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.

Plus ca change...

So Smart Casual's sufferring a little atm. We've had three members go off on holiday at the same time as well as one of our other healers leave. We can still scrape a raid together for Naxxramas, but Malygos is proving to be a real arse and we can't even start work on adding drakes to Sartharion.

Outside of raids, I've only been logging in to do Jewelcrafting daily quests for Ulu, and to abuse his Icy Prism cooldown. I've found him inundated with Scarlet Rubies, so I picked up the Bold Scarlet Ruby pattern this morning and churned out seven of them! Given they're selling at around 100G a pop on my server, I should make back most of the money I threw at learning Jewelcrafting. If I can keep this up for a few weeks, I might even earn the cash needed to get epic flying for Graysun (which would in turn encourage me to get the last level I need with him.)

Even if I don't, I can throw them in Ulu's Ret/DPS gear and still find a use for them.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I like Jewelcrafting.

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.

Post-Weekend update 01-Dec-08

So last night, Ulushnar got the loot 100 Emblems of Heroism achievement. Given he hadn't set foot in a Heroic before last Monday night, that should give you some idea of what he spent a lot of the last week doing...

...Yeah, Ah well, it's winter and being outside isn't good anyway.

Still on the plus side, ulushnar now has the T7 chest and is currently working on badges for the neck. At this rate though, he'll outgear Naxxramas 10 before the guild's ready to set foot in it.

This week I'm going to try and tone it down a bit. There's a couple of target heroics that I'm going to run, but I also wanna spend time helping the last few guildies not at 80 to get there so we can all join the Heroic frenzy.

I've also been logging in Wulfsblood a bit. I haven't really been levelling him so much as committing mass genocide on the Rhinos of the Borean Tundra. Our guild's only leatherworker has been having connection problems, and some members of the guild want the epic cloaks available at 440 LW, so I put my nose to the grindstone and got it done. Wulf's currently at 423 LW, and is working through my backlog of Eternals from Mining and Engineering to get to 440.

Titansteel: The Waiting Game

I've never really played an Alchemist. I mean, I tried to make Ulu one at one point when a friend convinced me that the Alchemist's Stone was "the shizzit" for tanks, but it never really stuck. I certainly never got all the cool transmutes people used to go on about. Which meant I never had to deal with the sucky cooldowns.

With my experiences over the last few days, I'm glad I never followed through on that profession. Ever since I started smelting Titansteel, it's been one torturous day after another waiting for the 20 hour cooldown on the next bar to be up. I'm swimming in materials, since I often trip over a couple of Titanium nodes whenever I go mining and my Mote Extractor has me swimming in Eternals.

However, knowing I still have 40 hours of cooldowns between Ulu and his Tempered Titansteel Treads makes me sad somehow. Ah well, guess tomorrow evening isn't too far away.

I'd rather be levelling

So Ulu hit level 76 last night, not long after completing an epic quest chain in Dragonblight (no spoilers, but go there and do every quest you can, you won't be dissapointed!). After that was done, I kinda lost the desire to do much more levelling that evening, and ended up tanking a few instances instead and did some mining. The Sholazar Basin's still largely deserted on my server so it's easy enough to run around there a couple of times a day and pick up a load of Saronite Ore, and if I'm really lucky, some Titanium. I've been slowly getting Ulu's Engineering up as well, but I've diverted a lot of my ore to a friend who's levelling Blacksmith and making him some spiffy armor.

Back at work today and working through the deluge of stuff. Tonight's going to be more quests and some instances. I'm aiming for 77 by tomorrow night.

Adventures in Engineering: The Dimensional Ripper

The Dimensional Ripper - Area 52 is in many ways the pinnacle of Goblin Engineering. It's obnoxious and unreliable.

Oh it'll always get you where you're going, but there can be side effects:



First up, Ulu became a Night Elf...



I didn't like that much, so I made a beeline for the Mechanar and zoned into the instance to find something more asthetically pleasing:



After a while, I went to some other instances to help friends, and Ulu took on another shocking transformation.



However, the last and most truly terrifying transformation had yet to occur:



So remember folks, Engineering isn't all fun and games!

What I did on my weekend by Ulushnar, level 70.

