049: On gear and upgrades

Illidan week #2 starts tomorrow with our second night on him. We've been told by other guilds that the norm is to down him within 2-3 days of reaching him so we're all very excited. This post, however, is going to be about gear. Ever since I joined Kamuf I've been whispered by old guildmates and friends wanting to know if I've gotten any nice drops, and when I kept telling them no, they wanted to know why not. This post is for them.

Back when I joined Kamuf, the raid leader and the main tank/guild leader both inspected my gear critically. I remember Dave (my raid leader & friend) saying how pleased he was that my gear wasn't as bad as he'd feared, and that I had 'all the hard to get stuff', whatever that meant. They pointed out my weak pieces to me, and adviced me on which to upgrade via heroic badges and which to wait for drop upgrades on. Shortly after that I upgraded one of my trinkets (Battlemaster's Audacity) and my gloves (Studious Wraps).

They told me my one hander, my bracers and my rings where what I needed to focus on and get upgraded asap. (At the time my belt was also very unimpressive, but Dave had promised me before I joined the guild that once he got his hands on a second Nether Vortex and I brought him the rest of the mats, he'd make me a Belt of Blasting for free.) They also said 'don't worry about your weapon, caster one-handers drop like candy for us in BT and Hyjal! You'll get that pink dildo-mace before you know it'. Okay, sure.

My rings were a sad state apparantly, no matter how proud I was of them. I was told that Band of Al'ar would surely drop for me, but of course it didn't. Likewise with the bracers they linked for me that dropped off of something-or-other in SSC. Still, they kept telling me not to worry. Eventually I picked up the Runed Spell-cuffs even though they weren't an upgrade, just so that my bracers would be purple and not blue and Gomez would stop making fun of me, and because I had more badges than I knew what to do with anyway.

After being attuned to Hyjal I received the upgradeable rep-ring, which I wore for a while along with the quest reward from Magtheridon. It was then that my first and so far only proper DKP loot dropped - the Ring of Ancient Knowledge. That, together with the Hood of Hexing from Zul'Aman, are the only drops I've gotten.

But why? Surely running with a full tier5 guild would get me some more new gear than this? Nope. You see, I wasn't too surprised when my crafted epics - Frozen Shadoweave and Spellstrike - turned out to be better than tier4 drops in Karazhan. I was a little miffed when they turned out to be better than tier5 as well though. On that first SSC run I saw 3 pieces of tier5 for priests drop and I passed on every single one. It's a little mind boggling that gear you can craft with tailoring upon dinging level 70, without setting foot in a single raid, are equivalent to tier5. Equally mind boggling are the Shadowpriests that do not work their arses off to get said crafted epics! Same with heroic badge loot. It's a little sad as well that my first ever tier piece ended up being for offspec.

There's something about the tier sets that really appeal to me. Probably due to the fact that I never had any, ever. Well, that's a lie, I did run around with 3 pieces of the Warlock tier0 set back when I was level fifty-something. That doesn't really count though! As it is, I'm having to contend with waiting for my DKP to slowly rise so that I can get a shot at tier6. It's gonna take a while.

Then there's the matter of my one hander. Gomez teases me about that as well. They never turned out to drop like candy, at least not after I joined, and at this point it's getting pretty ridiculous. Zul'Aman, SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT, Doomwalker, hell, even Prince in Karazhan has better one handers than mine. They all refuse to drop. Last night after killing off Archimonde and Illidari Council, Dave took pity on me and sent the raid off to kill Doomwalker. Again. He refused to drop his dagger. Again.

I said to them that I'm pretty sure by now that I'm doomed to kill Illidan with my Gavel of Unearthed Secrets still equipped. It's funny, but at the same time it's not funny at all.

Tonight we're clearing Zul'Aman again, so wish me luck.