General Update (complimentary hassles inside!)

Well. A lot has happened over the last few days.

I joined a larger guild with my druid to raid 25-mans. The following two days, we cleared Naxx-10 (Monday and Tuesday), and I got some much needed upgrades. I'm sitting about 1.5% under the hit cap, so I'm still debating on what to cut in favor of hit gems/enchants.

I started a priest. He's level 10. I'm not sure if this character will weather my intolerance of leveling or not.

My warrior has started doing timed runs of Strat for the mount. This is awesome. I was even able to sneak my druid in on one to get the achievement. I'm trying to decide what to get next with my badges. Possibly the mammoth mount.

Old-world and Outlands achievements have started becoming very popular among those who frequent the trade channel. I'm not sure if this trend will continue, but I'm sure I'll pick up what I need for the Classic and Outlands Raider ones at some point. And then move on to the Dungeon Master and Heroic Dungeon Master for each as well. I guess the only achievements I'm not too interested in are the PvP ones for now. And possibly the holiday ones. Those get to be annoying after a bit.

I'm really happy that we're about to start doing the 25-man raids. I've hit a wall with gear for both my warrior and druid until I can get the heroic raid drops, or in the case of my druid, some of the more obscure heroic drops.

All-in-all I'm very happy with this expansion so far, except for the players (as always). Every time I get on the forums, be it the realm forums, the class forums, or the role forums, everyone is complaining about how they got the shaft somehow. I'm hoping that this means that everyone in-game is happy and playing instead of on the forums complaining, but I sort of doubt it. Maybe that's just the skeptic in me.


And of course, the big news for this site is the domain name. I'm still fighting with GoDaddy's setup, and am playing around with WordPress a bit as well. Bottom line is that I want to have the archive of this blog transferred if I can when I get http://www.infamousnoob.com pointed to it. Right now I think it's just some spam that GoDaddy put up. I'm very unimpressed with them so far. Come Monday I might just have to call them and have them walk me through the setup if I can't figure it out on my own. I don't even know if they offer that kind of service, but for as convoluted as their process is to navigate, they absolutely should.

So there's my snapshot of what's happening now. I'm very hopeful that I can have a real site up and running before school starts, and maybe even get some playtime in, too. ;-)

My Class Imbalance

So. . .

I'm still plodding along with my druid and warrior. I finally got the [Essence of Gossamer] from heroic Azjol-Nerub last night and replaced my [Sonic Booster]. This puts me up to a solid 27111 health unbuffed, while keeping ~37% dodge+parry (before diminishing returns) and 20ish% block. All of the drops in Naxx-10 are either side-grades, or minor upgrades, except for tier pants and shoulders and a pair of boots.

My poor, poor druid on the other hand can't seem to get any gear to save his life. I still have a half dozen or so relatively significant upgrades from heroics that I can get, and of course everything in Naxx-10 is zomg good compared to what I'm wearing. I did manage to get my enchanting up to 440 though, so I can do all of the enchants from the shard vendor. But my pitiful 1550ish healing when specced resto, and 1660ish damage when specced balance are churning out numbers that I would yell at anyone else for having. But I can't get any upgrades from normal instances (except for a couple wonky trinkets that are too good for where they drop), so I feel sort of stuck.

I was amazed at Northrend when I leveled through it with both of my characters. It felt very natural to progress, and I never felt like I had "strayed" into a high-level zone that I shouldn't have been in. My warrior continued this progression all the way through Naxx. I've never felt like I wasn't geared enough to tank something on him. But my druid makes me feel like I missed a step somewhere. I keep looking at gems and enchants thinking that I missed a +150 spellpower upgrade. My glyphs are for resto, but I don't believe that swapping them to balance ones would increase my dps by the 500 or more that I need. All of the gear from normal instances are downgrades, but the heroic instances kill my tanks when I'm healing, or just leave me sputtering at 1500 dps. Maybe I just need more practice like my holy pally brother keeps telling me.

In any case, druid gear is what I'll be doing this week. I think another 2-3 solid upgrades, and I'll be set for Naxx.

