Avoid Your Moody Blues, but Still keep Your Balance

In my recently "Tamarized" post, You're so 133t, You're Simply Irresistable (Tamarind linked/recommended it) I mentioned gear inflation, and the importance of it was pointed out even more in the comments I received (Thanks Shintar & masith!)

Bascially, the reality as it is now, is that for any given expansion/patch level of dungeon, there is enough gear available inside for everyone to slightly out gear it. Especially once the dungeon gets slightly nerfed. And the problem only gets worse once a given set of raids is superceded by a newer release.

And still, there's a need to keep gear (and the ensuing raids) accessible to the ravening horde er, masses.

And release newer, tougher instances.

And provide newer shinier loot for each instance.

And prevent instances from getting too easy.


Um, I'm glad I'm not Blizzard. From what I can see, at least on the surface, it's impossible.

On the one hand,

If the raids are tuned (and stay tuned) for high end raiders, with the bare minimum of available loot (to prevent the dropped gear from overpowering the instance)

AND the followup instances are kept only *slightly* more difficult, and with a similarly "sparse" loot table.

AND the gear progression between the instances is kept low/small/whatever. (basically, instance one drops i290 gear, the next drops i293, and the next drops i296)

Then the older instances will still have a fair amount of challenge for the players.

Except for 2 things:

We have been trained by Blizzard to lust for gear, and the increased power it
gives us. If gear really isn't much of an upgrade, how interested will folks be
in the quest to get it? (conversely, if instances are tough enough, then even
small upgrades will be sought)

While nice for the top end raiders, the
above scenario will basically be a return to Vanilla WoW, and 90-95% of players
won't have access to the content, because the "middle" (average) players simply
can't won't be able to play at the level needed to succeed or make any
progression.

Another option

This is similar to what we have now, with hardmodes as well as the slow(?) steady nerfing of the instances so that over time the instances become more accessible.

BUT, you maintain the gear "sparcity" (or just very small gear bonuses/increases)

The problem here is that with nerfing, eventually the raids get "too easy" for the top tier players. Especially if the nerfing gets to the point that even hardmodes become readily accessible.

Now, I DO have a couple suggestions...

1 - keep hardmodes and heroics hard, BUT DON'T GIVE BETTER LOOT FOR THEM. I think the 10 vs 25 man equalization Blizzard has done is a great step in this line of reasoning. If people are truly serious in that what they really want challenging instances, well, tune the dungeon such that normal mode gear is sufficient for a good team to complete hard modes, but will make it hard enough that "the unwashed masses" won't.

This will help prevent gear inflation since there won't be extra (half) tiers of gear. Also, without the lure of better gear, "normal" folks won't feel obligated to run them, and they won't cry (as much) for nerfs.

A slight downside is that "good" players/guilds will be able to finish the normal modes without getting much (if any) of the new tier gear. But, assuming the hardmode is the "feather in the cap", then that should be fine.

2 - Realize that no matter how much folks want to avoid it, gear inflation WILL happen. If new content needs to be tougher than the old, (which usually necessitates newer, higher level gear) then it's bound to happen. Especially when multiple new raids get released. Even if Blizzard had made the difficulty jumps between raids smaller (ie, Ulduar was a smaller increase over Naxx, etc) it would still be a given that, once you had completed ICC, you would completely outgear Naxx.

3 - Realize that there will be content that not everyone sees, BUT ONLY HARDMODES/HEROICS. If the gear that drops between normal & hardmode, between regular & heroic are the same, then this should be fine.

If all of those are done, then I think that the difficulty of the various instances will still be fair/moderate, even at the end of the Cata expansion.

BUT, there is still a downside.

In general, the "progression" characters make as they gear up (currently) is something like this:

Quest blues/greens
Regular 5 man
Heroic 5 man
10 man regular
25 man regular
Heroics (10 or 25, depending)

If we followed my suggestions, it would be a *little* different...

5 man
10/25 man
10/25 man Heroic

Is that a good thing? I don't know, but I honestly think it could keep "most" players "mostly happy". Hey, this is a massive group of people, and it is impossible to keep everyone happy.

I would guess the top end raiders wouldn't like the "normal Joes" getting the same loot with less work, but I would also guess that the "normal Joes" would be somewhat unhappy that there would be content that they would likely never get to.

