Moving

Not sure if anyone follows this blog anymore, as much time as I've not put in recently, but I'm moving it. I just have too many eccentric hobbies to blog about only one of them, so will doing the more general purpose blog type thing. Anyway, here's the address for those who care:
World of s4dfish pt. 2

Karazhan

So, Saturday night was our guilds first Karazhan run. A few people had pugged it before, but this was our first 'official' all guild raid effort. We ended up starting 45 min late as two of our three healers had RL issues that kept them late. Raid breakdown:

• 2 Tanks (Protection Warriors)
• 3 Healers (2 Holy Paladins, 1 Holy Priest)
• 5 DPS (Rogue, Arms Warrior, BM Hunter, SV Hunter, Arcane Mage)

Only three of our raid had been in the instance before, and I think those three were the only ones who'd stepped into a Heroic either. So we were going in with a mix of PvP gear, 5 man blues and the occasional green.

Had one death on trash pulls before Attumen/Midnight. Quick regroup and 1 shotted Attumen/Midnight. Healer gloves and caster bracers dropped. Unfortunately for our Mage he had raided long ago and didn't realize that he couldn't release and run back in, so he missed on the bracers, Holy Priest ended up with both :P

Worked our way to Moroes with lots of Mage deaths on the AoE Pulls. Took three tries on Moroes, first attempt was going well until a shackle resist lead to a dead priest which lead to a dead tank and you can guess from there. We'd DPS'd down two adds and planned on keeping two CC'd until after Mores. Second attempt we tried to DPS down all adds before Moroes, which was horrid. Third attempt was like the first (2 CC: Frost Trap, Shackle) and worked fine. One thing we did which I haven't read was have our OT tank an add next to Moroes so he could build aggro via thunderclap and cleave (incoming damage from the add -> aggro), seemed to work fine. Emerald Ripper and Holy Paladin boots dropped. I snagged the dagger and we had a happy Pally.

Due to our late start we made an attempt on Maiden, wiped immediately as we were not 100% on placement. Tried again with another wipe as I pulled to early (swear I was in stealth) and called it a night.

Came back last night short our OT (hanging out at the mall, who does that?). Took three wipes with progressive success (60%, 50%, 40%) before we found out that everyone wasn't in cleanse range, not standing on the first step so we were losing DPS to the Holy Fire. Corrected that and we got him down. Of course this was the only attempt that I actually died on (double vanish FTW) as I stepped off the stair to bandage and was promptly Holy Fired... The shaman totem dropped (of course...) and something else which I can't remember, think it was mage loot...

By now our OT arrived and we worked our way to Opera. Trash hits crazy hard there, was a wake up call for us. Made it to the event and drew Wizard of Oz, which I think for our group was the worst we could have got. We settled on a strategy of DPSing down Dorothee (duh), OT picking up Roar initially then having our hunters chain fear him, Mage spamming scorch on the Strawman, MT tanking Tinhead, and OT picking up Tito when he pops. We wiped 3 or 4 times getting the strategy down pat. Seems like the Mage was key to our strategy. We ended up having the MT tank Tinhead near Strawman so that he could try to keep treat on both so that in the event of a resisted stun we didn't get a dead mage -> dead raid. We did manage to do it and I'm pretty pleased with our success. The libram and Wicked Witches Hat dropped. Neither Pally was keen on the libram so they /rolled for it and the mage wasn't convinced that the hat was an upgrade over his Second Sight hat, I made him take it anyway :P

Wanted to try Curator, but had people need to log, so called it a night. Hopefully next week we can get Attumen->Moroes->Maiden in one night then try Opera->Curator on the next. Not sure if we have the gear to do Curator, but might as well see.

Gear links

So, Zydari is now at 54 and looking at Outland and all those lovely quest rewards. So, I've made a list of stuff that I should keep a loot out on. Okay, technically wowhead.com made the list for me, but you know what I mean.

Plate quest rewards with +defense
Plate quest rewards with +damage
Shield quest rewards
Weapon quest rewards with +damage

Rare Plate drops with +defense
Rare Plate drops with +damage
Rare Shield drops:
Rare 1-Hand Weapon drops with +damage

Plate from Reputation with +defense
Shields from Reputation/Vendor
1-Hand Weapons from Reputation/Vendor with +damage

Pawn scales

So, I'm anal retentive enough to care about specifically how much my characters benefit from stat X vs. stat Y. The addon Pawn makes this easier, but you have to have the information to put in it to begin with. I'm also OCD enough to want it normalized against the item budget cost, non-normalized numbers are in parenthesis. The advantage for normalizing against the average budget cost is that you don't get much higher values with the presence of lots of stats. What I'd done in the past was simply add STA/Resilience to my DPS values, which was nice, but made it hard to compare the relative worth of an item across categories. Sure it was easy to compare for a set purpose, but to compare the multi purpose worth of an item got harder. It's not the big a deal for Sakuran, but for Zydari and Laic who both have 3 scales, keeping 3 'best' sets is silly when one item may be pretty good across the board.

