Level and Goal Check

I forgot to do a gear/goal check in December. So, here's two months' worth:

Death Knight	Unholy	72
Druid	Balance/Feral	80
Hunter	BM	71
Mage	Arcane	80
Paladin	Ret	38 (+14)
Priest	Holy/Shadow	80
Rogue	(no talents)	29
Shaman	Ele / Resto	44 (+13)
Warlock	Affliction PvP	80
Warrior	(no talents)	34

Although I gained several levels on my Pally and Shaman, I did so only in the last couple weeks. Thanks to the new LFG system, 99% of their xp has come from instances lately. More on that in my next regular post.

Goals

Warlock
✔ Level him to 80.
✔ Get into at least one raid.
✔ Get him to max Tailoring (well, not really achieved, but the carpet mount was the actual goal.
✔ Make a carpet mount.

Druid
✔ Level her to 80.
Get into at least one raid.
✔ Dual spec her boomkin/resto. (Though I switched from resto to feral soon afterward.)

Priest
✔ Get a little further in Ulduar than I have so far (which is only past the first boss). (So far we got all the way to Yogg.)
Get turtle mount.
Get Giant Sewer Rat pet.

Hunter
Max out Engineering.

Paladin
Level her to ??. (not sure how high I feel like leveling her).

Warrior
I had wanted to get her to exalted with Ironforge for the novelty of getting a ram mount. But now that I created the dwarf pally, there might be no incentive. I didn't really enjoy playing her that much.

Mage
Hmmm...no goals, I suppose. Just continue getting better gear. Her current Imba score is: 568.62.

Shaman
If I level her at all, go resto at 80.

Death Knight
No real goal. Fun to play, but no real motivation to get to 80.

Rogue
No goals. I don't like playing him. I would say "get him to max leatherworking", but that would require me to level him.

December 31, 2009

I've been really tired the last few days so, although I've played, I have logged off earlier than normal.

ToC 25 Regular (Priest)
On Tuesday we started in ToC 25 regular. We had an applicant again, so it was a trial run for him. Solace of the Defeated dropped. Of course, all healers wanted it, so it ended up going to someone else with higher loot priority. But still it was exciting to see the thing.

Nothing else to note about the run except I got a Trophy of the Crusade and finally upgraded my tier gloves. Since ICC is opening up slowly, I figured I might as well get these gloves now since it could take a long time for me to get the new ones. I thought the upgrade was minor but it ended up improving things quite a bit. I'm now at 716 haste!

ICC 25 (Priest)
Next stop...Icecrown Citadel. Full clear, as expected. Nothing special to report about it.

During the run, however, I had a strange conversation with our guild leader. I won't write it all out here (I'm too tired to do so). But just so I will remember it I'll say it had to do with promotion/demotion and attendance.

Ulduar 25 (Priest)
We ended the night by killing Ignis for the weekly quest.

After the official raids ended I would normally have gone with my 10-man group to ICC. But, I was just too exhausted to do so.

Ulduar 10 (Priest)
Last night my 10-man group headed into Ulduar. We've decided to focus on getting to Algalon and also on getting a Rusted Proto-Drake by doing all the achievements in Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player). It will be nice to fly around on a faster drake. It will also be nice to have that cool Starcaller title.

I got several achievements last night. So many that I don't have the energy to write them all out and make them clickable links like I normally would (I did mention how tired I am, right?). Suffice to say that I'm very close to getting to getting the proto-drake -- only five achievements left. Of course, the final one is going to be a doozy for sure. But glory is not easy. :-)

Miscellaneous
Tonight is New Year's Eve so I'll probably not play. My husband and I will bring in the new year in style.

December 29, 2009

Miscellaneous
Last night was a non-raiding night and I didn't spend too much time online.

I finally got the Looking for Multitudes achievement on my priest and the Perky Pug that goes along with it. Woo hoo! I'm unsure how I'm going to do the random daily going forward. I think I'll just do it with guildies from now on, as much as possible. I'm getting my fill of pugs while leveling my shaman. I can't take much more.

