I'm not sure if this qualifies as a Birthday gift...

...But Ulu got his gear back yesterday.

Well I thought it was kinda cool, even if it did take 25 days to complete. None of the gear was gemmed/enchanted when it was returned, but Blizzard also gave me the Nether Vortices/Primal Nethers that the Gold Sellers bought with my Badges. They've currently been sold to fund my reenchanting/regemming fund.

Well today I turned 29 for the third year in a row. *ahem* So I'm going to post a little tune in celebration:

What is Best In Life?

Still no word on Ulu's gear.

That said he did manage to scrape together enough badges to grab the Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor last night. Pretty nice upgrade over the Wrynns he was using, especially with 2x 15 Stamina gems in them. Ulu is currently sitting at about 15k health in his MT gear. It's not amazing, but it'll be enough to be useful in T5 instances and maybe even trashtank Hyjal.

In other news, I weakened yesterday and pre-ordered Age of Conan. An action-based MMO with Free-For-All PVP doesn't exactly sound like my cup of tea, but hey, it's Conan.

Three days, three different shoulders.

Well three weeks into the hacking mess, still no sign of Ulu's gear. On the plus side, with the exception of his Bracers, I've managed to build a halfway decent set of gear for him now.

On Friday, Ulu came and helped Off-tank a Void Reaver/Solarian run in Tempest Keep. After that was cleared, Ulu went and tanked a couple of Heroics. First up was Magister's Terrace, where Ulu was finally able to get his hands on a Commendation of Kael'thas! After that it was off to Sethekk Halls heroic where Ikiss kindly dropped the Spaulders of Dementia, giving Ulu a set of shoulders with actual tanking stats on them.

After that, Ulu had enough badges to buy a new Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker. However, I decided not to bother replacing any more of my old items and decided to keep saving for the new ones.

The new shoulders lasted him all of about 12 hours before an afternoon Gruul/Magtheridon farm gave him a new set of Justicar Shoulderguards. After that it was off to Karazhan, where Ulu got a new cloak and had enough badges for the new ring. After some humming and hawing, I decided to save badges for the new badge legs instead.

Sunday saw Ulu in Zul'Aman with some bored folks where the first chest provided him with the Pauldrons of Stone Resolve. At the moment, I'm still relying on the Tier 4 shoulders for the most part, but the Za shoulders will be useful for my block set when I get Ulu's gear back. As it stands, I'm just glad to be able to raid and do Heroics with Ulu again.

State of the Blah

Haven't updated here for a few days. There's not really much to say. I'm about two-and-a-half weeks into Ulu not having any gear, and I'm expecting to wait the same again.

Wulf's become my main raiding toon whilst I assemble Ulu a back-up set of gear. Thankfully he's able to do competitive DPS in Mount Hyjal, Zul'Aman and Tempest Keep. I'm currently collecting Badges on him to get a Crossbow of Relentless Strikes. I've currently saved 63, so "only" another 87 to go.

Ulu's been slowly developing some OK tanking gear. I've got some friends running him through Steamvaults once a day to try and get a new Steam-Hinge Chain of Valor and/or Devilshark Cape. Those items, plus the Tier 4 Shoulders which Maulgar will hopefully drop this weekend, should leave him at a level where he can usefully off-tank in raids again.