I am an engineer no longer… for the third time now.

This is a familiar journey for me, I’ve ditched the profession two times previously. The first time was while leveling Rhidach and not even at max, so no skin off my nose. Then, while gearing for TBC raids, I picked it up again for the Tankatronic Goggles — I still remember that grind really well, I had mining as the profession I was going to replace, so I went on a massive ore-fest. I gathered all the mats, dropped mining, and worked on leveling engineering into the wee hours, finally hitting 375 around 3 am.

Going into Wrath, I dropped it again and managed to stay away for a good year. But then only to pick it up again in May of 2009 when it was shaping up to be a massive EH boost due to the armor gloves tinker.

In my longest stretch of being an engineer in forever, I held on for dear life as long as I could. Through nerfs a-plenty going into Cataclysm, and after that. There was never going to be as good a time for Engineering as right after 4.0 when tinkers stacked with enchants and weren’t balanced around that consideration yet. It was all downhill from there.

Now armor is nigh-useless as a bonus stat, our belt tinkers will invariably kill us, and the glorious promise of a pseudo-gap closer has been squashed.

When I first mentioned on Twitter that I was strongly considering dropping the profession, I was interested at the people that dubbed me one of the last major holdouts for engineering. I think they’re giving me too much credit — I’m simply the last dope to realize I could steal an orphan and make an end-run for the life boats, rather than go down with the ship.

As to what to replace engineering with, for a long time I’ve been eyeing alchemy with a greedy look. The idea of a bonus that actually helps in PVE — whether it’s the extra 40 mastery and 15 resistance from elixirs, or the 120 extra stamina from flasks — is all kinds of awesome.

So, on Thursday last week I spent the better part of the day herbing on my level 75 druid and gathering a huge stockpile as recommended by one of those profession powerleveling guides. I was also helped by Ildara, the most amazing friend in the world, who gave me all the Cata herbs I needed as well as access to the leftovers of her Wrath-era stockpile.

By the end of the night I easily had all the Vanilla/TBC herbs I needed, plus extras, and was able to grind out the whole deal in about two hours. Including the time needed to run Black Morass for Elixir Mastery — and thanks to Antigen for willingly tagging along and making it much less boring to trudge through.

Next steps for me are definitely to get the druid up to 85 so he can start farming current-level herbs for me, that way I don’t have to continue to rely on the kindness of strangers for my supply.

In the end, I’m happy that I’ve got a second useful raiding profession again, though I’m deeply unhappy I had to drop engineering to do it. It’s become apparent though that any use engineering had during Wrath was a fluke, and it’d be follow to expect for a repeat performance.

The last two weeks have been building weeks for us in heroic Firelands. The Shannox kill came much, much too easily thanks to the undertuned-ness of the fight and the impact of the general nerf. Ever since our first kill, every subsequent one has been a simple one shot. I always catch myself suddenly noticing his health at 30%, and then a heartbeat later he’s dead.

Unfortunately this set up some rather insurmountable expectations for the rest of the hardmodes. People didn’t initially give them the proper respect, so as we began to work on Rhyolith some were expecting a road paved with cakes to lead them to a pot full of 391 iLevel gear. That… did not happen. To put it lightly.

Our first night with Rhyolith last week was painful. The shots we put in on him Tuesday went similarly. There are foundational issues with how we’re doing the fight, between driving not being as crisp as it needs to be, to dps attempting to lone wolf which leg they are attacking (rather than following the directions of the driver), to target swaps happening excruciatingly slowly or not at all.

So after Tuesday it was decided to put that fight on the back burner, our heads just weren’t in the game for it. Instead we pivoted (much more quickly than Rhyolith, may I add) to focusing on Heroic Majordomo Staghelm.

Hello, Domo

Our exploration attempts last week were hopeful. We hit the hard enrage timer once, so it was possible for us to eventually close the deal with another night or two of work. Though, our biggest obstacle was going to be Burning Orbs, which we’ve never handled with any particular agility. The orders came down — the name of the game was going to be communication, communication, communication. Mumble was going to be a cacophony, if that’s what it took.

So we talked, and talked, and talked our way through each Burning Orbs phase. And each time it got a little better. Finally, in our latter attempts, we were hardly losing one person. As opposed to throwing our hands in the air in disgust each time four people died to Orbs.

Also starting that night, Falowin and I began handling the Orb that invariably popped up in the dead center of melee. I’d park myself under it, hit five stacks and drop out, and Fal would take it. We handled the Orb flawlessly and it had no noticeable impact on my survivability, since Cat phase is usually a cakewalk. Indeed, any attempt with a melee Orb was usually much easier than the opposite.

