Khazgar, the Slayer.

I raced home from work last night, palms sweaty with anticipation. I wasted no time in getting online, logging on, and officially rolling my Slayer. Khazuk! Khazuk Khazuk-ha! I've been preparing for this for a long while, beginning with the name. I'm a huge fan of the lore, and so I didn't want to use some unoriginal, derivative name, like Gotreck, or something similar, heh. At the same time, I wanted to pay homage to Slayers past. The Slayer I wanted to reference was Azgar Grobkul, doomed brother of Uthor Algrimmson, both from the novel Oathbreaker. Azgar failed to prevent Skaven assassins from poisoning their father, the Lord of Karak Kadrin, as he was asleep on guard duty in a drunken stupor. I'd tell you more, but I suggest that you go ahead and purchase the book. It's a good, although bleak account of Dwarfs and oaths in the Old World. 

Anyway, I didn't want to just swipe the name, so I came up with Khazgar. A name that can stand on its own as being particularly Dwarfy, while having a small reference to earlier lore. Yes, I can be one of those pretentious d00ds that overthinks things like this. So anyway, my Slayer is Khazgar, the...um, Slayer.

In all seriousness, I had a blast in Tier one, just hit Rank 9 this morning, and I just trained Deathblow. I can't wait to find someone to uh..practice it on, heh. I've been dual-wielding most of the time, as 2-handers don't do significantly more damage as compared to dual-wield, assuming you are stacking similar amounts of strength. But still, I'm willing to give it a go again. Also keep in mind that these damage numbers were tested using tanks, switching between sword/shield and 2-handers. Melee dps careers might get different results owing to being a different archetype. 

I had a few great moments in Khaine's Embrace, in the tunnels. A group of mostly Slayers would turn the corner and run into a group of mostly Choppas and the screen just explodes! AoE flying everywhere from both sides, the sounds of battle, the screams of the dying, and the fight is over in less than three seconds. And strangely enough, when this occurred, it would be the Slayers left standing. Most of them, anyway. Maybe we just had better heals. At this point, I'm kind of torn about what to do. Should I power through the levels, getting to the next tiers as fast as possible? Or should I hang around and open RvR in Emskrank and up my RRs? In any case, I think I'm gonna be having some fun. See you guys on the front lines.

Well, that was quick.

So on day three of Bitter Rivals, I have completed all but four quests for the event. All I have to do now is kill 10 players in ORVR, /swear at the enemy careers, a kill quest in the Twisting Tower, and finishing a DvG PQ. I must admit I'm surprised at how fast the influence is filling up. Surprisingly, thanks to the addition of Choppa and Slayer npcs in the RvR lakes, doing the "kill 25 Greenskins/Dwarfs" quest was pretty easy. I thought that only players would count towards this quest, but hey, whatever works. The npcs also drop the "fallen weapons" needed for another task. I want to point out that I did see piles of "scavenged weapons" in different locations that you can rightclick to get quest items as well. I also picked up a Notched Choppa that gave me the "Grimnir's Own" title off one of the mobs. This is in addition to the "Doom Seeker" title that is the basic reward for the event. It's too bad I can't transfer titles to another character, as they would have been great on my Slayer. I wonder if Mythic will ever allow title transfer, as the event titles seem more appropriate for the new careers.

Some problems with the new patch though, for one the Auction House no longer accepts partial search terms like "dust" or "water". I used to be able to input just "water" and see all the different types of Apothecary Waters available. This no longer works. I have bug reported it, let's hope this gets fixed soon. Other than that, the renewal of the mail system helps tremendously. Being able to send several items at once through the mail is great.

I also vendored some stacks of leeches and ticks that I did not know I could convert. So I missed out on some possible rare dyes. Oh well, it's a perk I can live without. Still it would have been cool to have some black dyes

Tier 2 was pretty dead this morning on my server, but then again you can't expect full pops at odd hours. With any luck I'll get in on a keep siege and get my last few quests done and be ready for the Slayer early release. Wish me luck.

Update, March 7th: Got all the tasks done! Slayer time!