Making the move

I think I’ve made it pretty clear in past post that I wasn’t real happy with my raid situation. After FBI tanked, I moved to AA where me and a group from FBI formed their 2nd 25 man raid. In the beginning, things were good. We downed Festergut and Rotface then council. After a few weeks Professor went down. Blood queen followed shortly there after in 10 man. That’s where it stopped though. No more progression, hell we weren’t even trying to progress any more. More than half of the group was original AA alts, who were there just to get gear. They had no interest in wiping over and over on bosses they’ve already downed.

Thankfully, my raiding issue has been resolved thanks to Matticus. I have moved over to the Ner’zhul server and joined Conquest. While I’ve only been in the guild for 3 days, I’ve already gotten a shot at 10 man Arthas and 25 man Sindy. So far, I love this guild. Matticus has created a super professional and streamlined approach to raiding. The raids last 3 hours and somehow they manage to get more attempts on a boss in that time than I ever have in 5 hours of raiding. Extremely impressive.

The down side to all of this…I feel like I’m under a microscope, even though I probably shouldn’t. It’s just such a different situation than what I’m used to. While in FBI, I was THE tank, now I’m that new guy. I went from being the backbone of a guild to being an unknown. I was a loud mouth, shouting orders now I’m being asked to speak up in vent. It’s not all bad though, while it may only feel like I’m being judged by conquest, I’m really judging myself. I’m working harder, really monitoring the raid, my situational awareness and the abilities I use.

As far as the future goes, I’m working hard to get my mage up to level 80 because that’s what the guild needs right now. I think I’ve impressed enough to at least get a hard look at tanking the Sunday 10 man and even filling in for an absent tank in 25 until the mage is ready. Not much will change here on the blog, I’ll keep it a warrior/tank/raiding deal and try to get a more constant update schedule going. I’m actually fighting a post about AOE tanking now, I’ve re-written it 3 times already. At this point, it may make it live just after Cataclysm releases…

The Problem with WoW

In a series of post, I’m going to tackle what seems like a re-occurring issue…”Is WoW too easy?”

First off, I want to say I have taken a short hiatus from Wow. Some time away from the game to get some time with Star Trek: online, Aion and Dragon Age. This break has to do with me really wanting to play these games a bit but also because of a sequence of events that stems directly from my last post, where I talked about FBI breaking up and our raid team joining AA.

Now, I’m not going to slander AA, they are a great group of guys but I’m not happy raiding with them at the moment. I decided to shop myself around and see if I could land a raiding spot somewhere. In my search, I find that one of the top guilds on the server is looking for a protection warrior. I filled out an app. and waited. A few days later I got a message from the GM saying my app. was denied. At this point, I shrugged and just blew it off thinking I don’t have enough raid experience.

I’m nosy though, I had to know who they picked up instead of me. They did indeed sign a prot. warrior. I compared our achievements to see where I needed to be to gain acceptance in a top guild like that. He has cleared Kara a few times and has a few kills in Black Temple but no clears. So he’s been around since BC. Around the same number of Naxx clears as me and at the appropriate times. That’s where our likeness ends though.

In Ulduar, he’s never killed General Vez. in 10 or 25. He’s never killed Mimiron or Thorim in 25. He has a couple of hard modes achievements but no where near a rusted-proto drake. Moving on to TOC, he’s cleared it in 10 man and 25 man but only gotten as far as FC in 10 ToGC and 0 kills in 25 ToGC.

I’ve cleared Ulduar and have all the 10 man hard modes including the rusted drake. Cleared 10 ToGC in 45 attempts and am 3/5 in 25 ToGC. The kicker is, this dude has a higher gear score than me. They had to have chosen this guy based strictly off of gear score. I can’t imagine his application being more thorough than mine. In the business world, this would equate to selecting a new employee based on where they went to school instead of actual work experience. If you’ve spent any time in the working world, you know degrees only get you in the door and when it comes down to it, employers are going to grab the guy with the most experience…unless they’re cheap and want someone “green”.

In this case, we know this late in an expansion a guild shouldn’t want somebody “green” to step in and tank for them. They shouldn’t want to have to train this guy up.

