I've been running LFR weekly on my Pally tank, and now I'm fully kited out. I've got 4 piece T13, the off-set shoulders (Finally), Souldrinker and Blackhorn's Mighty Bulwark. I also have Indomitable Pride and Soulshifter Vortex, though the proc on that second one is mostly wasted. If Resolve of the Undying drops, it would bring me close to full cap, but I wonder if 609 Stamina would quickly be a greater boost than 780 Dodge after reaching CTC. If I bought Fire of the Deep, I'd be capped already, even without the on-use, but I think that would be wasted VP.
I'm only 4.45% under block cap when buffed, so I need to make some gearing decisions (i.e. hope for drops) based on that. For now I'll continue stacking Mastery, and using Elixir of the Master and Fortune Cookie (No Lavascale on the AH and my fishing isn't up yet). I know I'll have to start trading out for stamina soon, but I'm not quite there yet. As for trinkets, I'll stick with the one's I have, ignoring the Mastery proc for the most part. I'm sure a few DS regular drops will bring me to cap soon enough.
LFR has been hit or miss as a tank, metaphorically and literally. I've done it as a Hunter, a Priest (Disc and Holy), Shammy (Resto and Enhance), a Blood DK, and now as a Prot Pally. I know the fights, to say the least. Other tanks are dropping the ball on taunt swaps, either by never taunting, or taunting the boss back and taking all the stacks, dying, then blaming the healers, while the healers blame me. It's a real bummer.
I'm fairly good at my rotation, though I'm still not accustomed to misses. As a DK, Runes regenerate steadily and Runic Power is usually sufficient. As a Pally, Crusader Strike/Hammer of the Righteous needs to hit to generate Holy Power, and Shield of the Righteous will miss, not using up Holy Power. It's a very RNG rotation. I'm not to worried about it, since I never loose threat, but I do worry just a little bit, since I believe tank DPS matters.
Cooldowns and mitigation in general are very different. As a DK, the active mitigation of Blood Shield is very fun and interesting, and the cooldowns are few, but basic. As a Pally, mitigation is mostly passive, there are more cooldowns to track, and more variety to them. It's a bit difficult to figure them all out.
Since the latest buff to Aspects went out, Durotan's pugs have picked up on the Horde side, and boy do some of these people need it. I ran a pug where the second DK tank we got had actually stacked Stamina, and DPS was failing checks. The guy running it probably was just taking warm bodies at that point. Over on the Ally side, I've started doing a weekly Guild alt run that seems to be going well. We tried a heroic Morchok, but decided to just get on with it for now. I hope we try it again this week.
8 bosses seems like a lot to me. It's not as bad a marathon as ICC was, especially since there's not much trash, but it does still seem long compared to previous Cata content. Breaking it up to two nights would be ideal, but that's not convenient for an alt run, so we're not always downing Spine or Madness, due to time constraints.
Damn, I hate Spine as a healer. At first I was using Greater Heal constantly to burn through the debuff, but found that just using Heal was a lot better on my mana. I'm not used to using Heal as Disc, and decided that was an indicator I should switch to Holy. I think the 15% healing boost is more suited to this fight than Disc's Intellect boost, and the reduced cooldown on Divine Hymn is a real game changer.
Also, I just hit 450k gold. Most of my sales are still from glyphs, but the biggest gains are from flipping a few Vials of the Sand for at least 15k each. I've also started carefully testing the epic gem market, since it has depreciated to a fairly stable level. People are still active enough to move a fair amount of regular gems and enchants, and epic gems so far (mostly just red) either sell all at once or don't sell. I think barking in trade might be a good tactic here. We'll see how it goes.
I just sold of the last two of 230 Queen's Garnet I bought a couple of months ago. Basically doubled up on what I paid for them. I am sitting at just under 3.2 million gold currently.
ReplyDeleteI'm no wind trader, that's for sure, but I think I do nicely. I don't know if Durotan even has one.
DeleteI often hear people in pugs boasting how much they have. Most recently they were talking 10's of thousands (while underway, much to my chagrin), but on a different occasion I jokingly offered 300k to a guildie for the Alysrazor mount, and some pug jumped on it, saying he was triple capped. I had the impulse to invoke pics or didn't happen, but I let it go. I know what I have, I earned it, and I believe I can climb even higher. Never seen his name on the AH anyway.
I don't mean this as a knock on you at all, I've seen your name in other places.
I read a very interesting GQ article, Amber Waves of Green, about income inequality, where the first person interviewed made $200 a week (my IRL income) and each subsequent interviewee making 5 times as much. I wonder if that concept might make for an interesting article about gold income in WoW, starting with the amount that can be gotten from doing dailies once a day for a week, and going from there.
I think that the major differences would be that financial independence can be reached much faster than in RL, and the resulting excess is fundamentally less useful, or even usable, except to gain more.
Now that I muse on it a bit more, I think that reaching a point where getting fast flying, ect. on all characters, dropping and releveling profs for convenience, and outfitting a new 85 from scratch are indicators of jumping the first real hurdle of WoW financial freedom. That I certainly have, but I feel a bit like Ellen in the article, in that I have everything I need or want, but if I stop working, I will go broke. A big difference, though, is that the "taxes" I pay (repairs, bank slots, flying) are not anywhere near as much to me as they are to those who rely on dailies. Maybe I'm more equivalent to the author's position, in that I do frantically work to keep moving up.