Weekend (10 Jan) - Stuff

Weekend (10 Jan) - Stuff

Wild has continued to get into random heroics to pick up ever more emblems, and while the process is not terribly difficult, getting enough for each gear upgrade takes considerable time. Wild's experience with these multi-server PUGs has been largely positive. Wild's talked to a few guildies who have encountered players who steal gear, others who get what they want from an early boss and then quit the raid, and they have seen a lot of what I'd call childish behavior. With tens of thousands of potential players, some of that is going to occur. One disturbing aspect that will have to be watched over time is when players start getting disgusted and disillusioned by the bad players and the fact that there is no means to punish or censure them for the behavior. Fair minded players that give up and take the same "I'm going to get mine, screw the rest" attitude may grow over time. Again, although Wild has seen a fair amount of childish behavior, I have not seen anything worse than an impatient tank or a DPS that won't manage his aggro, and these are things that can crop up in any PUG.

For example, in Drak'tharon the other night the tank started running through the instance aggroing mobs indiscriminately, moving on to the next set of mobs even before the last set was killed. The rest of the raid scrambled to keep up, but we ended up wiping. The tank then apologized to the group. I did not get the specifics, but it was something along the lines of getting his movement key stuck or something. It was a bit lame, and many players would have simply bailed out and found another group, but our little group gave him a second chance and we did fine. In another group, Wild joined them at the last boss in CoS (Culling of Stratholme) because a player had quit. Wild won an abyss crystal when loot was sorted out, but a bug wouldn't distribute it to Wild. The group leader, however, was able to accept the crystal, and he could have just left the group with it, and there would have been nothing Wild could do about it. But he gave it to Wild.

Switching gears, I want to talk a little bit about Tier gear, which is linked to the whole emblem farming thing. Tier sets (which used to vary in the number of slots but now is pretty standard) come in five pieces: head, shoulders, chest, legs, and hands. Somewhere along the way Blizzard also began offering Tier sets of differing quality. That used to be distinguished by adding a fraction to the Tier number. For example, T8 would be the base level gear, with an enhanced version (heroics or other special designation) labelled unofficially as T8.5. For the T9 I even saw designations like T9.25. Once Blizz began seriously using the ilevel system to rank not only tier gear, but all gear, the fraction designations have been falling out of use, but there are still different levels of the same tier gear, often with identical or very similar names, often with different ways to acquire them, and always with differing set bonuses, and it becomes very confusing to keep track of. When deciding to purchase tier gear, one has to check very carefully to ensure that they are after the right piece, and buying what seemed to be what you were after but after you bought turned out to be wrong is pretty common. If you're lucky you'll catch it in time to return it; if you're not lucky, you just wasted a lot of whatever it was you paid to get it.

In general, to get tier gear, you have to go into 10/25 man raids and win a token from a downed boss. In addition to the token some number of emblems may also be required. The issue with that is that tokens are random - one may or may not drop, if it does drop it may or may not be for your class, and of course you will be competing with every other raider that needs it. Getting tier tokens is based totally on chance, which is why Wild accumulated so few T8 pieces. Wild is an unlucky cow.

The T9 set comes in two flavors, and the T10 comes in three. The base T9 and T10 sets do not require tokens. Yea! They do require emblems. Lots and lots of them, of course, but chance plays no role in getting the base sets. One must only grind heroic dungeons endlessly and eventually one can have a full set of i232 gear (for T9) or i251 gear (for T10). The higher ilevel tier sets require grinding 25 man raids and hoping for tokens. In addition, the highest level of T10 requires special ICC25 accomplishments, including turning in the mid-level T10 gear that you had to have also received via token. That would mean hard core raiders only.

Right now emblem grinding is Wild's best means of improving gear. Wild still wears two pieces of i226 Tier 8 gear, getting some use out of a modest two piece set bonus that improves a situationally useful spell called Swiftmend. I did have three T8s, but the new leggings Wild bought with triumph emblems (the i232 T9) replaced one of them. Wild now has two pieces of Tier 9 gear. So, Wild has T8 chest and head, and T9 legs and shoulders.