So, “What’s wrong with WoW?” A few months ago I would have said nothing major. Since I’ve been playing Aion I’ve noticed people who play other MMOs think WoW is for the noobs. I figured it was jealousy, since they’re MMO of choice didn’t have the player base that WoW has. After spending some time in Aion and STO, I realized that they really don’t like us. In Aion, if you ask in general chat where the AH or Auction House is and you’re going to be met with jeers of “Go back to WoW noob”. On the flip side I’ve seen it asked if Aion had “Guild Housing” and a huge discussion broke out on how awesome Guild Wars is…Granted Aion and GW are made by the same developer but still why are we considered noobs because we play the big boy on the block?

There has to be something there. Looking back at my failed app to guild I spoke of earlier, it’s not like the guy they picked had me beat by a lot in GS either. I broke the top 10 in GS for Prot. Warriors somewhere in the middle of Ulduar and I haven’t left the top 10 until shortly after ICC was released. Currently I’m sporting 3 pieces of ToGC gear. At the time of the app, this guy was beating me by 75GS.  The week ICC was released, I was a trinket away from being the top geared prot warrior.

Is this the problem here? A guy with no real raiding experience can come from absolute obscurity and take a raiding spot from someone who’s cleared pretty much all content in an expansion? I believe I’m on the right track thinking this.  Basically what Blizzard is telling us by making gear so easy to get is that our prior achievements mean nothing.

What I think needs to happen to fix this: There are a few routes that Blizzard can take.

1. Badge gear should be there to fill in the blanks for gear you didn’t get in the last tier of raids. To put in the current tier’s context, no piece of Frost badge gear should be better than a 25 man drop from TOC. Example would be the tanking frost badge cloak is better than the cloak that drops in 10 man ICC when in fact it shouldn’t be better than a cloak dropping in 25 TOC. It’s a fact you don’t need ICC gear to raid ICC, you need probably a full set of TOC gear to raid it. Any pieces that are missing from you’re set should be filled by frost badge gear. The same thing goes for gear bought with badges of Triumph…they shouldn’t be better than gear dropped from Ulduar.
2. You can’t say that people shouldn’t be allowed to gear up for current content by running heroics. After all, if you been raiding WotLK since it was released…you geared for Naxx by rep farming and doing Heroics. That being said, I’ve got a lot of time invested into my toon. To see somebody who hasn’t put that time in achieve things that I can’t at this time, feels like a slap in the face. This guy took the easy route in my eyes. If Blizzard wants to keep Frost Gear BIS until Hard Mode gear is available, I should have an easier time getting it or the guy that hasn’t raided should have a harder time getting it. I go for the second option…Lets take tier gear for example. Make it actual tier gear. In order to get the tier 10 head you must have the tier 9 head, in order to get tier 9 you must have tier 8 and so on. Of course there would have to be a break somewhere, you can’t expect someone who wants a full Tier 10 set to start at Tier 1 and work their way up…go by expansions and have all the tier gear in WotLK linked in this fashion. Go one step further and do the same thing with badge gear. If you want to buy the ilevel 264 tanking trinket from frost badges, you must have an ilevel 245 trinket (it could be pvp or a caster trinket) which can be bought for triumph badges and to get that one you’d need a ilevel 226 trinket.

Either method you pick would still make it to where someone who is un-geared for the current tier of raiding has to put in a bit more work but can still gear for current content. I know Blizzard is on this kick about how they want everyone to have access to all the raid content and that’s all fine and good but I think “The Problem With WoW” is that they’ve taken it too far and made it to where you have to totally re-gear your toon after every content patch.

The rise and fall…

This post is more for my own benefit than anything else. Some may find it interesting with the lack of drama on WoW.com these days. *NOTE: I like the way Larisa formats her post, I’m going to make an attempt at replicating her formatting…*

THE BEGINNING:

I was a noob. I’d never raided and had spent around 6 months leveling to 80. I did manage to hit 80 with most of the others coming from BC although I never hit the level cap during BC’s reign. I was in a few guilds on the way up. Most were with RL friends who played, none of them were raiders though. They all played socially. I knew during leveling, I wanted to raid. When I hit 80 I decided to leave my little group of RL friends and find a raiding guild. At this point I had no idea about wowprogress.com or wow-heroes.com. I saw a guild in trade chat looking for raiders so I sent a tell to the GM. I hit 80 while in this guild. While running a heroic, a DK guildmate of mine ninja’d a tanking helm from me. The helm was a huge upgrade for me but he claimed the guild wanted him to tank Naxx, so he needed it. I left that guild that night.

