Phaedra

I really need to get back in the habit of doing updates.

Anyway: S4 gear for PvE for mages doesn't seem to really be that great an idea. Last I checked in Rawr, the S4 pieces all tended to lose out to gear acquirable in early T5 if not earlier.

The neck is a different case. The Guardian's Pendant of Subjugation is a very nice piece. When gemmed with one of the new epic haste tems, it comes out superior to Loop of Cursed Bones from Zul'jin, which is a pretty nice neck piece. (When I finish updating the item list, I'll be able to show the difference better.)

2.3.2 brought us mages a great new talent: Icy Veins. For 20 seconds, we get 20% haste on all spells.

I'm personally not sold on it. It doesn't feel like it does much difference but it obviously does. In an (unfortunately unsuccessful) attempt on Nalorakk on Saturday, it helped me pull 1134 DPS according to WWS. (This is the anonymized report. Phaedra shows up under the name "Horcrux.") (On the actual kill, I only pulled 994 DPS. I must find a way to increase that.) [Read more about @title]

2.3 went live on Tuesday. The new daily quests are interesting... I'm sure that if I didn't have this cold, I could've levered it into getting a heroic run on Tuesday. Oh well.

The four new quests I've found are:

1. The PvP quest for coin and 419 honor.
2. The cooking quest
3. The normal dungeon quest for an Ethereum Prison Key and coin.
4. The heroic dungeon quest for two Badges of Justice and coin.

The PvP quest actually got me to go to a battleground on Tuesday! Luckily we won the first Arathi Basin game or I figure I'd've been pretty annoyed. But it was actually fun. PvP is fun when it's close. Sometimes.

Anyway, 2.3 means that there are new stuff to buy with badges. Having since lost my list of neat stuff they added, I need to redo the math. To help with that, I've updated the spreadsheets and stuck them at a single page here.

Attached are copies of Vontre's mage DPS spreadsheet filled out with Phaedra's talents and gear.

mage_dps-72.xls contains her soloing and 5 man instancing gear.

mage_dps-raid.xls contains her raiding gear.

A long time ago, I created a pseudo-spreadsheet for determining gear choices for Phaedra. In actuality, it was a PHP script executing some really nasty queries against a MySQL database. I called it "pain." (I tried making a version of it for Tonberry called "anguish" but didn't get very far.)

The issue now is that "pain" is out of date. It's not aware of spell haste and it made some questionable assumptions about gems and socketing equipment. [Read more about @title]

Such a silly, silly event.

In the end, I got 350 tickets. So I got Brewfest Dress, Brown Brewfest Hat, and Brewfest Pony Keg (for pre/post instance fun!). More stuff to clutter up bank space, I suppose.

In 2.3, Mystical Skyfire Diamond is getting a cooldown but an increased proc chance. The current consensus (without testing) is that the cooldown will probably be 45 seconds.

Right now, MSD has a proc rate of 5% with no cooldown. This averages out to approximately 1 proc per minute for Fireball. In order to continue to be 1 proc per minute with the new cooldown, the gem has to proc within 15 seconds - 5 Fireball casts. So the proc rate would need to be 20%.

Allegedly someone has determined that the new proc rate is 15% which would make it effectively half a percent less than it currently is.

If the proc is less than 20% and the cooldown is 45 seconds, MSD will likely come out at a loss to the new caster metagem (the one replacing RED). (This judgement is based on mucking with Vontre's mage spreadsheet and many not be particularly accurate.)

I'm just annoyed because I finally got Legwraps of the Aldor and commissioned a MSD to be cut.

No such thing, really. But it's really the only thing I can do in World of Warcraft during our RP sessions. Just park by Umbrafen Lake and fish, fish, fish until the Bright Baubles wear off of Seth's Graphite Fishing Pole. Apply another one, rinse, repeat. Since fishing skill ups depend on successful attempts, it's more efficient to just stand in one place rather than hunt down fishing pools. [Read more about @title]

Rumor has it that Relentless Earthstorm Diamond is fixed for melee classes in 2.2.2. While this is a good thing for Tonberry, it looks like it will probably not be fixed to work for casters. (It is entirely possible that since it's a +Agi gem, it was never intended to work for casters and the loophole that allowed casters to use it was introduced solely to allow Arcane Shot to work with the gem.)

I've worked out how I can use Mystical Skyfire Diamond but it depends on a single drop from Gruul. [Read more about @title]