A Kick in the Jewels...

First up, they announced at the weekend that they'd be nerfing Jewelcrafting:

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

[...] Nerfs are rarely (if ever) something that returns positive feedback, but we feel this change is necessary to bring this profession more in-line with the bonuses from the other professions. The stat bonuses are meant to stand on their own, not provide extra socket bonuses or ignore meta-gem requirements.

It now goes from being an overpowered profession to a merely useful one. A nice offset to this change would be the introduction of mixed-color Dragon's Eyes (ie: green, purple and orange), but I'm not about to hold my breath over that one!

In response to Galo's remarks on my last post:

Could be a idea maybe Macroing it to target target cast and putting a line of text in the macro that yells out that said spell is casted on tank so the raid is aware for obvious reasons of the spell. That may be a idea.

I know I redid most of my macro's for Divine Protection, DS/DS I have a line of text in the macro that yells out it's casted so the raid and especially the healer is aware spell is casted in case tank really needs extra attention. May have to do that with LoH as well.

I already have a line my Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice macro warning my healers in /rw that I'm using DS so they can adjust healing appropriately. I've also macro'd Hand of Salvation with a /rw warning to the DPS, although I usualyl find I have an exceptionally healthy threat lead early in the fight.

I don't bother with Target's Target on my HoS macro, but that might be an idea to get double use out of it...

In other news, I stepped into Arenas again on Friday with the Frost Mage who also hangs out in my 2v2 team. We spent the first six games getting our asses handed to us before we clawed back wins in the last three. It's inspired me to make some changes to my Retribution Spec to make it more PVP friendly (there's no point in having a raid-optimized Ret spec when I PVP in maybe one fight a week.) In the end, I went for this: 0/20/51

What I lost:

Improved Blessing of Might: It's nice, but not mandatory for Arenas
Swift Retribution: The haste is good for sustained DPS, but not big for burst
Righteous Vengeance: Great for sustained DPS, but again, not a big burst talent.
Divinty: 5% extra heals is covered by one of my other choices below.
Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian: I'll miss my 1-minute Sacred Shields, but I wanted to try some other toys.
1/3 Two-Handed Weapon Spec: I needed to trim points somewhere, and Crusade gives better bang for the buck.

What I gained:

Vindication: I figured I'd experiment with this talent. Debuffing someone's Stamina can mean them dying more quickly.
Eye For An Eye: A quintessential PVP talent, and it should be nice vs the low-end folks in high-crit PVE gear.
Divine Purpose: Turns Hand of Freedom into a "mini-PVP Trinket" on a short cooldown.
Stocism: Less Stun time makes me a happy fellow.
Guardian's Favor: Boosts Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom, your go-to buttons in Arena.
Improved Hammer of Justice: More Stuns = More Happy Times!
Improved Righteous Fury: An extra 6% damage reduction's pretty much a no-brainer.
Improved Devotion Aura: This is the only talent I'm not 100% sure of. The healing boost makes up for the lack of Divinity, and the extra mitigation might help when we're against a tough physical DPS team. It also means if Ulu does go ret for a boss fight whilst raiding, he can still give the healing bonus.

Gearing towards the future.

Well, as of last night's activity (a guild run to VoA10 and an OS25 semi-pug) Ulu sits about four Emblem of Valor away from his final tanking purchase: Kyzoc's Ground Stompers. I'll get those tonight in Ulduar, and after that, I'm planning to get some more Retribution toys. First up will be the Libram of Radiance. I've pretty much given up on getting the Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude due to scheduling issues with my 2v2 arena partner.

Been playing around a bit with Chardev to see how Ulu would sit once he has all the tanking drops he wants from Ulduar 10 normal mode. This seems to be the ideal setup, but wether or not he'll get there any time soon is another matter. (Thusfar in Ulduar, after five weeks of clearing bosses we've had precisely one Conqueror tier token drop!) I wish Blizz would let you buy the 10-man T8 with Emblems of Valor, it'd take some of the pain out of the RNG, and equipping around 17 people on five tier tokens a week!

I'm also considering replacing Ulu's Glyph of Exorcism with a Glyph of Salvation to give Ulu another minor "oh crap" button for Ulduar. To be honest, threat hasn't been an issue to date, and working Exorcism into my normal tanking rotation has been more effort than the reward merited.

Mimiron down!

So last night, on our fourth night of training, we downed Mimiron.



