It’s that time again, another Tuesday, or to WoW aficionados… maintenance day. The day where little boys and girls sit by the warm glow of their screens cautiously watching for the sign to enter Azeroth once more. For the Duranubs, it is another day spent wondering whether or not the server will be stable enough to raid. For me personally sitting here trying to prepare for the impending disappointment brought by Titanguard once more being fickle. I am convinced that this will be one more in the long line of things that refused to drop: Shoulderguards of the Bold, Barbed Choker of Discipline, and Destroyer Shoulderguards. It is a pattern… certain pieces of gear hate me with deep dark brooding passion.
Bowing to peer pressure
Well its not so much, peer pressure, but I still feel like I am somewhat jumping on the bandwagon. It started with Larisa moving from pinkpigtailinn.blogspot.com to pinkpigtailinn.com, and then continued with Ariedan moving from wordywarrior.wordpress.com to wordywarrior.com. It seemed like most of my favorite blogs were abandoning their cheap/free subdomains for the sake of a real domain name. In a blatant act of following the leaders, I did a quick search and sure enough, Aggronaut.com was in fact available.
I snatched it up as quickly as I could rifle through my wallet for my credit card. I have in fact had the domain for a few weeks now, but was waiting to make sure that my google analytics was in fact wired correctly and various other house keeping details. So from this point on, both the original Aggronaut.housestalwart.com and Aggronaut.com resolve to the same location. Thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog and making it so surprisingly popular. Had I not gotten the overwhelming support, I don’t think I would have ever “ponied up” for the “real” domain name.
Life and Limb
Ysinnia has been an active support of me and my dumb actions for going on six years. She helped me to found House Stalwart, acted as a gateway drug into heavy raiding, taught me to love and respect the power of the dwarven priest, and has been a great friend all along the way. Though she has shifted in and out of the mix due to real life responsibilities she’s always been a great player. When Burning Crusade was released, she shifted from her dwarven priest to her druid, and with the release of Wrath became one of the best Trees I know.
A few days ago, I added her new endevour to my blogroll, but haven’t really had time to give her a proper plug. She is currently working on the Limb From Limb druid blog, in which she covers the life and times of a more casual player in wow. We miss her horribly in Duranub, but real life has forced her to take a step away from the rhythm of the raid life. She’s hopelessly addicted to the “Get That Achievement” game on the Achievements forum. While I think she is nuts sometimes for it, she apparently enjoys being made to grind achievements by strangers.
Mostly I added that part in to fluster her, but I think it is a cool source of inspiration. Limb from Limb is shaping up to be a good blog, and I highly suggest adding it to your RSS feed. Great player, great sense of humor… you just can’t go wrong.
Pathfinder
Every so often I write something that might be a bit more than just one of my random brain dumps. When this rare event happens, it becomes a sort of guide that can be referred back to. Stealing a page from the book of RollingHots, I have decided it might be prudent to create a guides page so that it is easier for new folks to find these rare nuggets of wisdom, or at least not horribleness. If you notice at the top of the site, there is a new link entitled… wait for it… Guides.
It took me hours to think that name up. I hope people find it even mildly useful. The real reason behind this is that I am working on a new guide for the site. At the start of burning crusade I found that the groups were not coming as frequently as I wanted them to, so I set out to learn the ancient art of how to pull together a group from out of thin air. The resulting guide was posted for my guild, and I am in the process of updating it to be more sane. Hopefully in the next few days I will get it posted on the site.
A Final Thought: Normalize Repair Bills
In closing I want to through something out there. I think the time has come for blizzard to seriously consider normalizing the cost of repair bills for plate, mail, leather and cloth. Last Sunday, I ran Naxxramas with my boomkin. At one point during the run, I looked down and noticed that all my gear was in the red, so I flew over to Wintergarde keep to repair. I was expecting the worst, because I am used to the plate repair bills… and was shocked at a full epic repair bill for the Naxx leather gear I was wearing was only 35 gold.
This figure may or may not seem normal to you, but I will tell you that on Belghast, that is less than two deaths worth of repair bills. Even on a good night of raiding, I am dropping over 100g in repairs alone. My worst night ever that figure climbed up to roughly 300g, and in truth it was a little bit over that. I simply cannot make enough money each week to cover 4 nights of raiding on my warrior. Honestly this is the point at which blizzard needs to either adjust quest rewards to compensate the difference in armor classes, or look at maybe finally normalizing the costs.
In the old world, the basic theory was this. Plate classes had the least reagents to buy, so as a result they had the highest cost of repair to normalize things so that each class had to pay out roughly the same cost for a night of raiding. However, as gear has increased, the costs of reagents have not increased to a level to keep up with the astronomical repair bills that most main tanks have each night. I very literally watch my gold reserves draining every single night, and it is very hard not to do the math in your head.
You start to calculate, how many more weeks can you afford to continue to raid. I’ve had friends help me out with money, but in truth this only serves to delay the inevitable point at which I literally run out of money. The time has come for blizzard to finally address the disparity in the “cost of living” for the various classes. So I ask you my readers, what are your thoughts? Religiously grinding daily quests are not the answer, this simply adds more workload to an already overworked player. We should not have to work a “second job” just to be able to afford to raid.
And using the same math for me, in full 226 mail, with a 232 melee weapon and a 232 ranged weapon:
6 gold, 19 silver, 20 copper for armor
2 gold, 9 silver, 48 copper for weaponry
A total of 8 gold, 28 silver, 68 copper per death – about a gold lower than yours. 😛
I don’t understand it myself, but I took a screenshot thurs night in ulduar between two attempts on a boss. I repaired after a single death and it was 20g 25s 99c.
They are all pretty brutal but you aren’t paying 20g per death are you?
Assuming a full set of ilvl 226 plate armor, an ilvl 226 shield, and Titanguard:
85 (rounded up from 84.5) * (226 – 32.5) * .05 silver
85 * 193.5 * .05 = 822.375 silver for your armor and shield (8 gold, 22 silver, 38 copper)
For Titanguard:
11 (rounded up from 10.5) * (232 – 32.5) * .05 silver
109.725 silver for Titanguard (1 gold, 9 silver, 73 copper)
For a total of 9 gold, 32 silver, 11 copper per death. With no rep discounts.
So if you’re paying 20 gold a death, I wanna know what the heck you’re wearing! 😛
Major congrats on the shiny new domain. 😀
As for plate repairs, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind it being cheaper, but I suppose it’s one of those things I sort of accepted when I began playing. If they normalized repair bills, I wouldn’t complain, but it’s not something that really bothers me night-to-night. Although, to be fair, that probably has to do with the fact that I only raid two nights a week. 😛
In closing I want to through something out there. I think the time has come for blizzard to seriously consider normalizing the cost of repair bills for plate, mail, leather and cloth.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure they did this a LONG time ago. Plate pays more because plate has more durability points per item, but mail isn’t far behind, and my repair bills are brutal.
@Rilgon They are all pretty brutal but you aren’t paying 20g per death are you? 🙂 Every death is 10% durability regardless of the total durability of an item. So if I have an item with 100 durability it takes off 10 durability per death, whereas if you have an item with 60 durability it takes off 6 durability per death. Meaning on a death per death cost plate is still way more expensive than anything else.
Congrats on the new site, and I agree totally about repair costs. It didn’t make sense even in the old days because paladins wore plate and still had to buy reagents.
Oh man, if you didn’t think I was nuts for having strangers assign me achievements then it would be something else 😛
Thank you for the kind words, though. I know that I aggravate you to no end sometimes, and there are times when you’ve wanted to tell me to shut the hell up and leave you alone, I don’t know where I’d be if you weren’t my friend.