Cataclysm: new world order

We've been given the first concrete information about how the new gear stats will work in the expansion, Cataclysm. As you'd expect from something with such a name, it's going to be a bit of a shakeup.

The plan is for these changes to come into effect before the expansion is released, probably alongside wholesale talent revamps, so we have the joy of logging in one day in the not-too-distant future to see our gear reworked and our talents completely overhauled :)

It's much too early to worry about what this might mean for shadow priests. At this stage, in fact, very little would appear to be changing. Spellpower will vanish from our gear, while intellect and stamina will increase. Intellect will provide spellpower indirectly, so that we won't miss the lack of spellpower numbers on the gear. Hit, crit and haste will stay the same, and continue to function in the way you're used to. And spirit will probably vanish from most of our items.

The changes to spirit may be a cause for intrigue. This stat will no longer provide any benefit to caster dps. So we can expect talents such as twisted faith to disappear, as well as our mainstay glyph of shadow. We are promised mana regeneration in other ways — perhaps through buffs to dispersion and shadowfiend (although how shades are expected to level to the point where they can get them is another matter; this, we are told, will change too).

Divine spirit will go too, I assume, as we are told there will be no raid buffs for spirit in the new world order. To be honest, divine spirit was never the best buff in the world, but I like it. I like the shiny-blue-man icon, I like the connection it gives priests to spirit (their most idiosyncratic stat), and I like the fact that it's something melee don't want (I'm so sick of those DK buffs clogging my screen and making my hands glow). So I will mourn divine spirit and remember it fondly.

The spirit changes could actually cause many dual-specced priests a problem: we might be left with some big holes in our off-spec gear if we're not careful. It really depends on how Blizzard decides what gear currently constitutes "dps", how they convert that gear, and how they rework mana regeneration for healers. There is a chance discipline priests will need spirit as much as holy priests, so all those months of stocking dps cloth could leave us with a bit of a headache. We'll have to wait and see how this one plays out.

In the longer term, this change to spirit might go someway to restoring the once-rigid dividing line between healing and dps gear, and reduce the competition on healing priests for gear.

The introduction of a new "mastery" stat on items should also dissuade leather, mail and plate-wearing casters from rolling on cloth, because the intention is for this stat (function still a little vague at this time) to only apply to that item's primary class types (e.g. druids for leather, shaman for mail etc).

Things are starting to look interesting again. I can't wait for the bun-fight on talents to begin.

The problem with loot council

I used to think the loot council method of awarding raid drops was super. That was when I was an officer and was more concerned about the success of my guild than reward and recognition for individuals. Now I am a probationary raider in another loot council guild and see the system from the other side. And I have to say, it's not as super as it used to be. I can see the flaws and cracks in the system — but more importantly, I can also see that what I thought as an officer was good for my guild may well have contributed to its collapse.

A loot council, as I mean it, is simply a group of raiders who decide between them who gets the drops. In my experience, it usually consists of whichever officers of the guild are in the raid at the time, although it doesn't have to be. Each council will have its own ideas and guidelines for making these decisions, but the primary reason for using a council over other distribution systems is to ensure that the loot is put to best use for the good of the guild. And this is where loot councils start to break down.

The problem is that the needs of the guild are constantly in flux, making it very difficult to write up a clear and consistent set of rules — one day a guild may want to reward a player for their commitment, another they may want to better equip a tank or healer for an upcoming challenge, sometimes they may need to use loot to keep key players loyal. Every drop, every day, is different; a loot council will often have to contradict past decisions to achieve present aims. And this is compounded by the fact that different players may be making the decisions from day-to-day, possibly creating even greater inconsistency in the process.

For the player base, this can be confusing and frustrating. It is demotivating to miss out on upgrades week after week when there is no apparent pattern to the awards. It's even harder when loot council decisions are made in private and not explained afterwards (as they invariably are). This lack of transparency is easily avoided with some clear guidelines on a forum or in the guild information, but these are often necessarily vague to allow for every eventuality.

Loot council principles also lead easily to bad decisions. Loot councils may take current items into account when assessing an upgrade — something which you can't control easily with other systems — but that doesn't always mean the right person gets the item. I have seen items with spirit go to shamen and paladins over cloth and leather users, items with agility go to death knights over hunters and rogues, and items with mp5 go to dps over healers. While the individual benefited from an upgrade, people who could have benefited more lost out, and as long as a player is sporting a sub-optimal piece of itemisation, they will be on the lookout to replace it as soon as the next opportunity arises. In the long-run, this is not the best use of gear for any guild.

To be fair, not all loot councils allow players to roll on sub-optimal gear, or would necessarily award it over more suitable players. But the system encourages council members to make these mistakes by its very aims — almost anything can be justified for the good of the guild. Such a selfless act is easy to defend and player may feel churlish to challenge. In loot arguments, "good of the guild" is the trump card and needs no further explanation.

In the end, a loot council is a self-consciously biased court that casts judgement on players without the right to reply: X raids more than Y, N is a better player than M and so on. These judgements are rarely scientific but based on personal opinion and knowledge — and are therefore open to both conscious and unconscious influence. How do you know X raids more than Y? Or that N is better than M? You just think it, or you have the evidence to back it up? How long have these comparisons held true, and what makes you think they will remain so?

Of course, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many players on loot councils make good decisions on loot every day, and it contributes effectively to the progress of many guilds through challenging new content. But I'm not talking about players, I'm talking about the system, and this one, I have come to realise, is fraught with pitfalls to catch even the best guilds out.