Then again, hardmodes/heroics are generally very VERY similar, with maybe one or two slightly different fight mechanics, with the vast majority of difference being how hard things hit. It's not like completely missing content, just not getting smashed as hard.

Are there other options? Yeah, but I'm not sure they could accoomodate the vast number of often contrary requirements that players put onto the game.

Multiple Tanking Sets? DON'T BRING ME DOWN!!!!!

Over the last two days, I managed to pick up the two tanking items I was saving for over the last couple weeks. (and for once, I logged off with my Tank gear equipped, so I can actually look at it in an easier to see place)

What I got were:

Saronite Sword Breakers (wrist)

and

Boots of Kingly Upheaval (feet)

(actually, I got them in the reverse order, which caused me a bit of an arrythmia. My old boots had defense, the new ones don't - EEK! Fortunately, the new wrists do, and my old wrists didn't)


If you click on the picture above (a screen cap of my equipment from wow-heroes.com) you will notice that I am missing 3 gems and 3 enchants (well, I'm a blacksmith, so it's actually 4 gems and 2 enchants, but eh...)



And yes, it's on my brand new items. Given what I know, I am mulling things over.

mull

mull

mull

See?

Eh-hem.


Anyhow, there are 3-4 MAJOR stats for pally tanks: (and are important for other tanks, just the numbers vary)

• Defense (prevents bosses from get crits on you - Capped at 535 or 540. I've heard both)


• Hit (lets you not miss, which helps immensely with threat. Melee capped at 230 for a Drae Pally)


• Expertise (helps reduce/eliminate parries, blocks and misses on the boss - 26 is soft cap, 54 is hard cap )


• Stamina = Health

If you look at my stats above, you will see:

I am one point below def cap (or 4 points over) Regardless, a single gem swap will fix that. (yes, there are 4 blue items on me, and I have two rare gems on that blue belt :P I never wanted to invest an epic gem on a blue item, to increase defense by 4 points)

• I am hit capped


• I have 189 Expertise points which is roughly 24 rating.


• I have 27k unbuffed

Clearly, I am not "all the way there" yet.

What is kind of scary is that, at a 4,700 Gear score (whatI have now) I am considered "ok, but rough" for doing ICC 10, which would say I significantly over-gear Naxx and Ulduar, yet I would need to gem for even MORE expertise to hit soft cap, which would limit me to only 2 more stamina gems, and not that much more health...

Back in the Naxx/Uld days, how the f**k did tanks get by with that low of health, barely being hit & def capped, and no WAY were they expertise capped?!?!?

Yes, I know they would have multiple sets of armor:

• one for EH (effective health, which is basically stamina and armor)


• one for avoidance (there are also stats for dodge parry and block, which I'm not even going to touch here)


• one for threat


• and maybe one or two or three with various resists (nature, shadow, fire, etc)

So, you could optimize one set with mega stamina and armor, while perhaps being below def cap, or hit cap or expertise cap, and have another set with defense, parry, dodge, and another with hit, expertise and strength boosts.

But wait, I *ALREADY* have 3 sets of armor - DPS, Tank and PvP. SO no, I'm not going to have multiple tank sets. Not only because of bag space, but also because I simply can't afford to buy (or farm for) multiple sets of gear.

So, I'm going to try to make a single "best of all worlds" Tank set and live with it.

As it stands I desperately need 3 new tanking pieces:

Waist
Neck
Back

(remember how I keep stressing that you should use wow-heroes/etc to check your gear occasionally? This is what happens when I don't can't easily check my tank gear)

I could also use a couple new rings, but eh, it is what it is. The bummer is that PvP gear is useless for tanking gear. It can work well for DPS, but not so much for tanks...

I t hink I'll just fix my one Def gem, add one expertise gem, and push everything else into health/stamina.

Unless anyone reading this hasa better/wiser suggestion?

The First Time... Ever I Slew Your (Rot) Face

I have probably wiped 20+ times on the S.O.B., and I finally got to be a part of dropping him in a puddle of his own ickiness.

Bastard.

The 10 of us then ran over to give Putricide a try. (lesson: it helps if you open the valves in Rot & Fester's rooms - doh -)

We then wiped a few times, but eh, since only 1 of us has ever fought him before (not me), it went well enough. For giggles, after we had given up on him for the night, we ran over and got the "free" badges (killing some Vyrkul, can never remember the name) and we wandered into say "hello" to Dreamwalker.

