General Update: 9/8/2009

Edit: Randomsmo has started a blog and posted on the 2T8 vs 4T9 debate I talk a little bit about below. Since I already gave him credit for sparking idea, I think it is a good idea that I link to his post. You can find it here.

It’s been a little while since I wrote a real post. Since I don't have anything specific I am ready to post on, it is time for a new General Update.

Raid Progress:

Well, Anub'arak became available and everyone marched into the loot piñata that is ToC. Once again, the normal mode boss was pretty much a push over in my opinion. We got him down in two shots, and the first was a 2% enrage wipe. If we had been a little more comfortable with the fight mechanics it would have easily been a one shot.

Granted, one of our 10man groups did get in there on Tuesday and had a little bit of trouble. However, that was primarily due to a flawed strategy that they took from the PTR. Once they figured out it wouldn't work they downed him easily.

So with Anub'arak down, we moved onto Heroic ToC. I will admit my expectations were pretty low for the Heroic version of ToC. Given how easy normal was, I thought we would walk in there and down a couple of bosses. Boy was I wrong. Heroic ToC is pretty darn tough. We had a couple of issues with Group Composition given that some of our regular raiders weren't available, but we couldn't get out of phase 2 cleanly on the 25man version. My 10man group didn't even attempt it because we are trying to finish up the Ulduar Meta for a couple of people, but the other group did get in there and downed the first 3 bosses on heroic.

Heroic ToC is definitely doable, but it will take some practice. Unfortunately this poses another problem. We still have some fights left to finish up in Ulduar. We still want to get the meta achievement in there which means we need to pick up Firefighter, Vezax hard, and 1 light in the darkness. Since we have only a 9 hour schedule it will be a little difficult to work on both the ToC and Ulduar hard modes. Luckily they haven't announced the removal of the Drakes yet so we have at least 30 days to finish it up.

BiS Lists:

In some of my comments and emails, I've had a couple of questions about my BiS choices. I would like to address what I think are a couple of misunderstandings. First off, everyone needs to understand that a BiS list is just a Christmas wish list. Ninety nine percent of players in the game are unlikely to be able to get everything they want before a new tier becomes available. So, basing all of your gearing choices on a BiS list is pretty unrealistic.

Second, I never intended anyone to make loot choices based entirely off of my BiS list or the larger gear list. The list is a tool to help you see how things relate. It also organizes all of the options in one convenient place. What I expect players to do is to take a look at what is available and come up with a gear plan. What choices are best for you given the gear you already have and what is likely to be available.

For example, my back is pretty old. I picked up the [Shroud of Luminosity] from Naxx and have been rocking it for a long time. There haven't been a lot of good upgrades since then, and what there has been hasn't really dropped for us. [Jaina's Radiance] is BiS for me, but let’s be honest. I am nowhere close to being able to complete a ToC 25man tribute run. I can't hold how for that item. On top of that, most of the best items are from ToC tribute runs, so I need to realize that picking one up might take a while. On the flip side, [Shawl of the Refreshing Winds] is number 11 on my list, but it is an upgrade and drops off of Normal Beasts. The next time it drops I will probably invest a significant amount of DKP into it, despite it not being on my BiS list.

Tier 9 vs Tier 8:

I've commented on this before, but I want to take a look at it again, since I've heard some interesting new ideas, and continue to get questions about it.

• 4T8 vs 2T9: The 2 piece T9 set bonus is better. My math from several months ago showed that instant Starfires were worth about 2.5% DPS while critting Moonfires were worth about 4.0%. When you consider the additional stats from T9 the 2T9 set bonus is an easy winner.



• Which 2 pieces of T9: This really depends on what items you have and what you can pick up, but let’s assume you have full T8. If that is the case then I would pick up the T9 Chest and Helm. You're giving up 2 pieces of Spirit for two pieces without. Also, you wouldn't be making any big shifts regarding the hit cap by replacing your T8 gear in this way. Your T8 chest doesn't have hit on it and neither does the T9 chest. The T8 helm has hit on it and so does the T9. This makes for a very easy transition.



