The Dancing Tree

Let me introduce you to the bane of my existence. It’s called Masterwork Elementium Deathblade. It’s not the bane of my existence because of the weapon speed (though I hate that too) or the fact that it has haste on it (also not a fan of that problem). No no. My issue with this sword is the hideous, horrible, overused model. Dear god, I am sick of it.

Let me explain. My pally is my favorite toon. She’s not my main and I don’t get to raid much on her, but she’s my favorite. While I spend most of my play time on my druid (and I love her too!) the pally is the one who has most of the achievemtents and collects the mounts. She’s my main RP toon, and during Wrath, I got to raid on her as well, and she was extremely well geared. I obsess about her dps and I keep up with ret pally theorycrafting. I don’t get to raid on her because I am the raid healer for my group, and that’s where I’m most useful. I’m not particularly good at holy healing, so even when I can bring alts into the raid, I usually don’t get to bring her. It’s sad, but I’m okay with it.

I still like making sure she has good gear though. The Deathblade is the best that’s available to me without raiding, so that’s what I’m using. But MAN do I hate that model.

Prior to the Deathblade, I was using the pink version of the sword, Blade of the Fearless. I had been using that since about….I don’t know….maybe three or four weeks after Cata dropped. I joked with my guildies that I felt like She-Ra with it, and changed my pally’s hair to resemble her for awhile. But after six months of looking at that sword, I’d had enough. I was stoked when I saw there would be a crafted sword because it meant I wouldn’t have to look at that awful thing anymore. Then I saw the preview and it was the SAME MODEL. It’s just blue this time, which I guess makes her He-man? Arg.

Needless to say, when 4.3 hits, the first thing I will be doing is running to the ethereals and transmogrifying the crap out of that sword. My first choice is my long lusted after favorite sword model in the game, Twinblade of the Phoenix from Tempest Keep. I honestly think this is one of the best swords around for a blood elf paladin. If RNG doesn’t smile upon me, I’ll probably use Greatsword of the Sin’dorei  until it does. I loved that sword model during Wrath, and I only got to use it for a few days before an upgrade dropped for me in the five man ToC.

And possibly more exciting is that, as a ret pally, I have grown used to my belt and boots never matching my tier. It’s always either DK or warrior stuff, and sometimes that looks okay (like in t11) and sometimes it looks terrible (like in t10). Finally I will be able to use the models from those healie belts and boots and will not look like I’m color blind. And I will never have to wear a WWE style belt EVER AGAIN!!!!

I’m not just excited for my paladin here. My first thought when I heard the announcement was that I needed to go farm up the entire t6 set for my druid. Then, while playing Atlasloot dress up in guild chat last night, I realized that the off set drops from Black Temple look amazing with T12. While it’s not my favorite, I don’t mind t12, except for the shoulders and helm which I don’t care for in general, and make my poor tauren girl look like a deranged linebacker. But oh, it looks amazing with those two off set pieces!

Plus all of those gorgeous feral staves that look so perfect for a druid? Yeah. They will be mine.

My mains aren’t the only ones I’m excited for. I’ll probably deck my DK out in his starter gear again and will dual wield Tankard O’ Terrors. My engineer priest will be wearing her Wrath goggles full time. My warrior will get any other sword model than the freaking Blade of the Fearless….twice. And the beauty of it is, I’ll be able to change the look of these rarely played characters of mine who don’t often get upgrades, so that when I do get the chance to play them, I don’t have to look at the same gear for months on end.

I’m happy with the way Blizzard is doing this as well. I like that you still need to go get the gear if you want to wear it. I think it adds another level of achievement onto the whole thing. And I’m really looking forward to running old content with my guild so we can deck out our toons the way that we envision them. I would say that this is such an awesome thing for RPers, but really, I think it’s awesome for everyone to have more options. And it will be great that max level characters won’t just be complete clones of each other.

Oh, and as for void storage? Let’s just say my pally’s bank is rejoicing.