Archive for August, 2009

This is just a heads-up to everyone; I’m planning a Path of the Paladin post today, probably sometime this morning. I’m also planning to not do any profession dailies in it, so the hope is to make things a little more interesting. I’ll keep everyone informed.

Well, I’ve been playing around in Azeroth for the last almost dozen hours, and I’ve come up with some opinions on patch 3.2.

For one, whoever decided to put the Steam Powered Auctioneer in Dalaran, THANK YOU! lol It’s a big help, not having to hike back to Ironforge to do business (I have a bank alt, but it’s easier to just wheel and deal on Gav). I’m also really happy with my new Wormhole Generator. I’ve used it twice; once to Storm Peaks (it put me just outside Ulduar), and once to Borean Tundra (releasing me about a quarter mile in the air above a lake). It’s only useable every four hours – like the other engineer transporters – but as with the changes made to the old ones, it’s not a trinket and can be used right from the bag.

The Northrend Children’s Week quests were unspectacular but fun. I went with the Oracle orphan and got an Oracle vanity pet for my work. I also went to the Argent Tournament grounds, which were – as expected – packed. A couple guildies ran the normal version of Trial of the Crusader, but I didn’t go.

Finally, my thoughts on Wintergrasp. For one, it’s nice to be able to fly over it now. However, ‘fly over it’ is a misnomer, because you can fly anywhere in the zone, land and take off at will, so long as there’s no battle taking place. Once a battle starts, flying mounts are no longer allowed. The queuing system was no big deal, and it grouped us all into a large raid automatically and was easy enough to understand. We lost a defensive battle, though, due to being incredibly disorganized. That’s the Alliance for you, I guess.

I did head into Heroic: Violet Hold again to test my DPS, and it wasn’t real pretty. I wasn’t far below my old average, but I started every fight with my DPS dropping greatly until I got Seal of Vengeance fully stacked again. On non-bosses, I was at best a distraction. I ranked second on overall DPS, but I was the second best geared player in the group, so that was no surprise. Looting a couple Emblems of Conquest was nice, though. There’s not allot you can do with just three, however.

Well, problems (if you can call it that) are already creeping in for patch 3.2. Blizzard is extending it’s maintenance another four hours or so, from 11:00 AM PDT (2:00 PM EDT) to 3:00 PM PDT (6:00 PM EDT). Let’s hope this isn’t a harbinger of things to come.

Well, it’s time to do the Patch Day Dance, downloading and installing another couple hundred megs to your hard disk to keep up with WoW’s latest changes. Here are my top thoughts on 3.2.

• CLASSES: I hate the new “Seal of Vengeance only stacks on auto attacks” deal for paladins. WTF? So, what… we can’t Crusader Strike or Divine Storm or anything until we’ve auto attacked five times, lest we waste mana on less-then-optimal attacks? This sucks. My DPS, which was barely competent before, is going to drop like a rock. Of course, switching targets means starting over each time. This is going to take some getting used to.
• PROFESSIONS: Portable Wormhole Generator, here I come! I’ve been saving my mats to make this ever since I read about it.
• PROFESSIONS:On another engineer-based rant, I’m looking forward to the Dalaran auction-bot for engineers. Is there any doubt that science rules the world? lol
• UI: Built-in gear stat comparison and item selling prices for the UI will allow me to cut back on add-ons, which is always a good thing.
• MOUNTS: Since I can’t stop it, I’m going to take full advantage of the lower mount level requirements. Gleave (my lvl 61 human death knight) is going to be getting his flying mount ASAP, and Crane (my human warlock) and Lug, both level 22, are getting their first mounts as soon as I can log in on them.
• MOUNTS: I’m looking forward to the halved casting time for mounting. This will make node farming and the like much faster and easier.
• WORLD: Being able to fly over Wintergrasp will make getting to Sholazar Basin much easier. I also hope to be able to watch WG matches from above when I’m not part of them. Speaking of WG…
• PVP: I dislike the new battlegrounds-style format for Wintergrasp, but I assume it’s just because it’s so new to me. I’ve never queued for a battleground before, so this will be interesting. I liked the pre-battle portal gathering in Dalaran, though. It was a good opportunity to buff everyone and get on the same page. That’s no more, though. Again, this will take time to get used to.
• DUNGEONS: The new emblem system (with the higher-level emblems dropping in mere Heroics and the like) surely makes hardcore raiders angry, but for those of us who can’t or won’t commit to full-time raiding, this is a blessing.
• ARGENT TOURNAMENT: I can’t wait to finish getting the Crusader title so I can unlock the new dailies and gear at the AT, like the tabard that ‘ports you straight to the tournament grounds. That’ll be handy.