• 2T8 vs 4T9: Mathematically, 2T8 is a clear winner unless you’re able to build a full set of T9.258. However, I read an interesting point on the WoW forums recently. (Randomsmo posted his point on his new blog here.) The point was that while 2T8 is better than 4T9 mathematically, 4T9 is a lot more consistent. Every Starfire and Wrath you cast will benefit from 4T9, while you can get screwed by RNG with 2T8. When you combine that with the stat advances you get from the T9.245 gear you can make a good argument for the upgrade. I will have to plug it into the model to be sure but I don't think it is a big DPS sacrifice.

Toon Update:

I haven't done much with the Lock or the Priest lately, because Grayvik my mage has been getting all of my alt attention. He is currently level 69 and I am trying to get him to Northrend as quickly as possible. (I know I could take him now, but I want him to be 70 first. It just makes it easier to use the guide that way.) He has been advancing pretty quickly for a couple of reasons. First, Outland is much more fun to level in than Azeroth is. The quest lines are easy to follow and you can do a lot of quests at once. Also, since I can fly, it's a lot easier to complete some of the quests. Second, I need a herber in Northrend. Since I dropped Herbalism on Graylo, I am at the mercy of the Auction House for my herbs. That's not a big deal if you plan ahead, but I don't like not being able to farm if the prices are unusually high.

Overall his levelling has gone well without issue. I did find one very surprising thing, however. The quests in Nagrand have been nerfed quite a bit. I think I remember seeing a note saying that the animal slaughter quests were nerfed, but it doesn't stop there. My guide lists what it thinks the quest requirements are and what the actual quest requirements are. For almost every quest where I had to "kill X number of this" or "collect X number of that," the number of items or kills needed had been reduced, by between 33 - 66%. That is huge. It has made the zone go a little quicker but to be honest I am a little disappointed. I was looking forward to skinning all of the beasts. Anyway, I am about half way through 69 and should ding 70 in the beginnings of Blades Edge Mountains.

One Quick note: Thank you Myraxa and Tigeris. I was doing the bird quest in Shattrath and couldn't seem to solo it. I was getting through the 3 add rushes with no problem, but the last bird did too much damage and had too much health for me to kill on my own. So I asked for help from the guild. Myraxa and Tigeris helped out, and wanted to be mentioned on the blog.

Goblin Activity:

I am continuing with my AH activities. I've had my ups and downs, but overall I think it is going pretty well. A guildie of mine, Nosismyhero, walked me through Auctioneer and explained a little bit of the functionality that I didn't understand. It has made playing the AH a lot easier.

My bag business has been tough lately. The cost of mats has gone up quite a bit. I used to find a lot of the mats around 4 gold and below, but lately a lot of it has been above that. In addition to that, the price of bags has gone down quite a bit, with prices being between 7g and 7.5g. There is still money to be made but it's not a lot. The flask business seems to be on the rebound. The flask prices have gone back up, but the price of Frost Lotus has gone up as well.

Also, I have a lot more respect for people like Gevlon who have been able to make a lot of money from Inscription. Since picking up the profession, I have tried to make money from it a couple of times, but haven't been able to find the right glyphs yet. I may not have discovered the right glyphs yet, but most of what I make has sat on the AH with little profit. It's definitely not as simple as some of the other professions. With Alchemy and Tailoring there are really only a few things you can sell for a profit so it is easy to figure out. Since there are literally hundreds of glyphs it is much tougher to learn for Inscription.

The bright spot in my Goblinish Activity is that I think I've found a good market to play in. It is the Armor Vellum III market. The volume is high, and the competition seems relatively low on my server. I sold several hundred over the weekend for 100% - 150% profit. On top of that, there is no deposit cost for listing them, so the market has very little risk. If this past weekend is any indication I might be able to make 1k gold a week off of just this item.

If anyone reading this is experienced in the glyph market and has any suggestions, please pass them on.

(Edited by Flamedor)

Patch 3.2: First Impressions

It was a pretty typical patch day for me. Lots of lag, broken addons, and I even had a short queue when I logged in. You may not be real happy with my first impressions. My guild doesn't raid on Tuesdays, so I didn't experience the new raid and I didn't even get into the new 5-man. That does not mean I was not busy on my first day. Here is what I was up to.

New Eclipse:

It felt very odd at first. In fact, I had forgotten about the change while I was running a 5-man and it kid of shocked me at first. We were working on a boss and I was going through my normal rotation and all of a sudden Solar Eclipse proced on the first SF cast after the buff. It just felt way to soon and just strange. It will be interesting to see how it feels tonight when I get in a raid.

