Weekend - (18 Dec) Covering the Bases

Weekend - (18 Dec) Covering the Bases

Covering the bases includes both in game and in the ballpark!

Many players in Wild's guild are heavy into the transmogrification thing. I've explained "mogging" before, but basically it means collecting old gear for it's looks and then "mogging" your real gear to look like the old gear without changing the stats. It's a neat idea. As a result there has been a lot of interest in running old dungeons to get gear for mogging. Wild's guild has been making mog runs several times a week, and on Friday night they ran both Naxrammas and ICC. Wild wasn't able to make those raids, but more are planned over the weekend. Wild's mog set will be based on the Tier 1 Cenarion set from Molten Core, but Wild is also looking at other gear to complement/replace some of that set. Wild currently has the leg and chest from the set and has set aside a few other pieces that may become part of his mogged set.

Anyway, it's Saturday morning as I write this and the weekend is shaping up into a busy one in real life and in WoW. I'll be adding entries as I go.

To start, Wild got in the two dungeon runs needed for his VP boots, but got screwed over when Wild was not awarded the 150 points for the second run. I don't know what happened there, but Wild was royally T-ed off about it. I doubt the GM ticket sent will do any good. The dungeon was Well of Eternity, the middle dungeon of the three dungeon chain. With the Well done, players can move on to Hour of Twilight or leave the dungeon finder if they don't want to proceed further. When the final boss falls players generally wait to see what loot drops, rolls on them if they want anything, and then leave. Based on the several runs Wild has made now, it seems that if players leave group too soon, it's possible for loot distribution to have problems.

Wild's group killed the final boss, Mannaroth, and someone opened the cache for the loot. There was nothing Wild wanted, but I always roll on each piece anyway, even if I'm only going to Pass. That way there are no delays because someone failed to roll. Wild did leave before all the loot was distributed, and perhaps that caused the glitch. I don't know, but Wild was still 150 VPs short of getting his i397 boots. Wild is always going to check his VP totals before quitting group from now on to make sure he gets his VPs.

On the RL front, we're going to Petco Park (home of the San Diego Padres baseball team) today. We were invited by the team to come by - they are inviting everyone who attended games last season, and I'm sure it'll be a pitch to buy season tickets, but that's fine, we just thought it would be fun to go down to the stadium. The report on what we did is at the bottom of the post. It was fun!

At 3pm Wild went back to work. There are two guild raids planned for Saturday, a 25 man DS LFR run and then a another 25 man run at 6:30PM with the raid to be determined based on attendance and quality of gear.

There were ten of us in game for the DS LFR, so we queued up in our own raid group and let the LFR fill in the rest of the spots. We had two good tanks from our guild and one healer - Wild. We cleared through the trash and downed the first boss, Morchok, without any issues. On to the next boss, Ozz, where we had to clear the eyeball and Claw trash. While pounding through that, one of our tanks, Bd, DCed. The raid leader for the LFR Kicked Bd from the raid while we were telling him to give us a minute. I know that Bd had told the raid leader he had a guild group, but it apparently didn't make any difference that almost half the raid was from the same guild. I know that in these raids many raid leaders have a very fast trigger on dumping raiders who have any kind of problem, simply because that spot will be filled almost instantly. Then, someone aggroed Ozz and started the fight prematurely. Seeing the coming disaster, and pissed at the raid leader, the rest of our guild quit the raid. I hope that raid leader enjoyed the fight with no tanks and only 15 raiders.

We tried a second time, losing two guildies, including one tank, who bowed out. With this group we cleared the first four bosses with no significant trouble. There were more issues with the raid loot, however. A player DEed during the loot rolls and when that player never came back the tanking trinket that was being rolled on disappeared, screwing over our tank. Wild got his first T13 token, but unfortunately it was for the leg slot - the one slot where he already HAS the i397 T13 pants. It didn't really matter, though, because the token disappeared from Wild's bag when the raid broke up after killing the final boss. Sigh. Bottom line is that Wild didn't get any loot drops, but the valor points earned were enough for Wild to get his i397 boots. Wild's gear score is now i380.

