For every Good PUG, there is a bad one

Got into an Heroic Slave Pens PUG over the weekend. Still lovin' it.

We had a bit of a surprise, though. The MT and Healer group-quit and left after the first boss. No warning, just looted and ran. It wasn't even a ninja-loot: they only took Badges.



WTF? Really?

Kazard of Tempest and Dojin of The Fearless.

Now, a bad PUG is one thing, but this wasn't a bad PUG. We were making pretty good progress, despite the fact that the MT was Fury-specced and in full PvP gear. No one was arguing. As near as I can tell, there was no reason for the two guys to do it. And yet ... they just chose to be jerks.

But wait, it gets worse.

As I was pretty irked, I Armoried both of them and looked around to see if I could find an officer of each guild to let them know that their guildmates were trashing their rep. I spoke with Rabidewok of Tempest, and he was nice but it was pretty much obviously a dead end. I then spoke with someone with The Fearless and was told, flatly, to not even bother: no one cared. I hadn't even said what the problem was, just that I was looking for an officer to talk about a problem with one of their guildmates. I was nice. I was respectful. And in both cases I was blown off.

There's also a half of an epilogue.

Last night in /Trade I saw Dojin spamming for a Tailor. I cannot convey to you how strong the urge was to reply in the affirmative, as I'm sure he has no memory of who I am, then take his mats and tell him to please go fetch my missing Badges. Oh wait, they're Soulbound. Good luck with that.

But I didn't. I'm not that guy. There are times when I want to be, but I'm just not. (And I would have had a hard time defending my behavior to a GM.)

Either way, I don't think I'll be accepting anyone from The Fearless into any of my PUGs any time soon. It's a small revenge, but it's about all I can really do.

Magtheridon!

I managed to get into a Magtheridon PUG this weekend.



Seeing as how I wondered if I'd ever get into any 25-man content, I was pretty stoked. I did my best to read up and and not make a total n00b out of myself, and think I did a pretty good job. I helped take down the channelers in the correct order. I moved when the AoE hit. I kept up my DOTs. I even kept an eye on the cubes to do backup-clicking as people started to drop.

And I have to say a big Thank You to Ranii for the wicked heals. Every time I looked up, I was at full health and was Ranii's target. Thanks!

We wiped twice before the MT went all emo had computer problems and DCed, leaving his girlfriend on Vent to tell everyone that we were abandoning. Oh well. It was still cool to be there.



And, for the record, I was at roughly 850 +shadow, unbuffed, when I went. I felt just about appropriately geared for my first time. There were a few people that were geared significantly better, but there were also plenty of people that weren't. Unfortunately, I was the only SPriest, so I didn't have another to check out.

PvP epics versus PvE epics

I posted yet another rant on shadowpriest.com:

Cassock wrote:
Shadowpriests can craft all of their gear, so they don't have to PVP for it. Other classes can't, or can't as easily, so the enormous ilevels from the PVP gear is pretty enticing.

Okay, I hear that excuse quite a bit but I don't in any way buy it. Please don't take the following as a flame, as it isn't, inasmuch as it is a wall-of-text rebuttal.

First, and most obvious, is that plenty of people seem to have made it to 2.4.x and all of the progression bosses without needing to be in full PvP gear because it was their only option.

Second, let's break down the first part of that argument about SPriests being lucky about craftable gear. Sure, I'll grant you that FSW is epic in many ways and probably OP for when we get it. But let's look at the rest ...

Instead of using the Casual Gear thread, which hasn't been updated in a while, let's use this list.

Spellstrike: A boatload of Spellcloth, another boatload of Primal Mights, and a pair of Primal Nether. Primal Mights take 5 Primals each, and are thus the easiest to get ... for a definition of easy that means "farm, baby, farm". Primal Nether are quite a bit more expensive when you can find them on the AH, presuming you don't pony up the 10 Badges for them. 10 Badges? Yeah. Each.