A sure sign that you have fallen for them is a rising turnover or falling signup. Chances are, the people leaving or not showing up are the same ones not getting loot. Here, the loot council can easily lull you into a false sense of security. You naturally value the players receiving the loot over the ones who aren't (that's why they got the loot), so you may well think the missing faces are expendable. Until, that is, you realise you can't field a 25-man raid without them. And before you know it, your two ten-man teams are one, and even that becomes a struggle.

To be fair, many guilds have made loot council work for them. I'm not saying it's unworkable, just flawed. To avoid the pitfalls as best as possible, a guild must be absolutely transparent about the process it uses to award drops and it must be consistent and fair in applying it. I would also recommend keeping detailed and visible records of drops and decisions, so that both the council and regular raiders can monitor the system's implementation and keep a check on bias and misuse.

Of course, some of the problems here are common to other distibution methods too. There's no value judgement intended on DKP or rolling here, just some food-for-thought on one particular system.

Random thoughts on hit

I had a shower moment this morning. The shower is where I get all my best ideas, like 'oo, I should start a blog', and 'does conditioner work on pubes?'. This time it was about hit. Because Merlot has been locked in a wrestling match with hit since Naxxramas and is growing weary of it.

Hit is, by far and away, the most valuable stat to any caster dps — but you can easily amass enough of it to guarantee every single spell will land. All hit beyond that point is worthless, which is why Merlot, and probably most other casters of at least Ulduar level, burn considerable calories fretting over how to maintain but not exceed that magic balance.

The aim is to get as much hit as possible on as few items as possible — but that's a lot easier said than done. You may be forced to equip items that are of poorer quality, or even pass on upgrades that would result in too much of a hit loss. This is what gives rise to the popular feeling that hit is deadweight, the anvil of stats, constantly holding you back from bigger and better dee pee ess. Which is a shame, because it's a real trooper right up until the cap.

I'm about 40 points over the soft cap at the moment (allowing for misery). I can swap out hit gear, but the alternatives I have access to are inferior even accounting for the hit. I could swap out gems and enchants, but at the rate of gear turnover that option gets prohibitively expensive. Or I could start to spec out of shadow focus, but there are really no alternative talents that would increase my dps by any meaningful amount. So for now, I'm stuck.

For frequent raiders with a constant stream of new item options this might not be that annoying, but for a casual raider like myself who may get to roll on only one upgrade a week, it's a pain in the arse.

But as the hot water washed over me and I got shampoo in my eye, the solution came to me. Two, in fact.

First, I thought, we could change the goalposts. It feels wrong that the gulf between heroics and your first raid should be so large, while the amount of hit you should need in an entry-level raid is the same as the amount required against the ultimate badass of the expansion. Someone once decided all heroic bosses should be two levels above, while raid bosses should be three, but these are arbitrary checkpoints.

What if the level between you and a raid boss increased every tier, but the hit requirement increased more smoothly? This would ensure that we continued to prize hit on all gear as we progressed, and not come to see it as something distasteful to avoid wherever possible.

This would also have the advantage of reining in stat inflation in tank avoidance and prevent other combat mechanics like armor penetration from getting out of hand.

If that seems distasteful to you, I had another more radical solution. What if hit didn't affect the chance to land a spell, but the damage that spell does? So all spells have a hundred per cent chance to land (before resistances), but the damage they do relative to a target's level is modified by the caster's hit rating. Hit instantly becomes a desirable stat regardless of your hit level. Maybe there's a hit cap, maybe the effectiveness of hit diminishes at high levels, who knows. But in principle, it could work, right?

I know neither of these ideas will float, but it's nice to dream. For a few minutes there, while my conditioner got to work, I stopped fuming about my hit problem and imagined a world with one less thing to worry about.

Then the water ran cold and I reverted back to my rest state of nerd rage. And now I'm back to planning some gear upgrades that won't drop me below the cap.

Ticking over

Hi all. Sorry if you're waiting for some new content (I know there are hordes of you gnawing at the bit). It's the usual work pressures getting in the way. I'm waiting avidly for the priest Q&A to open up, then I'll make some more time for the blog.

On the game front, I have made some plodding, tentative steps into Ulduar, to the point where I almost know what's going on with flame leviathon. I've got to stop loading myself accidentally into the catapult.

And on my last run, I picked up the rather fabulous collar of the wyrmhunter from razorscale.

And I take everything I said about the priest glyph designer back - it's not just them, it's the whole damn profession that's screwed up. Will somebody please explain the logic of a profession which, as with shaman for example, has zero usable minor glyphs at the level when the first glyph slot opens up? Or please help me understand why one might need to learn from a Northrend world drop a recipe for a glyph which can be equipped at, say, 15 and requires materials created with pre-Outland herbs? Those were rhetorical questions by the way, I already know there is NO LOGIC. Someone made it all up while stoned. I speak the truth.

Help with gear

That title's a call for help, not an offer.

Pretty much all my gear is now of a similar item level and relatively similar stats. I've got a surplus of it, some with more haste than crit, some with more spirit than haste, and all with varying amounts of hit and spellpower. I know the weightings, but still my head hurts.

I'm firmly of the opinion that the differences are so small as to be academic. But what the hell, I may as well get it right.

So, what do you use to help you evaluate gear? Are there any models out there like I've seen for mages? Any speadsheets that work out stat weightings for me? Any sites I should be using, or addons? Pretty please?

The gloves of shame

In a glorious reversal of fortune from my usual raids, last night saw me come top in dps and bottom in deaths. Hooraah for me, and nothing but love and best wishes to the elemental shaman and warlock who undoubtedly account for the visible improvement in my performance. Who was it said you didn't need to stack raids anymore? Bunkum.

