Loot Musing

Regarding Galo's comment on my last post:

"Seems to be a common thing in the endgame progression, people getting tired of all the endless runs. Over and over to get that piece of gear they need.

You'd think Blizzard would make it so players be able to do a complete run maybe like 3 times and get all your gear through some means. Than to have people getting burned out in the end from the endless tried night after night."

Wonderful though that would be, it would completely fluff up Blizzard's model. Although they can't officially admit it, repetetive grinding is a part of the game, wether it's instance drops, reputation, honor/arena points, or crafting materials. The more incentive you have to come back and keep playing, the more money they get.

What I hope for in 2.3 (if/when it ever gets here) is for more Badge of Justice rewards that bridge the item gap between normal level 70 blues and Kara/ZA level drops. It'd be nice if, for example, despite not being able to get Nightbane to drop his chest after a couple of dozen clears, I'd then be able to use the badges earned from those clears to buy a better chest (even if it isn't quite as good as the one from NB).

We'll see what happens. Blizz has made some steps towards reducing the random factor of loot by replacing the Tier armor peice with tokens that multiple classes can use.

TK = Trash Killing.

Didn't have the Warlocks for Magtheridon, so we instead headed over to Tempest Keep for our first solid attempt at Void Reaver.

The trash clear was, as ever, both boring and painful, but in the end we got through it and made three attempts at him. Our best attempt had him around 54% health, which promises a kill in the coming weeks.

I'm not sure if I'll be joining them. More and more I'm feeling the need for a break or a change. I'm tired of running Karazhan (although both my toons still need drops from there) and I'm tired of Gruul's Lair.

Qapla!

Well was away with friends on Saturday, and I got back one hour before our Gruul's Lair attempt on Sunday. I decided to bring Wulf to the raid since three full tanks would have been a waste and high DPS on Gruul's a good thing. The raid started at 20:00 CET...

...And by 21:15, Gruul lay dead at our feet. We had one wipe at Maulgar and one at Gruul, but both died on subsequent attempts with only a couple of player deaths. The DPS was especially high and Wulf in particular finished third in the DPS stakes behind a Rogue and a Shadow Priest. Wulf was rewarded for his efforts with his T4 leggings, which stands as one of his last few available upgrades atm.

Afterwards, he took a run to Heroic Mechanar to help a tank acquire a new sword. The sword didn't drop, but the run went smoothly.

And tonight, we try Magtheridon for the first time!

One night, Three Heroics.

Well last night's raid didn't go ahead, so I assembled a team and headed off to Heroic Black Morass. Along with Ulu, there was a Holy Priest, a Shadow Priest, a Frost Mage and a Fire Mage.

We did good at first, killing up to the second boss with no problems, but the boss himself proved to be problematic. His Mortal Wound debuff stacked too many times, and quickly became too much for the healer to manage. We wiped and then went again, this time we managed to take him thanks to some judicious use of Sheilding by the Priest.

After the second boss, we were able to quickly move through the waves with the aid of our beacons and take on the last boss, who was, by comparison, a piece of cake. Sadly Ulu's belt didn't drop, but I feel happier about taking this instance on in the future.

Flush with that success, we moved on to Heroic Slave Pens, one of the easier Heroics. Nothing really of interest to note here, except the Shadow Priest had a lot of fun mind-controlling various mobs to fight their friends.

After that, we decided to do one more, and went for the fairly-hard Heroic Shattered Halls. By this point, we were tired and the mobs can be fairly brutal. We failed to complete one of the time-trial quests in there due to a few wipes, but overall, it was a good night. Our shadow priest ended the run with a couple of new epic cloth items and we all got ten Badges of Justice for our collections. A really fun way to spend an evening.

Routine Raiding

Well last night Ulushnar was back in Kara for another routine first-night run up to the Curator or Aran depending on how well we do. We were short on healers as well as tanks, so I specced Ulu to his 20/41/0 hybrid spec so he could heal and tank with relative success.

Attumen went fairly cleanly, but I'dve been surprised if he didn't. Moroes proved to be interesting. We technically killed him first shot, but doing so cost us most of the raid and his adds killed the last couple of us. Still one corpse run later and we got lewt, including a nice trinket for Ulu, but sadly no belt. Maiden went smoothly as well, Ulu got healing bracers from her. Opera event was Big Bad Wolf this week, which I brought Wulfsblood to in hopes of getting the gun. Sadly no gun, but another first kill. Curator also died smoothly, although the biggest challenge of the night came from the trash after him. There were a lot of magic-immune mobs and our group was heavily stacked towards magical DPS. Still, we got past them and cleared to the Shade of Aran.

It woulda been nice to one-shot him as well, but it wasn't to be. Our interrupters we're fast enough on the first attempt to keep his damage to a managable level, but we were able to take him down on the second attempt before calling it a night.

Raid's supposed to continue tomorrow, but I can't make it then, and neither can a good chunk of the group, so I don't know if it'll go ahead. If tonight's raid doesn't go ahead, I plan to try to get a group going to Heroic Black Morass, to see if Aeonus is any less stingy with his belt.

Adden-dumb.

Yesterday's indignation has cooled somewhat in the face of reason. I feel some folks missed the point of my rant and that was in part due to my own, unfocussed, caffiene-less style of ranting.

I just got upset that the Raid Leader would rather bring in a tank at the last minute who hadn't signed rather than go with the two signed and prepared tanks there.

