ICC 5-man Heroic Loot vs. Tier 8.5

As Vesserion is currently well equipped, and acquiring 251/264 gear and Ashen Verdict rep through the new ICC raid, I have been doing most of my experimenting with the new ICC 5-man dungeons on Bhender. 

For those not familiar with Bhender, he was my Shadow Priest alt from before the days of dual specs.  He was also my 2nd level 80 toon.  His offspec is currently Disc, so I can leverage the awesome healing skills I have developed while playing Vesserion, but he also dabbles in Shadow PVP from time to time.

Since I don’t have time to raid on both Vesserion and Bhender, and since Shadow Priest dps was the suck for the last two patches, he has been relegated to doing farming and dailies for the past 6 months.  (I think Bhender has downed the Northrend Beasts in ToC 10, and like 4 bosses in Ulduar to date, which is pretty sad.) 

But with the Patch 3.3 upgrades to Shadow Priest dps, and Vess outgearing all the drops in ICC 5-mans, I decided that I would run the new heroic dungeons on Bhender. 

I ran all three ICC 5-mans on heroic last week, and was very very fortunate on the cloth drops.  I picked up:

Arcane Loop of Anger (FoS);

Mord’rethar Robes (FoS);

Ancient Polar Bear Hide (PoS);

Engraved Gargoyle Femur (PoS);

Strip of Remorse (HoR); and

Sightless Crown of Ulmass (HoR).

The majority of the items I have picked up are upgrades to either Bhender’s dps or healing kit, but I elected to forgoe two of the upgrades despite the fact that the ilevels are higher than his current gear. 

Specifically, the Ancient Polar Bear Hide and the Sightless Crown of Ulmass are collecting dust in my bank.  Both are ilevel 232 pure dps items that would replace ilevel 226 tier pieces.  And therein lies the rub.

Here are the stats changes if I switch from the tier 8.5 set peices to the tier 9.0 non-set pieces:

Intellect (160 => 176)  +16*

Stamina (174 => 172)  -2

Spellpower (314 => 286)  -28*

Haste (124 => 170)  +46

Crit (70 => 0)  -70

Hit (74 => 123)  +49

Gemslots (Meta, 3 Reds => Meta, 1 Red)  -2 Reds

Set Bonus (+15% damage on Devouring Plague => none)  -15% on DP 

* Numbers take into account socket bonuses, or the lack thereof, from socketing all Runed Cardinal Rubies.  Numbers also ignore enchantments, which would be identical.

So I would gain 16 int, 46 haste and 49 hit, at the cost of 2 stam, 28 spellpower, 70 crit and 15% extra damage on one of my dots. 

Bhender is currently way over hit cap, and the 16 int doesn’t provide much benefit other than additional mana.  So really, the only effective gain from the upgrades is the 46 haste rating.  When you compare that benefit to the cost, it just doesn’t make any sense to forgoe the 2 peices of tier 8.5 gear in favor of the ICC 5-man heroic loot. 

So Bhender will continue to wear his tier 8.5 chest and helm, until he can get slightly bigger upgrades to justify breaking up the set bonus.  Which ultimately means that as cool as the new 5-man dungeons are, Bhender will benefit more from simply grinding heroics for Emblems of Triumph than from running ICC heroic dungeons for loot.

/sigh

10-Man Healing Team

Our 10-man team has been having trouble lately with progression, and a somewhat significant factor has been our healing team.  For the last couple months, we have been running with a Disc Priest (moi), a Holy Priest (Ashleign) and whomever we can find to fill the third slot.  We have had numerous people rotate through slot number 3, but haven’t been able to find the right fit.

In addition to our issues with the 3rd healer position, our 2nd healer, Ashleign, really would rather be melting faces instead of CoHing.  Ash is an awesome Holy Priest, but it would be great to be able to find a comparable aoe healer, so that she can do what makes her happy. 

For a while in 3.2, we were able to get away with having a patchwork healing team, as Ash and I were able to carry the third healer.  Mine was the product of gear and skill, while Ash’s was more skill than gear, as she was splitting time between healing and dps upgrades. 

As we finished off ToC 10, and started working on ToGC 10 though, it became very apparent that the days of having 1.75/3.0 dedicated healers were at an end.  The content was just too challenging for us to be able to carry the 3rd healer, and still cover our own assignments. 

I Think My Inner Loot Whore is Dead

I keep reading about how everyone loves the new LFG tool, and I get the fact that you can earn 2 Emblems of Frost by doing a random heroic everyday, and ridiculous amounts of Emblems of Triumph, but that still isn’t enough to interest me in going back and facerolling the same heroics that I have been running for the past year.

And the weekly raid quest makes me start counting how many different ways I can imagine killing myself.  (I won’t tell you how high the count can get.)

Maybe I will eventually get far enough behind on Emblems of Frost that I will start doing them, but for now I have absolutely no interest. 

I suspect on some level, I am resentful that Emblems of Triumph, which actually required some degree of skill and effort to acquire (up until two weeks ago), are now falling like leaves in Autumn.

