Joel's Scattered Thoughts

Notes on things that interest me

Posts Tagged gear

Dungeon Finder reactions from players

Dec 11

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I was shocked at the Dungeon Finder reactions from players.  Almost all the reactions I’ve seen so far have been positive.  You don’t see that too often when a new feature rolls out.

I’ve only run one random dungeon – I happened to be on my best geared toon and didn’t feel like switching so I gave it a shot.  We got heroic Utgarde Keep and we blew through it.  The only hitch was on the first boss when no-one freed the healer from her frost tomb.  Oops.

I now have four max-level tanking toons (though I haven’t properly geared my death knight and druid for tanking yet) and a max level healer.  If I wanted to I could run dungeons all day long thanks to this feature.  Unfortunately, I’m not really interested in running too many dungeons right now, so I’m not taking full advantage of it.  Christmas holidays are coming and maybe then I’ll be more into random runs.

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Prot Warrior: Endgame Gearing

Nov 10

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Achtung Panzercow’s So You Want to Be a Prot Warrior: Endgame Gearing, Part II gives a nice breakdown of endgame gearing for a prot warrior as of 3.2.  I need to rebuild my trash set on Tristam  – it would probably be better than my current set for doing heroics.

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Losing Gear Progression in WoW

Oct 21

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Spinks has a post on Losing Gear Progression in WoW.  The part that interested me was when she says this about Ulduar: “There’s no benefit to going there either, you’d be better served for rewards in the newer easier instance.” This is something that really annoys me about WoW.

There are currently 13 heroic instances.  On my newly 80 alts it makes no sense to run any of those instances except for Trial of the Champion and maybe the daily.  I buy/craft/quest the gear I need to get up to acceptable levels, then run ToC as I have time.  If it’s a slow day, I might do the daily as well.  There may be an occasional upgrade from some of the other instances, but ToC is so much more bang for the buck that running anything else is mostly a waste.

What if when new patches bring new instances and new currencies, the old instances start dropping the new currencies as well?  The loot would still be better in the new instance but at least running the old instances would not be a complete waste of time.  It makes sad to see those old instances going to waste.  (I’m even sadder about not having heroic max level instances from BC and Classic, but that might be a little much to ask.)

Make running old instances rewarding!

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Relative Stat Values in Rawr

Oct 7

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

Photo by MacJewell

Photo by MacJewell

Rawr is the tool to use if you’re interested in getting some personalized theorycrafting recommendations for your toon but don’t want to go beat on a target dummy 10,000 times while switching pieces of gear.

If you have not made yourself a full list of all possible upgrades and which pieces to swap out when upgrade X drops versus which pieces to swap if upgrade Y drops, you might want to make yourself a Pawn scale for quick and dirty item comparisons in-game. Rawr does not provide a way to automatically create Pawn scales, but you can generate relative stat values. After loading your character from the armory, the right-side pane will have a heading that says “Slot: Gear”. Change that to “Relative Stat Values” and you will see what each stat is worth in relation to other stats. Enter those values in Pawn and you will have your own personalized Pawn scale.

READ THE WARNING WRITTEN IN RED WHEN YOU DO THIS IN RAWR. Pawn scales are terrible for ensuring that you remain hit/expertise/defense capped. Rawr can handle this, Pawn can’t. For example, if you’re hovering on the edge of hit capped, that shiny new item with 0 hit rating isn’t worth nearly as much as the pawn scale might indicate. Know what the caps and minimums are for stats for your class and spec. Check Raider101 if you don’t want to wade through too much theorycrafting.

Photo by Blume Fou

Photo by Blume Fou

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Restoration Shaman Pawn Scale 3.2

Sep 16

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I got around to doing some healing on my shaman when I was pulled into a Trial of the Champion run.  That first run was just terrible as I really had no idea what I was doing.

A little later I found myself healing for an assault on the world dragons as an engineer hunted for the lifelike mechanical toad pattern. This time I wasn’t scrambling to figure out my gear and spec while a group waited, so it went much better.

