Crafting of Bloodmoon Reborn

The axe named Bloodmoon Reborn is a weapon (two handed strength based axe) that you either buy for huge amounts of gold, or craft yourself. I’ve never seen one on sale, but my AH mod tells me that they start around 50,000 gold. That seems cheap actually considering that to start from scratch it costs a small fortune in materials, and uses a daily cooldown for almost a month. Nuts.

As I have terrible luck with drops I decided to craft this. One month later I have a 502 ilevel item, which could just as easily be switched for a drop from LFR. That sucks a little, but Bloodmoon Reborn does have good itemisation for both Dps DKs and Tank DKs, as it loads Mastery and Haste.

I have two bitches about this in game:

• A craftable which takes this effort should be a touch better than an LFR drop, considering the time and resources it takes. That shits me a little.
• This weapon cannot make use of the Legendary upgrades. So it is not Thunderforged despite being forged in the Thunder Forge. Think about that for a moment.

If you want one don’t ask me for it unless you’re willing to pay for all that Living Steel and Motes of Harmony spent. Plus the trips out to the Thunder Forge. I can see these as patterns which really demonstrate the obsessive Blacksmiths in the game from the folks who just take it as they come. Full respect to any Blacksmith who gets all the 502 level patterns.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew

Quick PvP Round 3

PvP round three was much better. How you ask? Well I seemed to get into more teams that knew what they were doing, and were better able to bolster my silly ass through the experience. I did participate as well as I understood.

(Warning – Achievement screenshot spam).

Victory! One down, one to go.

Booyah! Wrathion’s silly pvp stuff done.

Mort in PvP, actually doing something bloody useful

For Temple of Kotmogu – 4x killing blows, 3x deaths, 48 Honorable kills and 4x Orb possessions, which also grants 403 of the 1600 points were mine. Another DK teamed with me for the match pulling in a very nice 498 points.

For Mines – less impressive and far more like the noob I am in PvP. 1x killing blow, 1x death, 26 honorable kills, and 2x carts controlled. If not for the frustration I think PvP could be enjoyable.

Best of all, this means I’m back onto the PvE based grind for the Wrathion quest chain. Happy killing, TyphoonAndrew

LFR and Random Boss loot luck

A small amount of luck goes a long way. Yesterday I got the LFR shoulder token, and today some Pvp boots. Rewards make the loot treadmill less crappy. Happy for this week, and hording my Valor points for a while to see what the cool kids buy at Revered rep with Shado-Pan.

Arrrg loot in LFR and the Useless Ordinary Legendary Gem

This post is brought to you by the word: Random.

I was going to whine about loot in LFR, as a run through Terrace and the first part of Heart of Fear saw nothing. But then I got lucky in the second part of Heart of Fear LFR, and got the Gloves token which I’ve now had drop 4x times. Arrrrg. No weapons, side grades, other drops for ages. Oh, working as intended? Random rewards are fun. /sarcastic

On an actual positive note I have now handed in and completed the first stage of Wrathion’s quest-line for the “Ordinary Legendary Gem“. Now the slow grind up to 6000 Valor points has started, and we’ll see how far behind the curve I am. I doubt patch 5.2 is 6-7 weeks away given the news and press flying around.

I love the fact that the Legendary quest line is a pain in the arse and bloody difficult for a casual player. Blizzard got this right. it should be driving those players crazy, and should not be something that we feel is deserved; earn it. I get a good quest line and the promise of more great stuff to come.

Not that the “Ordinary Legendary Gem” is actually useful as it requires a Sha Touched Weapon to be slotted into, which is also RANDOMLY DROPPED. So the Ordinary Legendary Gem” is actually a “Useless Ordinary Legendary Gem“. I’ve decided to treat the gem like getting the Left Binding in Molten Core. Now begins the stupidly long path of getting the other random thing to drop.

My Death Knight could really use a Sha Touched weapon for Tanking. Really, really, handy. Random and hard for LFR upgrades is poor, random and hard in a Legendary quest is perfect. Its like the two are the same now. Just saying.

Related articles

• LFR Sha of Fear – Tank’n for laughs (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Time for Tokens to die (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Elder Charms, LFR loot, and perception of the doubly random (wow.joystiq.com)

Time for Tokens to die

Years ago the wow community were rousing about the token system was ok, but fundamentally flawed. The mini-game we play after the boss dies is another treadmill-merry-go-round where gear drops which is useless. As a design principle wow’s reward for effort is based upon re-trying the kills each week until you get lucky. Today I’m bloody mad about this as its been far too long that we’ve been suffering this. Rant incoming.

In our guild forums I wrote this class tokens:

On the token (issue) I think we’re screwed for two reasons: we need to take what we can in terms of characters who are able to join and raid above their match on the token, and we can’t get people to switch characters just to suit the bloody token system each major content patch. It is a bullshit scenario to be in, but I can’t think of a solution that does not have the regular raiders re-rolling each patch.