It was amusing, for the minute/minute & a half that we lasted. None of us (other than the RL) knew anything about the fight, so it was interesting to see. I am going to suggest that we actually give it a few tries WITHOUT knowing strats. Just to see if we can figure it out. (although, the RL has seen and defeated her, so has Kattastrophe, who sits only feet away and can watch/comment)

---

In other news... we ran Magister's Terrace a few times... Kat went with a guildie and got the Phoenix pet, then we ran it a couple times, and I got the chicken mount: Swift White Hawkstrider.

If you want to see something hysterical, find a Draenei Pally, with Crusader Aura on, watch him run on teh hawstrider. After being hit with baby spice.

---

Prior to yesterday, I had run Stratholme about 8 or 9 times. I was doing it for rep, and a couple times was to run one of Kattastrophe's alts through it.

And then yesterday, I found out he drops a rather rare mount: Deathcharger's Reigns.

Here's a possibly gut churning bit: because it is a BOP drop, and it has no vendor value, it is *possible* that the dang thing dropped, and I didn't bother looting it.

When I am running rampant through a low level istance, I will keep stuff of value (in gold) and will ignore other stuff. Balth isn't an enchanter, so I don't DE anything, and the few auctionable items are hard (for me) to tell from just gold-lewt stuff, so I just loot everything and vendor it. 25-50 gold per run, depending.

So, if the reigns had dropped, I doubt I would have bothered reading what it said. I would have noticed the lack of a vendor price. That *might* have given me pause, especially for something purple.

But no guarantees.

So I ran the instance in "speed" mode last night a couple times with no luck. I have run it only 11 times, so it's likely a long way to go before I will get it. That being said, I cleared about 75 gold for all the crap I vendored. (and maybe 30-40 minutes total, and not very efficiently - I should be able to run/clear once every 8-10 minutes or so) At 6 runs per hour, 25 gold per run, that's 150 gold per hour.

That just about matches the gold per hour rate I get doing the Argent dailies.

If you're interested in what/how to do a speed run, go here ya go:



---

Oh, I got a nice drop of Saurfang (25) on Saturday: Polarbear Claw Bracers.

These now replace my Wrathful bracers (for PvE), and all together, I get an increase of 35 strength or so. Because:
- They have intrinsically 5 more strength
- They have a gem slot already (so as a blacksmith, I can put a second on)and the wrathful did not
- They have hit instead of resilience, so I can replace a +10 STR/+10 Hit gem with straight +20 STR gem.

They are identical in gearscore (big deal) but they are an actual good upgrade, so I'm jazzed!

w00t.

---

Oh, and I think I need only 1 or 2 more pieces of primordial saronite and I can make my nifty boots.

---

Things seem to be looking up with the guild. Again, I like the folks there a bunch, and I hope they are feeling more the same. We shall see.

DPS, Gear, and Metal by Numbers

I'm going to ramble here a bit about gear, both PvP, and PvE, and some pitfalls associated with them. I don't do any theorycrafting, but I do discuss some test dummy numbers and numerical stuff, so if you don't like that type of stuff, I guess I'll see you next post...

Wagons Ho!

The first upgrade to mention was my PvP belt; Relentless Gladiator's Girdle of Triumph. It's got some really nice stats, and, like every other PvP item I've picked up, it's a significant upgrade over my previous PvE item.

My PvP Gear summary If you look at each item, overall, they are an upgrade.

EXCEPT for hit. According to the sites I visit (wow-heroes among them) I 229 need points of hit, and I was at 223. So I gemmed my belt buckle with a +20 hit, and we're good to go. (if you look at the "summary page for my PvP gear, you will notice that I lose a fair bit of AGI, but that translates to about 1.5 Crit points (NOT %) so I am still at a net gain in Crit.

Now, even though they are clear benefits, there are a couple downsides:

1) As I noted with my waist, the PvP gear will have different stat allocation than PvP gear. So in my case, I replaced a waist that had moderate hit, with a waist that did not. GOTTA WATCH THAT!!

2) It is entirely possible that someone will inspect your gear and go "wtf up with your PvP gear?" Especially with me, where I have 4 pieces currently. All you can say is that the PvP gear you have is absolutely an upgrade over the item it replaced (it better be!)

