Monday (1 Aug) - A Tale of Two Raids
Wild was asked to join a Firelands trash/rep run on Sunday by his old guild leader from the MM guild. Wild has helped out with his raid a couple of times before, and didn't mind helping out again. Maybe he'd get a lucky drop, but if not Wild would still pick up some Avenger's of Hyjal faction rep, even though he was already at Honored rep.
Wild has done enough runs through the Firelands trash that I was really not anticipating any trouble, even though we were running with only nine raiders and two healers. The second healer was a shaman and he struggled some, which kept Wild busy trying to care for both tanks and part of the raid, too. We had some deaths, but mobs were going down and if it wasn't a big deal to be short a DPS, and not a big deal to bring an under geared healer, then it shouldn't be a big deal if a raider died now and then.
Well, it was apparently a big deal to the second tank, who began complaining about the healing in vent. Wild has run with him many times while Wild was still with MM, and he is a hothead. I don't get mad at stupid stuff like that, and just ignored it. The raid leader made no effort, at least that I heard, to get the tank to tone it down, and that did annoy me. It also reminded me of some of the problems we were having that led to the split in the guild in the first place. This player had been right in the middle of that fray. I stayed to complete one round. By that time the tank had declared that he was going to switch to his healer alt, which I guess he'd have to as Wild said his goodbyes and left.
On Monday night we ran our first officially scheduled Firelands ten man. Wild made a special effort to make this run to help out flagging attendance with this raid group, and see what a guild run could do in Firelands. The 6pm raid took a long time to fill, and we finally had to pull in two DPS PUGs to fill it out. I was half convinced they would change it up and decide to go to BWD instead. But we made our Firelands date. It was past 7pm when we got started.
Wild had made a couple of gear adjustments since the Sunday night raid. I was just not comfortable with the mana regen I was getting, and decided to reforge some +haste into +spirit. I had also been studying the gear and stat choices of some of the other resto druids I knew. I came across an i365 necklace that I had not seen before. Sometimes I make things harder than they are. The saying, "going around your elbow to get to your thumb" comes to mind. The necklace was associated with a Molten Front quest, and I crossed that back to a vendor I didn't remember seeing, and I started back tracking through the entire quest series . . . that's when Wild stepped in, ported into the Molten Front and tracked down the vendor inside the cave where all of the horde leaders were hiding ... uh, I mean discussing strategy.
Wild shook down the vendor and what do you know, he sells that very necklace. I could have had that necklace after Wild turned in his first 20 Marks. Tea is probably much smarter than Wild, and already has it, I bet. Wild is pretty slow on the uptake, sometimes. Oh, Tea wants to know what it's called? Nightweaver's Amulet.
Back to the raid, we did a lot a killing, and did it pretty well I would have to say. We even got a drop of the i378 dagger that sells for 30k plus gold on the AH. Wild rolled for it, but the priest healer won it. This wasn't just a trash/rep run, though, we intended to tackle a boss. Just as a reminder, once inside the instance portal, the "dungeon" is outdoors. It's quite a large area, too, with rocks and gullies and hills. Not once in all the trash runs Wild has been on have I ever seen a boss and wouldn't even know where to look. After much killing (many more mobs than the usual "run") it's my understanding that the boss Shannox becomes "activated" and begins to patrol the area with two hell hounds. We took so long on the trash I think we forgot about him and we almost walked right into him. He moves pretty fast, too. We managed to get out of his way in time.
I'm not even going to try to explain this fight until I've had another chance at it, and after going over what I saw and then re-reading the strats. Wild was healing the main tank on Shannox. Our priest healer took the tank on the hell hound Riplimb, and we had a shaman healer for raid healing. The tanks really have their work cut out for them. We made five attempts, and Wild learned something new each time about different kinds of traps, about the dogs that periodically tried to chew Wild in half, Spear chucking by Shannox (which a dog would go fetch and bring back), and a TON of damage to the tank Wild was single-mindedly trying to keep alive. I do think we managed to kill one of the dogs (Rageface) a time or two, but we mostly just died.
I'm excited to finally get a shot at a Firelands, boss, though! I don't think the fight is out of our league, either. There were a couple of attempts where Wild really felt we were starting to get on top of this fight, if we could get all the pieces to fall into place.
Wild was pleased with the gear adjustments, too. Mana regen was back to where my casting decisions feel natural again (instead of me mentally wringing my hands over whether to cast a spell), and it didn't seem to hurt my overall healing output. In fact, Wild's healing output went up, both on the trash kills and on the boss attempts.
I hope we start banging away at Shannox each week. That's assuming we can get ten guildies to show up. Which brings me to Tuesday night - two weeks ago the guild announced they were going to bring two raid groups together and attempt a BWD 25 man run. Wild is signed up for that. I really have no idea if we'll pull that off or not.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday (31 Jul) - Cowboys and Aliens and Bosses Oh My!
Friday (31 Jul) - Cowboys and Aliens and Bosses Oh My!
The good news is that the new Harrison Ford/Daniel Craig movie "Cowboys and Aliens" is a much better movie than you might think from the title. I really like Craig and Ford, and those two convinced me to give the movie a shot. Craig is the wanted gunslinger sporting an alien bracelet with no memory of what it is or how it got there. Ford is the cattle baron running roughshod over a town long past it's glory days. Add in a town trying to save itself, a bandit army, and Indians, mix in an alien encampment of District 9 like creepies bent on irradicating the human vermin in their way, and you have a wide prairie of action, fun, and even a little scary horror. Yes, there is a bit of silliness at times, but on the whole this is a great action flick with not only good leading actors but a very good supporting cast as well. There are even a couple of memorable lines.
The bad news is that the Friday night assault on Bastion of Twilight was a completely forgettable event. We could have used a few good gunslingers. We fell short in two areas - our pally healer wasn't feeling well, and we had to substitute him with a modestly gear shaman to complete our healing team of Wild and another shaman, who was pretty decent. The healing team was good enough, but we would have been a lot better with the pally. Not that it made much difference in the end. Where we really came up short was on DPS. We had one warrior DPS, and all the rest of the DPS were rogues and hunters. So, 7 of our 10 raiders were comprised of shaman, rogues, and hunters. Not really an issue in itself, but over the course of the night it was obvious we didn't have the DPS to make any headway. Only two DPSers could barely get over 10K DPS, and not consistently at that. The rest ranged down to around 7k healing. We started with the Ascendant Council, made five attempts, and never got closer than 10% despite some agonizingly long fights because we would go into phase 3 with far more than the 25-28% health we should have had on the P3 boss. When the evening began Wild was certain we would be taking shots at and perhaps killing Cho'gal Friday night - but it just wasn't our night.
