Odds & Ends

Rogue -

My Rogue is still pretty much under geared being I do not use it much but I was able to get to start my legendary quest line.  I most likely will never finish it for a few reasons.  One being I do not play my rogue much, two being I am not a very good rogue to begin with and three being there are much better people at playing rogues in my guild and they are the ones that deserve it.

That does not mean I can not go out and get myself the two 397 weapons.  Even if that is all I get it is still a great investment for my Rogue.  With this being the last tier or raiding this expansion the two daggers I get will most likely be the best I ever get anyway and two 397 weapons for 10K is not a bad price.

Too bad that my rogue only had 10K on him.  I now have a broke rogue.  But when you do not use a character much, what do you expect him to have.  Didn't stop me, my rogue spent his life savings.  Now the hard part, doing the quest.  From what I read I will need to win a rather hard battle.  For someone that is a good rogue it would not be much of a problem.  For me, it will be a huge challenge.  Sound like fun.  Challenge accepted.

Priest -

She is one of the few characters I can see really taking advantage of mogging with.  While I have made sure my engineers always have engineer goggles I have not really mogged anything else.  It seems, at least from my experience, that female priests all over are the #1 users of the feature and mine should as well.  I was considering something simple like a black embersilk dress but that does not fit her well.  She is a priest, she needs to be the light and not the darkness.

I want to bring her back to her early days.  For those that never heard me mention it my priest was leveled, until 60, through PvP.  When I started her it was before the LFD system came out or maybe I would have done that too and I was leveling as Disc so while I could quest as Disc is a fantastic leveling spec I felt like I wanted something different so I leveled her through PvP.  She had some awesome outfits while leveling. She looked like the basic biker chick, kicking ass and taking names.

She had some great days in the battlegrounds while leveling.  One time left alone at the stables and five horde coming in she went into attack mode.  She defended the stables all by herself and stood proud atop the bodies of five horde that thought they could take out one little female healer standing there all alone.  She looked bad ass and she was bad ass.  I want to bring her back to those days.

Sure, I said that she should be the look of light but for some reason the kick ass look just looks better.  Now if only I could remember what armor she had back then.  Probably something she made herself.  All my other characters sent her cloth and she did not quest so the only things she ever had where PvP items and stuff she made.  No heirlooms either back then.  So I am sure figuring out what she was wearing wouldn't be all that hard knowing the limited options she had.

I remember heading all the way over to the PvP vendor in ashenvale as soon as I was high enough to buy some items from there.  It was funny because she had discovered nothing at all in the world.  She had no flight paths, she had to make the long trek there.  I actually remember it fondly.  Up until cataclysm came out where we were given all the fight paths instantly now she had a total of 3 or 4 flight paths in all of the old world.  I always found that humorous.

When it all comes down to it, she is the only character I have ever leveled where I actively noticed her look so as such she is the only one I will probably mog.  Not because I want to, so to speak, but because I feel as if I have to.  She just doesn't look comfortable with the stuff they make for priests now.  It seems all too stuffy for her.  She is a down to earth girl.  A jeans and leather jacket type of girl.  Speaking of that, I think I need to get her a motorcycle too.

Druid -

I did the first part of LFR on my bear yesterday and noticed I had less life then I had before.  Took me a little bit to figure out why.  I had upgraded two items last week.  Tier legs and boots.  My meta apparently was not activated any more.  Ah ha, that is what it was. My old boots had an agility/dodge gem in it and the new boots I put in pure agility.  That was the difference.  So I put in a agility/dodge gem and my bear is a buffer bear now.

I can't believe that I did not notice that.  I am usually good like that making sure that everything is correct.  Oddly enough, no one said anything to me either.  People love to point out other peoples faults and I am sure that if someone saw it I would have been given the standard noob and l2p lines for missing something that simple. 

Didn't happen but I still called myself a noob.  We all make mistakes sometimes and with meta gems it is easy to make a mistake like that.  I am sure I am not the first one that broke a meta gem activation and I will not be the last.  Glad I found it before someone else did.

Red Gems -

With as many characters as I try to keep up to date and all the new gear out there I am running low on my stock.  There is no cheap way to restock right now at the moment.  Perhaps I should take advantage of the long queue time for tanks in the LFR right now and get some mining done.  Both my paladin tank and bear tank are miners. 

I did that the other day, gathering 244 obsidian ore while waiting.  I have a killer farming spot where there is never anyone and they respawn fast so it is constant mining.  Being it is under water I use my druid for it.  Instant seal is awesome for underwater mining.  Even if there is someone else there I can easily out pace them.  They need to mount up again, I am instant seal.  They need to fight mobs that they run into or they can't mount, I switch to bear, stun, mine, switch to seal and swim away.  Mining underwater is the way to go for me.

I choose to mine obsidian ore instead of elementium for a few reasons.  One is there is a lot less competition.  Two is that the obsidian breaks down into more uncommon gems then elementium does.  Three is that I have the great place to do it with my druid.  Four is with my transmute masters if I get a lot of uncommon reds I can really clean up on the red rares with a little luck.  Sadly, the last time I went out and prospected those 240 ore I only got 5 red uncommon gems.  Bad luck sucks.

