When Are Bigger Numbers Worrying?

Post soundtrack: “Ready Steady Go” by L’arc en ciel

It’s an odd combination; the excitement of raiding with a new guild, combined with increasing demotivation as pre-patch ennui settles in with the newguild raiders.  It’s good to be getting back in the saddle (so to speak), but due to a lack of numbers the 25-man raid last night was scaled down to a single 10-man (which I sat out on, giving me time to get another level on Dingle v1).

The thing that’s really jumped out at me from the first couple of raids has been how much more healing I was doing, while not actually doing that much more healing.  The best way to illustrate is this comparison between oldnewguild (perhaps failedappguild would be more accurate?) and newguild logs.  (I was a little chagrined after offering to parse the logs and post the results to the newguild forums, and then discovering I was quite often at the top of the healing-done lists – hopefully it doesn’t come across as bragging, or something equally unflattering)

Oldnewguild:

This was ToC25, along with FL and XT from Ulduar25.  That’s an average of 2666hps or so from me, putting me at #7 of 8 healers.

Newguild:
This is Koralon (we skipped the other two VoA bosses), Onyxia and ToC25.  About 2730hps from me.  (The priest bringing up the rear is shadow; I just left him in to keep the number of rows the same)  Anyway, #1 of 7 healers.  Sure, it’s not completely an apples-to-apples comparison (and I was healing as 100% disc for the latter raid, compared to mostly holy for the former) but the effective result was the same in the other 25-man log I’ve parsed.

It’s quite an ego-boost for me, to be honest.  (The results were very similar when parsed through WMO as well, so it wasn’t a parsing error on WoL’s part as I was originally suspecting)  So, yay for disc priest topping healing meters!

I could also make comment about this being the difference between a hard-core, hard-mode raiding guild and a casual raiding guild, but the numbers tend to speak for themselves (although what they said most to me was “this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, so don’t go reading too much into it.”  Followed with “and why don’t you call your mother more often?”).

Of course there’s a downside to go with the swollen head.  While normal modes aren’t too much of a problem, the guild won’t be burning through hard modes the way I’m used to.  It follows on from that, that progression through new content (I’m looking at you, Icecrown) may also be more drawn out than I’m used to – although the drip-feed manner in which 3.3 encounters are to become available may nullify that to some degree, with the corollary that ToC25 (and maybe ToGC25 with the advantage from Icecrown gear) won’t be leaving the raid rotation for some time yet.

Ah well, at least I’m still healing.

And I’m putting a tentative plan together to try make some profit from the upgrades coming with 3.3 with leg armors, gems and belt buckles, along with getting back into the glyph market (albeit in a more casual manner than previously was the case).  Of course, milling inks is still one of the most mind-numbing activities in-game at this time, so it’s really dependant on how much of it I can put up with.  (Doing it in batches of 30 stacks of herbs at a time is about the best compromise I’ve been able to come up with, between bag space and milling time – seriously, Blizz, your implementation of milling, along with inscription crafting in general, is truly EPIC FAIL game design)

OldDingle (ok, that works better than Dingle v1) has been working his way through Azeroth, and hit 52 late last night.  And thanks to the market for Greater Nether Essences, he’s building up a bit of a bankroll that should be handy when he gets to Outland and buys his first flying mount.  I’m tentatively aiming at getting to OL by the end of the weekend, depending on how much grinding I can get under my belt over that time (although my trusty magic 8-ball reckons “Outlook not so good”).

My tentative plans to roll a horde warrior (perhaps a tauren?) and priest (both troll and forsaken are…  unappealing, but the troll is slightly less so) remain tentative.  WTB dark dwarves horde-side (sigh).

In a non-WoW topic, I bought an iTunes gift card yesterday and have purchased my first apps for my shiny second-hand ipod touch – some nifty games (just what I need for those milling sessions), and an app to track my weight while I try to reduce my weight from “Planetary Mass” to “Small Asteroid.”  It’s a nice system (the app store I mean), apart from the nearly-total lack of filtering to let you find the gold amid the immense quantities of dross.

For now?  Back to milling.  And more milling.  And general inscription-type-stuff that takes a metric way too long.

/wave

(Oh, and if the person I’m expecting to pop by and read this does so, “Hi Mr. Good-Looking Pally Healer!”)

Nice While It Lasted

To cut a long story short, I failed my trial on Mingle (which I was expecting), and I think a break from raiding might be in order.

Basically, as a priest healer I wasn’t experienced enough for Heroic ToC25 (not as disc, and definitely not as holy).  And I was failing so much at raid-awareness (including little things like concentrating so much on healing my assigned targets that I let myself die – need to remember about Binding Heal!) that I was a liability to the raid.

So I politely said my goodbyes before /gquitting, and got an invite back to the old guild where I think I’ll stay awhile while considering what I want to do next.  (Healing is actually pretty fun, and I might be up to the hardmodes after a lot more practice and experience – it’s just hard to get that near the end of the patch cycle)

It’s tempting to throw it all away and start anew on a new server, and try building up a network of alts like the setup I have on Dath in preparation for Cataclysm. 

For now, though, I think I just need to let my wounded ego mend.

Life As A Healer: Week Two

It’s been an odd kind of week; my time has been split roughly between WoW, D&D Online, and catching up on my backlog of Criminal Minds, Warehouse 13 and Eli Stone.

I’ve had my first experience with real raid healing, having spent an evening working on the hard-hard mode of 25-man Iron Council last night (which we didn’t get down in the end, but we were getting close).  Now that’s what I’d call a challenge: being one of the designated healers for the Steelbreaker tank.  Apart from a failed attempt at ToC10 Heroic earlier in the week, it’s just been normal ToC25 and Ulduar25 which, while challenging, didn’t really require me to stretch my abilities.