On Saturday I rescued my computer from the shop and took it home. The good news was that there appears to be absolutely nothing wrong with the hardware - they even put it through a 24 hour high stress burn in period and it never failed. Their guess is that it's a manufacturer driver issue, but they also said that sometines the "sleep mode" is the culprit, and so that is now disabled. Bottom line - if it happens again the computer will have to be sent back to Acer, as I have now exhausted every other option. Keep your fingers crossed.
Happy's paychecks to his family have taken a serious dive in the past week plus. The Horde Auction House has been eerily quiet with very little buying going on. Usually that means sellers are dumping prices, which is when Happy swoops in and grabs the under priced items. That isn't happening, at least not yet. Wild has spent a large chunk of change, too, on those i365 items and toys from the dailies along with the enchants and gems that went with them. Happy is starting to feel a bit squeezed.
What that means in part is that Wild is going to be doing the Dailies again. The Marks don't mean much anymore, but what Wild forgot to take into account is that all those Dailies pay cash gold, and it adds up to some pretty nice walking around money.
The Alliance AH, by contrast, is hot right now. The arbiter of that success, Lost, has done a wonderful job riding that wave of buying and returning her cash reserves to it's highest level so far, quite an accomplishment considering her horde cousins nearly wiped out that cash on a big order Wild needed some time back.
On the Hunter Fortress front, Jocelyne is itching for some action and is close to level 25. I'm holding her back, but we should think about when we want to roll our toons over to level 25 and the next bracket.
The good news is that the new Harrison Ford/Daniel Craig movie "Cowboys and Aliens" is a much better movie than you might think from the title. I really like Craig and Ford, and those two convinced me to give the movie a shot. Craig is the wanted gunslinger sporting an alien bracelet with no memory of what it is or how it got there. Ford is the cattle baron running roughshod over a town long past it's glory days. Add in a town trying to save itself, a bandit army, and Indians, mix in an alien encampment of District 9 like creepies bent on irradicating the human vermin in their way, and you have a wide prairie of action, fun, and even a little scary horror. Yes, there is a bit of silliness at times, but on the whole this is a great action flick with not only good leading actors but a very good supporting cast as well. There are even a couple of memorable lines.
The bad news is that the Friday night assault on Bastion of Twilight was a completely forgettable event. We could have used a few good gunslingers. We fell short in two areas - our pally healer wasn't feeling well, and we had to substitute him with a modestly gear shaman to complete our healing team of Wild and another shaman, who was pretty decent. The healing team was good enough, but we would have been a lot better with the pally. Not that it made much difference in the end. Where we really came up short was on DPS. We had one warrior DPS, and all the rest of the DPS were rogues and hunters. So, 7 of our 10 raiders were comprised of shaman, rogues, and hunters. Not really an issue in itself, but over the course of the night it was obvious we didn't have the DPS to make any headway. Only two DPSers could barely get over 10K DPS, and not consistently at that. The rest ranged down to around 7k healing. We started with the Ascendant Council, made five attempts, and never got closer than 10% despite some agonizingly long fights because we would go into phase 3 with far more than the 25-28% health we should have had on the P3 boss. When the evening began Wild was certain we would be taking shots at and perhaps killing Cho'gal Friday night - but it just wasn't our night.
On Saturday I rescued my computer from the shop and took it home. The good news was that there appears to be absolutely nothing wrong with the hardware - they even put it through a 24 hour high stress burn in period and it never failed. Their guess is that it's a manufacturer driver issue, but they also said that sometines the "sleep mode" is the culprit, and so that is now disabled. Bottom line - if it happens again the computer will have to be sent back to Acer, as I have now exhausted every other option. Keep your fingers crossed.
Happy's paychecks to his family have taken a serious dive in the past week plus. The Horde Auction House has been eerily quiet with very little buying going on. Usually that means sellers are dumping prices, which is when Happy swoops in and grabs the under priced items. That isn't happening, at least not yet. Wild has spent a large chunk of change, too, on those i365 items and toys from the dailies along with the enchants and gems that went with them. Happy is starting to feel a bit squeezed.
What that means in part is that Wild is going to be doing the Dailies again. The Marks don't mean much anymore, but what Wild forgot to take into account is that all those Dailies pay cash gold, and it adds up to some pretty nice walking around money.
The Alliance AH, by contrast, is hot right now. The arbiter of that success, Lost, has done a wonderful job riding that wave of buying and returning her cash reserves to it's highest level so far, quite an accomplishment considering her horde cousins nearly wiped out that cash on a big order Wild needed some time back.
On the Hunter Fortress front, Jocelyne is itching for some action and is close to level 25. I'm holding her back, but we should think about when we want to roll our toons over to level 25 and the next bracket.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday (28 Jul) - Waiting For Something to Happen
Thursday (28 Jul) - Waiting For Something to Happen
When Hunter Fortress is in full force it is a murderous team that is very hard to stop. When we are at less than full strength we remain dangerous, but more vulnerable, particularly from healing supported enemies. As an option, I wonder if having a healer available would be worth considering. I even have a volunteer. Jocelyne is a level 23 paladin. She agreed to respec from Retribuition to Holy and back up the Fortress with healing when needed. Her Holy gear is still somewhat lacking, given that she selected retribution gear for the first 23 levels of her life. But that gear is coming along, and with a little effort I think she can be very effective. Just a thought.
Well, this has been a week of just hanging around for Wild. Wild did not sign up for the Mon/Tues Blackwing Descent raids, but ended up downing four BWD bosses on Tuesday night in a scratched together guild raid. As late as Thursday afternoon there was no sign up for the Thurs/Fri Bastion of Twilight raid, and the raid leader/main tank was confirmed as "on vacation" and not available to raid. Still, Wild "hung around" on Thursday evening, waiting to see what would come up. Around 6:30pm a few guildies asked if there was going to be a raid. One guildie counted noses and determined that there were at least enough bodies for a raid. Do we have healers? another guildie asked. Wild raised his hand. The pally healer, Fl, from our regular BoT raid group was on and raised his hand as well. We'd just need a third. Then one of our guild officers said he could come on his shaman alt as the third healer, and if no one objected he'd lead the effort to get a raid going. We quickly had one tank offer to come, but neither of our regular raid tanks were in game. The now raid leader asked for volunteers for DPS, and we got three right away. But two other guildies had just entered Zul'Gurub and that would take an hour or more. Apparently the other DPS players in game couldn't or didn't want to come. Another 15 minutes went by and we scraped up another DPS, a friend of the guild, and a little later that friend of the guild convinced another of his guildies to come. We then filled the raid with a death knight guildie who logged in and was ninjaed into our raid as the second tank. I'm sure he's an alt of someone, I just don't know who. I love his name - cathair.
It was a bit of a rabble, particularly with the DPS. We had a solid main tank and a second tank with good gear but no BoT experience. We had two DPSers making their first trip to BoT as well. Two of the three healers were vets of BoT, so that helped. Our raid leader, who most of us had not raided with before (at least with him as the raid leader) assured us that he new the fights and that he would lay out the strats for the newcomers.