Goblinish Activities:

I don't claim to be a goblin, but I am trying to make more money off the AH and take advantage of temporary situations. The only pre-patch position I took was to buy several stacks of Titanium Ore, to try and capitalize on the Epic gem feeding frenzy that was going to take place when the patch was released. When I looked at the AH when I got home from work, my position seemed like it was going to pay off. Gems were selling for 350 - 400g. Stacks of Ore were selling for about the same. The big question I had was do I sell the Ore or do I prospect it and sell the gems.

I ended up prospecting the or and got a decent haul. I put all the Gems on the AH and most sold. Oddly enough it was the blue gems I had the biggest issue with. In the end, I've made a little bit of gold. I wish I had taken out a larger position, but this opportunity has definitely past. Gem prices have already been cut in half after the first day feeding frenzy.

The other funny thing I saw was that in all the chaos people seemed to forget about other parts of the market. For example, there were no Chaotic Skyflare Meta gems on the AH. I put several on the AH at way above market price and most of them sold. The Flask prices on my server also rebounded a little bit.

All in all, I didn't make a lot of gold, but it gave me great experience for the next patch and gave me a little more confidence to take some positions.

Isle of Conquest:

When I was buying gems I noticed that I was just a few hundred shy of being able to buy another gem with Honor. So, I took this opportunity to try out the new BG. For those of you that don't know IoC is kind of a combination of several BGs that have come before. The best way to describe it is AV/AB + Vehicles, and I had no idea what I was doing. It has the Cap and Hold aspect that you find in AB and EoT, but it also has the Kill the Boss aspect that you find in AV. Of course, I knew none of this since I paid very little attention to the PvP aspects of the patch before release.

That said, I did have fun. It was very lagging, and I didn't know anyone in the BG, but Alliance won and I got the honor needed to get a new gem. It's not going to spur me into a lot of PvP play, but I think it is something that the PvPers will enjoy.

Daily Quests:

I'm not exalted with The Silver Covenant so I didn't do any of the new dailies, but they did change the old AT dailies. They basically made them a little more difficult to complete and it makes me wish I had finished this up before the patch. First off, the two scourge quests are now different, so you can't just kill 15 mobs and complete both quests. The second thing was they changed the number of commanders you have to kill in the jousting quest. It may have been the lag and the number of people trying to complete them, but it took forever to kill 3 commanders. I can't wait until I am done with this whole thing.

I also did the Heroic daily which was Drak'Tharon Keep. It was a pug with what seemed to be a bunch of casual players. I didn't expect it to be hard but it was beyond easy. The hardest part about it was getting into the instance. Everyone and their mother was running instances last night so it took us 10 minutes to zone in. If it had been a guild run with chain pulls I'm sure we could have completed the instance in 15 minutes. Now I just need to do it for the next week or two straight so that I can get 25 EoTs to get the new idol.

Addons:

The biggest disappointment of the night for me was how few of my addons were updated. I usually log in and most of the main ones have a new version out, but I think I updated 30% of my addons at most. Hopefully this won't present a big problem for raiding tonight.

Toon Update:

Graylo - Our raiding has hit a little bit of a snag. Like most guilds, we are having a lot of absences due to vacations and such which is slowing down progress, but we've also seemed to have lost some of our focus. The good news is we recognize the problem and the guild leaders are taking some steps to try and correct the issues.

Other than that Graylo has been trying to complete the AT dailies and get ready for raid. I am in the process of updating all of my gems to epic gems. Thank goodness I have a large stock pile of emblems.

I am also thinking about dropping herbalism on him and picking up Inscription. My original plan was to level Grayvik up and make him my herbalist/inscriptionist and have Graylo pick up jewelcrafting instead of herbalism. With the changes to jewelcrafting that doesn't seem to make sense anymore and I was unsure what to do with Graylo's second profession.

After thinking about it a little bit I think I am going to keep Grayvik a herbalist/skinner and have Graylo pick up Inscriptions. I already have most of the herbs to level it up, and I don't really do any farming anymore, so it wouldn't be a big loss to not have Herbalism on a level 80 toon. I may make the switch over the weekend. Please let me know if you know of a good way to power level inscriptions.

Graypal and Grayfel: These guys are really just profession mules for me at the moment so not a lot has happened. I do need to try and get Graypal into the new 5man though to try and pick up some more gear.