I think it ranks as the most complicated normal-mode fight in Ulduar 10, and it's going to take a long time for us to get it completely under control. That said, the presence of both a Restoration Shaman and a Holy Priest on healing made life much easier given the large amount of raid/aoe damage doing the rounds.

We finished the night with a couple of goes on General Vezax. He looks relatively straightforward once you learn the gimmicks, so I reckon we'll end up killing him this week.

I'm really pleased with Ulduar thusfar. Progress has been steady without being frustrating. I can't wait to down Yogg-Saron so we can start work on the Hard Mode encounters.

People Who Aren't You Have Won The Game!

Sorry folks, been only holiday last week celebrating my 32nd Birthday. Back in the saddle now with some venom

So last night, I took part in a joint Naxx-25 run with a friendly guild (Smart Casual members ended up hoovering most of the loot, including two pieces of Tier 7.5 for yours truly.)

As we were finishing up, our new Hunter mentions in /guild his dissapointment that Ensidia (the guild formerly known as Nihilum/Curse) downed the 10-man version of Alganon The Observer this week, five weeks after Ulduar's launch on the live server.

In response, I've been quick to point the following out:

1. They're pro gamers. Beating content quickly is what they do.
2. They were taking on a boss that was designed for people who have cleared Ulduar 10 including some hard modes.
3. They've been clearing Ulduar 10 and 25-man since launch, including hard modes in both. They're geared beyond the stress level for the encounter.
4. They're not us.

And that last point is the thing that bugs me the most. People have been jumping up and down about Ulduar's difficulty not being all that high. Moaning about how groups like Ensidia et al cleared it in their first week. And most of the people who were moaning weren't actually in the guilds doing the clearing!

From the point of view of someone who was actually wearing 10-man gear for that first week, it certainly didn't feel easy. A lot of the bosses came down to the knife's edge and some unlikely raid compositions (a shadow priest switching to holy to give us four healers on Ignis for example). By the second and third weeks, they'd actually managed to tune it down a bit to the level it was supposed to be: challenging for a group in Naxx10 gear.

Ultimately I don't care who's beaten the content before me, I just care about when I get my turn! I'm on a backwater RP-PVE server and so far from the cutting edge it isn't funny. The upside is I can relax, let someone else worry about world firsts and just concentrate on having fun. That's why we play this game, right?

30k Health woo-hoo!

Ulushnar hit 30k unbuffed health last night.

OK, so I'll admit I hate tanks who go on about their hit points like it's the only thing that matters. Still, it's nice to get there under my own standards.

* I only have one Stamina trinket equipped.
* With the exception of his Tier 7.5 gloves and Naxx25 ring, all his gear is from 10-mans.
* He has the minimum Defense needed to be uncrittable to raid bosses.
* He's block capped with raid buffs.
* His avoidance doesn't totally suck ass (just under 52% unbuffed).
* He doesn't have any Tier 8 yet, and maintains his T7 4-piece bonus.
* All enchants/gems are best-in-slot. No +sta armor kits on the gloves.

Utterly crushed six bosses in Ulduar 10 last night. Left a few farm bosses for the follow-up raids and a bunch of training time on Freya and Mimiron, our current targets.

Prot... PVP?

So last night, I started doing 2v2 Arena with a Ret Paladin friend of mine. I'll never be a hardcore PVPer, but the Hateful Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude is the best Ret Libram Ulu will see this side of spending Emblems of Valor, so it's worth a few weeks of humiliation.

So we started, and as two melee DPS without any sort of healer-killers, we got our asses handed to us. After a few games, I had an idea. I switched Ulu back to Protection Spec, equipped my Block Value gear and swapped in my PVP trinket. The upshot was, we started surviving. I could do some burst, but most importantly, I could survive any meleer who decided to unload on me whilst throwing cleanses and heals to my Ret buddy.

We still lost a few games, but we also pulled some wins out of our hats as a result of the switch. I'm going to have to try a few more next week, but I found Arenas as Prot surprisingly fun. In DPS vs Healer games, the DPSer usually spent too long trying to kill me whilst my buddy killed the healer. In two DPS games, we could outlast some of our competition. Our tactics are kinda rough, but I've been thinking about doing more with it.

It's even had me considering switching my Ret spec for a PVP-oriented Prot Spec, but I think the versatility of being able to switch from Tank to Healer is too nice for raiding right now.