We cleared construct and arachnid before calling it a night. Thaddius — I made the jump first time, by the way, another first! — spat out the leg tokens for yours truly, and I skipped off merrily to the vendor with a song in my heart.

And there I was reminded rudely of my earlier stupidity in picking the healing gloves. I'd quite blocked that memory out, but now it's unavoidable. The evidence is right there on my character sheet, where the yummy 10% discount on mind blast remains stubbornly greyed out.

I have resolved to plead my case to a GM, just as soon as I can get hold of one. I waited three hours last night with an open ticket, and got nowhere. Are they that slow on your server too? Wish me luck.

The dead zone

I got my mage to 60 over the weekend and bid a joyous farewell to Azeroth.

Those last ten levels were truly awful. I think it was a combination of the tedium of zone-hopping — Felwood to Ungoro to Plaguelands to Winterspring to Silithus — and the utter dearth of gear.

I forgot how pointless quest rewards were back in classic. I don't think I equipped anything after Hinterlands. No crafted armor is worth wearing and the auction house is virtually empty of decent gear until 55 or so, when BC drops start appearing for outrageously inflated prices. You can find the odd bit of spellpower gear but generally at the cost of stamina and intellect. I suppose you could run instances to pick up some reasonable blues, but who does anymore? I went through the Dark Portal still wearing some 40-something armor and jewellery, and don't get me started on weapons. Basically, 50-60 was vile.

Which got me thinking. If you are melee, or a hunter, your primary stats contribute directly to your combat stats — strength and agility boost attack power and crit at the same time, in various combinations, depending on your class. So even in crappy boe greens, which is what we're talking about here, your damage is respectable. But, short of a very poor conversion of intellect to crit, casters depend entirely on combat stats for damage, stats that are very hard to come by before Outland.

Presumably it all balances out somehow. But it did make we wonder if melee classes have an easier time traversing this dead zone of gear than casters, and why casters don't get more of a baseline benefit from primary stats.

And if you're wondering why I waited till 60 to move to Outland, that's because it took me all of two levels to hit 300 mining. Thorium, how I hate thee.

Misery and spell hit in patch 3

Edit: a couple of people have told me that spell hit mechanics will be changing in Wrath, along with the talents. If that's the case, most of this post is pointless and you can skip to the next blog in your reader. But if you know what's happening and when, please let me know!

Spell hit talents are being standardised across casters in Wrath of the Lich King, and for some, this means quite a big nerf. Arcane mages, affliction warlocks, elemental shaman and shadow priests are the biggest losers as they are the classes who currently benefit the most from spell hit talents.

These changes will likely land ahead of the expansion, with patch 3, so any caster who intends on continuing to raid may need to check their gear and enchants to ensure they are as close to the hit cap on bosses as possible.

For shadow priests, the shadow focus talent is being changed to provide 1/2/3% chance to hit, down from 2/4/6/8/10%. Misery is being reworked to provide 1/2/3% chance to hit against the target, instead of 1/2/3/4/5% additional magic damage. Because misery is a debuff, and therefore must be applied first, we effectively have a 'soft' hit cap, as well as a 'hard' one — until you reach the 'hard' cap, your spells against higher level mobs will have a greater chance to miss until one of them lands.

The following table summaries the hit rules and the implications of patch 3 for shadow priests. This table assumes the caster is level 70, because spell hit values differ according to your level. At level 70, 12.6 spell hit rating is required to improve your chance to hit by 1%. And remember: all spells have a 1% chance to resist, regardless of all other factors. (And if you know why there's a huge gap in my post, please let me know cos it beats me!)

Spell hit	Lvl 70 mob	Lvl 71 mob	Lvl 72 mob	Lvl 73 mob
Base chance to hit	96%	95%	94%	83%
Base hit rating to cap	38	51	63	202
Hit rating with talents now	0	0	0	76
Hit rating for patch 3 soft cap	0	0	0	126
Hit rating for patch 3 hard cap	0	13	26	164

As you can see, for raid trash, this won't make much difference, but for bosses the gap we will have to make up is considerable.

The good news is that you will already probably have more spell hit than you can shake a stick at. Even Merlot, with his very modest raiding career, has enough to spec only 4/5 in shadow focus and still be capped. But if you find yourself significantly short of hit come the patch, there are a few options open to you.

The most obvious way to bridge the gap is via gems, and the most efficient and economic way is via yellow ones — great golden draenite, great dawnstone and great lionseye, depending on your budget. I suspect the price of these gems will soar when the patch hits, so my advice is to snap them up now.

If you're feeling flush, you could jump for purple gems instead — specifically, glowing shadow draenite, glowing nightseye and glowing tanzanite. If you are replacing pure damage gems to get your hit up, these will enable you to save a few more spell damage. But it's not a lot, and you'll need twice as many gems for roughly double the cost of the yellow gems.

If you had the foresight to stockpile your spell hit gear as you progressed, you could also switch back to it. Only you can evaluate if that would be better or worse for your damage than re-gemming. If you are scryer, you can pick up the bloodgem and swap it out for another trinket. Compared to the icon of the silver crescent, for example, the loss in damage is roughly equal to re-gemming, but much much cheaper. There are a few other rep rewards out there with hit, plus badge gear, that you may want to look at.

One thing I won't be doing is swapping my glove enchant for spell strike (15 hit rating). Not only is this a poor trade-off for the 20 spell damage enchant when compared to gems, the materials are likely to be similar in cost to the gems if not more expensive.

So those are the options. But the question is, how much hit do we need? Misery clearly presents us with a dilemma. It is only of benefit to us as long as we remain short of the hard hit cap. But until we reach the hard hit cap, we have a reduced chance of applying it.

