What can I say, I’m crazy.

So, I was leveling my super cute  (actually, really not so cute) female troll mage this evening. Due to some technical difficulties (read: bad decision making), I did some things not condusive to leveling: letting my health bar hit 0 a few too many times, running a 40 minute av where we didn’t cap more than two towers, spent a good 30 seconds every 4 inutes youtubing a new song, etc. It took me something like 6 hours to power my way through the latter half of zangarmarsh and the first few long quest chains in Nagrand to get grom 64-66, and I ended up not achieving that beautiful “OMG I CAN FINALLY ICELANCE” level until 5:00AM, EST. (For those of you keeping record, it is actually 6AM for me, as I am writing this. :S)

Ideally, had I not made a large number of stupid decisions (honestly, spending an hour trying to solo three level 67 mobs who could crushing blow me for 1500hp when I only have 4500 and can’t be rooted was not my best idea), I probably could have done it by 3:00, which was my original plan. After that, I was planning on catching up on my two “survey” blogs that certain guild members have asked me to do before calling it the night at a ripe 4:30am-shockingly early for me. O.o (Note-I have class Mondays and Wednesdays, and work T-Th-Fri. On the days when I do work, it’s often 12-8, 1-9, etc., which is why I can have a schedule where I’m up until stupid hours of the morning. )

However, things did not work out as I planned. Upon exiting wow at like 5:15 and deciding to call it the night, I proceeded to read (NON-WOW :O) blogs for like 30 minutes, while pondering what my next step is. For, you see, this is what is on my plate right now:

A) Wow-related.

• Tank Survey
• DPS Survey
• Continued Coverage of 3.3 PTR information
• EnhSim Documentation Page, I needz 2 make it.
• TankSpot guide to PVE Enhancement DPS, I needz 2 write it.
• Articles for Big Hit Box.
• Articles for a currently-secret new blog, that I can’t let you know about, but that I got asked to contribute to today.
• Planning out my own second blog, which I think has real potential, about issues of gender/sexuality and mmoing.
• Getting Aching to level 80. (Honestly, now that I finally have ice lance, which I’ve wanted for like a year, my drive to push myself to level her as quickly might have died down a bit, which is a very good thing.)
• Raiding. Anub hard needs to go down.
• Raiding on alts. Notelam, Grazeless, and Darwinism are each just shy of a 4500gear score. Not that gearscore matters, but I want them ready for ICC10 in case we ever do alt runs of that. xD

B) School related

• Revised Proposal for my Shakespare Paper
• 10page Shakespeare Paper
• Shakespeare final.
• 50 minute lesson plan for sex. ed on social networking.
• Urban Anthropology final.
• Romanticism 10page paper, no topic yet.
• Romanticism final.
• Graduate in 3 weeks?

C) Work related.

• “Action Plan.” (Details of this are boring.)
• Resume’.
• Not having-a-heart-attack because my boss of six years decided this week that she’s leaving.
• Planning to get bosses’ job.

D) None-of-the-above-related.

• Feeding the needy on Thanksgiving. (Fun fact: My family hasn’t had an actual family Thanksgiving for like 4-5 years. We run a food-bank sort of thing every Thanksgiving where we make sure everyone who doesn’t have the means to feed themselves a Thanksgiving meal gets one. It’s pretty awesome.)
• Exercise moar. If I’m not the best looking person at Sarielle/Keaton’s wedding next December, I’mma be pist.
• Sleep.

I think I can start working on that last bullet nao, right? Since it’s 6:30 am and stuffs? Also, some fun psychological stuff to think about: did I put the wow stuff first because this is a wow blog, or because the wow stuff is my highest priority. And, if that’s the case…how bad is that? xD

Wtb the end of December, pst.

My current project is a level 60 troll mage named Aching, named after Tiffany Aching from a few Terry Pratchett’s novels. (However, this name is boring, and female trolls are fugly, so once she hits 80 she might become a female undead named Elamwatson. and by might, I mean she will.) She’s super fun to play.

My conundrum, and the reason I didn’t level her for the longest time, is that I have absolutely no intention of speccing out of the frost tree, as I find arcane boring and fire tedious. Since Frost dps currently is worse than your grandmother’s pitching arm, we won’t really work out at level 80.

