Tear them from the Sky!

Tear them from the Sky! is a quest so awesome, I stopped in the middle just to post these screenshots. Not a complicated quest, by all means. But then again, I'm not a complicated guy. Give me a BIG gun, and some dragons, and I'm there.

Ready!

Aim!

FIRE!!!!

Finished!

Inscription: Herb Comparison

Here's my guide to the relative herb prices you should be looking at when milling cataclysm herbs.

Unfortunately, on Dath'Remar at least, the party is over as far as cheap cataclysm herbs goes. The base price of the lower quality herbs seems to have settled around 3g50 up from 2 - 2g50 quite soon after the expansion hit.

Here's a guide to the table.

• Blackfallow Ink - The average yield of Blackfallow Ink from each mill.
• Inferno Ink - The average yield of Inferno Ink from each mill. I'm now valuing Inferno Ink at 10 times the price of Backfallow, since there is such a huge demand for the rare ink, many people are using the Dalaran vendor to convert them.
• Weight - Using Cinderbloom as the base herb, the weight indicates how much 'product' you get in comparison to this baseline.
• Price Eq. - An example of the equivalent price for each herb based on the baseline of Cinderbloom at 3g50s. If Cinderbloom is at 3g50s, and I see Twilight Jasmine at under 5g98s, I'll buy the Twilight Jasmine and know I'm getting more 'product' for my coin.
• Sample - The number of mills that I've used to derive my numbers. Naturally the more expensive herbs have a much lower figure, but it looks like the average product scales with the herbs item level pretty much as you'd expect.

	Blackfallow Ink	Inferno Ink	Weight	Price Eq.	Sample
[Cinderbloom]	1.21	0.12	1.00	3.50	165
[Heartblossom]	1.23	0.13	1.06	3.72	310
[Stormvine]	1.25	0.13	1.05	3.68	256
[Azshara's Veil]	1.29	0.17	1.25	4.39	35
[Whiptail]	1.43	0.26	1.70	5.96	34
[Twilight Jasmine]	1.51	0.26	1.71	5.98	72

Protection Warrior Gear Enhancements for Cataclysm

Here are a selection of available enhancements for the protection warrior.

I'm looking forward to trying out Windwalker and see how that movement speed boost works out. I'm a big fan of run speed enchants, so I've put those above the straight master enchant for boots.

Slot	Enchant	Source
Head	[Arcanum of the Earthen Ring]	Revered - Earthen Ring
Shoulder	[Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz]	Exalted - Therazane
	[Lesser Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz]	Honored - Therazane
Cloak	Protection	Enchant
Chest	Greater Stamina	Enchant
	Stamina	Enchant
Wrists	Dodge	Enchant
	Precision	Enchant
	Expertise	Enchant
Hands	Greater Mastery	Enchant
	Heavy Savage Armor Kit	Leatherworking - Materials
Belt	[Ebonsteel Belt Buckle]	Blacksmith - Materials
Legs	[Charscale Leg Armor]	Leatherworking - Materials
	[Twilight Leg Armor]	Leatherworking - Materials
Feet	Lavawalker	Enchant
	Earthen Vitality	Enchant
	Mastery	Enchant
Weapon	Mending	Enchant
	Windwalk	Enchant

Protection Warrior Starter Gear for Heroics

Here's my guide to gearing up your Protection Warrior for heroic Dungeons as efficiently as possible. There's no drops on the list (aside from a trinket), so as you are gearing up, this guide should help you spend your time and energy outside of those dungeons for maximum return.

Some of the craftable items are extremely expensive. Some are clearly worth the cost, and others are extortionate (where running a normal or heroic dungeon for an equivalent drop is a better use of your time). Items with an asterisk (*) have at least one [Chaos Orb] and at the time of writing these are BoP. I'm not sure why the Devs chose to do this as it seems to be arbitrarily punishing players without armor crafting professions at a time when they tell us they want to even things out.

Items marked with two asterisks (**) are PvP gear. I have included these items where they are generally much better than any alternatives which are easier to get than the items higher up on the list.

On the trinket front, unfortunately the best Darkmoon Card for tanking is Volcano because mastery is just that much better than dodge. The use of Earthquake, with Last Stand could provide a pretty large health pool for a while, so time will tell.

Any questions comments, item suggestions are most welcome so do leave a comment!

Slot	Item	Source
Head	[Crown of Wings]	Revered - Wildhammer Clan
	[Helm of the Proud]	2200 Justice Points
Shoulders	[Pauldrons of Edward the Odd]	BoE
	[Sunburnt Pauldrons]	1650 Justice Points
	[Pharoah's Burial Spaulders]	Quest - Uldum
Neck	[The Lustrous Eye]	1250 Justice Points
	[Elementium Guardian]	Jewelcrafting - Materials
	[Mountain's Mouth]	Honored - Guardians of Hyjal
Back	[Wrap of the Great Turtle]	Exalted - Guardians of Hyjal
	[Twilight Dragonscale Cloak]	Leatherworking - Materials*
	[Cloak of War]	Leatherworking - Materials
Chest	[Hardened Elementium Hauberk]	Blacksmithing - Materials*
	[Chestplate of the Steadfast]	2200 Justice Points
	[Breastplate of the Witness]	Quest - Grim Batol
Wrist	[Sandguard Bracers]	Exalted - Ramkahen
	[Terborus's Rotating Bands]	BoE - Rare Elite Deepholm
	[Bloodied Pyrium Bracers]**	Blacksmithing - Materials
Hands	[Numbing Handguards]	1650 Justice Points
	[Gloves of Gnomebliteration]	Quest - Uldum
Belt	[Hardened Elementium Girdle]	Blacksmithing - Materials
	[Girdle of the Mountains]	1650 Justice Points
	[Belt of Guardianship]	BOE - World Drop
	[Bloodied Pyrium Belt]**	Blacksmithing - Materials
Leg	[Greaves of Splendor]	2200 Justice Points
	[Stone-Wrapped Greaves]	Honored - Earthen Ring
Boots	[Gryphon Rider's Boots]	Exalted - Wildhammer Clan
	[Ramkahen Front Boots]	Quest - Lost City of the Tol'vir
Ring	[Elementium Moebius Band]	Jewelcrafting - Materials
	[Felsen's Ring of Resolve]	Revered - Therazane
	[Red Rock Band]	Revered - Ramkahen
	[Temple Band]	BOE
Trinket	Stamina
	[Za'brok's Lucky Tooth]	Quest - Twilight Highlands
	[Leaden Despair]	Dungeon - The Stonecore
	Mastery
	[Darkmoon Card: Volcano]	Inscription - Materials + RNG!
	[Impatience of Youth]	Exalted - Baradin's Wardens
	[Baradin Footman's Tags]	Honored - Baradin's Wardens
	[Impetuous Query]	BoE - Lost City of the Tol'vir
	Avoidance
	[Darkmoon Card: Earthquake]	Inscription - Materials + RNG!
	[Insignia of Diplomacy]	Quest - Deepholm
	[Binding Promise]	BoE
Shield	[Elementium Earthguard]*	Blacksmithing - Materials*
	[Shield of the Four Grey Towers]	950 Justice Points
	[Truthbreaker Shield]	Quest - Entry to Highlands chain
Ranged	[Sky Piercer]	Revered - Baradin's Wardens
	[Kickback 5000]	Engineering - Materials
	[Volatile Thunderstick]	Engineering - Materials
	[Abatement Cannon]	BoE
Weapon	[Ravening Slicer]	Revered - Baradin's Wardens
	[Dragonscorn Mace]	Quest - Twilight Higlands

