Virtue of the HitList

Well once again its a Wednesday, which is quickly becoming my favorite day of the week.  Why you might ask?  For the last few weeks we have been running 10 man Ulduar on Wednesday nights, and there is a certain package of hope when confronting a fresh instance.  For me, the 10 man dynamic makes for a much more enjoyable grouping experience.  While we are still serious about what we are doing, the 10 man group I run with always seems so much more laid back than our 25 man raid. 

I think most of this is simply logistics, trying to get 24 other players all moving in the same direction is as I have related before, like herding cats.  In the 10 man dynamic, we tend to take a group of players that as a whole work better together, and are closer friends.  So the banter is quick and friendly, and the pace is a bit swifter.  If there is a god, we will be able to pull together the group at the normal start time and maybe just maybe get Hodir down and start working on Freya.

Things in the 25 man front are looking more hopeful as well.  Last night was a bit rough, but mostly because we had some Ulduar virgins with us.  But the positive of this is we had some fresh blood finally coming in.  We managed to lose one of our tanks this week, but in a very serendipitous fashion I found a replacement in one of the stalwarts returning to the game.  In the grand scheme of things, adding a Tankadin to our stable, will mean much better balance.  In addition to this, we added several new healers…  that weren’t priest!  You all know my love of priests, but adding some more druids and shaman to the raid will help balance out the healing as a whole.

What is a HitList?

This topic is something I probably should have covered in my recent GroupCraft series of posts, but it honestly did not fit cleanly into the topics.  One of the important things I covered in those posts, was that you should have a clear focus and a stated purpose.  When I hit maximum level I switch my focus to gearing my character, since my goal with any character is to get them to a “raidable” state.  So one of the methods that I employ to decide which instances I should run is to create a “HitList”.

Loosely defined, a HitList is a list of items you wish to acquire for your character and which boss/instance they drop in.  I generally sort my list by equipment slot, and from time to time I will choose a primary focus and an alternate.  This requires a good deal of research and there are many options on how to do this.  If you are a DPS based class your easiest option for figuring out where items drop is MaxDPS.  This website allows you to constrain what tiers of gear you have available, and then presents you with a list of options allowing for things like crafted gear and badge gear.

Another older resource that still has alot of good in it is Kaliban’s Class Loot lists.  During Burning Crusade, I practically lived on this site when it came to gearing my characters.  The layout of the website really is designed to support the collection of gear as you are leveling up, as the various dungeons are arranged by level order.  However you can still view the various dungeons normal and heroic loot tables by class.  They used to have this great flash gear chooser, that allowed you to constrain things based on what stats you were looking for, but it appears to be long dead.

Wowhead is a bit like Hard Mode for gear choosing, and by that I mean you are flooded with so much raw information that it takes a good deal of work to dissect it all.  Basically when I attempt to choose gear from Wowhead I use a series of constraints to limit down the data.  For an example of this process here is a link that I would use to look at Tanking Helms.  Let me walk you through the process I used to arrive at it…

• I selected from the browse menu:  Items > Armor > Plate > Head in order to only return only results for plate helms.
• I constrain by level required, as we are looking for gear to ready us for heroics and raiding, we only want level 80 gear…  so I type 80 in the first box for “Required Level:”
• I only want to return items usable by my class… so I selected Warrior
• I am going to add a filter, that will allow me to sort out any gear that simply does not make sense for me to use.  In order to do this, you either want to constrain by a stat you would NEVER use, or constrain by a stat that you would ALWAYS use.  For a warrior, I want to filter out any gear with spellpower on it, as this is the immediate designator that the gear was designed for a Paladin.  For a healing priest, filtering out Hit gear is a good idea for another example.
• Lastly I am going to use the “Create a Weight Scale” Optional tool.  To open the UI for this, you click the text.  From the dialog boxes I chose the preset for Warrior, Protection (Tanking), and left the default of Rare gems.  If you are doing this on a search NOT constrained to a specific slot, it is good to check the “Group by slot” box.

Click apply filter, and you are given a much shorter list of items to choose from.  Additionally, if you are looking for only Epic or Rare gear, you can change your selection for that as well.  The source column will give you in a quick glance where the item drops from.  Generally I keep a notepad document open and scribble down all the selections that I am making per slot.

Once you have your list of items and where they drop, you will start to see patterns in the list.  Certain zones will have more items you need than others, so as a rule those are the zones that you should be attacking first.  Now that you know where things drop that you need, you can start trying to get into groups going to those dungeons.  If you apply a focused approach to gearing, you can do what I have done many time and go from being a fresh level 80, to being a heroic ready player in a week or less of systematic gearing.

Elemental Mastery

Well it appears that I have inspired another friend to start blogging, and I have to say she has blown my website design completely out of the water.  The player in question is non other than Audrae, the friend of mine who drew the Chibi Belghast that adorns this sites header.  Completely Elemental is her take on the world of warcraft world, from the perspective of an elemental shaman. 

It’s a fledgling blog, so there is not a ton of content yet, but as always Rae expresses herself well.  I highly suggest you add her to list of blogs to read.  Normally I would say add her to your RSS reader, but in this case the site design is so beautifully rendered that it always seems like a crime NOT to read it from the website itself.  Considering the fact that she is feeming to post more today, I am hoping that she can keep up with the rigors of regular posting.

Now… I have to redesign my site