Grayvik: He is now in Outland and progressing quickly. I went into the zone at level 58, and wasn't able to pick up some of the quest when I wanted to but after a couple of quick runs through HFP and BF I was back on track very quickly. The funny thing about it right now is being able to fly. I didn't buy the epic land mount when I hit level 60 because I new it would be cheaper when the patch hit. So, I went from the slow land mount to flying in a day. Its just a little strange.

Graybel - I used up all of my rested XP on Grayvik so I put a little effort into the shaman. I started leveling him using Brian Kopps guide, and I'm now trying to level him up using the Zygor guide. The problem is that due to all the rested XP I am way ahead of both guides, and they are very different in the beginning. For example, the Kopp guide has you going to level 20 in the Draenei starting area. The Zygor guide has you only going to about 12. So, switching from one guide to the other has been difficult, but I think it is all worked out now.

Final Note:
So that is my experience with the patch. Let me know what you guys think.

General Update: 7/10/2009

Ok, I've been a bit of a slacker lately and haven't posted much. My life has been very hectic with holidays, work stuff, Raiding, and even some trips to the hospital (don't worry everything is fine). So, I will try and give a general update of what is going on in my WoW life.

The Gear Guide:
I've updated my raiding gear guides to include every item in Ulduar. So, it should now be complete until 3.2 comes out. I want to point out that this list is still based upon a pre-3.2 Lunar Rotation. I probably one updated it for 3.2 until right before the patch is released.

Regarding the guide don't expect any serious changes. It is very similar to previous lists, and most of the changes were due to the addition of Algalon gear. Basically, its not important to study the new list. If you already have a good gear plan it is still probably good.

Raiding:
I must admit that Raiding has been quite draining lately. My 25man schedule is the usual 3 nights a week for 3 hours, but my 10man group now raids for another 2 or 3 hours after that. To some of you 15 - 18 hours of raiding a week may not seem like much, but it is tough when you combine the late nights with my family responsibilities. Hopefully it won't go on for to much longer.

The 25 man group is doing well. We have 4 hard modes down and are working on a couple of others. Despite our success I am starting to feel a sense of urgancy. Time is running out on the Meta Achievement and I want an Ironbound Drake before they are removed. The four hard modes that we have could probably be considered 4 of the easier ones leaving most of the heavy hitters to still be downed.

The good news is that our 10man groups are going very well. My group is only missing the Vezex and Yogg hardmodes. The guilds other 10man is just missing Yogg +1 and they got the Ulduar Undying achievement. So, we are in a very good spot to complete the meta on 10mans, and the additional experience we are getting on 10mans should help us meet our goals for the 25man raid.

The other positive sign is that both 10man groups are working on Algalon. My group has worked on him for 2 weeks now, and he is hard, but maybe not as hard as he seems.

Algalon feels like a break through fight. There is a lot of stuff that gets thrown at you very early in the fight and when you wipe after just a few minutes it sometimes feels like your not making much progress. However, that feeling can be misleading. There is so much to adapt to from the very beginning of this fight that it is hard to pick up quickly. Healers have to deal with the huge raid damage when a Star dies. Cosmic Smash is much more difficult to avoid then your standard void zone. The freaking constellations running around beating on people. Figuring out how to survive big bang and at the same time dealing with the massive damage that the tanks are taking.

That is a lot of stuff that all of that happens in the first minute or so. So, as you try to hone your strategy it may feel like your not making progress because most of your attempts don't' last more then a couple of minutes still. However, when we make a break through the fight will be come much easier. Our attempts will go from lasting 2 minutes to testing the 6 minute enrage timer very quickly once we figure out how to deal with everything. So I am happy with our Algalon progress. Hopefully he will be down soon.

My Inner Goblin:
I've been reading the Greedy Goblin for quite a while and I have often wondered how much gold I could make on the AH if I really put some effort into it. I don't really need the gold because I made plenty while leveling 3 toons to 80, but I'm interested in the challenge.

I started my experiments in the Flask market. Specifically the [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] market. I am kind of risk adverse when it comes to this sort of thing. I didn't want to get really far out on a limb with a lot of stuff and lose a bunch of gold, so I selected this market for my first attempts. The average cost to produce a flask seemed to be less then the average flask prices on the AH. Plus, I am an Elixirs master Alchemist so the procs mean added profit, and if my effort completely failed I could always use the flasks for my raid consumables.