Ok, so I played some of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It's fun, but the boss fights are an annoyance to someone who's used to tanking his way through fights. I'll get back to it at some point.

But if you're reading this, you're probably wanting some Wow-based information, right?

• I've pretty much given up on the Beta server. It's always a bundle of lag and ass at peak times (ie. the times I can reasonably log in). Still I have a semi-decent idea of the starting zones now, which is all I'll really need.
  
• Friday night, I finally maxed-out Ulushnar's Engineering and made his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine Control. I have a chopper now and the lore-freaks can suck it!
  
• On Saturday, I spent most of the day doing old-world content with Ulu. I went to Blackrock Depths and solo'd most of the Onyxia quest chain before patch 3.0 obliterates it. I got all the way up to the part that requires Upper Blackrock Spire.
  
• I then realised I didn't have the Upper Blackrock Spire key, so I went into Lower Blackrock Spire and had Ulushnar solo the bosses there to get it. Given it's a 55-57 level dungeon, it was something less than a problem for Ulushnar.
  
• on Sunday, I also made a Dimensional Ripper - Area 52. Ulushnar now has a Helicopter and a Teleporter.
  
• After that, I spent a fair amount of time helping various guildies kill the Brewfest boss before wrapping up the weekend with a Karazhan clear last night.
  

Speaking of the Guild, things are going ok. We currently have a 14-man membership, and I'm hoping another four people to return from Warhammer before WotLK and join in. There's been a largely positive response from most folks, with the exception of a couple of folks.

Now we just have to spend 7 weeks getting ready for the WotLK release.

The Professions aren't a-changing.

Well according to a post on MMO-Champion, the rather lacklustre Engineering Goggles have had another pass. They're now epic and roughly on a par with the drops from Naxxramas 10-man. They're also available at lvl 72 if you can get the Materials. More to the point, they have the same mote-finding ability as the current Goggles, so it looks like Mote Clouds will be implemented in WotLK.

This makes me somewhat happier about staying with Engineering, so tonight I'm going to use my stockpiled materials to get Ulu up to 375 and make his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. Just as well really, because getting Blacksmithing to 375 looked like an annoying drag.

In guild news, our numbers seem to be slowly but steadily increasing. Of course it's too early to judge how things will pan out.

Beta: It's Mine Time!

Well with the current bugged/broken Judgements making Paladin levelling and tanking about as much fun as trying to tighten a screw with a maggot, I decided to get Ulu's professions in order.

When I first copied Ulu to the test realm, his mining was only at 273, and I needed 375 to begin mining in Northrend.

First stop was the Burning Steppes, where I spent an hour doing circuits and mining all the Thorium and Dark Iron veins I could see to get him close to 300. On the plus side, the zones were practically deserted, so I was free to level at my leisure.

At 299 mining, I got on a bird to the Blasted Lands, figuring I could find the last couple of nodes I needed on the way to the Dark Portal. I was right, and dinged 300 there. For my trouble, Ulu was rewarded with Toughness rank 4.

After that, it was time for the easy part. I did circuits of Hellfire Penninsula and Nagrand on Ulu's epic flier, mining all the Fel Iron and Adamantite nodes I could find. Outland was a little busier than Azeroth with all the levelling Death Knights, but none of them were mining, so Ulu had carte blanche again. It took me maybe an hour and a half from that point to get up to 375 mining and Toughness rank 5, but it was worth it.

I'm quite chuffed with the Toughness buffs. It's nice to have a reason to keep a gathering profession late into the life cycle. The 20 Stamina buff is actually 26 when combined with Ulu's talents and I'm looking forward to getting the level 6 Toughness at 450 Mining...

I went to bed after finishing the grind, but I took a run around this morning and mined my first few Cobalt nodes.

In related news, I've just copied my bank character over to the Beta realm with my stored collection of Ores, stones, gems and Primals. I think tonight I'm going to drop Engineering and powerlevel Blacksmithing.

Beta: Further down the Rabbit Hole...

So this weekend, I knuckled down and got some more Beta going on...