Prospecting in Cataclysm

 
Here are my numbers for prospecting so far in Cataclysm. So far, aside from helping to level both Alchemy and Jewelcrafting it is looking quite profitable.

Here are my results for [Obsidium Ore] and [Elementium Ore].

The biggest difference is the number of rare gems gained from Elementium, but both sets of prospecting have a similar total yield of gems. Early on in the expansion, uncommon gems have been used for leveling and transmuting and are actually more expensive in a lot of cases than rare gems. So when Obsidium ore is cheap, it's a great way to help level Alchemy and transmute some meta gems. Cut rare gems are quite profitable if you pick the right pattern, and have as little competition as possible while still picking a highly desired cut that sells well.

The "Cost per Gem" figure is reasonably crude, since the value of gems varies a lot from gem to gem, and is changing fairly quickly. At the time of writing it represented a large markup in selling raw gems, but as the price of gems and ore comes down, transmuting and cutting the gems will help the raw gems retain their profitability.

Obsidiun Ore	550
Number of Prospects	110
Cost Obsidiau Ore	11.4
Cost per Prospect	57
Total Cost	6270

Uncommon Gem		Rare Gem
[Alicite]	34	[Amberjewel]	4
[Jasper]	28	[Dream Emerald]	1
[Zephyrite]	32	[Ocean Sapphire]	0
[Nightstone]	24	[Demonseye]	1
[Carnelian]	23	[Inferno Ruby]	0
[Hessonite]	26	[Ember Topaz]	3
Total	138		37

Yield Common	1.52
Yield Rare	0.08
Cost per Gem	37.54

Elementium Ore	1080
Number of Prospects	216
Cost Elementium Ore	11
Cost per Prospect	55
Total Cost	11880

Uncommon Gem		Rare Gem
[Alicite]	34	[Amberjewel]	6
[Jasper]	44	[Dream Emerald]	13
[Zephyrite]	39	[Ocean Sapphire]	8
[Nightstone]	34	[Demonseye]	9
[Carnelian]	43	[Inferno Ruby]	12
[Hessonite]	47	[Ember Topaz]	14
Total	241		62

Yield Common	1.12
Yield Rare	0.29
Cost per Gem	39.21

WotLK Flashback: Gearscore vs. Blizzards Item Level

I wrote this piece back in 4.0.1 when the iLvl metric was introduced, so here goes...

TL;DR: GearScore is weighted for the relative total itemisation of gear (chest is worth more than wrists). GearScore’s average item level is a straight average of iLvl across 17 slots. Blizzards item level is freakishly weighted for relative total itemisation of gear (chest outweighs wrists by A LOT), and is also based on your highest iLvl pieces from ALL possible gear you own (not what you are wearing).

I’m a fan of GearScore. It’s kinda like being a fan of guns. Gearscore doesn’t annoy people, people annoy people.

Gearscore is a convenient metric, with a whole ton of limitations (like every $#@%ing metric ever). If you know and understand the limitations, it can be a useful tool. Like most tools, it can be used for evil. I’ve mentioned guns, which can be used for hunting [yes, we don’t need meat now... but if we didn’t hunt at some point our civilisation would already have perished... so stay out of this vegans]. Guns are also used to kill people, via tragic accidents, murder and what have you. However, a big ass wrench has also been used to kill people, but we’re not trying to outlaw those are we?

So my point is, in my hands... gearscore is like a wrench and I’m an awesome plumber and I’m going to fix your plumbing good. Don’t hate gearscore just because some arrogant know it all used it to club your alt to death and keep him out of a raid. Do you really want to raid with a sociopath anyway?

I’m super impressed with the recent version of gearscore for patch 4.0.1, which has an eloquent disclaimer, “This is your raw Gearscore before spec and gem calculations. This value reflects your GS if fully gemmed, enchanted, and wearing appropriate stats”. That pretty much says it all right there. GearScore is directly telling you what it’s NOT telling you. When I look for extra members for a raid (how did PUG become a verb?) I choose to look them all up online (wow-heroes is my current favourite) so I can exclude people that don’t take pride in their toon like my peers do. Missing enchants, missing or rare gems are an excellent way to make obvious exclusions.

So with that brief introduction out the way, we get on to comparing the item level and GearScore, and why I’m bothering with the comparison in the first place.

I have 5 toons at level 80 with which I raid. Borgthor is my main and is guaranteed to raid ICC every week (both 10 and 25 before the patch). However, the others all raid a lot less and are just opportunistic with pugging opportunites. Wrathborg, my beloved rogue was the last to hit 80, and low and behold... has the highest Blizzard item level rating. “WTF!?!?”, I hear you exclaim. With some gaps in his gear (232 pants, 245 wrists and a 264 PvP cloak) he surely couldn’t be rated higher than Borgthor with 264 items across the board (with the only 277 item being the reputation tanking ring).

Alas it was true, so I set out to test both systems with a new upgrade for Wrathborg.

Wrathborg in PVE gear, GearScore: 5890 (GS iLvl 260).
Wrathborg best possible GearScore (includes PvP gear): 5952 (GS iLvl262).
Wrathborg Blizzard item level: 276.

So the Blizzard item level doesn’t change, and it is based on the best possible gear you own for each slot, regardless of which spec it’s for, or if it’s PvP gear. The drawback of this metric is that when people quote this number for when they come into a raid in their offspec (as their main role for the raid) it may be well out of whack with what they are wearing. Of course, many puggers are unethical or just plain sociopaths, relying on them to give you information has it’s downside anway. On top of that, toons in offspecs may be extremely well geared, but just not know how to play their offspec anyway.