3) PvP gear will give you a higher gearscore than you really "deserve", and your output (heals, DPS, whatever) may not meet expectations. With my 4 pieces of PvP gear, my gearscore is ~5,530, which looks nice. However, I would say I am only as effective (assume equal skill/class/spec player) as someone about 5,400. If you're reasonably skilled, it won't matter, but it is worth noting.

Moving On

So... I did a bit of raiding and a little acquisition this weekend. I was able to get the Blade-Scored Carapace from Saurfang 10 man. (One neat thing I learned is that mmo-champion's listing/links includes gems & enchants!) Since this would replace my T-9.5 chest, but NOT remove my 2 piece T-9 bonus, I was pretty jazzed.

I also had 95 frost emblems, which made me even more jazzed! Now, assuming I used the new chest piece, RAWR said the T-10 helm was the item to get. So, off to the vendor I go, and I get the new item.

A slight aside here.

I have noticed that since I replaced my old weapon; Orca-Hunter's Harpoon with Ramaladni's Blade of Culling, that I was not always proccing "Art of War" (AoW) which causes my next Exorcism (or Flash of Light) to be instant cast. If you look at the picture below, it should be kind of obvious why:

(Click on it for a larger, more legible version)

What it shows is that I lost 66 crit, and 112 Agility. I don't care if Agi is a Hunter stat or not, the Crit I got off that weapon was AWESOME. All together I lost about 69 crit points (~1.55%)

OUCH!

Now, if it were "just a stat" and had no real world benefit, I wouldn't care. BUT, as I have mentioned, I am actually losing out a bit on my DPS because AoW isn't proccing all the time. (usually at the beginning of a fight, but it occasionally happens mid-fight as well)

So, I did something NOT "called out" by Elitist Jerks, and I added a Crit gem to my new chest. The other 2 gems are standard Ret Pally: 2x +20 Str gems.

Back "On Topic"

So, with my gemmed and enchanted chest and helm, I headed over to a test dummy to see how the new 2 - piece T-10 set bonus (I now have Head & Shoulders lol) plus the new chest.

*sigh*

Not.
So.
Good.

My DPS with my old gear was about 4835 (+/- a bit) and I could bash away on the test dummy essentially non-stop as long as I popped Divine Plea (DP) occasionally.

My DPS with the new gear?

4835 (+/- a bit)

AND I ran OOM before DP came off cooldown!

AND I had even more troubles with AoW not proccing.

WTF?!?!?!?!?

*deep breath*

OK, what happened?

First off, I lost my T-9 2 piece set bonus (Your Righteous Vengeance talent now has a chance for its damage to be critical strikes)

So, I lost some critical strikes from my Righteous Vengeance. This lowered THAT damage, and also (probably) contributed to fewer crits overall, which then lead to AoW not always being up.

Um, overall, that isn't too good. It explains (possibly)a net "zero" for DPS gains.

What about the whole OOM thing? (OOM is "Out of Mana")

Let's see, losing the T-9 wouldn't have any effect. BUT, I GAINED the T-10 2 piece set bonus (Your melee attacks have a 40% chance to reset the cooldown on your Divine Storm ability)

Hmmm, this means that I will be casting Divine Storm a fair bit more. HIGH mana consumption, and only "so-so" single target.

Clearly, losing the T-9 set bonus and getting the T-10 bonus is Not worth it. (at least not on Bosses. I need to try it out for trash)

Moving On

So, what if I use the Helm, and store the chest, what sort of DPS will that get me?
4850 (+/-)

I'll be honest here and say that I have no effing clue why this didn't do better.
I expected this to really kick butt. No such luck.

And THEN

The last combination of gear is the old helm, with the new chest. Keep the T-9 bonus, lose the T-10 bonus, but gain a bit of crit & other "stuff". Given the results of the previous, I won't hold my breath. So?

4995 (+/-)

Again, I have ZERO clue why this combo is better than the other 2. Not by a squinch, but by a LOT. (well, at this point 150 DPS seems like a large amount)

But What Does It All Mean?

The only thing you can really say about the whole thing is that number crunching, widgets (like Rawr) and other bits can only help so much. Training dummies are much better, and "in raid" testing is even better yet. Perhaps the best theory crafters out there can avoid this, but I don't play that game.

