Professional Perks

Compared to the time and money it took me to get Jewelcrafting 1-300 on Ulushnar, the post-300 levels were easy. On Friday morning, I used my backstock of green Burning Crusade-era gems to get him up to 350. In the evening, I went to Northrend and got over 400 with some mining. I also did Finish The Shipment, which opened up the first Jewelcrafting Daily Quest. The quests seem all the same: Get a drop from x type of mob, combine it with gems y and z and then hand in for profit and a Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token. My first two went into learning the Solid Dragon's Eye pattern and the next three went into three Dragon's Eyes to craft them with.

Ulu's now sitting at just under 29k health unbuffed. Glad I switched? You bet!

Typical!

(Warning, the following post has been rated "L" for Linkage.)

So after Ulu dropped Engineering on Sunday, I got a Blacksmith friend of mine to make a Tempered Titansteel Helm to replace his Armored Titanium Goggles. I added an Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector to it and I was good to go.

On Wednesday, when patch 3.0.8 went live and the helm got two shiney new gem sockets, I grabbed a Solid Sky Sapphire and an Eternal Earthsiege Diamond for the slots and I chuckled heartily that my health had gone up from about 26.8k to 28.2k. (Well ok, the new Bracer enchant, the 2% increase in Sacred Duty's stamina scaling and the change in Toughness from health to Stamina helped, but mostly it was the helm).

And then last night in Naxx, Thane's Tainted Greathelm dropped and Ulu won it. As it stands, the Greathelm's avoidance makes it better for general purpose tanking, so I got my hands on another Eternal Earthsiege Diamond, another Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector and an Enduring Forest Emerald for the yellow slot.

But I wasn't done there. After all that, I realised I could repurpose the Titansteel Helm for fights like Saphirron and Malygos where I'm dealing with a lot of unavoidable magic damage. With that in mind, I dumped the Eternal Earthsiege from it and replaced it with an Effulgent Skyflare Diamond. His defense kinda plummets when he wears it though, so I may have to equip his Titansteel Shield Wall for those fights.

That was a lot of resources spent on upgrading two helms over the course of 5 days.

Oh and I've also managed to get Ulu's Jewelcrafting to 352. Total cost to get JC 270-300: around 500g. Total cost to get JC 300-352, around 30g for some Fel Iron Bars I couldn't be bothered farming. Ok, I'll admit I had about 80 uncut green gems from TBC sitting on my banker, but even so!

Still, tonight Ulu starts Northrend JC. Once I've levelled him up and made some of the nice shineys, I might actually be able to use the profession to start turning a profit.

Right in the Jewels!

I think whoever designed Jewelcrafting lvl 1-300 should be put up against a wall and shot. In fact scratch that, whoever designed the levelling progression of all professions 1-300 should be shot.

I switched Ulu from Engineering at the weekend deciding much as Baelor described, that Engineering was really just a profession for PVPers these days.

I decided on Jewelcrafting because at the end of the day it offerred an upgrade I'd always need in PVE (prismatic gems with nice stats), as opposed to goggles that start awesome and then end up underwhelming. The single nicest thing about the Prismatic gems, apart from their vastly-improved stats, is the fact that they count as all three gem colors simultaneously. They're just the thing to put in my red slots until the Soveriegn Twilight Opal becomes available, and they'll really help Ulu activate his Eternal Earthsiege Diamond.

That said, it's slow going. Ulu's currently at 270 and desperately looking for ores/gems to get the last 30 points. Once he hits 300, I can use the stock of Outland gems I've got sitting in the bank to get him most of the way to 350, where he can start on Northrend recipies.

Ah well, hopefully I'll do most of it this weekend.

Game over man, Game over! (redux)

Last night we killed Magylos. It was our third night of training and we beat him in a group that was absurdly suboptimal (one tank, three healers, four melee dps, two casters).

It's a lot of fun, but now we have a minimum of two months farming this stuff before Uldar hits.

*Joy*

Ulu's gearing philosophy in WotLK

I've been kinda lazy about gear in WotLK, I guess.

Now let me clarify that. I enchant all Ulu's gear to a decent standard, put in the best quality gems possible and aim for basic goals like the 102.4% block cap after getting essentials like the 540 Defense minimum. (I was actually tempted to call it "the Defense Cap" to see if certain posters from MTadin read this.)

But I just haven't cared too much about how my stats measured up. Back when I was in 25-mans, I used to build sets for better avoidance, mitigation, health, threat, etc. These days I don't bother. My avoidance scrapes along at a measly 48-50%, my health sits between 25.5k and 26.8k depending on what trinkets I feel like equipping, and I've started stacking Strength and Block Value like it's going out of fashion.

