I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Things that E’s working on getting.

1. Titan-forged Hood of Dominance (40 Wintergrasp Mark of Honor).
Sadly, E’s still using Hood of Hexing having no luck from Forgotten Shadow Hood dropping in my countless forays to heroic Strat. At least this seems attainable with effort and not with luck, though with the trade-off of wasted resilience stat. Any other good alternative?

2. Titanium Spellshock Necklace (crafted).
Alternative: Encircling Burnished Gold Chains (25 emblems) or Hateful Gladiator’s Pendant of Dominance (38k honors). Nothing prevented me in getting them except that I’m hoping Chain of Latent Energies (trash drop Naxx10)  or Circle of Arcane Streams (OS10) will someday drop.

3. Titansteel Guardian (crafted).
I am hoping for the cheaper alternative, War Mace of Unrequited Love (heroic nexus), but it is also another item that has been alluding me :(. Currently saving up for titansteel, should be doable by next week.

4. Deathchill Cloak (crafted).
Not in the highest priority with the reason of not being hit-capped if switching from Dark Shroud of the Scourge (plus other planned gear switch, such as the weapon).

I have to postpone levelling Vhe for a week so to allow one of the guildies’ alt to catch up with her (currently 39, while Vhe is 47). Another guildie and I decided that we should get ourselves Bracers of Nimble Thought. We found the willing tailor to craft them. So, in the meantime I am getting these ready:

• 15 bolts of netherweave clothes (or 90 Netherweave clothes)
• 10 Arcane dusts
• 10 Primal mana
• 2 Primal fire
• 4 Hearts of darkness

And of course, the enchant to go with it:

• 6 Large prismatic shards
• 6 Primal fire
• 6 Primal water

With the exception of Hearts of Darkness, it doesn’t seem to be so bad :).

Monday - ZA cancelled because our MT/RL had other appointment. Our other tank in the guild weren’t online. Nothing worse than having to pug an MT.

Tuesday - TK cancelled because we don’t have enough people (esp. healers). With school starting, a lot people is getting busier. We heard this story before, so not worth repeating. Anyway, after 1 hour later from invite time, we were still missing one more healer The temporary RL (the usual RL was out of town) felt like he had enough and called the raid out. Although disappointed with the outcome, I can totally understand since I was scrambling along with him to find some subs.

Wednesday - SSC was very closed to be cancelled because of the lack of people. We got a sudden cancellation from one of the healer and a few “regular” healers were a no show. But the same temp RL pulled some string and get some friends of his to come along.

First stop, Hydross. Imagine everything that could go wrong in Hydross - that would cause a wipe - and those happened yesterday. Well, I may be a bit exaggerating there. But hey, we usually one shotted this guy. First wipe - totem aggro, one of the raider must have forgotten no offensive totem or they need to recall them during transition. Second wipe - nature resist tank dc-ed right after they move Hydross to her. Third wipe - someone got too closed to Hydross before MT engaged him and pulled him across the line. Fourth wipe - someone either healed and regen some mana/energy while during transition (not exactly sure there, apparently people insist that they didn’t dps him at all during this time). Finally, we got our act together afterward. Pretty darn demoralizing.

Fortunately we ended the raid in a high note. There was a bit of problem with a rogue naga that rampaged one of the satellite island. Then whirlwind took a chunk of the melee dps. But we managed to recover nicely and got him down.

Let’s hope for a better raid time this coming Sunday.

***

On another note, after donning Ruby Drape of the Mysticant for way too long, and not seeing Shadowcaster’s Drape in sight anytime soon, I finally broke into E’s badge bank to get Cloak of Arcane Alacrity. Right now E is 1164 +Spell damage unbuffed with 8% spell haste rate. Although that’s barely 1400 with all the food/flask/wizard oil buff, I am tempting of getting Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons to alternate with Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation for pure spell damage set. I wonder if that would be worth it?

