Tuesday night our raid team formed and headed off to the new instance hoping to see and down Lord Jaraxxus, the newly-released 2nd boss of Trial of the Crusader. I was excited as this would be my first time inside the new dungeon.
Our RL calmly (as always) explained the strategy for the first “boss”, Northrend Beasts, and despite having a couple newbies involved (myself included), we one-shotted them. Next up was the new guy, Lord Jaraxxus. Again, we heard the explanation and then went out and kicked his butt. Somewhat surprisingly, he really didn’t seem to have all that many tricks up his sleeve and we one-shotted him, too.
I wasn’t all that interested in most of the loot, except for one item that dropped off the beasts, Collar of Unending Torment. I took it, largely because I was the only one in the raid who could benefit from it. Since 3.2 spreadsheets aren’t out yet for rogues, I had no idea if it would really better than what Ofn has been using. However, it turns out, as I suspected, it was indeed an upgrade.
After ToC, we headed to Ulduar to begin the new week’s raid. My RL knew how badly I wanted FL+4, so when he announced we would give a couple of tries, I was very excited. Our first attempt didn’t work out so well, but we got it on the 2nd try. Thank you, everyone! Of course it wasn’t done just for me, several others got the achievement as well and benefitted from the loot. However, I was, and am, still very appreciative of everyone’s effort.
We then moved forward and downed Razorscale and XT and called it for the night, and I had time to reflect on the achievement and my attitude about it. Very frustrated at first, later resigned to the thought that I might never get it, and then satisfaction at getting it. I struggle with being patient in all facets of life, and this served as another in a long list of lessons regarding the need to just chill out about stuff. I’ll try to do better in the future.
This week’s AH win: Really not much to report here. After I sold the bulk of gems prospected from my massive titanium ore hoard, I’ve been back to my bread & butter enchanting mats and bags. I guess the win is that , with the new dungeons out, and new emblem system out, players are getting a lot of new gear, which is translating to high demand for enchanting mats. Which is good in my book. :-)
The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
85° F — hot, hazy & humid
Showing posts with label Ulduar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ulduar. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Roller Coaster
So last Tuesday was patch day, with 3.2 hitting during the maintenance period. Generally speaking, this was okay with me. I kind of wanted another week to work on some things, but it wasn’t a big deal.
What turned out to be a big deal, however, was the extended maintenance time. I had planned on, even needed, the servers to come near their usual time, in order to work out issues with my addons and deal with re-gemming all my gear given the release of epic gems. Alas, with the server downtime extended by hours, I could not prepare like I wanted to, and I became concerned about my involvement in that evening’s raid.
Sure enough, when the servers finally did come up, I had loads of issues with addons. Plus, I was trying to sort things out during the worst possible time of day for me—early evening, when supper is getting made and the kids are acting crazy and I’m dragging a bit from the work day. I was grumpy and couldn’t focus. I finally nuked enough addons to be able to log in with a mostly uncluttered screen, but then endured the slow loading of the server dealing with the post-patch rush of players trying to get on—magnified by the large number of dorks from other servers logging on to AOS because their own realms were still down.
After things settled a bit, and I checked mail and auctions, I headed over to the JC trainer to pick up some epic gem recipes as step 1 in my 3.2 ore/gem plan. As I entered the room, the sheer number of players in there again slowed my screen to a crawl. Then, there were so many players around the trainer, that I couldn’t even see him! But I finally managed to click on him and purchase several recipes, starting with ones that would benefit Ofn the most.
Following my purchases, I left the room to begin learning the recipes in peace outside. But what’s this!? The recipes require JC 450 skill!?!? Argh!!! How incredibly frustrating! With all the planning I had done re: 3.2 and ore/gems, and I had missed the simple fact that Ofn needed to be max JC skill.
Fortunately, he was at 444—not too far away. However, as I began to try and figure out what I needed to do to get those last points, visiting the AH to buy materials, I realized that other players had had the foresight to know that there would be people like me, who would need certain mats to max their JC skill. I was quite upset with these people. Mats that only the day before had been reasonably priced, were now hundreds of gold; sometimes even for only 1x of something!