We had less than two hours of raid time given the time it took to get everyone together. And instead of going over the blow by blow of each encounter, I thought I'd mention only the out of the ordinary stuff.
First, the initial set of multiple trash mob pulls was flat easy. I mean, Wild had time to scrape, mold, and shine his hooves during the fight so little healing was needed. I'd say that guild raiders are reaching a gear level where the trash, at least, is insignificant. Even with something of a pick up guild raid.
We got one of the more difficult sets of dragons for the Halfus fight, but Halfus and the dragons went down without a fuss. Wild didn't even need to shift into Tree form at all. Smooth as butter.
Things went sideways on the trash mobs right after the gauntlet. We followed our normal pull scenario, intending to clear through the center, leaving the mobs to either side alone. A mistake was made on the pull, and we drew far more mobs than we expected. It wasn't a complete wipe, but most of us died. That left us with one solo ogre mob still standing, and farther back, the next mob group. No big deal. The death knight tank pulled the single ogre - and the group behind the ogre came with him. What!? No crowd control had been set on that other group and they should never have aggroed. This time we did wipe. That darn ogre survived, too, standing all by his lonesome. Still not sure what had happened, we had our hunter misdirect the ogre to the tank - and again we had mobs from all over the place descent on us. Another wipe. This was getting pretty frustrating, but at least this time we made sure to kill that ogre.
We moved forward to set crowd control for that next mob group, and we noticed something very odd. I took a screenshot (below). Not only were there the expected mob group, there was another mob group standing right next to them! We'd never seen this before. Blizzard must have been dickering with BoT in the latest maintenance and mucked up the trash mobs. Or maybe it was just our instance that had come unglued.
Note the two ogres and the dragonid to the right of the center group of mobs. They shouldn't be there.
So, it was with some trepidation we marked and pulled that group of mobs, wondering if it we would pull the others, too. Strangely enough, only the marked group of mobs aggroed on the pull, and we killed them easily. We still weren't too sure about this other group, which was slightly off to the side and quite close to the large group of mobs that we usually leave alone. We tried to simply stroll past them. And it worked. The mobs never moved. Weird.
The Twins behaved themselves, and we downed them without any trouble - except that Wild died. I had an excuse, though. We were down to the last 5% on the boss when Wild got Engulfing flames (which means get away from other raiders) and at the same time the raid was hit with Blackout. Wild needed to collapse on the tank with everyone else for the Blackout, but if Wild did that his Flames buff would add more damage to the raid over and above Blackout. Wild was the dispeller. With the raid so close to taking down the Twins, Wild decided not to collapse on the tank. As soon as everyone else had collapsed together, Wild cleared Blackout and of course Wild was instantly killed. The rest of the raid was saved. The Twins went down, and we had our kill.
We only had time for two attempts on the Ascendant Council, and we nearly got them on our second try, but too many raiders weren't familiar with this fight and we came up a little short.
I have to say, though, that despite the pug-like group and some new raiders, BoT seemed noticeably easier than in the past. There has been no new nerf (at least none announced), so I'd have to say it's more a matter of gear progression catching up with the raid difficulty. I know that Wild's gear is markedly improved from just a couple of weeks ago.
Everyone in the raid said they could come Friday night for another round of BoT. I hope so. I'd really like to see Cho'gal go down so we could officially complete a guild clear of BoT.
When Hunter Fortress is in full force it is a murderous team that is very hard to stop. When we are at less than full strength we remain dangerous, but more vulnerable, particularly from healing supported enemies. As an option, I wonder if having a healer available would be worth considering. I even have a volunteer. Jocelyne is a level 23 paladin. She agreed to respec from Retribuition to Holy and back up the Fortress with healing when needed. Her Holy gear is still somewhat lacking, given that she selected retribution gear for the first 23 levels of her life. But that gear is coming along, and with a little effort I think she can be very effective. Just a thought.
Well, this has been a week of just hanging around for Wild. Wild did not sign up for the Mon/Tues Blackwing Descent raids, but ended up downing four BWD bosses on Tuesday night in a scratched together guild raid. As late as Thursday afternoon there was no sign up for the Thurs/Fri Bastion of Twilight raid, and the raid leader/main tank was confirmed as "on vacation" and not available to raid. Still, Wild "hung around" on Thursday evening, waiting to see what would come up. Around 6:30pm a few guildies asked if there was going to be a raid. One guildie counted noses and determined that there were at least enough bodies for a raid. Do we have healers? another guildie asked. Wild raised his hand. The pally healer, Fl, from our regular BoT raid group was on and raised his hand as well. We'd just need a third. Then one of our guild officers said he could come on his shaman alt as the third healer, and if no one objected he'd lead the effort to get a raid going. We quickly had one tank offer to come, but neither of our regular raid tanks were in game. The now raid leader asked for volunteers for DPS, and we got three right away. But two other guildies had just entered Zul'Gurub and that would take an hour or more. Apparently the other DPS players in game couldn't or didn't want to come. Another 15 minutes went by and we scraped up another DPS, a friend of the guild, and a little later that friend of the guild convinced another of his guildies to come. We then filled the raid with a death knight guildie who logged in and was ninjaed into our raid as the second tank. I'm sure he's an alt of someone, I just don't know who. I love his name - cathair.
It was a bit of a rabble, particularly with the DPS. We had a solid main tank and a second tank with good gear but no BoT experience. We had two DPSers making their first trip to BoT as well. Two of the three healers were vets of BoT, so that helped. Our raid leader, who most of us had not raided with before (at least with him as the raid leader) assured us that he new the fights and that he would lay out the strats for the newcomers.
We had less than two hours of raid time given the time it took to get everyone together. And instead of going over the blow by blow of each encounter, I thought I'd mention only the out of the ordinary stuff.
First, the initial set of multiple trash mob pulls was flat easy. I mean, Wild had time to scrape, mold, and shine his hooves during the fight so little healing was needed. I'd say that guild raiders are reaching a gear level where the trash, at least, is insignificant. Even with something of a pick up guild raid.
We got one of the more difficult sets of dragons for the Halfus fight, but Halfus and the dragons went down without a fuss. Wild didn't even need to shift into Tree form at all. Smooth as butter.
Things went sideways on the trash mobs right after the gauntlet. We followed our normal pull scenario, intending to clear through the center, leaving the mobs to either side alone. A mistake was made on the pull, and we drew far more mobs than we expected. It wasn't a complete wipe, but most of us died. That left us with one solo ogre mob still standing, and farther back, the next mob group. No big deal. The death knight tank pulled the single ogre - and the group behind the ogre came with him. What!? No crowd control had been set on that other group and they should never have aggroed. This time we did wipe. That darn ogre survived, too, standing all by his lonesome. Still not sure what had happened, we had our hunter misdirect the ogre to the tank - and again we had mobs from all over the place descent on us. Another wipe. This was getting pretty frustrating, but at least this time we made sure to kill that ogre.