It was getting close to the end of the time we had allotted for heroic Domo and we were still dancing with the kill, while the hourglass was slowly running out on us. With Ragnaros still up, we really wanted to not close the week without getting his Smouldering Essences, tier tokens, and remaining loot — even if that meant a Domo kill. So, at 10pm we called for the last attempt, and wiped at 3%.

Dark tidings

Of particular note on that attempt was that previously a shaman had reincarnated after the wipe to cast Mass Resurrection. A couple of us have been trying to break that habit for the longest time, but only with hardmodes has it begun to have the chance to screw us. I asked him why he would waste a battle rez he can use after we use up the three normal battle rezzes, which could potentially affect the outcome of an attempt.

He protested, claiming that he never dies. I affected a voice of prophesy and informed him that one day — one day — he would die after we used all our battle rezzes, and his reincarnation cooldown would be used up from a mass rez and that I would be there to see to see it. Oh yes, I would be there.

So yeah, three people died, then the shaman did. So he couldn’t battle rez himself and in an alternate universe we scored the kill because he was able to do that 3% dps we needed. Of course, in another alternate universe those three other people didn’t die either. But that’s neither here nor there.

I was just amused because I’ve never been proven right that quickly before.

(That’s a joke, before Vili fires up the snark machine.)

And the triumph!

In any case, determined, Antigen said we’d do one more — evoking the classic ES magic of performing best on your very last attempt of the night. We proceeded through the fight like normal, everyone taking care not to make dumb mistakes that would cost us DPS. Approaching the end, we lost two dps in the Cat phase after Orbs. The enrage timer was looming. We told everyone to buckle down and we could mathematically come ahead, we just needed to focus.

Finally, at the very end of the attempt, I prepared to do what I could to buy us a few seconds. At one second to go, I taunted for the fixate effect and popped Divine Shield. Of course Staghelm then leaped away, eating up any time I bought. I popped GAnK and then Ardent Defender, doing what I can. I got rocked pretty quickly thereafter.

As people got picked off, the dead shouted encouragements in Mumble. Those seven second beyond the enrage last seven eternities until finally that little bastard expended his last life, keeled over, and coughed up his purples. The kill felt infinitely better than our post-nerf normal Ragnaros kill a few weeks prior.

We’ll have see if we can repeat the kill this week with many fewer attempts. I think we have a good shot from all the new ground we broke on communication and Orbs this week. For the first time since our normal kill, we don’t have to just stumble our way through it, we’re actually doing it correctly!

On Tuesday after (finally) having the Mirrored Boots crafted and picking up the shoulders off of Alysrazor — while still stabbing that Domo voodoo doll relentlessly to compel him to drop enough Conq tokens for me to win one — I finally amassed enough surplus mastery to be able to drop a mastery trinket.

To cross the finish line, I had to swap around six gems: four Puissants into blue sockets, one Fractured into my relic socket, and one Fractured Chimera’s Eye into a yellow socket. With that done, I picked up the last 183 mastery I needed to cover for removing the Spidersilk Spindle from my default kit.

I’m not block capped with the assumption of the Mirror of Broken Images being equipped, and I chose that particular trinket to be my default so that if I want to use the Spindle instead, I won’t suddenly be a chunk of mastery under the cap.

In return, I now run the Scales of Life (which I’m training myself to use like a cooldown, a mini-WoG) in my second trinket slot. If it’s Baleroc, I’ll swap that out for the Spindle to have the extra mastery needed to reach Baleroc’s special super-CTC requirement. If it’s Alysrazor, a dps trinket goes in. If it’s a primarily physical damage fight (like Shannox), I’ll swap out the Mirror for the Spindle and keep the Scales.

This is why I hope we’re allowed to continue to block cap in 4.3. All this dancing around the cap and gearing intelligently and effectively depending on the fight while keep our necks above the caps is fun. At least, to me. I might be a masochist when it comes to stuff like this.

Another update to the PTR and still no word of a nerf to block for Paladins. I’m not going to be stupid enough to hope out loud that they’ll just buff DKs and leave it at that, content to kick the can down the road to the next expansion’s beta, so we’ll leave my hopes and aspirations in the dark where they can’t be so easily crushed.

I really want to say more about this, but like Voldemort (or, I guess, Bettlejuice), I fear even saying the word “nerf” in any quantity will summon one. Mum’s the word!

In happier news, it looks like Judgement of Truth was buffed to 20% extra damage per Censure stack, which means another 50% damage with a full stack of the debuff on an enemy. Good stuff — thanks to Ret for needing that buff!

Likewise, this explains why the tier 13 two-piece was nerfed by 5%. Judgement doing more damage required the bonus to be tuned down a tad. In any case, I’m going to have to hop on the PTR soon and see what we’re looking at for damage numbers and try to extrapolate out what the two-piece bubbles will look like.