Irritated, I reviewed again the various mats of recipes that would get Ofn to 450 JC. Scrounging through my bank and my alts, and using some of the precious titanium ore I had been hoarding, I managed to finally hit 450 and move forward with the epic gem recipes.
However, a *lot* of time had been lost. Being unable to really focus on the problem had really dragged out the solution. Faced with less than an hour to go before raid, and not having dealt with raid addon issues at all, I reluctantly told my RL that I would either be late to, or not make, the raid. I held out hope that, with the new patch and addon issues, the raid would be delayed or postponed if enough players were affected. NOT.
I logged off to spend some time with the kids and put them to bed, logging back in 7 minutes after the scheduled raid start time, having resigned myself to using the basic Blizz interface for the night, only to find that the raid was full. Compounding this, they were not in Ulduar at all, but in the new instance, Trial of the Crusader. My night did not seem to be getting better, and indeed, PVE-wise, it got worse. After downing the (currently) only boss in ToC/10, the raid then went to Ulduar and downed FL+4, getting that nifty achievement. Though appreciative of, and happy for, my teammates in that accomplishment, I was now dismayed that I wasn’t there. The reports were that it was pretty hard to do, and I fear that, like my 8-man Naxx achievement, there may not be another opportunity to do it. /sigh C’est la vie, I guess.
Determined not to dwell on this, I turned my attention to my 3.2 ore/gem plan. From the very earliest information about epic gems being prospected from titanium ore, I had begun to purchase the ore in large quantities. Of course the price had gone up when miners realized that people like me would being stocking up, but even so, the prices were reasonable, especially in light of where ore prices are now, post-3.2. But, in any case, through the weeks leading up to 3.2, I kept purchasing, and so, when 3.2 hit, I had 40 stacks of ore, representing about a 5k investment, ready to prospect.
Setting up my “prospect titanium ore” macro to my mouse button, I then clicked 160 times, watching the gems appear. 30 epics, tens of rares, hundreds of uncommons and about a hundred powder later, I was done prospecting. What a haul! I used some gems for Ofn’s gear, but cut almost 20 epics and most of the rares and headed to the AH. Feeling much more hopeful and satisfied, I headed out to the Argent Tournament to do all the new dailies and buy the new Hippogryph mount. Later, I worked on getting addons updated and setting up new ones.
When I logged in the next day, I had made over 3k from the sale of epic gems alone, and by the end of that next day, the total had risen to over 4k gold. By the end of the week, having sold almost all the epics and rares, I had pulled in almost 10k gold. Not bad for a 5k investment.
For the rest of the week, I tried to do as many heroic dailies with Ofn as I could, to grow the pile of Emblems of Conquest and start collecting Emblems of Triumph; doing the Argent Tournament dailies as I’d like to eventually have all the mounts and the pets; and doing the JC daily quest to keep gathering the JC tokens for the purpose of continuing to purchase the epic gem recipes.
I am still concerned about achieving FL+4/10, but can’t—and won’t—worry about it. If it happens, it happens.
This week’s AH win: I covered the big one already in this post, but a secondary win was the abundance of uncommon-quality, uncut gems available in the AH at cheap prices. I’ve been buying them in bulk, and, through their use as mats for other things, I’ve been quintupling my investment!
The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
75° F, mostly cloudy with high humidity
What turned out to be a big deal, however, was the extended maintenance time. I had planned on, even needed, the servers to come near their usual time, in order to work out issues with my addons and deal with re-gemming all my gear given the release of epic gems. Alas, with the server downtime extended by hours, I could not prepare like I wanted to, and I became concerned about my involvement in that evening’s raid.
Sure enough, when the servers finally did come up, I had loads of issues with addons. Plus, I was trying to sort things out during the worst possible time of day for me—early evening, when supper is getting made and the kids are acting crazy and I’m dragging a bit from the work day. I was grumpy and couldn’t focus. I finally nuked enough addons to be able to log in with a mostly uncluttered screen, but then endured the slow loading of the server dealing with the post-patch rush of players trying to get on—magnified by the large number of dorks from other servers logging on to AOS because their own realms were still down.