I only ran one instance on my Shaman. She's now 42. Shaman items are hard to come by at that level so when a hunter took the mail bracers with intellect and stam on them, I must admit I was annoyed. Yeah it was only a green, but they were the first drop in days of pugging that actually made sense for a shammy.

• I'll take this moment to apologize to all the shammies whose loot I took back when I was new to the game and leveling my hunter. Although Intellect was useful, I now understand it was much more useful to you. I sincerely apologize.

I ran random heroics on both my mage and druid, then called it a night.

Raid night tonight. I'm looking forward to it.

December 28, 2009

It was Christmas weekend, so most of my time was spent with family and friends. (ment) But, I did get some opportunities to play.

Shammie Girl on the Rise
I decided to burn through the rest XP I had on alts. Once I got the paladin's out of the way, I switched to my shaman. I put myself into LFG and a few minutes later I was in a group. What fun!

She was enhancement when I started off and I had been using the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper. It's not actually optimized for shamans, but I already had the weapon and it worked fine for her. Anyway...I noticed quickly a few things:

• I don't like melee. Really, I don't. Positioning myself behind mobs is a pain in the butt. I much prefer ranged.
  
• My gear was a mix of spellcasting and melee items -- meaning I wasn't great at either.
  
• Getting into groups as DPS took forever.

So, I made plans to switch her to dual spec Resto/Elemental. Despite my low damage as enhancement, I made it through enough instances to gain 10 levels over the weekend. As soon as I hit 40 I paid for dual spec, sent the axe to my pally and got the Dignified Headmaster's Charge (once again, not the optimal weapon -- a mace and a shield might be better -- but I already had the staff...). I healed or dpsed my way through more instances and quit only 200 xp shy of lvl 42 when I had to switch for raiding last night.

Instances I saw were: Scarlet Monastery (all 4 wings), Razorfen Downs, Uldaman and Maraudon. I got very tired of Scarlet Monastery by the end of the weekend, but there's really no complaining about the amount of XP I got from each run. This new LFG system is great. I remember only a few months ago commenting on how hard it was to find a group while leveling my warlock. That problem is solved with this new system. Though, there is a shortage of tanks, that's for sure.

Speaking of tanks, I ran across several bad ones.

• In a few groups the designated tank was actually a dps in disguise. Most times this lead to disaster, though on one occasion, the skill of the group as a whole made up for it.
• There were a few tanks that were impatient. They'd run into a new area while the healer was still drinking. Then, the usual complaint about lack of heals when he died.
  
• There was one who couldn't hold aggro at all, even though he was Prot spec. He admitted being new to the game and having no idea how to play. (I had a hard time believing that, considering some things he new really well, but whatever.)
• There was the one that went into a room of mobs, aggroed them all, caused a wipe, then laughed and said obscenities to all of us before leaving the party.

I read an article the other day in which someone posited that the negative effect of the new LFG system is the prima-donna attitudes of tanks. I saw that first hand this weekend. Although being a jerk is never excusable, I do appreciate their plight. Until they can get dual spec at lvl 40, being a tank is tough because it's not easy to quest. Killing mobs alone as a tank is a slow process. No wonder so many could-be tanks choose to be dps. And then, when dual specs are available at lvl 40, it's still difficult to choose tanking over dps. At least as a healer/dps I can pretty much share my equipment across specs. Hit rating isn't really required until much higher level, so switching between resto and elemental for me is a simple change of specs. Tank/dps folks must keep two sets of gear. That must be tough.

Anyway, enough about the LFG system. What do I think of playing a Shaman? I love it! The last time I played her I had gotten to the point that I was frustrated. There were too many totems to think about and I was having a hard time killing mobs quickly enough for my tastes. But this time around, I was in the right mindset to figure out how to play her.

First thing was to recognize that my equipment choices (as explained earlier) were the cause of my slow mob killing. Once I switched to Elemental and put on spellcaster items, kill speed went up quite a bit.

Although this didn't come until I hit lvl 40, Call of the Ancestors really helped. Now I have two totem bars. One is for my standard set, the second has some choices switched out. Then, in my regular bars I only have those totems that don't appear in either of my totem bars.

