Ice, Ice Baby

A few days ago, Keelhaul of Disenchanting Azeroth posted a new Differentiation Analysis of Polearms.  It is, at it's most basic, a breakdown of all the polearm models in the game.  He has it sorted very elegantly and it's a great resource.  He has also done shields, bows and some assorted melee weapons.  Keelhaul is also the guy responsible for some epic transmog contests that have been going on.  The WoW Factor is having a transmog show on Lightbringer for Alliance this Saturday.  That is my very first home server, so I might have to dust off an old toon and go check it out.  Judging from the pictures of the shows from Arthas, Tichondrius and Earthen Ring, it should be epic.

But, back to the polearms!  I had been looking for something different than the Hellreaver for my PVP gear.  The Sonic Spear stood out to me right away, and reminded me that I'd been wanting to do an outfit to go with my blue demon dog, Dave.  I found out quickly, however, that blue mail is hard to come by!  I then found out that most of the best blue mail isn't even in the game anymore.  I started with the Icy Scale Gauntlets, why they are in the MogIt database doesn't really make

Classic WoW Icy Scale Mail Set

sense, but I really wanted those gloves. After spending a few hours farming the Crypt Fiend Slayer, I went to wowhead to find out what I needed to farm to make the gloves.  Turns out, I wouldn't be farming anything for them, as the only pieces from the vanilla frost resist set that were rehashed for Wrath were the chest, belt, and boots.  The next piece of disappointment was the Blue Dragonscale Shoulders.  While they are still technically available, the pattern no longer drops.  I have all the mats, I just haven't been able to find an old-school Leather worker who can make them.  The last piece that eludes me is the Boots of Persistance.  They drop from Anub in 10-man Naxx.  I was able to kill him with just one other person, so I have no doubt they are aptly-named and will drop eventually.  Luckily, it only took one full run and a few mob kills the second time to get the Outrunner's Slippers to drop from Wailing Caverns.  I look at that as almost making up for all the rest since they have about a 0.2% chance to drop from mobs in there.

Drainee, is that you?

Drainee - Skywall

While looking myself up in the armory the other day I ran across this Pretty Fly Stranger Draenei.  Now, I know I was not the first person to name my character after a bad pronunciation of a race, but most of the other Draynees or Drainees or Drayneys are either low-level, or not Draenei.  Draynee is also a Human mage, and Drainee is also a Gnome mage.  Maybe it's a mage joke I don't get.  But this Drainee, she's the real deal!

While, she is not transmogged, she is fully outfitted in the best of the Tier 13 sets.  I started leveling a priest shortly after the art for priest Tier 13 was released, I thought it was so awesome.  Draenye is only level 52, but she'll get there one day.  I think priest Tier 11 and Tier 12 got a little weird, but priests definetly have some of the better looking tier sets in the game.  Tier 5 Avatar and Tier 6 Absolution are real winners in my book.  Maybe my priest is only level 52 because there's so much awesome out there for her I am not prepared!

Kattie - Proudmore

Circle of Flame, modeled by Drayney

 

 

Kattie is another super fly Draenei in Vestments of Dying Light, who I ran into at the bank.  She has her helm mogged into the Circle of Flame, which drops out of Blackrock Depths.

 

 

 

 

Just because I like it so much, here's the wowhead model viewer shot of the set.

 

 

Hey, Can We Talk About that Shield?

Trying to find a shield to go with Draynee's blue look, I was originally thinking of getting the Royal Crest of Lordaeron, but it's just so big.  A quick trip through the sheilds available with MogIt revealed the perfect blue solution, the Mazthoril Honor Shield.  This sheild is really so awesome it could go with anything, though.  It shoots fire for cryin' out loud!!  The normal animation is a light blue smoke coming from the dragon's mouth, but about once a minute it threatens to catch your tail on fire.  There is also a red version, the Dragonheart Flameshield, that drops from Nightbane in Karazhan.  More shields on Azeroth should do cool things like breath fire.  They are always just there, hanging out on your back, being boring.  Thank the titans for transmog.  Or the devs, whatever.

Now, I know that the blue of the shield is not really the same as the rest of the templar outfit, so if you're looking for something a little more matchy, the Jouster's set is perfect.  I've told Draynee she should have bought that outfit instead, but she is an impulse shopper...