We moved forward to set crowd control for that next mob group, and we noticed something very odd. I took a screenshot (below). Not only were there the expected mob group, there was another mob group standing right next to them! We'd never seen this before. Blizzard must have been dickering with BoT in the latest maintenance and mucked up the trash mobs. Or maybe it was just our instance that had come unglued.
Note the two ogres and the dragonid to the right of the center group of mobs. They shouldn't be there.
So, it was with some trepidation we marked and pulled that group of mobs, wondering if it we would pull the others, too. Strangely enough, only the marked group of mobs aggroed on the pull, and we killed them easily. We still weren't too sure about this other group, which was slightly off to the side and quite close to the large group of mobs that we usually leave alone. We tried to simply stroll past them. And it worked. The mobs never moved. Weird.
The Twins behaved themselves, and we downed them without any trouble - except that Wild died. I had an excuse, though. We were down to the last 5% on the boss when Wild got Engulfing flames (which means get away from other raiders) and at the same time the raid was hit with Blackout. Wild needed to collapse on the tank with everyone else for the Blackout, but if Wild did that his Flames buff would add more damage to the raid over and above Blackout. Wild was the dispeller. With the raid so close to taking down the Twins, Wild decided not to collapse on the tank. As soon as everyone else had collapsed together, Wild cleared Blackout and of course Wild was instantly killed. The rest of the raid was saved. The Twins went down, and we had our kill.
We only had time for two attempts on the Ascendant Council, and we nearly got them on our second try, but too many raiders weren't familiar with this fight and we came up a little short.
I have to say, though, that despite the pug-like group and some new raiders, BoT seemed noticeably easier than in the past. There has been no new nerf (at least none announced), so I'd have to say it's more a matter of gear progression catching up with the raid difficulty. I know that Wild's gear is markedly improved from just a couple of weeks ago.
Everyone in the raid said they could come Friday night for another round of BoT. I hope so. I'd really like to see Cho'gal go down so we could officially complete a guild clear of BoT.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday (27 Jul) - Done With Dailies
Wednesday (27 Jul) - Done With Dailies
Now that Wild has opened up his primary vendor from the series of Dailies in Hyjal, Molten Front, and Molten Flow, I was all ready to send him back out to collect another 125 marks to unlock another vendor. There are three vendors total. One item that Wild was after was the [Fireplume Girdle], an i365 belt from Damek Bloombeard. However, when Wild made Honored with the Avenger's of Hyjal faction, he was able to acquire an even better belt, the i378 [Firescar Sash]. Wild needed nothing else from that vendor. The third vendor, Varlan Highbough, didn't have many items Wild needed, either. The i365 [Spirit Fragment Band] one would think was a better deal than Wild's current rings. Both rings are pvp rings, lacking key stats at ilevels of 358 and 365. But the vendor ring has no +spi or +haste. Reforging the crit to spi = only 48 spi. The two pvp rings have 134 and 76 spi on them. No matter how I tried, the vendor ring was so poor even the i358 pvp ring was, overall, better. The vendor also sold a companion and some kind of horn, but collecting another 125 Marks for just toys didn't much interest Wild. It looks like Wild's Dailies days are done.
That leaves Wild with the question - What time sink does he invest in now?
The Hunter Fortress was operating last night on two cylinders. See and Shevils created the usual fear and panic among the Alliance, although in the first round of Warsong Gulch the rest of the Horde team failed us and we lost. We were more clever in the second match, capping our one flag after the Allies had gotten their one cap. See and Shevils then took up residence in our home base and dared the Alliance to root us out. When that failed, it appeared that the Allies were going to let time run out. However, they staged a desperate, full strength assault on our base with a minute to go. That battle was the most fun Shevils had all night. The Allies captured our flag and made for their base, the battle raging all the way across mid-field. See murdered enough of them for Shevils to break free and charge the Allie base. On the very steps of the entrance to the Allie base Shevils caught up with the flag carrier and took him out. Time expired and the Horde were victorious!
Now that Wild has opened up his primary vendor from the series of Dailies in Hyjal, Molten Front, and Molten Flow, I was all ready to send him back out to collect another 125 marks to unlock another vendor. There are three vendors total. One item that Wild was after was the [Fireplume Girdle], an i365 belt from Damek Bloombeard. However, when Wild made Honored with the Avenger's of Hyjal faction, he was able to acquire an even better belt, the i378 [Firescar Sash]. Wild needed nothing else from that vendor. The third vendor, Varlan Highbough, didn't have many items Wild needed, either. The i365 [Spirit Fragment Band] one would think was a better deal than Wild's current rings. Both rings are pvp rings, lacking key stats at ilevels of 358 and 365. But the vendor ring has no +spi or +haste. Reforging the crit to spi = only 48 spi. The two pvp rings have 134 and 76 spi on them. No matter how I tried, the vendor ring was so poor even the i358 pvp ring was, overall, better. The vendor also sold a companion and some kind of horn, but collecting another 125 Marks for just toys didn't much interest Wild. It looks like Wild's Dailies days are done.
That leaves Wild with the question - What time sink does he invest in now?
The Hunter Fortress was operating last night on two cylinders. See and Shevils created the usual fear and panic among the Alliance, although in the first round of Warsong Gulch the rest of the Horde team failed us and we lost. We were more clever in the second match, capping our one flag after the Allies had gotten their one cap. See and Shevils then took up residence in our home base and dared the Alliance to root us out. When that failed, it appeared that the Allies were going to let time run out. However, they staged a desperate, full strength assault on our base with a minute to go. That battle was the most fun Shevils had all night. The Allies captured our flag and made for their base, the battle raging all the way across mid-field. See murdered enough of them for Shevils to break free and charge the Allie base. On the very steps of the entrance to the Allie base Shevils caught up with the flag carrier and took him out. Time expired and the Horde were victorious!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday (26 July 2011) - Guild Updates and BWD
Tuesday (26 July 2011) - Guild Updates and BWD
[Note: With one computer out of action Bean will not be making Wednesday night. Shevils is available, though. Just wanted to check on who is going to be on for Hunter Fortress.]
Tuesday's maintenance was a full eight hours (3am - 11am) despite a half day of maintenance a couple days ago to fix errors in the Honor point system. With nothing better to do, I figured I'd see how each of Wild's current and former guilds are doing.