In Blizzard's brave new world of raid buffs and debuffs, one other class can provide the same spell hit benefit as misery — balance druids, via improved faerie fire — but you won't find many taking it, because unlike shadow priests, they have to actively cast the spell to apply the buff. It takes a global cooldown, when we don't even have to think about it. Totem of wrath, incidentally, will no longer increase spell hit. So if you thought you could avoid the Hobson's choice altogether, you were wrong. Thanks to Cdin of the awesome Gray Matter blog for putting me straight there.

You might, when patch 3 lands, choose to aim for the soft cap first, depending on your current level of gear and budget. I think that would be fine. Long term, unless something changes significantly, I suspect shadow priests will end up gearing for the hard hit cap while retaining the talent. Why? Because it benefits the raid. Other casters will be able to leave their hit deliberately short of the cap and focus on stats that improve their damage output in other ways.

It's a gamble for the raid though. What if your shadow priest can't make it? What if they die in a fight? What if your focus is split over two mobs? Perhaps, ultimately, all casters will decide it's safer to aim for the hard hit cap, at which point this talent becomes obsolete. There's a risk, in fact, that shadow priests will be dropped as raids progress and pick up better gear. Once again, scaling rears its ugly head.

Quagmirran's eye versus darkmoon card: crusade

This is what you could probably term a statement of the bleedin' obvious. But I've written it now so you're getting it anyway.

If you follow my blog you may remember I spent many agonising months grinding heroic slave pens, waiting for the final boss to drop his trinket, quagmirran's eye. If badges had not been an issue, I would simply have bought the icon of the silver crescent instead and been happy at that. The icon beats the eye in all ways. But I was saving my badges for a weapon. The irony is not lost on me that I didn't buy the weapon but instead only this week bought the icon after all. But I'm not going to dwell on that.

So now I have both the icon and the eye, as well as a third trinket, darkmoon card: crusade. But only two trinket slots. Choices choices.

The icon goes in slot one. It provides a flat spell damage increase of 43, plus a boost of 155 for 20 seconds every two minutes. That's dreamy. My dilemma is which of the eye and the card to pick for slot two. Here's what they do:

Quagmirran's eye: increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 37; harmful spells have a chance to increase spell haste rating by 320 for 6 secs.

Darkmoon card: crusade: Equip: harmful spells landing on an opponent gives you 8 spell damage for 10 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.

Quagmirran's eye provides a flat increase to spell damage plus a random spell haste bonus. The haste bonus, I can tell you from experience, will reduce casting times and the global cooldown by about a sixth. This proc essentially enables you to do more damage in the same space of time, so in that respect the trinket is the equivalent of more than just the 37 spell damage it provides on equip. But I don't know how to calculate its true worth so for the basis of this comparison I'm going to ignore the haste proc.

The darkmoon card increases your spell damage by 8 every time an offensive spell successfully lands. (It also works for melee but we won't go there). It stacks up to 10 times, so at maximum increases spell damage by 80. This buff lasts 10 seconds, but is renewed every time another offensive spell lands so as long as you are casting it remains active. Helpfully, non-damaging harmful spells, such as vampiric embrace, proc the effect; resists, player buffs and heals do not. Also, it's useful to know that this buff carries through regardless of your target — you could dot up 10 different mobs or focus-fire on one, the buff will still stack nicely.

The eye then has a head start. It will take you five successful casts to stack the card buff to a point where it provides a greater spell damage increase than the eye. This will take you at least 7.5 seconds — actually nine, when you consider you won't get the benefit of the buff till your following spell cast. During these opening seconds with the card, your spell damage is inferior to the eye, but it will get better as you continue casting. I'm no theorycrafter, but if it took 7.5 seconds to bring you on par with the eye, I assume it will take an equal time of constant casting to break even in damage done. In other words, in a dps race between the eye and the card, it will take the card 15 seconds to pull alongside, and then ahead, of the eye.

In practice, it won't work quite this neatly. Your spell rotations will vary, lag will affect cast times, and the nature of the encounter may necessitate periods of moving or doing other things, not to mention the fact that we're working using 1.5 second cast times and mind flays are 3. In reality, it would take a fair bit longer than 15 seconds for the trinkets to draw level. But remember that your dots get the benefit of your spell damage at the time of casting, not as they tick along, so even if the card buff is not fully stacked, it might still be the better option for dps.

My general rule of thumb is this: If a fight is long enough for you to apply a second vampiric touch, the card is probably the better trinket. On boss fights, it almost certainly is, but this is probably true equally on fights with short-lived trash mobs — providing you are able to move from one target to the next without dropping the buff.

My conclusion: darkmoon card: crusade is the best trinket for raiding and instances. You see? Bleeedin' obvious. Ho hum.

But I'm not getting rid of quagmirran's eye just yet. It's still the better trinket for grinding. Nothing takes 15 seconds to kill and I never cast 10 spells per mob. In fact, I rarely cast more than four or five before switching to a wand. By the time I arrive at the next mob, chances are the card buff has dropped off. It's rather annoying to know I now have yet more things to switch between when grinding or grouping. At this rate, I may even think about getting a costume addon. But at least I know I've made the right choice in raiding trinkets.

Answered prayers

Clap, dance, sing, jump, tra la la Misery has a new knife! I'm still pinching myself. I'm just not this lucky with loot. I owe our mage big time for not rolling against me. We're going to get her Aran's shoulders, I promise.

To celebrate, I shed a single, silent tear for the scryer's blade and blew 136 badges on other stuff. I got the fused nethergon band (who needs diamonds), the icon of the silver crescent and runed spell cuffs.

These last two items have given me wonderful fodder for future blog posts: namely, what the hell use is spell haste to me, and what do I do with my trinkets now?