I found Krazy, GM of FBI, spamming trade that same night. After a few weeks of getting to know the awesome members of FBI, I got in my first raid with them. It was an OS 10 with zero drakes up. I was lucky enough to be in the run with the guild’s main DK tank, Port. He was awesome, I explained it was my first time in a raid and he took the time to give me a few hints and tips. He got me to tank Sarth while he collected the adds. The result was the guild’s first 1 shot of OS. He told me to sign up for the 10 man Naxx run on Tuesday and he’d get me in his group.

The guild had over 300 toons at the time and we had no standards for Naxx runs. If you wanted to go, you signed up. Port would invite all who signed up to a single raid and we’d split up from there. Usually into 3 or 4 10 man groups. We’d PUG to fill in the gaps and 9 times out of 10, the PUGs would become new members. In fact, looking at our raid today, I’d say 90% of our main raiders PUG’d with us before they joined.

Port was a great raid leader and tank. I learned a tremendous amount about tanking from him but he had a little secret. He hated tanking. He tanked because he could and pretty much had to. His true love was his warlock. I basically became his project. He wanted to turn me into the guild’s Main Tank so he didn’t have to do it anymore. By the time Ulduar was around a month out he achieved his goal. I was main tanking all bosses in whatever 10 I got put into and also our 25 man. I also was MT for the guild’s first Mally kill.

THE RISE

When Ulduar finally dropped. FBI held a ranking in the low 30′s on server. At this point, we didn’t really care. We just wanted to kill shit and kill shit we did…in 10 man. We had the 4 keepers down and were working on the General within the first month of release. The problem was it was only 1 10 man doing it. The other 2 or 3 10s that we got together rarely got past XT and never past council. Also, in 25 man, we struggled for what seemed like weeks on each new boss. Finally after a month of Ulduar, Krazy called a meeting of officers. While I wasn’t an officer at the time, I was included in the meeting. At the meeting we were instructed to start keeping tabs on raid members and see who’s just not pulling their weight.

Finally after a few weeks of collecting data, FBI began really recruiting raiders instead of casuals. We began replacing some of the “slackers” and it showed in our rankings. Before we knew it, we had 3/4 keepers down in 25 man and Yogg fell in 10 man. Our ranking reached 19th on server and we were starting to turn some heads and the more our rank improved, the better the recruits became. By the time TOC came out we were competing for top 10 on server. We had about 15 people with rusted proto-drakes and were killing bosses in TOC as fast as Blizz could put them out. We even scored a couple server first achievements along the way.

I think the highest we got on server was 7. Some of the top guilds even started shit talking us, which made us really believe we had arrived. This continued throughout the reign of TOC and into ToGC where we got 10 man insanity and ended up 3/5 in 25 ToGC. Good enough to finish tier 9 content in 8th on server. Just as a side note, we play on Hellscream which is one of the top PVE servers around. Usually ranking top 20-30 in the US. The server’s top guild is usually in the top 100 in the world.

The Fall

It wouldn’t last though. In the time while working towards insanity and trying to down heroic FC in 25 man. Krazy’s personal life kicked the guild in the nuts. I don’t know all of the details but I will try to piece together what I know. Basically, as I understand it, he was playing WOW at work. He got fired, his wife left him and took the kids. Instead of backing out of the game and fixing his life, he threw himself even deeper into the game.

Krazy has always been a bit of a hot head and on occasion would throw a tantrum on vent if we wiped where we shouldn’t or somebody was slacking. It usually worked though, he’d yell and we’d get a kill. We began to joke that we weren’t really raiding until we got yelled at.

He used the game to get away from the divorce but instead of leaving it in the real world, he brought in game with him. His tantrums increased and the moral of the guild as a whole diminished. I think the breaking point was a ToGC 25 where we had a “guest”. This was no ordinary PUG. He was a good friend of many of the guild and GM of one of the guilds that were ranked above us. Krazy absolutely blew his shit on vent in front of this other GM and began ranting and cursing at one of our top healers for no apparent reason. No more bosses were killed that night. Most logged off immediately after the raid ended.