I’ll post more once I get in-game to try stuff out first-hand. For now, I – like everyone else – have to wait for Blizz to put the servers back up (and hope that we don’t have a patch 3.1-type fiasco).

There I was, sitting outside the Violet Hold with an hour and a half to go before my dailies reset, holding the Heroic Daily quest to go in and slay Cyanigosa. I was unlikely to find a group this late. Or was I?

A pally tank was throwing together a quick last-minute run and I got an invite. He had a guildie coming along (a rogue) and had gathered a DPS Death Knight and a resto druid. We got a final DPS DK and went to head in, but the rogue was locked out from earlier in the day. Ok, scratch that. We got another DPS, and tried again, but our first DPS DK was also locked out. Finally, after trying for 15 minutes to get a group that was eligible, we entered the dungeon. The pally who started the group said he was hoping to find the tanking pants from this dungeon so he could max out his defense rating, and had been trying for quite some time. We wished him good luck and began the run. With only minor setbacks (the healer nearly died on Moragg, but I used Holy Light to heal him back up) we cleared it with less then 20 minutes to spare. I got the Solitaire of Reflecting Beams from Moragg for my healing kit, but more importantly, our tank got that drop he wanted, and we all completed the daily. It was a win-win all around.

I recently downloaded Rawr, a gear calculator/optimizer, and I love the thing. I’ve spent hours pouring over improvements, changes and upgrades to my gear with this little app. Using it, I’ve gone from 1.9k to 2.3k DPS on the Heroic dummies. It will evaluate your gear, and tell you what to upgrade to and where to find it. It also allows me to see my exact weaknesses. I was using under-performing gems and was looking to upgrade the wrong equipment. I use Gearscore in-game, and some of my decisions have been driven by a desire to raise that. When I had the option to go for either a Savage Scaled Chestpiece (over my Whalebone Carapace) or Savage Scaled Legguards (over my Savage Saronite Legplates), I was set to pick up the Chestplate. Why? Because it’s gearscore was much higher in comparison to what it was replacing compared to the legguards. Rawr, though, showed me I was taking the wrong route. My DPS was set to improve much more with the legguards when properly equipped. It’s also helped me figure out what gems I need, and showed me that I didn’t necessarily have to match gem color to socket color for maximum return. I’m hooked on this program. Here’s some other things it’s done for me and Gavelier.

• It convinced me to pick up the Pendant of the Outcast Hero over my Pendant of Azure Dreams.
• It showed me that I could improve in several ways by picking up the Girdle of Valorous Defeat at the Argent Tournament to replace my Icebane Girdle. I thought that the AT belt was a downgrade thanks to the Ratings Buster mod I use, but it’s been an improvement. I also needed some expertise to slow the dodges I was suffering when attacking in melee, and this fit the bill while raising my DPS as well.
• It’s shown me that my best bets for go-to gems are the Bold Scarlet Ruby and Etched Monarch Topaz.
• It guided me to the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond as my meta gem. I wasn’t paying attention to the +agility buffing my crit rating, but Rawr caught it.

There are some things it suggests that I don’t agree with, though, such as it’s talent choices. I’m not going to pass on ret talent to select Divine Sacrifice; my goal is to do damage, not take it. Also, it recommends a spell rotation that I don’t like, but I’m trying to give it a go because Rawr says it’s worth a couple dozen extra DPS.

In short, if you like to theorycraft, you could do far worse then to give this program a spin. It can download your data straight from the WoW Armory, so you don’t have to load everything by hand. It’s easy to use, and yet very powerful. I’d recommend it to any class. A true A+ program.

Cyanigosa must hate seeing me come through that Violet Hold door. I killed her again today, again for the heroic daily. The Loot Gods seem to finally be giving me a pass on my bad-mouthing of dungeons after failing on Azjol-Nerub the other day, since I came out of this run with more goodies then all of my other runs combined. A Frozen Orb, the Gauntlets of Capture, and some greens (Kraken Vambraces of Spell Power and Revenant Gauntlets of Shadow Protection). Not bad for a half-hour or so of baddie slaying. No deaths, thanks to a well geared pick-up group. I was by far the most poorly geared, so I was only third on the DPS chart. A balance druid was doing 2.4k damage, and the tank we had was a really good one. Our healer (who’d I’d grouped with before – she was the resto druid my guild picked up once to replace a shoddy shaman) was again kick-ass and kept us all at nearly full health. It’s nice when a run is as smooth as this one was once in a while.