Lethal Shots

Maintainence today, possibly even a patch even (conflicting sources, unable to verify either). Either way, another week has gone by. My thoughts on it:

• Not much raiding over the last week. Just the weekly three times and one venture into ICC as a healer, which did not end well. Two of the three healers on the run were alts (mine and another Hunter) and neither of us were really prepared for how healing intensive the Marrowgar encounter is.
• Randoms every day. Honestly I’m getting a little tired of them. It has gotten a little better since I cut back to one random a day per 80 (unless a guildie needs help of course).
• I jumped back into leveling my Paladin over the weekend. Decided to re-spec him to Prot, picked up a shield and one-hander off the AH, and jumped into the queue for low level randoms. So far it’s going pretty well. The XP is nice and I’ve already picked up several blues that are more suited to tanking.
• While my gear says I can heal in ICC, the above mentioned experience tells me otherwise. I need to work on my technique and maybe rework some gems and enchants. Some research will help with itemization problems, but the technique is going to be more difficult. Outside of raids, the best practice is going to be Heroic Halls of Reflection.
• I’ve been tanking heroics for about a month now and feel I have developed a pretty solid grasp on it. Now I want to move on to raids. I know it will be much more difficult, but I need to do it for the challenge.
• Back in real life, the wife and I took the kids out on a local Geocaching adventure yesterday. While the baby didn’t get much out of it (he slept the whole time), my four year old had the time of his life. It is definitely something we are going to have to do more often.
• Been playing with specs on my Hunter lately. Been specced Survival so long I can play it in my sleep. Now I’m trying to wrap my head around Marks.

That’s all I got, now give me yours.

Another week, another raid reset. What’s on my mind?

• Icecrown Citadel raid over the weekend. I am now 4/? in ICC-10 on my Hunter.
• Got lucky in ICC and scored two upgrades: the Njordnar Bone Bow from Lady Deathwhisper and the Hauberk of a Thousand Cuts from Deathbringer Saurfang. And if everything goes well tonight and I can get a run for the weekly raid I will have just enough Frost Emblems to pick up two pieces of Tier 10 (the gloves and shoulders).
• Also on the gear front, my Death Knight now has four pieces of Tier 9 which rounds out his tanking set quite well (his DPS set is a whole other story) and I’ve managed everything I can get outside of raids for my Shaman’s Resto set and have started to pick up emblem gear for his Enhance set.
• I’ve all but dropped out of the glyph business. There has been so much competition and undercutting on my server right now that it isn’t even worth my time to post glyphs. I still have my inventory of glyphs sitting on bank alts, so there is a chance I may get back in that particular game at a later date once the market thins out some. Until then I’ll just keep raking in the gold other ways.
• Now that my toon’s main sets are pretty squared away I’ve began trying to put together their off-sets. The Shaman’s Enhance set mostly just needs gems and enchants, but I still need to farm some stuff for the Death Knight’s DPS set.
• The guild has started to run regular ToC-25 runs on Saturdays. While fun, it has also helped remind me why I like 10-man raids better. If only 25-man loot wasn’t so tempting…

Well, that’s all I got on my mind. What’s on yours?

So far I’m thoroughly impressed with 3.3. I’ve yet to set foot into Icecrown yet (scheduled for Friday night with the guild), but so far I really like what I see. Like every other patch day, it was pretty rocky, slow loading while trying to zone in, lag, intermittent DCs, and pretty much everything else we’ve learned to expect. My initial thoughts:

• Forge of Souls – Short, fun instance. Two quick emblems.
• Pit of Saron – Fucking awesome. What’s better than a shit talking gnome riding a zombie? A gauntlet in an ice tunnel that is literally falling down around you. And the Pit features both.
• Hall of Reflection – Lore wise this one rocks, though it will become rather boring once you have farmed it a while.
• New Dungeon Finder system – Overall it seems to work pretty good. I like being able to teleport to and from instances (huge timesaver). It seemed a little buggy last night, but that may have been due to general server instability.
• Emblem of Frost gear – Have you seen the stats on this stuff? It’s completely insane. I’m decked out in the best ToC-10 had to offer with a smattering of stuff from ToC-25. This stuff blows my current gear out of the water.
• Misdirect – Amazing. This is a huge change. How huge you ask? In a heroic 5-man I was dumping almost 50k threat on my tank with one Misdirect. Now imagine multiple Hunters in a raid all doing it at the same time. Can you say goodbye to aggro problems forever?

That is all I was able to test out last night. Tonight I plan to hit up the Frozen Halls instances some more along with a few random PuGs for fun. So what do you think of 3.3 so far?

Wow, 3.3 drops on the same day I return to blogging. Coincidence? Why yes, yes it is. Here’s my thoughts on the last week of 3.2:

• 3.3 couldn’t come at a better time for me. Just this past weekend I finally managed to complete 25-man Trial of the Crusader. It may have been a PuG, but the group was mostly made up of one guild and there were five from my guild (including me). Granted I didn’t get anywhere in the heroic versions of ToC, but I’m not a hardcore raider either.
• Also received a compliment last night (at least I’m taking it as one). Said guild who ran the ToC PuG whispered me saying they were “impressed with my performance ToC-25” and offered me a slot on their raid roster for Icecrown. I thanked them, but declined the offer. I’ve made too many friends in Soulbound and like running with them too much.
• My little Death Knight tank is coming along real well. According to WoW-Heroes he could step into 10-Ulduar and hold his own. I plan to hit the random PuG feature in 3.3 pretty heavy with him to get him geared up to raid ToC and Icecrown with.
• Even after clearing ToC-10 week after week and trying my hardest to do ToC-25 PuGs I have yet to get a trinket to drop for my Hunter. He is still using a Mirror of Truth and Greatness deck. (Yes I could buy the Trinket from the Triumph vendor, but quite frankly, it’s a piece of crap). Hopefully Icecrown will hold better luck for me.
• My little Rogue alt has stalled out at 18. That grind through the 20s just plain sucks, so I am going to do my best to do it all with rested XP. My paladin on the other hand is coming along rather nicely. He’s made it to 34 so far and after a sketchy start has turned out to be quite fun to play.

Well, that’s all I’m thinking right now. What’s on your mind?