Results tagged “gear”

Work has been taking its toll on my playing recently but I've still managed to do a fair number of runs and get Andro her second piece of tier 9 (and some new trousers, prompting a revision of her enchants and gems) and for Buliwyf to slowly gear up and head off into the Epic 200+ territory.

Though I wasn't scheduled to participate (but was down as a reserve) young Buli found himself tanking the Plague and Spider wings of naxx on Monday (save for Loatheb which Awl, a druid tank, handled) as well as Sapphiron and a couple of cracks at KT. I'm still something of a novice in the tanking stakes, but it's a fun change from Andro's DPS-age. A lot to learn still (like don't turn the big icy dragon!) but my confidence is increasing and his gear has benefited greatly from 5-man TocH and Naxx/OS loot drops. I do need to work on some of his repuations (currently Sons of Hodir and Argent Crusade) after which point he'll hopefullt be a useful member of the Ravens.

In other news, the guild are trying to run 2 Raids a week - one progression-oriented on Mondays and a more general "fun" one on Fridays (though that one is heading to Onyxia tonight and is oversubscribed while Monday's Ulduar is rather healer-light!) Fingers crossed both raids will go off well (particularly as the coming Monday is the first one in 3 weeks I've not been down as reserve for - the Ony run already had 12 by the time I knew I'd be free) and that we continue to keep up the impetus. Fingers crossed too that the increased raiding keeps the guild's "high flyers" happy and that we dont' have another bout of departures to more raid-focussed guilds. We'll have to see.

Last night the Ravens ventured into the Halls of Stone (and also took a quick peek into Halls of Lightning before deciding out level 78 was better suited to the Violet Hold, which we murderized a couple of times). Andro's performance was okay but not great so I'm planning on spending the weekend looking at her kit (her spec is, I believe, fine ... at least until the Arcane buffs in 3.0.8). At present I have 4 broad sets of gear: Hit, crit, haste and PvP. The haste set is something of a "not quite sure what do do with this" and what I want to do is come up with 3 rather than two sets that are: Bosses, general DPS and PvP.

The current problem is that my +hit gear lacks the crit of my general gear (which, given my build is designed to deliver big crits, is an issue) and dps gear has haste or crit, rarely both (and I'm not overly familiar with haste). Finding a decent balance could be ... interesting.

With wrath a little over a week away, young Buliwyf isn't making too much effort to gather gear, knowing he'll soon be picking up new kit in Borean Tundra and the Howling Fjord; he's gathering money for his birdie, but that's about it so far (and WotLKs initial ground emphasis gives him chance to raise the cash for the epic bird given his planned route - finishing up the Outland zones - will revert to XP-giving quests I imagine).

Andro, on the other hand, is curious as to what the expansion holds for her kit. She's entirely in Epics - a mix of Kara and badge kit with the odd ZA item thrown in - which should last her a while. In Burning Crusade, the PvP spellblade lasted her until the mid 60s, and I'm expecting similar 'legs' for the kit this time around. Spicy tuna agrees, saying its unlikely that S1/T4 kit will be replaced until 72-72 and S2/T5 (which is more or less Andro's level) until 74-76, or possibly a little higher. Some individual items may go, but it doesn't seem likely that there'll be a repeat of BC's "greens better than purples" issue.

Though my various adventures I've plumbed most of the regular adventure locales in Azeroth and outland and am moderately well equipped. There are one or two items I'd still like to get from these instances, but the most likely route of gaining improved equipmwent is through 10-man raids (presently Karazhan, but also the forthcoming Zul Aman), PvP (arenas and battlegrounds) and the "heroic" versions of outland dungerons.

PvP is the easiest to work on solo as honor and tokens can be aquired in teh battlegrounds relatively easily. The range of rewards is rather limited, however, and efforts to foster arena pvp (which uses a different system and has much better rewards) has proved troublesome. As a consequence, I'm mainly relying on 10-mans (where there's competition for gear and the range of upgrades is presently limited by the encounters we can deal with) and the heroic instances, where the defeat of bosses provides "badges of heroism" that can be exchanged (in quantities from 10 to 75) for various bits of kit.

I've actually only done a couple of heroic runs - and only one to completion - and they can be quite hard work. I'm glad to hear, therefore, that as of the next major upgrade the boses in Karazhan will also award Badges of Heroism, which should allow me to accumulate enough for decent items. There's other loot (and quests) in various heroics I'd like to aquire and/or complete though so I'm hoping the number of visits to such "fun" locales increases (though hopefully without too many wipes and repair bills ...)

One of the way WOW allows for character customization to prevent all characters of the same level being equipped the same and using the same spells is through talents, for which points are gained at the rate of 1 per level after level 10 (so a level 70 character has 61 points to spend). Each class has 3 distinct "trees" in in which to spend points and the mage ones correspond to the schools of magic: Arcane, Fire and Ice.

Arcane talents focus on building up not only Arcane spell damage but intelligence (a ket statistic for mages as it influences the ammount of mana they have to cast spells too) and the ability to resist spells. Fire is mainly focussed on damage dealing, while is is a mix of damage dealing and protective effects. As such, building a mage you really need a mix of everything, and there simply aren't enough points to go round; you're going to miss out on one or other of the trees.

Popular opinion is that Fire talents are the core of player-vs-environment talent builds (or arcane and fire) while frost is at the core of PVP builds. Being mainly a PvE chatacter, I use a "Deep Arcane" Arcane+Fire Build (Arcane for Intelligence and raw spellpower, fire for more forcused raid firepower) though in the past I've been "Deep Fire" (i.e. using high ranked fire talents) and even back before the launch of Burning Crusade a "deep frost" mage (i.e. top-end ice talents). Now, for utility in raids and Battlegrounds I could swap to an Arcane-Ice build (which can be rather nice) but I've avoided doing that so far. The reason? Simple.

Equipment.

The top end tailored garb for robes is quite specific in what it benefits - I spent about a month making the Spellfire set, the benefits of which only apply to fire and Arcane schools. The other tailored sets are even less versatile - the mooncloth set is for healers and the frozen shadoweave is for ice and shadow (shadow being a warlock/priest school not available to mages) and switching would be both expensive (Spellfire is a specific branch of tailoring, so I'd need to unlearn it and then learn the new branch) and hard on materials.

As such, I'm is pretty much locked into Fire and Arcane as my principal schools, at least until I aquires school-neutral equipment from Kharazan and later (or from PvP; I've slowly been buying up PvP gear and will likely pick up some of the Arena kit too). For the time being though, given I'm moderately well equipped, it makes sense to me that others in the guild pick up most of the mage loot before I put in a request for it. There are some nice pieces out that I'll still roll on (from the Karazhan encounters so far there's a cloak and pair of trousers at least I'm interested in, not to mention the necklace I already acquired) and hopefully even more gear will come available as we work through!