First of all, let me say that Blizzard have truly fucked things up with the latest build. Whatever the plan was to tone down Retribution has resulted in none of our three Judgement spells working. This means that along with not doing damage based on the seal used, Judgement of Wisdom doesn't restore mana, Judgement of Light doesn't restore health and the talented abilities Judgements of the Wise and Judgements of the Just don't work. In fact the only indication I can get that Judgement is being used is Heart of the Crusader proccing.

That said, I gritted my teeth and finished levelling Ulu to 71 as Retribution. At that point, I went back to Stormwind, respecced to Protection and picked up the new Divine Plea spell.

I then went to the Nexus with two of my friends (a Resto Druid and an Enhancement Shaman) for an attempt at the instance. All three of us were in a mixture of T5/T6 and badge gear, so we figured we had a decent shot at a beginner instance.

Wrong.

We managed to kill one boss in there, Grand Magus Talestra who is completely insane, somewhere in between Shade of Aran and the last boss in Arcatraz. We made some attempts at Anomalus as well, but we really needed another DPSer for him. We gave up after the instance server crashed.

Lessons learned:

* The Nexus looks really cool.
* Threat generation's a nightmare with the bugged Judgements.
* Resto Druids are Tiny Gods at group healing now.
* Not even the instance servers in Beta are free from lag and instability.

Apart from that, I've done a bunch of quests over there and I'm starting to get a feel for Prot-based soloing. Divine Plea really helps cut downtime, and when they get Judgements working again, there should be no problem with staying as Protection.

I'm currently considering copying my Bank character over to test so I can level Blacksmithing with the ores I've collected. By the time I've got Ulu into his mid-70s, I'd like to be able to start work on the Tempered Saronite set.

Nailing shut the Engineering coffin...

New Beta build which is currently downloading at home. I haven't had much of chance to Beta recently due to a combination of gathering mining materials, showing up for raids and the occasional social engagement.

They've apparently announced some of the initial Engineering stuff here, and, it's looking more and more likely that I'll be switching to Blacksmithing on Ulu. The only two interesting items are set of blue-quality tanking Goggles which will probably be replaced early in Ulu's raiding career at 80 and a trinket with +81 Stamina which I predict to have a similar shelflife.

But when to switch? That is the question:

I could switch now, use the Crystalforge Faceguard as my sole tanking helm. I'd gain about 0.5% uncrushability, some Block Value and 40-ish spelldamage, but lose 2% Avoidance and 200 hp.

I could hold on and hope that the Hexlord drops the Battleworn Tuskguard. The difference in the two is negligable, although the goggles look cooler.

Or I could hold on even longer and make the switch a week or so before Northrend hits the live servers.

Meanwhile On Live...

So Beta predictably crashed about an hour after I logged in last night. With a sigh, I closed down the client, fired up WoW normal and went back to working on my mining.

Just after I hit 375, I went off to Shattered Halls normal to help a guildie through a run there.

After that, I ran through Dum Morogh, Loch Modan, The Wetlands and the Arathi Highlands on a mammoth mining spree. I'm still considering levelling Blacksmithing for WotLK, and I'm determined to grind enough mats to do so ahead of time, rather than my normal "grind a bit, give up and spend a fortune on the AH".

Switching to Blacksmithing now wouldn't be terrible, since I'll still have my T5 helm to tide me over in place of the Goggles. I'd lose some Avoidance and stamina, but I'd gain spelldamage and block value. That said, I'll make the final call if and when the loot gods are kind enough to drop a Battleworn Tuskguard in my lap.

I'm actually considering copying my newly 375 mining Ulu over to Beta so I can start mining those Cobalt Nodes that have been looking enticingly at me. If I actually do level Blacksmithing, then I'm definately shifting him across.

Anyway, it seems that CD's raiding is finally starting to pick up again. Sign-ups have been strong for the upcoming Mount Hyjal runs. Of course with them being MH runs, Ulu's needed.

Gah, why couldn't my Beta Key have arrived a fortnight ago?!

Update 14Aug08

So what's been happening since last we looked at our heroic Space-goat?

I managed to grind the last of the gold for Ulu's Artisan Riding on Tuesday evening, but not the gold for the mount itself. Luckily, some auctions took care of this on Wednesday and Ulu is now the proud owner of a Swift Purple Gryphon. The whole grind's kinda made me bored with daily quests, so I'm gonna hold off on grinding Netherwing Rep just yet.