And I'm only 6 badges away from the carved witch doctor's stick. Ignore what I said yesterday: shopping is great.

Hoarding for Horde

I have 152 badges burning a hole in my pocket. I have toiled for months to amass them. I have fantasised and dreamed about the weapon they will buy me since the vendor arrived. But I can't bring myself to spend them.

I know the weapon is a good one, it is probably the best weapon I will ever have access to in Outland. But I also know the minute I spend my badges I'll be showered with modestly decent alternatives.

Last night we cleared up to Prince. Tonight we'll go in there to smack his demon butt and he could drop the mindblade (if I can remember to step back from the shadow nova). Ok, so it's not the scryer's blade, but it's acceptable. Acceptable enough that I could splash out on three or four other pieces of badge gear instead. So I'll wait for Prince first.

And if he doesn't drop the blade? Or I don't win it? Will I bite the bullet?

I think the credit crunch is getting to me. I'm already farming like mad on half-a-dozen toons to keep Merlot in consumables (the WoW equivalent of taking sandwiches to work), even though it's probably a false economy. I could surely make more gold on dailies than I save on consumables: I just can't bring myself to pay those outlandish prices.

Somebody give me a slap. I'm being thrifty with imaginary money!

My take on the pvp question

BBB has opened up a can of worms over the relative merits and availability of pvp gear. Well, you know what I think about pvp gear. There is something seriously wrong with itemisation in Warcraft that encourages — practically forces — players to pvp for gear in order to progress pve content. But BBB's challenge is not to whine the loudest but to find a way to balance gear effectively in end game, so I'll stop whining and start thinking.

What's all the fuss about?
Pvp gear is easy to acquire relative to pve gear. You don't have to win to achieve anything, you don't even have to kill anyone, although it's quicker if you do. You just have to take part and know that your reward is waiting for you. No boss strategies to master, no unlucky drop runs to overcome. And in many cases the gear is better. For certain slots, it can beat anything you would fine before 25-man raids. So your average player starts grinding honour long before 70 in anticipation of a buying binge when they finally ding. The more reluctant pvper will maybe do some research, like BBB, and find a certain pvp reward is their best option for a particular slot and spend a couple of weeks in the battlegrounds to buy it.

So what?

Well, what this system does is discriminate against the players who don't like pvp. Someone who prefers pve content may work for months to collect the badges and luck-out on the drops to get gear that comes so easily to people who grind honour. The pvp route does nothing to teach a player how to behave in a pve encounter nor does it contribute anything to the life of a pve guild, yet that pvp player can quite easily take a raid spot from someone who consistently organises and attends heroics and raids and has helped a guild stay active and progress.

Anyone who tells you to suck it up and grind that honour because the pvp rewards are streets ahead of equivalent raiding gear is Missing The Point. You shouldn't have to, and in one sense the game doesn't require it. Any raid can progress on gear only available via pve routes. That's the whole point of the raid progression system. If an encounter required pvp gear, earlier bosses would be dropping it.

The problem then is not with the game, but with the gear. Either it is too easily obtainable, or the quality relative to pve gear is imbalanced.

An easy fix
BBB considers several ways to address the issue, including making pvp gear harder to obtain and making it only usable in pvp scenarios, but neither are particularly pretty solutions. They only result in discrimination in other ways. He concludes by saying he thinks pve gear should be as easy to obtain as pvp gear, therefore removing the incentive for players to grind honour for gear. I don't think this is a solution either, because while it might help put pve players on an equal footing with their pvp counterparts it doesn't address what I think is one of the most irritating consequences of pvp gear — that you can walk straight into a raid spot without spending any time learning to play with your team mates or contributing to the guild. And besides, pve gear is just fine thank you very much, it's a challenge to acquire and a suitable reward and the progression between encounters is good enough — it's pvp gear that's at fault.

So when I look for a solution of my own I find that it already exists in the game. Blizzard has already introduced mechanics to balance the different gear — remember resilience? Spell penetration? Hit rating? Mp5? These are all features of gear that bring greater benefit to one aspect of the game. The problem is they just aren't balanced properly. When a shadow priest only needs a few items to max out spell hit, it doesn't matter that pvp gear has none. When a druid tank finds resilience is the best stat for improving their performance in pve encounters, they are obviously going to hit the bgs. So the answer to this problem is right in front of us — we simply tweak the game mechanics to more strongly polarise the need for certain features in each aspect of the game. If you turned up to Karazhan in full gladiator gear you simply shouldn't be able to perform. It already works like that in one direction — if I walked into an arena in my Kara kit I'd be squashed like a bug. So why doesn't it work the other way round?

Weapons updated

I've added two new items to the weapons for shadow priests post:

• Cudgel of consecration


• Jaded crystal dagger

Both of these drop in heroic magister's terrace, which explains why I haven't come across them in person but doesn't excuse the horrendous oversight. Nice, aren't they?

The mace drops of Kael'thas himself. Given how much trouble it is to get to him, I'd be weary of pinning my hopes too hard on it dropping. In an instance where you're dead weight if you can't crowd control, I doubt I'll be seeing him any time soon.

But the dagger drops off the far more accessibly Selin Fireheart. The competition will be a little stronger, and the reward is a little paler, but it wouldn't be too much trouble to put this boss, the first in Magister's, on farm just for the weapon.

Bling bling (the post about gems, geddit?)

My readers, like my hair, are a bit thin on the ground. And like my hair, I'm prepared to do everything I can to keep them. You can't buy dodgy preparations from the back of Sunday supplements for blog readers, so when someone pointed out the lack of gem-related information on the blog, I jumped swiftly into action to redress it.