I have been pushing levelling Vhe a bit more lately. Hopefully by WotLK, Vhe can hit 70. She is currently sitting at 45. On the prep for WotLK too, I’m planning to shuffle the profession of Val and Vhe. Val is herbalist and enchanting (I know weird combination right? - only reason is so she can stock up herbs for Ast). Vhe is herbalist and skinning. The plan was for Vhe to drop herbalist and took in inscription. She was just a herbalist to stock up on the herbs for inscription. But since mining will get significant buff on stamina and herbalist is just getting some healing to self passive buff, also since stamina will be converted to spell damage for Val (prot pally), it makes sense for Val to pick up mining. It will beat having to look for ores in AH too. So, at this point, the plan is for Val to be a miner and enchanter, Vhe will be a herbalist and an inscriptor. Of course with that, I need to save up for Vhe’s epic flying mount for efficient farming. So many things to do…so little time :(.

This may not be the appropriate title. I wasn’t going to write about this until it almost happened again yesterday.

Last weekend, we are setting up group for regular MgT. By “we”, I mean G and E. Among the group was a resto shammy and an enh shammy. After a while, we got a mage as our last member. It took us a long time before we actually started due to the resto shammy’s needs to replace the battery on his mouse (which took longer than I imagine). As soon he got summoned, he asked to be summoned back because he was going to port and get him self some spells. A red alert appeared and upon asking, he mentioned that he is going to respec to resto and…he just ding like 10 min ago (the actual time is unknown, but it’s probably an exaggeration). But we didn’t think about it too much since he claims that he has about 1k +healing. After he is finally ready, we did one pull, and G suddenly asked whether that’s his healing gear. True enough, his gears were all greens, and not all of them were healing gear. They are a mix between healing and damage. There’s no way that amounts to 1k healing. Enh shammy suddenly said, “how come you only have 28 tp allocated”?. His excuse was that he was just setting up. At the end, he got kicked out from the group, which  I think mostly due to him lying to us and wasted our time for waiting on him.

/rant Why the heck do you think you can heal MgT with such a meager gears? With no experience of healing whatsoever.

I can devise so many theories to why he wants to come, but I do have to admit that he may just not know that MgT is harder than the other 70 instances, and he just want to see the content. The lying part is the one that gets me the most.

Yesterday, we were looking for an off-tank for ZA. Two warrior were on the LFG. G asked us to check them on armory. One of them turns out to be full fury (completely full, as no points are allocated anywhere else). That should have been our red alert, but I think G still inquire him anyway. It turns out that he just turned 70 and he doesn’t have a good gear. Well, at least he is honest. So now the question is, what is he doing in LFG for ZA? Did he expect that this run would automatically gear him up? Did he just completely unaware that ZA is hard (well maybe not if he’s going along with an overgeared group, which is not us)? Did he aware that him going there would mean him being a dead weight?

I guess in my opinion is that, if you are deliberately putting yourself into an LFG for a specific instance, you attest that you are qualified for that run. Unfortunately, I am jaded.

This Guardian’s Pendant of Subjugationis going to be available when S4 starts (which is in June 24). It has no rating requirement (as oppose to the ring version) with 15.3k honor points and 10 EoTS mark. Shadowpriest.com rated this neckpiece (64.99) higher than Ritsyn lost pendant (51 pts) and Pendant of Acumen (will be 61.99 for Aldor with the upcoming patch). Keep in mind however, that 24 pts of the rating comes from haste, which if you are not yet reached 1400, it is not quite 24 pts. But if you are not yet exalted with Aldor, or if you are Scryer, or if you want some extra stam for your gear, this may be a good alternative to have. For my self, I prefer passive buff instead of proc, so I am definitely going to snag this little gem

Also, there’s a rumor (wowhead) that the epic gems available with 800 honor points will not going to be unique-equipped, although it is still bop. For us shadowpriests, this is great. With just 2 days of PVP (at least hitting AV in our server), you can potentially get one Runed ornate ruby (12 spell damage). The downside though, there is no spell haste gems nor tanking gems for Val.

From 2.4.3 patch note courtesy of MMO-Champion:

Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen: The triggered effect from this Item can now occur on periodic damage ticks.