I also think that the sheer number of Emblems of Frost required to pick up all the tier 10 gear has me a little shell-shocked. 

Ice Crown Citadel – Week 1 Recap

This started out far far less ranty than what follows, but I have had an absolutely shitty first week in the new patch, and I am still pretty pissed.  So here are my guidelines for how to make raiding during the first week of a new content patch seriously unfcuking enjoyable:

(True story)

1.  When Blizzard releases new content, have one person in your raid group run all of the new heroic dungeons to unlock the new raid instance, before the rest of your raiders can even get home from work on patch day.  Players don’t like 5-mans, or new content, and they especially don’t like new 5-man content, so do them a favor and do the short attunement chain for them.

2.  If you have planned to run the new heroics on patch day, don’t put anything on the calendar and then invite your raiders to do the new 10-man raid instance as soon as they log on.  Players love it when the plan changes with no warning.  They also love the chance to be running the new raid instance on a patch day, when there are multiple disconnects, server crashes, bugged instances, unplayable UIs, etc.

Vesserion’s Report Card – Call of the Crusade

It looks like Patch 3.3 is going to drop tomorrow, so I decided to write myself a report card for my raiding efforts in Patch 3.2: Call of the Crusade. 

First, let’s look at the content I have managed to clear.  According to Pug Checker, since September 22, 2009, I have 10 full clears of ToC 10 and 4 full clears of ToC 25.  I have no full, or even partial clears of 10 or 25 man ToGC.  

Content Grade:  B -

From a gear perspective, I have 16 slots currently equipped.  Of those 16 slots, 5 are ilevel 232 items, 11 are ilevel 245 and 0 are ilevel 258.  So I finished this patch in 5/16 tier 9.0, 11/16 tier 9.25 and 0/16 tier 9.5. 

Greater Heal – Hello Old Friend

Patch 3.3 is just around the corner, but before it drops and things get crazy, I wanted to give y’all an update on some of the stuff I have been experimenting with of late. 

As you may be aware, I have been bucking the trend of stacking crit and spellpower that most raiding Disc Priests have been following, in favor of haste and mana regeneration.  On Sunday, I picked up Illumination from our weekly faceroll through 10-man ToC (sadly we still haven’t broken through the ToGC barrier yet), which put me over 22% haste self-buffed.

So on our last forray into 25-man ToC, I decided to see if I could work Greater Heal back into my spell list.  And just to make it more interesting, I elected to forgo the use of my standard Flask of Pure Mojo as well.

I feel so dirty . . .

I finally replaced my Handbook of Obscure Remedies last night.  Lightbane Focus dropped off of the Twins in 10-man ToC, and I ended up with it. 

(We use open rolls for 10-man runs, and our Warlock won the roll.  He is currently using Perdition, but has a one-hander in the bank with which he was going to pair the Lightbane Focus.  After some badgering by several other members of the raid, he agreed to pass it to me since I so very much needed the upgrade.)  ((Thanks Isyomama!))  (((No shit, that is his toon’s name.)))

So while I am happy about replacing the ilevel 200 item I have been carrying around for like 10 months, I feel like a dirty old man. 

Plateau Boredom

Not much to report from the World of Warcraft at the moment.  My 10-man team is stuck in the large gulf between one-shotting all the bosses in ToC, and not being able to clear the Northrend Beasts in ToGC. 

We did about 7 attempts on Gormak the other night, and just aren’t getting him down fast enough.  We are close, but not quite there yet.  We are going to try having one more dps focus on Snowbolds next time, to see if we can get them down faster and ultimately more dps time on Gormak.

My job has been keeping the main tank up, and I haven’t really broken a sweat so far.  We had an issue on one of our attempts where Karinthanis (MT) grabbed Gormak back from Unroku (OT) before his stacks of the impale debuff had worn off.  Karin got as high as 5 stacks in that fight (most strats have you swapping at 2 or 3), and I still managed to keep him on his feet.

Silent Resolve – Just Do It

Today we are going to talk about a talent found in the second tier of the Discipline tree: Silent Resolve. 

When fully talented (3 points), Silent Resolve reduces the threat generated by the Priest’s Holy and Discipline spells by 20%.  (We are going to ignore the dispel resistance mechanic for the time being, as it is mainly a PVP effect.)

In the days before WotLK, grabbing aggro off your tank was a much bigger issue for healers.  Most pulls, you had to let the tank build up threat for a while before healing them.  If you were good, the tank didn’t die before your heal went off, and you waited just long enough so that your heal did not cause the mobs to immediately turn and run your direction with bad intentions. 

Loot Sharing Is Not Stealing

There is an interesting article over at WoW.com dealing with the issue of whether a player who wins loot in a raid and then transfers it to another member of the raid (through the use of the 2 hour default trade timer) has stolen the loot.  You can read the article here.

After wading through 7 or so pages of the comments, I wanted to weigh in on the issue. 

Loot sharing is not stealing.  It is unfair, but it is not stealing. 

Let me explain.