Badge Vendor, Come Out...

Sometime yesterday, the Badge Vendor was unlocked in Quel'danas. While I had enough badges saved up for my Scryer's Blade of Focus, I was 12 badges short of the Fused Nethergon Band. But luckily, when I awoke in the Scryer's Inn, I was invited to a Karazhan raid that had seen one of its members disappear without notice. It was a late start for the team as a whole, so we didn't get a full clear in, but I got exactly 12 badges as we breezed through 6 bosses. After disbanding, I ported to Stormwind to fish me up a baby crocolisk and then went back to Shattrath to turn in some quests I was just finishing up before I was summoned into Karazhan.

Then, off to Quel'danas. With 10 Large Prismatic Shards and 10 Greater Planar Essences in hand for Enchant Weapon: Spellpower (I have not saved up for Sunfire yet) and Enchant Ring: Spellpower, I was ready to find the vendor. Of course, there were many other people around me trying to do the same thing, but I managed to get his attention and purchase my items. I then went out on the island to do my daily quests with Mercreus. We breezed through everything except the Darkspine Myrmidion quest as they were refusing to drop keys for us, but when I returned to the questgivers, I hit exalted!

I immediately went and picked up a Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen which replaces my Vindicator's Pendant of Conquest. But I think the Pendant of Acumen will be replaced with the Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation once I have saved up enough honor points. With a Runed Crimson Spinel, damage is identical on the two, so it comes down to whether 21 haste is better than the proc on the neckpiece which theorycrafts into 25 damage or so (maybe less due to a hidden cooldown).

Scryer: [((333dmg + 367dmg) / 2) * (1 + 0.5 * 0.12)] / 50s = +7.42dps = 25.97 dmg

While out doing the dailies though, I definitely could see the boost in damage from the new dagger and ring. The nice thing about the ring is that it allows me to use the Icon of the Silver Cresent at all times and stay at the hit rating cap (with the Pendant of Conquest or Subjugation - I'm 8 under the cap with the Pendant of Acumen). However, if I find I like the Pendant of Acumen, two Great Lionseyes will get me to the hit cap rating exactly which I might do if I can find someone to purchase them from (I will certainly be watching the auction house for them this weekend).

Note: It has now been 2 weeks and 1 day since the patch - I have done the fishing daily quest every day and still nothing. No hat, no fishing line, and most importantly, no pets. And now that Nefernetcher has the Phoenix Hatchling, he's bringing it out whenever he can to rub it in my face...

A Closer Look

I'd love to take a look at older WowWebStats outputs from previous Gruul encounters to compare to the damage I did last night, but there are just a couple remaining as most have expired (I'd love to pay, but it's a tad bit too expensive just for parsing Warcraft stats).

This was my first Gruul run since putting together my haste set and it's tough to tell if it worked. The problem is I was hit by a lot of cave-ins last night and had to move quite a bit and bandage more than usual.

On March 11th, during the Gruul kill, I averaged 884 DPS with 91% DPS time. March 18th, averaged 1,127 DPS, 94% DPS time. Last night, 971 DPS, 94% DPS time. On the 18th, I was racing Nefernetcher for DPS and I had very few cave-ins and didn't take too much shatter damage, so it was almost the perfect DPS run. Also, I had a shadow priest in my group that attempt so I didn't need to evocate which costs me 8 seconds during the fight, or 3 fireballs with my haste set.

Looking at the raw Fireball stats, where the bulk of my damage comes from, I get the following:

Date     Hits  Avg. Dmg.  Crit%  Missed%  Mitigated%
March 11  46    2,667      31%     N/A       6.5%
March 19  40    3,202      38%    1.4%       2.4%
April 9   53    3,107      31%    3.6%       4.6%

March 19th I had the shadow priest in my group and due to that fact I could run Molten Armor rather than Mage Armor. The increased crit rate really paid off, along with the fire damage buff. I'm not sure why my miss% was so high last night, I was running at 2 points over the hit cap, but the average damage is up along with the hits - so the haste set seems to be paying off as I can get off more fireballs in the same amount of time.

I think I might have to go pay Dr. Boom a visit. I've never gone out there and tested gear DPS, so maybe later tonight if I'm not in the Karazhan run I'll go have some fun out there.

Also tonight, I will be exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive. I already updated my exalted factions count over to the right (22 and counting) and note the new progress made for the Gold Team. Mag down. SSC coming late April maybe. New pet count also. 63. #32 in the Top 50.

Gold Team One Shots Magtheridon

Last night after a rough Gruul run (one quick wipe on Maulgar after my spell steal was resisted twice by Krosh (110 spell hit should not allow for two resists in a row) and one wipe on Gruul due to a bad shatter), the 25-man Gold Team headed over to Magtheridon's Lair to pick up where we left off last week. We went over the strategy quickly before engaging the monster and we took him down (WWS) in one fell swoop.

