Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Close to the Vest My Ass

 I, uh, made an oopsie last night.

No, I didn't pull aggro*, and we were finally able to down Sapphiron. And I landed the T3 robe as well. (Cost me about all my DKP, though.)

But it was after, when a raid friend and I were chatting back and forth and the talk turned to BC that I slipped up. I'd mentioned that I was thinking about cloning Card so that a version of her could remain on a Vanilla Classic server forever, which my friend was thinking of doing too, but then my friend asked me about mains in BC. 

I admitted that I didn't know for sure what I might do, and that I might even end up switching to Horde as a main, which shocked him. I had to explain that my first two toons I leveled [to completion] in Wrath were Blood Elves, and I do know that I'm likely to create a BC Classic version of them. Whether they'll be just an alt or whether I'll make them my mains remains to be seen, however.

Oh well. If word gets around that Card is "going to the dark side", I'll have earned that.

***

Given that I got the Mage T3 robe, my current robe, the one I've dubbed the Spider-mage robe, isn't going to be on me for that much longer. Still, I really love the look and feel of it:

Azshara was empty the night I was
playing around with the look. I'm not one
to do this sort of thing while there's a crowd.

The official name of the robe is the Crystal Webbed Robe that drops off of Maexxna, and according to sixtyupgrades.com it's the second best Mage robe in Classic at the moment. ** However, the personality of this robe is something that you'd think Spider-woman or Spider-Gwen (both from the Marvel Universe) would wear. 

It just has that awesome look like something
that Ashley Eckstein would design.

 

It was while I was screwing around in Azshara with the look of the robe that I discovered that, much like the superheroes I could see wearing it, the Spider-mage robe has a dual identity.

I was wearing an orange shirt underneath the robe, but since orange looks perfect with the aesthetic I never paid it any mind. However, if you look closely at the chest of the first pic you can see where there are a few cross stitching marks where some lacing is. That got me curious, so I took off the orange shirt, and when I did I blurted out "holy shit!"

Uh.... Card?
When did you grow up so fast?

Card turned into a vixen.

Complete with backless look...

...and matching side boob and
spiderweb / fishnet pantyhose
on the arms.

Even in my dreams I wasn't expecting this.

Now, I'll freely admit that Card looks awesome in both looks, but the Spider-vixen look was truly shocking. And I'm not going to say that Blizz shouldn't have designed it this way, but as was pointed out by another friend who I showed this... transformation... to, Blizz does have a history of presenting female gear very differently than male gear. To her (and me), it was the overall lack of choice on a lot of the gear that annoyed her.***

At least with the Crystal Webbed Robe I had the choice to put an orange shirt on and turn Card into a budding superhero, rather than a femme fatale out of Azeroth After Dark.****

And yes, I'm going to keep the Spider-mage robe in my pack, just so I can put it on from time to time to hang around Stormwind or something. Maybe I should make a "vixen" look too, but I don't think I'm ready for that side of Card yet.



*Thanks to an Ignite I got to the top of the aggro stack on Thaddius, even though I'd stopped casting, and the Mage Lead was calling for a drop of Ignite. Luckily the main tank was able to taunt off me, but I didn't touch my cast bar at all until at least one other tank got past me on threat. That was an anxious 10 seconds there, let me tell you, and that was right after we'd been given a lecture about managing threat by the Raid Lead. I wish I could take credit for the aggro, but I had little to do with it. I wasn't even up high until aggro on the MT got shaky and suddenly it was one person, then a second, and then me atop the aggro stack. But we didn't wipe and we only lost one or two people on Thad total.

**The T3 Mage robe is currently best in slot.

***At least this isn't TERA or some other Korean MMO, where this look would be considered tame.

****Knowing Rule 34, Azeroth After Dark is likely a thing. But I'm stating here for the record that I'm not gonna search for it. Nope nope nope.... Okay, whew. It isn't a thing after all. Actually, I'm quite surprised.


EtA: Fixed a clarity mistake and "shirt", not "robe".

4 comments:

  1. You get way too excited by a low-cut robe, lol!

    Grats on Sapphiron though. :)

    And I'm surprised you're already seriously considering switching to Horde... I mean, I get wanting to relive your belf days, but wouldn't you miss the friends you've made?

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    1. Yes, I realize in Europe --okay, in most of the rest of the world it seems-- standards are a wee bit different concerning sex, sexy clothing, and whatnot, but I had this image in my head of what Card looked like, and that vixen look kind of blew that out of the water. I just have a hard time seeing a Mage who'd dealt with the horrors in AQ40 and BWL --not to mention Naxx itself-- show up and fight the undead in what amounts to an evening gown. And a backless one at that.

      Maybe I don't watch enough anime or something, but this reminds me very strongly of the movie Jurassic World, where Bryce Dallas Howard's character spends much of the movie running from the dinos while in high heels.

      As for the Horde switch, that's the thing: even if I were to stay mostly Ally side, I could easily see myself being last by a long shot in terms of leveling up to 70 and then getting raid ready. It's not that I dislike leveling, but that I'd enjoy the ride too much. For example, the rest of the raid team (it seems) spends a ton of time farming lashers in Dire Maul East to build up gold to get the raid consumes they need, I prefer to spend my time playing around with friends, running instances, playing BGs, or run older raid content. Because I prefer doing these other things --and I don't have the bag space-- I end up just farming mats the old fashioned way. So in terms of raiding I already zig where the rest of the raid team zags.

      Looking ahead to BC, it looks like the vast majority of the raid team is already expecting to power level to first get to L70 and then through attunements, so I'm likely to be left behind or receive significant pressure to power level Card regardless of my own opinions on the matter. So from my perspective, switching to Horde is one way of taking back control over my own toons.

      Finally, switching to Horde is but one option I have. I prefer not talking about them in public as it were, but I do have other options open to me at this time.

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    2. Oh, and thanks for the congrats on Sapphiron. I knew my DPS sucked on that fight, but the Mages' primary job was to decurse people and simply stay alive, so I spent most of my time decursing, managing mana, and keeping Frost Wards up as a supplement to downing Greater Frost Protection potions. There was also a significant amount of luck in the kill, as we frequently had to sprint to the far side of the room to hide behind an ice block. And let me tell you, a lot of us got there just in time before the frost breath attack. If those ice blocks were just a little farther away we'd have wiped.

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  2. Grats on Sapphiron and your Frostfire robe!

    Ah, yes, THAT dress! XD It is kind of scandalous, isn't it? I much prefer it with a coordinating shirt, too -- preferably one in a color that goes well with the overall color scheme, but is a contrasting color to the lacings on the arms so that they still show up nicely.

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