Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Gear and Loot ramblings

Okay, so we cleared Heroic Naxx last week for the first time, we were excited.  

The Betrayer of Humanity dropped.  Now we are a melee heavy guild and have been for quite some time.  Now our Raid Leader/Loot Master decides that this is a hunter weapon and therefore the only hunter in the raid should get it.  Understand, we have a lot of people in the raid for which this is a very big upgrade.  Lots of melee still using blue weapons.  But the RL says this in vent and argues with others who try to explain that LOTS of classes consider this an upgrade for them.  But he gives it to the hunter instead of having a roll off like we do for everything else.

Now, last night, we cleared 3 wings of Heroic Naxx; military, construct and spider in that order.  In he spider wing, we were trying to beat the timer, so we were hurrying and apparently the RL (same guy) decided to take his headset off.  So he never heard the MT warrior say, "hey man, I need those gloves" while he and I were still pulling trash to the last boss.  And so he let people roll for off set and gave it away before the MT warrior realized what happened.  The MT Warrior is pissed but as luck would have it, the guy (another warrior) who won the gloves doesn't mind giving them to the MT warrior, so we have to open a ticket and get that taken care of. Okay...done.

And then the RL was too far away when Inevitable Defeat drops and the GL repeatedly says to pass so we can discuss and roll.  However, this one warrior who always gets the high rolls and NEVER passes to someone else even if it is only a minor upgrade for him and a major upgrade for someone else rolls need and gets the item. (he has the full T7.5 and epics and others who have been on the same raids don't have a single piece from Heroic Naxx, LT Share!)  

Well, so now we have to deal with this.  We have another roll off and as luck would have it, the mace goes to the warrior who gave up the gloves to the MT Warrior and he was replacing a blue (Runeblade of Demonstrable Power).  So hopefully that balances out some Karma!

Now, the other issue is we have a group of people in the guild who want loot to be awarded first to those who regularly attend raids.  WTF?  Have they missed the fact we are a casual guild?  Its sign up if you can make it to a raid, not required.  Our loot rules have never said, "those who show up the most get to roll first".  Real life always comes first to us.  This is a game, and yes, while it is nice to have the same people there raid after raid, what if they can only make it twice a week?  Does that mean we shouldn't help gear them up until after everyone else?   And if you show up regularly, you will have more chances to roll on stuff anyway.  And it isn't as though they aren't some of the best geared people in the guild anyway.  They haven't exactly missed out on loot.

And then last night, Origin of Nightmares dropped.  And a hunter wanted it.  And I wanted it for tanking given it is better than my Staff of the Plague Beast.  However, I had said to give it to the hunter but I wanted it next time it dropped since the hunter had a blue.  But it was given to me since it has armor on it and so I have mixed emotions.  I am happy I was given the staff, but I feel bad for the hunter.  I really hope he gets Journey's End tonight!  I got it last week for cat when we downed Kel'Thuzad and he wasn't in the raid and the other hunter had gotten the Betrayer of Humanity so no one else rolled against me.

All in all, Loot is such a head ache.  

And in other news, I went as cat last night for the first 2 wings.  I got up to 3600 DPS on Razuvious but the fights where I have to move a lot or have a lot of adds I can't do quite as well as the ranged with the massive AOE.  Overall for the night, on boss fights I was in the top 10 every time on DPS so that makes me happy.  I didn't do quite as well on the trash pulls but once I get the hang of cat, I might can do better!


Friday, January 23, 2009

Twilight Assist

So we downed Sartherion last night with 1 drake still up.  We initially tried it with all three up just to see, but after 8 attempts the masses were getting restless so we killed 2 of the drakes.  It was quite interesting to see how it all worked together.  

I will say, if you have a choice and you are a bear, don't be put on portal duty or elemental duty.  Too many of the spawn at a time and they get out of swipe range very quickly.  So then you spend your time running around trying to pull them off casters.   Not a good scenerio.  

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Post Patch 3.0.8

Ugh, what a mess last night.  Northrend kept going offline....Kicking people off and causing all sorts of issues.  But that is to be expected with a large patch changing as much stuff as they did.  

I did get to log in and found that unbuffed my armor is now up to 32,400 so that is a big jump for me.  I had not been able to get the armor trinkets yet, so the change was a very good thing for me.  I have the Essence of Gossamer and the Indestructible Alchemist's Stone as my trinkets.  The Gossamer procced 10 times during our 25 Man Naxx the other night.  I am actually surprised that it didn't proc more often.  However, between the two, that is 186 stamina and that is a nice chunk of HP.

I actually saw a feral in bear form the other day in Dalaran, he had 37K hit points unbuffed but every single gem socket had a +24 stamina gem in it.  So he had great hit points, but not much mitigation.  He was even wearing the Polar set gemmed with stamina gems.  While I know having a large hit pool is great, it is better if you don't get hit.  Balancing HP and dodge is a good thing, it makes your healers happy if you can dodge 50% or more of the attacks.  Especially on Heroic Patchwerk.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Patch 3.0.8

So the patch is going live today......I can't wait to find out what my armor changes to.  I haven't been able to get the armor pieces for rings and trinkets, so this should actually increase my armor by about 4k.  That is nice.  Prior to the patch, I was sitting at 26.5K armor with 33.5 HP, so I will post tomorrow about the change.

We cleared all 4 quarters in Naxx 25 this week.  I got a new Tunic of Indulgence, and I am quite happy!  I had been running with he Polar Vest, so this is a nice upgrade.

Also, at what point do guilds itemize for tanks.  I mean, it is getting quite close to where the DPS folks can outpace my threat generation even in my threat gear because I am just not getting drops.  Oh well, I guess I will get drops sooner or later.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Bear DPS and Ramblings

So during our 25 man Naxx last night, the best boss dps I was able to put out was about 1750.  Now I am fairly happy with that but the DK tanks can do approx 2600 DPS. Now seriously, what is up with that.  I realize that my guild is not that well geared yet, but our DK tank was in the top 10 DPS, as a tank.  Top DPS was about 4100, but still, it is somewhat frustrating that I can't do more damage.  

And I am well aware that I'm a tank, not a DPSer and that I was still doing about 300 or so DPS more than the pally tank, so I'm good with that.  Plus I have way more armor than the DK but really, only about 4000 HP more.  I really need to start getting some drops on gear!  I keep running heroics for the couple of things that I need, but so far, no luck on the drops.

I have evaluated my gear, and with no buffs at all, I stand at 26.5k armor in bearform with 30k HP.  So with patch 3.0.8 my armor should actually increase to over 30k, maybe 31k.  That will be nice!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

25 Mans and Arenas

So, tonight we will be running Heroic Naxx for the first time as a guild.  I will be main tanking with two OTs that are death knights.  They are a couple of really good tanks so I have no worries there. When we ran Heroic Vault of Archavon last night with a PUG, raid buffed I was up to 34K armor, 40K health and 42% dodge.  So I feel pretty good about that and my gear upgrades pretty much come from 25 mans now.

I will buy the legs to the Savage Gladiator's set tonight and that is the last of the 5 main pieces that I need.  Woo Hoo, now to just farm honor for the Hateful accessories.  I'm at 342 resilience before the legs, so I know those will help.  Our 5v5 team is actually ranked this week, I'm in shock.  The ranking on my armory profile says 155th, but if you click on the team and follow it, we are 468th. Not sure of the difference yet.  Oh well, I guess I will figure it out.

Gear Link Updates

Since we are now doing 25 mans in our guild, I got to thinking I needed to update my gear sheets to include them.  This is using Loot Rank.