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It’s amazing just how quickly the gear portion of the problem can be changed. So much so that my mage is now virtually broke after gemming, enchanting and reforging the deluge of upgrades received in just a few hours of running the HoT 5 mans and one lucky LFR run. As of right now my mage only has 2 pieces of PVP gear to replace and is sporting two pieces of ilvl 384 raid finder tier pieces. Each upgrade has been met with excitement and animosity with the amount of juggling I’ve had to do with reforging to stay as close to 17% hit as possible.

Reforging is a boon and a bane.

Anyhoo, needless to say gear is no longer drastically holding my mage back. Nope. Now it’s just my inexperience which is doing that. Sure my DEEPS is substantially better now and there’s still some pieces holding me back (trinkets come to mind) but there’s still something that I’m doing wrong.

I’ve fully embraced fire as my main DPS spec and have done some scouring of the forums to have a better grasp of how to play as a fire mage. Knowing how to is still not the same as doing and as I learn the fights from a ranged perspective I’m sure my DEEPS will get higher.

Movement is the main thing that I’m struggling with since, as a rogue, I’m not used to the necessity of being stationary to cast. One thing that I do love about fire is that I can cast scorch on the run, but the mere act of movement usually causes me to let living bomb fall off and forget to reapply it.

As I get more comfortable with movement as a mage things will get better, especially if I can work blink into the equation more. I just need to subdue my perfectionist’s tendacies so that I don’t get down on myself for not being where I feel like a should be in terms of performance. I’ll get there … eventually. I just need to keep telling myself that.

Sadly, however, there’s been a side-effect of gearing as a fire mage that I can’t do much about: my frost DPS is now really, really lacking. Fire favors haste and crit, not mastery. Whereas frost loves mastery so unless I want to spend tons of gold juggling secondary stats I’ll just have to cope.

Anyhoo, I think I’ve droned on long enough, and my car is ready, so I will leave it at that. Ciao!

Again, my mage isn’t quite as geared for PvE as my rogue is but the difference in performance is downright embarrassing. I have had an arcane build, but I’m not a fan even though it was barely edging out my frost dps build. Considering my distaste of arcane I decided to give fire another go for PvE but that hasn’t been met with the results that I was hoping for.

It can’t just be my gear alone that is causing me to stink. It isn’t terrible despite being under the hit-cap (something which is probably hurting me greatly) yet there’s something about mage DPS that I’m not getting. Perhaps I haven’t set up my UI to communicate everything I need to know to maximize my performance, but it can’t be that. Sure I”ve jerry-rigged an add-on designed for rogues while I probably should be using something more like MageNuggets for timers and cool-downs but my stink goes beyond that.

Maybe there’s just something about ranged-dps that I just haven’t figured out. Or maybe it’s the priority system. Or maybe that most of my damaging abilities all have cast times, something that is somewhat foreign to a rogue. Needless to say I’m going to have to spend some time thumbing through the Elitist Jerks and MMO Champion mage forums. Hopefully I can glean something that will clue me into what I’m doing backwards.

Oh well, back to the HoT 5mans and to hope that I always get groups willing to put up with my low DEEPS ;_;

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When I have had enough time to do something other than work I have managed to sneak in a little bit of time for podcasting, spending time with my family and WoW. Prior to patch 4.3 I felt like I would never achieve  the same level of gear with my rogue as I did in WotLK but I don’t think I was prepared to feel like I had surpassed it. Enter the Raid Finder, the single greatest addition to WoW since the Dungeon Finder.

Wait. Wait. Did you just call the Raid Finder the greatest addition to the game since the Dungeon Finder?!?

Yes, that’s right. I did, deal with it.

Oh right, you’re one of those “casuals” that Blizzard is catering to nowadays. Have fun with your Pandas and PokeWoW.

What’s with the hostility? Is there something inherently wrong with allowing a much larger portion of the player base an opportunity to SEE the content that the developers worked hard on creating? I certainly don’t think so. If more players are doing raid content, regardless of what difficulty level, then more time and resources will likely be allocated to creating raid content. Imagine what the Molten Front could have been with the Raid Finder in place.

Anyhoo, I’m straying from the focus that I intended with this entry. It’s not supposed to be an elitist v casual debate; rather I intended to share my experiences with raiding the Dragon Soul with the raid finder.

For the first time in my WoW career I have seen an entire tier of raid content while it is still relevant. In fact my rogue has been involved with the slaying of the World Breaker three times. Could have been four, but let’s not bring up my double-fail of sprinting off of Alexstraza’s platform and then releasing the other night. So far my experiences with the raid finder have been mixed, but mostly very positive. Sure things can get dicey when half of the DPS in the raid clearly shouldn’t be there and are pulling less than 15k dps on Ultraxion (was in one the other night with TWO mages barely managing 11k dps) but so far these occurrences don’t seem to be the norm … at least not yet.