Oh, and I'm pretty cheap so I only socket green gems at this point. As Sakuran starts using Kara gear I may invest in the blue gems... but 50g for only a slight improvement? Unlikely...

• Zydaria, Enhancement Shaman. My wife's toon.
  
• DPS - Pulled from the Enhancement thread on Elitist Jerks.
  
• Strength: 1.38 (1.1)
  
• Stamina: .42 (.33)
• Agility: .88 (.7)
• Attack Power: .62 (.5)
• Crit Rating: 1 (.8)
• Hit Rating: .88 (.7)
• Blue Socket: 5.79 (3 STR, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 8.25 (6 STR)
• Yellow Socket: 7.12 (3 Crit, 3 STR)
• Meta Socket: 15.5 (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond)
• Healing - Yes, she does heal as enhancement spec, STR and AP are included due to the 2.3 AP -> +damage/healing talent.
  
• Strength: .38 (.27)
• MP5: 3.47 (2.5)
• Attack Power: .14 (.19)
• Spirit: .69 (.5)
• +Healing: .63 (.46)
• Intellect: 1.39 (1)
• Spell Crit: 1.39 (1)
• Blue Socket: 7.89 (7 +healing, 1 MP5)
• Red Socket: 8.21 (13 +healing)
• Yellow Socket: 8.58 (7 +healing, 3 INT)
• Meta Socket: 21.65 (Insightful Earthstorm Diamond)
• Laic, Survial Hunter. You'll not that I don't assign a value for +hit, with survial spec reaching the hit cap is relatively easy, so assigning a value would make it more likely that I exceed the cap, I tend to shoot for a balanced approach moving gear around to get the higher hit % while not sacrificing my pawn scores).
  
• DPS - Max damage with little regard for mana regen.
• Attack Power: .6 (.51)
  
• Stamina: .12 (.1
  
• Agility: 1.18 (1)
  
• Intellect: 1.04 (.88)
  
• Crit Rating: 1.04 (.88)
  
• Haste Rating: 1.35 (1.14)
  
• Blue Socket: 4.02 (3 AGI, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 7.11 (6 AGI)
  
• Yellow Socket: 3.55 (3 AGI, 3 Hit)
  
• Meta Socket: 19.22 (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond)
  
• Regen - Emphasis on mana regen, good for grinding or situations where I may not be able to stop drink.
• Attack Power: .55 (.51)
  
• Stamina: .11 (.1
  
• Agility: 1.08 (1)
  
• Intellect: .95 (.88)
  
• Crit Rating: .95 (.88)
  
• Haste Rating: 1.23 (1.14)
• MP5: 3.79 (3.5)
  
• Blue Socket: 3.68 (3 AGI, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 6.5 (6 AGI)
  
• Yellow Socket: 3.25 (3 AGI, 3 Hit)
  
• Meta Socket: 18 (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond)
  
• PVP - increased weight for STA and Resiliance. Decreased weigh on regen, but still has a value for MP5.
• Attack Power: .52 (.51)
  
• Stamina: .67 (.67)
  
• Agility: 1.01 (1)
  
• Intellect: .88 (.88)
  
• Crit Rating: .89 (.88)
  
• Haste Rating: 1.15 (1.14)
• Resilience: 1.01 (1)
  
• MP5: 2.53 (2.5)
  
• Blue Socket: 5.73 (3 AGI, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 6.07 (6 AGI)
  
• Yellow Socket: 5.37 (4 STA, 3 Crit)
  
• Meta Socket: 17.14 (Powerful Earthstorm Diamond)
• Sakuran, Combat Dagger Rogue. At least for the moment, WTB excuse to go back to subtlety.
• DPS - Pretty much straight from the spreadsheet.
  
• Strength: .69 (.57)
  
• Stamina: . 12(.1)
• Agility: 1.2 (1)
• Attack Power: .69 (.57)
• Crit Rating: .84 (.7)
• Hit Rating: 1.17 (.97)
• Expertise: 1.25 (1.12)
  
• Blue Socket: 4.09 (3 AGI, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 8.22 (6 AGI)
• Yellow Socket: 7.11 (3 AGI, 3 Hit)
• Meta Socket: 19.43 (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond)
• PVP - Same as Laic, higher weight for STA and Resilience.
  
• Strength: .58 (.57)
  
• Stamina: .68 (.67)
• Agility: 1.02 (1)
• Attack Power: .58 (.57)
• Crit Rating: .72 (.7)
• Hit Rating: .99 (.97)
• Resiliance: 1.02 (1)
  
• Blue Socket: 5.08 (3 AGI, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 7.00 (6 AGI)
• Yellow Socket: 6.05 (3 AGI, 3 Hit)
• Meta Socket: 17.29 (Powerful Earthstorm Diamond)
• Zydari, Protection Paladin
  
• DPS - a hard set to come up with, basically I took my start from the Tanking stats and removed anything that was exclusively defensive while retaining things that can result in damage dealt. This is not a retribution DPS scale, they favor much different stats.
• Stamina: .81 (.67)
  
