Freak Show

So last week I was running a dungeon, maybe the random heroic, when Ofn hit exalted with The Hand of Vengeance, giving me 35 exalted reps. I got a couple of “grats” in gchat, but then I also got some “freak” comments. LOL. I suppose so.

Not content with that, I went ahead and also finished out Keepers of Time rep with solo runs on Black Morass (normal), giving Ofn exalted rep #36 and also The Burning Crusader.

I assume that rep #37 will be Ashen Verdict, seeing as Ofn gets steady increments with them due to our ICC raiding and given that I don’t have many more reps to (easily) work on. Hydraxian Waterlords is Ofn’s highest revered rep, but hitting exalted there will require 3 or 4 full-clear Molten Core runs. Not exactly high on anyone’s list. Then there’s Arathi Basin rep, also revered, but thinking of grinding that out makes me want to poke my eyes out.

So, getting “The Exalted” is still a long-shot, and I don’t have a plan to complete it at this point.

Ofn is now at 98 mounts, thanks to the last AT mount and the acquisition of the two Sons of Hodir purchasable mounts. I had set up a run with a 25 man guild for the Sartharion + 3 drakes mount, but it fell through and doesn’t look resurrectable. ZG, the Brunnhildar daily and the Oracles’ egg continue to disappoint. I haven’t tried for the Rivendare mount in weeks; maybe I’ll try that some this weekend.

There are still two mounts Ofn can get via BG tokens, and I’ve been trying to grind them out, but BGs aren’t what they used to be (neither are my PVP skills) and it’s largely been an exercise in frustration. There are still 10 or so tokens of each classic BG to earn just for one of these last two mounts, another 30 each for the second. Oy vey.

Last night our 10 man team ran ICC 10 with the second wing up for the second time, easily busting through the first wing, 2-shotting Festergut and downing Rotface in less than 5 tries (don’t remember the exact number of attempts). Frost Giant's Cleaver was in the Gunship chest, which I have been interested in. Boston generously declined to roll on it against me, allowing me to take it. Both Ofn’s axes are now ICC 10 drops. They are ilevel 251. The new MH axe replaced an i232 — a not insignificant upgrade.

I promptly called Ofn’s Argent Tournament squire (with mount) and gained bank access to get enchanting mats for Berserking. I did have to DE some items, including the two prior axes, but got it done, switched to Combat spec and ran off to catch up with team.

I was happy.

The DPS Ofn was achieving with this weapon rivaled the Mutilate dps I’ve been seeing previously. Of course, Ofn’s daggers are from ToC; once he gets ICC daggers, I’m sure Mutilate will again become the higher dps spec of choice.

We met up with Professor Putricide again, getting in four attempts on him. Despite the late hour, we were on our toes enough that we made some good progress (well, after Honors took over Abom sucking duty), easily getting to Phase 2 on our last two attempts. We’re going back on Monday, and though there’s a good chance we won’t get him down, I’m confident we can do it and it won’t be long before he’s just another notch in our belt.

Given Ofn’s recent achievements, and my reluctance to grind BGs, I dusted off Zephaniah (the armory updates are pretty cool) and have been doing some questing and 5-mans with him. I’m slowly gettng him enough gear and power to hold a decent amount of threat. Running random heroics with him has provided a new challenge, and sometimes new headaches. I need a lot more tanking experience, but I’m gonna take it as it comes and not try to grind it.

The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
Currently 36° F and overcast, with 6 inches of snow on the ground

Rolling along

An update of my goings-on in-game...

On rep - I got Ofn to Lower City exalted (#34) over the holidy break (solo Shadow Labs [normal] runs ftw). He’s at 13k revered on Keepers of Time rep and I intend to wrap up getting him to exalted with them this week (again, solo Black Morass [normal] runs ftw), which will give him “35 Exalted Reputations”.

On the AH - I’ve finally gotten back into doing some steady AH work, centered around enchanting mats, as usual. Fortunately, I have quite a stash of raw materials stocked up on my bank alt, so I don’t need to worry about expenses anytime soon. I was able to make a good 7k or so over the last two weeks without too much work.