Gems are a bit boggling when you first encounter them. Six different colours, mysterious 'meta' gems, wildly varying prices, and countless combinations of stats and effects. It's much easier to get your head around the system when you see all the different gems laid out on one page — wowwiki's entry is perfect.

Standard gems

Standard gems are really quite dull for shadow priests. Don't be intimidated by the variety. You should only really be interested in two things: reaching the hit cap and increasing your damage.

I've talked about spell hit before. You need 76 with talents. All your gems should be yellow spell hit gems until you hit that figure — great golden draenite, great dawnstone or great lionseye. Pick the best gem you can afford, taking into considerating the item you are gemming. You will keep your frozen shadowweave set for a long time, but that level 69 quest reward may not be around long enough to justify an expensive gem. Uncommond gems are, well, uncommonly cheap, so you never have an excuse to leave a slot empty.

After that, it's red all the way. Anything with runed in the name. The uncommon runed blood garnet if you're poor or are likely to upgrade an item soon; the rare runed living ruby otherwise. If you're rolling in cash, you can even splash out on the epic runed crimson spinel. You will get one of this last variety as quest reward for magister's terrace. If you are a jewelcrafter, you may cut yourself the bop don julio's heart, but you may only have one equipped at a time.

If you have enough slots, you could instead use the orange gems that combine these stats — veiled flame spessarite, veiled noble topaz or veiled pyrestone — but I'm not sure you gain anything by doing so. In fact, I think you might even loose out.

Do not be fooled into meeting an item's gem requirement. The bonus's are rarely, if ever, worth the compromise.

Meta gems

Meta gems are a little more interesting. I say a little, as your aim is still to stack as much spell damage as possible. Any perception of choice you may harbour is purely illusory. But meta gems have some quirky special effects on top of the main stat, which gives them a bit more sparkle, if you'll excuse the pun.

Meta gems, as you probably know, are special gems that can only fit into meta gem sockets and only helms can have meta gem slots. They are not of much practical use to me right now, as I am currently sporting the spellstrike hood. If you aren't raiding tier 5 content you should be too. But I will generously assume you are either saving up for the mats or have found something better.

Additionally, each meta gem has a set of requirements relating to the other gems you have equipped. This limits our choice somewhat. If you have (rightly) stacked red gems, you will be stumped by a meta gem that requires two blue gems to equip. Thankfully, Blizzard has come up with an ideal solution to our quandary as we shall see.

So here are my top three picks for your meta gem, in reverse order.

3. Swift starfire diamond

This can be purchased for 8 spirit shards from the pvp vendors in terrokar forest, which makes it easy or awkward to acquire depending on how lucky you've been with your auchindoun runs. On my server, the region is almost permanently in the hands of the alliance. The spell damage is nice and the run speed, while situational, can come in handy on some boss encounters. It requires two yellow gems on top of a red, which makes it an ideal starting gem if you are stacking spell hit.

2. Bracing earthstorm diamond

If you have reached the spell cap and replaced your hit gems, this is a reasonable choice. Yes, you're right, it's actually a healing gem, but provides 9 spell damage. A little less than the swift starfire diamond but you will more than make up for it by replacing the two yellow gems for red. It requires more red gems than blue, which won't be hard. The beauty of this gem is the 2% reduced threat. If you're one of those annoying shadow priests who never has an issue with threat, this won't be of interest. But for me, it's enough to make my palms sweaty with desire. It is a crafted item, so head over to the auction house and be prepared to fork out a couple of hundred gold. The recipe is from consortium and requires revered.

1. Ember skyfire diamond

With 14 spell damage and 2% intellect, this is my top choice for a meta gem. And look: it requires at least three red gems. It was made for us. Again, it's a crafted item and the recipe requires revered with the shattered sun offensive.

Now before you rush off and snap up your gems, I should point out that shadowpriest.com disagrees with my recommendations — and they are, unfortunately, far better informed than I am. They suggest the following:

Mystical skyfire diamond

As you can see, it has a chance to increase spell casting speed and requires more blue gems than yellow. So you can easily get away with one blue gem to activate it. shadowpriest.com recommends either a fluorescent tanzanite or a glowing shadowsong amethyst.

The reason I don't like it? I'm just not certain of the value of spell haste from random procs. I'm still getting used to quagmirran's eye and find that I waste as many procs as I use effectively. Admittedly, a better shadow priest might be able to make better use of it. But right now, for me at least, the jury is still out.

The obligatory gloat post (and second thoughts)

It was to be my last jaded foray into the cavernous maw of heroic slave pens.

After months of fruitless adventuring, I had resolved to make one last concerted lunge for quagmirran's eye. If, when, it failed to drop, I would give up and spend some badges on an icon of the silver crescent. You will no doubt recognise this latter trinket as the better option anyway, which is true. But I'm saving my badges for the dagger and this would have put me back weeks.

So we rolled up to the bog lord, whipped his grassy arse, and guess what sprung up on my screen? Yes indeedy, his bulging, bloody eye! Hooraah for me! Even better, there wasn't even a mage or lock in the group to roll against me. That trinket was mine!

The first thing I did was swap out that offensively green ancient crystal talisman and skip off to grind and test the proc.

As the tooltip says, the trinket provides 37 spell damage, a nice boost of 11 from the talisman. It also has a chance of increasing spell haste by 320 for 6 seconds.

I observed it triggering once or twice a minute, which fits nicely with the 10% proc rate listed on wowwiki. And while I have absolutely no idea how spell haste works in theory, in practice it chopped .3 of a second off a 1.5-second mind blast - according to Quartz. A back-of-a-fag-packet calculation using wowwiki's equations showed the cast time to be more like 1.25, so I'm assuming Quartz rounds off to one decimal place.

