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

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

Juggling hit for fun and profit.

Another raid night completed (and all the 25-man content finished for the week), and for a change I’ve picked up an upgrade for Mingle.  Now, getting new gear is the easy part; juggling stats to best effect is the tricky bit.

Now Mingle is already very well geared, so upgrades are very far between at this stage; basically 10- and 20-man Malygos drop an item each, and 25-man Kel’Thuzad drops a couple more items.  But winning Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster gave me enough extra hit that I’ve been able to drop two pieces of +Hit gear and replace them with more effective items.

Old gear: Total 156 Int, 101 Spirit, 73 Crit, 766 Spellpower, 77 Hit, 41 Haste

• Valorous Pants of Faith with Brilliant Spellthread, a Runed Scarlet Ruby and a Potent Monarch Topaz
• Haunting Call with +63 Spellpower
• Surplus Limb

New gear: Total 177 Int, 83 Spirit, 85 Crit, 758 Spellpower, 82 Hit, 66 Haste

• Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster with Brilliant Spellthread
• The Impossible Dream with +50 Spellpower
• Accursed Spine

Aggregate change: +21 Int, –18 Spirit, +12 Crit, –8 Spellpower, +5 Hit, +25 Haste (And once I get the upgraded weapon enchant, that will turn the Spellpower deficit into a bonus)

But the fun thing was juggling gear to get the best overall bonus.  For Shadow Priests, the best resource for gear comparisons I’ve come across would have to be the “Best Raiding Gear Available” list on shadowpriest.com.  Admittedly it does take some practice to work out how best to interpret the list for you and your gear options, but once you’ve got a grasp of it, it makes things a little easier to work out if gear item A is much better than gear item B.

As far as future upgrades go, that leaves a helm to replace Faerlina’s Madness (which really is pretty average, compared to the items which just haven’t been dropping for me), the trinket from Sarth, the cloak from Sarth with 2 Drakes, the ring from Kel’Thuzad, the healer mace also from Kel’Thuzad, and the chest from 10-man Malygos for its +Hit.

But it’ll be another week until I get to pray to the god of RNG, and hope that items I want will drop, and that I’ll be able to win them.  Oh well, back to my alts until the raids reset…