In the days that followed that incident, I began getting tells asking if I was leaving the guild. It seemed like nobody wanted to be the first to leave but everyone wanted to stick together. The officers decided to put some pressure on Krazy to see if we could get him to leave the game for a few weeks to get his life in order. It was met with a stiff “fuck you, this is my guild. I built it, I’m going to run it as I see fit.” I knew at this point it was over, it was just a matter of time.

Upon the release of ICC, we rolled in and quickly put the first 4 bosses on farm in 10 and 25 man. We managed to keep our ranking in the top 10 and it seemed like we were going to clear the place despite krazy. When the plague wing was released we hit a brick wall in progression. To date we have not killed Festergut in 25 man and not downed Professor in 10. No bosses are down in newer wings. Our ranking slipped to 19th on server and Krazy flipped his shit once again. He went on some rant that pretty much ended in him saying if we didn’t kill Festergut and Rotface in 5 attempts, nobody would get any DKP for the night. This rant occurred before we even stepped foot into the raid, needless to say everyone was on edge from the get go.

Flash forward to Rotface. 2nd attempt he falls. Move to Festergut, 1st attempt we get him to 5%. 2nd attempt Krazy dies on the pull somehow. Shortly after another dps dies. We asked a druid to BR Krazy and Krazy to BR the other dps. Krazy took the BR but didn’t rez the other. The attempt ended in a wipe and when asked why he didn’t BR the dps, we got no reply from Krazy. It was then that we realized that he had dropped to another vent channel to talk with his new “girlfriend”. The raid leader “death gripped” him back to the raid channel and gave him a lecture. Krazy in typical fashion began to argue that he didn’t need vent because he knew the fights. He then began to pout. We put one more attempt on Fester that ended with him about 75% and we called it.

The “core” raiders all logged onto alts, got in a group and later into another guild’s vent. We discussed the situation and decided we were done raiding with FBI. We knew we had a solid raid and wanted to keep them together. We discussed the idea of starting our own guild or merging with another. By the end of the weekend, it was decided that we would merge with another top 10 guild, Athena’s Avatars. We would become their second core group. We’d have our own raid, leaders, loot system like we were our own guild but have to ability to pull their alts into our runs to fill in any gaps we have.

THE FALLOUT

The following Tuesday, everyone logged on and /gquit. The carnage was amazing. I was one of the last to quit because I just wanted to watch the fall out. FBI went from a strong 350 plus members to 77. Of the 77, only 27 are level 80, about 10 of them are alts and the other half are either inactive or never raided.

For the core group, we managed to keep about 20 of us together and move to AA. In the process, we lost our top dps rogue. Also, AA’s core group has begun picking our top guys to join their 1st core. We’ve lost our #1 dps to them, our warlock and it looks like we’re losing our best paladin tank.

Personally, I’m not going to sit by and watch our best members get picked off one by one. I’ve got numerous applications out atm. I guess we’ll see where I go from here.

My Eleanor

If you’ve seen “Gone in 60 Seconds“, you know it’s a movie about stealing cars. Memphis is a retired car thief who returns to the car stealing game to save his brother’s life. There’s a bad guy who’s going to kill his brother if he doesn’t steal 50 cars by some random deadline. The cops are aware that Memphis has returned to town and are sniffing around, so the crew decides to steal all 50 cars in 1 night. They research the cars and give each one a lady’s name. Eleanor was the name given to the 1967 Shelby GT 500. The crew said Eleanor was Memphis’ Unicorn.

Why am I going into detail on a movie the majority of you probably saw 10 years ago? Memphis was the king of thieves. He could steal any car…except when it came to the Shelby GT. It has a direct correlation to the World of Warcraft and our pursuit of Phat Loots. What’s the first thing that we, as raiders, do when a new patch comes out? Yeah, we go look at the new loot that’ll be dropping in the new dungeon. You update Rawr or a spreadsheet or you may write it down on a napkin. Don’t lie, you look at the loot then try to figure out how to kill the boss to get said loot.

I’ve played WOW for about a year and a half now…I’ve been at the level cap for around a year. Do the math…that means I couldn’t have raided in BC. My experiences with loot began at 80. I knew I wanted to raid, I knew I wanted to tank. I did what any want-a-be would do, made a gear list. #1 on that list….The Red Sword of Courage, which I believe is still one of the coolest looking weapons in wrath. Anyway, I started running heroics crossing out pieces on my list 1 by 1 until only 1 remained….yep, the Red Sword of F-ing Courage. 10 days in a row I had run Heroic UP and still it evaded me. It had become my first Unicorn. That mythical piece of gear that evades your grasp until you’re sure there’s some sort of conspiracy against you. There are times when you believe even wowhead is lying about it’s very existence.

