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

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

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