Wood and Cloth - Salute to a Warrior

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Patch 3.2 came and went with the excitement of ore selling like crazy, gems going for 500 gold cut, and lowbies rushing into bg's. But markco was no where to be found in the auction house.

He was alone, in the valley of honor swinging his gladiator's furious axe into a big stick and bag of cloth that made up one of ogrimmar's level 80 dummies. The bag head seemed to smirk at Markco as he attacked, and after every shield slam he swung from side to side as if to say 'no, you won't beat me.' Markco worked up quite a sweat and was seen changing into four different sets of gear while he compared all kinds of stats and the results of those changes on the dummy.

Try as he might, Markco never even put a dent into the thing.

3k, 4k, 2k, 2.2k, 4.2k... the numbers just wouldn't go higher. The devastates didn't live up to their name.

Frustrated, he swore and put on his full block value set... 13k with shattering throw, shield bash, shield block, and greatness proced with full sunders. A day ago that would of been 18k, and what's worse, the resilience changes made it so he could not possibly wear that block value set any longer. The devastates were too low, as low as 1.4k and he was too vulnerable in this gear set. In 2's he could survive, but not 3's.

So then Markco got an idea, a crazy idea that no one else seemed to have thought of... he put on full armor pen. Epic gems, worth 750-1000 gold each he bought without even thinking about it. As quickly as possible he put on the few pieces of armor pen he had and regemed everything.

The end result? A measly 28.63% passive + 10% from battle and +20% from sunders. 58.63% all together.

3.8k, 4.6k, 2.4k... the numbers didn't seem to go up much at all. Maybe with full pve dps gear he could do it, but after hundreds of hours of gearing for the block set, Markco didn't seem to think he had the power in him to do it again.

After almost four years of mastering his character, perfecting arms, perfecting prot... Markco suddenly backed away from the dummy. He wasn't upset, he didn't cry or turn his back to his opponent in disgrace. He simply looked down at his weapon, took a deep breath of the smooth, cool ogrimmar air, and held the hilt with suddenly sweaty palms. The smell of kodo, caked mud, and the flowing river next to him filled his senses with dreams of when he first ran through this great valley. Small and alone, he had looked at Ogrimmars wonders with such passion and respect. These memories were replaced with the thrill of combat, the hundreds of thousands of alliance he'd slain. Suddenly he roared with his axe held high in his right hand and let his shield fall to the ground.

The axe flew so fast that it took the dummy's head clean off. Tired but satisfied, Markco headed off to the auction house, leaving his weapons behind.

RIP MARKCO

9/17/2005 - 8/04/2009

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So Markco is getting shelved because I just don't feel like running hundreds of hours of pve to get armor penetration to make prot somewhat viable. What's worse is that there really isn't a hunter good enough on my server to do 3's to glad competitive levels. Therefore markco is getting shelved for the time being and I have several alts I can pick up to start over. Who would you pick?

Mage, Shaman, Lock, Rogue, Hunter, Druid, or Paladin

Now Markco isn't totally going away, let's face it, he's my favorite character. I will do my best to get him into a 3's team with good players and attempt to get high as prot or arms, but I'm definately not going to keep him as my main character.