My Emblem of Frost Pull List

So lootrank isn't showing emblems of frost items yet, so I've plugged my latest HEP stat weights into a wowhead filter to plan what items I should save badges for. I've gone over my HEP-based loot selection methodology, and I generally try to get the highest HEP per Badge item, unless there are oustanding considerations.

Keep in mind that I'm in a group that does 10 man casual raids, so I'm not really expecting to have access to 10 man heroic loot that early, or 25 man loot.

Emblem of Frost Upgrades

Item	Upgrade from	Cost	HEP gain	HEP per badge	Easy Alternatives
Drape of the Violet Tower (49.09)	Shawl of the Caretaker (35.79)	50	13.3	0.266	Flowing Sapphiron Drape (45.35)
I've had really bad luck with cloak upgrades in Ony and ToC. This would be a big upgrade for me, but if there's a chance I'll be running some legacy raids, There are intermediate upgrades that would make this slot less of a priority for me.
Meteor Chaser's Raiment (120.05)	Thrall's Tunic of Conquest (86.78)	95	33.27	0.350	Frost Witch's Tunic (101.04)
I'm still unclear on exactly what the purchasing method for tier 10 with emblems of frost will be. Regardless, the Meteor Chaser chest piece is a huge ugprade over the base level tier 10 chest. It is MUCH better than the mail piece, which has no haste on it.
Gloves of False Gestures (86.65)	Looming Shadow Wraps (62.64)	60	24.01	0.400
The cloth gloves are a touch better than the mail ones, due to the increased haste and the usable socket bonus. No real easy alternative glove upgrades without going into 25 man raids.
Waistband of Despair (85.58)	Icehowl Binding (56.76)	60	38.82	0.647	Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner (69.53)
The belt is a huge upgrade from what I already had. There is a potential upgrade from 10 man Marrowgar, BUT it is cloth and it has spirit on it, so it would probably be a while until I was allowed to roll on it.
Totem of Surging Seas (255)	Totem of Calming Tides (234)	30	21	0.700
The totem upgrade is basically a flat 21 spellpower upgrade. Not that sexy, but easily the cheapest and most effective badge purchase.
Purified Lunar Dust (216.232)	Eye of the Broodmother (195.296)	60	20.936	0.349
The trinket proc was modeled to be 76 mp5. While it would be a fair upgrade, trinkets are very situational, and I would be swapping this one out for fights that I'm not mana constrained on. Not a high priority for me yet.

I still don't understand how the iLevel 251 tier 10 gear is purchased with emblems of frost, and this data doesn't seem to be on wowhead or mmo-champion right now. If someone knows, please give me a heads up. Obviously those numbers would change all my badge priorities going forward, but until I figure that out, my upgrade priorities based on these numbers are probably:

Totem, Waist, Gloves, Cloak. The Trinket is a situational sidegrade, and the chest is nice, but blocks a possible tier bonus which I'm hoping to get at least 2 pieces of as soon as possible.

Playing with the new 5-man Healer Trinket!

When I finally got on to Borean Tundra last night, some guildies and I blew through the 3 new heroic 5-mans, and I got 3 upgrades! Also, 3 Battered Hilts dropped, but I didn't roll on them because I had already gotten some phat loots, and since they were dropping so readily I figure I'll get mine soon enough.

One very interesting upgrade I got was the new trinket, the Ephemeral Snowflake. In addition to a kickass on-use haste proc, it also gives you back 11 mana every time one of your healing spells heals someone. This is incredibly interesting to me. What I've found from half an instance of testing is:

• It procs off heals from hots and directly applied spells. For shaman, this is Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave, Riptide (including its hots), Chain Heal (including jumps)


• It does not proc from passive heals, like Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield, Ancestral Awakening, or Earthliving Weapon.


• The proc is maximized for multi-target spells and hots. Riptide can return up to 66 mana (88 if glyphed). Chain Heal can return 44 if glyphed.


• The proc does NOT happen on overhealing, so it will only shine in heavy raid damage situations where hots are not overhealing and your AOE heals are actively healing all of their targets.

On Elitist Jerks, they've modeled it to be about 147 mp5 in ideal Chain Heal spam situations, assuming 2 riptides rolling. Obviously this would only be sustained by constant damage to be healed, and assumes perfect Chain Heal jumps and Riptide target selection. It's still not as good as either of the Solace of the Fallen trinkets from TOTGC, but it is very easy to acquire, and a lot of fun. And I just love weird trinkets.

I am dying to get it on my priest, to see if it procs on every target of CoH, every target of PoH, AND the PoH glyph hot? I can't imagine it does for that last one because that would be insane, but it's not like I really have mana probs on my priest anyway?

Speaking of which, the new 5-mans were really fun, but also REALLY healing intensive. Even with a pure guild run, we had some wipes on some bosses in there. The hardest one for me was the first boss in the Halls of Reflection, Falric. He has a really nasty AOE horrify that will do 10,000 shadow damage to all party members, and can be amplified by various debuffs he puts on you; he also has a magic debuff that can stun you if not removed in time. Like Violet Hold, if you wipe on this boss, you have to reclear the waves of trash up to him, which is non-trivial. The packs spawn all around the room and have a lot of caster mobs that have to be LoS'd to stick to your tank.