Wild has a tier gear progression plan that starts with getting the T10 hands (60 frost emblems), and then either the chest or head (95 frost). Even if Wild maxes out the number of frost emblems (19) that can be earned outside of ICC each week it will still take a lot of weeks to do. Wild may use the more easily obtained triumph emblems as interim replacements until I have enough frost, but there is another issue that Wild has pretty much had to ignore. The set bonuses for tier gear is specific to spec. All of Wild's tier gear has healing spell specific set bonuses. If Wild wants set bonuses specific to moonkin (and these are necessary for a raiding moonkin), Wild will need to acquire a completely different tier set with the correct set bonuses. The only moonkin tier piece Wild ever owned was a T7 shoulder, and that was only because I was one of those doofusses who bought the wrong gear. One piece does not a two piece set bonus make, so Wild has never had a tier set bonus for his moonkin spec. So, I am considering using future triumph emblems to buy at least two T9 moonkin gear, which could mean that Wild would be hanging on to his healing T8 pieces a while longer than I'd really like. Decisions, decisions.

So, is that now crystal clear in everyone's mind? Good, could someone please re-explain it to me? I've already forgotten.

Wild surprised himself by discovering that he had reached Exalted rep with the Wyrmrest Accord. There was a time Wild was interested in getting that rep for the head enchant, but you know Wild, grinding rep is not much fun, and mostly it required doing dungeon runs while equipped with the Wyrmrest tabard. Well, Wild has been doing random dungeon runs since the patch came out. With the tabard equipped. The Exalted rep head enchant is now something of a ho hum for Wild now, but it is a Bind on Account item, which means Wild can buy it for JB to enchant her headgear with and she won't have to have Exalted rep to get it. That got Wild wondering what other factions might have a faction tabard that I could raise rep in as a by product of doing dungeon runs. Will have to research that. One faction that Wild will probably raise to Exalted is the Kalu'ak. Unfortunately, they don't have a faction tabard, so Wild will have to do it the long way by doing dailies. Wild wants the Kalu'ak special fishing pole. Yes, I am reduced to that as something for Wild to do. I've found that I can only do at most 2-3 dungeon runs a day before I'm sick of it.

As Wild was hunting about for something more to do, he discovered another interesting thing. Wild recently got his first Title (ie, a moniker that shows up in front of the name in the nameplate). That title is Chef, of course. Well, Wild, again mostly by accident and simple longevity, is also very close to another title, with the much grander sounding title of Champion of the Frozen Wastes. To get this title Wild has to clear fifteen dungeons in Northrend, three of which are 10/25 man raids. If Wild had checked that achievement a week ago he would have seen that Wild had already completed thirteen of them. What was missing was Eye of Eternity (EoE), the 10/25 man raid that Wild hates. Well, Wild did EoE last week (and hopes never to do it again). So, Wild now only needs to do one more - Occulus (OCC), the other dungeon that Wild hates because it is similar to EoE. Wild isn't going to go out of his way to do this dungeon, but one day it is going to pop up in the random dungeon thing, and maybe he'll get it done. Wild would like the title - but not the part of having to run OCC to get it.

Wild got to run Trial of the Champion (ToC5 man) for his frost heroic on Saturday. ToC5 offers a slightly better grade of gear (i219) than the run of the mill heroics (i200), but it was still a little sad to see an i219 +hit cape that was actually an upgrade for Wild's moonkin spec. But it's an indication of why Wild should put some effort into his DPS gear, and not just his healing gear. It was a popular cape with the group Wild was in, as the other two DPS also Needed it. Wild did not win it.

This week's weekly raid is Obsidium Sanctum (OS), and Wild still needs to get that done before Tuesday. Can't screw this up this week, like I did last week when I forgot to pick up the quest.

Wild also put some time into Wintergrasp. Wild had 21 WG marks and needed 25 to be able to buy the +hit trinket Wild wants to improve his moonkin gear. The alliance did not make that easy, as they held WG for the entire weekend, with Wild participating in and losing three battles and falling one short of the needed amount. The horde finally took control some time Sunday night, and Wild joined an early morning (very early) WG to defend the fortress. It was fun because there were only about half the number of raiders than I usually see, and there was a lot of hand to hand pvp going on with only a few vehicles. My favorite moment was Wild standing on a broken gun emplacement at the outer ramparts of the fortress, preening in his chicken suit and daring the allie raiders on the ground outside the fortress to try and take me out. Wild destroyed two of their siege vehicles and kept the allies at bay, and then we all jumped down into the general melee and chased them off. The alliance did finally breach the walls, but they ran out of time and horde held on for the win. Wild got a pvp achievement for getting his 1,000th honor kill. And Wild has not a single stitch of resilience gear, arguably the most critical stat for a pvp player. Who would have believed that just a few months ago?

Wild also got his +hit trinket, and was able to swap out other gear for a much improved look. That didn't help Wild get into the weekly raid, though. The one group forming this morning (Monday) wanted to make an achievement run with only 20 raiders instead of 25, and turned Wild down, saying they needed shaman, not druids. Wild is running short on time.