• Intellect: 1.22 (1)
  
• Expertise Rating: .61 (.5)
  
• Mp5: 1.52 (1.25)
  
• Spell Power: 1.04 (.86)
  
• Block Rating: .91 (.75)
  
• Spell Crit Rating: 1.22 (1)
• Blue Socket: 7.41 (4 +Damage, 4 STA)
• Red Socket: 7.29 (7 +Damage)
• Yellow Socket: 7.82 (3 Spell Crit, 4 +Damage)
  
• Meta Socket: 19.61 (Swift Starfire Diamond)
  
• Tanking - These values are based on ones I found on the Pawn forums, haven't seen a spreadsheet yet to give more precise values, but it works. Note that I'm not necessarily offering this as valid for a raid tank as all you want to focus on there is STA/Def/Block/+damage, but for 5 man grouping this should be better. The different ratings are based on the amount of avoidance you get per rating point, so block is the fastest way to get avoidance up, followed by Defense then dodge, and lastly Parry. Yes, Parry is better than Dodge, but for this exercise I'm ignoring it.
  
• Stamina: .72 (.67)
  
• Intellect: .54 (.5)
  
• ExpertiseRating: 1.08 (1)
  
• Mp/5: 1.08 (1)
  
• ParryRating: .72 (.66)
  
• DefenseRating: 1.08 (1)
• DodgeRating: .85 (.78)
  
• SpellPower: .93 (.86)
  
• BlockRating: 2.04 (1.88)
• BlockValue: .7 (.65)
  
• Blue Socket: 6.51 (9 STA)
  
• Red Socket: 6.6 (4 +damage, 4 STA)
  
• Yellow Socket: 6.15 (3 Def, 4 STA)
• Meta Socket: 13.02 (Powerful Earthstorm Diamond)
  
• Healing - I ultimately plan to run 20/41/0 with Zydari, yes he won't main-tank, but he'll be fine as a 5 man tank and raid off tank, plus will be able to off-heal. I'm slightly favoring +Healing to +Spell Crit until such a time as my +healing exceeds 750.
  
• Intellect: 1 (1)
  
• Mp5: 2.5 (2.5)
  
• Healing: .57 (.57)
  
• Spell Crit Rating: .57 (.57)
  
• Blue Socket: 6.48 (7 +Healing, 1 MP5)
  
• Red Socket: 7.39 (13 +Healing)
  
• Yellow Socket: 6.98 (7 +Healing, 3 INT)
  
• Meta Socket: 17 (Insightful Earthstorm Diamond)

Eventually I'll come up with some for my Priest and other toons, but for now this is about it. Hope you enjoy it.

100th post, and a substantive one at that (lol)

So, guess this is my 100th post. Which strikes me as odd as I can't imagine typing that many posts. Anyway, I'll keep plugging along, slowly but slowly, this post is mostly random junk, but stick to what you know.

Hunter licenses revoked:
So, I was in a SL group as my rogue with two hunters who I'll not name. I ended up dropping out right before Murmur due to RL issues (specifically a screaming two year old). I logged on later to see how they did. Dropped Murmer and WOOT Sonic Spear dropped. I wish I had a SS of the conversation, but the jist is that it was sharded. ONE OF THE TOP 5 HUNTER WEAPONS IN THE GAME WAS PASSED OVER BY TWO HUNTERS???? I was shocked to say the least. Now one of the two hunters in question is planning on DW, getting a Felsteel blade crafted (two lazy to look it up and link it), so I suppose I can understand that. But still... I'm pretty sure Big Red Kitty doesn't read my blog, but I'm half tempted to e-mail this to him as I think he was never able to get his (though is now wielding Legacy, so the sting will be less).

Arena
I'm loling my way through the arena for a few weapons. Sakuran is losing massive numbers of games on 2v2 and 3v3. 0-20 in the last two weeks. Of course I'm grouped with some guildies who don't PvP much and we're all PvE spec. Sak's going for the S1 offhand dagger (1.4 attack speed FTW). Laic is on a 2v2 with a Warlock in our guild who's much, much better at PvP than I am. He pretty much single handedly carried us to 6-4 which is saying something as I have about zero clue how to PvP as a hunter. Still trying to figure it out.

PvE Spec FTL
In case I haven't mentioned it Sak's combat daggers now. Which is fun in a group, but man does it suck to solo. Waiting for the 2.3 PTR to come up so I can see how buffed the subtlety tree is. If it's even close to competitive I'm respeccing, it's just too much fun. I've been having some frustration with her as I've got pretty close to as good of gear as I'm going to get, outside of heroics and raids (few pieces left to upgrade, I know), but my DPS still isn't where I'd like it to be, averaged 520 DPS on my last BM run. Laic, my Suvival Spec Hunter, is getting close to her DPS levels, averaging in the upper 400s, breaking 500 on some boss fights. And that's with worse overall gear. Who knows, maybe it's just my perception and dislike for Combat Daggers...

Was thinking about rambling on more, but maybe I'll just make it a new post. You know, start that next 100...