Finally after 13 straight days of running the dungeon, I looted the boss and there it was…my Eleanor. I was ecstatic, all that work had finally paid off…yeah, I was a noob. I had no idea that it was just the first of many. That unicorn was quickly replaced by Essence of Gossamer (10 runs to get) which was replaced by Last Laugh (17 runs) and Wall of Terror (never dropped for me). Then Ulduar came out and with it, you guessed it a new unicorn. Heart of Iron was the tier 8 version of Eleanor. It took me 13 runs to see it drop, lucky I had the dkp to win it.

Then came patch 3.2 and with it TOC and of course a new unicorn….Satrina’s Impeding Scarab. This ones a little different, see the unicorns in the past were mine before they dropped. I either was the only tank that needed it or had the dkp to get it. After 13 Faction Champ kills, I have seen the Scarab drop twice. The first my off-tank had 5 more dkp than me and won it. The second was this past week. My guild had an alt/new 80 TOC 25 run. I volunteered to tank it for a chance at the trinket. Guess what…it dropped…guess what else…I rolled a 14 off-tank rolled a 22. Since it’s now old content, dkp doesn’t matter, all loot was open roll.

This newest Eleanor has by far been the hardest to swallow. Twice now, it’s been in my grasp, yet has failed to land in my backpack. It makes me wonder if she will show up in ICC…as of now, no gear really jumps off the page as “I gotta have that”. Most of the really sweet gear is either from badges or craftable. Although, I can see the tier armor tokens being a pain. This tier I’m running with 2 shaman, 2 hunters and another warrior. I’ve already lost 2 dkp battles for a token but at least there’s more than 1 boss per week that drops them…I guess.

Lets hear it, what’s your Eleanor? I know most tanks I talk with have a problem upgrading shields. I’ve been fortunate in that respect, for me, it seems the fabled unicorn will always be a trinket….maybe this one will take the scarab’s place?

WTF, wow.com?

I read wow.com pretty much every day. I usually check it a couple of times a day and usually enjoy most of the articles. The ones I don’t like, I usually skip over and don’t give them a second thought. So far, it’s only Wed. and 2 articles have really pissed me off this week.

The first isn’t so much the article but the fact that the moron writing it has no clue about anything PvE. First off, I’m kind of indifferent on PvP. I enjoy it on my DK and my warrior. I’m not a fan on my mage though. I also love random world PvP. I, along with a few of my guildies, will flag ourselves while standing around the summoning stone for raids. We had some epic battles in front of Ulduar when a horde guild would show up for their raid. At times it’d be around 25 vs 25 right at the steps of Ulduar. It was awesome, of course our GM would get pissed because sometimes the fighting would go so long that we’d be starting the run an hour plus late. That being said I have never stepped foot in arena. I have said time and again, competitive PvP should be skill based. I can’t laugh because I pwned some noob that has a 1,000 less Gear score than me. I don’t find that funny or fun. When I want competitive PvP action, I switch over to Halo or Call of Duty or some other shooter where skill is the only difference between players.

Enough of my views on PvP, none of our views can change the fact that WoW is a PvE game first. The current version of Pvp is tacted on. It was added later in the games life….battle grounds then later arena. That being said, I’m not going to hold it against anyone because they like arena. It’s your game, play it how you want. At the same time, leave me the fuck alone.

It becomes a problem when your game starts affecting my game. Which is where the wow.com article chooses to go. The following is his list of suggested nerfs and tweaks to make prot warriors stop killing his little harmless mage.

1. Nerf Protection Warrior’s damage
2. Remove the silence from Shield Bash and Heroic Throw. Also, make Gag Order and interrupt instead of a silence.
3. Something about how they need to make every thing like Spell Reflect..
4. Cut the stun duration of Concussion Blow and Shockwave by 1 second.
5. Shockwave should apply DR to itself.