Anyhow, just because an item has better stats, it doesn't mean it will be an actual upgrade. Item interaction plays a big role in overall gear performance. Sometimes you will need to hold on to that piece until such a time when it WILL make a difference (like holding on to my T-10 helm, so that when I get another 2 pieces of T-10, so I cen get the 4 pc bonus)

Other times things can be a real upgrade, but you need to be extra careful about stat itemization. Some of this might be "core"stats for your class (like hit, or other hard & soft caps) that are easy to catch and adjust, other times it will be more subtle (like my own crit issue) where it will require you being aware of how your toon plays, and realizing that all things aren't behaving quite right.

Actually, on this point, it may actually be worth going back to the Orca harpoon and seeing if all that crit would improve the DPS. Or, perhaps, some combination of the above would be good/better for trash.

Test Dummies for Dummies, perhaps?

Dunno.

Wild Horses and Other Oddities

You ride your little pony, and I'll ride mine, athankyuverymuch! This is my Balth placeholder DK on Velen. VERY FIERCE!!!!




So yeah, I changed realms and used the better balanced battlegroup to try and actually get my Children's Week quests/achies done. Even though we lost this particular bout in Arathi Basin, I did manage to capture 3 flags/territories and got my Disgracin the Basin Achie.

I have to admit, being in a BG that's relatively balanced was actually kind of fun, even if we did lose.



During my EotS BG, where I got my flag cap, I was amused to be among the top in a couple different stats (Killing blows, damage done, etc) Clearly there was another Pally that wasn't trying for the Achie, possibly a n00b? After all, it's been confirmed that (during non-children's week) the flag is noob bait, aka it's a bug light, and there is no real use in capping the flag 2x. (unless he was just griefing us Children's Week hopefuls)

One things I seem to notice on my new server: I won't sasy that the Alliance plays that much better than on my old one. But it does seem that the Horde are not quite as on-the-ball either.

It seems the Horde simply don't run Wintergrasp that much. I ran my fourth WG last night on this server, and they had tenacity. Compared to my last couple attempts on
Velen where WE had it (2 stacks, actually) in my last couple battles, this is big.

But, after my first WG run last night, I got my own 3 weekly PvP quests done, plus I was shared two more (but only finished one so far) I was able to turn in 52,000 honor and got my PvP necklace. Only 17 more WG Marks of Honor until I can get my shoulders, and a gawdawful number more BGs so I can finish my full PvP set. As of now I have (in order of accrual):

• Wrathful Wrist
• Relentless Feet
• Medallion of the Alliance Trink
• Wrathful neck

After all my hoofing around, I manged to complete the Children's Week trials and tribulations, and am now a Patron:

One other last little tidbit..

Last night, during my semi-daily Frost run, I got queued into Azjol-Nerub. Along with me were a 3,000 GS shammy Healer and 3,300 GS Warrior Tank.

The other DPS & myself were well into the 4k-5k range. My first thought was -uh-oh... this could get tough, especially with a relatively low-threat tank (which will force us to slow down), and with a low gear healer, the longer fights could be problematic.

I couldn't have bee more wrong.



Not only did I NOT pull aggro off the tank, the healer did a freakin AWESOME job keeping everyone alive. We even got the Hadronox Denied achie!!!!

We did get into a bit of trouble on Hadro, but we all kept our heads and dropped the S.O.B.

As has been said many places and many times: GS ≠ skill .

AWESOME JOB, FOLKS!

Shake it UP, Cuz this is Learning!

In a recent post, I mentioned that some interesting DPS things happened in my run through Violet Hold. The interesting part is due to the picture above. Those that recognize the website I captured it from may groan, but I plan on using the info above as a learning tool, and I may possibly show how it CAN be useful.

For those that don’t recognize the picture above, it’s a screen cap of a character comparison from the website wow-heroes.com. The reason for the possible (likely?) groans is that the main use for that website is to review a character’s “Gear Score” or “GS”, and there has been a recent trend (in both PUGs and Guilds) to focus a bit too much on this number. All it is, is a means to get a VERY rough idea how well geared someone is. It says nothing about how appropriate the gear is, or how skilled the player is. It just says how “powerful” all the gear is. I could gear my pally in all iLevel 200 cloth, caster gear, and I could get my GS to be as high as I want. I would be an EPIC FAIL if I played with that gear, but I could “easily” get a high score that way.

Anyhow, back to my point, and the commentary about my raid into Violet Hold.

