Well, I mean that both as a level pop (shammy is now 69, thank you, thank you — dinged 69 in an Utgarde Keep run that I healed. Hilarity. Hell is healing that place with an actual level-appropriate group, none of whom have raiding epics from BC.) and as a sound to indicate I just clued into something.
I have had this blog, such as it is, for about a year now. Hey, almost exactly a year since my first post.
I haven’t made much use of the blog because I haven’t had the time or energy to dedicate to blogging here on any kind of regular basis. Eventually, it kind of fell by the wayside as Apotheosis crept through T6 instances and such.
But I’ve been blogging more now because I actually have the time (well, sort of) and because I don’t have an entire guild listening to my advice on various things. Not that I think my last guild actually did listen to me all the time, though. ;)
I’ve always been a curious person. And I’ve always made the effort to find out answers myself rather than ask someone. I love WoWHead, WoWWiki, all the various resource sites out there. I adore them and would be lost without them. So since, oh, level 60ish or so, I have been constantly looking up the crap that I don’t know. We’re talking MC attunement, ZG armor sets, boss strats, trash abilities, everything from back then onwards to today. I must go to WoWHead about a dozen times a day just to look something up, be it an ability, a loot table, a quest continuation…
And I share that information, if it’s remotely important.
For example, hit rating. I’m pretty sure my guild, collectively, had no idea what the hell hit rating was and why it was important until Gruul. After wipes ranging from 4-7% and ungodly numbers of grows like 14, 17, 19… we finally realized we were missing. A LOT. So I do my research and do my very best to impress upon my dear guildies that missing is BAD and hit rating is GOOD and oh, look, here are the hit rating caps for basically everyone.
Gruul died on our next raid after people spent two days running around gemming and enchanting their shit for +hit.
But nowadays, I am this new, lowly healer in this guild I’ve just joined. I’ve been there for a month and while I’ve moved off standby and am brought into things like 3D and 6m Maly attempts, I’m still just a healer. I’m not complaining — it’s a relief to be a cog in the machine after so many, many, many months, years even, of being one of the decision makers. I’ve been making raid-related decisions since April 1st, no kidding, 2006, when Fated Heroes first downed Venoxis. It wasn’t even a full FH raid. And we spent hours on Venoxis and Venoxis alone. Still, I was one of the leaders of the raid and I haven’t looked back since. I was briefly (5-6 weeks?) a cog in another guild between Fated Heroes and Apotheosis, but that didn’t work out and my old FH friends came calling, so we made Apotheosis.
My point here, is I have things that I discover on a daily basis. I am very used to having an audience for my discoveries. My old guild forums are pretty deserted, my new guild probably already knows what I’m discovering and that leaves me with… this blog.
And it’s not just my discoveries, either. It’s stuff that’s basic that I want to share. Like how to heal as a paladin. (I think I’ve got that pretty much down at the moment.) Or more officery topics like how to lead a raid. Or how to pick officers. Or how to recruit. Or any number of topics in which I have extensive experience.
So I’ll probably be posting various things here, assuming I don’t just give up on the idea, stuff that’s practical and helpful and useful. Or at least that’ll be the intent. :)
Oh, +hit. How I have mixed feelings about you.
Definitely important (as you’ve already shown in the post) but some people take it way too seriously. Back in Karazhan, when we were wiping on Nightbane every week (after clearing everyone else with no effort) the various officers would complain about us not having enough +hit. Our spell damage was fine, we were all rocking badge gear, and a few of us actually had tier 4 gear. We needed to up our +hit. They were sure of it.
Every one of us was capped. My mage ended up with something like 75 over the hit cap because my friend insisted the raid leader was right.
Doesn’t really add to the post, but I can’t seem to help myself from commenting with guild-fail. ;)
haha, the key to +hit is knowing what the cap is and at what point a miss is acceptable in exchange for other stats.
My hunter is always hit-capped. My mage, maybe not. I know that not all casters are hit-capped, although I tried to make sure mine were. I try to go with:
– attack power/spellpower
– hit
– crit
as a priority for a DPS class. I mean, haste is in there too, somewhere, but if you have an upgrade that will be OUTSTANDING for your toon in terms of raw power and you’ll lose a little bit of hit… well, go for it, IMHO. I’m not talking about dropping something with 90 hit for something that’s a 3 spellpower increase, but you know. Balancing priorities is part of the game.
Definitely. I figure if I miss 1 in 20 hits, that’s fine. But that’s based on 5-mans and 10-Naxx, that one hit may be a huge difference in later encounters?
I’m sure someone on Elitist Jerks has done the math for what’s an acceptable level of missing for various classes. For me, though, because I’m totally OCD like that, I need my hunter to be capped and though I’ll never achieve hit cap on my shammy, I’ll probably aim for it on my mage. If my mage ever, EVER gets past 74. Which is so not terribly likely. ;)