And nothing. The only other person ready to raid was my favorite Druid Healer/Tank. He and I stood next to the stone bemoaning the state of raiding affairs in our guild. We waited...waited...waited.
Then finally someone suggested we do the Heroic Daily...and off we went. Our eyes never looked toward Ulduar for the rest of the night.
Druid Leveling
After running the heroic on my mage, I switched to my druid to do some leveling and hunt down some herbs. I maxed out Alchemy! Woo hoo! Now I'm doing the Cardinal Ruby quest. Boy! These cooldowns on transmutes are annoying. I guess I understand that they're there to keep the economy from being flooded with transmuted items. But, to take 5 days to do this quest, ugh!
OK...I'll admit I think the transmute cooldown in general is a PITA. Screw the economy! I want to transmute my gems all at once! I have so many of them stocked up on my Priest. It's going to take forever to transmute them. Ah well...it's not like I'm going anywhere. :)
Some guildies ran me through DTK and VH last night. I was definitely too low for the instances -- even with +hit buff food I was missing a lot. But, I'm not complaining. I got some XP, a couple achievements, and a couple blue items to wear when I reach the right level.
Rawr - How Have I Lived So Long Without You?
So...I discovered Rawr last night. Actually, I had seen references to it on various sites for a while. But I assumed it was a spreadsheet or something -- honestly, I didn't think about it much at all. Then, WoWInsider mentioned it in a column yesterday so I clicked on the link.
It's this great application that downloads the information for you toon (spec, gear, etc.) and allows you to experiment with different equipment, gems, enchants, buffs, etc. to see how they affect your dps, hps, or whatever.
One of the coolest options is the ability to "Optimize" your toon based on the equipment, gems and enchants you actually have available to you. It starts off knowing exactly what you have on. You can add the stuff that's in your bank or bags. Then click on Optimize...and about 30 seconds later you are presented with suggested changes. You can add specific goals too (e.g., a certain amount of mana regen, hit rating, etc.).
Like I said above, Rawr suggested I swap out the shoulders I was wearing on my mage -- supposedly the switch will increase my dps by around 300. I had placed the shoulders in the bank when I had 3 tier pieces on. The shoulders that I replaced it with increased my dps slightly without affecting the set bonus of the tier items. But, at some point, I swapped out another of the tier items, accepting the loss of the set bonus. But, it never dawned on me to consider putting the tier shoulders back on to retain the set bonus.
That's where Rawr comes in very handy. It helps you make gear choices that you might not consider or even see.
In the example of my shoulders, a comparison on wowhead of the two items would make me think that the Mantle of the Extensive Mind is better. It increases Int (3), Sta (3), MP5 (23), Haste (14), SP (9). The Heroe's shoulders increase Crit (48) and has a Yellow socket. For my simple mind, the former seems a better deal all around. But, after playing around with Rawr a little bit, I think I've figured out why the tier shoulders are better.
- They have a socket -- and the new epic gems are more powerful than the previous ones.
- 48 Crit is nothing to sneeze at. Perhaps it's worth more than 14 Haste?
- The set bonus must add DPS. That is something I am unable (unwilling, actually) to figure out. (Though I think this is less of a factor than the others, since it still recommends these shoulders even when wearing them without a set bonus.)
Oh my gosh! Another thing to fuel my WoW obsession! Now I'll spend precious work hours playing with Rawr. :-)
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