#1 we do too much damage. Um, last I checked, the paladin off tank that I’m beating by over 1,000 gear score is doing roughly 500 more dps than me in raids. It’s actually more than that but I want to play it safe since I don’t have a screen shot to prove it ATM. On a normal boss fight, I’ve seen him hit 3.4k dps where I’m doing just over 2k…2.5 if I’m lucky. He averages around 3k. If they reduce my damage, it’s very likely on a boss like Festergut who has 40 million HP and a 5 minute enrage timer…I’ll get sat for the DK/Pally tanks who can add that little extra damage, even though I’m the better skilled and geared tank, yeah, that’s the game I want to play. If you read the comments, the readers say it’s because Prot Warriors have found a loop-hole that lets them do crazy damage by stacking ArP to get to 100% armor reduction. There you go, nerf ArP, leave my WIS (Worst in Spec….I just made that up.) damage the fuck alone or better yet, buff it where I can keep up with the pally and DK to make up for my unfortunate loss of ArP. Gonna cost me a fortune to re-gem all that gear…oh wait, yeah, I don’t use it, nevermind.

#2 He wants to pretty much destroy Heroic Throw. This would absolutely cripple a prot. warrior in today’s PvE content. How the hell am I supposed to entice that mage to get in the group with the rest of mobs so my group can kill him? C. Christian Moore thinks I should just “run up and tank it”….read the comments, he actually said that. The dude comes off as ignorant and whiney. He obviously has no clue about anything PvE related and I’m ready to bet that his mage got owned by a prot warrior before writing this article. Really, make it an interupt. So instead of being able to use to actually pull a caster, I would need to face pull the caster, wait for him to start casting then HT to interrupt the cast….or, I could call for CC on it. Yeah, then I’d be known as the only tank who has to use CC in a 5 man….I can hear the QQ in LFG now, “Woot!! we got a tank….oh shit, a warrior, we don’t have a mage. Shall we kick you or do you just want to leave?”

#3 Apparently the douche…I mean writer knows how to avoid spell reflect, because he said we should have more. We need to be more defensive….whatever.

#4 & 5. This is where I start to understand what he is saying. Concussion Blow, 5 second stun. Shockwave, 3 second stun. Gag Order/Heroic Throw/Shield Bash, 3 second silence. That’s 14 seconds I can keep a mage locked out of casting a spell. Notice, he didn’t mention Revenge, which would be another 3 second stun. He obviously plays a caster who wouldn’t proc Revenge by getting a swing dodge, parried or blocked and since he mentioned mages a few times in the article….I assume he plays a mage. Now, like I said, I don’t arena but is 14 seconds enough to kill a mage when he should have a healer in his group? I mean, this is an arena team we’re talking about right? Their healer can keep mage alive while the other dps maybe focus your healer or the warrior….IDK. I guess what I’m getting at is we all play by the same rules, rogues can stun lock you to oblivion…I know, they’ve done it to me. I’ve mentioned before that I played Halo semi-professionally. The whole game was about tactics. They do this, you do that to counter. Is the prot warrior taking out your mage that big of a deal if you take out one of their dps in the process?

Regardless of the point he’s trying to make, the guy made himself look like a fool, insulted 90% of the commenters of wow.com and maybe even got blizzard’s attention to up the already incoming nerf. All because he doesn’t know a thing about PvE content. Bad move bro and WoW.com…I think it’s time to find a new PvP writer.

Ok, the warrior thing pissed me off, more the way the writer talked to the commenters than the actual article. I wasn’t planning on writing this, really I wasn’t…I have a nice article on UIs and addons almost ready to go, I was going to finish it today but instead you get a bitchfest….today I read the new Guildwatch. Come on now, it’s guildwatch…the funny as shit drama section (didn’t realise they had more than just the drama section to tell the truth) was awesome. How can you not like reading about how absolutely retarded some people can be. Man, I loved that column. Now, apparently WoW.com is going “PC”, no they haven’t banned macs, politically correct….or as Walton and Johnson put it, they have furthered the “pussification of america”. Basically, they don’t want to hurt peoples feelings anymore because they called them out on guildwatch. They claim, it’s to bring the community together. What the fuck ever, give me my drama back. I would sit there and read that column for days….really, I’d leave my browser open so I could pick up where I left off the day before. It doesn’t get any better than that shit, from the vent recordings to the ninjas….who doesn’t like reading about douchbags getting caught?