In testing the GearScore raiting, its iLvl rating is just a pure average of the item level across the 17 gear slots.

See the TL;DR up the top for the conclusions.

Jumping right back into this post, post-Cataclysm! I was surprised to find the minimum iLvl for the starter dungeons at 272. Surely ICC epics will do the trick, right? Well, a couple of drops later... and some green junk loot and quest rewards littering my Portable Hole, without exchanging a piece of get I was over the iLvl requirement. Maybe here, Blizzard has done the right thing... if you think of the iLvl metric as, “if you bothered to collect the right stuff, you certainly look like you’ve been seeing the right level of content, so go ahead throwdown in this dungeon”, then that fits the bill nicely. After all, GC keeps telling us that the Devs don’t want to preside over a nanny state.

Cataclysm Milling

I've been doing a lot of milling since the prices of herbs, while not 'cheap' have stabilsed pretty quickly. I'm surprised by just how much people are prepared to pay for Inferno Ink (up to 500% above cost)... but it's great for the bank balance.

Some assumptions for the numbers below.

• Inferno Ink is worth 8 times as much as Blackfallow Ink. The exchange rate is 10:1 but I'm being a little conservative, since in WotLK the ratio was at times 1:1, but Inferno Ink is looking to be a lot more useful in Cataclysm than Snowfall Ink was in WotLK.
• Prices for herbs are changing dramatically, so expect that to change from day to day and from server to server.

Cinderbloom
Sample: 127 mills
Yield of Blackfallow Ink: 1.2
Yield of Inferno Ink: 0.12
Cost of Herb: 2g
Cost of Blackfallow Ink: 4.59
Cost of Inferno Ink: 36.75

Heartblossom
Sample: 266 mills
Yield of Blackfallow Ink: 1.23
Yield of Inferno Ink: 0.13
Cost of Herb: 2g
Cost of Blackfallow Ink: 4.35
Cost of Inferno Ink: 34.77

Twilight Jasmine
Sample: 36 mills
Yield of Blackfallow Ink: 1.53
Yield of Inferno Ink: 0.26
Cost of Herb: 2.7g
Cost of Blackfallow Ink: 3.71
Cost of Inferno Ink: 29.68

So Twilight Jasmine is currently my herb of choice for milling, since you can pay up to 50% extra over Cinderbloom and Heartblossom to get the same result. I'm not sure if it will pan out (since the sample was only 36 mills) but Twilight Jasmine producing twice as much Inferno Ink is pretty awesome.

I'm really enjoying that I can make a profit from all the products of milling herbs, and it means I can really keep cranking out glyphs for sale at a base price of around 12-15g. Unfortunately Blizzard set the exchange rate of Blackfallow Ink to Ethereal Ink at 10:1, so I have to keep hunting for Outland herbs in order to make many of the (now) most profitable glyphs.

The changes to inscription are fantastic, and I'm looking forward to getting into the darkmoon cards as soon as possible. Today, Twitchie has a trip planned to Stormwind to deliver his Forged Documents.

One last tip: make sure you get your friendly Inscriptionist (or Scribe for you heathens) to craft you a Adventurer's Journal to get a 10% buff to your quest XP. Based on the prices above, you should be able to find them for around 15 - 30g on the AH if there's any kind of scribbling competition on your server.

As prices come down further I'll have a look at milling the other Cataclysm herbs.

Last Minute Wrath: 150k gold

After I posted that I had reached 100k gold on the server, the coin just kept flowing. The nice thing about automating many of the steps in coin generation, it doesn't take a lot of effort to keep things ticking along. Sure if you have a burning desire to have a ton of gold you can expand to new markets, and find new niches... but if you are comfy with where you're at, you can focus on your highest profit for time markets and participate in the others when you grab those bulk bargains from the AH.

A month or so ago I had 160k at my peak, and then between getting involved and another "Last Minute Wrath" project and transferring 10k horde side.... I was down to 125k.

Fortunately after the doom and gloom about the post Glyphmas slump prediction for Inscription when patch 4.0.1 hit... I found precisely the opposite. Increased materials for glyphs meant a larger mark up for each glyph, and even after the massive demand subsided... demand has been steady and the market humming along nicely.

I was completely caught out by patch 4.0.3a, and had not traded nearly enough Ink of the Sea for alternate inks before the ink trader was 'upgraded'. However, there most be a whole bunch of people leveling alts prior to Cataclysm hitting, since I've found the lower to mid level Herb markets far more accessible in the last couple of weeks. I'm still constantly short of Eternal Ink, but I make hay when the sun is shining.

The picture above has my most recent takings from selling glyphs in a single session, which at 3.8k is a new record for me. With the last taking coming in at 1.8k, hitting 5.6k worth of glyphs sold in 12 hours was a nice present just before Cataclysm.

Nitro Boosts: Now a Liability in Combat

It's pretty funny to go shooting up into the air in a heroic, when you're desperately trying to get back to a the boss so you can stab him just once before he transitions.... it's somewhat less funny when you're on your DK is tanking Sindragosa (well it was actually pretty hilarious the first time).

Unfortunately since the boost moved from boots to belt, what was a useful tinker for PvE has become more of a liability. If the increased failure rate is because the enchant is over powered, I completely get that. Don't make them fail in combat though silly! That's the worst possible nerf. How about the speed increase is reduced? The time you are boosted is reduced? Put the $#@%ing cool down up to 5 minutes... anything is better than making them a giant liability.

Last Minute Wrath: Glory of the Hero

In the category of 'things I'd kinda forgotten to finish' is Glory of the Hero. I knocked it off today with an 11 minute stint on Gal'darah for Share the Love.

I think I've still got some questing in Icecrown to finish off... little dungeons to do... and if I think to long about it I'm sure my list will no longer afford me that 'break' before Cataclysm hits.

Crafting: Maximising your AFK time

Milling herbs can sometimes be tedious... but aside from minimusing WoW and doing something else while you facroll your mailling macro, you can't escape that one keypress per action limitation that's been imposed.

Creating Inks from pigments can be equally tedious... but you can be AFK! So make sure you really fill up those 4 inscribing bags I know you all keep on your inscriptionists (and some more for the bank) and just let it roll.

Kingslayer Wrathborg

Today was finally the day I got the Lich King down without raid leading or putting the group together, and Wrathborg walked away with a Lich King kill.

The raid started off well enough, with 6 bosses on heroic mode going down with only a couple of missteps. I was pleased enough with my Saurfang DPS of just shy of 14k, but unfortunately a hunter's distracting shot messed up that last little push under 10%.