MM2 - Wild's current guild: max level 25, 310 members, 148 level 85s. Three 10 man raid groups. Raid accomplishments: 10/13 bosses (BH, BWD, Thrones, BoT), 0/7 Firelands
MM - Wild's former guild: max level 25, 188 members, 81 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 4/13, 0/7 Firelands
FS - Wild's first raiding guild: level 24, 128 members, 60 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 13/13, 2/7 Firelands
WC - FS spin off guild: level 24, 74 members, 54 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 13/13, 1/7 Firelands
It's still a shame that MM and MM2 did not stay together as a single guild.That would have made our MM2 raid groups stronger, but the personal issues were too much to overcome. MM lost most of the raiding members to MM2, and do not seem to have recovered from that. Had Wild stayed with MM, he would have missed out on a lot of raid accomplishments. However, they are not totally out of raiding. The Firelands trash run that Wild ran with last sunday was an MM led raid, and Wild was glad to be able to help them out. The funny thing, though, is that had Wild stayed with MM he would still be geared the same as he is now. Despite downing 10 Cata bosses with MM and MM2, some of them mulitple times, not a single piece of gear has come from Cata boss kills. I find that kind of amazing.
FS was like MM2 before hard core raiders took over the guild and chased away the casual raiders to become a pure raiding guild. WC was a spin off from the FS raiding guild when the two remaining raid leaders could not work together. Their numbers are lean and their accomplishments greater due to their raiding focus - neither guild takes in casual raiders.
You're still reading? I didn't think I'd be doing anything Tuesday night, but I was surprised to find that not only was the BWD raid leader trying again to get his raid off the ground, another guildie, Lady Hunter, was forning up her own BWD raid. Wild was confused. Both raids had trouble filling. Lady Hunter filled hers first (that woman knows everyone and no one says no to her when she wants ya in her raid). Had I known she was raiding Tuesday, and had she known I was going to be available, I know where Wild would have been. As it was, though, Monday's raid leader got to Wild first. Our raid ended up pugging two players, a shadow priest and a moonkin.
Wild knows almost nothing about BWD. I've seen the first boss, Magmaw, way back in the first week of Cata. No kills, though. Then last week Wild got in on the 5th boss, Atramedes, but still got no BWD kill.
At least this time Wild was starting a fresh BWD raid. We elected to start with Magmaw, which Wild at least had seen a time or two. Wild also recalled that the pair of trash mobs in front of Magmaw were a real pain in the early days of Cata. We did actually wipe on those mobs the first time we tried, but that was because the pug moonkin attacked before the tanks had aggro and we were not able to get things back under control. The moonkin apologized, and on our second attempt we cleared the trash easily.
The magmaw fight unfolded just as Wild remembered with one exception - Magmaw died. Wild had his first BWD kill. The moonkin topped 20k DPS, so we forgave him the earlier aggro.
We moved on to the Omnotron Defense System. Wild had no clue what this fight was about, and I scrambled to read what I could from the Dungeon Guide. The Dungeon Guide is a great source of in game info about fight mechanics, adds, and abilities, but it does not cover strategy. With my main computer still in the shop, alt-tabbing back and forth to try and read up on the strats was a real pain, too. The raid leader was not the type that goes over the strat in any detail - Wild got a "very" general description of the strat, and we plowed right in.
As best I recall this encounter has four robots, of which a max of two are active at any given time, and the robots activate and deactivate randomly. Each robot has it's own set of abilities. In general, Wild has seen enough boss fights to react almost instinctively to most things - get away from things that hurt, collapse into a pile when he sees others doing that, and of course, heal! We had some trouble with DPSers attacking robots when they were shielded (I learned that was a very bad no no). Wild was never told to stand in Arcanotron's "puddle," so Wild avoided it as something potentially bad. It would have helped Wild's mana regen (I learned later) but Wild did without. The four robots fell on our first attempt, and Wild now had two encounters down.
Maloriak was to be our next boss fight, but two players, a tank and a healer, went offline as we were setting up for the fight. They lived in the same area and had let us know that the weather was bad and often knocked out their internet connection. Obviously that had happened. There was a long delay waiting for them to -hopefully - come back. I was a little surprised that the two pugs stayed with us. But they did. The shadow priest (our only cloth wearer in the raid, which when I thought about that was pretty odd) had already won one item, so maybe he hoped for more.
We finally got our raid back together and started on Maloriak. The raid leader did set up color beacons so that we knew where to stand at each part of the fight. There is a lot going on in this fight, but a lot of the activity belongs to the tanks. From Wild's perspective as a healer, this was a pretty simple encounter. We wiped on our first attempt when the tank went down instantly just a few seconds into the fight. We thought that maybe the raid was not positioned correctly at the red beacon. We wiped a second time - same thing. The main tank did a little checking. He then told us that he usually tanks the adds in this fight and it was his first time as main tank. He had been turning the boss away from the raid - and taking the full brunt of whatever ability was getting him killed. On our third atetmpt he turned the boss toward the raid so that we would share the damage, and now that we had that down we killed Maloriak. Three bosses down.
Chimaeron was the fourth boss on our plate, the one Wild had actually prepared for last week and then was thrown off track by finding out they were doing Atramedes instead. So, Wild was up to speed on this boss. However, and it's a big however, this fight is unlike any other fight. Frankly - I hated it.
The fight is simple enough on the surface. There are three phases, and Wild need only move between two points during the course of the battle. The gimmick of this fight is that for most of the first two phases, our health bar is forced down to 1%, and healers have to keep raising that, but only to about 10%. Anything much above 10% is wasted mana that healers will wish they had back at the other end of the fight. Do you know how hard it is for a healer NOT to heal someone, particularly someone down to 10% health? It's torture!
Wild's healing spells aren't the best for this encounter, either. The instant rejuv tics too slowly, and while it "usually" is good enough, Wild lost a raider or two at times when they got hit too soon. Nourish, another low mana cost spell, provides plenty of health, but it takes two seconds to cast. I couldn't find a happy medium, and Wild's attention span was so wholely focused on keeping my group above 10% Wild missed movement periods - and was killed instantly. I really hate this fight.
Wild managed to die on all of our first three attempts. I did sort of get my act together on the fourth attempt, but even though we reached the third phase we had too many dead. Even with Wild helping on DPS, we wiped at 2%.
The third phase is the only fun phase for Wild. Reaching that phase essentially shuts down all healing, and the whole raid DPSes the boss in a kill the boss before the boss kills us scenario. On our fifth attempt we again reached the third phase with an already once resurrected Wild still in the fight. Wild blasted away with everyone else - and Chimaeron fell. I still hate this fight. Four bosses down.
We were out of time. Wild got no drops. The shadow priest got three. What was funny and weird is that his rolls for the items had no competition (being the only cloth wearer) and went like this:
1st piece: Rolled 18
2nd piece: Rolled 19
3rd piece: Rolled 20
It doesn't get any luckier than that.
Wild did get a good look at his mana regen over the course of the four boss fights. Taken objectively, Wild never needed his innervate and never saw his mana fall below 50% (except against Chimaeron, which is part of the fight mechanic and can't be helped). Wild's 1,897 spirit seems to be "good enough" so far. However, I did feel like I was holding back on the healing a little out of worry that I might have mana trouble. It never affected the fight, and Wild still led the other two healers (pally and shaman) in both hps and total healing (again, minus Chimaeron, where "normal" healing doesn't apply). Even so, I'm considering reforging out of a little haste and mastery to get up to 2,000 spirit. The "right amount" of mana regen is very dependant on healing style, and Wild is not fully comfortable yet.