I'm not a threat whore, I'm a DPS whore. One of the nicest things about WoW v3.0 is the ability of Paladin Tanks to do significant damage whilst tanking. Whilst the days where Ulu could top the DPS meter whilst tanking Heroic Stratholme are sadly behind him, any time I can push him into the top five in Naxx10, I'm happy.

Outside of Magylos, it's the only challenge currently in the game for a tank.

Finally a challenge!

So on Sunday, Smart Casual went hunting for Dragons.

First up was Sartharion, who we hadn't faced before. The encounter's interesting in that you can get more rewards if you try engaging him with his adds intact. Since this was out first visit, we took him by himself and two-shotted him. The wipe was caused by our tank tailswiping the raid whilst attempting to reposition him. Once we decided to let the tank eat the lava wall, the fight went much smoother.

After that it was Malygos and we didn't kill him! We spent an hour and a half working on him, but our best attempt was starting phase three. Am I pissed off? Strangely no. After Naxxramas and Satharion, I've been desperate for a challenging boss, like I remember from my 25-man days. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing wipe after wipe slowly build into a kill.

We tried a follow-up to hopefully kill him before the reset, but couldn't get the numbers. Hopefully the group that's in here tonight will get the job done!

My New Hobby

I've started replying to tells/private messages from strangers in l337/txt speak with "I'm sorry, but I don't speak your language."

Am I an old fart attempting to hold back the (d)evolution of the English Language or just an asshole who likes to mock the hard-of-thinking? Or maybe I'm a classhole?

The decision, gentle reader, is yours.

I'm MT

So last night I pugged the Vault of Archavon 10-man with Ulu. I really wasn't that bothered about it, but hell, an ex-raidmate was looking for a tank and I figured I could give them 10 minutes.

So I arrive there and the Warrior says, "I'm MT, Ulu's OT, ok?", I say "'Spose" and then swap JoL and JoW on my action bar so my wacky JoL threat doesn't pull aggro. (Yes I use JoL, but mainly because I run with a Ret Paladin and it's better I use it than he does.)

So we pull the first trash mob. Admittedly I was reckless, dived in with Avenger's shield because I figure "It's trash, who's gonna care?" Obviously he doesn't get aggro back and afterwards I got the reminder "I'm MT!" (He was a man of few words.)

So I figure I'll behave. He goes in, I follow, Judge Wisdom, Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous and then I have Aggro. after that there was a

"Don't use taunt Ulu, I'm MT"
"I didn't."

This behavior repeated itself on the next two trashmobs and we're standing at the boss. After reminding me for the umpteenth time "I'm MT" he went in.

And I kept pulling aggro. OK, I can maybe accept that whilst we had equivalent gear, I probably had a higher aggregate gear level with more invested in threat stats, but even so, I don't struggle this much with Smart Casual's Warrior MT.

And what's worse he was sadly clueless. He kept tanking the boss in the Choking Cloud. But hell, he was MT, right?

Because I like a good audience request as much as the next narcissist...

Chefs Oliver and Otto asked me:

Ulu, could you possibly post up your thoughts on the epic tanking weapons and shields in WotLK sometime (if the topic is worthwhile)?

My main point of question is surrounding the Broken Promise as it is kind of slow, but on WoWhead they said this is no biggee for prot pallies these days. I was wondering if you agreed!

Anyhow I hope you are recovering well and I do enjoy visiting your blog. Thanks!

I'm afraid I don't have hands-on experience of Broken Promise since it drops in Naxx25 and I'm pretty much 10-mans only. That said, Ulu did a lot of his levelling and early heroics with the Crescent of Brooding Fury which is slower.

Paladin Tanking is pretty much weapon speed-agnostic. AFAIK, Warriors like a fast weapon because they want their swing time to be as close to the global cooldown of 1.5secs, so that their melee swings don't interfere with their other abilities too much.

With Paladins, the melee swing is a smaller part of our overall threat. There's two things you should look at when picking a weapon:

Weapon DPS: Hammer of the Righteous is the reason you're using a high-DPS one-hander in the first place. It doesn't care about the speed, only the overall DPS.

Secondary Stats: If you two weapons with the same DPS (ie: Red Sword of Courage and Slayer of the Lifeless), then pick whichever one has the more favorable stats. The Red Sword will help more with the Defense Cap, the Slayer has more avoidance.

And that's really all the mystery there is to tanking weapon choices. Pick the one with the highest DPS first, failing that pick the one with the more favorable stats, failing that, pick the one that looks coolest.

Here endeth the lesson.