Spell haste is a completely new concept to me, but it appears to provide a percentage benefit based on the original cast time — so a 3-second mind flay benefits more from the trinket proc than a 1.5-second mind blast (by approximately .5 of second if my calculation is correct). As of patch 2.4, spell haste also affects the global cooldown, but I'm not sure by how much.

So the theory is this: the proc from quagmirran's eye reduces cast time and time between casts, enabling you to cast more spells in the same time than you would without the benefit of the haste boost. But while I ran around Nagrand skinning clefthoofs for the daily, I began to wonder if my lowly talisman, a mere quest reward from hellfire peninsula, might in fact be the better trinket. Oh god, had I really wasted months of my life grinding the same, gloomy instance for no reason?

Even with the combined might of wowwiki and my maths GCSE, I'm not at all certain. Shadowpriest.com says the eye is a decent investment for my level of progression and rates it above the eye (thank you Aaron M). But it's going to take some getting used to. I don't know whether to watch for the proc and adjust my spell rotations to take advantage of it, or just ignore it and let the haste do its work without a thought. If you have any experience of haste, please enlighten me.

At least I don't have to step foot in slave pens again, although now I see how close I am to exalted I'm tempted to keep grinding away. 6000 rep equals what, another three runs? Maybe just for the dailies...

Weapons for shadow priests

Weapons are not as abundant for shadow priests as armor is.

Firstly, we are limited by our weapons proficiencies of one-handed maces, daggers and staves. And actually, when you talk about raiding, you can pretty much rule out staves too. You will find nice stats on staves, but the combination of one-hand
weapon and off-hand will usually provide more spell damage.

So we have only maces and daggers to play with. In 5-man instances, even in heroic mode (with the exception of magister's terrace, which we'll get on to in a minute), the best you can hope for is a 120-ish spell damage dagger. Nothing to be sniffed at, but a very poor option over all. I currently sport the starlight dagger. This is my biggest single opportunity for raising my spell damage and must be my priority, even over and above replacing my lowly uncommon trinket.

But that's easier said than done. Before patch 2.4, someone in my position had four realistic options:

• eternium runed blade — a crafted weapon with expensive materials and underwhelming stats; if you know a blacksmith with a pattern it's worth a modest investment, but don't bust the bank on it
  
• pvp daggers/maces — the battleground weapons are good, the arena weapons are better; this is one time I have no defence against pvp — if you do it, go get your weapon already
  
• gavel of unearthed secrets — this is a nice weapon and one of the few dps caster maces out there, but it requires exalted reputation with lower city; if you can stomach the rep grind this is a nice weapon to have going in to Karazhan, but you're just as likely to get this next weapon sooner
  
• nathrezim mindblade — at 203 spell damage, this is a very nice weapon, but you have to kill Prince to get it; not something you can pick up easily when you ding 70

So you see, unless you PVP, there were no easy options for a good weapon until patch 2.4. Now we have some more options, since the patch introduced weapon badge rewards and a new 5-man instance.

First the instance. The first boss of magister's terrace, Selin Fireheart, drops this dagger on heroic: jaded crystal dagger. A very nice upgrade to anything you can get in the other heroics and it's probably easier to get hold of than the eternium runed blade, the gavel of unearthed secrets or a pvp dagger. So we have made progress.

But it gets considerably better. The last boss, Kael'thas himself, drops the cudgel of consecration. This is on par with the mindblade, but to get this far in heroic magister's is a difficult process and the prospect of repeated runs brings me out in hives. Each to his own.

Now the badge reward. It's not a welfare epic in the true sense of the word, but it is something even the most casual of players can work towards. Introducing the ungodly scryer's blade of focus...

These weapons are intended to be comparable to tier 6 loot, which explains why the only things you'll find of similar juciness drop in 25-man raids. The price is an epic 150 badges of justice, which may sound like a lot until you start to think how many badges you would get on your grind to lower city exalted or from all those kara runs waiting for the mindblade to drop.

I'm not sure how long it will take me to collect so many badges, or if it will be worth it in the long run. After all, it's not like I'm running tier 6 content, and I am in desperate need of other, less costly badge loot. But as I said before, it's the biggest single improvement I could make to my character, and I have many more options for armor than weapons. I am on 39 badges at the moment. We'll see how long I hold out...

2.4 hangover

While I should be out discovering Quel'Danas and mopping up the gold from a flood of new dailies, I am instead pulling my hair at the damage that 2.4 reaped to my set up. Firstly, the patch update went askew and I had to reset WoW to a previous version. This wiped all my local settings (including, most annoyingly, every macro from all of my 9 characters). Now I am left struggling to restore my UI and get my addons back up and running. The two addons I use the most, recount and omen, are completely dead, but I don't know enough about addons to figure out the problem, let alone try and fix it.

All of this at least means I've found myself standing around in UC a lot, with enough time to scrutinise the auction house and spam trade for goods and services. The upshot is two very nice improvements to my gear.

Firstly, I bit the bullet and forked out 400g for two nether vortexes, giving me the mats for a belt of blasting and ending my dithering over which belt to plump for. The vortexes have only been tradable for a few days, so I probably paid over the odds, but 200g is still better than the 600g people were demanding before the patch so it feels like a reasonable price. The tailor charged me 100g for crafting and now it's all mine!

Secondly, with only a week to go until the darkmoon faire hits Mulgore, I was getting desperate to complete my blessings deck. I picked up my last card, the six of blessings, for 250g; not a very nice price but probably the going rate. So come Monday, I will be sporting the mouthwatering darkmoon card: crusade. I'm desperate for a decent trinket and this will do nicely.

