Still a hunter though. Bwahaha! We shall take over the world, soon enough.

Note: Cause I know someone’s gonna bring up all the Marksman stuff on my bars: I am experimenting with raiding as Marksman when there’s a ret pally in the group already bringing the 3% damage buff, since it overwrites Ferocious Inspiration anyway. I want to get good with Marksmanship, and then someday, I swear to you, I’ll be good at Survival too… maybe… /bangs head into wall

Ya know, several months later, and I still hear it in the back of my mind sometimes…

Lemme tell ya, it’s weird to have “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” floating above a certain character’s head when you still feel like a noob to that particular class.

Not to mention:

My alt is in Ulduar. That may not be a big deal to some of you, but it’s fantastically surreal to me.

(Nothing dropped, of course, but hey.)

One-shotted. 4968 DPS from yours truly, of which Wash– who lived the whole time– did 38%. Of course, I got destroyed by a mage, DK, and Marksman hunter, but that’s one of the great things about my raid group: people are good!

But yeah. Even if everyone is way over-geared for this now and much of the title’s value has been cheapened, it’s still cool, no?

I <3 my guild!

Color-coordinating Bears. It was cute. =D

This is the achievement I got after winning The Greatest Piece of Loot I Have Ever Won In Any Event Ever. To be fair, I used the trick where you just stick it in one trinket slot and then move it to the other, so really, I am still rolling with one non-qualifying trinket (Curse you, Mirror of Truth!)

In any event, I had a big night, and now I’m off to go lovingly cuddle my new trinket as I fall asleep~

*is not in any way obsessed with her new trinket*

*may not be telling the entire truth*

Enter “Iron Council Medium Mode”.

See, today I logged on, went to go do Icecrown dailies, and received a whisper from someone I hadn’t heard of it in a long time. It was my old Naxx group. The one I went to Naxx10 with every week for a good few months earlier this year. They invited me to a 10-man Ulduar. I had nothing better to do and I was excited to see some people I hadn’t played with in a while, so I accepted.

…so…

…so, in the time between us struggling our way through Naxx10 and now, they got good. And also got some friends in high places. We were smashing through achievements left and right with tanks who had close to 50,000 HP.

Anyways, Iron Council, aka Falcon Punch. Apparently the order you kill the guys in determines how difficult your encounter will be. We opted to go for a “Medium Mode”, which involves little elementals that spawn every ten seconds or so and must be AoE’d and slowed and kited and pretty much killed immediately, or Bad Things Happen.

Due to group makeup, it was pretty much up to me, a warlock, and a mage.

…and I dunno if I’ve ever felt like so much depended on me as a DPS. If we died, it wasn’t cause the tanks failed or the heals failed or because of something passive like a lack of gear. No, this time, if we died, it was all on the heads of the DPSers.

As a hunter on this, your job is a.) keep your pet on the boss, b.) Keep an eye out for the purple circles, c.) lay down Frost Traps as available, d.) Volley the heck out of the purple circle, e.) pick off any stragglers that snuck past the AoE, f.) avoid the crap on the ground, and g.) somehow manage to keep your mana up throughout all of this (curse you Volley, you mana-sucker you.)

It was not easy.

But man it felt good afterwards.

Warlock, mage, and I all got specifically thanked by name afterwards for our work.

DPS frequently feels like a thankless job, but I felt good today. Kudos to Blizz for (perhaps finally) making an encounter where it feels like all depends on you and your active efforts, my fellow PewPew-ers.

Well I’ve been thinking I need to clarify something, namely, my wanting of that title is purely from a Pike perspective. Tawyn, the character, from a roleplaying standpoint– is titleless. Partially because I haven’t seen any titles in the game that fit her, and partially because I don’t think she’d want a title or feel very comfortable with one. Oh sure, I’ve got Jenkins (like everyone else), and I’m gonna wind up with Champion of the Frozen Wastes sooner or later (Oculus and Malygos left… my money is on getting Malygos first… that is how much I stink at Oculus =P), and I might wear that one for a bit later down the road when not everyone is using it, but… that one doesn’t fit Tawyn either. Tawyn is Tawyn. Period.

Lunapike, on the other hand, is a different story. I view her as being not only very intelligent but also good at understanding people, particularly “fringe” groups that she can connect with on some sort of deep level as she, too, is a bit of an outcast. This is in contrast to the more acerbic Tawyn who is sort of a misanthrope to people until they earn her trust. Anyways, this was largely why Lunapike wound up exalted with the Mag’har before achievements even existed– reputation is one of my favorite forms of “passive roleplaying” (mounts and tabards, by extension, are another favorite).

So then came Achievements and with it the Diplomat title and I knew immediately that it was Lunapike’s title. Since I already had the Mag’har finished I was 1/3, and I knew from experience with Tawyn that getting Sporeggar up there isn’t that hard. So I opted to work on it after Tawyn hit 80 and the resulting initial WotLK hype died down.

I really wanted to get a level on Lunapike first before I started, so I did that, and then for the past several weeks she hasn’t set foot in Northrend. Instead, I slowly worked on getting rep with the Timbermaw and Sporeggar between doing things on my other characters. The Timbermaw one was the most tedious especially at Revered when you stop getting rep-per-kill (except for named mobs) and have to go through turn-ins, but lemme tell ya, having House on in the background while you do it makes it go a lot quicker. >.>

Sporeggar was done mostly through solo’ing the first 25% or so of Underbog over and over and farming Sanguine Hibiscus (Hibiscusus? Hibiscusaii? Haibisukasu?). The mobs in there were all still green to me as a level 71, so not only did I get some experience for my pets but I also got experience for myself– 35% of a level entirely from Underbog. Not too shabby.

My hard work culminated in this today:

It looks good, and fits her character. Passive roleplaying for the win. *nods*

Oh, one last thing (off-topic!)… if you are actually at my “physical” site, you will notice that the Sitemeter button on the right hand side of the page is hanging rather precariously close to 200,000 hits. I would like to officially extend the offer I made at 100,000 to this one, too: e-mail me a screenshot of the 200,000 ding and get a free “WarCute avatar”. Oh, and if I already owe you one (I know I’ve offered out “freebies” before on my LiveJournal), I apologize and I’ll try to get right on it >.> And my apologies for forgetting to announce the “contest” until relatively late in the game. /phail

(Makin’ it better: Wash didn’t die until literally the last ten seconds of the fight. <3)

(Oh, and alternate title for the post: “Hell Has Frozen Over”)

Heck yeah.

D’awww!

And for the not-so-minipet-inclined, have a screenshot that was taken in live game with no graphical glitches or anything. It’s an actual place and camera angle you can get– fairly easily, too, if you have an “I wonder if you can go in there” type of mind. Any crazy guesses or need me to drop hints? =P

(Oh, and in case anyone’s curious… I’ll be dinging 79 tomorrow. Go go Aspect of the Tortoise!)