The next two businesses I picked up for dual purposes. I hate not having my professions leveled up all the way to 450. It looks sloppy and I hate finding out that I can't do that enchant because my skill level isn't high enough. So I got into the Meta Gem business with my warlock and into the bag business with my priest. The results were mind blowing.

The Meta Gem business is easy. [Skyflare Diamond] were selling for 25g - 30g on my server and [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] were selling for 50g - 75g on average. You do the math. I've decided though that this is a weekend market. The cut gem prices seemed to go down quite a bit on raid days. It seems to me that the real money to be made is on the weekend players.

The bag business is a little more difficult because you have to look at several different mats to figure out if it is profitable at this time, but for some odd reason it also seems to be a less developed market on my server. There never seems to be a lot of bags on the AH. For that reason undercutters don't seem to matter. I seem to be able to put my bags on the AH at my prices and they will sell even if there are undercutters with posted for a 25% discount.

Not all of my efforts have been successful. I've tried buying Eternals and selling Crystallized pieces and that hasn't been that successful. People on my server seem to be a little more savy in that regard. I also bought a ton of Shoveltusk flank before patch 3.1 was released for personal use and as an investment but Fish Feasts seemed to have killed that market. I have been focusing on the raid nights so far. I'm going to be switching to the weekends here and hope I have better luck.

All in all, I've made several thousand gold over a week or so with just a couple of hours work. Not bad, but I'm not going to be hitting the gold cap anytime soon at this pace.

Other Toon News:
Outside of raids, Graylo has been working on the Ardent Tournament stuff and getting his rep up with the different alliance factions. All in an effort to be able to access my bank once every 8 hours and help my alts to level up a little big quicker. Indicated above Graypal and Grayfel have been forced into business. I would love to raid both of them if I had the time but, given my already busy raid schedule its just not possible.

Grayvik has also suffered some due to my renewed interest in the Ardent Tournament. He is up to 53 right now, but he would easily be a couple of levels above that If I wasn't spending so much time on Graylo doing the Tournament stuff. On top of that, leveling has become more difficult for him. I am now about 2 and a half levels ahead of my guide. All of my quests are green and on occasion I have to fight grey mobs. He is in searing Gorge at the moment but I am going to look at jumping ahead again once I get out of the zone. I guess the good news is that 58 is just around the corner and then I can jump to the easy Outland leveling. That will be a great day.

New 3.2 Info: Professions, Heirlooms, and Squires

It is becoming clear that patch 3.2 is just a round the corner because the CM team is starting to release new information about the changes coming in the patch. I personally wouldn't be surprised if we saw patch notes released with in a week.

Anyway, none of the changes announced so far are Moonkin specific, but there are some interesting changes that you may want to pay attention to.

Professions:

When the next major content patch launches we will be introducing epic quality gems and updating the perks for each profession.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. I've long speculated that Blacksmithing will become the profession of choice because when Epic Gems are released there buff would go up while the buff of all other professions would would stay the same. Apparently, Blizzard realized this also and is buffing all of the professions except Blacksmithing. Don't expect the buffs to be huge, but an additional 8-10 spell power is nice.

The second thing I noticed about this change is that they are buffing the gathering professions as well has the crafting professions.

• Lifeblood: Increased healing (Rank 6), Scales slightly with maximum health, & No longer affected by global cooldown


• Toughness (Rank 6) provides more Stamina


• Master of Anatomy (Rank 6) provides more critical strike rating

The benefits of the gathering professions are a bit situational for Caster DPS, but I really like the changes to Lifeblood. If you look back at some of my old comments on the ability you will see that I thought Herbalism got shafted. In it's current form Lifeblood is a week dot that didn't scale, and probably wouldn't save you from anything. Obviously I can't make any definite comments on it right now, but I think these changes are all moves in the right direction. The only other thing I would suggest is to make it a direct heal instead of a DoT.

Personally, I like all of these changes, but it throws some of my plans right out the window again. I had been planning to drop Herbalism at some point to pick up Jewelcrafting, because the prismatic gems were so awesome and lifeblood was so weak. Then they nerfed Jewelcrafting. Then I figured I would switch to Blacksmithing once the Epic gems were made available because lifeblood is so weak and I will get 8 more SP then I would with any other profession.