Ulu's mining's coming along fine. I'm now at the 255-ish level, so I should be terrorizing the mining nodes of Outland on my birdie by the end of the weekend.

My next goal with Ulu after this was to max out his Engineering and make the Flying Machine, but I'm currently holding off on this. Looking at what's come through from the Beta thusfar, it seems that Engineering won't have comparable Goggles in WotLK, or indeed anything that would be specifically advantageous to a Tank. I'm going to stockpile materials and if this appears to be the case closer to release, then I'll drop Engineering for Blacksmithing.

In terms of raiding, there really isn't that much going on. The last 25-man CD managed was on the 31st of July. No matter how many we recruit, we never seem to get more than 20 people in a raid. I'm one failed raid away from giving up on 25-mans altogether.

Update 14-03-08

Well I've been on holiday the past week, and not being stuck at work and bored over my coffee and lunch breaks has led to a steep downturn in my blogging. Hope nobody's missed me too much.

Well what's been going on? Well the Tankadin community has been reeling from some blogger at Wowinsider.com and his claims that Paladins are essentially the third choice as a tank. I would normally link the articles, but I refuse to boost WoWinsider's page rank further by listing them. There's a lengthy thread here if anyone cares.

Why should we care? Well for one thing, Wowinsider is a reasonably respected source of wow news and info, and a poorly coloured view of them could close the minds of raid leaders who might have been willing to give tankadins a chance as anything other than a gimmick tank. But meh, damage done, time for damage limitation.

In other news, not much. I've dropped mining with Ulushnar and instead levelled Enchanting. It was partially out of boredom and partially out of a desire to get two crafting professions going on my main raiding toon.

Haven't done many heroics this week, since the heroic dailies were uniformly sucky (had Sethekk Halls three days in a row and then it was Auchenai Crypts today). Did set a new record for a Karazhan clear on Monday though, of two and a quarter hours. Going to try for better tomorrow.

The 2.4 patch downloader's appeared now, so I guess it's 2-4 weeks until it arrives. I'm hoping this gives the game a bit more of a kick in the arse, because I just haven't been feeling much love for it recently.

Re: Adventures in Engineering

Leon wrote:

New engineering googles look damn good but its annoying that both the smelting & google upgrades recipes are raid drops. Think im the only tanking engineer in the raid tho.

I'm personally hoping that they hit the AH within a few months of 2.4 opening.

That said, they're worth it even without the upgrade. Playing around with Warcrafter suggests that once I get the Goggles gemmed and enchanted, I'll be able to replace my S2 shield with the Bulwark of the Amani Empire whilst being uncrittable. The total Stamina gain will put me over 16k health unbuffed again and I'll have enough Avoidance/Block to be able to wear the Commendation of Kael'Thas next patch in place of my Pocket Watch and still hit uncrushable.

Adventures in Engineering

Got Ulu's Engineering up to the 350 mark this morning. When I get back from work, I'll be making the Tankatronic Goggles. And then I'll have to gem it and sort out a head enchant.

It'll be worth it in the end though, I imagine.

Update 11-Feb-2008

The weekend's done, here's some bullet points:

* The patchnotes for Patch 2.4 appeared, and there was much rejoicing.

* Of special interest the Engineering Goggles are now upgradeable. Also, the third boss of the new 5-man instance drops a sweet trinket on Heroic mode. I will be grinding that place like silly.

* As a consequence of this, Ulu has dropped Jewelcrafting and currently sits at 302 Engineering. I subsequently found out that both the upgrade pattern and the recipie for the Hardened Khorium needed to make it are dropped in the new 25-man instance that CD will be lucky to get into any time soon. Still I was thinking of making the basic Tankatronic Goggles anyway. They have more Stamina than the T5 helm and enough Defense to sort my current deficit in that area.

* CD's raiding's currently stuck as a bunch of our regular raiders have all picked the same week to go on a break. We've spent nights wiping against farm bosses. On the bright side, in 2.4 it'll be substantially easier to kill Kael and Vashj, plus they won't be required to get attuned to the T6 instances anymore.

* I promise you, I will try to finish the Kara guide with a Netherspite write-up today.