On mounts - I picked up another PVP mount and another Argent Tournament mount over the holidays, bringing my mount count to 93. There’s one more AT mount for Ofn to earn, and two more PVP mounts. I should have all three by the middle of January, as long as I can stomach BG grinding. At that point, there are three other mounts I can purchase, which will leave me at 99. Hopefully, one of ZG, AQ40, Baron Rivendare, Brunnhildar daily or Mysterious Egg will be kind enough to drop a mount I can use, giving me the 100 mount achievement. Or, there may just be an opportunity for a mount I otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. More news as it comes in...

On dps - I’ve been running the last couple weeks with a locked-in combat spec [build] (for 5-man Heroics and some questing) and rotating Mutilate specs (PVE [build] for progression raid nights and PVP [build] the rest of the week).

There is no question that PVE Mutilate easily out-dpses Combat; one week on Saurfang, I pulled 6.9k as Mutilate. The next week on the same boss I only pulled 5.5k as Combat - even with 3 pieces of new ICC gear! So annoying...

I have tried, somewhat, to run Combat on trash and Mut on bosses, but it requires that I remember, and take the time, to switch specs, switch weapons, re-poison, etc. Plus, with as fast as our raid clears trash, Combat cooldowns are down more than they’re up, resulting in little advantage for Combat on trash. Meanwhile, it seems like our warrior gets to Bladestorm every other pull... /grumble

Having said that, I really don’t worry about dps nearly as much as I used to. At the moment, Ofn can compete with the best dps of our raid team (unlike the Naxx days of a year ago), and, though I may grumble at times, that’s really all I can ask for.

I do feel pretty fortunate at the gear Ofn has been able to pull together. Many, many heroics, he is the best geared toon in the group, occasionally eliciting positive comments from the other randoms. When I see and consider the gear on other players’ toons, I am reminded to be thankful for where Ofn is and what I am lucky enough to accomplish with him; it helps keep me grounded in my sense of, and approach to, this toon and this game.

On raiding - our team has cleared the first wing of ICC 10 three or four weeks now, one-shotting most bosses/encounters and generally finishing each night in little over an hour. A few weeks back, we came within something like 50k of downing Anub’arak in ToC 10 Heroic, and in Ulduar 10, we have three or four more bosses to down on Heroic mode to complete “Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player)”.

On alts - I haven’t been playing my pally, Zephaniah, that much lately, due to the push regarding rep and mounts I’ve been doing on Ofn, but I have logged him occasionally to tank some Heroics. I’m steadily becoming more confident in my tanking skills, even running one random by myself, without my usual safety-net healer, Neoqualitas (Neo’s druid). I’ve been enjoying it enough that I have had a few thoughts, here and there, about making him my main toon come Cataclysm. However, I’m pretty attached to Ofn, so we’ll see...

Miscellaneous...

Nine more Wintergrasp wins for “Wintergrasp Veteran”.

A few more kills in The Cauldron of Flames (WG) for “Wintergrasp Ranger”.

Nearly four years after first setting foot in Blackwing Lair, Ofn was finally able to clear it, obtaining “Blackwing Lair”. Only AQ40 is left of the classic raids for him to do.

Zephaniah was able to complete all Winter Veil achievements and become a “Merrymaker”, thanks to... my foresight (luck) at opening the 2008 present for the Crashin’ Thrashin’ Racer, a pally’s bubble (very helpful, especially in IF) for BB King and Blizzard’s easing of entry into Ogri’la daily questing (no longer have to do the 5-mans) for “Fa-la-la-la-Ogri’la”, among many other things.

The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
Currently 39° F and overcast, with 8 inches of snow on the ground

Time, time, time

So you noticed I haven’t blogged much lately? Yeah, I noticed, too. Something about all the holidays and family birthdays this time of year really seem to sap my interest in doing things like blogging. On top of that, this being a blog about a game, it’s really not *that* important that I post something here. Anyway...

Patch 3.3 hit last week, and Devolve hit up the new Icecrown raid (10 man) on Thursday. The couple days before raid I spent quite a bit of time reading up on rogue changes over at EJ. I was sad to see that combat spec was getting the shaft. Based on changes to Deadly Poison and Improved Poison, mutilate spec was seeing a substantial improvement in dps, giving it a 15% to 20% lead over combat. Blizzard quickly realized that was probably too high, and they were very fast in nerfing Hunger For Blood, changing it from giving 15% damage boost to 10%.