Now, it doesn't really seem to matter which profession you pick. I would get more DPS from a crafting profession and they would save me money on some items and enchants. However, I really like having an extra oh crap button on my bar, and if Lifebloom becomes decent it could be a powerful heal and a critical time. So, I'm back to square one. At this point I'll probably stick with Herbalism until I see a clear reason to switch.

Heirlooms & Squires:

• One thing I can tell you is that chest piece heirlooms will be available in the next content patch. They will provide a 10% experience bonus that stacks with the shoulder bonus.


• An Upgraded Squire: As any good squire should, this upgraded squire now has a mount and can be called forth every eight hours for three minutes of duty. The upgrade cost is 150 Champion Seals and your squire will also offer one of three services: bank, mail, or vendor access.

These changes have to do with the Argent Tournament, and I have to say I find them very distressing. Up until this point I have almost completely ignored the Argent Tournament and have been quite happy to do so. I don't really care about reps and the rewards didn't really interest me. So, I was quite happy to allow everyone else mess around with it while I raided and leveled new toons. Now that Blizzard is adding attractive rewards I feel like I have to participate in an event that I was otherwise happy to ignore.

When they first announced the new Heirloom items I assumed that they would be similar to the current set, but fill in some of the gaps. Now that we know there are new chest pieces and that they have a 10% experience buff that stacks with the shoulder buff, I have to pick it up. As you can tell, I like to have alts, but I also like to level them as quickly as possible. Having the extra 10% is not an option. Its a requirement.

I do hope that the chests aren't the only new Heirlooms. When I was looking at options for my Shaman, I realized that they are pretty limited. When leveling my shaman I've been using the caster items I already have, but it would be nice to have something that is designed a little better for a shaman.

The other big change I see is the Squire. Despite the child safety/labor concerns, I see this as a must have. Being able to access your bank, mail or vendors only once every 8 hours may not seem like a big deal to some, but I really want it. I currently lug around an entire Bear set on the off chance that my guild will need me. I could free up a lot of bag space by leaving it in the bank. Also, how many times have we bought something from the AH, or had something mailed from an alt but forgot to pick it up. A little bit of convenience goes a long way with me.

So, last night I made my way up to Icecrown and started doing dailies for the first time in months. Damn you Blizzard.

General Update: 6/5/2009

Sorry, guys for the recent brake in blogging. My real life has been quite hectic lately. On top of that I've been raiding a little more lately, therefore the time available for blogging has gone down. I hope my life will smooth out a little bit and I can get back to a more regular schedule soon.

With that, there are several things happening around the land of Graylo and Moonkin that I would like to talk about.

New Druid Forms:
The big druid news in recent weeks is the new Bear and Cat forms that will be released with 3.2. Unfortunately none of the other forms including Moonkin are being updated at this time, but seem to be in the queue for a later patch.

The druid forms have never been a big issue for me. I agree that its boring to look at the same form from level 10 to level 80 and look like every other druid you see, but what I looked like didn't really matter to me. That said, I like the new forms for the most part. The black Tauren Cat looks like a baboon to me. I would love it if they found a way to scale with gear, but I understand that that could be difficult. Now if they could just come up with some cool Moonkin forms, I might get a little more excited.

Moonkin Stats - Graylo vs Murmurs:
If you follow the Moonkin Repository you may have noticed that Murmurs and I have had a bit of a debate regarding the value Haste Rating and Crit Rating.

A month or so ago (its been a slow debate) Murmurs posted some shocking numbers regarding the value of Crit relative to Haste where Crit was actually worth more then Haste for a Lunar rotation. This goes so far against the conventional wisdom and the numbers that I had calculated that I was immediately sceptical of his results.

If your interested I suggest that you read through the thread. I had several issues with his math, but I had two primary concerns. First, I think his starting value of Crit Chance was way to low, and Murmurs conceded that point. The second concern I had was his numbers did not factor Eclipse or Set Bonuses into the value. He made some good points regarding here, but I still think its wrong to completely exclude them.

Obviously, I am supportive of my numbers. I did discover a couple of small issues with my model while arguing this debate so My lunar stats have changed a little bit, but not materially. However, you might find my last post in the thread very interesting.

