Monday Random Thoughts

- A four day weekend gave me a little extra time to play with my new hunter so I ran every LFR.

- My new hunter seems to have exceptional luck when it comes to quest drops.

- My new hunter has the same luck my original hunter does when it comes to gear however.

- So it is not going to be gearing up quick but it sure as hell is moving along the legendary quest line faster than any other character I have ever has.

- I almost finished the sigil part on week one.

- Nope, not kidding, I ended up with 19 of the 20 needed.

- That officially puts my hunter further along the line than at least 6 of my other characters and he just hit 90.

- Even my previous hunter to hit 90, who did the same thing and ran all LFRs, twice, is not that far along.

- Even my druid, who admittedly never does LFR, but raided back when the expansion started and was killing boss on normal every single week is not that far along.

- Maybe this hunter has a little luck at least in one area.

- I have been keeping track of every boss and what he got off every boss, I will add an update post on it at some point with all that.

- I decided to do it because I thought it would be interesting of actually write it all down and see what it looks like in the end.

- With all the characters I play it gets confusing something.

- I'll think I did something on one character when I actually did it on another.

- I ran my two characters currently on the runestone phase through all that could drop it and had decent luck this week as well.

- It seems this was shaping up to be my lucky week for drops.

- Both my priest and my rogue managed to get 5 stones this week.

- Then I went to work on some of the characters on the secrets stage and my luck dried up completely.

- My mage got none, but I did not do them all on him, just queued up for all that could drop it and did the first two that popped up in queue.

- My monk did all of the ones that could drop secrets and only managed to get 2.

- So this was a lucky sigil and stone week for me but no secret love at all.

- I noticed I have 3 characters sitting on a test of valor, and being they are alts I pop on to once in a rare while, like the rest, that is proving to be the hardest part of the quest line.

- Why is that you ask?

- Because there is no set "get this" part of it.

- Sure, there is get 3000 valor, but for me it is so much easier to decide what to do when there are get sigils or get secrets or get stones.

- When I am on one of those parts I log in, queue for appropriate raids, and then go about doing whatever it is I want to do.

- Gathering is best, in my opinion.

- That is why I love having gathering professions on damage dealers.

- They will wait in queue and that gives them something to do while in queue.

- Back to valor, the get 3000 valor just means to cap, which is easy enough, but when I have other characters that "need sigils" or "need secrets" or "need runestones" the idea of just getting valor for the sake of valor moves to the back of the line.

- Even more so being there is nothing to spend valor on any longer.

- I am at or near cap on almost all of my characters.

- I have stooped so low as to upgrading 522 crap that you know you will replace as soon as humanly possible.

- I don't know about you but every time I have to upgrade something that is less than 540 to start with I want to cry, it feels like I am wasting valor.

- There really should no longer be a 3000 valor cap being there is no valor gear or anything else to buy with it.

- Would it really be game breaking to let it build up so if we get lucky one week we have tons to upgrade everything with it?

- It is not like there is anything else to spend it on.

- But better to "waste" 500 valor making a 522 a 530 then to "waste" it by not being able to collect it.

- Even a minor upgrade to a piece you will replace is better than no upgrade at all.

- I have to listen to my own advice, the advise I give other people.

- When someone says they do not have money for gems I tell them to put in the cheap ones.

- A lesser gems is better than no gem, isn't 120 agility better than no agility?  You don't need the 160 if you are having gold issues..

- Plus you get the "bonus" from having a gem in and that bonus is not actually a bonus, it is part of the stat budget, so if you do not get it, as in do not use gems, the piece is actually worth less than its item level would dictate.

- If you have a 502 LFR chest with no gems in it and a 496 chest with gems in it, the 496 chest would be better.

- Gems matter because even little upgrades count.

- So if I know that and if I preach that, why does it bother me so much to upgrade a 522 item?

- I just can't shake the thought of "what if" I have a good week and get a lot of good gear and wasted my valor on upgrading old crap.

- So all my characters are floating in the 2400-2900 range for valor.

- I only spend it when I am in danger of capping.

- That is the only thing that makes sense to me.

