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| Hmm... Have I been here before? |
It didn't hurt that the Good Twin got a couple of pieces of gear, the Azuresong Mageblade --it's made for a Mage, because it has "Mage" in the name!-- and the (Mage Tier 1) Arcanist Bracers. Between those two pieces of gear --plus an offhand I had obtained as a reputation piece via Alterac Valley-- my damage on an unbuffed per Frostbolt hit went from mid-600s to mid-700s. Which ain't so insignificant when you think about it.
***
There's also been all sorts of sneaky activities that my Questing Buddy and I have gotten ourselves into.
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| Because I simply can't keep my mouth shut. |
She and I --on my old Classic Rogue, Azshandra-- have been sneaking into Zul'Gurub and picking herbs, hoping for Bloodvine to drop.
In case you're wondering, Az's spec is a customized mixture of Combat and Subtlety. I designed it so that I could go just far enough into Subtlety to pick up Improved Sap and then into Combat to get the bonuses for dual wielding daggers. (Oh no, a Dagger Rogue! And a non optimized one, too!)
Eh, it works for me. She's not raiding. As a bonus, she has advantages in stealth that a regular Combat Rogue would never have, and that means she can help my Questing Buddy with Operation Bloodvine.
When we're not dead, that is.
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| There's a reason why I'm still hidden. |
Those of keen eyesight among you might notice that my Questing Buddy's Druid doesn't have any real gear on, and that's because she'd died enough times that her gear broke.
The idea is that we target an herb node, she casts heals on herself, mounts up, and pulls the nearby mobs. Then I stealth in and grab the herbs and any nearby Hoodoo Piles, then stealth away before the mobs come back. She typically manages to avoid the mobs long enough to find a reset point, but as you can see above she occasionally pulls too many enemies or she runs into one during her escape.
Still, the reward of Bloodvine for some of the best non-raid gear in Classic Era is worth it. The Bloodvine 3-piece cloth set is great for Warlocks and Mages up through Blackwing Lair, and only starts being replaced in the AQ40 T2.5 set pieces. Back in the Fall of 2020, once I obtained my Bloodvine set on OG Cardwyn, I kept it until I began getting replacement pieces in Naxxramas.* My Questing Buddy was hunting for Bloodvine to make the set for herself, but Bloodvine alone is worth a pretty penny on the Auction House.
So the lure of "free gold" --minus the gear repair bills-- is strong.
When my Questing Buddy is running back from having died, I find myself with time on my hands. So I've taken up dancing and singing while hidden. Because I can.
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| Yes, I remember Born in the USA quite well. Between that album, Purple Rain, 1984, and a host of other classic albums, 1984 was a good year. |
***
Oh! And I ran into an old friend in Feralas.
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| Fancy meeting you here. |
It's good to see Rexxar out and about like this, and not tied up at a Horde-only base in Outland.
***
And, uh, this person is back too.
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| /sigh |
Sometimes you just can't win.
*Why is it so good? Because the Bloodvine set has two distinct advantages over most other gear: it has superior spellpower bonuses, and it also has hit bonuses. If you want to go raiding, a Mage has to get to roughly +17 to their Hit bonus to reach the cap and have the greatest chance of hitting a raid boss that's roughly 3 levels higher than you. The Bloodvine set alone gets you a +4 to Hit, netting you a quarter of the bonuses you need to become "Hit Capped". The drawback is that there are absolutely no Stamina bonuses to the Bloodvine set, so you don't have even close to as much health as wearing Tier raid gear will get you. That is.... kind of deadly in places such as Blackwing Lair or AQ40.
EtA: Apparently I can't spell the word "keen". Fixed.
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