Battlecast: No Spellcloth, but don't think you are saving yourself any farming -- you need roughly as many Primals. Still need those Primal Nethers, so there's still a 20-Badge hump in addition to farming for gold/Motes.

Sure, 20 Badges isn't too bad for a two-piece gear set. Okay, it's dirt cheap. But stop and think about when your SPriest is working on this -- probably while gearing up for Kara/Heroics/ZA. Thus, figure a +shadow range between 700 and 1100? Given that kind of range, how much gold can you make per hour? I figure 100g to 150g per hour if you really crank it, based on personal experience. Farming Motes will get you to Primals without the AH, but I'd argue that the "per hour wage" would be equivalent. That's roughly 5 Primals or one Primal Might per hour, right?

For each item in those two sets, we're looking at 10 Badges (two Daily Heroics) and 5 hours of farming. Per piece. You can't tell me that other classes can't spent the same amount of time and get an equivalent piece of gear. If they can't craft anything and must buy Badge gear then those 5 hours can go to Heroics. In even the worst PUGs, no Heroic will take more than 2 hours. Thus, 10-15 more Badges in those 5 hours, for a total of 20-25 Badges in the same time period. Hey, look, 25 Badges -- that's where the gear starts.

Belt of Blasting ups the ante to 2 Nether Vortex at 15 Badges each, for a total of 30 Badges and 15 Primal Fire. If we go with our rate of 5 Primals per hour, then that's 3 hours of farming, or converted into Badge-hours, between 5 and 10 Badges. The belt is then worth 35-40 Badges, even more than the other pieces.

From here on out, we're pretty much done with the crafting. If we go all-out and fill the rest of our slots with Badge gear, what are we looking at?

SPriests will spend between 341 and 569 Badges to get the best gear. A fully Badge-geared tank will spend 541 Badges. A Druid will spend between 410 and 745 Badges depending on spec.

Point being, we're not much better off as far as how many badges we're going to farm versus any other class. And, I'd argue, we make up for that time farming gold or mats for the FSW.

So what about PvP gear? Does that really take less time to get?

For a full set of S2 Warrior gear you're going to need 65250 Honor and 130 Marks of Honor. That's a per-piece average of 13050 Honor and 26 Marks.

BG farming will run you between 1000 and 2000 Honor/hour, so we'll be nice and say that you could meet the honor requirements for one (average) piece after 7 hours of BG farming. If you played only premades and always win you could probably farm 8-10 marks an hour or so? Thus, the limiting factor there is definitely the honor. Also remember that Honor-farming and Mark-farming are somewhat inversely related: sure, you can premade a zerg win, and you'll get Honor and Marks for the win, but you'll be missing out on the Honor for the kills. It averages out.

But, oh look. What did we say? A minimum of 7 hours of Honor-farming per piece. Scroll up. Look familiar?

Thus:

The argument that PvP epics are easier to get than PvE epics is completely false. It all takes roughly the same amount of time, whether Badge-farming, Honor-farming, or mat-farming.

QED.

Fresh Frozen Shadoweave Gemming

I wanted to expand a bit on my last Frozen Shadoweave post, particularly on the gemming. I had said:

You've probably been reading quite a bit on shadowpriest.com about how your #1 stat is Spell Damage, right? And how if you are putting anything other than red gems in your gear then you are nerfing yourself? Ignore that advice for now. Come back to it later. The first thing you need to work on before you start worrying about Spell Damage is Spell Hit.

I stand by this 100%. Yes, long term you are going to put in a bunch of red gems and go for max damage. But you must hit-cap yourself first.

I'm not speaking from theorycraft — I'm coming at this from experience. There's nothing more frustrating then seeing a bunch RESIST messages flash by and watching your mana bar drain down. (No damage == useless VT.)

Think about the point at which you are putting together your FSW set. If you've been on the ball, you should already have your shoulders and boots by the time you hit 70. I did it, without a raiding guild to fund me, and it wasn't that much farming. (I am certainly not going to say it was fun — but the first few minutes of running around in my FSW completely made up for the hours of farming.)

