Tier 5

Has it really been nearly two months since I've posted? Darn. I guess a love-hate relationship with my guild has been keeping me busy. Love because raiding is fun, and some of the people are cool. Hate because raiding is tedious, and some of the people are annoying as hell.

ANYway, for better or worse, we are moving onto Tier 5 raids now, which is pretty exciting, even if it usually ends up being a wipe-fest. But we've gotten Gruul and Mag's on farm now, and I haven't been inside Kara for months, so what else is there to do but progress?

Of course, that means time to update my wishlist, so here goes:

Head: Cowl of Grand Engineer (Loot Reaver). Or, Spellstrike Hood (10 SpellCloth)
Neck: Dude, I already have the awesomest: Guardian Pendant of Subjugation!
Shoulders: T4 Voidheart Mantle (High King) or better yet, T5 Mantle of the Corrupter (VR).
Back: done for now (Ruby Drape) although something interesting dropped off the TK trash last night. (I lost the roll though, darn.)
Robe: some sweet-ass stuff from Vashj and Kael'thas, but I doubt we'll get there any time soon.
Wrist: happy with Runed Spellcuffs
Hands: Studious Wraps (60 badges)
Waist: While I'm saving for Belt of Blasting (15 Primal Fire, 2 Nether Vortex = 30 badges), I'll take either the Belt of Divine Inspiration from HK or Cord of Screaming Terrors from Lurker.
Legs: The Trialfire Trousers are going to last a while, since it's 10 SpellCloth for Spellstrike Pants or 100 (!) badges for Legwraps of Sweltering Flame...
Feet: doing well with Shadowweave Boots, the next best thing is 75 badges.
Ring: Fused Nethergon Band, 60 badges (sigh); Band of Crimson Fury, Mag.
Trinket: Eye of Magtheridon, from, well, Magtheridon.
Weapon: Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade (2,739 arena points) or Wub's Cursed Hexblade (Dragonhawk ZA)
Offhand: Fetish of the Primal Gods (35 badges)
Wand: Got my Carved Witchdoctor's Stick.

MATS
Badges: 185 (gloves, Belt, ring, off-hand)
Arena Points: 2,739
20 Spellcloth
15 Primal Fire

BOSSES: HK (2), Mag (2), Dragonhawk (1), Void Reaver (2), Lurker (1)

WANT... PURPLES...

I downed Gruul last night. No, that's not entirely true. My guild downed Gruul while I lay there as a useless corpse, watching helplessly. See, I'd been unlucky and ended up near way too many other players during his first Ground Strike / Shatter -- and I didn't have the hit points to withstand it, and apparently also didn't have the DPS to justify a battle rez. So I died after landing about 5 dots on him and then just sat there while my guild 24-manned it without me.

But whatever, I looted anyway -- the Collar of Cho'gall, woo!

So, I have some ultimate loot goals which I've outlined in previous wish-list posts, but today I just want to think about how quickly I can, if not max out my gear, at least get to the point where I'm all purples or very high blues.

Here's what's left that's old and outdated:

Neck: Still wanting one of the neckpieces from Kara (Moroes or trash).
Back: Ruby Drape of the Mysticant from the Prince. -- Dropped last night (5/16)!
Waist: Belt of Divine Inspiration from the High King.
Gloves: Handwraps of Flowing Thought from Attumen or Voidheart Gloves from Curator.
Trinket: Icon of the Silver Crescent for 41 badges.
Weapon: Really, any of the one-handed daggers or swords that drop from the Prince, Gruul, or in Zul'Aman. I'm not picky. They're all drool-worthy.
Off-Hand: Orb of the Soul-Eater for 25 badges. Delicious.
Wand: Carved Witch-Doctor's Stick for 25 badges.

I'm favoring badge gear over random raid-boss drops because you only get to kill the boss once per week, you never know if he's going to drop the item when you kill him, and there are plenty of other warlocks/mages rolling against me in this guild. On the other hand, badges are guaranteed. Too bad I'll now need 91 of them.

A Gruuling Raid

So my wishlist the other day was made up almost entirely of either badge loot or Kara loot, and yet it seems that the guild we are playing with at the moment is more focused on Gruul's Lair (or at least, it has more slots available). I was surprised that MaxDPS hadn't suggested any Gruul's loot for me, so I took another look.

Honestly, there's not much at all for a warlock in GL -- the following are the sum-total of anything useful from the King:

- Belt of Divine Inspiration
- Brute Cloak of the Ogre Magi
- Tier 4 shoulders

and from Gruul:

- Bloodmaw Magus Blade
- Collar of Cho'gall
- Tier 4 legs

The belt, if it dropped, would be better than the Girdle of Ruination not only in DPS but stats as well (and is ranked #3 overall by MaxDPS), so I definitely would want that. Need.