I completely appreciate why she did, the Druid has unquestionably the best stats for the encounter, but in doing so, she sent the clear message to me at least that she believes the encounter is insurmountable without him. Hence the "Not all tanks are created equal" remark.

Maybe it is, I dunno. For the next week I'm gonna try to take a step back from the raiding game. I look at our raid schedule and I just can't bring myself to sign for anything.

In slightly happier news, Ulu got his fugly new shield today!

Oh and Etynn, I wouldn't say we get less avoidance than a Warrior (although the +5% to block you guys get from talents would be nice), but we do need to stack more to get crush immune, which hurts how much stamina we can stack elsewhere. That, plus the basic fact we have 1.5k less base health than a Warrior, is what hurts.

All tanks are not created equal...

So last night we were going for our third Gruul kill. Our deeply imba Druid tank hasn't signed so it's down to me and our best-geared Warrior to tank him. I know it's gonna be hard, but not impossible. I grab a few stacks of Ironshield pots, some unstable flasks and farm enough stamina food for the night's attempts.

Then at five minutes to go time, the Druid saunters online and I'm being told I have to switch to my Hunter. ><

I appreciate the reasons for the raid-leader's lack of confidence in me and the warrior doing it. A lot of our DPS sucks and even successful attempts can go to 13-14 growths. In that scenario, then I can appreciate having the desire to have the Druid on Hatefuls, but it sucks that they won't even try.

Still we got him down after five attempts. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do though. As a tank I'm always gonna be thought of as third to the warrior and the druid. I'd be happy to take a 20/41 OH/OT spec, but the sad fact is that if either of them can't make it or decide to play their DPS toons, then I have to pick up the slack, so I have to show up to raid night prepared to MT.

Weekend lootfest.

Well on Friday night, Karazhan finally bent over for Ulushnar and gave him the leggings he'd long saught. Nightbane also dropped a nice shield, which Ulu passed to the Warrior in the raid. Why? Well Ulu was supposed to tank Gruul on Sunday, and he had his eyes set on his shield. Failing that, then he would finally have enough Arena points on Wednesday to buy the Arena shield if all else failed. All in all, it was worth passing on a very temporary upgrade.

Didn't do much on Saturday, but in a frenzy of preparation on Sunday, he got the last few tokens for and Epic Necklace that gave a small, but significant increase to his stamina.

Then it was off to Gruul's Lair. I won't pretend it was our smoothest kill, but we got High King Maulgar down on the fourth attempt I think. Once again, he dropped the Paladin/Shaman/Rogue shoulder token, and once again, Ulushnar rolled second-highest. This time however, the Rogue who won the roll decided to pass to him, so Ulu got some epic shoulderboobs! I was so chuffed and grateful it's untrue, since those shoulders are currently the best pallytank shoulders until Tier 6.

So visually there's a subtle difference from before:



To after:



The shoulders look ridiculously huge on a Draenei male, but I've heard they're fixing that slightly next patch.

After that, we went on to Gruul, but he refused to drop. We'll hopefully finish him off tonight!

I'm (not) A Survivor

Last night, I quit Surprised Survivors, the guild Wulf has been a part of for nearly two years. There is a member of the guild who spends his time on the channel either spouting inane bollocks, or whining constantly. It's not entirely his fault, he's both slightly autistic and teenaged which is not a great combination. However, over the period of our association, he has worn down all tolerance I had to him. Kicking him from the guild wasn't an option, he would only start bugging me in a day or two to be allowed back, or worse, take his crap to the general CD channels.

ultimately I decided to take the path of least resistance and leave. Not sure what I'll ultimately do guild-wise, but I'm enjoying the quiet right now.

After that mini-drama, it was off to spend a night wiping in Tempest Keep. It was CD's first look in there, and I don't think we did too poorly. It took us two hours to clear to Void Reaver, (affectionately/derisively known as "Loot Reaver" because of the ease of the encounter), but in the end we were defeated. Not by the boss itself, but rather than the last few trash packs before him. They're pretty tough without a second Warlock and our focus, somewhat degraded in the long time away from serious raiding, had atrophied. We'll hopefully be back in there tonight for another crack.

Square Pegs and Round Holes.

I'm in somewhat of a fix recently. CD is starting to move towards 25-man content more and more (we downed High King Maulgar and Gruul in the same night last night). I'm honestly not sure if Ulu's ready for it, but I don't have much of a choice since I'm one of three tanks with consistant enough attendance.

Karazhan is currently the home of most of the decent tanking upgrades for him. Karazhan has also been the source of most of his frustrations, since with the exception of his bracers, it hasn't given him any upgrades in about two months. With my most finely-tuned setup, I still end up with the same amount of stamina as a less well-geared warriors. Given the amount of runs Ulu's been on, he should have statistically seen every piece drop twice over.

Meanwhile, even though he could use a couple more upgrades, Wulf is still ranking as one of the better DPSers in CD. Much as I love tanking, I'm honestly not sure if Ulu's up to the role in the later content. So instead I kinda navel gaze and wonder if it's more helpful to CD to bring a struggling tank or a fairly competant DPSer to raids. Last night I did both, bringing Ulu to offtank one of Maulgar's adds before switching to Wulf to bring the pain to Gruul himself.

On a similarly maudlin note, I'd like to wish Bluebottle good luck. She's just left CD to apply to the raid group her Husband recently joined. It's a shame, but ultimately understandable. Hopefully they'll find the time in their busy schedule to drag Ulu to Arenas.