Oh don’t worry, there are tons of terribads out there that will make fail-boating a far greater occurrence. Just you wait. 

Again with the hostility? Does the raid finder really irritate you that much? Can you not handle the “terribads” getting gear? Everyone should be afforded the same opportunity to enjoy the game to the fullest, even if they aren’t of the same caliber as an elite/hardcore raider. Do I really need to bring up the fact that us “casuals” also help keep this game going?

Yah, let that soak in for a moment. Blizzard has never been only about the 1%, they care about making fun games for everyone. Was it not Jay Wilson that stated that their goal was to bring the casual gamer into the fold and transform them into a hardcore gamer? By giving more players accessible raid content Blizzard is hoping that more of those players will then venture into raiding normal modes and maybe even heroic content. Is there something wrong with that?

But Jay Wilson isn’t even on the WoW development team! And I don’t want terribads taking MY raid slot!

Let’s just move on shall we. Clearly someone is intimidated by more players seeing their content.

As I stated earlier the raid finder is, in my opinion, a huge boon to the game. From here on out I will always be able to see all the content that Blizzard puts into WoW and that excites me greatly. I can not wait until Mists of Pandaria. How awesome is it that I’ll be in the mix and get to see the Sha in a raid setting? That if I want to wear tier gear, I’ll be able to? I only hope that rogue tier 14 isn’t hideous ^^;

Now to get my mage geared enough for the raid finder …

Naaaah, we understand. Really we do. Really. /eyeroll

No? Okay. Let’s get back in to the swing of things and type out some words for you, my dear oft-neglected readers (which number in the tens? ^^; )

It would pretty fantastic if there were some awesome news to report on why I haven’t blogged since the middle of July, but there isn’t. Between conditions at work becoming increasingly stressful and my free-time disappearing to tending to my almost eleven month old son I just haven’t been able to get in to the proper mindset to sit down and type. Often instead of trying to push my brain into semi-functional half-coherent rambling-mode I’d opt to log into WoW and do dailies. Something mindless, something to take my mind off the stresses of the day.

Wait, I thought you weren’t going to explain your lapse. What are you doing?

Good point. I can’t break bad habits, so you’re just going to have to deal with that. Errr, well I mean it has been almost FOUR months since I last posted something, I feel like the least that I could do is give a little bit of an explanation.

Fair enough. Carry on, carry on.

As I was stating what I’ve mainly been up to isn’t much of anything, just the usual boring stuff. Well, that isn’t to imply that watching my son grow has been boring, which it hasn’t … quite to the contrary … just that mostly everything else (that I would blog about) hasn’t been outside of the norm. I completed the arduous task of completing the Molten Front dailies on both of my 85s (mage/rogue) and got both my DK on Nevikhoof and shadow priest on Cenarius into Cata-content.

Speaking of my poor, poor shadow priest when I dusted her off I was having a heck of a time trying to kill things out in Storm Peaks. Killing a single mob took a healthy chunk of her mana and if there was an add … forget about it. It was like I had forgotten how to play a shadow priest and I was having horrific flash-backs to when I tried going OOMkin with my druid in Outland. Then, I noticed something … something incredible … something HORRIFYING …

What? What’s in the box?

Points for the Seven reference, that is a fantastic movie. I think I’ll have to watch that again here in the near future.

*Cough* Ahem *Cough*

Oh right, what’s in the box. Got it.

What I noticed was that somehow I had leveled my priest up to level 78 (where I left her long before Cataclysm launched) without GLYPHS!

Oh … my … words are failing me … woooooooooow ….

I know, right? Crazy.

After rectifying that little issue my priest went back to melting faces without issue, until she hit the speed-bump named Vashj’ir. One does not simply walk into Mordor … errr I mean Vashj’ir decked out in Wrath leveling greens and blues. You’ll get your face smashed in by the tremendous iLvl leap when jumping into Cata-content as a fresh level 80. If you recall, that was one of my worries prior to Cata’s launch but after visiting the auction house and dumping 800g to replace a good chunk of her gear she was back in action.

Quick aside, my DK on Nevikhoof didn’t experience a similar issue when questing through Hyjal … then again she is a blood DK and was able to over-power everything tossed at her in Wrath, therefore having slightly better gear when making the jump.

Anyhoo, once my priest hit 81 and trained mind spike her play-style changed dramatically. Instead of having a compelling and fun rotation, all she needed to do was toss mind spike three times and then mind blast. Essentially she went from being a warlock to an arcane mage, only without having to worry about her mana pool to deal ALL THE DAMAGE.