On Being 80, Heroics, and Death Knight Professions

I'm back!

Well, I never really left. I just didn't have anything worth saying for a while. WoW has been exciting and fun, but there's nothing new to say that wasn't said a million times during the beta. But in an effort to combat blog silence, I decided to make a post about my progress anyway.

I've been doing a lot of heroics (as many as I can) on my warrior. He's got a decent set of gear now, and I'm looking to try to get him in Naxx. As soon as I get the 140 Emblems I need (of which I'm at ~50), I'll get my T7 gloves and chestpiece. Somehow the defense trinket from normal HoL has eluded me so far, and I still go in there when I'm not getting Emblems, but I think it might just be one of those pieces I miss.

My druid has sort of been shelved for now. I'm not sure whether it's the fact that he's resto, so can't kill anything without a lot of work, or that I've got a good rhythm down with my brother and girlfriend for knocking out heroics on my warrior. I still try to get him out to do the cooking daily quest and mine up more saronite (BOO to the last 5 points of engineering), but there's not a whole lot that I really want to do with him right now. I think once we get more 80s in the guild he'll become more useful, but with only one heroic "group" (6 80s in guild, I think - 7 if you count me for both of mine) we only need one healer. And my brother's paladin is way better at that than my druid.

I still have a couple zones to do quest-wise on my characters. My druid is pretty much done with everything except the faction quests in Sholazar for either the Frenzyheart or Oracles and still needs to do some quests in Icecrown. My warrior needs about the same Icecrown quests, but hasn't done more in Sholazar than getting the flight point set up. To be honest, I'm not in that much of a hurry to get them done, either. I'm sure I'll have some time to burn once I finish getting my heroic gear worked out and I can putz around questing then.

Oh, I do have a death knight. Just like everyone else. Mine is only 58 though, and I haven't even decided on professions. I mostly just wanted to do the questline in the starting zone and be ready to pick him up at some point in the future. Although with the appearance of the Darkmoon Faire and the Northrend deck trinkets, I might just take him herbalism/alchemy to get the eternal life that's required for inscriptors (scribes?) to make the cards. Oh, and to transmute my meta gems so I can get my jewelcrafting leveled. But I really don't want to level through Outlands again right now. I spent way too much time there in the last year. So that might be a while coming.

So that's a snapshot of my WoW status. Hopefully it will change rapidly so that I have something interesting to post here soon. :)

Northrend! It's here! And it's . . . already populated with 80s?!

I've been working at leveling my druid since the release. I quest with my girlfriend (a hunter), and we've been breezing through zones. Borean Tundra? Check. Dragonblight? Check. Grizzly Hills? Check. . . well, almost. We hit 75 tonight, but I can't help but feel that we're still falling behind. The big horde guild on our server whacked out Naxx this afternoon (the "big" alliance guild is a joke comparitively. . . it makes me a little sad), and I can't help but feel that I'm missing the leveling curve and won't even have the chance at 25 mans. Not that I'll be doing a lot of them, but I would like to have the opportunity there to not take if I choose. I don't want to be locked out of them because I was just too late.

But then again, as I look around at everyone else leveling, I don't see many people over 73 or so. Tons of people in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Not so many in Icecrown and Zul'Drak. So maybe there is hope after all. I see bloggers posting about hitting 71 and 72. I see lots of tips on how to make enough money to afford training - which at 15-20g per spell per level isn't cheap, but not outrageous - and I see gearing guids for leveling. In my mind though, whatever gear you had on you when your soft little feet hit the beaches of Normand. . . I mean Northrend is plenty to carry you through until the quest rewards replace them. Instances drop ludicrously powered gear for how hard they are to do. Quests give 5-10g per, and that's more than enough to cover repairs and training. Hell, I even got myself a genuine [Repair-o-Mount] almost right off the bat and I haven't really missed the cold, hard cash.

I guess the best I can hope for is to just level through Northrend at the pace that I want to, and see what's waiting for me when I hit the level cap (again :) ). I've been getting enough cobalt to fuel a small army, so that's exactly what I'm doing with it. I've hit the point where I need saronite with both engineering and blacksmithing, used the crappy green armor from the blacksmithing to fuel my enchanting, and sent the extra ore off the be prospected into shiny new gems that get sold on the auction house for obscene amounts of gold.