But let's say you don't. Let's say that you ground your way to 70 without giving your FSW a thought. Where does that put you?

You've only run Hellfire, Coilfang, and Auchindoun, as Tempest Keep only just now became available to you. The gear in those first three sets of instances is okay, but it's nothing stellar. Certainly not when compared to FSW. As a fresh 70, you can't even look at Kara without keeling over and having to corpse run.

Odds are, you don't have any purples. Okay, maybe one or two, but almost certainly nothing with sockets. If you've been grinding your level instead of your FSW mats, you probably haven't been worried about your rep yet, either. That means no purples from rep rewards. (Who grinds rep before 70? Why?)

With that kind of history, there's only a slim chance that you are hit-capped. You might be, but it would be really odd. It's not like you're going to get hit-capping blues or greens while grinding the mats or gold.

Thus, your first gems in your FSW will probably be yellow, not red. Sure, the reds will come along soon enough. But for now, play by the rules and put the right gems in your FSW. When you do your first Kara run and only get a few resists instead of one after another, you'll know you did the right thing.

But, again, this comes with a disclaimer. Everyone is different. I'm speaking in wide generalities here. Maybe you have gotten some really lucky drops or have been consciously working on hit-capping yourself before getting your FSW. It's certainly possible. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the guy behind you that got to 70 and said "now what?".

My first respec

I may min-max a little when it comes to gear, but I don't when it comes to spec. I assume it comes from the comfort in the fact that I was able to heal my way through 70 even with full Shadow spec and gear. Your spec may be important, but your skill is more important.

So, as I leveled Shadow, I put points into what I thought would be useful, not necessarily what some cookie-cutter spec progression told me to. Yeah, I had points in [Improved Renew] and [Healing Focus]. I'm sorry, but no matter what anyone tells you, those two skills are far more useful to a leveling Priest than [Meditation] and [Inner Focus]. Don't get me wrong,Med and IF are great, but they just aren't that useful until raiding beyond 5-mans.

Here's a fact: I almost never ran out of mana mid-fight in dungeons before 10-mans. Even when healing. And I almost never had to use mana pots. Yeah, it happened occasionally, but it was always a good sign that our strategy wasn't working. Med and IF would only have prolonged the agony.

Sorry, I'm a little bitter.

In a Heroic PUG this weekend I had a pair of people gang up on me and get up in my business about why I didn't have Med and IF. I explained, very politely, that I was still in my leveling spec and hadn't yet respecced for raiding. Instead of moving on, the two went all holier-than-thou on me talking about how they have SPriest alts and I am nerfing my spec if I don't have IF/Med, etc, etc, etc. I, again politely, told them that it wasn't like I was going to keep this spec forever, but that it had served me well thus far and I'm not the type to respec before every group. That wasn't good enough, and the verbal abuse continued for about 10 minutes.

And yet ... there I was. I was pulling my weight and getting it done, even with my nerfed spec. Go figure.

I keep coming back to the fact that I've been able to surprise people with my skill level, despite being a n00b when it comes to the content. It happened in Kara. It happened in Heroic Sethekk. If I can do that, does my nerfed spec invalidate that? Of course not.

I have an entire post brewing about how too many people in this game are looking for the “one true spec/gear” and forget that there's a progression involved.

But, eventually, I did end up respeccing. The truth is that I don't heal nearly as much as I used to, and [Improved Vampiric Embrace] was getting me into more trouble than it was worth. So, I am now a 14/0/47 cookie-cutter SPriest. Huzzah.

Maybe it's just bitterness, but I am not all that impressed with IF. It's one free spell every 3 minutes, maybe with a bit more crit to count it as a spell and a half. That's not going to make or break a fight. Med is arguably more useful, kicking me from something like 5 MP5 while casting up to 56. That's two free MF per minute, or a free SWP.

But for that, I gave up a 70% chance to get off a heal while getting beaten on. Is it worth it? I'm not entirely sure.

Quo Vadimus

Where are we going?