Lastly, a few PTRers noticed that Shield of the Righteous has a new sound effect (ok, a sound effect — does anyone really hear that “whoosh” it currently makes?). It’s kind of a metal clang noise, but without the echo that Hammer of the Righteous has. Here’s a YouTube video where you can hear it:

I like it.

1. The 2pc is weak, but cool

Protection, 2P — Your Judgement ability now also grants a physical absorb shield equal to 30% of the damage it dealt.

Not a huge amount of mitigation. My average Judgement on Shannox last week, for example, was around 14k damage. So, that’d be a 4200 damage bubble I’d put up. Which would obviously break just about as soon as it came up. Still, it’s free mitigation — nothing to sneeze at.

This is also the first time in as long as I can remember the two-piece bonus for a tier set was an actual survivability bonus. Even if it’s a pittance, that’s still incredible it’s not some boring “x more damage when you do y ability” song and dance.

2. 4pc is pre-nerf DG

Protection, 4P — Reduces the cooldown of Divine Guardian by 60 sec and increases the radius of its effect by 70 yards.

This is just silly. The four-piece bonus changes Divine Guardian to a two-minute cooldown and 100 yards range. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what the ability was before it was nerfed in 4.1 when warriors were given a raid cooldown. So, try not to wallow in the insult that we’re being given a pre-nerf shell of one of our spells as a “bonus”, there’s a lot more that’s wrong with this.

3. 4pc is flagrantly unbalanced with other tanks

Not in a bad way; actually, our four-piece is much, much better than the other three tanking four-piece bonuses. Warriors, druids, and DKs will have to give up one of their personal survivability cooldowns to perform their four-piece raid cooldown. Hell, a warrior now has to give up two cooldowns to do two different raid cooldowns. Meanwhile, our raid cooldown remains that — a raid cooldown — and continues to offer no actual damage reduction to us.

This sucks pretty badly for the other tanks, who I’m expecting we’ll hear about being forced to blow their necessary cooldowns at inopportune times and thus possibly putting themselves at risk for the benefit of the raid. I’m not sure I’d be thrilled hearing the raid leader call for my to blow Guardian of Ancient Kings when a burst of AOE damage was coming up, when I was planning to save it for a big nuke on the tank down the road.

This also fills me with dread with how much raid-wide AOE damage this is going to be in Dragon Soul.

4. No personal benefit to 4pc

This is minor, but it kind of bothers me. Other than for fights where there are major AOE burst events — ie, something like Majordomo Staghelm — what would compel us to wearing four pieces of tier? If we have a situation like Firelands where the offset pieces were better itemized over tier in two out of five cases, what would drive us to put on that fourth piece and activate our ultimate bonus?

There’s no awesome “you are totally amazing with this bonus available and will be that much more unkillable” set bonus. We just had a more frequent, less restrictive raidwall. Feels bad, man.

But truthfully, I’m very proud of the guild for killing Ragnaros for the first time. Despite my disappointment of not being there.

Still, what more can you say about the nerfs that we were able to down him — as sloppily as they did — on the first try of the night? … I suppose it was also the eighth try of the week (or so), so perhaps it’s not that dire.

But, whatever. Heroic modes next week. Woohoo.

The first round of hatchlings died with 37 seconds left on the clock. The second round I delivered the death blow with 30 seconds left. We never got a second round of tornadoes.

Majordomo was perhaps the most pitiable boss in there, as we entirely skipped his Burning Orbs phase. We killed the poor bastard in the Scorpion phase right before. In the lead up to the fight, we were figuring out what to do while missing one raid cooldown that we usually had, when I pointed out that the whole damn raid now has a 25% Divine Guardian up the entire time thanks to the nerfs.

It was embarrassing for poor Domo. The guy used to really give us a run for hit money. But now he’s been completely declawed.

Bottom line on the nerfs: Too soon, Executus. And too far.

It’s great that some guilds will finally get to see the bosses they’ve been stuck on forever. But at the same time, it really feels like the place has been outright cheapened. “Victory at what cost?”, and all that.

Ultimately, Firelands yesterday felt more like 30%-nerfed ICC. It was eerie, the deja vu.

On the bright side, we’ll probably kill Ragnaros tonight. About two weeks ahead of schedule, thanks to this handicap that’s been shoved down our throats.

I expect this will be our reaction when we’re standing over Ragnaros’ defanged corpse:

Made a quick change: dodge and parry inputs now require your ratings, rather than the undiminished percents. This will hopefully make the sheet a little more intuitive for folk’s first use. I know the majority of the questions I get about it is that the numbers look way off, and it’s almost always because the wrong percents were put in. Hopefully this makes it more simple.

Update: Thanks to Rudy on Twitter for alerting me about an error in the spreadsheet. I’ve corrected it now and uploaded the fixed version 1.3.5. So sorry about the error, and lesson learned about rushing out an update right before the end of the work day!

