Never when it counts…
I roll a hundred on the loot that was uncontested.
Got My Mind On My Money - 200k
Some months ago news sites showed some of the new achievements that were going to be in Mists of Pandaria and one of those was another level to the Got My Mind On My Money achievement which would increase the looted gold needed to 200k. I was still working on the 100k at the time and once I got it I took a break from Solo Raids aside from those that could possibly drop mounts. But more recently there was also an announcement that gold drops from old raids will once again be nerfed so a week or two after that I managed to get myself to start solo raiding again and even increased boss kills from when I was working on the 100k.
On the list of raids to solo were full clears of Hyjal Summit, The Eye, and Naxxramas. There’s also Onyxia’s Lair, Magtheridon’s Lair, and The Eye of Eternity. Then for partial clears I did 3/4 Vault of Archavon, 6/14 Ulduar, 5/6 Serpentshrine Cavern, and 1/12 Karazhan (hardly any gold but you might get a mount). There are a lot more one can do solo but I felt they were too much trouble to add.
Since I spent more time going out with friends than usual this week I skipped a lot of the solo raids that don’t drop mounts. I decided it’s time to check my progress by adding the gold looted statistics of my Horde toons in my current server. I was happy to find out that I’m almost 12k over the target without needing to count characters from other servers; and that my DK makes up for 71.4% of that. Starting this raid lock it’s back to just the mount bosses.
Physical Vulnerability
I was hoping they’d change their minds about Ebon Plague but, as was mentioned recently in WoW Insider’s Lichborne, the buff to the shadow damage of Scourge Strike per disease points to it being done to make up for the loss from 3 down to 2 diseases. Hopfully this plus the increase in the physical portion of scourge strike will make up for the lost disease and the change of the Scourge Strike glyph into Glyph of Foul Menagerie.
But personally I was more concerned with Ebon Plaguebringer now providing Physical Vulnerability which is a debuff that increases physical damage taken by 4% instead of Ebon Plague which increased all magic damage taken by 8%. My normal melee, ghoul, and strikes do physical damage but at the same time my Death Coil, Death and Decay (which it seems will still be included in single target rotation), DoTs from diseases, Gargoyle, and the shadow component of Scourge Strike are all magic damage. This might be similar to how the number of spells we have makes expertise our worst stat despite being a melee class.
Another thing to consider is that the magic damage debuff now comes from warlocks and rogues. I find this a little odd since they have been trying to even things out between classes when it comes to buffs and debuffs. Wouldn’t the rogue have had more use for the physical damage debuff instead? And if I remember correctly, there was a time in Cataclysm that these two were the least seen classes in raids. I’m sure hardcore guilds would have all the buffs and debuffs covered but what of the rest? In our guild that raids two to three 10 mans a week none of the level 85 rogues were raiding before the legendary daggers were announced and only one lock. I just hope that the ability improvements and flashy graphics for warlocks will increase their numbers and that the rogue alts keep getting played once the legendary daggers become outdated.
Leveling another toon, my last one for Cataclysm. I’m unsure what will happen to items already enchanted so I will make use of my heirloom helm and shoulders before MoP might possibly remove the enchantments.
This time I’ll be doing more questing and less dungeons to see more the of the world and get a few points of Loremaster taken care of for accountwide achievements.
Outside PvP though it seems a bit boring to play a rogue up to my current level. Due to enemies having low HP, Sinister Strike is enough to take care of most things without the use of other skills.
Death Knight Army of the Dead
I’m glad that they’re planing to make Army of the Dead more of a dps cooldown than it is now by allowing Death Knights to use a glyph to turn off the taunt and increasing the damage of the ghouls. Since it’s a skill that has a 10 minute cooldown I expect it to be something you would really want to use.
I still think that the 3 second channeling is a bit of a problem though. A blue post did mention that the dps the skill will provide will surpass those of the skills you would have used in those 3 seconds but I still think it disrupts the flow of your rotation. It takes up 3 runes without providing runic power which would fuel other skills and potentially recharge runes faster. Unless you channel before the pull or during times that you can’t attack normally you would actually have to stop spending resources once they are available (which is against the nature of DK dps since you want to spend resources at once to have them recharge as soon as possible to spend again). These would result in lost time and open GCDs which are then dps losses.
I also find it odd as a defensive cooldown. Since DKs are the ones who have always had the active tanking model, it feels out of place that one of our damage reduction cooldowns requires us to not do anything else for the 3 short seconds it’s active.
If were really have to live with the 3 second channel then I hope this 10 minute damage cooldown is worth the effort and resources. As a defensive cooldown though I think they should just remove that part of the skill and make it a separate skill instead. It’s not something I really use that often but it’s the only skill I have on cooldown for the third Impale on Heroic Madness (I use it with Dancing Rune Weapon to make it stronger, but DWR won’t really help me take the Impale on it’s own).
On the first day of Cataclysm, unlike how most people started with leveling, I was flying around Azeroth going for my server first in Archeology. Moving from dig site to dig site, from map to map, you see a lot of hidden locations that can only be reached by flying. It reminded me of all the times I tried climbing mountains trying to see if you can and what could be up there. Sometimes I just land and walk around to have a better look.
I’ve ended up tanking ever since our group reached Heroic Spine, something I would have never expected. I have a tank spec for soloing old raids and to tank as a last resort when no one else can. Now I’ve tanked all heroic bosses and downed Heroic Madness as the tank. With only 3 hrs of progression a week for months now, it did take till the day after the 30% debuff though.
Weather Effects
Since I’ve been doing the ravasaur daily quests in Un’Goro I was lucky enough to catch some rain. It might not be a big deal but weather is one of the features I do enjoy in WoW. Recently though I only get to see rain in Mulgore and Un’Guro; and that one sandstorm while I had some business in Tanaris. I wish more maps had these effects and that they’d happen more often, and maybe more variations.
I did start using my lock again since it basically got neglected when it hit 85. I hardly logged on it until the Fire Festival, and the only combat it got then was against the Frost Lord. When my fel guard died to the ice during the first fight I summoned my imp and it’s been my demon on use for the rest of the event. After two weeks I summoned my demon for single target fights and it comes out with a 24 day stun debuff.
I think this has happened to me once before and it was also when I summoned my demon while I was at the reforger.