You see, while I’m a competent healer at this stage (helped by my relatively high-level gear), I’m still working on picking up the little things that I can do to keep a tank alive (and the pressure in hard modes encourage growth – along with the desire to throw things at the screen).  Growth in this sense means picking up things like how to time my cast of PW:S to get Borrowed Time at the right moment to then be able to cast a 1.6 second Greater Heal that lands right after Fusion Punch hits the tank instead of a Flash Heal that lands for maybe 2/3 as much.  (Maybe that’s not the best way to react to it, but it’s proving effective for me to use in that situation, especially if Penance is on cooldown at that moment)

It’s tricky, as I don’t really have anyone in-guild I can get to mentor me; our priests are all either main-specced Holy or Shadow, and our leading healer priest wasn’t able to offer much advice when I did try to get some advice.  Looking at WWS logs for other guilds are only effective in showing what spells they cast; it doesn’t give me tips on how they cast them, such as the Borrowed Time thing I described above.

One thing that has proven effective has been improving my visual alerts with the new version of Power Auras Classic, which now has support for dual-specs and more options that make it more flexible.  I’ve replaced Inner Fire Helper with a simple aura, changed my Flask aura to alert me when I don’t have either Flask of the Frost Wyrm or Flask of Pure Mojo active, and implemented another that displays when Penance is off cooldown and ready to cast.

I’m also having some success having dropped Bartender4 in favour of the default Blizzard action bars, and relocating Vuhdo’s raidframes closer to the centre of the screen so it’s easier to glance up at my toon to check if there’s something happening that I need to react to (such as patches of fire on the ground in which my character may be standing).

Sadly, the downside to being so reliant on mouseover healing is an equally growing reliance on keyboard-turning due to my mouse being unusable for turning while it’s over the raidframes; I think working out some way to get around that will have to be my next move.

Other than my healing, things have been pretty quiet.  I’ve been investing in Eternal Life for darkmoon cards in preparation for the next faire, along with my other usual AH investments.  I’m back down at 50k from my high of 70k, but I’m still ahead considering just how much I’ve invested in card mats (I’ve cards enough for three nobles decks already).

For now, though, I think I might go do some research on the possibilities of Prot Warrior PvP.

/wave

Life As A Healer: Week One

Well, I’ve a week of raid-tank-healing on Mingle under my belt, and I think I’m off to a good start.  (Translated: when the tank died, it wasn’t my fault)

I suspect the situation would be different for someone in a guild that isn’t one of the better-known progression guilds on their server, but it’s fun being able to enjoy fights that left me gritting my teeth as shadow.

In the week past I’ve healed 10-man and 25-man Ulduar, along with 10-man normal, 10-man hard-mode and 25-man normal ToC.  Admittedly the 10-man Ulduar only consisted of doing Razorscale, XT, Kologarn and Auriaya while the main raid did the first three bosses in 25-man ToC (and I was the raidleader for it – talk about stressful).  And on 25-man Ulduar I sat out for Yogg-Saron+3, but I’m proud to have successfully tank-healed up to and including General Vezax.

The way we tank-heal on General, we rotate through three healers who each heal the tank until they’re down to 50% mana, at which the next in the series takes over and continues until they reach half mana.  When the third person in the sequence starts healing, the previous two go stand in a saronite pool to regain their mana and get ready for the first person to take over from #3.  Anyway, I was #3 in the sequence, and was quite surprised when the boss died just after I hit 50%, and before I got to engage the saronite-boss.  Bear in mind that I’m still pretty inexperienced; enough so that I don’t know how much of the time I spent healing (which felt like I was in there for ages) was due to very-well-geared and skilled DPS, how much is due to well-geared and skilled healers, and how much is me not screwing up.

While I was only in for the last 25-man ToC boss, Anub’arak, I was in for the full 10-man normal clear, and the first two 10-man heroic bosses that were downed.  No pretty loot for Mingle, but some other new raiders got some upgrades and one of our priests finished making Val’anyr.  (Why yes, I am just a little jealous)

The Heroic Beasts encounter was pretty full-on to heal; the tweaks between normal and heroic change the substance of the fights quite a bit, especially that change to Icehowl that changed the fight the most, namely removing the speed-buff you gain after everyone is stunned and knocked back to the wall, right before he charges someone.  (The tank wiped us twice by not running out quite fast enough; she’ll probably be very happy to hear that they’ve added an extra half-second before he charges)

The Faction Champions are even harder on heroic than I expected, and they’re such a hard fight on normal that it’s already (sometimes) remarkably difficult – it’s probably the most unpredictably difficult encounter I’ve come across, with the difficulty of the fight being almost completely reliant on their group makeup.

Still, I’ve managed to pick up one piece of nice badge loot (the non-tier badge shoulders, not to be confused with the horde equivalent), and I’ll probably be looking for the badge ring next.

It’s the start of Week #2 though, so hopefully it’s more of the same, but better this time.

Oh, and I’ve managed to reach another personal milestone.

Ding 50k.

/wave

The Downside To Changing Raiding Spec

Well, I’ve experienced the upside of changing Mingle’s raiding spec (healing is fun!), now I get to enjoy the downside.  Maybe in a month I’ll start being able to pick up some upgrades for her healing gear that don’t require badges.

Yup, I conveniently forgot that part of the process of changing raiding spec was that Mingle’s rank drops from Raider to Applicant, and with that goes the Raider-first loot opportunities (along with guild repairs and flasks, but they’re not really as important when you’re financially secure like I am).  Now, due to a combination of bad luck (/roll doesn’t like me), generosity (it made sense to pass on the mace from Razorscale which was of more benefit to the other dps caster who wanted it rather than roll on it for my underperforming shadow priest) and a biased loot system (mp5 on an item means healers get preference – which is kind of necessary in order to differentiate otherwise identical loot, but it’s painful when there aren’t many 1h caster weapons that don’t have it) she’s currently wielding Mariel’s Sorrow and Accursed Spine.  Not the worst combination you could think of, but it’s irksome when I bear in mind that (barring upgrades from Ulduar or ToC10) she’s going to be stuck with them for a while.

