Back to the grindstone

My first full work day in about two weeks (thanks to Prague and Thanksgiving) and I feel completely out of my element. I’m not prepared to return so abruptly to cube life. And blog life, for that matter. I know last week I was “back” and then I only did, what, three posts? Sure it’s a holiday, but I should have done a bit better than that.

My first second max-level character

On a happier note, last night I finally hit 80 on my death knight (who I rolled back in… wow… July). I’ve been a bit slow, obviously.

The impetus for this last minute alt burst is a good chunk of the regular raiders in my guild are obviously sick of doing the same five bosses every week (Icecrown *really* needs to drop this week) and were looking to shake things up a bit. Doing Coliseum with ten different characters who can’t easily consider the raid as “on farm” will definitely add some spice. It’ll be fun to gear up and progress a brand new toon.

When I picked up the DK again earlier last week I paid the $25 to change him from a Belf to Undead, mostly to evade the “lol belf dk” stigma when running pugs and the like. However, I’m starting to regret the decision, missing the grace and elegance of the… er, well, mostly the hair. Them Blood Elves have some pretty sweet ‘dos.

I’m loathe to throw away a total of $50 for nothing, though, so my penny-pinching ways will probably get the best of me and prevent future finagling. … We’ll see.

Oh, and can we talk for a second about how much easier 70-80 is now with Cold Weather Flying available at 68? I basically burned through every level, banging out huge swaths of quests at a time, with no time wasted running through packs of dazing mobs. It was sublime.

Calm before the storm

Right now in-game is pretty quiet. Like I mentioned, everyone’s crazy bored of the Coliseum, and raid nights are seeing a few more new faces than usual because some of the raid core doesn’t bother to log on. People are rolling and leveling alts, while others are just taking a break from the game altogether. Especially a certain holy paladin in my guild, who has done this for the second time now.

I’m not sure what’s more excruciating, the last few weeks of Naxx while waiting for Uld, or this stretch before Icecrown. Naxx at the end sucked because we were starting to regress, with people not showing up out of boredom and reaching their personal gearing goals, so we actually got to the point where we were consistently wiping in there. That was depressing. Now, thanks to dkp in part, I think, we haven’t had as many attendance inconsistencies. Still, it’s the same. five. bosses. every damn week. I cans only takes so much and I can’ts takes no more.

I’m itching to knock down the doors of Icecrown and get to work dethroning Arthas. Come on Blizz, let’s get this show on the road!

Armor’s epilogue

Wrathy brings up a fascinating point regarding the new theorycrafting done with armor. With this new mathematical understanding of the stat, it’d be possible to make a spreadsheet where you’d plug in various numbers (including a predetermined percent of how much damage in a fight is magical) and you could weigh armor, stamina, and avoidance (among other things) to empirically work out what kind of gear you want to run with in that fight.

The thought of becoming Excel jockeys like some Rogues I know scares me a little, but it adds a little flair to our craft other than stamina, stamina, stamina. I’ll be following this effort in earnest as it develops.