Booooo hissssss!

I tried going back to using the old rotation but it couldn’t keep up with the damage output of the new two button gameplay. Well … there is occasionally the need to toss in a shadow word: death when the mob didn’t fall over from boredom. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my priest. I’ve tried playing as an arcane mage and quickly grew so bored of it that I went back to frost but there isn’t another DPS option for me to fall back onto.

Wait. Did you just try to state that FROST is a viable DPS option for Mage? Are you mad?

Yes, and yes. However let’s not side-track this post into debunking the myth that frost mages can’t dish out the DPS … they can.

Fine. I’ll let you live in your little fantasy bizarro world where frost mages deal damage.

Thank you, I think.

Other than preferring the mindlessness of what I’ve been doing in-game I have spent a smidgen of time on my other neglected alts. My dwarf rogue and tauren paladin have seen some playtime, but not really enough to warrant writing about. My mage has gone back on PVP-hiatus potentially until 4.3 when fire mages finally get some love so there’s nothing there to write about unless you want to hear about how I’ve taken her back to the Argent Tournament to become a Crusader.

Naaah, that’s so last expansion. Sounds like you’re wrapping things up?

Indeed I am, but before I do there is news on the podcasting front. Awhile back I was approached by Medros, the mad-man behind Dawnforge Productions, to start a Diablo podcast for his network. Considering my love of the Diablo franchise how could I not say yes? I mean, Diablo was my first true gaming addiction before World of Warcraft came around. Alas the Shattered Soulstone was born, a podcast for all of the loot-crazy deviants like myself, Breja and Jen.

Wait. What about The Overlores?

Don’t fret, The Overlores is still happening, just not as frequently as it once was. As you might deduce from the lack of activity on my blog, things have been hairy for getting together and making the magic of the Overlores happening. Rilandune, Kharendos and myself are still committed to putting out shows for you to consume so do not lose hope. Never lose hope … I haven’t.

With that I think I’ll call this a wrap. There’s still plenty of things that I would like to write about, especially about Mists of Pandaria and how excited I am about the prospect of being a troll monk. And then there’s the little thing called DC Universe Online going free-to-play, but that’s better suited for a post of its own … eventually.

I’m Batman!

Anyhoo, let’s move on into the meat of this post …

It amazes me how with each expansion my approach and focus to my long-time gaming addiction changes. In The Burning Crusade most PvE content was out of my reach, not only because of the painful rep-grinds but also because I was having to balance time against the birth of my daughter. These restrictions led me back to an aspect of the game that I once spent a good chunk of time in, PvP.

Granted back then I did most of my PvP on my priest, not my rogue. It was something that I could jump in and out of without adversely affecting the gameplay of my friends or whomever I was grouping with at the time. Even though it started off exceptionally frustrating until I got my rogue enough gear to survive long enough to provide any kind of threat. Once the gear was mostly not an issue my enjoyment of the competitive nature of PvP soared.

Then Wrath of the Lich King arrived and my focus shifted back to running PvE content. My daughter was older and my ability to commit longer chunks of game-time increased to where I could run heroic dungeons. With my PvP-focused priest lagging far, far behind in levels I decided that I didn’t want to once again subject my rogue to the grueling gear-grind to become viable in PvP once more. Death Knights were the bane of my rogue’s existence when I did foolishly venture into PvP as they were EVERYWHERE and would death grip me away to my demise. So I hung up my PvP boots and embraced trivialized heroics as WotLK matured.

Yet there was a apart of me that yearned to return to the PvP scene; watching PvP videos certainly didn’t satiate my hunger. Unfortunately the barrier to entry was so painful that when I did decide to jump back in, it was already far too late in Wrath’s life for me to get my priest caught up. Besides, most of my time was already occupied running lots of PvE content with my rogue and death knight tank, finding time to fit in PvP would have been impossibly difficult.

That’s where the great world sundering of the Cataclysm strode in to save the day; that and the birth of my son. Back are the days of spontaneously needing to jump up and tend to my son at the drop of the hat and my inability to dedicate chunks of time to run PvE content, especially since Cata brought back lengthier dungeons. Once again I’ve returned to clashing with the opposing faction, this time from the opposite faction than before. Instead of jumping into the fray from any of my horde toons I am spilling the blood of my “former” comrades with my Draenei mage.

Fret not, however, I haven’t completely forsaken my horde toons and still have grand plans to get my Undead priest caught up and in the middle of the action … as soon as I find the time to do so. Until that fateful day I’ve been spending the majority of my time working on my mage as well as watching mage PvP videos to keep my motivation and drive going. I still have a lonnnnnng way to go considering that I still need to drop herbalism from my mage and pick up engineering for all of the fun toys tinkers get to play with in BGs.