I also removed several of the buttons that I would never use, like Rockbiter Weapon. Previously, I had put every option on my bars so I wouldn't forget they existed. But, I will never use spells such as that, so who cares if I forget about them? My interface is much cleaner now. I feel I have a better grasp of what tools I have at my disposal.

Both healing and DPSing on this toon are a blast (no pun intended). I'll probably never raid with her, but I will enjoy getting her to 80.

ToGC 25 (Priest)
Last night was a raid night and we went to ToGC 25, since it was the only thing we hadn't completed earlier in the week. It went poorly...very poorly. Even though we had a full raid, our top players were not there due to the holidays. It was evident. It took us forever to get through the first two encounters and we stopped after a few attempts on Faction Champs. All was not lost though; I got a Trophy of the Crusade, with which I purchased my final tier item -- Velen's Gloves of Triumph. I had been putting it off, thinking it was only a minor upgrade to Velen's Gloves of Conquest. But, the net effect was higher than I expected when all was said and done. So, it was a good call.

After all the drops I got this week, my loot priority has dropped substantially. That's as it should be. I really made out like a bandit this week. :-) Unless strange luck smiles upon me, I'll need to sit back and accept that no drops will be coming my way for a few weeks. Just in time for the new bosses to be released.

I also purchased the Circle of Ossus with my frost emblems. Another good upgrade for me. I had been indecisive about saving them for tier items or purchasing regular frost items with them. In the end, it seemed like the best choice.

Miscellaneous
I'm considering switching my mage into my priest's guild. I had avoided doing so because I didn't want to lose the connection with the friends from the other guild. But, I've spent little to no time with them the last few weeks. And, when I do switch to my mage, it's to do an "alt" run with my priest's guild. We'll see...

December 24, 2009

Kiting? Why?
Yesterday I had a very strange experience. I was going to blame it on the new looking for group system (or "dungeon finder" might be its new name). But, in retrospect, I realize this could have happened in any group, no matter how it was formed.

Heroic Violet Hold was the random dungeon and I was in there on my druid. The tank was a bear with some very good equipment. Clearly he was an experienced player, no question about that. First portal opens, out pops a mob. The tank gets its attention and we start dealing damage. Then, the tank proceeds to kite it around the room. I thought it was odd, as I've never seen a tank do that before. But, I shrugged and adjusted.

The next portal had multiple mobs. Time for AoE spells. Nope, no good. The tank pulled them away from the portal and kited them all around the floor. No chance to focus AoEs.

He repeated this on every pull. Finally, the mage in our group spoke up and pointed out that kiting didn't seem necessary and it was making it difficult for the dps to do their job. The tank's response was...well...something I wouldn't write in my blog. Let's just say the tank didn't like his methods being questioned.

As (horrible) luck would have it, our first boss was Xevozz. This boss requires effective kiting to beat. Can you guess what the tank did? He stood perfectly still, which eventually caused a wipe. He then said, "What? I thought you didn't want me to kite."

/sigh

The group disbanded. Thank goodness you don't get the dungeon debuff if you leave a group while you're dead!

So...his asshattery aside, I'm curious why he was kiting the mobs. If any tank happens to catch this post, please let me know if you can give me insight into why he was doing that. On EVERY other time I've done Violet Hold -- I've done it 51 times on all my lvl 80s combined (13 on normal, 38 on heroic) -- no tank has ever kited regular mobs. Kiting Xevozz, sure. That make sense. But kiting the regular mobs that spawn through the portals. NEVER. Why did the tank do this? He was adamant about knowing what he was doing. But I'm hard pressed to understand his reasoning.

Miscellaneous
Nothing much else to note from last night. I did random daily heroic on each toon then spent the evening snuggling with my husband. :)

December 23, 2009

What A Difference A Day Makes!
I have to say, yesterday will go down as one of the most memorable days/nights I've ever had in WoW. So much has changed in less than 24 hours.

Promotion Time
Before we started raiding, our guild leader announced three promotions. I was grats-ing the people whose names were called. Then suddenly I realized the last one was mine. What??? I was promoted so soon??? Yowzah! Just yesterday I was talking myself into being patient while I waited for the possibility of being promoted in a month or so. I was shocked and excited. Woo hoo!!!!