(Yes, pun titles. How I love you.)

So Sunday night we killed Majordomo Staghelm for the first time, but in 10man mode. Which was strikingly easier than our 25man attempts and somewhat demoralizing. I understand a lot better now why 90% of the raiding guilds on Lightninghoof are 10man only now.

But that’s neither her nor there. We obviously (as a 25man guild) didn’t have a “legit” kill for our chosen raid size, so we weren’t going to even bask in the victory. We prevented a shoulder token from being left on the table, no more, no less. The real work was still left to be done with the new raid week.

Tuesday was sort of a rough raid night, but only in comparison to the previous raid weeks when we one-shot everything and rolled over all opposition. This week — horror of horrors — it took us four attempts to kill Baleroc and three for Alysrazor. Such backsliding! And as a result, unfortunately, we didn’t get any shots in on Domo on Tuesday. We just disembarked for BH as a palate cleanser and then called it a night ten minutes early.

Wednesday, the thinking goes, we’d roll in fresh and finish off Majordomo once and for all after our amazing 8% attempt the previous Wednesday.

Initially hope was strong, but then as real-life RNG intervened it began to wane. Several disconnects occurred during attempts. We had to replace one healer and bring in one that was back from extended hiatus and hadn’t even seen the fight yet. Later, another dps had to go for a family matter, so we had to replace him with the disconnecting healer because none of our other standbys were available. All signs pointed to us being quite doomed.

And yet, immediately following that replacement, our attempts started going a lot better. DPS was tightening up because we came to a big revelation: we weren’t stretching out the Scorpion phases enough. Those were our “big money” dps phases. So we went from taking the first Scorpion to 10 and fleeing to holding him up to 12. Personally, I wanted to go farther and eating two additional Scythes with Ardent Defender and Guardian Spirit, but I was vetoed.

It’s probably for the best — I’m not sure how much faster the Scythes would be getting at that point and if I’d get immediately one-shot by a third follow up before everyone could flee.

Like Zilga says, “I don’t get you people — you post this amazing attempt and you try to change what already works!”

So the first Cat phase then, we ate seven leaps, without much incident. Then it was back to Scorpion phase. And so on and so forth.

We kept taking the Scorpion phases up to 6 or so and then splitting. Raid cooldowns were used extensively for the Searing Seeds/Scorpion phase.

After the Burning Orbs/Cat phase, we somehow still have the entire raid alive — which is crazy, that phase is usually the bane of our existence, but it appears it clicked for everyone. Then hastily going into another Scorpion phase we took quick stock of our raid cooldown inventory and proceeded to mitigate our way through every Scythe. His health ticked down slowly but surely, until finally, on the fifth Scythe he was in low single digits. Zilga called for us to scatter like rats, and we quickly did. There was no way we could eat another Scythe.

We quickly switched Domo to Cat form and went to town on him. The decision was made to ignore the adds, as he was around 4%. Around 1% or so, Staghelm took a flying leap away, but that only delayed the inevitable. As soon as he closed into melee, we finished him off with a starving fury. A roar of joy went up as he switched to human form, and then dropped to the ground, coughing up his purples.

Antigen won the only Conq token, but it’s ok. We’ve agreed on a visitation scheme so I can get 12 minutes of wistful sighs in once a week. (It’s going to be a while before I can win a pair of my own.)

And then we went to go give Ragnaros a few pokes.

I haven’t been as good about detailing my race for the block cap as I had been with my pursuit of the armor cap in the latter days of Wrath of the Lich King, but I am proud to report I’ve finally achieved my goal since the start of the Cataclysm: total combat table coverage.

It’s really hard to show in game because the Visual Combat Table addon is being funky, so enjoy this screenshot from my spreadsheet.

Raid buffed, I have 13.98% dodge + 14.01% parry + 69.48% block + 5% miss. This adds up to 102.47% combat table coverage — .07% over the cap, or 6 mastery too many. I also was able to completely regem to a stamina scheme (I can’t wait for the first LFD pugger to call me a stam-stacker) and activate all my socket bonuses. I’m ecstatic!

What allowed me to go through this joyous metamorphosis was picking up three new pieces last night: the Deflecting Brimstone Band from valor points, the Essence of the Eternal Flame from the Avengers quartermaster, and the Uncrushable Belt of Fury from Shannox. Though, mostly, it was the trinket. The other two just allowed me to shed a few more hybrid mastery gems to hybrid stamina gems.

Looking at my armory now I see a Puissant gem in a blue socket. I’ll have to fix that, but I need 14 or so more mastery first. (Enter the eye twitch.)

Anyone else block cap, yet? How’d you handle overflow mastery? Or, if not capped, how close are you?