After things settled a bit, and I checked mail and auctions, I headed over to the JC trainer to pick up some epic gem recipes as step 1 in my 3.2 ore/gem plan. As I entered the room, the sheer number of players in there again slowed my screen to a crawl. Then, there were so many players around the trainer, that I couldn’t even see him! But I finally managed to click on him and purchase several recipes, starting with ones that would benefit Ofn the most.
Following my purchases, I left the room to begin learning the recipes in peace outside. But what’s this!? The recipes require JC 450 skill!?!? Argh!!! How incredibly frustrating! With all the planning I had done re: 3.2 and ore/gems, and I had missed the simple fact that Ofn needed to be max JC skill.
Fortunately, he was at 444—not too far away. However, as I began to try and figure out what I needed to do to get those last points, visiting the AH to buy materials, I realized that other players had had the foresight to know that there would be people like me, who would need certain mats to max their JC skill. I was quite upset with these people. Mats that only the day before had been reasonably priced, were now hundreds of gold; sometimes even for only 1x of something!
Irritated, I reviewed again the various mats of recipes that would get Ofn to 450 JC. Scrounging through my bank and my alts, and using some of the precious titanium ore I had been hoarding, I managed to finally hit 450 and move forward with the epic gem recipes.
However, a *lot* of time had been lost. Being unable to really focus on the problem had really dragged out the solution. Faced with less than an hour to go before raid, and not having dealt with raid addon issues at all, I reluctantly told my RL that I would either be late to, or not make, the raid. I held out hope that, with the new patch and addon issues, the raid would be delayed or postponed if enough players were affected. NOT.
I logged off to spend some time with the kids and put them to bed, logging back in 7 minutes after the scheduled raid start time, having resigned myself to using the basic Blizz interface for the night, only to find that the raid was full. Compounding this, they were not in Ulduar at all, but in the new instance, Trial of the Crusader. My night did not seem to be getting better, and indeed, PVE-wise, it got worse. After downing the (currently) only boss in ToC/10, the raid then went to Ulduar and downed FL+4, getting that nifty achievement. Though appreciative of, and happy for, my teammates in that accomplishment, I was now dismayed that I wasn’t there. The reports were that it was pretty hard to do, and I fear that, like my 8-man Naxx achievement, there may not be another opportunity to do it. /sigh C’est la vie, I guess.
Determined not to dwell on this, I turned my attention to my 3.2 ore/gem plan. From the very earliest information about epic gems being prospected from titanium ore, I had begun to purchase the ore in large quantities. Of course the price had gone up when miners realized that people like me would being stocking up, but even so, the prices were reasonable, especially in light of where ore prices are now, post-3.2. But, in any case, through the weeks leading up to 3.2, I kept purchasing, and so, when 3.2 hit, I had 40 stacks of ore, representing about a 5k investment, ready to prospect.
Setting up my “prospect titanium ore” macro to my mouse button, I then clicked 160 times, watching the gems appear. 30 epics, tens of rares, hundreds of uncommons and about a hundred powder later, I was done prospecting. What a haul! I used some gems for Ofn’s gear, but cut almost 20 epics and most of the rares and headed to the AH. Feeling much more hopeful and satisfied, I headed out to the Argent Tournament to do all the new dailies and buy the new Hippogryph mount. Later, I worked on getting addons updated and setting up new ones.
When I logged in the next day, I had made over 3k from the sale of epic gems alone, and by the end of that next day, the total had risen to over 4k gold. By the end of the week, having sold almost all the epics and rares, I had pulled in almost 10k gold. Not bad for a 5k investment.
For the rest of the week, I tried to do as many heroic dailies with Ofn as I could, to grow the pile of Emblems of Conquest and start collecting Emblems of Triumph; doing the Argent Tournament dailies as I’d like to eventually have all the mounts and the pets; and doing the JC daily quest to keep gathering the JC tokens for the purpose of continuing to purchase the epic gem recipes.