The cloak is far below either of the cloaks I could get from Kara, but would be a vast improvement over what I'm wearing now, so I'd roll on it if it turned up, but then feel guilty because I'd be hoping to replace it quickly. Greed.

MaxDPS puts the Voidheart Mantle above the Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders for DPS, but I respectfully disagree (I wonder whether that ranking is scaled down based on the fact that FS only improves your shadow spells). Besides, I don't need the Voidheart Mantle for the (2) set bonus, and frankly I love the Shadoweave set bonus -- it would take a lot more than an extra 3.5 dps to get me to break up that set. Pass.

Gruul's sword is only slightly above the Staff of Infinite Mysteries from Kara in dps -- less than a point -- and the staff has significantly better stats. Of course, if you're only wielding a 1-hander then you have an off-hand available, but for now, I feel ambivalent about the Bloodmaw Magus Blade. Greed.

The Gruul head piece is below the Voidheart Crown for DPS and doesn't have the Voidheart Raiment set bonus, but until I get the Voidheart Gloves and a diamond for the meta-slot, the crown is inferior. So, I'd take the Collar of Cho'gall, but would expect to replace it. Need (for now).

The Voidheart Leggings are not as good as my newly-acquired Trial-Fire Trousers. Pass.

See, that's why I'm more excited about Kara than Gruul's Lair. Friday night, anyone?

Updated wishlist

Well it seems that the Kara run with the other guild went very well this past weekend (I was very pleased to get both my Trial Fire Trousers and also a Ring of Recurrence). So now with a whole new level of content opened to me, it's time to check MaxDPS.com and revise my wish list a little bit.

Head & Hands: Hoping for the Voidheart Crown, since I can't be bothered to gather Spellcloth for the Spellstrike Hood and besides, I really want the set bonus with Voidheart Gloves. Both from Kara (Prince and Curator).

Neck: Ritssyn's Lost Pendant or Brooch of Unquenchable Fury, PLZ (both from Kara -- trash or Moroes).

Back: Ruby Drape of the Mysticant from the Prince in Kara! (Seeing a theme yet?)

Waist: Belt of Blasting would be awesome, but badge-pricey and I already have my badges earmarked for something else. So instead, Girdle of Ruination, anyone? Lots of Primal Fires, but I can make Shadowcloth easy. Now to find someone who can make it...

Trinket: OMG fucking want this so bad: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29370 Only 41 badges! Also Scryer's Bloodgem once I get the rep (1900 points to go). And I'll keep rolling on those Blessings Cards for the Darkmoon Card: Crusade.

Weapon: Staff of Infinite Mysteries from Curator or the dagger from the Prince in Kara.

Wand: Carved Witch Doctor's Stick = 25 badges.

Totals: a few lucky Kara runs, some Scryer's quests, 66 badges, and 21 primal fires/5 primal shadows (plus 20 days of Shadowcloth cooldowns). Not too hard...?

Joining the Karavan

Yep, I made my Shadoweave set. And then DoS beat Magister's Terrace, finally, and that was nice. And then, I sort of drifted away from Selix again.

Honestly, it's nice to have all those Heroic Badges goals and PvP goals and whatever, but I miss the instant gratification of a new instance where you see new content and probably upgrade at least one piece of gear all in one run. And I got so sick of logging on, asking my guild-mates "What are the heroic and the regular daily instances today?" and being told "Shadow Labs" every single time. I hate Shadow Labs. Also, nothing desirable drops there.

But now, we might actually have a way to team up with another guild and -- holy cow -- RAID. R to the A to the I to the D. Suddenly the game has opened up to me again! (Maybe. If it works out with this other guild.)

So, just for fun, I took a look at the potential loot from Kara. I understand the chance of any one piece dropping is slim, but, YUM.

Like, look what drops just from TRASH in there!

OMG pants. OMG hat. OMFG STAFF!

If I got really lucky in a few Kara runs, I wouldn't have to save all those stupid primal mights for Battlecast or Spellstrike pants/hood after all.

Plus, you know, the encounters sound really fun.

Shadow's Embrace

Tonight was Shadoweave night.

FEAR ME. I HAZ EPICS.

Un-improving my succubus

I didn't post any jokes yesterday for April Fools, but I thought what Blizzard did was hysterical.

Anyway, I've been thinking about talent builds today, was playing around with the build calculator on Wowhead, and came up with this new build.

It's not super-different from what I already have -- mostly just tweaks on the Affliction build to move away from soloing quests and be more useful in group instances, which is what I do most of these days.