Big bleeping deal. Mutilate still has roughly a 10% dps lead over combat, seriously impairing combat as a viable spec. I know Blizz said they wanted rogues to *want* daggers more, since too many rogues (in their opinion) were neglecting, or passing on daggers, in favor of swords, axes, fists and maces. However, I am highly annoyed that they would make the PVE dagger spec so good it would make any attempt to stay combat look questionable. Combat should be a viable spec, but right now, most rogues that want to maximize their raid dps, will go mutilate.

/sigh

Seeing as I had already been feeling that combat was not delivering like it had back in Ulduar, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet, giving up my favored spec to go with mutilate.

Fortunately, Ofn has a couple really nice daggers (since no other class on our raid team really wants or can use them, meaning they all fall to him), and with a little re-gemming, gear adjusting and re-speccing, I had a setup that the spreadsheet reported would give an additional 800 to 900 dps. Good grief. (more annoyed)

So, at raid Thursday night, I was ready to go as mutilate and by the time the night was over, I saw both the highs and lows of the spec. On stand-and-deliver, I-can-stay-behind-the-target-and-never-move fights, the spec really shined, fairly easily out-dpsing other classes. On fights requiring movement, or switching off to adds, it was mediocre. And on trash, there were several times when it downright sucked.

I was reminded of why I abandoned the spec in early LK / Naxx days (even though it supposedly provided better dps than combat back then, too) — inconsistent performance over the course of a whole raid and a world of difference between trash and bosses.

This pattern has been repeated in the days since making the switch. When running 5-mans, or dpsing trash, mutilate’s dps fluctuates from adequate to bad, but when dpsing single-target, long-lived, stationary fights (hello Saurfang), it’s incredible.

I had made the decision to drop the combat spec entirely, going with PVE mutilate and PVP mutilate as my regular specs. However, after last night’s raid, where we downed Saurfang, I’m thinking I will move to always having a combat spec available for heroics and raid trash, and changing the mutilate spec between PVE and PVP depending on need. If only they would come out with the ability to carry *3* specs, lol!

Aside from my annoyance with rogue specs, we all had a good time clearing ICC 10 this week, and I was lucky enough to get Ofn a new cloak, belt and ring out of it. They aren’t exactly the slots Ofn needs to upgrade the most, but they are significant improvements nonetheless.

In other news, I finally got my pally alt (prot/ret), Zephaniah, to 80 a few weeks back, and was steadily gearing him up until 3.3 hit. I’m still learning the tanking ropes with him, but he is, apparently, geared enough to tank heroics, having successfully run 5 or 6 of them with no wipes or serious threat problems — not that he’s been running stuff with Donk, Neo or Lakini dpsing, but still... Now if only I could get him over the level 285 blacksmithing hump; thorium is expensive and I believe it’s not a good use of my time to go farm it. Oh well, it’ll come.

Back to Ofn, he is now up to almost 7400 achievement points (the armory is incorrect). The big, slowly developing ones I’ve been working on are 35 exalted reps and 100 mounts. Exalted rep #34 is almost done (Hand of Vengeance) and then I’ll have to pick either Lower City or Keepers of Time to finish out (both are about 9500 revered). Of course, following that, there will be getting to 40 exalted reps which will give the title, “The Exalted”. But one step at a time.

Regarding mounts, Ofn sits at 91, with 3 more that can be purchased with gold. That leaves 6 mounts to get to 100. There are 3 more Tournament mounts to grind out and 3 PVP mounts to grind out, which will give him the achievement. If only Mandokir, Thekal or Rivendare would drop their rare mounts, I’d have less grinding to do. But alas, no luck so far.

Finally, no exciting AH story of the week this week (or for the last several). I haven’t really worked the AH in quite some time. Simply put, my toons all have plenty of gold, and I’ve been spending time leveling and achieving instead. I’ll get back to it at some point, as the purchasable mounts will be quite expensive and I want to have a sizable chunk coming down the back stretch of LK.

In off-topic news, my 4 year old daughter’s ballet class were reindeer for Santa in the Maine State Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker. No, there are no reindeer in the official ballet; this is a cameo at the end of the show, just something they do here in a nod to the season and the tiny ballerinas. I was impressed that her 7 year old brother watched the show as intently as he did, seeing as it’s a pretty far cry from Astro Boy. Of course I happily played the role of the doting father, bringing her a flower for her performance and showering her with praise. I intend to enjoy these times to the fullest while they last.

The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
Currently 39° F and overcast