I walked away with a ton of uncontested loot, but was pleased with the [Precious's Putrid Collar] to upgrade the Onyxia neck. I also picked up a 264 Axe, 264 Fist Weapon and 251 Sword to give me plenty of weapon options for leveling in Cataclysm. I even grabbed the bow from the Lich King, 'cause it looks kinda awesome.

After the initial slaughter, the raid lead had to leave... and it took a very long time to reorganise the group and get going again. Unfortunately there's still some misconceptions about the "flexible" raid lockout system, and the group (despite at least two of us protesting (and explaining that it works like this by design)) spent at least 45 minutes trying to incorporate another toon who had done heroic mode bosses with a different group, and continue on with heroic Putricide. Once they came to their senses (or just gave up trying to circumvent the raid lockout design) we decided to soldier on with some achievements.

Nausea and Portal Jockey later, we had a couple of goes at All You Can Eat, but even with three tanks (I hadn't even considered this strategy before we had twice baked a Sindragosa souffle) it wasn't going anywhere.

So to the rescue game a delightful enhancement Shaman, Jorgie (Jondy's shaman) and we beat the dragon into submission and had our way with the Lich King. Jorgie defiantly pumps her fist and celebrates the Fall of the Lich King!

King Dred: 455 skinning?

Oh come on!

Milling Goldclover

Yesterday, Goldclover hit 65s on Dath'Remar in bulk, and I hadn't seen the price even close to that since pre-4.0.1. A fantastic chance to not only make some coin, but get a decent sample size for determining yield.

Ink of the Sea / Mill : 1.24 (1.48 for Adder's Tongue)
Snowfall Ink / Mill : 0.14 (0.25 for Adder's Tongue)

Absolutely awful for Snowfall Ink... which is usually the bane of an Inscriptionist's workshop, however I'm trying to stockpile it, since I have an ink exchange program happening as well as churning out those cards for some reason. /winkyface

Sticking with the assumption that Ink of the Sea's market value is half of Snowfall Ink... You want to make sure you are picking up Goldclover at 3/4 of the price of Adder's tongue to get the same value from milling it.

Base Price of Glyphs

I thought I'd a post out there for all the struggling Inscriptionists trying to make a living since another golden era of coin making has tapered off as the glyph market becomes stable after patch 4.0.1. Also, for my friend Moordenar, who is resistant to the idea of glyphs costing more than 10g.

First some basic assumptions from the current economy on Dath'Remar.

Market Prices:

Ink of the Sea (IotS): 4g50s
Snowfall Ink (SI): 9g
Adder's Tongue: 1g - 1g50s

Finally herb prices are dropping significantly enough to really start cranking out some inks.

Yield from millling Adder's Tongue

 I have tested the results of milling Adder's Tongue over 382 mills (yes, that's 1910 herbs and about 2k gold worth at the time) have have:
IotS/Mill: 1.48
SI/Mill: .25

Remember, that is ink per mill, not pigment.

Total Market Value of one Mill

Using the current market values, 6g68s worth of IotS and 2g27s worth of SI for a total of 8g95. So the markup on the 5g of herbs (at 1g/ea) from milling is 79%.

If you've ever annoyed your wife by continuously hitting a key (with the edge of the WoW window barely visible in the corner of the screen) while you are watching some TV together... that's really not a whole lot. However, this morning there was only 40 IotS at or below that market price, and I could plonk down over 2k gold for Adder's Tongue that would net me over 640 IotS, you just gotta mill those herbs.

Getting to the cost of Ink of the Sea

Now that I have the value of a single mill, and the relative value of both products, I can jam that back into the total cost of a single mill (5g @ 1g/ea for herbs) and divide by the yield to get:
Cost of IotS: 2g51s
Cost of SI: 5g03s

So milling herbs is generally significantly cheaper than the current market price of inks. Good news. Now how about those glyphs?

The mark up on Glyphs

A glyph costs at most 1 Resilient Parchment (40s) and 3 IotS (2g51s) for a total of 7g94s. So what's a reasonable markup based on getting those herbs at 1g/ea? I'm going to propose that if you buy a glyph for less than 16g, please send your Inscriptionist a lovely thankyou note.

Time is Money, Friend! Purchasing herbs, milling them, creating the inks, scanning the AH, selecting which glyphs to make, making those glyphs, listing them on the AH, getting the 90% of your glyphs that don't sell out of the mail and relisting those glyphs takes a lot of time. Even with with a slick set up, lots of delightful addons and maximising your AFK time for parts of the process, it's reasonably involved.

So it's only recently that the herb prices have dropped this low on Dath'Remar, and now that many toons have their glyph requirements sorted, things have certainly stabilised. I currently have over 500 glyphs on the AH, and aside from Glyph of the Wild.... my most expensive glyph is only 31g42s with the majority sitting squarely in that 15 - 25g range, which is what I'd like to call a modest mark up for much needed service to all of Azeroth.

Heroic DF$#@%ingO

Twitchie has been enjoying destruction since the patch, while straddling the affliction and destruction trees is a little awkward (especially with such little legs). Along with destruction, I've revamped my UI, and started using NeedToKnow as my timer mod, which handles all of buffs, debuffs and spell cooldowns. Conflagrating with confidence is the key to gnomish destruction.

I'm also enjoying the change in flavour between the specs. What attracted me to affliction was that as a master of shadow damage and dots, I was kin to the shadow priest. I would destroy my enemies from the inside out with crippling damage over time, while brutally assaulting them with my nukes.

Destruction is kinda different. It's like I'MA SET SOME $#@% ON FIRE! So that's fun too. I think Demo is a little Emo, but it's fun to sing, "look at my demon, my demon's amazing!" Turning INTO a demon is also pretty freakin' awesome and I've never had so much fun farming leather. Dismount. Meta. Immolation Aura. Hellfire. Big numbers. All dead.

So I found a run in ICC 25 that was doing some hard modes. I checked the loot rules, after which I declined and logged back to Borg. A pst later assuring me there will be no loot too awesome that I wouldn't be able to roll on (and there'd be no drama)... I was back in.

Even as affliction, the DPS was rocking, and despite a death to a bone spike during Heroic Marrowgar, spirits were high. I don't think it quite dawned on me until halfway through the fight, that Heroic Rotface would mean Heroic DFO... so when it dropped, I thanked Elune and prepared myself for the roll. 83 =O. Kablam, it's in my bag. [Dislodged Foreign Object].