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm trying to see as much as I can before Wrath. To that end, what is the gear that I am working towards? Well, it starts with a few rules:

• 25-man loot doesn't count
• 10-man loot doesn't count (I'll do the 10-man content, but I can't rely on the drops)
• I won't be picking up Engineering
• Presume that I can farm an infinite number of Badges, mats, and gold

In other words: stick to stuff that I can pretty much guarantee. Given those rules, how far would I get?

For the following table: PD=Pseudodamage, Dmg=Actual bonus spell damage, Hit=Spell Hit, Sock=Socket, Ench=Enchant added damage.

EDIT: Table removed because I am an idiot. It will return.

Two! Ha, ha, ha!

I did not one but two (!) heroics last night: Mana Tombs (Daily) and Slave Pens.

The Heroic Mana Tombs run was a PUG (for me) with four guys from Grateful Undead. They have a small guild of IRL friends, just like ours, and struggle with finding comparably-able players to fill slots in their groups, just like we do. It was simultaneously comforting to see another guild working the same problem, and also a little bit of a bummer. Long story short, it was a very good fit. (And they spoke in complete sentences! omg!)

It took us a little while to get past Pandemonius. Okay, 3 wipes. After the second wipe we saw that the Druid tank was just taking far too much damage, and was getting 3-shotted. The Shaman we had healing just couldn't keep up with that kind of damage. Given that mana and DPS weren't the problem (the Mage was putting out enough DPS for both of us), we saw that I needed to put on some healing gear and off-heal.

We did wipe one more time. But I immediately saw that it was my fault -- I hadn't gotten into a healing mindset and hadn't been able to keep up, either. (You try switching from DPS to healing and doing it exactly right the first time.) It was frustrating, but we gave it one more try.

The fourth run went as smooth as chocolate silk pie. I kept a Renew, PWS, and a PoM on the tank at all times, then threw out GH and FH as necessary. I even got to practice a few GH dekes as I saw that the Shaman was able to keep up. When I had a few spare seconds, I DOTted and Fiended. Smooooth.

The rest of the run was a cakewalk, and we one-shotted everything else. It's nice to work with proper villains heroes.

But there was a downside.

I really, really had my A-game on for that run. We had a kick-ass team and the synergy raised the bar. I can honestly say that I think I performed better on that run than any other dungeon run I've done. I don't mean in terms of DPS or total damage or any other stats. I mean that I went above and beyond.

I was dispelling Immolates and Silencing left and right. (Recount said I had 52 Dispels by the end of the run.) If it looked like the Shaman needed an extra half-second to get off that Chain Heal, I blew a bubble on whoever needed it. If we started taking massive AoE damage, VE went up on my next cast. If the Shaman started taking aggro or got Silenced, I bubbled him and popped Shadowform to heal for a second, then popped right back in and kept going.

I didn't have to be told to do anything. I just did it, and it made a noticeable difference. I was frickin' heroic, dammit.

So what's the problem?

I thought I had been bringing my A-game before, but it turns out it was more like my B-game. Now I realize I've been slacking off. I need to be this on top of things all the time, not just when I get a good group.

Anyway ... it's something for me to think about.

The PUG for the Heroic Slave Pens run (which I am beginning to love) was both the same and the exact opposite.

It also started off with a few wipes, but they were dumb accidents. Several of the others were on Vent, but I wasn't given the info so I just did my thing to a mostly-silent chat channel. But ... that was okay. Vent is great for coordinating, but sometimes it is overkill. It was getting late, and I now feel like I have HSP down pat, so I appreciated being able to work in silence.

Hello. My toon's name is Apanthrope. Duh.

The bosses were all one-shots. I got a nice healing belt that no one else wanted, as well as my second [Primal Nether] for the evening. The entire run, including the dumb wipes at the beginning, took just over 45 minutes. Wicked.

But that was pretty much it. There were no tales of heroism for the second run. It was a nice, quiet way to end an evening, but with a few more Badges and mats in my bag.