During the raid, the other melee DPS player was a Fury Warrior (who happened to be a REALY nice guy to play with). At the start of the raid, we were both running about 1,400 DPS for each fight. As the raid progressed, and we both “got into the grove” we both made it into the low/mid 1,700 range. He was slightly ahead. (I didn’t screen cap, but the numbers I recall are me – 1,720 and him – 1,740) Also, he was doing a bit better in getting into the fights faster, because his overall damage was a bit higher than the slightly higher DPS would cause.

AAAANYHOW.

I know I was paying a fair bit of attention to Recount (my DPS meter) though this was mainly to try to make sure I was “doing ok”. And yeah, a bit of a competitive blood stirred. So I was a *little* disappointed that he out DPSes and out DMGed me, even though the numbers were pretty darned close.

After the fight, I decided to see if he had worse gear than me. After all, it would be a competitive blow to be out done by someone who wasn’t even geared as well as I was.

Such was not the case.

If you look at the numbers listed in the picture at the top (click to see large version), you’ll notice his score was roughly 2,100, and mine is roughly 1,100.

?!?!?!?

Also important is the fact that the gear that shows up here is my tank gear. (I must have been in Wintegrasp doing PvP prior to the data up/download, because I wear my tank gear to PvP. It just lets me live a bit longer…)

My original thought was that my DPS gear would be similar in score, so I just went with it.

And here comes the learning part: evidently I was doing at least reasonably well, because I was performing pretty much the same as a guy in a very similar class (melee DPS) and I had significantly “lesser” gear.

He had clearly put moderately good enchants on all his items, way more than I had (though he was missing one gem for an empty slot) and even though some of his gear was “tanky” (more stamina/defense as opposed to strength/hit) it was still pretty dang good. (and heck, some of *MY* “DPS” gear was also tanky)

A couple days later, I FINALLY remembered to make sure I logged off with my DPS gear equipped and was a bit surprised to find that my DPS gear was worse than my tank gear. By a LOT. My GS for my DPS gear was less than 850.

So what does all this numbery mumbo jumbo mean? Well here are a few general take-aways…

1 – A higher GS does NOT equate to better numbers. It can certainly help, but on its own, it means little.

2 – Focus your gear, as much as possible, on what your particular class/spec needs. Obviously, gearing yourself during leveling/questing is far different from the specialization that occurs during raids.

3 – Know how to play your class to the best of your abilities. There’s no need to obsess, but knowing more never hurts…

4 – Pay attention during the battles. As I mentioned, our DPS was pretty close, but overall damage was distinctly in the other guy’s favor. Why? Because he was getting into the fight a bit faster, he was staying on target more (like when one dies, he got his next target faster) Overall, he just did better.

5 – Damage Done will nearly always be the more important number, since it’s total damage that kills the bad guys. The bosses don’t simply keel over if the RATE of damage (DPS) gets to a certain point, they keep going until ALL their hp are gone.

6 – I may have obsessed more over the details of playing/gearing a ret pal, and I have probably read EJ more and practiced my rotation more, but if you look at the Damage:DPS ratio, it’s clear that he did better. Player focus during a fight and experience during a fight will almost always do better, even if everything else isn’t exactly optimal.

Pictured below is my latest gear set for my DPS spec. It’s now 1072! That’s up over 200 points from a few days ago, and the gear is getting more focused on what I need. (click to enlarge, if you’re so inclined)




As for the near future, based on my recent fights as well as some test dummy info I need the following:

1 – Get my 2 handed mace skill up to 400. It’s at 389 right now, and during my fights, I still see a number of “glancing blows”. That’s 11 “free” skill points. It may not prevent misses and glancing blows, but against a Boss, every bit helps. I may switch weapon types later, but I can worry about “topping” that skill off later.

2 – Increase my “Hit” score. On the test dummy and in battle I have a fair number of misses. Increasing my hit will help. As the screen cap below shows, my hit is a bit low. It’s about 200, and should be closer to the “max” of 263. (known as the “soft cap”, and prevents melee misses)





3 – Increase my Crit. For my Pally, Exorcism accounts for 8-12% of my total damage. The problem is that it’s only an useful attack if another attack crits (which procs Art of War, aka AoW) Even with my old 2H axe (Axe of Frozen Death ) , I would have the occasional situation where Exorcism would be ready to cast, but AoW wasn’t active. And this is a weapon that has 43 crit points. When using my new 2H mace (Titansteel Destroyer ) which has zero crit, I find that AoW is ready only 1/3 to 1/2 the time. Since I don’t always notice that AoW isn’t ready, I will sit there casting, which wastes 1.5 seconds, which slows my attacks, etc, etc, etc… Now, the fact that my weapon skill for the mace isn’t maximized will also affect this.