The screenshot above is from a Champion of Ulduar run in 10 man Ulduar. I decided to go on Twitchie, since it's reasonably unlikely that a pug would burn through the place Undying style, even if we had a couple of hiccups, he'd only been in for weekly bosses and it was a good chance to hang out in a good group. A good group it was, so not only did I get in a tidy full clear of Ulduar, but we blasted Algalon as well. Starcaller Twitchie. It has a nice ring to it I think. I have a post in the works about our guild run of Algalon, so maybe Twitchie's romp through Ulduar will revive that. Ulduar 10 was a great place to test out destruction without having to worry much about DPS. Having said that of course, we absolutely flattened some of the bosses. Surprisingly, we didn't lose anyone on Yogg-Saron which was great. However, accidental pulls for Hodir and Freya (we one shot her with 2 Guardians AND two packs of trash shortly after killing the first guardian (Con-speed-atory was a nice side effect)) saw toons die. On Mimiron we lost someone to basic raid awareness (being our of range for heals) and just silliness (getting hit by slow moving core boss mechanics) saw someone on die on Vezax.

Speaking of Vezax, getting a 101k Conflagrate crit was pretty awesome. Next time my fellow casters will be aware of the fight mechanics and won't go oom so quickly. ;)

Glory of the Icecrown Raider

 

Last week (after a week twiddling our thumbs thanks to a heroic lockout bug (this itself may warrant another post)) we finished off Heroic Sindragosa for the Glory of the Icecrown Raider.

 

It was a great effort by all the gang, and when she finally went down our trusty engineers whipped out the mailbox for our drakes.

 

Oddox and I were decked out in full frost resist gear, which was made a lot more attractive with the removal of defense rating. With epic stamina gems, they offered almost the same amount of health, a ton of frost resist at the cost of reduced armor and avoidance. Reforging into mastery as a warrior tank worked well in this set up as the improved physical damage mitigation though the reworked blocking mechanic helped smooth out the incoming damage.

RNG still plays a large role in this fight, since often two of your healers can be out of action with unchained magic or ice blocked. However after successfully completing the achievement for Sindragosa, the tank taunt rotation and speed of breaking the ice blocks was very good leaving us to concentrate on the additional mechanics and more brutal damage output.

So for our first Heroic Sindragosa kill last Friday, we ended up with 4 drakes, and followed up on the Sunday with another pummeling of Heroic Putricide for another two. This week we are back in there again, and have blasted through 7 hard modes, and toppled the PP achievement for toons that were unable to attend in previous weeks. While some members of the team are a least another week away, we should complete some more drakes tonight, including one for a new friend from Greenstone who has been a regular part of the team of late.

Big thanks for everyone who has been a part of our 10 man progression team, and The Ancients for all your support.

4.0.1 Protection Warrior Build at level 80

 
Here what I'm currently thinking for 4.0.1 at level 80: 2/3/31.

Firstly, with the new 31 point trees, I only have 5 points to spend outside of the protection tree. Given that the self healing talents are new, I just had to pick up Field Dressing in Arms and Blood Craze in Fury. If threat is more or an issue than survivability, I'll add a second protection spec to test out the threat talents.

In the protection tree, aside from the fairly obvious talents, I chose to spend points in:


Blood and Thunder: even on a single target I think this will be good bang for buck threat wise, and should keep threat ticking on multiple mobs quite nicely.

Hold the Line: While the uptime on this talent is dependent on a successful parry, hopefully it will be a promising threat and mitigation talent, increasing both critical strike and the critical block chance. Of course, once the talent is activated, you just get the extra critical strike, but for the critical block chance, you need to actually block something. It will be interesting to look at the logs for this talent and discover just how many blocks are "landed" while this talent is up. The other big plus is that the wording of the talent makes me feel like a stalwart defender, so the name alone will appeal to warrior tanks everywhere.

I could have moved those points into:

Incite: I keep reading that incite is mediocre with rage normalisation and therefore not needing to spam Heroic Strike. However, if rage is plentiful and threat is an issue, I'll definitely give this talent another look.

Impending Victory: Additional self healing while the boss is under 20% health is appealing, it just doesn't seem worth the points given it is only available for a fifth of the fight. I'll wait and see what feedback this talent gets before getting to excited about it.

Glyphs

Unfortunately the prime glyphs are set in concrete. There are only 3 viable glyphs. Now I know prime glyphs are supposed to be obvious direct improvements... but if I never change them, they might as well be baked into the abilities themselves.

For Major glyphs I have gone for Long Charge, Cleaving and Thunder Clap. It is important to note that the old Glyph of Taunt is no longer.

Shield Wall now reduces damage done by 40% with a 5 minute cooldown [2 minutes when talented], and its glyph actually increases the cooldown as well as the damage reduction. Depending on fight length and particular mechanics, the Glyph of Shield Wall might be an attractive addition.

Glyph of Heroic Throw applies a stack of sunder armor, so it might have some interesting applications at some point as well.

For Minor glyphs I have Demoralizing Shout, Command and Battle. Battle is for pure convenience when Commanding Shout is not required so could easily be replaced with Berserker Rage if rage is an issue.

The nice thing about glyphs from this point forward is that once learned, you can swap them willy nilly. I'm hoping that blizzard have built an API for glyph exchange that allows all glyphs to be changed at once [out of combat, with cast time - I don't mind] so that addons like Outfitter can add a glyph profile to sets of gear. It is easy to think of a set of gear for tanking trash... how about a set of glyphs, too?

Patch Day: BYO Dragon

 

Oddox really knows how to spice up a rep grind... BYO Dragon! I was pretty surprised while killing pirates when this Dragon showed up with its very own Oddox.

Twitchie Day(tm) - Part 5 - More days!

 

Day 2
Twitchie ripped through TotC10, completed the ICC Heroics and grabbed the T10 pants from VoA10 making the extra TotC25 token a little redundant (still worth 50g).

Day 3
Twitchie headed into VoA25, bought himself a Black War Mammoth and grabbed the Epic achievement. I grabbed [Bejeweled Wizard’s Bracers] and an emblem wand to hit 5k gearscore.

Day 4
Into ICC10. Oddox rescued us from an early bail, and the spyglass failed to drop. Unfortunately the consensus was to bug the weekly quest [Fester and Rot] so Twitchie reluctantly complies. Abracadaver dropped from Rotface which was a fantastic upgrade. Finally I picked up [Gloves of Broken Fingers] and got up to 1000 haste (including spellstone).

Day 5
Into ICC25 with Kal’s mage Tylendel. We got the Frost Giant weekly this week, so lots of frosties straight away. [Crushing Coldwraith Belt] from Marrowgar saving a whole bunch of frosties. Lewtship was a hoot on another multi-dotter, but unfortunately got my self nuked from over enthusastic seeding. Kal had a ball as fire too (especially since he got brezzed and I didn’t). We fell over horribly on Saurfang which as pretty bad for a ranged heavy group.