Wild never made it to the second raid of the evening. On Sunday, though, after the San Diego Chargers kicked butt against the Ravens, Wild was charged up for some raiding. Wild queued up for the final four boss segment (The Fall of Deathwing). Wild entered the raid on the boat, which is the second boss in this segment. I almost pulled out to wait for one that started at the beginning, but hey, if I get the last three the first one will be easy to get later. We won the ship battle, followed by the battle on the back of Deathwing, and then the Madness to wrap things up. For the first time Wild actually led a DS LFR raid in healing, but it was still only around 15k hps. Wild really wants to see what numbers he gets/needs in a ten man because I'm just not sure what impact all this new gear will have on real ten man raiding. That won't likely be until after Christmas as no raids are scheduled for next week.

Wild did win a loot drop from the last encounter, Madness of Deathwing. It was [Maw of the Dragonlord], an i390 healing mace. Wild usually gets ecstatic over weapon upgrades, and this is a pretty big jump from Wild's current i378 dagger. However, it has no secondary stats. Instead, it has a gimmick equip buff that heals all players in front of wild on a 15 second cooldown. I've researched this mace and it seems that it does provide considerable healing in situations where players are grouped up, but Wild has no control over when it procs and will miss the +crit and +mastery on his dagger. Wild decided to give it a try, though, and see how it works out.

Oh, Wild waited around after the fight and then checked his VPs. I thought that killing all four bosses was required to get the 250 VPs for completing the raid, but Wild still got his VPs despite missing one boss. I guess the only boss that matters for the VPs is the last one. Also, for the first time in memory, Wild maxed out his points for the week, earning his full 1000 points. I'm going to try to keep that up and let that gear keep coming. And eventually Wild is going to have to start winning those tier tokens.

Back in real life, we went to Petco Park for our appointment with the Padres rep. We were there about two hours and it was a blast! The rep gave us a tour of the park - and not just the areas open to everyone, either. We got to go into the press box, into areas for players only (but not the locker room itself), the luxury boxes, and the private lounge/restaurant/bar for season ticket holders. We also got to go down on the field and into the dugout. That was truly cool.

For those not familiar with the Padres financial state, this is a small market team with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. You might think that in a city of two million, and with a still new and wonderful ballpark, we would have no trouble filling the park. However, year round sunshine, lots of other fun distractions, and a significant transient population that usually has other home team preferences (ie, the military), makes selling tickets is a challenge. In 2010 the team surprised everyone by winning 90 games, and despite going back to our usual losing season in 2011, attendance was still up. With little hope for a winning team in 2012, though, attendance will be a problem. It didn't help us when the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to the north of us bought two big free agents recently - the salary of just those two players (starting pitcher CJ Wilson and super star slugger Albert Pujols) would fund the entire payroll of the Padres - for six years.

The sales pitch was smooth but without any pressure. The rep started with the royal treatment, though, letting us sit behind home plate where the premiere season holders get seats. These folks get most everything for free - concessions, in seat service, valet parking, private lounge, etc, including entering the park in the same area where the players enter. The private lounge has one way windows that look directly into the bullpen. Now that is truly cool. All of that could be ours for the cut rate price of just $56,000 - yep, fifty-six THOUSAND dollars. We were impressed but declined.

We then moved around the park, checking out various seating and progressively bringing down the price. Honestly, I didn't think we would find anything that was cheap enough to buy season tickets for ... but the Padres are pretty desperate for butts in seats, and in turn I was surprised at the quality seats that were available on the aisle, no less, for the price. The team also has an exchange system where we can change our seats if we wanted or place them for someone else to buy when we aren't using them. My wife is as much a fan as I am, and you have probably guessed by now that we bought in.

The cost averages out to about $13 per seat (81 games, two seats per game). I love baseball. It's still hard to believe that we are season ticket holders. Oh, and I have a picture of me in the Padres dugout on the phone to the bullpen.  I'll send that along when I get it off my phone.