Well, I guess I can look forward to being promoted back to raider in a few weeks (provided I get the nod from the healing officer – still WTB feedback on how I’m doing), and by that time there should be enough people who’ve received loot that I’m a bit closer to the top of the queue when Misery’s End drops.  Of course, that’s provided the guild lasts that long – we still don’t know if we can up our game sufficiently to keep the raiders who want to work on hard mode progression from leaving for greener pastures.

I love being an optimist.

/wave

Maybe I’m Not As Burnt-Out As I Thought

Yesterday I officially started raiding on Mingle as a disc priest, and it was pretty enjoyable.  Apart from the Faction Champions.

I’m not saying I dislike that encounter – indeed, it’s very much the opposite.  Healing through the Champions on 10-man was Awesome!  Seriously, that fight alone was the most fun I’ve had playing WoW in quite some time.  And the rest of the night was pretty good as well.

I’ve yet to get some feedback from the Healing Officer about my performance so far (I’ve been told not to expect too much until I’ve several raids worth of WWS for officers to study), but I’m cautiously optimistic.  I think part of that is the fact that healing (at least, Disc-style) plays up one of my strengths (reaction time) whilst avoiding my two biggest weaknesses (targeting mobs at range as a dps class, and hesitation when starting to dps).  But it’s quite a turn-around from the last time I did the Faction Champions on my priest – that left me fuming and probably the angriest I’ve been in a long time, when I last did it as shadow.  (That was the 25-man version though; I’ve yet to see what it’s like to heal)

I was also in for the first guild 10-man run of VoA and the new boss, Koralon, on tank Dingle.  It was easier than Emalon (and probably almost puggable, given decently geared people with at least a little competence), but a fun little fight.  I still haven’t been able to get in there on priest Mingle; missing out on the 25-man VoA run last night was annoying, but considering that we had so many new raiders that we ran a 10-man Ulduar simultaneously with the 25-man ToC run to give people something to do, it’s not really worth getting upset over.  (I guess I’ll have to see if I can get Mingle into a VoA25 pug)

Anyway, I haven’t done any ToC25 so far this week – I’m really hoping I get the chance, as I have enough emblems of triumph saved to be able to buy a t9.5 piece (probably the Shoulders) but need to get my hands on a Trophy of the Crusade.  It’s a pity the tier 9 is such a plain, characterless set – hopefully the tier 10 from Icecrown will make up for this set’s boredom.

But I have been in ToC10, and the guild group managed to clear it all – even Anub’arak (which was more fun than he was in AN).  After the 25-man raid, we went back to do heroic ToC10 and managed to get through both the Beasts encounter and Jarraxus.  (Sadly, the bosses don’t drop the Trophy I need for my shoulders – apparently they only drop from the tribute chests after killing Anub’arak, if you have enough attempts remaining)

Unfortunately we’re stuck on the Faction Champions again, which is even nastier than it was first time around.  Fortunately while it’s irritating to be wiping on the encounter, it’s challenging to heal and not mind-numbingly frustrating the way I found it when specced as shadow.  We’re going back tonight after 25-man, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.

For now, though, it’s time to get busy with the little bits and pieces I’ve been putting off – not least of which is grinding Netherwing rep on Fingle, who’s going to be my designated drake-rider.

/wave

Is WoW The Game It Used To Be?

Or it the players who’ve changed?

I never reached the level cap playing vanilla WoW so missed old-school raiding, but managed to raid everything in TBC up to Felmyst in Sunwell.  However, the changes to raiding that Wrath has brought us seem to have changed the raiding experience considerably for a large number of people, myself included, and not necessarily for the better.

Last night our guild was faced with the possibility that a large number of the raiders (including several officers) are so unsatisfied with the quality of our raiding (and the lack of recruitable players on the server) that they’re facing either stopping working on 25-man hard modes (which are pretty much the only remaining measure of progression raiding) or transferring to another server with a more mature raider population in order to continue progression raiding.

Several factors have lead up to this, ranging from experienced players getting burnt-out and leaving the game, to raiders server-transferring to more progressed guilds elsewhere, to unreliable raiding performance of current raiders (myself included) and general dissatisfaction with the progression-raiding model.  While some people are afraid that we may end up disbanding or at least retiring from 25-man raiding, the officers are working on one last recruiting push to try and get enough capable raiders and see if we can still push hard-modes.

Personally I’m beginning to think that if I’m not careful, this might be the feather that broke this particular camel’s back.  WoW (and the people I play it with) is a big part of my life, but the game doesn’t have the thrill that it used to.  Raiding especially has changed, with the challenge level going from “Challenging” in TBC for everything (well, with the exception of Sunwell), to either “Faceroll” for normal fights or “Impossible” for hardmodes in the current raiding tiers.

Apparently (hearsay FTW!) Blizzard’s goal with hard-modes is that only the top 1% of players are skilled enough to complete them.  I reckon this is raising serious issues with raiding guilds, who at a rough guess comprise 5%* of the total player base, but due to the binary nature of current raid difficulty the majority of them will end up either wiping in growing frustration or possibly dropping hardmodes entirely due to their very small reward-to-effort ratio.

* – Numbers may have been completely fabricated in order to support my rant.  Take with a large grain of angry salt.

Gear no longer has any meaning more than being the (occasionally aesthetically pleasing) vessel for your various stat bonuses – some of my guildmates still keep their T6 sets in the bank, because of how much completing the set meant.  However, when they replace their T7 with T8, or T8 with T9, the set it’s replacing will get vendored without a second thought because of how little the old items mean in this age of disposable gear.

