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

Epic

This post is off-topic.

A fairly new advantage to summertime for my wife and me, is the sending away of our children to stay with grandparents for a few days, allowing us time to be adults and enjoy each other’s company — without interruption.

The kids have been gone with my folks for the last 3 days, and Sunday, after church, my wife and I were deciding what to do for lunch. We considered grabbing something “to go” and heading to the beach, or going to a restaurant on the water. But, given the awesome weather, and it being a weekend day, we figured both options would likely be crowded. So instead, we headed to our local supermarket, where they steamed some lobsters for us and we grabbed some fixin’s &mdash asparagus, potato salad, deli rolls and wine and then went home, enjoying a quiet, epic lunch together... uninterrupted. ;-)

The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
72° F, clear and sunny with low 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