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

Eggs: Spawn-Camp Or Run Circuits?

As someone who spent a couple of hours running in circles while shape-shifted into rabbit-form, picking up eggs around Azure Watch, I’ve been surprised at the number of people who’ve spent their time camping at a spawn-point for several eggs (quite a few I picked up from in front of them as I travelled past at near-supersonic speed).

If I wanted to sit in one place and click on an egg when it spawns after however many minutes, I’d probably be missing the old 30-second duration of fishing.  Actually, even the old fishing system would be more fun than egg-camping, for me at least.  I just don’t get it. 

But I’ve completed the meta-achievement on Mingle, so I don’t have to stress over it any more (until this time next year, maybe).

Mingle’s endeavours with rod in hand have been rewarded with another fishing item, the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat.  Besides giving her a certain stereotypical-adventurer-chic, the on-use lure ability is very convenient.

In 25-man raiding news, Auriaya came to a sticky end last night (and I was dead for most of the fight, just like I was for the 10-man kill of her I was party to).  We then moved on to wipe all night on Thorim and Hodir – it…  really wasn’t pretty.

Also, I’m the guildmember responsible for logging the fights to put WWS and WMO reports on the forums for the guild after raid, but after replacing the logging addon I’d been using when 3.1 broke LoggerHead (which has been updated, finally) I forgot to enable it for Ulduar.  Thankfully another raider was able to log the fight (thanks Tame), so my poor performance wasn’t lost to the ages.

Last of all for today, I stumbled across a couple of interesting links that I thought I’d share.

• An enlightening article by Matticus entitled “Frustrated by Ulduar? Here’s Why.”  (And I’m certainly frustrated with it lately)
• And on an entertaining, Noblegarden-related note:  Hannelore.

Back to my dailies (and fishing), anyway.

(I’m beginning to wonder if I should rename the blog to “One Of These Fishermen”)

/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)

Fishing Makes Everything Better.

Even Lake Wintergrasp yesterday, where I spent almost 100 minutes fishing in a rather contented manner.

That’s what I caught in that time, thanks to one glow worm and four sharpened fish hooks.  And on top of that, from the clams, I scored 9 northsea pearls and a siren’s tear.  All in all, I’d call that a pretty good haul.  It was actually pretty enjoyable (other than being killed twice by horde players who obviously don’t fish); I just put on some good music (first was the self-titled album by Genesis from 1983, and after that was a collection of Crowded House tracks) and kicked back (in a manner of speaking).  All I needed was a floppy hat and a beer.

I’ve now got 5 fishing toons, having brought Pringle back into the fold (it was fun getting him to the central flight path in Sholazar Basin), and Kringle might join in the fun today if I have the time (I checked and found I’d done some fishing on both characters, so it’s not quite the grind of starting from 0).  I also scored a Porcelain Bell from Mingle’s fishing reward yesterday, which has the virtue of vendoring for 100g.  Still no fishing rods (or Sea Turtle), but there’s always tomorrow.

We didn’t have the numbers for either guild 10-man Ulduar last night – the main group didn’t get enough healers, and the secondary group just didn’t get enough sign-ups.  Disappointing.

Fingle has started doing the Tournament dailies, with an eye towards getting a replacement to the BoA mace she’s still wielding at level 80.  Kringle’s still waiting to be levelled.  And re-talented.

I’m also finding my aggregate gold total going up, thanks to multiple characters doing dailies – much more of this and I might find myself getting around to giving one of my characters dual-specs.  It might actually be interesting to do it with Fingle, and see how hard it is to gear up a second shadow-priest (mostly) from scratch, with a backup set of gear for disc.

Lastly, I’ve been reading this fascinating article on WoWInsider that delves into the differences between 10-man and 25-man loot in Wrath, and why the difference may be necessary to keep 25-man raiding viable.  Have a look here if you’re interested.

(Oh, and I might finally be able to remember how to correctly use an apostrophe, thanks to this)

For now?  Addons are updated (again), so it’s time to be endailyfied.

/wave

Perseverance. We Has It.

It took 15 tries, but we finally got Kologarn down last night.  (Personally, I think he died because he felt sorry for us)

I’ve also come across some wonderful daily news – you remember how I thought the cooking and jewelcrafting dailies had been changed to require level 80?  Well, it turns out it was a bug.

The level requirement for the following quests has been appropriately set to level 65: Shipment: Wicked Sun Brooch, Infused Mushroom Meatloaf, Mustard Dogs!, and Cheese for Glowergold.

Kringle and Pringle can go back to earning their keep.  (Hurrah!)

Did anyone ever play the Bejeweled addon for WoW?  I introduced it to my guild while we were progressing through Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, and it was entertaining to get the achievement messages from the most unlikely players while we raided (and sometimes at the most unexpected moments).  Anyway, they (PopCap Games) have released a new one:  Peggle.  (I can’t wait to see my guilds response to this one)

Three more days of Tournament dailies, and both Mingle and Dingle will have their second faction raised to Champion (Stormwind for Mingle, due to her choice to only ride horses, and Gnomeregan for Dingle because an engineer will only ride a Mechanostrider – until you can joust on a chopper).  Incidentally, I’m getting quite good at the mounted combat now – defeating the four champions is almost a one-shot thing.  I’m also able to down the Boneguard Commander for Battle Before The Citadel single-handedly (provided I don’t pick up any scouts when I pull, or while I kite him).

Hopefully I’ll find out if we’re running a second Ulduar 10-man group tonight – signups for it haven’t been very comforting so far, so it’s still up in the air.  On a related note, I took Dingle in for 10-man Vault of Archavon last night, and we managed to one-shot Emalon this time – my performance was a lot better, apart from some hiccups taunting the replacement adds off a paladin who picked them up to kite towards me after we downed each charged one.  No T8 for me, although I did pick up the PvP chest from Archavon (which I can’t see myself using, to be honest).

For now though, ‘tis time to get a-dailying!

/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

Nothing To See Here. Move Along.

Just a little post today.  It could be because I’m feeling lazy, but if pressed on the matter I’ll deny it.

We went back to 10-man Ulduar last night before server shutdown, and managed to down Ignis (who has apparently been nerfed substantially – I hadn’t been in the attempt earlier in the week, so I missed the ‘fun’).  No loot-love for Mingle from the boss, but she scored the Drape of the Spellweaver off the pre-Ignis trash that not only was an upgrade, but also gave her the Epic achievement.

I’ve been distracted of late (and the Tournament dailies are taking forever), so Kringle has been getting impatient for that leveling I promised him.  Had the single fishing daily for three days in a row now, and nothing shiny to show for it (apart from the compass of uselessness and a couple of glow worms).

We have another week of Ulduar to look forward to (possibly getting past Mimiron in 10-man now he’s been tuned down a little, and hopefully getting further in 25-man with less hassle), and I guess I have more days of the Tournament for Mingle and Dingle (which I’m getting tired of, especially with them being such travel-heavy time-sinks with very drawn-out payoffs)

For now, though?  Dailies, again.

/wave