Weekend WoW: Loot Piñatas Gone Wild

A Good Weekend™

The quest to get Decently Geared™ took some twists and turns this weekend. Ran Naxxramas-10 Regular on Friday night. Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina, Maexxna, Noth the Plaguebringer, Haigan the Unclean and Loatheb -- all enjoying their weekly dirt naps. Of course, I was a "FAIL" once again at the Safety Dance with Haigan. In Military Quarter Instructor Razuvious took us to "The School O' Serial Wipe," thus ending a decent raid. Clothisis, holy healer-type and Girlfriend Supreme, pulled some nice upgrades -- as in "Tier 7 shoulders" off Loatheb. It was FUN helping her determine which Tier 7 shoulders to get. Tier gear is tailored (pun not intended) for a specific specialization. Since Clo's specialization is Holy (healer), all her spells are cast at friendly targets so there is no miss chance and no need for Hit Rating stats on the gear. Were she a Shadow Priest, she'd need Hit Rating to overcome miss chance against bosses. I helped her select the Spellpower / Haste, not Hit Rating / Spellpower model shoulders.

My wow-heroes.com gear score -- an index of gear quality that too many party leaders are using to evaluate people for pickup groups -- is now a comfy 2246. This value is the best among all death knights in Clothing Discouraged and 15th overall in the guild. I am happier and happier with my raw damage output -- 2.5k damage per second when full-up raid buffed with food, elixirs and spells. We have some folks -- warlocks and rogues -- pushing 3.5k dps.

I'm getting there. Now to help Clo get there too. Need to run her through more Heroics and get her some much better gear.

Saturday was the weekly guild progression / wipe-a-thon in Ulduar. Sadly, Clothisis is barely geared for Naxx-10. We are still learning the fights. I missed the guild's dropping Flame Leviathan, XT and Razorscale, but I got in on kills of Kologarn, Auriaya (the Crazy Cat Lady) and Freya on Sunday. Fortunately, the proceeds of Gear Nobody Can Use -- as in "I already have better / and there's no paladin who can use that piece of mana-regeneration plate armor in the party" -- fund the massive repair bills (8 gold per wipe, 25 personal deaths on both runs all weekend, times 10 party members, is a buttload of gold) for the armor repairs from all the wipes.

Sunday morning I went on a timed run through Caverns of Time: Stratholme (aka "More Zombies! More Zombies!) on Heroic mode for a shot at a bronze drake epic flying mount -- and I won it! On Sunday, it seemed like I was beating loot piñatas . The belt I was after for so very long (before I sprung for the badge belt) dropped in Heroic Nexus . . . three straight times this weekend. Ran Trial of the Crusader on regular mode with the guild and got a new epic helm for my secondary specialization armor set, then on Sunday night after Ulduar I ran ToC in Heroic mode with a pickup group (the Looking for Group channel / interface is.my.friend) and scored, you guessed it, Tier 8 shoulders off Eldrac the Pure. The T7.5s I got the other day look better on my toon, but the T8s increase my dps.

I still have one non-epic item in my main spec set: a trinket. My off-spec set can still use rings and trinkets, and I'm still nowhere near defense-capped.