The token system was an ok idea to allow a boss to drop loot which would not be fraught with drama, as only a few classes could use it. Less people = less drama right? Wrong.

We have in guild now is one character with a token to himself, and half the raid split on each of the other two. Ah shit, gear drama. And I don’t mean people being bitches about loot, I mean that we see Tokens getting cycled for gold/de as we’ve had too many of one type and miles from enough of others. The drama is that our progression is slowed due to shitty luck. A boss dies but the drop is totally pointless.

Also with 4-5 players on each 2 tokens it takes huge amounts of time to gear those 9 players. It is not just 9 kills job done, because we have alt sets, and subs who join from time to time to help with the roster, which makes the distribution ever worse.

Just bring more people to suit the tokens? The server populations are shrinking and this is a totally non-viable response.

Bring the player not the class? Nope. Bring a balance of classes for the tokens. Oh and the tokens change each major content patch. Arrrg.

Reroll? Good god, have you seen how unfriendly the alts are? Forget that as viable for everyone except those with huge amounts of time to play.

The outcome is our raid group just has to suck it up, and keep grinding.

Honestly I am so sick of the loot rewards or issues around loot getting in the way of actually having fun with my raid team in World of Warcraft.

Fark this, I’m soon going to play something else. If Blizzard need a reason why I’ve moved to month-on month payments now, and will shortly consider reading a book instead of logging in they can start with this. Fark it. Destroy it all.

(p.s. what about suggestions for alternatives? Nope, I’ve done that for years suggesting ways that progressive “coins” or currency could be acquired each kill. Do a search on Gear on the blog… they’ll be a few.)

Whats next for upgrades?

There is a new-ish site which indicates which item on your character will benefit from Valor Points the most according to your class and spec stat weightings. Wowupgrade.com.

Cool stuff, and a great idea. Check it out.

That said, the best use of Valor for me is buying new gear, not upgrading. I suppose it should be obvious, but I jumped straight at the tool to see where the bang-for-buck was, and initially forgot to consider the purchase.

eg. 1500 VPs to upgrade a 476, or 2200 VPs to buy a 489? Get the 489 every time, as it can be upgraded later to even higher. Then once all the purchasable VP gear is obtained, then start the upgrade spends as per the site’s recommendations.

This week if I cap the 1000 pt limit successfully, then I’ll be darn close to the 3000 hard cap as well. A spend is a must do. This is a great problem to have, as I can replace either a set of 476 Bracers or Legs.

The choice then becomes between the two items – the bracers have Exp and Crit, where the Legs have Mastery and Haste. No brainer – Legs. I have no idea what the dps increase will be by upshifting 13 item levels, but it moves to what are almost perfect DK stats. And when they get replaced by 5.2 stuff the Mastery might be re-used in a Tank set.

I’m soon off to spend VPs – Wheeeeeee.

Happy Killing.

Related articles

• Gearing up for an adventure (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Patch 5.1: Upgrading your gear with valor (wow.joystiq.com)

Mathy question on DK set bonuses and gear item levels

On first drop I was stoked – the tier gear is something that I crave due to the old days when the BiS gear was almost always Tier only, and all the rest of the gear was a poor shadowy reflection of the Tier gear. And the Tier generally was a great looking matched set and transmog was still a gleam in the lead dev’s eye.

I had the pleasure of getting a few Tier tokens from kills (four items in two weeks – DPS LFR Chest and Normal Gloves, and also LFR Chest and Gloves) and now have a ponder-some issue for DPS gear is due to a difference in item level between my current Chest item (489), and the Raid Finder DK set Chest (483).

TLDR = To get the Tier 14 2 set bonus I have to drop the chest item level down 6 item levels. Is the set bonus of +10% damage to key dps abilities better than 6 item levels of stats other stats?

I’m really not sure. It is likely an overall dps loss, but if so by how much? Does that DPS loss become mitigated by the 4 set bonus if I can get those drops instead? Hmm.

In thinking through the solution I compared the 489 Tier 14 with the 489 Breastplate I was using and they are almost on par, with the current one (King’s Guard) a smidge ahead. This however does not include the benefit of adding either of the Tier bonuses themselves, which I’d argue makes the Tier Breastplate at 489 better.

• A Wowhead Comparison of the two items:
  • The Breastplate of the King’s Guard (489)
  • Breastplate of the Lost Catacomb (483)

By comparison the items show a clear difference, which is to be expected with 6 ilevels.

Left is the LFR T14 Chest, and the right column shows the 489 King’s Guard chest.

Overall gains of 62 Str, 590 Mastery, and 186 Haste vs the 694 Crit is the point of differentiation, as the Stamina and Armor is moot.