The leveling game isn’t all that bad (once you get past the archaic 1-60 grind), and Outland is still quite beautiful (well, apart from Hellfire Peninsula).  But once you hit 80, the remaining game (either self-goals like collecting pets/mounts/reputations/achievements or group goals like raiding) just isn’t that exciting anymore.  Even raiding has gone from feeling elation at having defeated boss X (so you can move onto the next boss), to feeling relief that boss Y is dead (until next week).

I suspect I’m just getting burnt out by the same-ness of the endgame (and the necessity of a month of jousting to open up the latest group of dailies is just salt in an open wound).  To be blunt, I’m running out of things to do.

So it’s time for a change.

I’m going to try something new on my priest; I’ve changed raiding spec from shadow to discipline, and that means trying something very new.  I’ve spend a metric bucket-load of gold picking up some new disc-friendly gear (including the Etched Signet of the Kirin Tor – thank you Inscription), and my talent build has passed the healing officer’s once-over, so now I just need a lot of experience (which I suspect I’ll be getting in short order).

Here’s hoping we’re able to pull the guild back together, and reclaim our place as A Guild That Doesn’t Suck.

/wave

Competing For Profits

AKA “There ain’t enough glyph sales for the both of us.”  Needless to say, I expect my profit margins to take a hit while I try out my cunning plan to get my share of the market back from some rather insistent competitors.  And I’ve been amusing myself with a resurrection quote addon.

Thanks to a bit too much time spent in Wintergrasp, Fingle’s PvP gear is coming along nicely.  In about 17k more honor, she will be able to pick up the Hateful chest, which will give her the four-piece bonus, and she’s now wearing both the Titan-forged boots and belt.  I’ve been distracted by other things, so the frequency of her PvPing has come down a bit, and I’m seriously considering not putting too much time into it until after 3.2 and the battleground changes that will make them less painful (especially Warsong Gulch – yes please to a 20 minute game limit!).

It looks like my healing with Fingle will be affecting my raiding as well, as I’m going to be changing Mingle’s second spec to discipline to help out with healing Iron Council hard-mode.  We tried it a few times last night, and the raid damage was just flattening us.  I was on primary dispelling of Steelbreaker’s Fusion Punch (with our very talented other shadow priest backing me up), and with all my attention on that I didn’t really have the time to do much dps.

After a couple of wipes I whispered our healing officer and suggested that it might be a good fight for me to do as disc, to help with raid healing (or at least raid shielding) when I’m not dispelling.  The suggestion went down well, so if we go back to that fight tonight I’ll be sporting my shiny new (mostly repurposed) disc gear and a positive attitude.

Last night’s raid actually went surprisingly well, considering how often we’ve been off-form lately.  We started by one-shotting Flame Leviathan with four towers up, followed by one-shots of Kologarn and Mimiron, and two-shots of Auriaya and Thorim.  Iron Council was troublesome, as new hard modes usually are, but we were keeping a pretty good attitude about it all.

I’ve finally reached another milestone on Pringle, and it’s surprising they haven’t made an achievement out of it.

I mean, seriously.  450 fishing isn’t worth at least some kind of achievement spam?  That’s just ridiculous (and kind of disheartening).  They’re failed to recognise when you max out other professions as well, and I think it’s a missed opportunity on Blizzard’s part.

Speaking of professions, I’ll touch on the interesting times I foresee ahead of me thanks to some increasingly persistent competition in the Glyph market.  I noticed over the last few days that my sales have dropped considerably, and when I checked after posting my glyphs on Monday I found that by the time I’d finished listing my second group two people had undercut almost every glyph I’d listed in group one.

Needless to say, I’m not taking this lying down.  (Actually I’m seated, but that’s beside the point.)  I’ve changed my posting system to minimise the effect of being undercut, and lowered the undercut percentage in Auctioneer while I work on regaining a more substantial share of the market – I only started yesterday, and while my net profit has dropped quite a bit, I am still making a profit, plus I think I’m cutting into their sales as well.  I’ll see how things look later in the week, though, and see if further changes need to be made.

For now, though, I have things to do, fish to catch, and other chores to complete.

/wave

The Week That Was

(Not to be confused with the Week That Will Be, or The Week That Is)

PvP is, I must admit, a lot more fun when you’re doing it with a group of guildmates who know what they’re doing – random battleground pugs (at least the Alliance-side ones) are awful at least 50% of the time by my calculations (although perception bias may have some small effect on that number).  All the same, I’ve managed to get Fingle off to a good start with her PvP gear (which I’ll probably post about before too long), and I’ve picked up a little how-to about disc priest healing from both my desperate efforts to keep teammates alive in battlegrounds, and the couple of PvE instances I’ve healed since starting to gear her up.

I’ve made some changes to Mingle’s UI based on what I’ve learnt from PvPing on Fingle (and setting up Vuhdo), which helped last night when our main dispeller died early on Yogg-Saron last night, and I had to help make up for her absence.  Also, after last nights raid I splashed out and made both the Ulduar crafted belt and boots for Mingle (the latter using discounted orbs from the guild bank, but the former completely on my own coin) – I’ve been regularly selling the crafted items I’ve been putting on the AH, so I have enough gold to treat myself to something nice every now and then.

I’m beginning to consider dual-speccing Mingle to shadow/disc after my pleasant experiences with Fingle (which is to say healing as disc has been fun, but it’s no comment on battleground pugs).  I’ve been juggling gear to try put together a set to try healing with – admittedly that mostly means trying to find pieces without hit rating, at this stage.  She will have two pieces of t7.5 to start with, and a badge trinket, so she’s not starting off too shabbily.

I’ve been enjoying the “New Races in the Expansion!” rumour that surfaced after someone found new Halloween masks in the PTR data that have been interpreted as evidence that we’ll be playing Goblins and Worgen when we enter the Maelstrom.  My take on it?  I like the thought of Alliance finally gaining a bestial race, and the goblins have been a loooong time coming to the horde.