[Note: With one computer out of action Bean will not be making Wednesday night. Shevils is available, though. Just wanted to check on who is going to be on for Hunter Fortress.]
Tuesday's maintenance was a full eight hours (3am - 11am) despite a half day of maintenance a couple days ago to fix errors in the Honor point system. With nothing better to do, I figured I'd see how each of Wild's current and former guilds are doing.
MM2 - Wild's current guild: max level 25, 310 members, 148 level 85s. Three 10 man raid groups. Raid accomplishments: 10/13 bosses (BH, BWD, Thrones, BoT), 0/7 Firelands
MM - Wild's former guild: max level 25, 188 members, 81 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 4/13, 0/7 Firelands
FS - Wild's first raiding guild: level 24, 128 members, 60 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 13/13, 2/7 Firelands
WC - FS spin off guild: level 24, 74 members, 54 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 13/13, 1/7 Firelands
It's still a shame that MM and MM2 did not stay together as a single guild.That would have made our MM2 raid groups stronger, but the personal issues were too much to overcome. MM lost most of the raiding members to MM2, and do not seem to have recovered from that. Had Wild stayed with MM, he would have missed out on a lot of raid accomplishments. However, they are not totally out of raiding. The Firelands trash run that Wild ran with last sunday was an MM led raid, and Wild was glad to be able to help them out. The funny thing, though, is that had Wild stayed with MM he would still be geared the same as he is now. Despite downing 10 Cata bosses with MM and MM2, some of them mulitple times, not a single piece of gear has come from Cata boss kills. I find that kind of amazing.
FS was like MM2 before hard core raiders took over the guild and chased away the casual raiders to become a pure raiding guild. WC was a spin off from the FS raiding guild when the two remaining raid leaders could not work together. Their numbers are lean and their accomplishments greater due to their raiding focus - neither guild takes in casual raiders.
You're still reading? I didn't think I'd be doing anything Tuesday night, but I was surprised to find that not only was the BWD raid leader trying again to get his raid off the ground, another guildie, Lady Hunter, was forning up her own BWD raid. Wild was confused. Both raids had trouble filling. Lady Hunter filled hers first (that woman knows everyone and no one says no to her when she wants ya in her raid). Had I known she was raiding Tuesday, and had she known I was going to be available, I know where Wild would have been. As it was, though, Monday's raid leader got to Wild first. Our raid ended up pugging two players, a shadow priest and a moonkin.
Wild knows almost nothing about BWD. I've seen the first boss, Magmaw, way back in the first week of Cata. No kills, though. Then last week Wild got in on the 5th boss, Atramedes, but still got no BWD kill.
At least this time Wild was starting a fresh BWD raid. We elected to start with Magmaw, which Wild at least had seen a time or two. Wild also recalled that the pair of trash mobs in front of Magmaw were a real pain in the early days of Cata. We did actually wipe on those mobs the first time we tried, but that was because the pug moonkin attacked before the tanks had aggro and we were not able to get things back under control. The moonkin apologized, and on our second attempt we cleared the trash easily.
The magmaw fight unfolded just as Wild remembered with one exception - Magmaw died. Wild had his first BWD kill. The moonkin topped 20k DPS, so we forgave him the earlier aggro.
We moved on to the Omnotron Defense System. Wild had no clue what this fight was about, and I scrambled to read what I could from the Dungeon Guide. The Dungeon Guide is a great source of in game info about fight mechanics, adds, and abilities, but it does not cover strategy. With my main computer still in the shop, alt-tabbing back and forth to try and read up on the strats was a real pain, too. The raid leader was not the type that goes over the strat in any detail - Wild got a "very" general description of the strat, and we plowed right in.
As best I recall this encounter has four robots, of which a max of two are active at any given time, and the robots activate and deactivate randomly. Each robot has it's own set of abilities. In general, Wild has seen enough boss fights to react almost instinctively to most things - get away from things that hurt, collapse into a pile when he sees others doing that, and of course, heal! We had some trouble with DPSers attacking robots when they were shielded (I learned that was a very bad no no). Wild was never told to stand in Arcanotron's "puddle," so Wild avoided it as something potentially bad. It would have helped Wild's mana regen (I learned later) but Wild did without. The four robots fell on our first attempt, and Wild now had two encounters down.
Maloriak was to be our next boss fight, but two players, a tank and a healer, went offline as we were setting up for the fight. They lived in the same area and had let us know that the weather was bad and often knocked out their internet connection. Obviously that had happened. There was a long delay waiting for them to -hopefully - come back. I was a little surprised that the two pugs stayed with us. But they did. The shadow priest (our only cloth wearer in the raid, which when I thought about that was pretty odd) had already won one item, so maybe he hoped for more.
We finally got our raid back together and started on Maloriak. The raid leader did set up color beacons so that we knew where to stand at each part of the fight. There is a lot going on in this fight, but a lot of the activity belongs to the tanks. From Wild's perspective as a healer, this was a pretty simple encounter. We wiped on our first attempt when the tank went down instantly just a few seconds into the fight. We thought that maybe the raid was not positioned correctly at the red beacon. We wiped a second time - same thing. The main tank did a little checking. He then told us that he usually tanks the adds in this fight and it was his first time as main tank. He had been turning the boss away from the raid - and taking the full brunt of whatever ability was getting him killed. On our third atetmpt he turned the boss toward the raid so that we would share the damage, and now that we had that down we killed Maloriak. Three bosses down.
Chimaeron was the fourth boss on our plate, the one Wild had actually prepared for last week and then was thrown off track by finding out they were doing Atramedes instead. So, Wild was up to speed on this boss. However, and it's a big however, this fight is unlike any other fight. Frankly - I hated it.
The fight is simple enough on the surface. There are three phases, and Wild need only move between two points during the course of the battle. The gimmick of this fight is that for most of the first two phases, our health bar is forced down to 1%, and healers have to keep raising that, but only to about 10%. Anything much above 10% is wasted mana that healers will wish they had back at the other end of the fight. Do you know how hard it is for a healer NOT to heal someone, particularly someone down to 10% health? It's torture!
Wild's healing spells aren't the best for this encounter, either. The instant rejuv tics too slowly, and while it "usually" is good enough, Wild lost a raider or two at times when they got hit too soon. Nourish, another low mana cost spell, provides plenty of health, but it takes two seconds to cast. I couldn't find a happy medium, and Wild's attention span was so wholely focused on keeping my group above 10% Wild missed movement periods - and was killed instantly. I really hate this fight.
Wild managed to die on all of our first three attempts. I did sort of get my act together on the fourth attempt, but even though we reached the third phase we had too many dead. Even with Wild helping on DPS, we wiped at 2%.