I’m on the verge now of taking them off my reader…probably won’t happen because they’re still valuable to read about class and dungeon changes that may or may not affect my raids. Anyway, how do you feel about these issues? Are you a mage that gets pwnd by prot or a prot warrior facerolling your way to a new drake? Gonna miss your weekly injection of drama?

Phat loots

-on the 7th day the lord declared “LET THERE BE MANDALUS!” and it was done.

Yeah, that’s right, my birthday was last week….ding! Gratz me if you feel like it, I don’t expect it. Really, my feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t feel like it…of course I may not give out the gear list I have prepared if you don’t but whatever.

Ok, I’ll give it up then. The following is my “pick list” of gear for T10. It includes drops, badge gear, crafted items and tier gear. I will preface this by saying, I used wowhead for this and they don’t seem to have a loot table yet for Blood Prince Council or Arthas.

Also, I have noticed at least 1 piece that has incorrect stats on it. I picked up Cloak of Many Skins from Festergut this week and the stats on the piece I got are 169 armor, 72 str, 108 stam, 45 defense, 37 dodge, 42 parry and it has a blue socket with +4 dodge socket bonus. The wowhead version has identical stats except they list the item with 120 stam and no socket.

Head Pieces: I only found 1 head piece that drops in ICC from 25 Deathwhisper. I’m going to assume that there will be another head dropping from either Lich King or Council.

1. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Greathelm
2. Broken Ram Skull Helm
3. Ymirjar Lord’s Greathelm

Out of these heads, I’m definitely going to pick up the 264 T10 head. The broken skull helm is nice as an avoidance piece but I like the extra strength on both tier helms better. I’m currently using Helm of Wrath, I will be upgrading to the 251 T10 helm tonight…mostly because I need it anyway to get the 264 one.

Neck: I’m currently sporting Endurance of the Infernal but Blizz really hooked us up with some tasty neck upgrades.

1. Bile-Encrusted Medallion
2. Noose of Malachite
3. Marrowgar’s Scratching Choker

All the necks are very nice. All with gem slots but it’s not a hard choice to realise which is BIS….you can’t go wrong with bonus armor!

Shoulders: At the moment, I’m using the 245 T9 shoulders. The same as the Helms, I could only find 1 set of shoulders that drops in ICC.

1. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Pauldrons
2. Boneguard Commander’s Pauldrons
3. Ymirjar Lord’s Pauldrons

This is a pretty tough decision. The Boneguard Pauldrons give an extra socket while the 264 T10 has a bit more stamina. Other than that, they are equal. You’ll end up with a bit less stamina going with the tier 10 but if you want the 4 piece bonus, I definitely want it, this isn’t the piece to skip.

Back: As I said before Cloak of Many Skins dropped for me this week. As is becoming the norm. it seems like some drops are missing from the wowhead database.

1. Sentinel’s Winter Cloak
2. Cloak of Many Skins

Obviously in this case the badge cloak is top notch. Bonus armor and an extra 20 stamina is win.

Chest: I think it’s safe to say, we know of all the chest pieces dropping in ICC. I was lucky enough to get my hands on Chestplate of the Towering Monstrosity in ToGC. So, I won’t be upgrading this one for a while.

1. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate
2. Cataclysmic Chestguard
3. Blightborne Warplate
4. Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate
5. Ghoul Commander’s Cuirass

Another tough choice here. I think the +39 stam coupled with the ability to get the 4 piece bonus with the tier chest puts it on top of the blacksmith chest, even with the 1,200 extra armor.

Wrist: While the Saronite Swordbreakers have been good to me, I think it’s definitely time for an upgrade.

1. Bracers of Dark Reckoning
2. Gargoyle Spit Bracers

Blizzard isn’t making this easy. Once again we’re choosing between that sweet bonus armor or a big boost to str and stam. I’m going with the dark reckoning if given the choice.

Hands: Lots of options here to upgrade my old T9 gloves.

1. Gauntlets of the Kraken
2. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards
3. Veincrusher Gauntlets
4. Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards

This is where the choices get tough. The Kraken gloves are obviously BIS (best in slot) but we still need 1 more tier piece to get the 4 set bonus, which I highly recommend. To get the 4 piece, you’re going to have to skip out on a BIS piece for either legs or hands. If you don’t want to shell out the obscene amount of gold and/or emblems to craft the blacksmith legs, then grab the kraken and take the tier legs.

