Friday, July 9, 2010

Blacksmithing Leveled to 400

If you're following this at all, you know that I've dropped my 450 Mining in favor of 400 Blacksmithing because of the awesome extra two sockets I get ... Well, I do see a DPS increase of about .5k based on my weekly VOA25 runs. Because my rotation is extremely predictable, and the second fire boss in VOA is a silly 'tank and spank', I can tell you that instead of my usual 10k I do 10.5-10.7k. ICC is a different story due to its inherent variety, but overall I am very happy with the switchover. Now if I could just bring myself to level that miner DK of mine to 65 ...

A word of caution, though ... Unless you have 5-7k gold and a bit of time on your hands, don't start leveling BM. It's a gigantic gold drain!

Also ... Have an Enchanter guildie hang around with you and DE all those greens you'll be making. The mats are worth a lot more than vendor prices for those greens, and you'll be missing out on some gold.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Ready to Solo

I got my T5 twopiece from Tempest Keep!


I got the shoulders and the chest off the side bosses in TK, and, of course, killed the main guy for a chance at the Phoenix mount.

Impressions in next posts ...

Monday, July 5, 2010

The Lurker Fished Out

I got my Lurker achieve!


Turns out, it's very easy to get solo, and without fighting anything!

1. Step 1 - group up with your alt. I normally scream in Trade or ask a guildie to invite me on my bank alt. Then I re-log on my main, ask for invite, and get lead. Then the person can leave and I end up in a raid group with my DC'd bank alt.

2. Purchase a few stacks of Noggenfogger Elixir and a few Elixirs of Water Walking.

3. Enter Serpentshrine Cavern (BC - Zangarmarsh, middle of the Serpent Lake, dive down through a pipe into the oilfang Reservoir). After two elevators, go left.

4. Drink Noggenfogger until 'Slow Fall' procs, drink water walking and jump down. Run to Strange Pool, a few casts, and you'll get it!

Friday, July 2, 2010

Skillscore > Gearscore?

Well, turns out it's possible to pull 5k DPS in the Pit of Saron wearing nothing but greens and blues with a combined Gearscore of ~4,700:


Note I had no enchantments and very few gems ... I strapped on some random greens I rolled on when running heroics, although I did have the 245 T9 twopiece.

More interesting, when I re-ran the same instance in my full Sanctified 264 raid gear, proper talents, gems, and chants, my Recount said 6k. My fail or a scaling issue?

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Halion is Dead ... Yes, Already

I logged onto my mule on Illidan, and lo and behold, people already cleared the new Ruby Sanctum:


Goes to show that people on the strongest progression server in the game don't f*ck around.

Dreaming of Heroic Zod's

According to the spreadsheets, my biggest DPS increase from gear will come from a better weapon. Currently, I am using the Heroic Stakethrower, which is an awesome weapon thanks to its stats (decent agi and ArP) and the socket.

However, unlike Frostheim, I'm not such a big fan of guns ... or Alliance, for that matter. He, playing a dwarf hunter, unequivocally refuses to use bows or crossbows. I, on the other hand, love bows.

In this game, guns are LOUD. Even though there's a way to silence the constant chitty-chitty banging via addons, I would much rather prefer the quiet, elegant 'ffft ffft ffft' of a bow or a crossbow. As you are raiding, you have enough to worry about in-game and on vent, and I don't think people appreciate another loud, obnoxious distraction that never frigging seems to end.

I did some min-maxing in spreadsheets, and turns out that the biggest DPS increase from a single piece of gear comes from upgrading my ranged weapon. It trumps everything, including upgrading major pieces of tier gear to BiS 277's. Since I already have the regular Zod's, the only way to go is straight to Heroic Zod's.



It's such an awesome weapon it makes all the frustration of wiping, grinding, enduring server downtime sooooo worth it.

Here's some items from my wishlist laid out in Zeherah at femaledwarf.com. I called my standard raid gear setup "ArP" because I'm a Marksman hunter stacking Armor Penetration, currently at around 1,240.


First off, look at those 6k DPS values and ignore them. They don't mean actual DPS you'll ever see in-game on Recount. Don't ever relate those numbers to anything you do inside the game, ever. Instead, treat those numbers as an index used to rank theoretical DPS values within the same population of values. In other words, the 6,670.55 of fictional unbuffed DPS I should be doing doesn't actually mean I should stand in front of Festergut, add the 25% charity buff Blizzard gives me, and expect to do 6.7 + 25% = 8.4k.

I instead do a different calculation: (6824.72 - 6670.55) / 6670.55 = 0.023, which means that if luck smiles upon me and we kill LDW in a Heroic 25 AND I outroll 3-5 other hunters in the raid, I should expect an incredible, amazing, massive DPS increase of at least 2%.

After all the stacks, procs, and buffs, that could mean a difference of 0.5-1k DPS if pulling above 10k, especially if intermingling with Volley pulls. On straight Volley pulls I'm scared to think of what this upgrade can mean.

Take a look at the other values in that list. Curiously, the extra armor pen from the 251 twohander off Princes provides roughly the same DPS bump as the heroic Whispering Fanged Skull if used in place of the Herk War Tok (is it "HERKUML" ??? I thought it was "HERKUMI" !!!)

Also, getting my hands on the awesome armor pen trinket that is Sindy's Claw is actually not that great when it stands by itself because after dropping Wodin's I become so hit-starved that I'd have to gem it. Pairing it with the 264 twohander, surprisingly enough, is not as good as just upgrading the weapon by itself because of fancy hit jiggling I'd still have to do. The real surprise for me is the massive 1% DPS bump from just upgrading the helm to its 277 version, most likely because of the meta socket crit bonus.

In general, this list shows the wide array of gear options I have, each providing a definite DPS increase. I can do every version of ICC and still find something I can use!

Well, it took me 4-5 months to finally roll a winning 21 on the normal Zod's in a pug (yeah, I know, for YOU it drops LIKE EVERY TIME), so I am hoping we down LK in our 25 and start grinding those hardmodes!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Lich Damage

That's why he's the Lich King -- Arthas hits Illidan for weapon damage plus 400k.

 

The screenshot came from one of the quests in Icecrown when I was pursuing my Final Goal achievement. In it, I possessed Arthas to appease a little boy who gave me the quest, then proceeeded to beat the hell out of Illidan Stormrage. I wish my DPS meter registered this!
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