The clicking of the cubes was done perfectly, Aracely did a masterful job tanking the behemoth, and DPS was steady through the fight. When I went last week with Familiaris Incursio, we had cube clicking issues and when we got to the cave in, it seemed the raid was not ready for it. This time around, we stopped all DPS at 32%, waited for a blast wave, healed up, powered through his cave-in and continued our one shot. We were rewarded with the Eye of Magtheridon (which mistakingly went to a healer - a problem with anonymous need bids), Magtheridon's Head, a few Tier 4 chest pieces, the Pit Lord's Satchel and a very nice Black Sack of Gems. Inside the sack, we received a Crimson Spinel, Lionseye, and a Pyrestone. Though I wanted the Pyrestone more (I need a couple Veiled Pyrestones), I won the Crimson Spinel and will have a Runed Crimson Spinel waiting in my mail when I get on tonight.

The run was amazingly smooth, we had very few problems (a slight healing mix-up when Magtheridon broke free of his chains and an early pull on Maulgar), and the team as a whole is amazing. Congrats to the Gold Team!

Rocket Chicken

Yesterday, the latest addition to my pet collection arrived via the vendor in Booty Bay. My very own Rocket Chicken! He's wonderful. He tries to take off with his rockets all the time, but just can't seem to get the hang of it. Sometimes though, he does manage to make it off the ground and well...the results are not that pretty.

Recipe Completion

With little to do last night, I scanned my recipe list to see which recipes I needed to acquire. In total, there were 11 cooking recipes I did not know. So I enlisted the help of a friendly troll shaman who searched out three of them and put them on the neutral auction house for me. I have a ways to go, but the rest of them just require more traveling. The one recipe I fear I will not be able to obtain, leaving me one short of every recipe is Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. They require a kill of the third boss in Blackwing Lair, an instance I have not ventured into yet, and I fear I would need many skilled friends to accompany me. But perhaps there are others who would like to obtain that recipe and might join me.

Looking through my tailoring patterns, I realized there was one easy pattern I could obtain, so after killing overmaster Pyron three times, he finally dropped the pattern for Cloak of Fire. I also found an amazing deal on the auction house and bought Pattern: Vengeance Wrap for just 500g.

SSC? Tempest Keep? Bah! Take me to Hyjal!

So, continuing on last week's Hyjal run, we went back, determined to take down Rage Winterchill. After one wipe on the trash due to our pally tank going down early, we regrouped and quickly one shot Rage. It took less than an hour, I got 2,000 rep, and a couple badges. Earlier this week, we tried to down Magtheridon on Tuesday with Gold 25, but only had one shot, so off to Mag with Familiaris Incursio it is!

More Epic Gemming Goodness

Last night, while trying to figure out what to spend my gold from dailies on (I complete 20+ dailies a day during a normal trip around Outland), I briefly thought about getting the formula for Cat's Swiftness for 1300g. But then I decided to check for epic gems, and lo and behold, someone had flooded the auction house with them.

I ended up spending 1200g on new gems, including two Crimson Spinels for 350g each and two Pyrestones for 250g each (Wowhead pegs them at 450g each and the Spinels at 1000g each, so great deals!). I had a guildmate cut the Pyrestones into Reckless Pyrestones and I hired a mage I know to cut a couple Runed Crimson Spinels and I tipped him a nice amount.

The odd thing is, the uncut Spinels were 350g each while the cut Runed Crimson Spinels were trying to be auctioned at 700g each. I tipped 25g for two Runed Crimson cuts and briefly thought about auctioning them back off, but decided against it. I replaced two Runed Crimson Rubies with the Spinels and I replaced one Glowing Nightseye and I also replaced one of my new Forceful Seaspray Emeralds with the Pyrestones. In the end, I lost some stamina, but gained 5 haste (now at 103) and 18 spell damage. Some may call me crazy for spending my money this way, but every little boost I can squeeze out of my gear is worth it.

After all this re-gemming, I was asked to go to Heroic Magisters' Terrace. We had a small problem with Vexallus, but after figuring out how to handle his spawns, we quickly took him down (go go gadget Ice Block). We quickly dispatched of the 5v5 boss and continued on to Kael'thas who continually kicked our butt. We didn't have the burst DPS to burn through his shield so he kept killing our tank. We figured on our next run we could soulstone the tank so he could die and come back, but running over an hour late already, we just called it. The elusive Phoenix Hatchling still eludes me, but I was able to pick up a new enchant of Steelweave which makes me happy. All I need from there is the pet now. Oh yeah, even without downing Kael'thas, I earned 2,000 rep. Puts me almost 25% through revered. Exalted, here I come!

Pets, Pets, Pets

With my latest acquisitions of the Hyacinth Macaw and Crawdad, I am now in the top 50 pet collector's on a single character as tracked by WarcraftPets.com. I am currently sitting at 62 of 79 possible pets. Who knows how many times I will have to fish to find those four pets, but I am fishing every day and still nothing - not even a hat or recipe.