Yeah, I know. It’s been awhile. But you see I promised myself something when I first began writing this blog: I will try my best NOT to write posts JUST to write posts. It’s not like I have to clock in or whatnot, this is no job. I write when I have something worthwhile to talk about, or at least I hope so. Please don’t now inundate me with examples of crap posts from the past, as I’m sure I have many out there. 
With that out of the way, I can tell you that I indeed have something to talk about. A couple of things, really.
Bye Bye Maly
For starters, I’ve beaten WoW. (Save the accolades for later, really.) I’ve been raiding once a week for the past couple of months, and Friday night we finally accomplished the last real thing I had to accomplish, downing Malygos in 25 man. Now I know there are things I have not done on my warrior, like OS25 for instance, but between my warrior and druid I’ve really done it all. I’m itching for Ulduar now just like many of you are. But I’ll get back to that in the second part of this post.
Back to Malygos – it took us a long time, and a lot of tries. Overall the fight really isn’t that difficult. It wasn’t long before we had phases 1 and 2 pegged. Anyone who’s done Maly knows, however, that phase 3 is the rub.
Individually, it’s not all that difficult. Just keep your stack up, and stack as many as you can. In a way I have some advantages in this area due to my experience with Resto Druiding. For a long time I made my living on proper stack/HOT management.
The problem is you have to get SO MANY people doing the same thing. In other phases, in other fights, you can carry some people through who aren’t performing like everyone else. In Maly your room for error is marginal at best. You need most everyone to be handling their stacks RIGHT.
In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Teron Gorefiend fight from Black Temple. To take down Gorefiend, you had to play this itty bitty mini-game that Blizz had thrown in, and you needed everyone to be able to play it. The same thing goes for Malygos. At least here Blizz had the foresight to institute some in game training. There is a daily quest near Transitus Shield, Aces High, that shows you how the drakes you will have to use for Maly work.
I can’t say I’m a fan of that kind of boss fight, but it was very satisfying when we got it done. Pics or it didn’t happen, I know?
There you go, proof. Are you happy? My apologies for the fairly crappy shot, it’s hard to get anything decent with 20+ drakes in the air and whatnot. Don’t even get me started on the horrors of trying to loot the stupid chest thingy afterwards. Ugh. (On a side note, can we have a moratorium on any loot “boxes”? I’d much rather always have a big old corpse to click on, where we can ALL get in!)
So goodnight Maly, it was fun?.ish.
Razor Thin Layers of Progression
My Fury Warrior (who is my present main, in case you haven’t heard) has pretty dang spiffy gear. I finally got done with the dreaded Nobles Deck to get the Darkmoon Card: Greatness, I have several pieces of near BIS gear from 25 man Naxx, and I’m capped in everything useful and sport over 4k unbuffed AP. But still, I have a pretty big problem.
My frigging weapons.
I have Demise from 10 man Naxx and the Titansteel Destroyer. Good weapons, sure, but overall they are really holding me back.
The problem is that there are very few upgrades in this area. There are four I’m looking at, to be exact, and to date I’ve only seen one of them drop, and that only once. In case you are wondering, the four weapons are The Jawbone, Armageddon, Death’s Bite and the Betrayer of Humanity. 3 of them only come from 25 man Naxx, and the last comes from 10 man Naxx. I can only raid once a week, and I do 25 man Naxx on that one day, and to this day I’ve only seen Armageddon drop, and that only once. To add to the futility of trying to upgrade my weapons is the fact that I really need TWO in the long run, and there are usually 4 other people in each raid that would like the same drops.
Ugh.
So here I find myself on the narrowest of upgrade paths, and it’s disheartening. This is why PTD gets bored, and why I find myself wondering what alt to level next. It gets tough as you approach the upper echelons of gear, and fewer and fewer upgrades are appealing. I need nothing from heroism badge gear (unless I start looking at tanking gear), and there aren’t many drops left in Naxx 25 that I’m interested in anymore. I just want a new stinking weapon. And then one more to boot.
So I keep on heading into Naxx 25, and hope every time that I get lucky. I do my job, put out very good DPS, and approach most boss lootings as uneventful.
So why are there no good badge weapons? Back in the BC days, there were some VERY nice weapons you could get with badges. Now I see nothing at all. Does Blizz have something against those of us who wield two-handers? And then, just for kicks, did they say “hey, maybe we should make a class able to use TWO two-handers, and thereby magnify their frustration tenfold!” I sure hope not.
Thankfully, there look to be some good choices coming along in Ulduar. Now where the heck is 3.1??
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Sadly it’s the nature of end game progression, gear choices narrow to if you’re lucky three, more then likely two good options in a given slot. Tanks face a similar issue with tanking weapons and shields, there being really two good tank weapons end game and three good shields. As for the badge thing, I would say they didn’t do it because it would have been to easy to get best in slot weapons (a major component of physical DPS). Also while it isn’t a great weapon for a fury warrior you might consider looking at Inevitable Defeat, trash drop mace from 25 Naxx.
I think that in 3.1 loot boxes will give everybody a badge when one person loot it, avoiding the problem.
Minor correction. Betrayer of Humanity comes from Naxx 25. Death’s bite is the one that comes from Naxx 10.
Grats on the kill PTD. Just in time, too.
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