I’m not sure if I’d roll a goblin to level to 80 (or 90, considering expansions raise the level cap), but I might give a worgen a try (depending on what classes are available – I’m still hanging out for a new dwarf class, of course).  Certainly a goblin would be the ultimate bank alt, but considering all my active toons are on the alliance side, it’d be kind of ineffectual if it’s a horde-only character (which I expect will be the case).  In any case, the idea is covered pretty thoroughly over on Random Ravings of Warcraft, which I recommend checking out.

Finally, this weeks glyph industry report.  The changes I made to my undercut value pushed my average sale price up by over 1g, and while my gross volume of sales was down, the total was up slightly from last week.

For the seven days from 13th July – 19th July:
Total glyphs sold: 612
Average price per glyph: 10.51g
Average sales per day: 918.814g
Total income from the AH: 6431.7g

This would have been better, but there was a huge drop in sales on the last day of the week – weekdays seem to be much more reliable for glyph sales than the weekend, quite possibly due to casual players doing their undercutting thing.  I’ve also trimmed my stock based on what hasn’t sold over the last three weeks, so I’ll see if that makes any difference over the coming week’s sales.

Anyway, time to get my chores done (I’m doing the dalaran fishing daily on all my 80s, cooking daily on Pringle, Kringle and Fingle, and the JC daily on Pringle) so I can decide what I want to do with the rest of my day.

/wave

More Numbers and an Ex-God

You’d think the flu would end a lot more quickly, but nooooo.  Which isn’t to say I still have the flu, because I’m no longer contagious, but I’m still coughing.  Needless to say, I’m getting rather tired of the whole thing.  (cough)

Raiding with Mingle has progressed, and above me is exhibit A.  Meet the ex-old god, Yogg-Saron.  Of course, that’s the good news.  Now we’re going to be doing hard-modes in an attempt to reach Algalon.  (Sadly, I wasn’t blessed with any loot to commemorate the event, so I had to make do with a fleeting feeling of relief – it’ll be interesting to see how we do next week)  We followed that up with a 6-minute Malygos kill which was quite satisfying.

I’ve spent a bit of time on Dingle as well, running Naxx10 and some Ulduar10.  Naxx was as much of a pushover as you’d expect, but Ulduar was a tad more punishing.  (Just a tip:  The trash before the cat lady Auriaya can’t be 9-manned by alts – we had someone go afk to go to the dairy and buy some cigarettes who didn’t come back for over an hour, and we had to do something with our time.)

Also, PvP.  Yes, Dingle actually did a little, and even picked up a couple of the simpler achievements from it.  (She picked up the end of a fail AV, an AB, a couple of EotS, and the tail end of Wintergrasp)

The Midsummer Fire Festival has been and gone (yes it was very funny, celebrating summer in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter while I was sitting in front of a heater, wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing, sipping a hot cider vinegar and honey drink while recovering from the flu), and I mostly ignored it.  I did a little exploration while honouring/extinguishing fires to get Tingle some flightpoints and a little more xp (she’s currently in Southshore, sitting on level 35), but I didn’t spend much time on it with any other characters.  (My money is on the next in-game event being Northrend Children’s Week, which is apparently being introduced some time after the 3.2 patch goes live.)

Glyphs are continuing to treat me well, not to mention profitably.  I’ve switched from manually price-checking and listing them over to batch-posting, and the time it takes to post them all has more than halved (plus I can be afk while they go up).

Anyway, here’s the (100% batch-posted) numbers for last week:

For the seven days from 29th June – 5th July:
Total glyphs sold: 721
Average price per glyph: 8.88g
Average sales per day: 914.89g
Total income from the AH: 6404.22g

Remember those extra books of glyph master that I assumed I’d be able to resell for a profit?  Well, do you remember the saying about assumptions?  Needless to say, I suspect if I want to sell these anytime soon, I’ll have to eat a small loss on the deal.  On a more profitable note, I’ve sold about half of the decks I made for the Faire; I still have a handful to go, but I expect to have them sold before the faire moves on.

I’ve spent quite a bit of the proceeds already, on Runed Orbs to make a pair of Spiked Deathdealers for Dingle (which was a little cheaper than it would otherwise have been, thanks to Mingle being able to buy four orbs with Emblems of Conquest) and a Scroll of Blood Draining to put on Stoneguard, which dropped from Kologarn.  The crafted plate tanking belt from Ulduar is the next upgrade I have planned, but I’ll have to check if we have a blacksmith in guild who has the recipe.

After the mixed results from my minimal time spent tanking in Ulduar, my respect for Ulduar main-tanks who also lead their raids is substantial.  I had enough trouble keeping track of the things currently pummeling me, without keeping track of everyone else at the same time.  But on the positive side, I’ve managed to get an achievement on Dingle that my ‘official’ raiding character hasn’t managed yet:

Meet Flame Leviathan+2.

/wave

(cough)

One More Goal Down

Mingle is now fully T8 geared, which is…  well…  Actually, it’s not that much of an achievement, as it’s only the Valorous piece and anything over 4 pieces is of negligible value…  But it’s nice to have completed the set.  Well, kind of completed.  Completed enough?

The last item I needed for the set was the shoulders from 10-man Thorim, the Valorous Mantle of Sanctification.  Sure I’d prefer the Conqueror equivalent, but I don’t think we’re going to be downing 25-man Yogg-Saron any time soon.  (It’s not totally beyond the realm of possibility, especially with our talented now raiders, I just don’t think it’ll be happening without a lot of effort and substantial expenditure of time)

Other than this?  Well, it’s just more grind.  10-man progression is slowly coming along, with some success against Yogg-Saron last night.  25-man progression is…  Unexciting, on the whole.  We should be able to get General down tonight and spend time with 25-man Yogg-Saron.  If nothing else, we’ll get some solid experience getting out of the clouds.  And into the clouds.  And avoiding shadow-crashes.

