How Did Week One of the Gaze Treat You?

After a full week of having the so called increased drop rates from the gaze of the black prince I figured I would discuss how it worked for me and you are free to share your experiences as well.

Before I get on to drop rates I do have to say that the increased reputation gains worked out a lot better than I had expected.  Sure there is a lot more competition for mobs but I was able to get two characters that were on that stage to exalted with basically no effort.

In part that was thanks to the fact I did not camp a spot like I normally would with so many people all over the place. and people fighting to camp the so called "best" farm spots for reputation that they had read about online  I just ran around, I killed rares, I used the incantations, all things that give nice reputation.

With all that running around however I managed to stumble across something that I found amazing.  It is amazing because of the world we live in with the internet.  Whenever you find a good spot for something there is always someone else that finds in and instead of keeping it to their close circle of friends they have to play internet hero and tell the world.

Even if I have a blog and all I am not that type of person.  I found a super farm spot at the beginning of the expansion and kept it to myself, and my guild and friends, for a very long time.  It was only recently that someone else found it and I started to see it talked about.  Now, a couple of months later there is usually always someone there to farm it.

Not saying things should not be shared, but sometimes, well, they should not.  Either way, although I will not share it I will give a hint and you can look for it yourself.  This spot has mobs that give 60 reputation each thanks to the buff.  There are only 7 mobs, all very low health, and they respawn fast.  Not just fast but as you are killing the last one the first one respawned.  And they die near instantly because of the low life.

I found my farming spot and even when the buff goes away this will be the spot of choice.  Even my lower geared characters can take advantage of it because of the 300K health pool of the mobs.  Give it time and this space will be ruined too as soon as word gets out, but for now it is great. 

I found it because there were dozens of people around the center fighting for kills I would just run around and kill things until I found this and noticed I can walk over there and there would not be a soul around.  And want even better?  It is off the beaten path which means no one will see you farming them and so no one will try and take mobs from you.  But with as fast as they respawn, it might not be a problem even if they did.  Even without the buff this will still be my new spot of choice.  Even more so if you are a skinner.  (there is your hint, if you find it, keep it close to the vest, we do not want the best farm spot over run)

Now, to how the gaze has worked for me this week.

Over all I am not very impressed with it.  I am not saying I did not experience any luck with it but nothing really worth writing about as odd as that sounds being I am in fact writing about it.

My monk began the week only needing two runestones so even without the buff there was absolutely zero doubt I would get the cloak this week on my monk, and I did of course, so it is really hard to say how much it "helped" me however I would chalk my monk up to being one of the characters it did help even if it did not need any help so to speak. 

I did ToT 3 first, as I do on all my characters because I am still going for the pet in there and managed to snag both runestones during that run so I just went to part 4 right after to get the heart.  I guess I was lucky that I did not need to do all of them for the two guaranteed drops and then have to do ToT 4 again a second time for the heart.  So did the gaze help my monk, I would like to think so, but then again, it could have just been luck.  Call this one a draw.  Didn't really see a boost, but it could have been there, I was going to finish anyway.

For HH1, Horde Hunter 1, I started my secret collection.  I managed to get 11 secrets which just so happens to be the exact number I got on another character the week before, with no buff what so ever.  So this was a wash at best.  Most decent weeks for secrets lately see you at 8 or better thanks to them adding them to the first 8 bosses of SoO.  So without a doubt I would say that the gaze did nothing for my horde hunter.  So lets call this one a loss for the gaze as it did nothing.

For AH3, Alliance Hunter 3, I was sitting at 11 secrets, as I mentioned I got them last week without the buff.  So this week you would figure that I would be all but guaranteed to finish off the secrets part of the quest right?  Don't jump to that conclusion so fast.  I did.  I was all ready to move along to collecting runestones this week after getting 11 without the buff the week before 9 this week with the buff would be a joke. 

Not only did I not advance to runestones this week, I did not even manage to put myself in a position where I can maximize effectiveness next week because I only got 5.  To maximize effect I would need to get the last secrets I need from the first two ToTs so I am not wasting ones that will later drop runestones for me.  But sitting at 16 now means I need to get 4 out of those 6 bosses.  Basically, the gaze screwed me here. 

Not only screwed me but gave me less than I got the week before without it.  I went from expecting to starting runestones and maybe even getting a couple this week to not even finishing secrets and not even being in a good place to finish them before wasting kills on the bosses that could give me runestones later next week.  In this case the gaze is a failure, not only a failure but a failure of legendary proportions.  Ha ha, get it, legendary proportions.

My mage is my one true success case.  It only needed two secrets to move on and it got those in the first two ToTs, thankfully, so I did not need to waste possible stone bosses.  It did not start out looking good for my mage as I needed all 6 of those bosses to get the two stones.  After doing all the things I needed to do I went back in and knocked out the four that could drop stones. 

After an amazing start of 6 stones out of 7 bosses I ended with 8 stones out of the full 14.  Even if the second half of them did not work out as well as the first half of them I still call this one a success story for the gaze.  8 stones in one week is nothing to laugh at.  I think my first time through on my main, when there were fewer bosses that dropped them and there were no guaranteed drops, I probably didn't have my 8th stone until I was on the 3rd month of the quest killing every single boss that could drop them each week.  1 day is much better than 3 months in terms of collecting.  So yes, this was a huge boost for the gaze for me.

My druid was in need of 5 secrets to move on so unless there was a gift of the gods dropped down upon my druid and 5 of the 6 secret only bosses dropped one I would need to cut into possible runestone drops.  That is exactly what happened.  I only got 2 secrets out of the 6 bosses that could have dropped them without eating up runestone chances.   I tanked the first four for my guild before another tank showed up to take over and got the three more I needed from there.  Three out of four secrets on normal is not surprising and impressive.  Normal is believed to have a higher drop rate to begin with and the forth boss is a guaranteed drop. 

So far it is not looking like the gaze had done anything for me on that character.  You could argue that doing the other 11 bosses I could do for stones however did show some luck was involved because I managed to get 5 in those 11 bosses.  But it was not looking good at first.  I was on a bad luck streak only getting 1 in the first 7 bosses but then getting 4 in a row to finish the week.  So did the gaze grant me luck?  I don't think so.  In the end I just had a lucky streak, there was nothing lucky or increased in the secret collection and nothing lucky about the first 7 stone bosses I killed.  I just managed to get on a lucky streak in gates and got one off each boss to give me 5 for the week.  I can not and will not credit the gaze for this.  It was luck, just as all the bosses before it were just me being unlucky.

So how did the gaze buff work for you this week?

Most of my characters saw absolutely no change, it was just either being lucky or unlucky.  I did see one case that could be argued the gaze works in my mage who managed 8 stones in one week and I did see one case that is proof the gaze does not work, AH3 which managed to get fewer secrets with the buff that it did the week before without it.  The rest of my characters just has the same old basic ever week experience.  No noticeable change at all.

So if you ask me, the gaze is a lie.

Just keep plugging along if you want to get the cloak, do not let the gaze convince you to try.  It is bullshit.  In the end you will either be lucky or you won't be lucky, and the gaze will not help you either way.  If you are lucky you might get 1 more piece, if you are unlucky you will still get nothing.  Now if only blizzard could release a buff that increases your luck, that might help.