So inside his first week, Twitchie had been through all the heroics, Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity and TotC 10 and 25. He’d ventured into both ICC 10 and 25, hit 5.2k gear score and was pumping out some DPS. For Twitchie’s adventures in their abbreviated completeness, head to: http://twitter.com/twitchietgw.

Kingslayers

 

Yes, plural. While I’ve been jabbering on about a few other things a couple more of my toons have taken down the Lich King.

Firstly, Zenborg grabbed a Lich King kill in the week following our guild’s first kill. 13th June 2010. For the first night, we were short a healer and we wanted to give one of our regular tanks that missed the first kill at shot at LK so Zenborg plucked up the courage to try some hard modes on for size. The following night, Kalus was able to come, so I breathed a sigh of relief and was able to pew pew.

DPSing the Lich King fight is a lot of fun. I gave myself the task of mowing down the orbs that drift towards the group during phase transitions. Given that devouring plague can one shot an orb, and mind flay ticks so quickly, it was great fun handling the orbs while pumping as much DPS into the raging spirits as possible. Having AoE that works for the vial spirits is awesome fun, and dispersion really comes into its own as well. Unfortunately I didn’t get soul harvested, and still haven’t been on any of my toons to this day.

Next up, Twitchie (the Gnome Warlock). 28th August 2010. For a while there, we were really struggling to put together a 10 man group capable of making progress in ICC hard modes. We had our usual core toons, but some of our favourite people were unavailable both nights, or away on holiday. In particular we had a massive void in the healing department, with Jondayla our only regular healer. So we put together some alts groups and tore normal mode ICC apart, usually leaving Jondayla to keep healing. Eventually, helping numerous people get their Kingslayer titles [and then watching them sail off into the night] I managed to sneak Twitchie in for a kill. Using a lock portal to render the Val’kry impotent was quite satisfying.

Finally (so far), Borgelmir. 3rd October 2010. Despite making his main spec Unholy DPS, and trying to stick to my guns... he has ended up tanking quite a bit. The week Borgelmir got his Kingslayer title, the 10 man progression team extended a lock out to work on the Sindragosa and LK achievements for the Glory of the Icecrown raider. When we managed to finish of both achievements in one night, we had a spare raid night left over. Finally we managed to get Jondy’s warlock Jossamine her Kingslayer title, and Borgelmir was tanking away when it happened. Getting Lich King twice in a week was very satisfying.

So that just leaves Wrathborg, who unless he can sneak in this afternoon, is going to be doing it post Patch 4.0.1. I’ve got about 800 1002 glyphs ready to go, Jondy has scarlet rubies and fire in the mail... and I’m rearing to go.

(Re)Introducing Wrathborg

Wrathborg is my rogue and first alt (second toon) in WoW. He started out life as a tailor, because I wanted to make my own bags. In fact so much so that his leveling in the early days (before Borg was 70) was centered around breaking that next crafting skill cap. I soon got tired of a weird looking Elven tailor, and as Zenborg took over tailoring he was benched.

Despite Jondy’s many pleas to bring back the rogue (and severe objections to the notion that I might delete him)... he stayed benched while Zenborg, Borgelmir and Twitchie (the Gnome Warlock) all leveled through to 80 in Wrath.

Finally, I decided to ditch Tailoring for skinning, and keep engineering despite Borgelmir also having that profession. I also looked into the specs and decided that an Assasination (mutilate) rogue was right for him. While mutilate rogues get some teasing for being on the faceroll side of the equation, even while leveling I found dual wielding daggers, spending a lot of time in stealth and wreaking havoc with poisons just felt like what I wanted my rogue to be.

Wrathborg hit 80 late August, and in his second ICC 10 man cruised through 11/12 with his favourite companion Jorgie [leveling partner, and Jondy’s enhancement shaman]. Wrath has been extremely lucky with loot, picking up [Rib Spreader] and [Flesh-Carving Scalpel] in his first 25 and 10 man run respectively. I was very surprised to pick up the heroic [Ikfirus’ Sack of Wonder] in ICC 25 shortly after purchasing the regular version.

My DPS highlight thus far has to be in that second ICC10 run, when on Rotface, the combination of heroism, great buffs, great RNG (no infection) and a group that could kill him in 2m27s made for a delightful 11.2k DPS.

Bonus highlight (since I started writing this post): [Deathbringer’s Will] !!!!!!!!!! I was lucky enough to pick up DBW (although I was hoping for [Heartpierce] (for PvP as much as anything)) in a PuG this week. I then put it to great use and hit my stride for 13.8k DPS on Festergut. While there was some room for improvement (like better Hunger for Blood uptime and yelling a fellow rogues for tricks) it was nice to trash Borgthor’s effort the previous week with his newly acquired DBW.

I went out to farm leather while waiting for a PuG to form one day, and despite being not too poorly geared, the memory of how Twitchie would tear mammoths and rhinos apart was just too much to handle... so with the help of Jondy’s secret stash of low level herbs, I power leveled Alchemy in a quick session after breakfast one day (just wait until you see what she got in return). I went Elixir Master partly so I could produce the guild’s flasks myself, but mostly as a potential income stream come cataclysm. I gotta say, the 2 hour flasks and extra AP are pretty nice. An extra regular transmute per day is icing on the cake.

So after a very shaky start, Wrathborg has proved to be a joy to play.

Heroic Professor Putricide 10 man

 
Last week we had a lot of fun finishing off the Sindragosa and Lich King achievements so that we could finish off ICC in a single raid lock out. Sindragosa required some precision in order to avoid stacking Mystic Buffet over 5, and once we got the tank rotation together, things started to proceed like clockwork. We would flip the boss from side to side, so that the tanks only had to run straight out to find the next ice block and by the end, the taunting was tight enough that I had to avoid running straight into incoming toons who were Frost Beancon’d. I had to grab a couple of extra toons for the night, and to my surprise advertising for the specific achievements resulted in some pleasant and competent toons; to date my best pugging effort.

The LK achievement took a couple of attempts to get the disease stacking correctly, but once we got it going it was a matter of a clean kill after that to bring the achievement home. We had a couple of hiccups with tank deaths due to a couple of enraged Shamblers, and once we had the plague skip from 29 to 31. It was also a joy to have the regular mechanics of the fight reasonably well known, and it was satisfying to see how fast some of the Val’kyr went down.

This last week our big challenge was the remaining two hard modes before LK, heroic Putricide and heroic Sindragosa. Heroic Putricide takes a bit of getting used to, since the unbound plague mechanic takes a reasonable amount of raid awareness and communication to coordinate. We found (like many groups do) that there is limited value in assigning an infection order, or a location from which to share the plague. Instead, everyone needs to fully understand the mechanic, and focus dealing with it in the most productive way given several variables.