Surprisingly, the clearest explanation of how to heal as a shaman is on Elitist Jerks: Shaman: Restoration.   I went for the Riptide – Lesser Healing Wave – Lesser Healing Wave setup.

Here’s the Pawn scale I used.  Note that the quotation marks may not come through in a copy/paste.

( Pawn: v1: “Resto EJ (3.2)”: Intellect=1.1, CritRating=0.8, HasteRating=0.45, SpellPower=1, Mp5=1.3, GemQualityLevel=81 )

I found that Power Auras Classic was extremely useful, especially as a reminder to keep buffs up as an inexperienced healer. (See this NoStockUI post for more)

Sadly, Power Auras strings are quite long, so I’m just going to put up the one I used for Earthshield on Focus:

gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.1843137254902; anim1:nu1; ignoreResting:botrue; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Nature_SkinofEarth; size:nu0.5; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.39607843137255; y:nu30; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:botrue; raid:bofalse; texture:nu42; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; soundfile:st; owntex:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:botrue; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; sound:nu0; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; wowtex:botrue; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; InactiveDueToState:botrue; id:nu1; aurastextfont:nu1; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; spec2:botrue; customtex:bofalse; isSecondary:bofalse; g:nu0.25882352941176; thresholdinvert:bofalse; tooltipCheck:st; stance:nu10; anim2:nu0; buffname:stEarth Shield; Showing:bofalse; spec1:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:botrue; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; isinraid:bofalse; finish:nu1; timer.a:nu1; timer.dual:bofalse; timer.cents:botrue; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.id:nu1; timer.y:nu0; timer.h:nu1; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Showing:bofalse; timer.x:nu0; timer.enabled:bofalse

I didn’t mind healing on my shaman, but I’m still not up for much group play right now so I’ll probably stick to a nice solo enhancement build  as primary spec.


Tauren Shaman by ~DavidRapozaArt on deviantART

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Game Over

Apr 7

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

gameover One of the tricky things about MMOs is that there is no game over screen.  Even the top players in the top guilds still have more to strive for.  If your character has beaten all the top bosses and has all the top gear, you could always start another character with a different role and try to get that one to the top as well.  There are other aspects of the game you may have barely touched – time to try to excel at those.  Then there’s the next content patch with all its shiny newness, not to mention the rumors about the next expansion…

For me and WoW, game over seems to come when a number of friends leave.  Whether it’s a guild split, people quitting the game, people switching to other guilds or transferring off the server, there comes a point when I don’t see enough familiar faces when I log in.  Without the social aspect to keep me there the game isn’t fun anymore.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I came back to WoW at some point but for now I’ve had enough.  The nice thing about WoW is that gear-wise, the next expansion will reset everything anyway.  Should I wait till then to resume playing I will not be terribly far behind those who have been playing all the way through. 

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Cat Gearing

Mar 25

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

One of these days I may get around to leveling my druid to 80.  When I get there, WoWInsider has a very thorough guide to Gearing your Cat Druid (part one and part two).  My one caveat would be that when 3.1 comes out, the best in slot BOE will probably change. 

 

funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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March Sadness

Mar 22

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Doofy the Paladin is suffering from March Sadness. Progress has ground to a halt as their roster of raiders has disappeared. We’re in much the same situation with our guild alliance. Historically we’ve run 2-3 nights per week, but we’ve lost about 9 of our 18 raiders. Some may come back but for now we’re lucky if we raid one night a week, let alone doing any progress raiding. On the bright side, I’m having fun gearing my toons up for dual specs and raiding.

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Healing on a Shaman

Feb 27

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 1 Comment

With my shaman at 80, I now need to figure out how to heal with a shaman.  The only thing I’ve healed with him is Karazhan at 70 and things have changed since then.

I’ve managed to get a lot of good gear thanks to LootRank, some luck at the Auction House, and my friendly neighborhood leatherworker. (Thanks Hidi!)  My plan is to respec and get into some instance runs this weekend.  I may try to finish off the initial Sons of Hodir questline first though.