The biggest difference is that I'm sacrificing Improved Succubus to gain Shadowburn. Losing ImpSuccubus makes me nervous, since my group relies so heavily on her Seduce for crowd control, especially in those heroics with 6-man pulls. I'm telling myself that even if her Seduce doesn't last as long, I can always re-cast it. But it means losing that CC for the 1.5 second casting time -- and also puts her in danger of running out of mana during a long fight. On the other hand, during recent heroic instances (Slave Pens), she's been getting feared, AOE'd, or the mobs have just been breaking out of Seduce early anyway. So Seduce never lasts as long as it should, and I might not actually be losing much.

I'd like to play around with Shadowburn. As a "dotter," I'm not super-excited about increasing spell crit, and I always seem to end up with +spell crit on my gear anyway, so I didn't care to spend many points in Destruction, but having such a powerful instant-cast should be fun.

I'll probably try it for a few runs and see how it goes. Now I just have to make sure I'm always rolling in shards!

I can haz enchants?

All very well to collect nice gear, but as an enchanter (a bitter, poverty-stricken enchanter), I'd darn well better actually get some benefit from pouring all my hard-earned cash into this profession, and fatten up the gear a bit, as well.

I've been lucky with drops recently and managed to score Spellpower for weapon, gloves and ring. Was hoping for Spellpower to bracers as well, but that only drops from Bloodmaul Geomancers, who seem to be the least populous ogre in all of Blade's Edge Mountains, and of course every other caster/enchanter on the server is also trying to farm them at the same time, so... might be a while for that. (In the meantime, I have stamina or intellect for bracers so I'm doing okay.) Need Thrallmar rep for the +stats to chest, but hopefully all these heroics I'll be doing for badges will make that easy. Scryers rep will eventually get me spellthread and inscription (of the orb) for pants and shoulders. Sha'tar rep required for Glyph of Power for head.

What really confuses me is what on earth to put on my cloak and my feet. There's nothing immediately obvious for casters. All that's really available for cloaks is agility, defense, or resistance (to all, or to one). There's spell penetration, but that only really matters for PvP, which I'm not concerned about. But then, there's Subtlety. Certainly interesting, expensive in Primal Shadows, would be particularly helpful when I'm soloing quests since I always manage to pull aggro off my voidwalker by owning too hard. Requires Exalted with Thrallmar, but heck, I'm grinding that rep for the chest enchant anyway.

Boots? Boar's Speed (speed and stamina) would be fun, but mostly because I get so bored ("boar'ed," haha) running slowly. Vitality (health & mana regen) would be vaguely useful. Apparently both recipes drop in random places so no point grinding for them, really. Or, I could find Fortitude (+12 stam) in the ManaTombs. Seems like luck is the only way to go with feet.

In sum:

Head: Glyph of Power, Revered with Sha'tar
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Orb, Exalted with Scryer
Chest: Exceptional Stats, Revered with Thrallmar
Back: Subtlety, Exalted with Thrallmar
Weapon: Spellpower (have it)
Gloves: Spellpower (have it)
Bracers: Spellpower if I ever have the patience to grind Bloodmaul Geomancers.
Ring: Spellpower (have it)
Boots: *shrug* whatever drops.

Guess I better start grinding those Hellfire heroics!

Wish List

In four days, the (ridiculous) cooldown on making Shadowcloth will finally allow me to create my Frozen Shadoweave Robe, the last piece in my Shadow's Embrace set. So my shoulders, chest and feet slots will be taken care of, once and for all. Now I only have to worry about my (1) head, (2) neck, (3) back, (4) wrists, (5) hands, (6) legs and (7) waist. (And fingers and trinkets, but geez, enough already.)

Head and Legs

For casters who are unlikely to see any raid content, seems like the head and legs are best clothed in either a Battlecast set or a Spellstrike set. I have read a few online debates as to each set's relative worth, but the obvious dilemma is: the Battlecast set has far (FAR) better stats while the Spellstrike set has: spell hit, more gem slots (which translate into more spell damage) and a significantly (at least, in my opinion) better set bonus.

Of course, another important consideration is that the Spellstrike set is made of Spellcloth, which is difficult, time-consuming and costly for a Shadoweave tailor like yours-truly to come by. I have a guild-mate who is a spellcloth tailor, but he's busy making his own epics now, so I'm unlikely to be able to get any spellcloth off him for a while yet.

So Battlecast is the winner for now, meaning I have to gather: 24 bolts of imbued netherweave (not so hard for a tailor/enchanter like myself), 16 Primal Mights (at about 80G each on my server's AH) and 2 Primal Nethers (miraculously already have them). ...oh yeah, and, uh, a tailor who can make them, or else I need to get really lucky on a Steamvaults or Botanica run.