ToC 25 (Priest)
We started in regular ToC 25. Quick and easy run. We had an applicant along with us who was amazed at our speed and efficiency. It really is true...the guild is great. We got to Anub'arak and I held my breath. Would he drop my coveted Misery's End? No! :( But he did drop Armbands of the Ashen Saint and I got them!

ICC 25 (Priest)
Next stop, ICC 25. I half expected to sit out, but luck was on my side and I got in. While clearing trash, I got the Stiffened Corpse Shoulderpads. Item #2 for the night.

Then Lord Marrowgar dropped the Frozen Bonspike. I stopped breathing as I waited to hear the outcome of the rolls. I won it!!!! Item #3. No more waiting for Misery's End! I won an even better weapon. Yay!

As icing on the cake, I reached Honored with the Ashen Verdict and got the upgrade of my ring: Ashen Band of Greater Wisdom. Item #4.

Ulduar 25 (Priest)
We ended the official raids by going to Ulduar to kill Igniss for the weekly raid quest. I had forgotten that he was the only boss in the starter area that I had never killed. I got 4 achievements upon his death: Shattered (25 player), The Siege of Ulduar (25 player), Stokin' the Furnace (25 player) and Hot Pocket (25 player). I got a lot of friendly ridicule for spamming the guild chat with all those achievements. :)

Next up...10 man team.

ICC 10 (Priest)
With all my new healing gear, ICC 10 went even more smoothly than the week before. I noticed an immediate improvement in my healing throughput. Also, my haste jumped almost 200 points and I could feel the difference in my "rotation". Previously I could count on casting PoM, followed by 3 Flash Heals to proc Serendipity. At that point my PoM would be off cooldown. Last night I did the same rotation and when I clicked PoM the second time, it wasn't yet off cooldown. Woo hoo! Haste has changed things for me. Gotta figure out a new rhythm to get into.

We easily got the achievement Boned (10 player). Not really a hard one to get, if your dps are quick to react.

The final boss, Deathbringer Saurfang, dropped Thaumaturge's Crackling Cowl. Item #5 for me that night.

I can't remember any night when I've gotten so many items. My gearscore went from around 5110 to 5344. A jump of over 200 points. Woo hoo! But, more importantly, my SP went up by around 300 and my Int and Spirit increased too. I can't wait to see how well I do in Heroic ToC 25!

Ulduar 10 (Mage)
The final activity of the night was an alt run to Ulduar 10 to defeat Ignis. I hopped on my mage and we downed him so quickly that we got Stokin' the Furnace (10 player).

Phew! What a night!!!! A promotion, lots of loot and lots of achievements. Fun fun fun!!!

Thoughts on Loot Distribution

I've been mentioning my frustrations lately with loot distribution and I thought I'd put some more positive thoughts down. I spoke with a guildie the other day about my being so far behind everyone else and how upsetting it was to see two weapons I need be rewarded to another priest. (I mentioned that in a previous post...I felt I should have gotten one of the weapons, since the priest who got them was just going to trash the first one after he got the second one.) My guildmate encouraged me to take a deep breath and wait. My time for loot will come when I get a promotion.

Here's how loot works in my guild:

Rank: First, your rank matters. So, let's say there are ranks 1-4. 1 is for officers and 4 is for newbies to the guild. I'm currently rank 3. The priest who "got my loot" :) is rank 2. When the two of us are rolling on the same item, he gets it, regardless of the roll.

EPGP Loot Priority: Second, your EPGP loot Priority matters. So, let's say two people of the same rank roll on an item. The one with the higher loot priority is the one who wins it, regardless of the roll. This supports the effort/loot balance.

Roll: Third, if two people with the same rank who have the same loot priorty roll on an item, the one who wins the roll gets the item.

It actually seems fair to me. But it's very very frustrating for those of us in the lower ranks. I still have more than a month to go before I will be considered for a promotion to the next rank. So, as we go into ICC 25, I'm almost guaranteed to get nothing for a while. I will only be eligible for an item if no one of a higher rank wants it. That's not likely to happen, since all the people in the higher ranks are still getting gear there. But, the stars might align...