Anna has a lovely guide to resto shaman healing spells.  PlusHeal talks a little more about spell rotations for different situations and provides some advice for new healers.  Lodur on World of Matticus has a post on Being the Shaman Behind the Meat Shield. 

It’s been a while since I ran as a healer.  For now the plan is to keep tanking on my warrior as my main role, but it’s good to have options. 

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How to be a better tank

Feb 15

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Shalandra at Tank Hard! has a post on How to be a better tank . The points she raises are very good ones. I find that situational awareness is one of the biggest failings of new tanks. This has led to me taking worse geared tanks over better geared ones. I want someone I can rely on to keep the adds from munching the healers. There’s nothing like watching the off-tank single-target tank one add while the rest run amok.

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Heirloom Items for Clothies

Jan 13

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

If ever I decide to transfer and level my priest, I may go this route and Level a Priest / Warlock / Mage in style. Here’s a list of heirloom items.

I would probably get the cloth set first as it can be used by any class. It might not be optimal, but it would probably be better than a lot of the early level gear even for leather/mail/plate wearers. I’d have to play with the numbers to confirm this. It would also push all classes with mana to a caster style of play which might defeat the point of rolling a new class.

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Resto gear guides for Heroics and Naxxramas

Jan 11

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Flame Shock has a roundup of : Resto gear guides for Heroics and Naxxramas in case I level my shaman and decide I want to heal with him. Right now my shaman is the toon I’d be most interested in using to heal.

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Ret Paladin

Jan 10

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

ret_paladin I’m thinking of taking my paladin ret.  I don’t like tanking with her as much as I do on my warrior and right now our guild alliance has a surfeit of tanks.  I don’t think I’d raid or even instance with her, so it might be fun to try something new. 

If I do decide to pursue this, here are a few resources I’ll be consulting.

I have a pile of toons still to level and our raids don’t need more melee DPS at the moment, so those factors are somewhat of a disincentive. 

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So You Want to Rip Some Face?

Jan 9

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Karthis has a guest post on Resto4Life covering druid cat form DPS, So You Want to Rip Some Face?. I really like the way he’s gone through the stats and broken down the important ones to show why and when they’re important. He also includes a Pawn scale for evaluating kitty DPS gear.

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Bear Tanking Specs and Gear Pre-Naxx

Jan 5

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

My druid is only 71 or so (and he’s only that high due to doing dailies), but if I decide to tank with him Big Bear Butt Blogger has me covered with Bear Tanking Specs and Gear Pre-Naxx.

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Character Tracker

Dec 28

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

WoWProgress has a Possible Transferred/Renamed Characters Tracker. I was looking for this tool earlier and couldn’t find it. If you don’t want to be tracked when you transfer, you may want to look at changing as much about your character as you can (gear/talents/name).

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Pawn Scales for Wrath

Dec 28

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 2 Comments

pawn Here are the Pawn scales I’m using for my toons in Wrath of the Lich King.   As always, Pawn is for quick comparisons, not for squeezing every last point out of your gear.  Read Skeleton Jack’s post on Pawn for some of the things to watch out for.  I have tweaked some of these scales and I have no strong theorycrafting proof behind their effectiveness. 

A few more points to note:

1. Each rating is relative only to itself.

Some pawn users assume that if they have two strings, that the rating that has the higher value is what the gear is better for. This is NOT the case. You should only use a rating to compare two items together, rather than using ratings to determine what an item is better for. (Note: This rule can be counterfeit, but that requires balancing points)
2. A rating that gives you numbers in the 100’s is no better or worse than one that gives you points in the 10,000’s
Remember, this is a relative comparison tool. So 900 – 1000 may be better than 90,000 to 95,000.
3. Pawn doesn’t account for everything
Raid buffs, gear changing, and Talents factor in here as well. These are static values to help determine relative value, but raid buffs, talent changes, and changes from blizzard will affect the relative value of these statistics, so these strings will more than likely be dynamic.