- One of the servers I play on was merged not so long ago and it was like a culture shock to see the changes to it.

- Not the difference in size, that is one annoyance all on its own, but the spam whispers from gold sellers.

- I don't think I had one gold seller whisper in years on that server and the other day while on it I got 3.

- Every time I log on to that server now I get at least one whisper from [Blizzarda] or [Blizzardus] or [Blizzardstore] or some other hacker / gold seller trying to pass themselves off as a GM.

- Usually they tell you to go to this web address and log in with your information and you will get a spectral tiger mount or something special to bait you over there.

- I wonder how many people fall for that?

- I am betting enough do, otherwise they would not still be doing it.

- But seeing all those whispers when I had not encountered them before makes me wonder.

- Being I never got them on that server before the merge, that must mean there were not really many gold buyers on that server, hence their absence.

- But being I get flooded with them now left and right when I am on that server it must mean the server it was merged with must have a buttload of people that were buying gold and that is why they are around and already there.

- So I've now labeled that server a gold buyer server.

- I sometimes wonder what is the big deal.

- I can see the rational to buying gold, I really can, even if I have not done so.

- Let say there is something I want on the auction house, one of those trading card game pets or something, for 40K.

- It would take less time for me to "earn" the 40K by buying it than it would to "earn" the 40K in game.

- Basically, in the time it takes me to write this post I could easily buy that 40K gold.

- So when talking time vs reward it makes sense for me to buy the gold and then when in game actually do other things I want to do instead of making the gold in game.

- For some people making gold in game is part of the game, for me it is a byproduct.

- I never actually try to make gold.  It just happens.

- I can make 40K easily, it only takes a little time, but why waste the time when you could buy the gold so cheap?

- So while I have not purchased any, I can surely see the attraction to it.

- There is just nothing in game I really want to buy that I do not have the gold for already.

- Maybe if there were I would consider buying gold, like it seems everyone and their mother did on that one server.

- I can't believe the amount of whispers I get there now.

- It is impossible to log in and not get someone whispering you to sign up for some account and get a free spectral tiger mount.

- Makes you wonder why blizzard does nothing about this stuff.

- I report every one of them, I choose spamming as my option, not sure if that is the right one to choose.

- Would it be cheating?

- The person buying it could be considered cheating if you really wanted to argue that, not the person selling it.

- It isn't a language violation, but if you saw some of the ways they spell things and their broken english maybe that might make sense.

- I choose spamming because there is no other option I think is close to fitting it.

- They need another option.

- ToS Violation.

- And then those get looked at as priority.

- On that server it must be common practice to buy gold because they talk about it in their trade, openly.

- There was some guy spamming trade the other day for hours asking to buy 500K gold for paypal payment.

- He was spamming for the whole 3 hours I was on and when I was on that server later someone asked in trade if the guy looking to buy gold was around.

- Someone mentioned that he got all he needed already.

- So trade knew he was breaking ToS, people from trade were selling it to him, and no one once even said, that is not allowed in game.

- Well, no one from that server, but someone from the server I was on said something and they were ripped and told to mind their own business.

- Makes me wonder how many servers out there are like that out there, ones that so freely break the terms of service in open trade and no one says anything and blizzard does nothing.

- Kind of makes you think if you can't beat them, join them.

- The only thing I think I would consider buying are challenge mode gold runs.

- Not like I am not capable of doing it skill wise, but no one in my guild wants to do them.

- Let me rephrase that, no one in my guild that has the skill to get a gold wants to do them.

- There is one rogue in guild that keeps asking people to do them but he is sitting at a 525 item level and still doing 50K.

- Could you imagine what he would be like in 463 gear?

- I did a few with some random people from guild, only managed bronze because they did not want to reset when we made a mistake, they just wanted to do one run and that was it.

- Hey, I'll take what I can get.

- On the extremely rare occurrence that one pops up in trade looking for people they all seem to ask people to "have gold" to join.

- Excuse me?

- If I have gold already I have no desire to do it.

- Challenge modes have zero replay value, once you did it, you did it.

- I might do it again to help a friend, but that is about it for me.