But Fallout 3 is a great distraction.

/wave

But Vacations Don’t Last Forever

Well, maybe I’m not taking as much time off from 25-mans as I expected.  Due to an unexpected reduction in raider numbers (and another unexpected increase in raiding numbers after another Dath’remar raiding guild stopped raiding, and we picked up a few new faces) I’ve decided to get back into the game.

I have to admit, after just a couple of nights off I’m happy to get back to it (and the possibility that the new raiders will stand in the fire less than some of the old ones is appealing as well).  I might take the occasional night off in future (raid numbers willing), but for now the vacation’s over.  (It was kind of novel while it lasted, brief though it may have been)

We had a less than optimal run last night, thanks to low numbers (as well as some undergeared new raiders), but we managed to get Ignis, XT, Kologarn, Iron Council and Auriaya down anyway (even though our lower-than-normal dps meant we actually hit Auriaya’s enrage timer, which was kind of embarrassing).  Still, considering we were also 24-manning a lot of it, we pulled through better than we could have.  Next week’s raiding could be very interesting.

I’ve put a couple more levels onto Snowfall, but she’s just not as enjoyable to level as my dwarf army has been.  I’m not sure if it’s the blood elf aesthetic, or just the complete lack of friendly guild chat (which is to be expected, not having a guild horde-side).  It’s an unusual experience though, to be leveling somewhere completely new (as I haven’t leveled a horde-side character since pre-TBC).  I guess I’ll see it goes.  (I could just go back to my nelf druid, and see if playing her has jelled any more for me, but my enthusiasm is fleeting)

The last couple of days have been largely non-fishing ones, due to the fishing daily being in Wintergrasp – nothing kills the mood quite like PvP getting in the way of your otherwise solitary and enjoyable past-time.

Ah well, time to publish and then pretend to be productive.

/wave

Ding 80! (Again)

Kringle has finally reached the hallowed heights of level 80, which leaves Pringle, Bingle, and Tingle to go.  (Having said that, I’m considering replacing Tingle, the underplayed druid in my lineup, with a new character on the Horde side – at least it would be something different to do)

25-man raiding has progressed yet again, with General Vezax falling before us after a single (surprisingly focused) session.  It was actually quite a fun fight from my perspective, and it’s been a long time since I’ve used my wand so much.  However, we were having lots of issues with interrupt-capable players failing to, well, interrupt (even our raid leader, a very capable prot warrior, was having trouble with that for some reason).

With this in mind, I’ve finally purchased dual-spec for Mingle, and have put together two slightly newer shadow specs to play with.  The first one has 3 points in Shadow Affinity (for those painful times I’m called to do AOE, and am paranoid about fatal aggro-pulls), and is closest to the one I’ve been raiding with until now.  The second one is mostly the same, but drops the threat reduction for Silence (and its useless prerequisite, Improved Psychic Scream), for ranged interrupts in a pinch.  Admittedly the silence spec is a bit of a reach, especially with the 45-second cooldown on it, but I’m curious to see if it’s actually useful (especially when we’re having issues as we did last night).

Previous build: link
Shadow Affinity build (13/0/58): link
Silence build (13/0/58): link

It’s actually a little embarrassing to go back and look at my current spec, and to see the holes in it (such as only one point in Improved Shadow Word: Pain)…  Well, hopefully I can learn from it.

Hopefully we can get our act together next week, and reach Yogg-Saron again for more frantic wiping at the end of the first phase.  (Seriously, that transition is insane – which is quite appropriate, considering where you are)

I’m getting Kringle a little more geared up (mostly with crafted epics), after which I’ll either work on leveling Pringle or see about rolling this mythical Horde character I’m considering.  I just wish we had playable goblins.  Or murlocs.

/wave

Contemplating Change, Leveling, And A Meme

Well, 25-man raiding is slow and…  not really fun, to be quite honest.  I’ve had a chat with an officer about my dissatisfaction raiding on Mingle, and have decided to take a couple of weeks (while I continue to raid) to think about what I want to do next.  (I’ll be passing on loot in Ulduar as well, as it wouldn’t be right to take loot that other people can use if there’s a chance I may be not raiding on that character)

Unfortunately there’s no openings for another tank, with one of our old guildmates returning his gnome warrior to the game.  (He’s a far better tank than I am, and a nice guy, so I’m not complaining about it)  I’m trying to come up with ways I can get raid time (in some capacity, probably outside of the guild) on my warrior, but options are pretty limited.  I might have to go raid-hunting, and see if there are any guilds who’d be willing to take a tank from outside their guild, and who raid on nights I’m not raiding on Mingle.  Possibly a bit of a reach, but I’ll see what I can find.

Speaking of Dingle, she has ventured into 10-man Ulduar again, and has another boss kill under her belt.  Most of the raid members are from another guild, and we managed to kill FL, Razorscale and XT-002, but Ignis and the Iron Council proved too much for us.  Sadly, Dingle has no shiny tank loot to show for it (although she did pick up a dps helm that would otherwise have been sharded – I really need to gem and enchant it at some stage).

My tanking inexperience showed itself with two bosses during the raid, both bosses we couldn’t get past.  First was Ignis, where I finally realised my taunts were ineffective if I hadn’t first damaged the target – I was on construct duty, and at the start had trouble keeping aggro on the constructs long enough to get them into the scorches.  I also caused one wipe when I wasn’t tanking the construct far enough into the scorch, so it wasn’t picking up the debuff that turned it molten.  By the end, though, I’d worked out what I had to do (and was doing it correctly, as best I can tell).