Waist: I never did see the heroic version of Girdle of Bloodied Scars drop, so this is a piece I’m definitely looking to upgrade.

1. Verdigris Chain Belt
2. Belt of Broken Bones
3. Ironrope Belt of Ymirjar

There’s no doubt which is BIS in the waist category, 157 stam, 120 str and also 1,000 bonus armor…yes please. Second place on the list is a bit of a toss up, Ironrope has 2 sockets putting it in second for effective health but you’d actually lose 20 str if you had bloodied scars already. Broken bones has 120 str and dodge and parry putting it second in threat/mitigation/avoidance.

Legs: This is the section that really got me into looking at gear for ICC. I wanted to know how BA the crafted legs were. Another of the gems I managed to pluck out of ToGC 25 man were Legguards of Feverish Dedication. These aren’t going to be replaced easily and in fact the legs that drop in 10 man ICC as well as the 251 T10 legs are down grades to these bad boys.

1. Pillars of Might
2. Legguards of Lost Hope
3. Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Legguards
4. Deathforged Legplates
5. Ymirjar Lord’s Legguards

If you’re a serious end-game raider, Pillars of Might are a no brainer. A shot to the gut comes in when you start looking at the mats, 12 titan-steel bars is steep enough. Add in 8 primordial saronite at 2k gold or 23 frost badges a pop and you’re looking at an expensive piece of gear. I’m calling them BIS, even compared to the heroic version of Legguards of hope and heroic T10 legs. The catch is, you don’t want the T10 legs, even if they’d complete your set bonus. Legguards of Hope vastly out weigh them. The T10 legs are a waste of badges, in fact, the 95 badges that they cost would get you over half way to having enough primordial saronite to craft Pillars of Might. To wrap it up, unless you plan on farming H ICC to get the Heroic version Legguards of Lost Hope, Pillars of Might will last you until the opening raids of Cata.

Rings: I’ve already replaced both ToC rings, at the moment, I’ve picked up Ashen Band of Umatched Courage and Juggernaut Band.

1. Devium’s Eternally Cold Ring
2. Ashen Band of Endless Courage
3. Harbinger’s Bone Band
4. Juggernaut Band
5. Abomination’s Bloody Ring

As far as rings go, they’re all pretty nice. All of the Ashen Bands are worth it just because it’s free. Also, once you hit Revered, you get that sweet armor proc. Devium’s is BIS, but I’m happy with Juggernaut ATM. Harbinger’s Bone Band is a nice BOE that drops off of trash in 10 and 25 man.

Trinkets: We have a couple nice ones, 1 I’m not too sure about and one that’s garbage.

1. Unidentifiable Organ
2. Corpse Tongue Coin
3. Sindragosa’s Flawless Fang

4. Corroded Skeleton Key

The Organ and the Coin are top notch trinkets, I’d love to have either of them. Out of the 2, I’d much rather have the Organ, the stacking stamina buff is going to be awesome. With the coin, the dodge makes it a little less valuable but it procs a ton of armor. Sindragosa’s fang and the skeleton key have probably the worse “use” of any trinkets I’ve seen. The use for the key is absolutely trash and the fang is almost as bad. IDK, we may see a need later in ICC for resistances but it only last 10 secs. Yeah, you get big stamina with them but having good “use” is like having an extra cooldown.

Weapons: Don’t know what to say about the weapons, I’ve already picked up bonebreaker scepter to replace shiver.

1. Last Word
2. The Facelifter
3. Bonebreaker Scepter

I really like the looks of Last Word, nice damage and look at that proc. I’m kind of meh about the scepter, especially after running with shiver (one of the coolest looking tank maces ever).

Shields: I probably won’t even be upgrading my shield in this tier unless I get a heroic one to drop. I’m wielding the heroic Crystal Plated Vanguard and the 2 new shields are moderate upgrades.

1. Icecrown Glacial Wall

2. Neverending Winter

Ranged:As usual, we get 1 new ranged per tier…but wait, we’ve got 2 this time!!

1. Rowan’s Rifle of Silver Bullets
2. Dreamhunter’s Carbine

Basically, if you get one to drop, take it. There both nice.

This conclude’s the gear list. As you can see, I didn’t add any heroic gear. So, some things may chance depending on if you’re in a heroic mode guild or not.

EDIT: Added Harbinger’s Bone Band, thanks Spinks