Anyway, despite some server trouble, yesterday night was great fun. I didn't get to play with the random heroic tool yet, but my guildies all said it was pleasant and easy to use. So far, 3.3 wins!

3.3 patch excitement!

Yigi's original predictions were correct! While we're all waiting for the servers to come up, what are you planning to do when you get on first?

As a rule, I don't like to raid on patch days- there are too many possible headaches, and it's been a while since I've been in a guild that was really competitive for server rank. I think I am definitely going to try to hit up the daily random heroic on both my shaman and my priest, and if I have time, I probably want to run the regular and heroic 5 man as many times as possible for new loots and triumphs. And remember, the MOST important patch note if you plan on going for perky pug?

Quote from Zarhym

Fall of the Lich King: Patch 3.3.0 Notes

• A Player will not be placed in a group with people on his or her Ignore list.

(Source)

Learn it, live it, love it.

I also want to get some battleground dailies in, now that they grant arena points. But there's also the Kalu'ak fishing daily...

And of course, just staring at my new totems...

PATCH IS HERE!

A truly terrible plan

I don't know how I thought this was a good idea. Somehow I'm on my warlock alt, waiting for Level 1 Dwarf rogues to spawn in Coldridge Valley so I can blast them and finally get my Turkey Lurkey achievement.

UPDATE: GOT IT! Thanks guildies!

3.3 Release predictions

With the coming of Thanksgiving, I can't help but wonder when 3.3 will be released. The gating system and (almost) completion of testing on the PTR realms leads me to believe that it will be very soon. However, a WoW Dev DID hint a few days ago that:

Quote from Daath

Re: is there a mirror for 3.3.0?
We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we're not really worried about your speed. :) (Source)

Does this mean that 3.3 is still a month away?
If 3.3 dropped exactly 1 month after that announcement, it would make the release date December 22 (23rd on EU realms), which is the week of Christmas. I have a very hard time believing that Blizzard would release a major content patch, even if it isn't the full instance, that close to Christmas.

My best guess is a few weeks earlier; either next week (December 1) or the following (December 8). This will give us December to work through the first 4 bosses and adjust to any buffs/nerfs and also give Blizzard enough time to finish off the Arena season. I would think that wing two of Icecrown would then drop right after New Year's, with Arthas FINALLY coming near the end of January.

Although I cannot WAIT for 3.3 and to finally face Arthas, I have to say that in this case anticipation is half the fun.

I will leave you with my guesses:
Patch 3.3 launch: December 8th
2nd wing unlocked: January 5th
3rd wing unlocked: January 26th
Arthas unlocked: February 16th

Return to KZ

Back from my vacation!

5 bored guildies completed all the easy achievements for Pilgrim last night, and with nothing else pressing we decided to go clear Karazhan (3 of them had never seen it). It was pretty fun, mostly because the two of us that had done it before we're trying to remember all the fight mechanics on the fly, and because we could easily pull all of those big middle-of-the-room trash pulls that you had to strive so valiantly to avoid back at 70.

The hardest fight for 4 level 80s and a 1 level 74? CHESS. Sometimes the best old jokes are the ones with a ring of truth to them.

-zigi

Icecrown Gate System Info Released

Blizzard has just announced the exact gate system they will be using for Icecrown Citadel:

Quote from Daelo

Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression
As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately. (Source)

Basically, this means that we'll get the Icecrown wings at 4 different times. When Patch 3.3 first drops, we will get The Lower Spire:
Lord Marrowgar
Icecrown Gunship Battle
Deathbringer Saurfang
Lady Deathwhisper

And we'll only get a chance to kill these bosses on normal mode. This will last "several weeks" until The Plagueworks is released:
Festergut
Rotface
Professor Putricide

Also of note, we will only be allowed 5 attempts per week on Professor Putricide before we are locked out.
After several more weeks, The Crimson Hall will be released:
Blood Princes
Blood Queen Lana'Thel

At this time, we'll have a total of 10 attempts for Putricide and Lana'Thel, and our attempts on Blood Princes will not be limited.
Finally, after several more weeks, we'll get The Frostwing Halls:
Valithria Dreamwalker
Sindragosa
The Lich King

And we'll get a total of 15 attempts to kill Putricide, Lana'Thal, Sindragosa, and The Lich King.
After Arthas is killed on normal mode, heroic modes will be unlocked.
The FINAL catch is that in order to get to the Lich King (heroic) on ANY given week, we will have to kill Putricide, Lana'Thel, and Sindragosa ALL on heroic. Remember that our attempts will still be limited to 15 total for the 4 bosses. Over time, the number of attempts will be increased.

This will be good for prolonging the time until The Lich King heroic is finally killed, but in what I feel is a VERY superficial way. It will be at least 6-8 weeks until the Lich King is even unlocked, and then the following week we'll finally get a chance to try hard modes. After that we will have 15 attempts a week to kill Putricide heroic and continue on to Lana'Thel, Sindragosa, and finally, Arthas.

Personally, I dislike this system, even though I don't think my guild will personally be held up too much by the gates. Whether or not I am personally affected, I feel this will kill the race for world first Arthas heroic by just making it take too long until it is released.

I will reserve my final judgment until I see how difficult each of these encounters are, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope.