New Blood Elves and Level 100 (a while ago)

     I'd been watching for it, but before I thought to check yesterday morning a friend who knows me very well excitedly told me to go look. Sure enough, a preview for the new Blood Elf models: Blood Elf Artcraft. I've been waiting more than a little uneasily for them. Looking at the still pictures has me a bit more optimistic, but only cautiously so. I liked the stills for a lot of things that I've been less impressed with when I see them live. And the previews are limited to one face and a few hairstyles so I really have no idea how mine will look. I'm afraid they'll get a really silly run like the male night elves. But the stills look good. It doesn't seem like they gave them the flat, dead, bulgy eyes that ruined my enjoyment of my lady draenei. So I'm hoping that when I see them live I'll love them as much as I love the current models.

I went afk for something and when I came back I found that Tai had taken a seat and settled in to discuss garrison matters with Rokhan,

      In other news Tai did manage to hit level 100 last Saturday. That night he tried the proving grounds and I was pleasantly surprised that it only took three tries to get silver despite the fact that for that he has to heal in serpent stance when in the field with Os he's played almost entirely in Spirited Crane.
     So of course the next day the first thing we decided to do was go make an attempt at two-manning a dungeon. Looking to see what we should try we found out our brand new 90 gear only made us barely eligible to queue for normal Skyreach if we had been going to queue. that seemed a pretty good indication that it would be the best place to start.

     It was our first time setting foot into any of the dungeons this expansion, so we had no idea what to expect. Skyreach is a pretty dungeon I'd have nabbed more screenshots but only had time for this one when Os went afk for a moment. The trash wasn't too bad, though rather slow going with only mistweaver and prot pally damage.
     Then we got to the first boss. The sensible thing probably would have been to look at a guide for the strategies or at least crack open a dungeon journal, but we like trial and error. There were lots of errors. An accidental bubble on Os' part got Tai stomped by Ranjit. Moments later an ill timed chi torpedo showed me that no... there is NO invisible wall on that platform after all. We rather thought we wouldn't manage it. I couldn't really help with the dps, the damage was too heavy on our new armor. But somehow after a lot of tries this happened:

     He dropped mail that Tai and Os looked at, shrugged, and DEed. The second boss got one attempt before we decided to leave it for another day. Still it was fun, far more challenging than Mist Heroics we were easily able to complete with roughly the same gear. We'll be going back to try again with a few more pieces of gear.
     It took a few more days of resource gathering but Tai has finally managed to upgrade his garrison to level three and put in a salvage yard, lumber mill and stable. Eventually the mill will be replaced, probably with an inn, but for now it's helping upgrade the rest.

    Ailuuya's almost 97. She's got plenty of resources, thanks to some downtime and to having been smart enough to start with a lumber mill. But I still can't decide what spec to try to gear up, for the moment she's continuing to level in prot.