The third phase is the only fun phase for Wild. Reaching that phase essentially shuts down all healing, and the whole raid DPSes the boss in a kill the boss before the boss kills us scenario. On our fifth attempt we again reached the third phase with an already once resurrected Wild still in the fight. Wild blasted away with everyone else - and Chimaeron fell. I still hate this fight. Four bosses down.
We were out of time. Wild got no drops. The shadow priest got three. What was funny and weird is that his rolls for the items had no competition (being the only cloth wearer) and went like this:
1st piece: Rolled 18
2nd piece: Rolled 19
3rd piece: Rolled 20
It doesn't get any luckier than that.
Wild did get a good look at his mana regen over the course of the four boss fights. Taken objectively, Wild never needed his innervate and never saw his mana fall below 50% (except against Chimaeron, which is part of the fight mechanic and can't be helped). Wild's 1,897 spirit seems to be "good enough" so far. However, I did feel like I was holding back on the healing a little out of worry that I might have mana trouble. It never affected the fight, and Wild still led the other two healers (pally and shaman) in both hps and total healing (again, minus Chimaeron, where "normal" healing doesn't apply). Even so, I'm considering reforging out of a little haste and mastery to get up to 2,000 spirit. The "right amount" of mana regen is very dependant on healing style, and Wild is not fully comfortable yet.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday (25 Jul) - Raiding with Strangers
Monday (25 Jul) - Raiding with Strangers
Our BoT raid leader is out this week, so there will be no scheduled Thurs/Fri night raid. So Wild checked in with the BWD raid group on Monday night to see if they might have a spot for me. Yes, they did. The raid was scheduled to start at 6pm. At 6:30pm we were still short three DPS raiders. I don't really understand how a guild of this size can't find three DPS guildies who want to raid. The BoT group is well established with regulars compared to the BWD group. We continued to wait, finding one more DPS. Then a healer had computer problems, went offline, and never came back. The raid leader called it after waiting almost an hour, not wanting to PUG a healer. At least Wild was able to fish up more than two stacks of raid food while he waited. Sigh.
Wild didn't waste anymore time. After the raid was called Wild started checking trade chat and volunteered for a PUG Firelands trash run. They had eight already when Wild joined them, but Wild was the only healer. Wild was asked if I was ok with two healing it instead of the normal three healers. Wild already had experience doing the trash run with two healers, plus I didn't want to wait around for a third healer, so I said sure. They found a priest healer who could only stay an hour. Good enough.
Thirty minutes into the run I had a pretty good idea what we had. The raid leader did no leading. Tank roles were defined but the tanks did not work out who did what and tended to run after the next mob with little thought to the state of the raiders behind them. DPSers blundered into patrols while we were fighting other mobs. Despite all that we were still killing things, and had wiped only once. Wild stuck with them as I wanted to build up rep with the Avengers of Hyjal faction. We did a decent clear and then reset. Our second healer had to leave, and Wild was very disappointed when they grabbed a resto druid to replace the priest. Dang, now Wild had competition should leather healing gear drop. Two DPS left as well, but they were quickly replaced.
Wild need not have worried. No gear at all dropped. The other druid healer kept pace with Wild on the healing meters, but the tank he was supposed to be healing died five times. Wild's tank died only on the two wipes. Not to mention that the raid leader went offline right as we started the second run and never returned. We nine manned the entire second run.
After the second run four players dropped out, so we called it quits. Wild got no goodies, but he got something just as good. Wild reached Honored with the Avengers of Hyjal. His reward was the i378 belt [Firescar Sash], replacing his i359 belt. Wild loses more spirit/mana regen with the new belt, but gains gobs more +int. I just hope Wild's staying power under real raid conditions against real bosses holds up - assuming I get a chance to do that any time soon.
Wild's gear is now ilevel 363.
Our BoT raid leader is out this week, so there will be no scheduled Thurs/Fri night raid. So Wild checked in with the BWD raid group on Monday night to see if they might have a spot for me. Yes, they did. The raid was scheduled to start at 6pm. At 6:30pm we were still short three DPS raiders. I don't really understand how a guild of this size can't find three DPS guildies who want to raid. The BoT group is well established with regulars compared to the BWD group. We continued to wait, finding one more DPS. Then a healer had computer problems, went offline, and never came back. The raid leader called it after waiting almost an hour, not wanting to PUG a healer. At least Wild was able to fish up more than two stacks of raid food while he waited. Sigh.
Wild didn't waste anymore time. After the raid was called Wild started checking trade chat and volunteered for a PUG Firelands trash run. They had eight already when Wild joined them, but Wild was the only healer. Wild was asked if I was ok with two healing it instead of the normal three healers. Wild already had experience doing the trash run with two healers, plus I didn't want to wait around for a third healer, so I said sure. They found a priest healer who could only stay an hour. Good enough.
Thirty minutes into the run I had a pretty good idea what we had. The raid leader did no leading. Tank roles were defined but the tanks did not work out who did what and tended to run after the next mob with little thought to the state of the raiders behind them. DPSers blundered into patrols while we were fighting other mobs. Despite all that we were still killing things, and had wiped only once. Wild stuck with them as I wanted to build up rep with the Avengers of Hyjal faction. We did a decent clear and then reset. Our second healer had to leave, and Wild was very disappointed when they grabbed a resto druid to replace the priest. Dang, now Wild had competition should leather healing gear drop. Two DPS left as well, but they were quickly replaced.
Wild need not have worried. No gear at all dropped. The other druid healer kept pace with Wild on the healing meters, but the tank he was supposed to be healing died five times. Wild's tank died only on the two wipes. Not to mention that the raid leader went offline right as we started the second run and never returned. We nine manned the entire second run.
After the second run four players dropped out, so we called it quits. Wild got no goodies, but he got something just as good. Wild reached Honored with the Avengers of Hyjal. His reward was the i378 belt [Firescar Sash], replacing his i359 belt. Wild loses more spirit/mana regen with the new belt, but gains gobs more +int. I just hope Wild's staying power under real raid conditions against real bosses holds up - assuming I get a chance to do that any time soon.
Wild's gear is now ilevel 363.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Weekend (24 Jul) - Wildshard The Avenger
Weekend (24 Jul) - Wildshard The Avenger
I went to see Captain America: The First Avenger with our visiting friends this weekend. It was pretty good, a decent action film, even if it was pretty predictable. I think "predictable" is what most fans of comic book heroes want, anyway. The ending was a bit of a surprise, if only because it seems to skip several decades of possible sequels and left me scratching my head on a couple of other things. Don't want to spoil anything by being specific, though.
Wildshard underwent his own transformation this weekend. Sunday morning Wild accumulated enough Marks (125) to open up the first, and most important, vendor for the Avengers of Hyjal. Her name is Ayla Shadowstorm. [Hmm, I wonder if they named her after the heroine of the book Clan of the Cave Bear?]. But first, let me back up a bit.
