It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
stargrace 
I think it’s great that we get the choice of some pretty nice armor in Frostfell this year. It’s easier (or at least cheaper) for me to work my way through those instances and collect tokens for gear rather then paying for all of my alts to wear mastercrafted, and it’s certainly on par with MC gear as long as you don’t mind having 0 saves vs. heat. That does mean the fire traps hurt a LOT when you open a chest, as a word to the wise. The only thing I don’t like, is that you can not turn off the graphic effect of the gear, even when you wear it under regular appearance stuff. It also causes a lot of lag, and if you run around on full settings like I typically do it’s a little frustrating. It looks like Stargrace needs to shave or she’s got some very bad rabies going on, and has skin care issues. She’s wearing the level 72 cloth dress, the +spell crit was a fairly nice upgrade since I’ve barely worked on gear for her.
My paladin is wearing the plate version of this gear and has the same snow flake effect, it surrounds the flower (she’s a kerra) she wears in her ear and when she’s in combat it looks like a huge abnormal growth glowing on the side of her head. My bruiser is also sporting the gi, the effect on that gear is slightly different. Instead of snow flakes you are morphed into a giant ball of snow that dusts constantly, and that’s all you can see. It’s a lot more lag then the snow flake one.
I’m hoping we’ll have the option to turn this gear off in the future, or maybe once Frostfell has passed the effects will be toned down. At least let me hide it under my regular appearance gear.
Game wise, yesterday was fairly quiet. I took my paladin to Sanctum of the Scaleborn which was completely empty. She gained a fair amount of achievements, and hit level 62. It still feels odd to have a tank this high in levels, and I’m enjoying it a good amount. I was going to do some crafting instances and get some experience on Ellithia (65 tailor) and Goudia (65 alchemist) but instead headed off to some DoF instances on my (at the time) 53 swashbuckler. She’s now sitting at 55.
It’s almost difficult for me to play a melee character now, after spending 7 years playing ranged mages and healers. It feels like I always have to be at ranged for some reason, and I have a difficult time positioning myself. Something I’ll have to work on in the future.
Tomorrow is Christmas eve! I’ll be here at home for the day and then heading to my parents place in the country. However, we are due for a huge snow storm (again) so plans may change and I may be spending Christmas eve here at home depending on the roads. Driving through 20cm of snow at 7pm at night is no fun. I hope everyone has an amazing holiday no matter your plans, get some family time in and many hugs to you all!
Ah, sweet memories. Yesterday once my paladin reached level 60, I turned off experience so that I couldn’t level past that mark. I had volunteered to help Siege out in obtaining some extra achievements. I mentioned before that when EoF came out, the old achievements had been reset, so those who had not been to the old content and obtained aa from them back then, can now. Well, that consisted of pretty much every old T5 raid that rewarded aa, as well as a good portion of the ‘less then popular’ T6 raids (not counting the one that replicates shimmering citadel because most guilds farmed that one for status but wouldn’t farm the Djin Master’s Prism for example). If you’ve never been to Spirits of the Lost before, it’s a fun zone. It was REALLY hard back when level 50 was the cap, too. The zone was released along with the server wide quest to unlock the froglok race. I never beat it when 50 was the cap, in fact yesterday was the first time any one of my characters had completed it (and I didn’t even have the quest for the title so that sort of sucked). Even though it’s been years, the quests related to this server event are still there. The chain of quests gives fairly good aa (because you have to gain the trust of the frogloks) and also rewards a shiny house item. The final quest rewards a title, for saving the frogloks. 
My paladin got 6 just from that zone alone. The final boss to the zone of course is Venekor (who you also defeat again in KoS) and then finally Varanak the Everlasting. Since my group was mentored to level 60, and the three groups consisted of end game raiders for the most part, it took very little time to work our way through the raid zone, and it was a lot of fun. The loot was amusing, a lot of the named encounters would drop a whole slew of adepts and crafting rares, but nothing more. I remember when those crafting rares used to be *rare* and people would fight over who would get to have a few in their pocked when they left the raid. The same happened in DoF raids that would reward crafter bits, everyone would bid their dkp on them because it was just so difficult to farm any. Ah, I miss days like that, a lot. 
