My to-do list before the expansion

As everybody will have noticed already, we are left with barely two months to prepare for the expansion and try to complete at least a few things left over in Burning Crusade.

I have a vague plan of what I want and need to do before the expansion hits, here is my list split under two different headers: House-cleaning and Achievements

House Cleaning

• I have 107 Badges sitting in the bank, and unless I manage to get the Fang of Vashj or Boundless Agony in the next two months I’m going to spend them on the badge daggers. When the 3.0 patch will be live, I will definitely respec to Mutilate and I want to have the best main hand I can possibly get. At the moment it looks like a fast main hand is preferrable but things might change as they tweak talents and abilities. As off hand I have the Tracker Blade which should be the best off hand before BT and SW. If I were so lucky to get either of the two drops I will spend some of the badges on gems and try to sell them.
• I need to decide whether to put my primals on the AH or keep them and wait for the plethora of Dark Knights levelling their professions; probably everybody will be in Northrend exploring new content and very few will still be in Outlands and possibly even fewer farming primals.
• I still need 10 stacks of Netherweave so that I can get all the possible points from Netherweave bandages before I start with the new cloth.
• Same with Furious Crawdads and the other two Highland school fish and cooking, except that I have a head start with the cloth while I start from scratch with them.
• Collect enough low level herbs so that I can quickly level Inscriptions on my Death Knight. This is getting quite easy since I’m levelling a Tauren warrior and he is only 30, so plenty of low level herbs, and the DK should get the rest while she levels. (btw, I already reserved the name)
• I’d like to be able to start life in Northrend with 10K gold but not sure if I’ll be able to achive this; I’m not that far away but between all the other things I want to do, paying for consumables and repairs, I’m not sure I can bring myself to grind dailies enough to get there.

Achievements

• When I started raiding, I set myself the objective of seeing Vashj and Kael lying on the floor at my feet. I have now seen Vashj dead so I’m halfway there and one of the guild priorities is Kael, so should be ok with that.
• I have pretty much resigned myself at not hitting exalted with the Defilers before Christmas, but I’d like to be able to collect enough rep to become revered before the expansion. I’m less than 3k away so it could be feasable.
• In terms of rep, I still need to get to exalted with two Horde faction, Darkspear Trolls and Thunder Bluff. For the trolls is going to be relatively easy, I’m 5k away and I have some Runecloth in the bank I can turn in, it won’t be enough but it will help; it will definitely be more difficult with Thunder Bluff but I’ll see how much time I can spend on it.
• We are making progress in BT and I would like to just see as many bosses as I can there and give Archimonde a try or two but that will depend on Raid Management and what they decide to do.

I will update my list as I get closer to the expansion date maybe adding a few things and scrapping others because I will not be able to achie them and hopefully with what I have managed to do as well; so what are your things to do before the expansion hits?

12 Reasons why Rogues are the best lovers

Matt started it with this post, asking for 12 Reasons why your class is the best lover. Here is the evidence that Rogues are the best:

1. We don’t just fall asleep straight after (Quick Recovery)
2. We have staying power (Vigor and Endurance)
3. We can find the “right spot” for any partner (Find Weakness)
4. We are very good with our hands (Dual Wield Spec and Sleight of Hands)
5. We know all the Dirty Tricks
6. We are aware that Preparation and Setup are fundamental
7. We have an uncanny predisposition to undress our partner (Expose Armor)
8. Have some kind of “problem” in the bedroom? No worries, we can provide solutions with our knowledge of poisons and herbs
9. We are ready at every Opportunity
10. We have an instant protection against deseases (Cloak of Shadow)
11. We often take the Initiative
12. And last in the list but certainly not in importance… Rogues do it from behind

Addon Highlight – Hemlock

This is a first article of in what I hope to make a pemanent feature of the blog; from time to time I want to highlight addons that can make life easier to players. As my main is a rogue I will most probably concentrate on addons for the class but not necessarily all the time.

So, the first addon I’m going to talk about is Hemlock.

I really can’t remember how many times I got wrong the quantities of one reagent or another or oicked the wrong vial when I had to do the buying manually. Since I started using Hemlock restocking poisons has become as painless as two mouse clicks.

Once you have installed the addon by placing the extracted folder in the correct path (WOW\Interface\AddOns) you will not see anything different in your UI until you’ll visit the poison vendor for the first time.

As you can see from the screenshot Hemlock adds small tabs to the right of the vendor window, one for each type of poison plus one for Flash Powder. Every tab has two numbers, the top one is the amount of that poson you currently have in your inventory, while the bottom number is the amount you want to have when you restock. The first time you visit the vendor this number will be 0, and you can change it by right clicking on the tab and moving the slider as in picture two.

I usually carry a stack of each poison, that’s why the bottom number of each tab is 20.
With a first click on the correspondig tab, Hemlock buys autimatically enough reagents to align the top number to the bottom one. With a second click on the same tab, it start creating the poison.

With regards to flash powder, this is even easier because Hemlock automatically buys enough of it when you open the vendor window.

Another good thing is that the addon keeps track of reagents you already have in your inventory and doesn’t start from scratch for every poison so you will not find yourself with more than 4 spare vials (this happens because you can only buy vials as multiples of 5) or if you have reagents from lockboxes Hemlock uses those before buying new ones.

In Wrath this addon will be redundant since it looks like we will be able to buy the poisons straight for the vendors but in the meantime, I couldn’t really do without it.