I was just browsing through the vast amount of blog's that I read from the Warrior community* when I stumbled accross a little gem of a post about feeling part of a battle, rather than just a raid. It occured to me, that this is perhaps one of the things that I take for granted these days, in perhaps a different way.

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Well Arena Season 4 is due to start on 25th June in the EU - and not a moment too soon I think. I usually keep up-to-date with info as soon as it comes out, but last night I didn't find out this fabulous news until I logged on to grab some Battlegrounds. The arrival of Season 4 will herald a new start in PvP for me. Where I'll finally be actually playing for rating rather than just points. I'll admit that in my mish-mash of PvP gear I'm still averaged out somewhere in power between S1 and S2, which is under-geared to compete. But my partner and myself have improved somewhat since we started out and I really believe with some Gem and Enchantment changes on my S2 items that I'll be grabbing from Honour in Battlegrounds, we have a good chance of climbing up in rating quickly (albeit to a cut off point where we'll need to gear into S3/S4 mixes from the points we've earned.

I think that our primary aim would be to get to 1700 - which with some S2 gear upgrades, enchantments and gems should be doable. This will give us access to purchase a nice mix of S3/S4 items. Until then I'll be found in Battlegrounds grabbing enough honour to give my gear a little boost as soon as the 25th is here. I'll also be found farming more gold to get the latest and greatest of Gem and Enchantment technology sorted out.

In other news, my good IRL friend and fellow guildmate - Leggy (a.k.a. Rafeeki, Orc Shaman) has got 2 weeks of WoW downtime while he moves house. Not sure how he'll cope with that but I remember when I had a similar issue and it was hard work. For me it was while my guild was part-way through the BWL progress push, so I missed a lot of wipes on Chrommagus. Rafeeki however isn't into his raiding - and like the rest of us in the guild; he plays for Honour against other players. I'll save a spot for you in the group mate ;)

I suddenly realised today that I've not really spoken here in some time. There are plenty of reasons why not, all of them involving events that I've wanted to attend IRL. But I've far from been avoiding good old WoW.

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It has been a little over a week since I said anything. I've mostly been playing games rather than thinking and talking about them much. With PvP Arena Season 4 just on the horizon I've been trying to cram as much Battlegrounds in as possible. I'm not entirely sure why, the more I earn now - the less I have to earn in the next season; which in turn means that I'll end up with less realistic goals. But I imagine that a focus shift in-game could help me overcome any potential tedium that could develop as a side-effect.

Last night our little PvP guild head back into Karazhan for a few more free epics - but mainly for Badges (think of those nice PvP cloaks) and a little break from Battlegrounds and Arena. In a change from last week our Raid Leader Maestroism (Tauren Shaman of our Guild) asked me and Tristan (our main Warrior) to both spec. Protection. So I picked a reasonably standard Prot build - including 3/3 Improved Thunderclap and 2/5 Improved Demo Shout - and then all the way through the Protection tree to grab all the neccessaries.

I can't tell you what my gear levels were like before I went in - but it was around 15k armour, 11k health and less than 400 defense. We cleared through the instance in one sitting this time. Which was nice. Took a fair number of AFK breaks tho, so we could have been done before 3am I guess - but it was a good laugh.

The main feature was that we killed Netherspite this time - which we previously missed. I think that it has now "clicked" how to do it in our minds - he'll be one of the easiest to drop again as he did seem like a bit of a pansie otherwise.

I picked up a couple of items that will help my cause of tanking gear for when we do things like this (although seeing as we have no problems completing the instance in what gear we already have, I guess I don't need to gear for it - but perhaps there is a ZA run in the winds sometime...)

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For a month now (or just over) I've been playing with the same talent spec - Endlesss Rage, Maces & 5/5 Enrage (41/20/0). I have little or no complaints about this spec. [Endless Rage] does seem to yield a lot of extra rage. Some people complain that it is too much rage, and that with Mortal Strike and Whirlwind on cooldown there is little to use it for. I disagree. Endless Rage enables enough bonus rage yield from your attacks that you can use Heroic Strike more often.

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The new PvP rewards from Arena and Honour have been released from PTR servers. I checked out a link with screenshots in-game showing the costs, appearance and stats on the new Season 4 PvP equipment at World of Raids.

I'm loving the fact that some models have now been changed (most notably the shield graphic).

Check them out and let me know what you think.

What happens when a bunch of PvP addicted chaps head into Karazhan 3 times over a 2 week period? Well it gets cleared of course. Now I might be lying here. We've yet to defeat Netherspite - but some have mentioned that he is not needed to be considered Karazhan clear? Maybe somebody could confirm this PvE nuance for me.

There were a few bits of loot to be found for some of us. But generally speaking, it was looted for looks or for disenchanting. We were there 100% for the acheivment of the raid instance, even if it was the most simple in the game currently.