Monday (21 Dec) - Will Wild Grind?

Monday (21 Dec) - Will Wild Grind?

On Monday Philly got in some levelling time out in Terokkar Forest near the Outland city of Shattrath. She moved the bar from 11% to 33% of the way to level 68. It wasn't hard, but even with the two heirloom pieces helping the grind, and a very sweet level 68 required shadow damage wand waiting for her in the bank, she just ran out of steam to push things any faster. Level 80 seems to be very far away.

On the level 80 front Wild and JB are in a crucial period right now. With the Fall of the Lich King patch (3.3), the rules have changed greatly. Gearing up for the end game raids (which right now is 25 man ICC) has come down to two methods: (1) be in a guild that raids regularly and successfully in the 25 mans (ToC primarily) and 10 man ICC, as well as offering raid nights for 5 mans and the special "weekly" raid (which replaced the dailies). Unfortunately, that really isn't in place in Wild's guild. Strike one. (2) Grind.

In patch 3.3 one does not need to find a 25 man PUG or a guild doing 25 mans in order to get high end gear. One only has to be willing to spend the time grinding emblems. The two important ones are Frost and Triumph.

Triumph emblems, hard to get before 3.3, and now as easy as grinding random 5 man WotLK Heroics. Two emblems of Triumph drop with every clear of a Heroic dungeon. In theory hard core grinders could do all 15 of those dungeons, winning 30 triumph emblems a day. While that isn't likely for most, it isn't too hard to do, say, 5 a day for 10 triumphs if one had the time. With the new dungeon system there likely isn't even that much down time between dungeon runs, so 3-5 hours depending on the group would be plenty of time. That's every day, day after day, and I guarantee that there are hundreds of players doing that and more in order to fill out those T9 sets, get their trinkets and relics, etc.

Frost emblems are the new, rarer emblems that are used to buy the highest end gear, including the new Tier 10 sets. The main source of frost emblems from a raiding perspective is Icecrown Citadel, the end game 10/25 man raid that is being revealed wing by wing over the next several weeks. In addition to this, however, there are two other ways to get frost emblems. The first random Heroic completed each day rewards 2 Frost emblems instead of triumphs. There is also a weekly raid that rewards 5 frost and 5 triumph emblems. There are hundreds of players who would sell out their mother to make sure they get their once a day random dungeon and the weekly raid target completed to get their 19 frost emblems a week.

I've said before that I don't like grinding dungeons. Blizz has made it much easier, but that doesn't mean I like it any better. If the group of strangers is bad then doing them takes forever (or fails completely), which isn't any fun. If the group of strangers is good then it goes fast, but there really isn't any fun involved - just kill everything as quickly as possible, collect our emblems, and get out of there. Over and over aud nauseum.

Wild is hoping that the guild 10 man raids will include an obligatory weekly raid run before our regular raid. But a lot of guildies get that done in PUGs or on the fly with guildies, which will lock them out for the rest of the week, which would leave the regular ten man group short of people to do it. The random 5 mans could also be scheduled by the guild, and there was talk of doing that, but I strongly doubt it will happen. Wild should just suck up and do it. As a healer I doubt he'd have to wait long to get a group. Wild could sign up only as DPS sometimes for a change of pace, I guess.

The question is whether Wild will actually do it or not. Will Wild grind? The answer is probably - no, at least not consistently enough to keep up with everyone else. Strike two. And Wild will get far behind his fellow raiders. Here's a quick story. When Wild did the three new Icecrown 5 mans, you'll recall that Wild picked up FOUR prizes, all ilevel 232 gear. Wild has a couple of i245 gear, but getting those i232 pieces was a significant upgrade in those gear slots. Wild was proud of that. A good friend in the guild had not done the new 5 mans, and asked Wild about it. In the course of discussing it he asked what Wild had won. When I told him I got 4 pieces of i232 gear - he laughed. He honestly thought I was making a joke, sort of a "I spent four hours in three new dungeons and all I got was this lousy i232 gear" kind of joke. You see, he was decked out in all i245 gear, with a couple of i258 pieces thrown in as well. In a very short time, anyone with less than i245 gear is going to be under geared for any serious raiding. And Wild is still wearing i226, i219, and, gods help him, i213 gear.

Don't worry, though, Wild has a third strategy. He likes to cook, so Wild has decided to earn the Achievement "Hail to the Chef" which requires finding and making literally hundreds of recipes. There are 11 achievements within that main one that must be completed to earn the title of "Chef" which Wild can then display proudly in his name tag. Chef Wildshard will look so very nice. Of those 11 required achievements, Wild starts with two of them completed - Grand Master Cook (for getting to the max 450 skill in cooking) and Our Daily Bread (for doing all five daily cooking quests in Northrend). Lots more to do. And maybe, while Wild is hunting up recipes and ingredients, maybe, just maybe, he'll think to do a random daily heroic or decide to join a PUG for the weekly raid. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.