Please

After long and grueling sessions of PVP and Arena, Val finally picked up Gladiator’s Gavel and Merciless Gladiator’s Shield Wall. They are supposedly replacing the Crystalforged Sword (that Val has had forever) and Sunward Crest (for serious and hard hitting bosses). The problem is, the new gears would make Val crushable…again. I guess Val has to wait until she can pick up new gears, with more defense and avoidance stats, before she can wear her new toys. It’s really sad

On the other hand, E finally took the plunge and got herself Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation. Yes, I’m playing with haste rating now even if it is not actually recommended at the spell damage level that E has right now. With the off-hand, E has 72 spell haste rating, which translates to 3% casting time reduction according to the tool tip (but MB has 1.44 sec casting - which is actually a 4% reduction, not sure). So far, Dr. Boom’s test seems to favor the new gear, although I can’t tell that my casting is actually faster.

I’ve read the arguments on how with a constantly moving fight, spell haste is worst than pure damage. I’ll be comparing the dps on E’s incoming Kara’s run.

Vambraces of Courage dropped from Attumen yesterday. A great upgrade for Val’s current wrist.

Val finally get enough BoJ to get herself the Libram of Repentance. She’s finally uncrushable with HS. Need to redo her raid tanking set to see if she could have more spell damage.

Pattern: Girdle of Ruination dropped for one of the guildy. Although being told that he could have sell the pattern for a hefty amount of g (he would probably set on his flying mount with the money), he insisted in giving the pattern to E. It’s gonna make a mage and two warlocks in our guild happy, provided that they grind enough mats for it On the other hand, I’m still debating whether this is a decent upgrade to my Voodo-woven belt. I’ve been losing some spell hit rating with my recent upgrades. If I swap the belt, I would need to put some spell hit gems to still being hit-capped. Then, I’d gain only +8 spell damage while still losing some crit and int. Does it worth the mats? Difficult decision indeed.

Well, I posted that I am getting the Shattered Sun of Acumen neckpiece, which I did on Wednesday. I swapped Ritssyn’s Lost Pendant, hence losing 14 spell damage on equip. What I have been curious about is how often the Light’s Wraith actually proc during a run. Is it better to swap Ritssyn back for some fight?

With the help of WWS report, here’s my proc during our last Kara’s run:

1. Attumen - 150 sec - 0 proc.
2. Moroes - 192 sec - 3 proc.
3. Maiden - 91 sec - 1 proc.
4. R&J - 188 sec - 3 proc.
5. Nightbane - 424 sec - 3 proc.
6. Curator - 161 sec - 1 proc.
7. Illhoof - 267 sec - 3 proc.
8. Shade - 211 sec - 1 proc.
9. Netherspite - 276 sec - 2 proc.
10. Prince - 221 sec - 1 proc.

So, that’s a proc every about 121 sec. The nightbane’s fight may skew it the number. And I’m assuming that I’m constantly casting offensive spell (my priority is VT, SW:P, MB, MF, and when appropriate, VE (usually after VT), and SW:D (usually after MB)). I’m really surprised that there’s no proc during Attumen and a very low proc times on Curator. Those were the most constant fights (where I don’t have to move) that I did.

Another number that I have is 15 procs for 32 minute dps time during last Sunday’s Gruul. And 42 procs fir 81 min dps time for overall Kara (including trash). So, the proc rate varies quite greatly, from once every 90 sec to once every 2 min. Don’t you think the proc rate is a bit low? Is it better to have the constant steady damage that Ritssyn bestows, especially with my spell rotation?

1. One more day of SSO dailies till Exalted. Shattered Sun of Acumen, you’ll soon be mine! Note: Remember that the bonus damage from proc only happens if you are Exalted with Aldor or Scryer.

2. Seven of Furies is finally spotted at the AH. Although there was no buy out option available on it
3. The blessing deck is only 2 cards away from being completed - Ace and (another) Seven of blessing.

On another, entirely random note, I just find out that the enchanting skill to break void crystal to 2 large prismatic shards, although is learnable at 360, requires the skill of 375 to use it. Furthermore, there’s a 24 hour cooldown (this one is expected). That’s good to know, since I was trying to power level my enchanting just to learn the skill. That explains why the price of void crystal is still lower than 2 large shards combined.