All-in-all, I'm very happy with how things are going. I just don't want to get to the end of leveling and find out that if I had taken my time and leveled all my characters together I would have been just as well off. So here's to you, Blizzard. For another great piece of interactive video entertainment. And if you ever have a job opening, I'm very good at fetching coffee. . . .

A Summary of Suggested Paladin Stat Change

I've been running some numbers to determine how to homogenize the plate armor for paladins - specifically holy paladins - so that spellpower plate is phased out, much like feral attack power is being worked towards. With the conversions I've worked out, the combination of a spellpower 1h and shield will still be superior, but trinkets, rings, and necks will be a toss-up between strength and spellpower. So without further ado, here are the conversions:

1 str -> 2 SP, 1 int
4 stam -> 1 mp5

With these conversions (at 70, at least), a retribution pally with 1800 attack power and ~10k health will have (when specced holy) about 1200 spellpower, ~10k mana, and 175 mp5. I haven't looked at the conversion for prot yet, but without real numbers I think that the current talent can be reduced to 10% of stamina from 30% so that the str -> SP can be baseline. The str -> int and stam -> mp5 can be deep holy - at least 30 points. Sheath of Light could probably be done away with, or simply reduced to the HoT portion.

This opens up a door to new healing styles, since holy will have a significant amount of attack power. Healing spells based on damage done to an enemy, or similar engaging mechanics. Also a big bonus is that ret/arms gear now becomes ret/arms/holy gear. The dependece on spellpower doesn't make me too uncomfortable, since the weapons/shields will still be shared by elemental/locks/mages/priests. The same goes for jewelry and trinkets.

Of course, there's nothing inflexible about these numbers, and I haven't thought of every possible combination of gear that might make either ret or holy completely overpowered. I'd like to get this posted to the healing forums and get some feedback on it, but I think I'll need some more number crunching first.

Quick Note About a Pally Change I Came Up With

I had an idea last night about how to keep holy paladins able to solo while allowing ret to have seals and judgments nerfed for whatever reason.

1. Put two talents of however many points into holy. One that has some conversion of strength->spellpower and the other that converts stamina->mana/5. Exact conversion rates can be determined later.

2. Scrap all plate spellpower gear.

3. Profit!

The basic idea here is twofold. First, holy paladins are the only spec in the game now that has a set of gear all their own. Second, it's very flavorful to have a "holy warrior" type character that can heal more the stronger he is, and can last longer healing if he has more stamina.

Using str/stam/crit plate dps gear, the holy pally would have spellpower/mp5/crit which is exactly what they're after. If they stack too much tank gear, then they can heal forever, but they lose spellpower. This may not be a complete fix for the entire class, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

New Gear, Just a Year Too Late

Last night my guild did an odd thing for us: we voluntarily switched up our Kara run with several alts. And we didn't have any wipes (except for a dumb mistake on my part when I pulled a group before taking out the patting Stagehands on the way to Opera). This earned us a three hour (give or take 5 minutes) run, and 22 badges.

I used those badges to pick up the last piece I need for tanking on my warrior before WotLK: [Girdle of the Fearless]. I still have the [Devilshark Cape], but I don't see that going anywhere until I hit Northrend. [Slikk's Cloak] is better, but it's also another 35 badges. And I'd lose some of my ever-dwindling block value, so I think I'll just hold out for a WotLK variant.

I'd like to scrape together another 40 badges on my druid to get some [Grovewalker's Leggings], but I'm not sure if that'll happen before I make the plunge to the Icy North.

Incidently, it looks like with the change to spellpower, healing is ending up just barely on top. Presumably the +81 healing and +40 damage enchants are the "same" ilevel, but while the +40 damage just goes straight across, the +81 healing turns into +42 (or 43, I can't remember) spellpower. Since I want to heal anyway, it won't hurt my feelings to have gear itemized for that, but it's something to keep in mind before the patch.

Here's looking forward to achievements!