4 – L2p. (learn to play) As I mentioned above, my raid experience, focus and such aren’t ideal. Unfortunately this isn’t something that can be gemmed for: you can’t gem against stupid. BUT, I can do as many raids as I can to remove this debuff lol.


5 - Work on better gear. Even though I've got my GS up a fair amount, looking at my list of gear, it's pretty obvious I still have a few green pieces there. That's not exactly conducive to better performance.

Ah well.... it's all good and getting better. :)

EDIT

I am currently using the crafted purple chest piece: Bulwark of the Ancient Kings LINK with 3 gems:

Etched Ametrine (10 str & 10 Hit)
Rigid Autumn's Glow (16 hit)
Bold Cardinal Ruby (20 Str)

This gives a final "as used" stats of:

1825 armor
+70 str
+56 sta
+51 hit
+41 crit

PLUS - "on use" I get 1,500 extra health and 150 extra strength

My other DPS chest is Breastplate of Undeath LINK which has:

2166 armor
+80 str
+112 Agi
+75 sta
+45 hit

The gains in Str, Sta & armor are (to me) pretty small (and I'm now over my hit cap, so I could swap out the Etched Ametrine for another bold ruby) so that it's nearly a wash... The AGI (works out to 2.15% crit) is more problematic

BUT, that extra strength and health has become a VERY nice thing to have in Boss fights.

*sigh* If I got a chest piece that was equivalent to the Undeath one WITH gem slots, it would be a no-brainer. But I'm having a hard time giving it up... "Bulwark... I can't quit you..."

I've Finally Made it to the House of Fun! It's Madness!

Yep, I dinged 80.

I did so on the pentultimate (I think) quest with Thorim (poor guy!)

And now comes the long slow progression for better gear. (or should I say grind?)

Yeah, maybe grind is a better word, since getting the gear necessitates a fair bit of grinding:

- for stone keeper shards
- for emblems (heroic, valiant, etc)
- more rep (Hodir, Oracles, etc)
- Argent tourney factions and emblems (btw, do all factions offer the same gear?)
- ToC
- ToC
- ToC
- other raids that I'm geared well enough for
- mats for crafting a couple more pieces of armor (1 titansteel bar per day - ick)

I know for a HUGE portion of WoW players, dinging 80 is the START of the game. Me? Well, let's say I'm a bit ambivalent about it. From an "achievement" point of view (the real meaning, not the little pop-ups you get in-game) I'm VERY happy I made it. It's been a loooong long road.

The downside? For the last couple months, WoW has been a LOT of grinding. Rep for Kurenai (for the mounts), rep for sporregar (for that shield, AND the pet) for the Netherwing (yep, more mounts) Now, it looks like I will have to do.... more grinding! And not just for cool mounts (that netherdrak is frikkin awesome!) but to get decent/good gear.

The good side? Katt & I have found a guild that seems to be a pretty close fit. We're still very much the outsiders, but seems really nice. We;ve run a few small raids with them, Pugs and friends and it seems fun. (does everybody treat a raid like it's a race?!?!? lol)

I've already started to collect (and gem & enchant) some better gear, though I have a LOOONG way to go to even be "adequate".

The majority of the dailies aren't too bad, since they're pretty quick, though a couple (Argent and Hodir) ones can be a bit slow. And the gold you get from doing them is pretty nice (I've been getting 200 gold an evening, including the profit from any items sold)

I'll post more of a sit-rep later, since this is getting a tad long...

One last topic before I wrap this up: the Thanksgiving quests.

I DID complete my mission impossible, though not without further incident. (NOT of the Horde kind). While hiding inside a Furlbog disguise is cool, it can also hide the fact that you are (or are not) in the proper Pilgrim outfit. Needless to say, it was after I finished stopping by all 4 Horde cities (and didn't get the achie) that I realized that I had been improperly garbed in 3 of them (DOH!)

I eventually got my Turkey (and my Title) in a pretty fun holiday celebration. *golf clap for Blizzard*

Oh, and I got a letter back from my Undercity killer. (she?) was VERY nice about it and even appologized. Evidently she had just gotten ganked herself and had the urge for payback. I responded back with a "not a prob, I *was* flagged after all. lol"