Conceding the point about Set Bonuses I reran my model 4 times with various set bonuses to see how it affected the results. Here are the results:

Stat	No Tier	4T7	2T8	4T8
Hit Rating	1.52	1.526	1.536	1.518
Spell Power	1	1	1	1
Haste Rating	0.819	0.808	0.791	0.709
Crit Rating	0.653	0.627	0.633	0.639

As you can see, the value of Crit Rating relative to Spell Power was fairly similar for all 4 runs. It was highest with no Tier bonuses, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are all within the margin of error.

What I found odd was how much the value of Haste Dropped with the introduction of 4T8. I new that 4T8 would devalue Haste but I didn't expect it to be by so much. However, its important not to overreact to this result. These results assume a T7.25 gear level with a ton of haste rating. Every BIS list I've seen produced for a Lunar rotation sees a significant drop in the amount of Haste being stacked. At my highest, I had about 628 Haste rating. I am already down below 500, and most of the BiS lists I've seen would put most people at about 425 -450. At the same time our Spell Power is going to go way up and our Crit Chance is going to go up. Since we are losing haste Rating, but gaining significant amounts of Spell Power and Crit Rating, the relative value of haste will be very similar to what I've reported in the past.

New Moonkin Blogger: Relevart’s Druid Reliquary
I want to give a little support to a new Moonkin Blogger. Relevart's blog is still very new, but he has already gotten several good theorycrafting posts out and seems to be on the right track.

Most new moonkin bloggers I see fall in one of a couple of categories. They either post too generally without detail, don't provide reasonable explanations or support their conclusions, or stop writing after a couple of posts. Relevart on the other hand seems to be off to a good start.

If you like my blog, you may like his also. If you don't like my blog, why the heck are you still reading. :)

Graylo and the Alts Update:
Its been a long time since I did a toon update, so I thought I would give you a little update on how things are going for me in Ulduar and such. Our 25man group has cleared through Yogg on normal mode with medium mode kills on FL and IC. We were the fifth guild on my server to kill Yogg. That is a little behind what I had hoped, but is still impressive given that we raid only 9 hours a week and all of the guilds ahead raid at least 16 hours a week. This week we started on the Keeper Hard Modes. Our first target is Hodir, and it has been a little tougher then I expected. Our best attempts are getting him to 15% before the three minutes ticks off, which isn't bad after one night of attempts. I think if we can get a little better at stacking the buffs he should be down shortly.

From a 10man perspective, I was left high and dry for a little while. My late night group broke up because some of the members decided to raid at different times and there wasn't enough interest to fill the empty slots. So, I had a couple of weeks without any 10man action, but then the late night group was reformed.

Our 10man groups have been going very well. We killed Yogg very quickly and have been working on hard modes for a couple of weeks. Personally the only Hard Modes I have left are Mimiron, General, Yogg, FL+3, and FL+4. This is part of the reason I was surprised at how hard Hodir Hard mode is. The 10man versions have been much easier in most cases. That said, it is understandable why we are having less of an issue. We out gear the content because we are 25man raiders.

The biggest test we've had so far is Mimiron Hard mode. The fire's add a lot of complexity to an already complex fight. The main issues we seem to be having is range. We seem to be able to control the fires, but it isn't unusual for some one to die because they got separated from the raid. We need to work out our positioning a little more and pump out more DPS so that we limit the number of Plasma Blasts we get.

Hopefully we can get him soon, because would then be able to start working on Algalon.

Finally, there hasn't been much activity for the alts. Grayfel and Graypal have primarily been Profession Mules since 3.1 dropped. I have worked on my Mage some and he is up to about 45 now I think. I also transferred my shaman over. I know its a little stupid to transfer a level 16 toon, but I didn't want to start over. He is now up to level 22 or so.

General Update: 5/11/2009

First off, I want to apologize to my readers, commenters and people that have sent me e-mails recently. My real life has been very hectic recently with the birth of my second child a little over a week ago. As a result I haven't had as much time to blog, or respond to comments and e-mails.

My Ulduar Gear List:
Most of this post will deal with questions and comments made about the gear list. Most of the questions and comments have been insightful and helpful, but I want to remind everyone that the list is still in flux and am trying to improve it. However, that takes time and given my life lately it is taking more time than usual. That said the list will be updated with changes in my thinking, changes in the game, and with the addition of new items.

My Stat Weights: Smo (aka Randomsmo and Staticsmo) made a post on the wow forums doubting my stat weights. It turns out that Smo uses a more complete model to evaluate the stats.