First up, the unbound plague lasts for 60 seconds. After being infected for 10 - 12 seconds you become extremely difficult to heal (the damage increases with every tick) so you need to pass the plague (with the remaining duration) to another toon. The flip side is the the plague is that each time the plague moves, it leaves a stacking debuff (plague sickness) on the original target that increases the damage done by unbound plague by 250% per stack. In the normal course of dealing with the plague you can expect about 5 - 6 people to be infected if all goes well, however the more the plague bounces around, the quicker toons need to pass it off due to increasing stacks of sickness.

So the goals with the sickness are to:

• Keep the sickness as long as possible while remaining easy to heal (10 - 12 seconds)
• Pass the sickness to someone with as few stacks of sickness as possible (zero is best)
• Pass the sickness to someone who can easily identify the next person to pass it to
• Deal with strategy that require people to stack or move quickly, which can make it a lot harder to sensibly share the plague
• Deal with the regular mechanics at the same time while putting out significantly more healing / DPS / tanking than in normal mode

All that takes a little practise, and it really helps if people are able to communicate over vent to coordinate.

The next major change is for transitions, instead of getting stunned in place, you get to deal with a Green Slime and and an Orange Gas Cloud at the same time. The strategy we landed on was to zerg the green slime (all stacking near the spawn point) and kite the orange gas cloud until we got around to finishing it off. So if the Abom has more than 90 energy, it can slow both and if not, the orange gas cloud is the priority. At best, the tank in the Abom suit can spit on both slimes and everything goes nicely... at worst you can be dealing with a plague, people getting separated when the green slime explodes, and several toons dead in the process of a transition. It is also important to time the transition properly, since if you already have a slime/cloud up, you will end up with 3 which will most likely lead to a wipe. If you are running just a touch late on the transition, don’t worry if you force a transition just as he is starting to cast you can only end up with two. When I say a touch late, I’m not kidding, we forced a transition just as the ooze started to form, and we got three - so don’t try and take advantage of this as part of your strategy, just be glad if you you’re running late and only get two.

We ended up running with four druids, and while learning the fight the extra battle resurrections were valuable, but in our kill we needed none. If you have good enough execution for the last transition, you can have PP under 30% by the time he’s finished drinking his concoction which helps a lot with the soft enrage for the last phase (which aside from everything hurting more, requiring higher DPS and potentially having to deal with unbound plague is essentially the same). Since you aren't frozen, once you've killed both oozes feel free to give PP a whack while he's still drinking his concoction.

Big thanks to Therepoman, who ended up tanking on his druid, Healforreal. I’m still not sure it’s sunk in (for me), but he ended up with a well deserved (heroic) [Unidentifiable Organ]. Many of us would be a little reluctant to switch to an alt being so close the our ICC Drakes, and others oblivious to the opportunity they are getting to say... kill Lich King for the first time AND get Been Waiting for this for a Long Time. However, Repo logged without hesitation and did a great job in the meat suit.

So, speculation is that the patch is looming this week, leaving us just 2 more heroic modes in ICC.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Moordenar picked up the heroic [Flesh-carving Scapel] just in time to see assassination make a comeback post patch.

Tamed at last!

After days of camping (lucky he's a Blood Elf), and with the help of a speedy alliance gnome (complete with 310% mount) Jondy finally tamed the Spirit Kitty on her horde hunter!

Best in Show

 

While we are struggling for numbers for 25 mans, and even with several DPS on fire we're not getting it done in the later bosses. Tonight however, worked out nicely for me, with a couple of long awaited items finally mine!

[Precious's Ribbon]!!!!!! I'm now "Best in Show" along with Jondy of course... and erm... Oddox... and well a few other toons. It was even better to win it in a 25 man, since there's so much competition for the roll.

Next up, THE kablam melee DPS trinket, [Deathbringer's Will] finally dropped (yet again). The first time I won it, I felt I had to give it up to one of our hunters... the second time, Oddox had me beat on DKP. Finally it was mine! It is the perfect compliment to my gear, bringing me to just a hair shy of the ArP cap with ArP food, and even taking my DPS set over the 6k gearscore mark.

Oddox grabbed the slimes for me on Rotface, and on Festergut I was able to put the trinket to good use, only being beaten out by rogues! Happy days.

100,000 gold

 

While I haven’t blogged a lot recently, that day has finally come! I was astounded when I sold [Ikfirus’ Sack of Wonder] on behalf of the guild for 25k, more than I had ever owned between all my toons soon after ICC was released. I had heard about players with over 100k, and after some googling... players who were “gold capped” (214748g36s47c is the maximum gold on a single toon (since gold is stored as an unsigned 32 bit integer)) and even bloggers that have marched onto 1 million gold.

So I started to set my sights a little higher. The first thing I did was to expand my craftables spreadsheet with the usual high volume markets. Leg patches, drums, meta gems, spellthread, vellums and fort scrolls. I also resurrected my inscription trade, thanks to a fantastic addon Quick Auctions 3 which deals with the glyph market very well.

The next job was identifying toons that could cover the professions that I hadn’t leveled yet. Jondayla has a leatherworker, so I immediately put her to work. The volume of regular borean leather she has schmunched into heavy leather over the last few months is epic. Thanks to Moonspirit for her Moonshroud specialty and Therepoman for his Spellweave (Zenborg gets double Ebonweave). Other than that I had all the crafting professions covered (now with a Gnomish AND a Goblin Engineer).

I almost forgot! A special mention to Jondayla for transmuting gems and titanium for me for ages! I forgot about it until I sent the mats for 60 meta gems (edit: which came back as 66 meta gems) just now.

Then I got to work. I had already set up thresholds to watch for flask, potion and belt buckle materials for the guild bank. So it wasn’t a lot extra to add to my morning AH scan to grab the rest. I was already used to spending between 20 - 30k per month for the guild, so I relished the opportunity to start buying in larger volumes for myself as well. I did need to grab a couple of quick macros so that I could buy 4k gold worth  of leather in a single sitting without boring myself too much.

Then the coin came rolling in. The high volume items (including bullets) have just kept on trucking, with the ICC craftables providing some excitement [like when cloth pants sell for 2.5k profit even while prices are deteriorating].