Warrior

Protection

Balanced

(Pawn: v1: “Balanced”: CritRating=0.89, Agility=8.47, ExpertiseRating=9.22, DefenseRating=11.13, BlockValue=4.86, ArmorPenetration=1, Dps=3.56, Strength=3.84, ParryRating=8.24, BlockRating=8.42, DodgeRating=9.61, HitRating=1.98, Stamina=14.29, Armor=1, HasteRating=0.62, Ap=0.43 )

Survival

( Pawn: v1: “Survival”: BlockRating=8.49, Strength=2.91, ParryRating=8.56, Agility=8.02, ExpertiseRating=7.22, DefenseRating=11.61, Stamina=14.25, Armor=1, DodgeRating=10.09, BlockValue=4.98 )

Threat

( Pawn: v1: “Threat”: ArmorPenetration=4.54, CritRating=4.03, Dps=16.15, Strength=4.66, ParryRating=0.41, Agility=3.26, HitRating=9.56, HasteRating=3.02, ExpertiseRating=9.56, Ap=2 )

Based roughly on Elitist Jerks Tanking Spreadsheet.  Needs to be edited for sockets.

( Pawn: v1: “Heavy”: RedSocket=16, CritRating=0.8, Strength=1, MetaSocket=8, ExpertiseRating=0.7, BlueSocket=16, YellowSocket=16, ColorlessSocket=16, HitRating=0.7, BlockValue=0.9 )

Based roughly on Matthew Rossi’s post,The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Heavy.  This is for leveling as a Prot Warrior.  Vene has a good post for Raid DPS as a Prot Warrior.

Fury

See this post for Fury Warriors.

Paladin

Mostly from this thread on Elitist Jerks. 

Protection

Mitigation

( Pawn: v1: “ProtMit”: DodgeRating=18, BlockRating=1, Ap=1.2, CritRating=0.6, Strength=9.5, ParryRating=14.5, ExpertiseRating=1.5, Agility=14.5, HitRating=1.1, Stamina=19.1, Armor=1.2, SpellPower=0.8, DefenseRating=16.5, BlockValue=16.5 )

Threat

( Pawn: v1: “ProtThr”: Intellect=0.2, DodgeRating=15.1, BlockRating=0.9, Ap=4.7, CritRating=2.4, Strength=18.8, ParryRating=12.8, ExpertiseRating=6.1, Agility=12.2, HitRating=4.2, Stamina=16.8, Armor=1.1, SpellPower=3.1, DefenseRating=13.9, BlockValue=17.4 )

Holy

( Pawn: v1: “Holy”: Intellect=2.25, RedSocket=24, CritRating=1.1, MetaSocket=75, HasteRating=1, BlueSocket=14, Stamina=0.1, SpellPower=1.2, Mp5=2.5, YellowSocket=30 )

Shaman

Enhancement

Based on a run of EnhSim, DPS simulator

( Pawn: v1: “AEP Calc”: Intellect=1.14, CritRating=0.64, Agility=1.39, ExpertiseRating=0.67, OffHandDps=4.33, YellowSocket=32, ArmorPenetration=0.52, RedSocket=32, Strength=1, MetaSocket=16, HitRating=0.68, BlueSocket=32, MainHandDps=8.82, HasteRating=0.81, ColorlessSocket=32, Ap=1 )

Restoration

Based on this post.

( Pawn: v1: “Resto (EJ)”: Intellect=7, RedSocket=105, HasteRating=3, BlueSocket=86, YellowSocket=112, SpellPower=5, Mp5=10, CritRating=3 )

EDIT: There is something broken about these scales for weapons. Do not use them to decide which weapon to use.