Shoulders - Imperial Plate Shoulders
Chest -  Jouster's Chestplate
Hands - Jouster's Gauntlets
Waist - Jouster's Girdle
Legs -  Jouster's Legplates
Feet - Jouster's Greaves
Shield - Mazthoril Honor Shield
Mace - Crystal Spire of Karabor

Feeling a Little Blue

One night Draynee was feeling a little Blue (that song might get stuck in your head, be careful) and decided to do a little shopping.  New clothes can cheer up even the most battle-hardened warrior, right?  Browsing through the racks she came across Templar Legplates. "Hmm, these look nice." she thought, "A nice blue color, a little gold, wait a minute... are these?  Are these my Murkblood Avenger's Legplates in blue?!!!"  Draynee was no longer sad, but a Draenei on a mission.  In a fit of sadness-erasing shopping madness, she bought the whole Templar Plate set.  Then, she got it home and tried it on, "damn the Auction House and their skinny mirrors, these shoulders look horrible on me!" Since the AH has a strict 'no returns' policy, she set off to her void storage to see if she could make the outfit work.

As you can see, only the pants and belt made it out of the house.  The chestpiece too, but she didn't want all the dirty worgens around town looking at her cleavage, so she got a tabard.  Luckily she had held onto her tier 9 shoulders.  These have always been her favorite shoulders, since they are one of the only shoulder pieces that sit right on Draenei.  All the other shoulders are titled too far back, and you can see right into them.  Like, the shoulder designers couldn't just tilt them forward a tad?  Draenei have enough problems in the universe, you'd think they could be rewarded for standing up straight.  Draynee was totally feeling the Alliance pride though, and topped her look off with an Alliance Balloon.

Head - none, but the Templar Crown is a nice looking headband option
Shoulders - Turalyon's Shoulderguards of Conquest
Chest - Templar Chestplate
Hands -  Talonguard Gloves
Waist - Templar Girdle
Legs - Templar Legplates
Feet - Sapphiron's Scale Boots
Tabard - Knight's Colors
Sheild - Mazthoril Honor Shield
Mace - Mace of the Order  I originally farmed up the Lightsworn Hammer before realizing it is a main hand mace, and the one I have equipped is one hand.  Stupid transmog restrictions.

An amazing option for this look is The Grinder, but not a lot of people are running TOC 10 these days.  Hopefully the great item squish doesn't happen, and I'll be able to solo it in Mists.

Draynee

Drainee's on Fire!

Well, not literally, but I think her dog is.  You have to wonder if it gets hot carrying a flaming polearm around on your back.   The Hellreaver is another one of those items I first experienced leveling my Blood Elf DK.  I've never really understood why they don't have more strength polearms in the game, but at least there's plenty of agility ones for hunters to transmog!

This was the first outfit I transmogged.  I was so excited about the feature, I bought a bunch of greens off the AH and copied my hunter over to the PTR to play around.  I liked it so much, I 'mogged this look the first day.  The mail is very prounounced in the set, which is always nice, and I think the pockets on the pants add an excellent utility feel.

 Hunters don't use ammunition in-game anymore, but if Drainee needed some spare bullets, leg pockets seem like the perfect place to keep them.  Maybe some treats for Knucklehead too, he's a good Demon dog, although you don't have to feed your pets in-game anymore either.  Playing a hunter used to be a lot more work.  My very first character was a hunter.  I only played for a weeks, got to level 25 or so, but it was way back in Burning Crusade before they started changing hunters.  At that time, if you wanted to get rid of a pet, you would choose Abandon Pet, at which time the thing would turn around and attack you!  If you planned to be standing around the city for a long time, you had to dismiss your pet.  The longer you stayed inactive, the unhappier your pet got, and they would eventually leave you.  When I picked the game up again at the beginning of Wrath they had taken those two mechanics out, t it wasn't until later in Wrath they removed ammo, and with Cata came the elimination of the pet happiness system.

Well, now that the history of pets in WoW is out of the way, lets talk about this look! To the left you can see the whole Marshcreeper Mail set.  It comes with strange red shoulders that don't match at all.  I picked some silver scaley shoulders that coordinate well enough.  I also replaced the ankle wraps for some real boots.  For some reason I am anti skinny boots.  Boots should be large and in charge!  One of my biggest challenges in making outfits is finding boots that don't look like 80's leg warmers.  The Marshcreeper Items and the Sundered Spaulders are all Burning Crusade level BOE's

Head - none
Shoulders - Sundered Spaulders
Chest -  Marshcreeper Fen-Vest
Hands - Marshcreeper Gloves
Waist - Marshcreeper Belt
Legs -  Marshcreeper Leggings
Feet - Scaled Draenic Boots
Polearm - Hellreaver
Bow - Windrunner's Bow

What is UP with that armory pose?  Once upon a time they upgraded the original armory to let you change your character's pose.  Then, they upgraded it again, moved it to the battle.net site and for some reason lost that feature.  Drainee could really use it.