But, the beauty of the EPGP system is that my loot priority will continue to rise. Even with the weekly decay, as long as I'm getting EP and spending no GP, when I reach the next rank, my loot priority will be higher than everyone else's and I'll get loot right and left. I just noticed this phenomenon when the guild leader posted the latest EPGP numbers. Last week I was near the bottom of the priorty list. This week I'm in the top 5. That's because the higher rank players are getting loot in ICC, thus lowering their priority. It has no effect on me now, since rank is still considered first in loot distribution. But, over the next few weeks as they get more and more loot, their loot priority will continue to lower and mine will continue to rise. When I'm promoted, I'll be near the top on the priority list. Then, I'll get first pick of loot among people of my rank. Woo hoo!

So, does this system work? Let's compare it to how my mage's guild does things:

Whenever we go into a raid, the reward system is a clean slate. How much loot you got last raid does not matter. When an item drops, you roll for main spec and show the item you will be replacing. If there's one person for whom it is a bigger upgrade (based on iLevel), it is given to that person. So, let's say a level 232 item drops. Four people roll on it, three of which have ilvl 226 items and one has an ilvl 219 item. Automatically, the person with 219 wins it. If everyone has the same ilvl, then the highest roller wins.

A friend in my mage's guild pointed out that the likelihood of him getting loot any time soon is pretty low. His gear, although below the level that drops in the raid we were in, is higher than that of our other guildies. So, even though drops are all upgrades for him, they are bigger upgrades for everyone else. He can't win. He won't be able to get items until they pass him up. For example, his gear is all 226. The raid drops 232. Our guildes are mostly in 219 gear. When items drop, they will go to the 219 folks, not the 226 ones. So, those with 219 will jump to 232. Those with 226 will have to wait until the others are at 232 before they can start getting gear. It's demotivating for him. Even though he and I are both waiting for loot, he has to wait for a very different reason. For me, there's a definite date on which it will change. For him, there's no end in sight. He has to wait for others to gear up, which could take forever in a casual guild with semi-regular turnover. As long as there are people with worse gear than his, he can't win loot.

Is this method better, worse or as good as the one used by my priest's guild? A plus side (from a player's perspective) is that it means you always have a chance to get loot -- no waiting until you get to the right rank. A plus side is that it's possible for loot to be more evenly distributed across the raid group. (Though one person in Friday's raid got three items because all of his gear was ilvl 200.) A negative is that good loot can go to a fly-by-night guildie, whereas the method used by my priest's guild pretty much ensures that most loot goes to those members who have proven their intent to stay for the long haul. This helps the guild gear up more evenly, whereas my priest's guild's method favors gearing up the top ranked players.

Is it better to have some ultra-geared members and many not so geared? Or to have no one ultra-geared but everyone around the same level? For example, I'm the lowest geared healer in my guild. My healing output makes that very evident. Is the guild's progression hurting because of this? Is it good to have such a big difference between my output and theirs? I think the answer might be "yes". And, as mentioned above, as soon as my rank changes I will be able to get lots of loot to bridge the gap (assuming it actually drops!). So, in the scheme of things, it's a risk the guild takes. While I'm proving I'm here to stay, they'll continue to gear up their loyal players. Once I've proven myself, I will be brought up (closer) to their level.

Oops, I got distracted. So, I was comparing the two systems and trying to determine if either was better than the other? I think the answer is "no", neither is better than the other. The reason: the goals of the guilds are different. My mage's guild is not focused on progression. They're very casual and focused on having fun and doing what they can. There's no overarching need to be the most progressed guild on the server. So, spreading loot evenly (or as evenly as possible, considering the randomness) is not going to hurt their goals. My priest's guild, on the other hand, is a progression guild with the overarching goal to be better than the others on the server. Loot allocation is very important. We don't want to risk giving a good item to someone who will turn right around and leave the guild (though we recognize anyone, even the most loyal, can do so). Giving loot to the loyal players helps ensure that the guild will continue to progress. And, while loot is going to higher ranks, the lower ranking people are gaining loot priority that will kick in when they get promoted. It works.

Phew! I got that all out. I feel much better about the loot system. I just have to stick with it and look forward to my impending promotion!