Late last week Wild bought the i365 elementium Hammer that can now be crafted. The guild is crafting at least two of the new weapons, but I don't think they'll be caster weapons. Even if they were, Wild had the gold to buy his own without having to make demands on the guild. I'd rather the guild weapons go to raiders who can then make Wild's healing job easier. The Hammer is a very modest upgrade to the i359 two-hand staff Wild has been using since he started raiding Cata. Wild enchanted the Hammer with Power Torrent, a much more powerful enchant than what Wild was using before, Heartsong, since Power Torrent procs +int instead of Heartsong's +spi. It will lower Wild's mana regen, but it's worth that.
Wild couldn't really use the Hammer yet, because I didn't have a good enough off-hand to go with it. With the 2-hand Wild didn't need an off-hand, so the best he had was an i346 that undid what little stats upgrading the Hammer got me. Wild had to wait until he could get the goodies from Ayla.
When Wild turned in his 125 Marks, it was not without a small amount of concern. I was "pretty sure" that it would open up the vendor, but the quest chain was just vague enough that I thought I might be required to do the Armaments quest (another 125 Marks) as well before the vendor would sell to Wild. Armaments wasn't needed, though, as that one opens up a different vendor. Wild also thought he'd have to do a boss kill quest, but that also wasn't necessary. He did get a boss kill quest, but didn't have to complete it to open the vendor.
So, on to the goodies. The first thing Wild picked up was [Globe of Moonlight], an i365 off-hand. It's not the perfect off-hand, but hey no complaints from Wild. It was far better than what he had in his bags. He then picked up an upgrade to his relic, replacing his i359 with the i365 [Relic of Elune's Light]. Wild had the +40 int gem ready to go into it's socket. Finally, Wild picked up the biggest upgrade of them all, [Moonwell Chalice]. The Chalice is a trinket with +340 int. It replaces Wild's i359 +spi trinket and gives Wild a very large increase in mana and spell power.
With that accomplished, Wild next had to do some reforging. Both +haste and +spi took some significant hits due to the type of stats on the new gear - all that extra +int does come at a cost, you know. Once that was done, Wild's haste was back where I wanted it, while I was able to keep +mastery above where it was before the gear change. The one thing Wild needs to watch carefully during next week's raids is his mana regen. There was no way to replace the over 200 spi just from dropping that +spi trinket, much less the other +spi losses on the gear. The rule of thumb for druids is a minimum 2000 spirit. Wild is at 1963 spirit now, a large drop from the over 2200 he had before (plus the additional loss of the +spi proc from Heartsong). Wild is hoping it will be good enough. Otherwise, more reforging will have to be done at the cost of haste and/or mastery.
Here are a couple of screenshots of Wild in his new gear. Note the changing color surrounding the Hammer - that comes from Power Torrent. Pretty cool.
Oh, Wild also picked up some fun stuff. He bought the Crimson Lasher, a companion pet that periodically shoots off a fireball. Wild also got erik's favorite pick, the Mushroom Chair. Frankly, it was a little disappointing - it's a pretty small, ordinary mushroom. But it does provide a nice place to sit. :-)
By the way, Wild's gear score is now i362.
I went to see Captain America: The First Avenger with our visiting friends this weekend. It was pretty good, a decent action film, even if it was pretty predictable. I think "predictable" is what most fans of comic book heroes want, anyway. The ending was a bit of a surprise, if only because it seems to skip several decades of possible sequels and left me scratching my head on a couple of other things. Don't want to spoil anything by being specific, though.
Wildshard underwent his own transformation this weekend. Sunday morning Wild accumulated enough Marks (125) to open up the first, and most important, vendor for the Avengers of Hyjal. Her name is Ayla Shadowstorm. [Hmm, I wonder if they named her after the heroine of the book Clan of the Cave Bear?]. But first, let me back up a bit.
Late last week Wild bought the i365 elementium Hammer that can now be crafted. The guild is crafting at least two of the new weapons, but I don't think they'll be caster weapons. Even if they were, Wild had the gold to buy his own without having to make demands on the guild. I'd rather the guild weapons go to raiders who can then make Wild's healing job easier. The Hammer is a very modest upgrade to the i359 two-hand staff Wild has been using since he started raiding Cata. Wild enchanted the Hammer with Power Torrent, a much more powerful enchant than what Wild was using before, Heartsong, since Power Torrent procs +int instead of Heartsong's +spi. It will lower Wild's mana regen, but it's worth that.
Wild couldn't really use the Hammer yet, because I didn't have a good enough off-hand to go with it. With the 2-hand Wild didn't need an off-hand, so the best he had was an i346 that undid what little stats upgrading the Hammer got me. Wild had to wait until he could get the goodies from Ayla.
When Wild turned in his 125 Marks, it was not without a small amount of concern. I was "pretty sure" that it would open up the vendor, but the quest chain was just vague enough that I thought I might be required to do the Armaments quest (another 125 Marks) as well before the vendor would sell to Wild. Armaments wasn't needed, though, as that one opens up a different vendor. Wild also thought he'd have to do a boss kill quest, but that also wasn't necessary. He did get a boss kill quest, but didn't have to complete it to open the vendor.
So, on to the goodies. The first thing Wild picked up was [Globe of Moonlight], an i365 off-hand. It's not the perfect off-hand, but hey no complaints from Wild. It was far better than what he had in his bags. He then picked up an upgrade to his relic, replacing his i359 with the i365 [Relic of Elune's Light]. Wild had the +40 int gem ready to go into it's socket. Finally, Wild picked up the biggest upgrade of them all, [Moonwell Chalice]. The Chalice is a trinket with +340 int. It replaces Wild's i359 +spi trinket and gives Wild a very large increase in mana and spell power.
With that accomplished, Wild next had to do some reforging. Both +haste and +spi took some significant hits due to the type of stats on the new gear - all that extra +int does come at a cost, you know. Once that was done, Wild's haste was back where I wanted it, while I was able to keep +mastery above where it was before the gear change. The one thing Wild needs to watch carefully during next week's raids is his mana regen. There was no way to replace the over 200 spi just from dropping that +spi trinket, much less the other +spi losses on the gear. The rule of thumb for druids is a minimum 2000 spirit. Wild is at 1963 spirit now, a large drop from the over 2200 he had before (plus the additional loss of the +spi proc from Heartsong). Wild is hoping it will be good enough. Otherwise, more reforging will have to be done at the cost of haste and/or mastery.
Here are a couple of screenshots of Wild in his new gear. Note the changing color surrounding the Hammer - that comes from Power Torrent. Pretty cool.
Oh, Wild also picked up some fun stuff. He bought the Crimson Lasher, a companion pet that periodically shoots off a fireball. Wild also got erik's favorite pick, the Mushroom Chair. Frankly, it was a little disappointing - it's a pretty small, ordinary mushroom. But it does provide a nice place to sit. :-)
By the way, Wild's gear score is now i362.
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