Patch 5.2: Looking at the new gear; being sort of ready; being sort of not ready

Disclaimer: this post is anecdotal only; there is no 5.2 gear info here, just me talking about me, which is what I do a lot on this blog.  :)

I’ve been sick with the flu this week. I felt it coming on at work last Sunday, and it’s gotten progressively worse all week. One thing that something like the flu does is make me feel weak and achy – and I don’t feel like doing anything – and so I have not written one word in service to a post for this blog in that entire time. I haven’t done much in-game since Tuesday, either. I’ve played, but I just haven’t had the energy to chain-run dungeons or LFR, or to do a ton of quests, and so on.

I did have a good night last Sunday, in spite of a splitting headache. We had almost no issues at all in clearing Mogu’shan Vaults, collectively, in a timely manner. We worked a bit on Blade Lord, and I’m hoping we can get him down the weekend after next, which is likely to be the next time we try that one out (if I’m prognosticating correctly).

At any rate, I’ve taken it slow in-game this week. I’ve gotten some heroics in on my warrior Droignon, and am 93% to VP cap on Mushan going into the weekend, which is good. And… not much else.

However, I did take time out on Tuesday and Wednesday nights to work on getting a feel for some of the upgrades available in 5.2. I parked myself at wowdb.com – which I was liking more than Wowhead’s database at that moment, because some of the gear had a corresponding boss listed right in the tooltip – and made a pretty extensive list for the hunter. It was a long list, with possible upgrades from appropriate sources (excluding heroic modes, for instance). And when the list was done, I was already tired of it, and I set it down for the time being. I plan to do some serious math*, so I can begin to set goals and plan a path for spending VP and bonus rolls.

*Frostheim wrote a Scattered Shots article, posted to WoW Insider on Thursday, discussing the top pieces of 5.2 hunter gear for each slot except for trinkets, which he apparently plans to tackle next week, since various proc rates, ICDs, etc. were released this week as well. His gear articles are always something I check out, but they are less exhaustive than I would like to see. Appropriate for WI, but I like to dig a little deeper. And I also like to see more info on in-between gear – like LFR gear – rather than “Here are the best two or three, and this one is the best of those.” Nevertheless, check out his article if you’re interested!

Wednesday night, I was feeling very achy from the flu, and, hence, didn’t feel like playing much. So I dragged out my notebook again and made a similar list for my warrior.

This list is both less extensive (I likely won’t be tanking regular Throne of Thunder, so I didn’t include that gear) and more so. We’re hoping to start a second raid team to run on Friday nights, and unless there is some personnel miracle between now and then, I will likely have to tank. So Droignon is looking like my main alt in 5.2, supplanting my mage, whose fortunes are uncertain due to the less-than-pleasant changes mages are undergoing in 5.2 on the PTR.

Since we’re looking to start raiding in a few weeks, what’s old is new again, as far as gear. I included gear from MV and HoF normal modes on the warrior gear list, since he’s never set foot into either place.

While Droignon’s been a distant third on the priority list thus far in MoP, he’s moving up. I’m trying to tank stuff for people in my guild several times a week, in order to get a little bit more accustomed to using my defensive cooldowns. And he’s almost geared enough that he should be able to enter ToT LFR soon after it opens up. I think the gear games for each toon will be pretty interesting, and I’m looking forward to both journeys.

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Also this past week, Blizzard announced that Valor Points would convert to JP when the patch went live, so I began making plans to get some use out of mine before the conversion. Then, they reversed course and said that we could carry them over, which feels like a good move.

One thing that’s interesting is how that change, along with the new gear becoming available, shapes my thinking on the Item Upgrade system, which is going away. Since the new raid/VP gear is so much higher level than the current fare, maximizing the number of upgraded pieces has become a lower priority. Other than weapons, which aren’t necessarily something that we can count on replacing right away, there don’t seem to be cut-and-dry “must-haves” in that department. It looks like, rather than upgrading any more pieces, I’ll just try to take an amount very close to the cap into 5.2 on each of my toons, and go from there.

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I have to say, I’m both ready for 5.2 and not quite ready. There’s been discussion about the fact that 5.2 is coming too soon for people who want to finish off heroic modes, or regular modes, or whatever they’re working on. With 16 raid bosses, challenge modes, and everything else that there has been to do since the launch of Mists, it does indeed seem like the extreme opposite of the 8-boss finale to Cataclysm and the ensuing months of horrible boredom…

So it sucks to feel rushed when you’re enjoying chasing your goals. Personally, I’m in a different place. My guild has finished Mogu’shan Vaults-10. We’re knocking on the door to getting Blade Lord down. We likely wouldn’t get the tier completed if the patch dropped during the third week of April, in all honesty.

Part of me wants to wash my hands of this tier – I’m chomping at the bit to see ToT, and to start downing some bosses in this awesome new place – but part of me doesn’t like leaving the job unfinished before moving on. So the result is that I’m somewhat ambivalent on the subject of “too soon?” I think Jasyla is totally right in the article that I linked above, and if I were in her position, I would feel exactly the same way she does. However, since I’m not, I’m kind of ready for a fresh start, a clean slate.

I’m looking forward to looking more closely at the gear in the coming weeks, and otherwise prepping for 5.2.

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Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!

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