DING 80!!!

Okay, so, i have been way too busy working full time, spending time with family for Christmas, and trying to find time to level on WoW to post here. i did finally catch up on Heroes (nooo, why did Sylar have to go psycho on us again?) but other than that i haven't gotten much done at all. That is, until i got sick last week. Being sick makes a great opportunity for legitimately finding time to level, particularly when you have joint aches, headaches, dizzy spells, and general weakness that is unaffected by typing and using a mouse. i called in sick at work two days, stayed home from church on Sunday (except for AWANA that night), and finally dinged 80 today. i have several screenshots to share, actually.

First off, i got this bow about three days ago, but the 44g rep bow had issues. When i opened a ticket i wrote:

I just bought the Sin'dorei Recurve Bow in Vengeance Landing. My old Bow of Bone and Sinew gets 362.5 dps with my current gear and the Timeless Arrow. My new bow says 303.1, and when I try to shoot an error message says "Ammo needs to be in the paper doll ammo slot before it can be fired." If i take the ammo out of the slot my old bow then does 300.4 dps, so my new weapon obviously isn't registering the ammo and should be doing 365ish.

They responded via e-mail:

We are aware of the situation you reported, and we are currently working on a solution. Please check the World of Warcraft website (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com) for future updates and corrections. We appreciate your patience.

Had i actually checked Thotbott in the first place, i needn't have bothered. The stupid bow shoots bullets.

In the process of lvling from 79-80 i started to look at armor upgrades. i'm not wanting to look at Naxx yet (this, as it turns out, includes disregarding the Eye of Eternity, because it turns out that's a raid, too), because i want to get geared to go into Naxx. My gear is actually pretty decent already because i saw some lw recipes drop in SSC and the Eye along with a trash drop in Hyjal and rare wrist drop off Supremus in BT while i was running with <Kids Next Door>; that paired with my badge gear (from running Naxx and Heroics until i was sick of them) gives me a hodgepodge of pre-t5, t5-comparable, and pre-t6 gear (save for my bow/gun and one-handers, which to be perfectly honest have sucky drop rates in TBC, i mean less than 15%, and i never got to see the bosses that would give me that gear, except for the one trash drop that was given to an enh shammy even though i won the roll). So now i'm starting to buy some rep gear and figure out where i need to go to get my dungeon gear (there are no dungeons sets in Wrath for me to go for, so i've had to do more searching to figure out what i need). This isn't that easy, since the Armory no longer compares upgrades to your current pinned character, and its search filters stink, but i finally figured out how to use Wowhead to good effect. Anyway, as far as rep gear, i've gotten the Fang of Truth and Unholy Persuader (my, don't they make a pair? lol). i plan to get the Cloak of Holy Extermination as soon as i ding honored with Argent Crusade (which isn't too far away, in fact, i could be doing quests and dailies for rep right now instead of writing this!).

So, in conclusion, i plan to eventually get the Zombie Sweeper Shotgun (rev with Arg Cru), but i enjoyed using the gun with bullets for all of two days, and today this dropped in the Halls of Lightning (i was really surprised, i thought it had a low droprate), just a couple of hours after i dinged (dang?) 80 while running CoT - Old Strat (in which this dropped, with another low droprate). It's painful deleting my old gear (that i spent so many hours raiding to acquire, sometimes in agony, sometimes having a lot of fun), but this is just comical. Ugh, i'm hungry and tired, and i didn't get to the screenshots. i think i'll get something to eat, and if i have the energy i might post those for you then... or maybe tomorrow as i don't have to go to work until 4pm or some such.