- Unless you are going for server best times, and if that is the case you are not going to pug it, you will hand pick and develop and practice with a team.

- I can do over 100K single target in 463 gear on short fights like those, I am more than capable of pulling my weight.

- But I do not have a gold so I can not come along to get a gold.

- I did find one CM group one day that was asking for gold and I told them I only have bronze as a tank and wanted to do it on my hunter.

- They eventually took me when they could not find anyone else.

- We went in and did the first trash and first boss and I was doing 51% of all the damage done.

- I whispered the leader and asked them, does anyone here have gold.

- He said, everyone but you.

- I asked, if I am doing more than the entire group combined do you think we can make gold this time?

- He did not say anything, the group disbanded.

- Maybe I am thinking more is needed for gold then really is, because if these people, as bad as they were, could get gold, I should be able to get a group that could do it with like skilled players in a heartbeat.

- So I would not be looking to buy a carry, I would be looking to buy 4 competent people that are actually willing to do it.

- Because I sure as hell can not find them on my server.

- But I looked up prices on those on some places online and they are insane.

- I'd pay 20 bucks per run, no more and even that is already paying too much.

- The only reason I would pay that much is I just want to get it done already.

- We are at the end of the expansion, I should have gold in all of these already.

- I should have had gold in all of these a year ago.

- Oh well, guess it gives me something to aim for, eventually.

- I won't buy a run, I should be able to make one.

- I just have not "tried" hard enough to get a group willing to learn together and get it done.

- So in the end there is no one to blame but myself.

- I can deal with something like that.

- Really hate things you need others for to get done.

- It means you have to rely on people to do the right thing and if I have learned anything in my life it is that you can never rely on anyone to do the right thing.

- In game or in life, that rule always applies.

- Speaking of needing other people, I finally manged to get holding hands done thanks to other people.

- It was the only thing I've needed for the DS meta for a long time.

- The change made to it made it easier of course being you no longer need 10 people to connect the lightning.

- Did it with 4 people total and it was super easy that way.

- Got it first try without even giving it much thought, four people is the perfect link between the posts if you step back a little.

- Three if you go straight across.

- I can't believe we used to do that every week, on at least three characters, and tried it each and every time, and never got it with 10.

- That is because even if I watched multiple videos and read on how to do it, the 9 other people apparently did not.

- See, that is what I mean about hating having to depend on others sometimes.

- Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

- I don't like any achievements that says something like "no one gets hit by xxx" because that requires everyone to be on the ball.

- Everything should be "don't get hit by xxx" so the only person you have to blame for not getting the achievement is yourself.

- I over think things don't I?

- I need to chill and just play sometimes.

- If more characters were lucky like my new hunter was with 19 of 20 sigils in one week, the "just play" option would be so much more attractive.

- Lucky people must really enjoy the game, because whenever I am on a lucky streak I feel like I am really enjoying the game.

- Lucky with drops, lucky with gear, lucky with random groups, when you get lucky the game is fun.

- When you do not get lucky you wipe 12 times on sha of pride in LFR and finally give up logging off for the night even though it is early and you wanted to play.

- Like what happened to me on my lock last night.

- Hey, I can't complain too much, outside of some really horrible sunday groups, I've had a really lucky week.

- And I enjoyed the game this week because of it.

- Well, I enjoyed everything but sunday.

- How is it possible to do under 40K DPS with 10 stacks of determination?

- Like 8 of the 17 damage dealers in that pride group were doing.

- But on the plus side, I got to see my lock almost do 400K for the first time ever thanks to it.

- So even wiping was fun, in a way, I got to work on my strategy for the fight, and I actually started to get pretty good at it.

- Made me realize I need two new macros.

- Best way to get better playing a character is by playing the character.

- As obvious as that sounds it is worth saying.

- So the question of this monday is, how do you manage to do less than 40K DPS with 10 stacks of determination on a fight with an AoE phase that normally inflates damage?

- At least sunday is over, now lets hope monday groups are not as bad.

- As odd as it sounds, the last few mondays I've had some really decent groups as odd as that sounds.

- Sunday has become nightmare day lately.

- Have a good day.