I am still concerned about achieving FL+4/10, but can’t—and won’t—worry about it. If it happens, it happens.
This week’s AH win: I covered the big one already in this post, but a secondary win was the abundance of uncommon-quality, uncut gems available in the AH at cheap prices. I’ve been buying them in bulk, and, through their use as mats for other things, I’ve been quintupling my investment!
The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
75° F, mostly cloudy with high humidity
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Clearance
Unusual Suspects came together quickly and continued Ulduar 10 raiding without delay. For several weeks, we made excellent progress, getting to where we could down Yogg, effectively clearing Ulduar, and pretty consistently do some hard modes. Some other hard modes we are not that far away from achieving, and some that are still quite hard. However, we have been missing the 1337 dps of our resident boomkin (just returned), feral druid (still out), and one of our hunters (gone for a while). Also, one of our top healers has also been MIA for a couple weeks (back on Monday?). I’d hope to see our progress on the as-yet-unattained hard modes advance considerably, but the impending release of 3.2 will likely greatly hinder further Ulduar 10 progression.
But whatever our own sense of our Ulduar 10 progression, we are listed as the top 10-man Strict guild on AoS. What is “Strict”, you ask? Strict means that we clear what we clear using primarily 10-man gear—unlike other guilds who raid 25 mans and then use that gear to do 10-man hard modes, achievements, etc. I take some pride in this recognition, that U.S. has been able to down various bosses and hard modes, using lesser gear; it is a measure of our ability and talent.
Beyond this ranking, we were also responsible for being Alliance-first on some Ulduar 10 boss downings and hard modes, some of which I was involved with and some I wasn’t. However, being in a guild on the edge of WOW content is a new and satisfying experience. In vanilla WOW, the farthest I got was half-way through BWL, and in BC, the farthest was Magtheridon, so being a productive member in a guild that has cleared Ulduar pre-3.2, is a nice place to be, and I’m happy to be here. Kudos to the team on what we’ve accomplished in game, and to all of you for putting up with a whiny, damage-obsessed rogue player. ;-)
This week’s AH win: Some person kept undercutting my Netherweave bags this week, by one silver or less each time. After a couple days, I got fed up with it and crafted 100 bags and listed them all 30% below his prices (though still at a profit). I haven’t seen him back in that market since the day I did that, but I suspect it’s not a permanent disappearance. Oh, and I discovered a different way to produce enchanting materials, roughly halving my cost, yet almost doubling production. Booyah!
The Baconsrip™ Maine Weather Report:
on location in Houlton, ME, next to the Canadian border
72° F and overcast
But whatever our own sense of our Ulduar 10 progression, we are listed as the top 10-man Strict guild on AoS. What is “Strict”, you ask? Strict means that we clear what we clear using primarily 10-man gear—unlike other guilds who raid 25 mans and then use that gear to do 10-man hard modes, achievements, etc. I take some pride in this recognition, that U.S. has been able to down various bosses and hard modes, using lesser gear; it is a measure of our ability and talent.
Beyond this ranking, we were also responsible for being Alliance-first on some Ulduar 10 boss downings and hard modes, some of which I was involved with and some I wasn’t. However, being in a guild on the edge of WOW content is a new and satisfying experience. In vanilla WOW, the farthest I got was half-way through BWL, and in BC, the farthest was Magtheridon, so being a productive member in a guild that has cleared Ulduar pre-3.2, is a nice place to be, and I’m happy to be here. Kudos to the team on what we’ve accomplished in game, and to all of you for putting up with a whiny, damage-obsessed rogue player. ;-)
This week’s AH win: Some person kept undercutting my Netherweave bags this week, by one silver or less each time. After a couple days, I got fed up with it and crafted 100 bags and listed them all 30% below his prices (though still at a profit). I haven’t seen him back in that market since the day I did that, but I suspect it’s not a permanent disappearance. Oh, and I discovered a different way to produce enchanting materials, roughly halving my cost, yet almost doubling production. Booyah!
The Baconsrip™ Maine Weather Report:
on location in Houlton, ME, next to the Canadian border
72° F and overcast
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