I was thinking of buying the uncommon ones on the market but at 70-100 gold each it is still a waste of gold in my opinion.  I have to wait for 15-20 minutes in queue anyway.  Might as well farm it and put that waiting time to good use.  Red gems are going for 400-500 however, so with a transmute master I can get lucky and make some gold but I am not really interested in making gold.  Making gold this expansion is easy.  I am interested in being a cheap elf and getting things as cheap as possible.

Some might say just make the gold and then spend it.  I am a horder.  If I make the gold I want to keep the gold.  Seriously.  I hate spending it.  Not sure why, it is not like I need all that gold for anything.  I just like having it if some day something pops up I want to spend it on it is there.

I think the gem design this expansion was done horribly.  Outside of shield tanks which use mastery mostly all my other characters need red gems.  Bear is agility. DPS is agility, strength or intellect.  Healers are intellect.  All reds.  They made red the only gem worth using and thus created a huge market for them and made all other gems basically useless.

10K DPS -

When doing the LFR yesterday on my hunter and my druid it had me wondering how it is possible to have a 372 item level and only do 10K DPS.  Even if you cheated your way in with 100% PvP gear I think it would be nearly impossible to only pull 10K DPS.  Even as a tank I pull more then 10K DPS.  There were two fights where I was not the lowest DPS as a tank.  That is really sad.

Where is the self respect of these players?  I know when I was first gearing up new characters I would have never even considered entering the queue for a heroic unless I could pull 8K.  I figured 8K was the acceptable number to be doing at entry level in a heroic and I was not going to ask to be carried or not give it my best.  Anything less would be me not trying enough.

I suck at my rogue, you have heard me say it many times.  I wanted to play a little on my rogue so I made sure I spent some time on the dummy learning and getting comfortable with my rotation.  Sure, nothing works the same in reality as it does in practice, but I felt if I gave it my best then I would be okay.

I did 9K in my first heroic.  Not great but acceptable.  I wasn't asking anyone to carry me.  Sure, I did get a tank that was doing more insult me for being carried but he was just a blow hard jerk.  9K in a heroic is just fine and that tank can go screw himself for all I care.  I was proud of what I did.  I went in and did not ask to be carried.  I pulled my own weight.

Why can't everyone be like that?  Carry your own weight.  It is not much to ask.  People are not asking you to do 20K+.  They are just asking you to pull your own weight.  In all 372 gear and the content we are speaking about, LFR, I think 15K is a fair benchmark for pulling your own weight.

Sure, people that know what they are doing will do more then 15K easily in 372 item level but people that are at least attempting should be able to pull 15K.  Anyone under 15K is just not trying.  Heck, even when I am tanking if I do under 15K I think I did bad.  I have been pulling 13K on my tank.  I need to step it up.  Yes, honestly, I should be doing more.

The only thing worse then the 10K people in the LFR are the idiots that need to nerd rage over them doing 10K and winning something while in the group.  Had a group where a DK doing 10K won a token and someone had to start spamming the recount numbers over and over saying how he did not deserve them and it is the games fault for letting bads win and bads be there and... oh my god shut the F up. 

It is only a game, you can play it again next week or how about this, you can do the real thing and get the real item instead of the raid finder item.  Sure, I agree, the DK did not deserve to win, hell, he did not even deserve to be there, I do agree with you but there is no reason to make a fuss over it.  Chill the hell out, nerd rage is not an admirable trait and you should stop it.  If you must say he did not deserve it, say that and then move on.  No reason to do more then say one line if you really feel that complaining is required.

I think I would rather have the 10K people instead of the people that rage over it.  I think blizzard should find a way to auto remove AFKers, this means people that just auto attack, and a way to remove anyone that posts anything from recount.  Seriously.  Posting recount should be a system kick.  Posting it 10 times in a row while raging should be a 24 hour game ban.

Steady Shot -

I am thinking I need to rework my rotation on my hunter a bit.  I got beat by a hunter doing a steady shot rotation.  Do you know the steady shot rotation?  It dates back to BC when hunters where one button wonders.  Press steady shot, keep track of the swing timer, press steady shot again.  One ability was all they needed only that now you do not need to watch swing timer any more, you just spam it.  I checked his recount and he never had a serpent sting, never had a chimera shot.  His damage was from steady, the bleed, aimed on proc only, auto shot and wild quiver.  That's it.  Did not even use kill shot when in kill shot range.

First off, how fun could that conceivably be?  Hitting steady and then aimed on proc and that's it.  He did not beat me by much.  Admittedly I could have done better myself, I did 24300 and he did 24800 but he still beat me.

I am tempted to do this and see what I end up with.  He must have a hell of a lot more gear then I do to beat me doing basically nothing the whole fight.  If he doesn't, I think hunters need to be reworked.  No rotation should ever be that simple.  Seriously.