Draynee

Draynee's Still Fly

Ah, the year 2000.  Long before the World of Warcraft there was some pretty good rap music.  Still Fly by Big Tymers was one of my favorites to blast driving around in my big green van.  Yeah, I drove one of those in high school... It had a TV in the turtle top and rope lights in the back!  Luckily Draynee is way cooler than I was and totally rocks this Judgement recolor outfit.


My first WoW experience with the plate bustier was the Murkblood Avenger's Chestplate.  I was leveling my first solo character, a blood elf DK and was pretty enamored by that goofy chestpiece, and the matching pants, Murkblood Avenger's Legplates.  Both pieces come from quests in Nagrand. Since this was long before transmog (2009), I ended up selling those pieces and moving onto full-coverage Wrath gear.  When I leveled Draynee through Nagrand, I held onto that skimpy gear just for the nostalgia of it all.  As soon as transmog was announced, I knew what she'd be wearing!  Unfortunately, no shoulder pieces look right on Draenei's alone, so I threw a tabard over my beloved bustier (or corset as you may).  Luckily, my guild is purely for the advancement of Draenei flyness, so the guild tabard matches the outfit.
If you, too, regtretably vendored you Murkblood pieces, the chest and legs are the same model as the Revenant Plate set, which are BOE greens.  The other pieces in the outfit are part of the Tier 2 purple recolor, found in various Burning Crusade dungeons.

Head - none
Shoulders - Justice Bearer's Pauldrons
Chest - Murkblood Avenger's Chestplate or Revenant Chestplate
Hands - Life Bearer's Gauntlets
Waist - Girdle of Many Blessings
Legs - Murkblood Avenger's Legplates or Revenant Leggings
Feet - Boots of the Watchful Heart
Tabard - Illustrious Guild Tabard
Mace - Revitalizing Hammer
Sheild - Lord's Crest

I would love to have this for my ret set using the 2-handed sword Despair out of Karazhan, but drops have not been kind, either in Kara or appropriate level weapons, and I am stuck with a mace atm.

Draynee

Transmog is the Flyist Thing since Draenei

One night I was standing around Stormwind looking at options for my next transmog outfit while waiting for the Raid Finder queue to pop.  Suddenly, I was dc'd, unable to log back in due to an "issue affecting the authentication servers", to be fixed soon™.  The lull in dragon killing action got me thinking about how amazing the transmogrification feature is, but how expensive greens have become.  I spend many hours viewing gear with the MogIt add-on trying to plan the perfect look, but actually going out and trying to farm the gear, or dropping the gold at the AH keeps my outfits pretty stale.  I decided to start a blog cataloging the looks I'd like to put together, and the ones I actually do.

The name of the blog comes from my guild, Pretty Fly for a Draenei, on Proudmore US (A).  It was 100% ripped off from Nyhm's awesome video, a cover of the song "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" by Offspring.   At the time I first saw this video, I played mainly Horde, but after rolling my first draenei, I was hooked.  I make no secret about how the waggle is completely mesmerizing.  All of my draenei's are named after how I originally thought the race was pronounced "draynee".  A good friend of mine, Indora, got a kick out of that, being an original alliance player herself.

Well, now that all that history is out the way, I just have to say that transmog is the most wonderful feature implemented in World of Warcraft since the Draenei themselves.  Transmog was introduced around the time that Star Wars: The Old Republic was released.  I was pretty excited about transmog, but WoW had gotten a little stale, and like everyone I knew at the time I was pretty stoked on SW:TOR.  I played around with transmog a litte, and then spent the next month perfecting my light saber skills.  SW:TOR has a nifty feature that attempts to replicate transmog.  They have gear that is 'mod-able', meaning you can wear it at any level, and the gear gets its stats from mods.  The character I leveled in TOR wore the same outfit from 15-50 thanks to mod-able gear.  It was a pretty cool outfit, but when I got to max level and tried to find an outfit that really fit my character, I found the options to be pretty limited.  Chalk it up to it being a new game, but every time I tried to change my look, in the back of my mind I kept thinking about all the awesome gear WoW has to offer.  Long story short, I shelved my magenta light saber, and picked up a Hellreaver.  I couldn't be happier to be back, well maybe if they allowed 2-handed maces to be transmogged into 2-handed swords, but I'll take my gun-to-bow feature and just be quiet about it!

Draynee