With both of these issues worked out (to my satisfaction, at least), we were left with issues with dps (we only had one character capable of enough burst damage to kill the molten constructs, who was unfortunately very attractive to Ignis, and kept getting hot-pocketed) and main-tanking (a DK who was having problems getting positioned correctly, and kept getting the scorches positioned either too far from the pools needed when killing the constructs, or positioned too close to the healers/dps who died pretty rapidly when accidentally scorched).  Eventually the raidleader threw his hands up in despair and we moved on to XT (who we one-shot).

I had a brief positioning issue with the Iron Council, where I was tasked with tanking Steelbreaker at the start, and didn’t pull him out of his damage-amplifying rune quick enough on one attempt, but in general the group just didn’t perform well enough get any further (although it was getting pretty late at that stage).

Other than that, I’ve been putting some time (and gold) into leveling Kringle over the last few days.  He’s currently about a third of the way through 79, and should be 80 today if I don’t get distracted (which is pretty likely).

Some time fishing on Kringle yesterday means he’s now officially a fisherman – which by my standards means he has the 200 points of fishing skill required to equip and use his Fishing Pole.  That gives me 6 characters I can do the fishing daily on, which is about the only daily I’m doing regularly currently (apart from the cooking daily for Fingle and Kringle, who are both working towards the 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards achievement – they’ve both passed the 50 awards part, and are on the home stretch now).

But before I get back to my leveling, here’s a meme that caught my eye.  (Snagged from Mend Pet)

The instructions:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

And what did I end up with?

The first album from BNS Turag.  Brought to you by random wikipedia links, a quote from Socrates, and a photo that felt surprisingly appropriate (well, to me it did).  I’m not going to do the ‘name people to continue this meme’ thing, as I’m just not really into that, but if anyone reading this wants to give it a try, put a link to your results in the comments.  (I’d love to see what other people come up with)

Time’s passing, so I guess I should log on and get Kringle to 80.  (That Nesingwary 4000 he has in the bank is waiting to get brought out and equipped)

/wave

So, What’s New With You?

It’s been a quiet few days, with just the usual raids and a couple of nifty new toys for Dingle to play with.

Yup, this is 3 Tournament pets worth of chopper.  And I have to say, the appeal of the tournament dailies wears off quick when you have multiple characters doing them – Fingle, Mingle and Dingle are all champions now, with Mingle and Dingle champions of four of the five alliance factions.

Dingle has also ventured into Ulduar at last, downing Flame Leviathan and tanking Razorscale.  The zone has been nerfed substantially since I first ventured in there – I suspect it’s actually within my ability to tank it now, provided the raid is geared enough (and 10-man Naxx gear may be good enough, if the players know what they’re doing).  Sadly, she didn’t get any gear from those bosses, but hopefully next time will be more profitable.

Anyway, I’ve cut down my playing time lately because it’s currently just so unsatisfying; Mingle is doing 25-man Ulduar, Dingle will be tanking 10-mans (whenever we can scratch up enough players (which has been once since 3.1 went live), and what’s left is basically just the fishing dailies plus whatever other dailies I can be bothered doing.

I’m deliberating whether or not to put together some gear lists from Ulduar – a list of tanking gear from 10-man Ulduar is appealing, albeit mostly out of curiousity about what there is in there for Dingle to work towards.  I’ve also roughed out a quick guide to setting up Power Auras to display on-screen when Mingle’s flask has worn off while I’m raiding. (it’s happened so often that it got quite annoying).

But for now, I have a little fishing to do (and maybe a handful more dailies) before I head out this afternoon for my second viewing of Star Trek.

/wave

Meet The New Staff

Following yet more nerfs to Ulduar, last night our 25-man raid managed to down Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002 and Kologarn, and had time left over for a couple of attempts on Assembly of Iron.  And Mingle has (for the first time) added a staff (Intensity, which was most generously dropped by Ignis) to her raiding gear.

It’s such an odd look, seeing her with staff in hand (or strapped to her back).  I mean, she’s only ever equipped one in order to train her weapon skill up, and that wasn’t even an afternoon’s work.  Admittedly the shadowform effect does tend to limit the effect of any new gear she gets (even new shoulder armour, which are usually one of the most noticeable pieces of gear from an aesthetic perspective), but a staff…  It’s just a whole new look for her.

It surprised me that no-one else in the raid rolled on it.  I mean, it has the most +hit for any weapon I’ve come across so far, and having so much on one item means you have a lot more flexibility when you’re readjusting your gear to get the hit you need without nerfing your other stats too much.

(As an aside, quite a lot of items have been going off-spec, so I guess that really puts the normal 25-man Ulduar gear into the correct perspective, especially when so many raiders had best-in-slot items pre-Ulduar.  If we can get our act together enough to start doing hard-mode bosses, then the loot circus will probably kick into gear.)

Mingle is currently just a little bit over the hit cap: the cap for a non-Draenei with 3 points in Misery and 3 points in Shadow Focus is 290, and Mingle has 305 without any buffs.  This is after re-gemming and fiddling with gear as best I could, so she’s stuck with those extra points for the foreseeable future.  But she did pick up almost 100 extra spellpower from it all, so the WWS for tonight could be interesting.

In other news, there’s not really any other news.  Nothing exciting from the fishing dailies, nor from the Tournament dailies, nor from…  well, you get the idea.

And speaking of dailies…

/wave

A Noble Compulsion.

Well, Mingle finally has the Noble Gardener achievement under her belt (although I did stay up until after 3am to complete it).  I had to farm a hundred chocolates to buy the Spring Rabbit for the last achievement I required.

I guess that’s the compulsive side of my nature shining through.

My time spent fishing has finally gifted one of my characters (Mingle again – she’s having all the luck) with something new in the reward bag, namely a Strand Crawler.  It’s nifty and all, but I’m still hanging out for a new fishing rod.  And we still have no idea where those fancy fishing bobbers come from, or when they may become available.  Bah.

