I am alive and kicking. Don’t let the lack of updates fool you. And just because the posts have been slow coming doesn’t mean I haven’t continued taking names.
Currently I am not in a “raiding guild” since I am teaching classes as an adjunct faculty member at a local community college. It ties up my evenings a couple nights a week. But considering that Illidan is now the number one PvE-progressed server in the United States, finding groups isn’t exactly difficult.
As you can see over on my Armory that my gear is nothing to scoff at. Although my gemming is ugly. But that is being remedied. I recently picked up the heroic version of the Sunreaver Ranger’s Helm and the fact it has 50 hit on it is letting me replace pretty much everything with good ‘ol Cardinal Rubies. Since it has a blue socket and a +8 Agility socket bonus, a Nightmare Tear was the perfect fit for it.
I am taking my time because I am waiting to regem everything until I transmute all the rubies myself. Overall I will lose the massive ArP found on my Dragonstalker’s Helm but end up gaining like 60 Agility. My funds have dropped to “dangerously low.” OK, not really. I am down to 25k gold, much lower than I would like to be. This is all attributed to me slacking off in the glyph world. My Priest is almost solely funding all my characters with glyphs and epic off-hands with Drotara chipping in a Cardinal Ruby pretty much every day.
All the Lotuses on the AH have sky-rocketed, making flasks non-profitable for the time being. But my sudden dip in gold can be attributed to a few things. Mainly, massive gearing on the part of my Death Knight and Hunter. My little ‘ol tank is rocking 36,300 HP without any buffs. And all that tanking gear requires enchants! And gems.
My Warrior is still rocking face in the 70-79 bracket. Check out that secksy beast. Warlocks still like to blow him up though. Sometimes. If they don’t get 2-shot. Which a lot do. I may not hit as hard as some, but he keeps on truckin’.
Also a real-life friend of mine transferred over to Illidan (friggin’ finally) in the form of the Rogue Yaumer. I bought him the materials and the pattern for the Footpads of Silence for his birthday.
Another contributing factor was my wife wanted to borrow 3,000 gold for her third alts epic flying. While her Paladin was still over on Silver Hand rocking 12,000 she didn’t have quite so much on Illidan. And any of you married folks know that when she said borrow 3,000 gold she actually meant give me 3,000 gold.
So I did.
Two weeks ago me and 2 guys from Really Good At This Game put together a 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader. Trade chat PUG, found a couple good folks from one guild and a few others and went to town. And by went to town I mean we finished with 49 attempts left after a heart-breaking wipe at 17% on Anub’arak. The following week was slightly less inspiring since we accomplished it with 44 attempts left. So close yet so far away. Not bad for a PUG though.
I haven’t been sucked into any of the “grass is greener” thinking that has been running rampant with so many people. I’ve talked with people I know in real-life who have tried “other games” recently and their opinions came back exactly as I had anticipated.
“Meh.”
In other video game related thoughts, holy crap there are a lot of awesome non-MMOs coming out however. I made a brief post about Dragon Age Origins the other day. Now I get emails from Gamespy and a couple other sites. Most of the time I look at the subject lines and delete them. But yesterday it said “Dragon Age Character Creator.” And that caught my interest.
I downloaded it and it was what I expected. A character creator. It contained the now standard slides and dials to tweak everything from how pointy your character’s nose is to how dark the tattoos on their face are. One night addition was the option to choose between 6 or 7 different voices. Which will be nice so when you play through a couple times which I undoubtedly will, I don’t have to hear the same voice hours on end.
So yeah. Dragon Age Origins. Left 4 Dead 2. Mass Effect 2. Holy awesomeness. And I just finished two of Fallout 3′s downloadable content, which was shorter than I expected but on par with the non-crappy Mass Effect DLC.
But yeah, that’s me at the moment. Trade chat all-star.
How do you feel about all that ArP?
I stopped raiding on my Hunter to run on my Mutilate Rogue not to long ago, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the ArP and hit rating that hunters keep getting pushed into (Mostly because people still ask me questions about gearing, rotations, macros, etc). Anyways, I feel that although the ideal conditions for SV and Marks leave SV in a strong position relatively, all this ArP gear just doesn’t fit the itemization demands of SV.
You’re doing solid numbers either way though.
I just look at ArP as an added bonus. My Auto Shots and Aimed Shots get use out of it. Until I switch my helm out I am sitting at 30% passive ArP just from the stuff on the gear. I have found keeping my hit up to be the biggest challenge to the point I am almost tempted to buy the iLevel 245 hit trinket to replace Wrathstone.
Hmm. Maybe it’s because I was apart of the evil faction, but I was having issues finding items that didn’t have hit rating. Good to see that other hunters are actually having to balance their hit rating instead of stacking straight 20agi though.
Still not sold on the ArP on the gear though. I don’t like that SV hunters are nearing the ArP soft cap(s) without even liking the stat. I try to view itemization points on the portion of the DPS that they affect, like ArP has roughly half it’s value because so much damage comes from Explosive Shot, Black Arrow and Serpent Sting. This basically makes your 30% ArP weigh more like 16% ArP, which is a lot of wasted itemization points.
Anyways. Glad to see you’re still kicking ass on the charts and showing the Rogues, Ferals and DK’s up.
I figure that every piece of gear is going to choose between hit, haste, crit, AP, and ArP. Most items at this level pick 3. It’s easy to get really close to the haste cap and its easy to get over the hit cap if there is an over abundance on it. So that leaves crit or ArP. And since my unbuffed crit is almost 50% now, ArP ain’t so bad.
Bobby Flay is a dick.
Just sayin’.
He just wants a good throwdown! And they haven’t given Mario Batoli his own show yet. That’s who our real favorite is.
Screw that, Morimoto needs his own show.
What this conversation proves is just how awesome the Food Network has become!
What this conversation proves is just how awesome Morimoto-san has always been!
fixt
Bobby Flay is a dick.
QFT
Alton Brown ftw! :D
I used to think that. But after watching Throwdown and a few other shows, he has grown on me.
It was a good Tuesday. My DPS on Koralon went up 700, and broke 8k. It felt good. :)
not too bad for a pug? /dies
my guild, GUILD is still working heroic 10 man Anub. forget 25 man. and its not that we’re bad, oh nooo. we’re just fairly casual. and we’re one of the more progressed guilds on our server.
our top horde guild just got trial of grand crusader with 50 attempts remaining.
pugging 25 man ToC, not even grand usually results in getting stuck on twins, if you are lucky. pugs STILL wipe on Ony and Koralon. Heck, some of them still wipe in 10 man Naxx? and we’re far from the worst US server, we’re actually about in the middle progression wise. who needs a raiding guild when you play on a server where you can pug content most guilds in the country are still wiping on >_>
aaaanyways…. have you played MM lately? and if yes, how does it compare to survival?