At first I tried running with frost my mage and was getting my ass handed to me on a regular basis. Sure I wasn’t properly spec’d for PvP but there was something about frost that didn’t sit right with the mentality I was taking. I like to be mobile in PvP and in order to deal my best damage I had to be a stationary glass cannon. I was also running into issues with my water elemental running off and/or not following me when it came time to retreat. I knew I needed to try something else and to make sure that whatever it was that I picked the right talents for PvP. That’s where this video CHANGED MY LIFE …

Well, okay. Maybe it didn’t actually change my life but it definitely did change my mage’s life. Fire is just an absolute blast to play! Pun-intended. While I’m still far from a high-level of play I’m learning the in and outs of playing as a fire-battle mage and enjoying the hell out of it. That’s the most important thing, right? Once I get my mage’s gear together and her engineering up I know she’ll be a wrecking ball out on the battlefield and I can not wait, but for now she’ll just have to be satisfied with occasionally wrecking people.

It was another project that I could add to my portfolio (if I ever finish that site) and to me that alone is payment enough for my efforts. Needless to say I was floored when I received an email from Blizzard alerting me that I had been gifted Mr. SnufflesMcMeowMeow (Hi Shade!) aka the Winged Guardian. I was flabbergasted and extremely happy since I had planned on buying the mount eventually when the finances allowed.

I promptly thanked Skolnick for his incredible generosity and planned on putting something together to do the gift justice to adequately express my gratitude. This is where this blog entry comes into play … another art-filled post showing off the majesty of the flyion. (Once again you can click on the images to see the full-size version)

Don’t forget to click on the pictures to see the full-size versions!

Sulfuron Spire

Aiom, Ogre Frost Mage

Deathwing, Destroyer of the World

No, that’s definitely not the long strange trip I’m talking about. Rather I am talking about the fact that just today, 5 months after Cataclysm’s launch, I reached the level cap with a second toon. Now that in of itself isn’t all that newsworthy considering the relative ease of breezing through Cata’s 80-85 content nor is the fact that it took me this long to have a second max level toon interesting. What is interesting, however, is with which toon I accomplished this with.

Who did you hit level 85 with? C’mon telllllllll me! Ugh, the anticipation …

Alright, I’ll spill the beans. No need to keep you writhing in pain from the anticipation any longer. That’d just be mean of me, right?

… /glare

Tell Me WHO IT IS!

Oh, right! Let me get on with it …

Today my Draenei mage, Aiom, on Winterhoof dinged 85 while out in the Twilight Highlands while making preparations for a wild, raucous Wildhammer wedding.

Okay … why exactly is this interesting?

Well the main reason this is interesting is the fact that I now have a max level Horde and Alliance toon. Going into Cataclysm I was pretty positive that my second max level toon was going to be my Orc death knight, or maybe even my oft-neglected Undead priest.

What’s even more interesting is the fact that I’ve almost completely abandoned my toons on Cenarius in pursuit of getting my mage to the max level. I haven’t logged in to my Troll rogue for more than a few minutes over the past couple of months and haven’t made any progress with his gear and reputations since I shelved him prior to my most recent break from the game.

I'm still FOR THE HORDE! (Of course)

I suppose my interest in getting my mage to 85 had a lot to do with the fact that she’s in the forgotten Ctrl Alt Wow guild on Winterhoof. It’s as if I felt compelled to spend all of my time there in a vain attempt to keep the guild from folding completely. Yet in all honesty, I think it may have been more the fact that mages are a ton of fun to play that kept me logging into her.

So now that you’ve hit 85 with your mage what are you going to do?

I’m not completely sure, but currently I have zero interest in getting her geared enough to run heroics … at least not yet. I could run normals to get her some better gear, but for the time being I’ll probably just end up doing the dailies that I can to improve her reputation. She still needs to do all of Hyjal and Uldum, so there’s that as well.

Once tier 11 is moved to justice point vendors I’ll probably get the itch to run heroics, but I’m not sure if all of t11 will be available in this fashion. Hopefully Blizzard and/or someone else can shed some light on exactly what patch 4.2 will mean for JP vendors.

I also need to figure out my professions on Winterhoof as well considering I don’t have the same foothold on this aspect of the game on Winterhoof. Will I drop herbalism for enchanting? That’s a question I’ll have to muse over for some time. I do have a couple of alts on the server to sort out and I’m sure with my mage being 85, my death knight will be getting a lot more play time.

It’s still amazing to think that a toon I rolled back in the doldrums of the Burning Crusade in an attempt to play with my sister who has long left the game is now my second level 85. Crazy times indeed.