Hunter

Beastmaster

( Pawn: v1: “Beast Mastery”: Intellect=7, RedSocket=128, CritRating=5, MetaSocket=168, HitRating=10, Agility=7, HasteRating=2, BlueSocket=128, YellowSocket=128, ArmorPenetration=6, Mp5=8, Ap=4 )

From this thread

Druid

Cat

( Pawn: v1: “Cat (Toskk)”: ArmorPenetration=1.0161, RedSocket=37.312, Strength=2.332, CritRating=0.83, ColorlessSocket=37.312, MetaSocket=103.21, FeralAp=1, Agility=1.6992, ExpertiseRating=1.0362, BlueSocket=18.66, YellowSocket=26.92, HitRating=1.0334, HasteRating=0.7236, Ap=1 )

From Flyv

Bear

( Pawn: v1: “Bear (Toskk)”: RedSocket=113.7, YellowSocket=101.3, ColorlessSocket=172.4, MetaSocket=329, Stamina=7.185, Agility=3.429, Health=0.411, BlueSocket=172.4, Armor=1.066, DefenseRating=1.885, DodgeRating=2.685, ExpertiseRating=1.306 )

From Flyv

Resto

( Pawn: v1: “Resto”: Intellect=5.79, HasteRating=2.87, CritRating=2.05, SpellPower=9.4, Spirit=5.13, Mp5=10 )

From this Elitist Jerks Post

Death Knight

Unholy

( Pawn: v1: “Unholy”: ArmorPenetration=0.544, RedSocket=39.7552, CritRating=1.12, Strength=2.4847, ColorlessSocket=39.7552, HasteRating=0.621, Agility=0.7336, HitRating=2.474, BlueSocket=17.3929, YellowSocket=25.2329, TwoHandDps=7.567, ExpertiseRating=1.391, Ap=1 )

From Skeleton Jack’s Post.  

Other

Other specs, Warlocks, Priests, Mages, and Rogues are out of luck here.  I suggest Elitist Jerks as a starting point. Good luck in your search!

 

NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All software is supplied as is, without guarantee.  The user assumes all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.

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Tank Gemming in Wrath

Dec 19

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Orly Factor – Tank Gemming in Wrath, my experiences seems to match what I’ve seen. Now I need to get some gear with gem slots on it (or at least modify my own gear to provide gem slots).

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Do you care about PvP anymore?

Dec 16

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Matthew Rossi asks, Do you care about PvP anymore?  He describes how he went from doing some PvP in classic WoW, less in Burning Crusade to not doing any in Wrath.  I’ve found that as I played Warcraft more I PvPed less.  The last time I PvPed was when my warlock hit 60 and I tried to do the AV quests for XP.  My kids will occasionally take one of my toons and go to a battleground but that’s the only time you’d have seen my toons there in the last few months. 

I don’t know what could be done to make PvP more interesting.  A standard set of PvP gear so that it’s skill that matters, not twinking, might help.  I’d still get owned, but at least I’d feel as though I had the possibility of doing something.  Alternately, I like the idea of gear brackets of some kind – let those with full arena gear beat on each other instead of my PvE geared toons. 

There may not be any point in try to get me interested in PvP again though.  My preference is for PvE play.  The changes Blizzard has made in PvP may simply be catering to those who prefer PvP.  I can live with the fact that a portion of the game has no appeal to me.  I’ll play the parts I enjoy and ignore the bits I don’t.

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I Hate Rep Grinds

Dec 12

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

hate Someone put this much more poetically a few months back but by the time I hit exalted with a faction, I hate their guts.  It seems to me that every rep ding should be accompanied by a note saying how much more you hate that faction.  I start off at neutral and by the end I want to watch those miserable pixilated beings die horribly. 

The irksome thing is that if I choose to raid in WoW I’m going to have to rep grind with those bloiting blits the Sons of Hodir.  I cannot begin to express how much that made dinging 80 a miserable experience for me.  Currently there’s an exploit for the Argent Crusade rep grind, but I can’t be bothered to take advantage of it.  I may just stick to buying the Aldork/Scrybaby shoulder enchants and live with being sub-optimally geared. 

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