I think I am just jealous.  Jealous that he got the same numbers I did and he didn't actually have to do anything to get it while I worked on trying to do my rotation the best I could and timed things and got beat.  Hell yes, I am jealous.

Did something change that I do not know about?  Is this really the new marksmen rotation and everyone is keeping it a secret from me?  Share the love people.

Either way, I just can not see how that only could be better then mixing in other shots.  At the very least keeping the sting up refreshed by chimera should be better then that.  Maybe it was just a gear issue.  I'll have to take a visit over to female dwarf and check out what type of gear would be needed to get that high just needing steady shot.  If it is a gear issue, then I am still jealous.   My poor hunter has only gotten into one DS so far.  Still seems like I will be tanking and healing more then I am huntering.

Taunting -

I've gotten so used to the paladin super aggro that I forgot where my taunt was.  I have righteous defense set up to be a right click on heal bot (yes I use healbot while tanking for quick and easy targeting) but my heal bot bugged out for some reason and someone grabbed aggro on a mob.  I went into panic mode.  Holy crap.  What is my RD bind?  What is my hand of reckoning bind?  Where are the buttons so I can click them even?  Ah, where is anything.

Don't get me wrong.  I have RD and HoR keybound but I have not needed to use them in, well, ever.  RD is usually the only thing I will ever need and that is tied to right click on heal bot.  Just goes to show you that key binds are completely useless if you do not remember where the hell you bound the things.

I went looking all over my skills like a mad man, found it and clicked it and all was well after that.  It did send me into a panic.  Seriously, as a tank I have one main duty.  Keep aggro.  If I do not do that then I am useless.  While it was never an issue, I even got the mob before he made it to who he was going to, so no one else even took damage when I lost aggro, I still feel as if I failed at my job.

I have to rebind my hand to an easy to remember position at least.  Sure, I might only use it once every 1000 pulls but I should make sure it is somewhere I'll remember if I need it.

When it first happened and I started looking at my abilities the thought flashed through my mind that I do not even know what the image for the taunt looks like.  How over powered is that?  I lose aggro so rarely that I can't even tell you what hand of reckoning looks like.

Legendary  -

Our guild had it good with deciding who gets to assemble the legendary first this expansion.  With the three main people we considered eligible for the first caster staff it worked itself out because one person was busy with work issues when it started, the other passed being he knew he could not have 100% attendance leaving the third person to be the one to get it.  No executive decisions needed to be made there.  Great for guild leadership.

The second was easy as well.  While we did have three rogues that where mains, only one raided with us.  The other two were rarely if ever in any raids.  If it ever came up we would have just said that the person that has been raiding with us would get it, but it never came up.  Having only one main rogue helped.  We have 4 reasonable rogue alts that might get a second one if we ever get around to it, which I doubt, but as alts, no one really cares much.  Another win for the guild leadership. 

When things work themselves out there is no need to make decisions which means there is no chance for drama.  I love the drama free life.

However, legendary weapons are the bane of all guilds.  I've seen more then one guild disband when a legendary comes out and there is fighting over who gets it first.  I personally think all legendary items should be for a single class only.  With luck most 10 man guild will have little or no problem if that was the case.  If it where a per class and spec thing then making the decision is a non factor.

I worry about what would happen to my guild if a hunter legendary ever came out.  We are full on hunters.  We could field a 25 man with just hunters probably, all over 20K DPS hunters too, so it is not like we have a group of totally bad hunters.  A few do not raid often, so telling them they can not be first would probably not create drama.  Five have other characters they raid with predominantly so that makes them a non issue as well.  Two more are part timers.  Even myself, as a main hunter find myself in the position of being on a tank or healer more then I am on my hunter.

For as many hunters as we have and as many good hunters as we have, there are none that I think should be first in line.  Except for me selfishly saying myself.  Remember that I am only on a tank or healer to help the guild otherwise I would be on my hunter with 100% attendance.  The only hunter in the guild that could say that.

However, you know if anything like that happened there would be more drama then it is worth dealing with.  The raid leader can not ever take the first legendary unless he wants to hear people cry.  Not to mention, if I where to do that I would always need to be on my hunter so who would play fill in tank and fill in healer.

I personally hope that they do not make a legendary hunter weapon.  It would surely destroy our guild.  So many hunters, all would say they deserve it.  It would cause more problems then it is worth.

As much as I might hate luck based legendary weapons, I am looking at you tempest keep, I think they are better, much better.  No fighting for it.  In a casual guild anyone that can use it can roll for it.  In a hard core guild that wants to make a priority list of who gets it first, they can still do that.

The luck based system would also return legendary items to legendary status.  On my server, with crap progression (heck, if my guild can be top 10 on our side sometimes and we only raid 2 hours a week progression) it seems like every caster and their mother has a legendary. 

I can only imagine what a high progression server would be like.  They would be pugging legendary weapons left and right.  I say put the legendary back in legendary and make it actively hard to get but still attainable by anyone that can down last bosses and the only way to do that is make it a 1% drop.

One bad thing about that way for me.  That means I would never get it.  My luck sucks.

I guess that is enough babbling for now.  Be well all.