Raiding has made some more slow progress – we downed the Assembly of Iron last night, and started working on Auriaya whose cats proceeded to shred us repeatedly.  We finished the night with kills of the two Vault of Archavon bosses, which I found surprisingly frustrating due to my desire to be tanking, not just dps.  Unfortunately (for me, in this case) our GM doesn’t do alt runs unless there are very special circumstances*, which there weren’t last night.

Sad to say, I’m finding raiding on my shadow priest is unsatisfying and the desire to change is growing.  Perhaps it’s just the whole “Grass is greener” thing; I might see if I can have a word with an officer about it, anyway, so they’re aware of my dissatisfaction (even if there isn’t much that can be done about it).  I’m not sure if it’s role-burnout or just me being difficult – time will tell, I suspect.

It’s kind of disappointing that our 10-man raids have failed to come together this week – I really want to get Dingle into Ulduar, and see if I’m geared enough to progress in there.

Mingle and Dingle have both completed their second exalted champion grinds with the Tournament, and will be starting on their third today.  Their seals were invested in a Mechanopeep and a Dun Morogh Cub, which have been surreptitiously listed in the neutral auction house for ridiculous sums of gold, with a view to funding Dingle’s chopper fund.  Fingle will be on her third and final day of aspirant status, starting her Ironforge valiant training today (if I don’t get distracted).

Well, dailies await (not least of which is more fishing in Wintergrasp for the fishing daily).

/wave

* – Raiders Alts + Farmed Content = Trauma + Fail.  (If you’ve been in that position, you’ll probably sympathise)

Yawn. No, Really.

I couldn’t get back to sleep (woke up at about 6am, after going to bed at 2am), so I figured I might as well get some dailies out of the way.  And guess what?  The fourth day of Blood Is Thicker in a row.

Ah well, you get that sometimes.  (But it would be nice to get something else for a change – I’ve done the dailies every day since 3.1 went live, and I’ve still only seen two of them)  I’ve started leveling fishing on Fingle as well, which gives me four characters to fish with.  Fortunately you’re able to do the fishing daily in Shattrath in addition to the Dalaran one, so I can keep myself in Sharpened Fish Hooks.

Ulduar-25 went better last night; after defeating the loot piñata that is Flame Leviathan (well, we downed him despite all the raiders who still don’t know how to do that fight – apparently we’re going to be organised when we do it next week), we then downed Razorscale (eventually – it took a few attempts), and I sat out for XT-002 Deconstructor.  We finished with Ignis (barely downing him before we over-ran our scheduled raid times).  Razorscale was generous, and gave me the Collar of the Wyrmhunter, which has allowed me to drop Haunting Call in favour of The Impossible Dream – the new +hit pieces are making it a lot easier to juggle that particular stat.  (The stats on it are nice, but some of these helms make me really glad I can set them to not display on my characters)

I’m hoping to get Dingle into the second guild 10-man group for Ulduar this week, but her comparative lack of gear may put her out of the running – Ulduar is really quite demanding of raiders, in that they need to be pretty solidly geared before it’s worth taking them in.  While she’s geared enough for Naxx25, Ulduar10 may be beyond her – or at least, her lack of gear may make her impossible to keep up.  I’ll have to see what happens come Friday.

For now, though, I’m going to finish the fishing dailies and see if I can get another couple of hours sleep – raiding and sleep deprivation aren’t a very successful combination.

/wave

Quick Argent Tournament Information And Linkage.

Just a quick post that I’ve been meaning to make for a few days (and kept forgetting).  If you’re having trouble with the mounted combat part of the Tournament, I found this post to be a lifesaver.

Here’s my take on it (having finally reached champion):

• Before you start, make sure you have 3 stacks up of your shield.
• Talk to your opponent to start the fight, use Shield Breaker (attack #2) when he moves into the centre of the right, and immediately follow so he remains in melee range (which means you don’t get charged).
• Move just far enough away from him to use Shield Breaker again, then back into melee range before he can return the favour.  Repeat until his shields are down.
• Move away until you can charge him (attack #3), then return to melee range.  Repeat until he’s been defeated.
• While you’re doing this you have to keep your shields up (attack #4).
• And while you’re doing all that, you have to keep him in melee range when he moves away in preparation for a charge.

Easy, right?  Well, practice makes perfect…  (I certainly got more than my share of practice)

Once you reach Champion rank and start doing those dailies, the optional rewards are quite nice as well.  You get the choice of a Champion’s Writ or a Champion’s Purse, in addition to the Champion’s Seal.  The Writ can be turned in for tokens worth 250 reputation with your faction of choice, and the Purse gave me 10g for each of the three dailies I completed.

Well, that’s Mingle done for the day, time to get Dingle enchampioned.

/wave (again)

Time Flies When You’re Having Wipes

Well, after our first week raiding Ulduar, we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and last night we (finally) got down XT-002 Deconstructor.  The night was finished off with Emalon in 25-man Vault of Archavon, to give some people a piece of T8.5.  In 10-man progression we also managed to kill Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Freya, Thorim and Hodir.  A pretty full-on week for everyone involved.

Oh, and we might not have a screenshot of our XT-002 kill, due to an over-zealous engineer mining his body.  Whoops.

I have to say, the adjustment in 25-mans from Naxx to Ulduar is proving pretty painful.  This is especially evident after spending time in Ulduar in both 10-man and 25-man, as demonstrated by the differing progressions listed above.  I’m really hoping we get it together for 25-man a bit more when we start again next week, but I’m a bit ambivalent about it for now.

On a more positive note, today should be the day that Mingle and Dingle become my first champions of the Tournament, which means acquiring squires and starting to collect the Champion badges for fun and profit.  Well, for profit anyway.  (The pets are BoE, and I suspect the AH will be a popular destination for them)

But it’s time to get dailying, and Kringle won’t level himself (unfortunately).

/wave