Waist

Until anyone tells me differently, I believe the clear winner for warlock belt is Belt of Blasting, which will cost me: 4 bolts of imbued (laughably cheap), 15 primal fires (at 20G per on AH or farmable), and 2 Nether Vorteces (now, since 2.4, purchasable for 15 badges each = 30 total badges). Quite a few heroic runs in my future, then.

Wrists

Have been eyeing the Runed Spellcuffs for their spell haste, which weigh in at a relatively cheap 35 badges. Did I say "cheap"? I meant "at least 7-9 heroic runs." Oh well, unlike a random drop, at least I'm guaranteed to get to this reward... eventually.

So I just have to find goals for hands, back and neck. And preferably items that don't require badges (or nether vorteces). Who knows: perhaps something will drop during these ~20 heroic runs I'm going to be doing over the next few months.

MrT

So, wow. The guild tried Magister's Terrace on Sat night, for the first time as a guild. (Various individual members had tried PUGs before, with disastrous results. Serves them right for not waiting for us, IMHO.)

We are a small guild and a good team. We have gotten used to cleaning out instances quickly and efficiently. Coming in as spoiled as we were, MrT was a rude awakening. We went in at around 10pm, and finally gave up (at the 6-pull before the final boss) around 1:30am or so. I lost track of how many times I died, but I had to repair twice.

It was humbling. I sure felt humble. I also felt undergeared, slow, and useless as a warlock. The 5v5 "PvP" fight was the worst--I had the responsibility to keep Curses of Tongues, Curses of Exhaustion, Fear, Howl of Terror, Death Coil and my felhunter's Spell Lock on all five targets. Which meant that I needed to be able to tell within a split second of targeting something whether it was a caster or melee, whom it was targeting at that moment, what it was doing, and what the key-binding was for the appropriate spell -- and then tab to the next target and make all the same snap decisions.

Well, I won't go into greater detail because many blogs have already done so. But I did come up with two tips:

(1) On the Vexallus fight (second boss), don't bother keeping off the platform and away from the boss, because although you may (MAY) avoid the chain-lightning, you can't avoid the Overload ability which does damage to all players regardless of position. And if you're sitting on the floor while he's on the platform, you'll be stymied in your attempt to cast spells on him many times by being told "not in line of sight" (even if you can actually SEE him). Then you'll waste precious DPS seconds running up onto the platform to get Vexallus into "sight." So stay up on the platform from the beginning.

(2) Magisters are not seducable. Neither are the mini-bosses who come with Priestess Delrissa (third boss).

Anyway, we were too demoralized to try again last night, but I really need to best this instance for a few reasons. First, because like Wyanna, I hate being "beaten by a computer." Second, because I gave Wyanna (and other guild members) so much crap for PUGing without the guild... and then the guild couldn't do any better. Third, the loot is so sweet. Have already secured myself a Band of Arcane Alacrity and am ever-hopeful for other nice things from Kael'thas himself.

Maybe tonight? Wish us luck.

Hello world.

My name is Selix, and I'm an undead affliction warlock.

I hit 70 in January 2008, and it was an attitude adjustment for me. Up until then, WoW had been fairly linear: go to an area, do quests, gain levels, then once you level high enough, go to a new area, repeat. Suddenly I was stranded out in Netherstorm with no more experience to earn, ever. (Well, until RotLK, obviously.)

I won't lie: I went through an identity crisis, and I drifted away from WoW for a bit. Because I couldn't figure out what the heck I was supposed to do. People advised me that at 70, PvP suddenly becomes the schizzle (I'm on a PvE server), but aside from the occasional BG when I'm in a cranky mood and want to torch some gnomes, I don't care for PvP all that much. At the rate of one BG every couple of weeks or so, was I ever going to save enough honor and marks to earn any worthwhile loot? Uh, no.

So, not knowing what else to do, I rolled a new toon, and then another, and drifted aimlessly around the Blood Elf starting area for a while. (And *gasp* I started doing stuff with my time other than WoW, like watching American Idol.)

But then: I finally leveled my Shadoweave tailoring up to 375, and made my Shadoweave set, and something about having those purple names sitting on my character screen made a light go off in my head, and I realized what my boyfriend had been trying to drill into my head all along, which was that at level 70, it's all about the gear.

PURPLE GEAR! I HAZ IT!

And it's like what people tell you about finding religion: I suddenly had a renewed sense of hope and purpose. What is the point of the game after 70? Well, my friends, it's to gather 1337 lewts.

I have become so obsessed with the finding, studying, and drooling over said 1337 lewts, that I was compelled to start a blog about it. Mostly, to save my relationship, so that I can once again talk to my boo about romantic stuff (like, whether we're going to order Chinese or pizza for dinner tonight) rather than how many Heroics I'll have to run to save enough badges for Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation.

After all, he doesn't care about my new-found obsession with +shadowdmg. He's an orc prot warrior.