I've always known that my numbers weren't 100% accurate because I didn't include IS, MF, or Eclipse. However, I assumed that the impact would be small or not that meaningful. After, seeing Smo's numbers I decided I had to bite the bullet and build a better model. Its not completely done yet, but so far the results are confirming Smo's position.

I will go into how the model is built and probably make it available on File Front as some point in the future, but here are the few results I have right now. Using a Lunar rotation, my new model still has SP as the standard with a value of 1. I estimate the value of Haste rating at 0.77, and the value of Crit rating at 0.55.

I'm not surprised that Haste went down a little bit, because haste has very little impact on instant cast dots like MF and IS. However, I didn't expect the value of Crit to go down as much as it did. There are a couple of reasons for it though. The first is the new Natures Grace. Since it affects more then one spell now it limits the impact of any single crit since it is more then likely refreshing Natures Grace. The second reason is Lunar Eclipse. Having 30% extra crit reduces the value of Crit rating dramatically.

There is a lot of work still to do on the new model, but I am excited about it. It gives me a new way to look at things like set bonuses, idols, glyphs and other things. Hopefully I will be able to publish it soon.

Amice of Inconceivable Horror: I have gotten several comments saying that this is a Priest only item. I understand where these comments are coming from because the picture I linked from MMO Champion says that it is a Priest only item. However, I seriously doubt that is the case.

First off all, where are all the other class specific items? If priests had a unique item but none of the other classes did it would be a firestorm of QQ. Blizzard knows that, and wouldn't do it.

Second, no one has actually seen this item yet in game. We only know about it because of data mining from MMO Champion, and they said that there were some errors in their modeller. My guess is that the program assumed that it was priest only because it uses the Priest tier design.

I can't confirm my position until we see it in game but it makes a lot of sense. It is highly unlikely that we wouldn't have already found the other class only items if they were included in the game. Plus, it is highly unlikely that Blizzard would create just one class specific item. Therefore I'm assuming that this item can be used by everyone.

Gear Drop Locations: Several people have asked that I include the drop locations as a part of my gear list. I would love to do that, but in reality that just isn't possible for me at this time. The list as you see it know was a huge data entry project, and adding drop locations would be an even bigger pain.

That said, if someone is willing to do the work for me then I would be very happy to provide the locations and give them credit for the work. If you are a masochist and this sounds like a job for you then I ask that you use the following format: Instance - Boss - Hard Mode (if applicable). For example the Embrace of the Spider would look like this: "Naxx10 - Maexxna". The Pennant Cloak would look like this: OS25 - Sartharion - Hard Mode.

The Set Bonuses: I am also getting a lot of questions about the T8 set bonuses. When the set bonuses were first released I made this post. The 4T8 bonus was a complete unknown and the 2T8 set bonus clearly underpowered and not worth dropping the 4T7 to get. At the time I suggested that the 2T8 bonus had to be increased from 6% to 15% to make it competitive to the 4T7 bonus in terms of DPS. Blizzard also saw the problem and increased the bonus.

So, I like the updated 2T8 bonus. It's probably not quite as good as the 4T7 set bonus in most fights due to movement and such, but it is close. In my opinion it is worth it to break the 4T7 bonus.

The 4T8 set bonus was a mystery until recently. I did some math a couple of weeks ago and posted it on the EJ forums here. Basically it looks to increase you DPS some where between 190 DPS and 270 DPS in my poor napkin math. I will have to find a better way to evaluate it further, but I feel confident in saying it is worth equipping. With a 15% proc rate and no internal cooldown this is a good set bonus. (Thanks to Ryuujin for showing that this doesn't have a cooldown. Link.)

The New Spirit: It is official Improved Moonkin Form now increases the amount of Spell Power you get from Spirit from 15% to 30%. Obviously this is a welcome change, but it doesn't really change the way I feel about Spirit. I wrote a pig post on the forums regarding our problem with Spirit. You can find it here.

It is hard to summarize my post in a couple of sentences, but my basic position is that if blizzard wants Spirit to be a more prominent stat then they need to completely commit to it in a fair way. Moonkin shouldn't have 4 tier pieces with Spirit while all other caster DPS has only 3. I also think they should eliminate the wonderful items with no spirit or hit, but both crit and haste. Those items are just to good then and every caster in the game will want them.