The upshot of this spending spree is that I am now broke. So broke, in fact, I can't afford the gems for my belt. I will have to stick a couple of green spell damage gems in there till I can grind enough gold for the better ones. Once I've fixed my addons, it shouldn't take too long to grind the gold for them. Meanwhile, I've got to look around for a new project. Maybe lower city rep for that gavel of unearthed secrets...

Kara progress

Look, that's me, all shimmery and hauty...

finally, some proper Kara action. Ok, so I know going four bosses in Kara is not exactly hard-core raiding, but it's modest progress for me.

Attumen went down like a priest's nickers first time and obligingly coughed up the handwraps of flowing thought, a small but reliable upgrade to my tempest's touch. Notice the extra spell hit? I now have spell hit coming out of my ears and need to consider dropping one or two points from shadow focus. More on that another time.

We moved on to Moroes, who proved easier than I was expecting. And can you believe he dropped another nice cloth piece? This time is was a belt, the nethershard girdle. Again, it was a nice upgrade for me, but not as good as the belts I am saving up for. So I passed.

On to Maiden. Some of our group had been there before, but for others (like me) this was a new experience. It took us a long time to figure out the fight, even with the more experienced players explaining things. After four wipes, we were nearly ready to give up, but luckily we went in that fifth time and cracked it. Amazingly, she dropped the bands of nefarious deeds.

By this point I am feeling a bit giddy. Three bosses, three cloth drops, no dps competition for the gear. That never happens. I could have taken the bracers, but like the belt, I have my eye on better stuff and didn't want to ruin my loot karma.

So onwards and upwards. We hit the opera event and rolled Romulo and Julianne. I think we were lucky in this. From what I've read of the other fights, there's a little more to them than simple tank and spank. We burned these two down easy, and one of our hunters got a nice shoulder upgrade for his efforts.

And that, as they say, is that. It was late and I had an early start in the morning, so we called it quits. Next time, we'll be looking to curator and nightbane. Fingers crossed...

Death to Quagmirran and a nice offhand upgrade

I cleared Heroic Slave Pens last night in the hope of grabbing Quagmirran's Eye from the eponymous fungal giant. Sadly, it wasn't to be. My search for a decent trinket continues.

As a consolation, the five badges of justice I looted (including two as a reward for the daily quest) gave me enough for the orb of the soul eater, a nice upgrade from my saga of terokk. Once again, I find myself trading stats for damage. I can barely afford to loose that 23 intellect from the saga, but I am comforted by the fact that the orb is listed on shadowpriest.com as the best offhand in the game for shadow priests.

This takes me over 900 shadow damage, not bad for someone who has barely stepped foot in Karazhan. That's a sore point which I'll moan about another time.

Belt up

The break from grinding primals was nice while it lasted but the holiday is most definitely over. I need a new belt, and the cost is a fat load of primal fire. Quite how many depends on which belt I eventually plump for. It's between the girdle of ruination and the belt of blasting, both beauties of the tailoring profession and juicy-looking for any shadow priest. To be honest, I'm in a bit of a quandry. Let's take a look at them one at a time:

Girdle of ruination (Look! We have Wowhead links!)
This is a very well-balanced caster belt — stamina, intellect, two sockets and a good helping of spell crit and damage. Obviously, I'm not drooling over the crit but it doesn't hurt. The mats hurt though. 10 shadowcloth and 16 primal fire will not come cheap. Even if, like me, you're a shadowcloth specialist tailor, you will still need to grind 21 primal fire and that is equivalent to a life sentence in solitary. The recipe itself is a world drop, so you may be lucky enough to find it yourself or pick it up on the AH, but expect to pay about 1000 gold for it. The cheaper option is to find someone with the pattern and a spare primal. You can expect to pay about 100g to get it crafted with your mats. If you were to try and buy the belt ready made, it could cost you somewhere around 1200g.

Belt of blasting
What, no stats at all!? Are you as outraged as I am? I admit to being a little disturbed by the total lack of stamina and intellect on this belt. But oh, sweet sunstrider, look at what you get in return. Two sockets, a whopping 23 spell hit, 30 crit (that's 1.4%) and an obscene 50 spell damage. I'm spellcapped already, but the spell hit would enable me to switch a trinket, replace a few gems, or even move a talent point or two out of shadow focus and of course, the damage is amazing. This is the second highest damage belt in the game, which automatically puts it pretty close to the top of any raiding shadow priest's shopping list. And what a cheap baby this would be — one less primal fire than the girdle and only four bolts of imbued netherweave. The mats, were you to buy them in their entirety, would cost about half as much as the girdle. If there's a catch, it's this: the belt requires two nether vortexes, which are BoP drops from 25-man raids, as is the pattern itself. So there will be far fewer people on your server ready and willing to craft it. How that affects the cost when you come to trade with them I can't say, but I doubt it will add up to more than the cost of the shadowcloth required for the girdle. If you are planning on buying this beauty ready-made, expect to fork out upwards of 2000g.

So which way should I jump? The belt of blasting, clearly, is the better item for a raiding shadow priest. But I really am worried about the lack of stats. I'm already very squishy and quick to loose mana. And as good as this belt is, I'm just starting Kara so do I really need the extra kick it will provide? I think I'll try a while to find a crafter for the belt, but if one fails to turn up or the price proves too rich for my budget, I won't be too upset to plump for the girdle. for now, at least.

Edit: Since patch 2.4, nether vortexes have been free to trade. On my server, they started in the auction house at about 200g a piece. That makes the mats required for the belt of blasting considerably cheaper than those for the girdle and may help make up your mind which way to go; it certainly did me.