I think my attraction to coin generation is primarily that it is something that I can do on my own. While I have a fantastic group of crafters who help out, I can mail them mats and have stuff crafted whenever it suits them... you can’t mail a raid ID and have someone’s return combo DPS / fire avoidance returned to you later on. I’m not a big quester, I only like to level in bursts... and rep grinds are mostly painful at best. While farming I can’t keep from keeping muttering the mantra, “Time is money, friend”. So while coin making is one of those necessities, it’s the most fun solo aspect of the game for me. The other bonus is that it can be done in small time slices, and I can queue up smelting 10 minutes worth of saronite and just go AFK. Having a spreadsheet to track profitability great fun too!

So now I’m all cashed up for Cataclysm, but I haven’t quite decided on a coin strategy yet. I could blow it all trying for a realm first profession, but if people in the US get to log in hours in advance it might be a no go. The summer months are very busy real life months for me, so Wrath might repeat itself and the coin dwindles away as outside of raiding and the odd daily there isn’t a lot of time for much else.

To celebrate I made Borgelmir a pair of [Boots of Kingly Upheaval] since he is generally tanking these days and ArP on all the T10 Death Knight makes a unholy DK want to cry.

9/12 Heroic ICC 10 man

We finally saved Dreamwalker and killed Princes in heroic ICC. We’ve been moving through the achievements too, which have been a lot of fun (including getting Once Bitten, Twice Shy achievement on heroic Blood Queen for one of our DPSers).

The Putricide achievement benefits from speed, so Kal switched to Body and Soul mode, and I handed out our trademark Potions of Awesome. Everyone did a great job kiting the Gas Cloud, and having a mage and rogue was a great asset for the transitions.

We tried something new with Heroic Dreamwalker going with 4 healers. We turned the screws on the 4 DPS so it was more challenging to keep the ads under control, and the healers had to play extra nice in order to share the orbs in the nightmare amongst 3 toons. Once we got the new strategy together, the stacks for healers were smaller but when you have 3 healers with up to 20 stacks and heroism, Valithria starts feeling better quite quickly.

Heroic Princes seemed like a breeze when we knocked them over. The beach balls were under control and people were relaxed enough to give me grief about positioning that not only punted a mage but Jondy as well. I pleaded “I’m busy gathering purple orbs” but they wouldn’t hear it.

So we are now 4 achievements away from our ICC 10 drakes. PP and Sindy hard modes as well as the Sindragosa and Lich King achievements.

Is a free emblem of frost ever free?

If you haven't answered NO to the above question, go and spend some time with goblins in Booty Bay.

Time is money, friend.

Sister Svalna, or more commonly known as the FREE emblem mini boss, lays in wait just before Valithria Dreamwalker and she does indeed drop an [Emblem of Frost].

In a partially decimated ICC 25 pug, it took 8 1/2 minutes to clear the trash (which drops no loot) and kill Svalna. She rewarded us with 7g35s29c and an EoF.

The first major assumption is that you don't need EoFs for gear. If you do, and you've done your daily, your weekly and both lots of VoA... I highly recommend killing her. The second tiny assumption is that no BoE epic drops when she goes down.

On Dath'Remar at the minute, you can pick up [Primordial Saronite] for around 400g. With 23 frosties per saronite, that makes one frostie worth only 17g40s.

So this one emblem wonder is worth 175g per hour.

Conclusion: Killing Sister Svalna is actually not as horrible as I thought. Apologies all for my previous ranting and cursing.

P.S. That's still no excuse to fold a raid when you could go and kill Princes instead. Don't be a wuss.

Zenborg heals ICC10 Heroics

I recently found a good pug for ICC10 on Zenborg, that needed a healer with DPS offspec (although I didn't get to use it). We one shot the first 3, and I even managed to score [Bracers of Dark Blessings] as a healing upgrade. The group as a whole was unfortunately out classed by Saurfang, since even two healing it there were two marks up before 70%.... so there were a combination of mechanics that were being handled poorly. Rotface was a little hit and miss, with some silly deaths, including a couple of DPS getting themselves killed with spectacular rips off the tank at the very start of the fight, leaving us well short of DPS.

Festergut was a little painful with people unable to avoid the goo, but we did manage to get FSS as pictured above.

Heroic Blood Queen was a blast, since there's just so much to heal... unfortunately our resto druid got a little confused with Pact of the Darkfallen, so we needed a few attempts to get it down.

I got my first chance at the portals on VD which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately part way through we lost our resto druid, so I had to pop out and raid heal while our machine of a shaman landed his 125k healing waves to save the dragon.

So all up healing 5/12 heroics was a lot of fun, and now equals Borg's and the guilds progression. Recently we had somewhat of a mass exodus from the guild, leaving our progression stalled while we rebuild. Pre-expansion blues does seem to have set in across the server, with some of my favourite guilds either calling an end to progression raiding or disbanding altogether.

DF$#@%ingO

Zenborg finally got his hands on [Dislodged Foreign Object] today, and I'm excited. After picking up the heroic spyglass last week, I'm keeping Zenborg a good step ahead of my warlock.

As usual, a PUG is more fun with a friend, and Oddox joined me on his warlock (Parl) and we tore the bosses apart, including our first go at heroic lootship.

I was pretty pleased with over 10k DPS on Rotface, and being able to give the trinket a good home. It was also nice to get some 'well deserved' PSTs as well. Of course, Parl would have given it an equally good home, but in the end he's got to l2roll. ;)

Warlock Art

The week after our first Lich King kill in 10 man, I needed to use Zenborg in the progression team to fill out the healers, and get a cuople of new guildies in for a LK kill. More about that later of course, but for now, just know that Zenborg is doing a happy dance.

So Borgthor was unsaved, and so we put together an alts run for some fun in ICC10. I didn't want Borgthor's ID to go to waste, and perhaps motivated out of severe jealousy of my priest wanted to at least pick up one heroic boss on my main.

The picture is from Saurfang, which we accidentally 1 healed. Two healers decided to go offspec after the event was started, to Rih (Oddox's shammie) had to suck it up. We had two affliction warlocks, and you can see in the background two boomies too. It was some nice symmetry to capture... just don't tell Rih that I was taking screenshots under 25% health while he was busy healing.

We managed to breeze through 11/12, the beauty was that we had set absolutely no expectations for the run, and everyone put up a good showing on their alts. Our guests were delightful, even if somewhat silent (the Disc Priest missing from vent put a little spanner in the works of continuing with LK). Sindragosa was a pleasant one shot, even though while setting up flares I engaged the boss and had to explain the last phase while we were busy fighting.

Achievements:
1 - Once Bitten, Twice Shy - grats Whip XD
2 - Boned
6 - The Plagueworks
7 - Heroic Lootship
7 - The Orb Whisperer
7 - The Crimson Hall
8 - The Frostwing Halls