So then I thought to apply the stat weightings for  Frost DKs via Wowhead. The goal was to see what difference for teh item alone was, in terms of marginal upgrade or significant upgrade.

This showed the combined weighting value of 156,784 pts for the T14 LFR Chest, and 161,280 for the 489 Chest; meaning a difference of only approx 3% in the two items. Ignoring that this is probably not the way to use item weightings (?) it shows that the LFR item is only a minor downgrade.

It also made me realise that even if I know what the weighting is for the items themselves, I do not have a dps value to compare too, as I cannot ratify a specific DPS figure increase against items level without a set of repeated simulations (like SimCraft).  I don’t know a way to settle what the difference is. Fark.

How do you get to 1000 valor per week?

I’d like to know how other players get to the 1000 valor cap per week? My method is constrained by small blocks of time, and a desire to alternate activity. I do:

• as many dailies for valor and rep as I can fit in while waiting for a queue
• x1-2 scenarios and x1 instance run per day, for the 3 nights a week I play. As a priority the Instance comes first, as it rewards more VPs, although the Scenarios can be quick.
• rarely I’ll do one or two extra daily quests before work, or on an off-night. Only 10-20 VPs worth at a maximum.
• even more rarely I get to kill bosses in a Raid or an LFR. Typically this happens if I don’t get a raid spot and I also get a night with no distractions. Once a month typically.

How successful is the strat? Its generally not enough. I get to around 650 VPs per week, although on a great week that might be almost 900 VP.

Is this the fault of me as a player not having enough time, or the fault of game design?

Given I spend approx 9 hours playing a week broken into small chunks of 45 minutes to 1.5 hours (if not raiding) I’m very comfortable saying that it is my schedule which affects the lack of capp’ing Valor points. Adding a night, or even 1 extra hour per day would make a huge difference on this time, and that is my long term plan – to spread play into “off-nights” but only doing stuff that is very easy to be interrupted in.

I’ve posted about the Valor rewards themselves being poor, and it may appear to be an attack on the overall system. The facility for obtaining Valor is fine, but the reward rate (5x per Daily) feels very low, but has not totally prohibited gear upgrades.

Happy Killing.

Related articles

• Raidboss Valor Reward Increased (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• wow p5.1 Valor Grinding Update by Ask Mr. Robot (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Shieldwall VP rewards (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Gearing up for an adventure (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Dungeon and Raid Requirements (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

The Offensive Shieldwall Operation

kek. Somewhat silly and irrelevant – while pondering the names of the new daily quest faction content it appeared in my brain that there are a few odd variations to have fun with. You might have to be a little loopy to enjoy this:

• The Offensive Operation
• Operation Dominance
• The Dominance of the Offensive Shieldwall Operation, which cannot be denied.

It all sounds a little like a special evening event at the boutique bondage and discipline house-of-ill-repute. Collect those tokens for an extra lashing! At least they chose ShieldWall which I can’t do too much damage with.

I blame a lack of sleep due to crying babies, tired parents, and the holiday season. More is the pity that no alcohol or fine food was involved. Shameful.

Also silly, but cleverer by half is Penny Arcade’s commentary on WoW as played by moms eight years after the initial jump (comic url). PA are brilliant, colour me a fanboy.

(thou shalt wolves and grind valor!) Strange days.

Dungeon and Raid Requirements

A “note to self” on what item levels are needed to get into the MoP Scenarios, Dungeons, and Raids, and what item level they drop. Also what is obtainable from Factions and Craftables, via gold and Reputation.

Why? Because I frequently get them confused with each other…

Scenarios

• Requires: 425
• Awards: chance of 463, and now a small chance of 476

Heroic 5-mans

• Requires: 440
• Awards; 463, with very rare 476 on a few end bosses.

Mogushan Vaults (raid)

• Requires: 460
• Awards LFR: 476, Normal: 489, Heroic: 502

Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring (raids)

• Requires: 470
• Awards LFR: 483, Normal: 496, Heroic: 509

Reputation Rewards

• (most) faction = 458 gear purchased with Justice points
• (some) factions = 463 gear, such as Klaxxi Exalted weapons, for gold.
• (most) Honored and Revered with faction = 489 gear purchased with Valor points
• Friendly with ShieldWall Offensive = 458 gear purchased with Justice points
• Honored with ShieldWall Offensive = 496 gear purchased with Valor points
• Revered with ShieldWall Offensive = 496 gear purchased with Valor points
• Exalted and doing a Quest chain, with the Golden Lotus grants a 489 Neck
• Exalted and doing a Quest chain, with the Klaxxi grants a 489 Ring

Craftables

• Item level 450s (no special mats needed – dirt cheap)
• 463 (Spirit of Harmony needed – cheap-ish)
• 476s (Spirit of Harmony needed – not badly priced at the moment due to new gear)
• 496 (Bloods needed – very expensive)

Happy killing