Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Wranngar - 4/5/11

I have been working on getting my Druid Wranngar geared and getting his professions and skills up to maximum level.

So far it is coming along well. One week after leveling him to 85 he has a 350 item level, has his Leatherworking, Skinning, Cooking and First Aid at the maximum 525 and his Fishing at 498. I have all the 359 Cataclysm patterns for Leatherworking and am currently running heroic's for Chaos Orbs. I currently have 3 Chaos Orbs but can always use more. Chaos Orbs are BoP (Bind on Pickup) so if I am going to make 359 items I am going to need to run heroic's to get them. Usually when you are making a 359 item for someone else they will supply all the mats and you will supply the orbs for a price. The going rate for orbs is 200g-300g on my server. That means if I make a piece for someone and use 3 of my orbs I will make a profit of 600g-900g on the orbs plus a tip. One Chaos Orb drops off the last boss in every heroic dungeon and it is rolled on by everyone there who can use it. I ran 6 dungeons and got one orb so they are not piling up but over time they will.

Wranngar is geared pretty well now, his item level is 350 and all of his gear is either 346 ilvl or 359 ilvl. I am working on getting the 359 trinket from Baradin's Wardens and have about a week of doing their daily's every day before I can get that. I was running specific dungeons for gear until I got all the 346 pieces I needed with the exception of a weapon. I was hoping to get the polearm from the Lost City of the Tol'vir but didn't have any luck after running it for 5 consecutive days. You can only choose to run a specific heroic dungeon once a day, after that it might come up in the random dungeon queue allowing you to run it again or it might not. I ended up getting the Spear of Trailing Shadows from Baradin's Wardens which set me back some on getting my trinket.

I am also working on my reputation with all the Cataclysm Factions and that is coming along well. I have gotten all the rep pieces I can and am now working on getting my reputation to exalted with the other factions that don't have anything I need. Who knows, in future patches they might get something I need so better safe than sorry.

Expertise - Do You Need It?

As I am gearing my Feral Druid Wranngar I have found that expertise is playing a big role. Wranngar is a Feral Druid that fights in Cat (Kitty) Form. As with any melee character, that is actually striking it's opponent, you can't deal damage if your opponent is dodging and parrying your attacks.

When I first started gearing I wasn't worried about expertise, but as I went along I noticed how many of my attacks were being dodged and parried by whatever I was attacking. Having played ranged or caster characters for so long this was something new to me. Looking into this problem I found that the higher your expertise rating the less chance you have of something dodging and/or parrying your attacks, so I started working on my expertise. As my expertise rose so did my dps. Now I have a 0% chance of my attacks being dodged and a 4% chance of my attacks being parried by a level 87/skull mob. The only place I will be coming across a level 87/skull character is in a raid but as I plan on raiding I will have to work on that some more.

So in conclusion, if you have a melee character your expertise is going to help you do more damage by making your attacks harder, if not impossible, to dodge or parry.