However, patch 3.3 is looking awesome for frost pve dps. First off, Deep Freeze will have a new effect on raid bosses that makes it hit like a compendium of Shakespeare’s plays dropped from the Empire State Building. (Something like 20-25k damage every 30 seconds, iirc. It’s hot.) Second, and more relevant to this blog, is the Glyph of Enduring Winter (or something), that makes Water Elemental a permanent pet while taking away it’s pvp usefulness.

Now, this is awesome for me. Right now, I’m pretty tight with my Water Elemental, even though I only get to see him 1/3 of the time. He’s like the friend I go out to dinner with every few months or so…except every 3rd minute. Same difference. Come 3.3 (and hopefully, a level 80 frost mage), mr. Water Elemental will be the Daniel Radcliffe to my Elam Watson, except less doable.

This, however, is where my problem lies. My Fire Elemental (and yours. And every other fire elemental totem on the planet) is somewhat affectionately named Sparky by my lovely guild leader. My Earth Elemental doesn’t need a name, because he hasn’t enjoyed a spot on my bar since Mulan was in theaters. Charles <Darwinism’s Pet> is a well established member of the League of Extraordinary Elam pets. Mr. Water Elemental, however, can not go on being named “Mr. Water Elemental,” as he’s no longer a dinner guest and is now a traveling companion.

Normally, I’d name him myself. However, like every other thing I name, one of three things will happen: A) I’ll name him Theodore. No idea why, but I love the name Theodore, even though every Theodore I’ve ever met was a prat. (No offense to readers named Theodore.) However, I always name things Theodore from inanimate objects to babies. It won’t work out. B)I’ll name him something Russian, which is my default fallback plan. For example, my laptop’s name is Rasputin, and my iPod is Anastasia. C)I’ll name it Mulan, because I fucking love Mulan.

However, all of my names are predictable, and I’m pretty bored with them. To that end, I’m sponsoring a contest! Everyone has till exactly 1:47 AM next Tuesday morning to submit as many water elemental fitting names* as possible as comments.Why? Because I say so.

And, as a reward, just because I’m trying to be absurd as possible, I think I’ll take a picture of myself with a cardboard cutout of Edward Cullen and a personalized note to the winner. Because I can’t think of anything hotter than me in a steamy embrace with an inch-thin piece of cardboard that has more depth than the character it’s exhibiting.

Aww yea.

*Srsly, though-No Nemor. No Squirtle. No Ariel. Think harder!

(Quick note: /afk tomorrow. I’ve been tagged by our raid leader/feral tank extraordinairre in his tank survey, which means I have to complete it talking about my experiences as a blood dk. Additionally, over at my guild leader’s blog, our Canadian berserker tagged me in his guest post dps survey, which means I also get to do the DPS survey…which is probably the one that anyone reading this blog most want to read. xD That said, tomorrow is a schoolwork day, with two short essays and a reading of Hamlet due Wednesday, as well as my normal work day. My schedule is so packed that I’m admittedly worried about having time to raid, so I doubt I’ll be blogging…unless I’m a sneaky hobbit and cheat at work. )

So, what am I ranting about? Well, first:

Dear Mr. Hunter. (You know who you are.)

I respect you and like you. You’re fucking awesome dps, a good person, and will be shanked in the back by my rogue buddies if you take Death’s Choice over me. I still remember and feel pretty awesome about those early Ulduar 10s you got me in on, even if they were with Cynical, Karmadillo was the only worthwhile non-us member, and we couldn’t down Mimiron. So yes, you’re awesome.

HOWEVER, I FUCKING KNOW BLESSING OF PROTECTION IS ON THE KILL TARGET. And Earth Shield. And Hand of Freedom. And every other purgable buff. I know that vent has no global cooldown, but my abilities do- rest assured that unless I fatfinger lava lash, or had to target switch to hex/focus purge/Wind shear the hellfire, within the next 1.5 seconds I -will- be casting purge. My reaction time is not much less than yours, and most of the time I’ve noticed as you started speaking- but that does not mean I have the free ability time to purge.

One rant down, one to go.

So, heroic Twin Valkyrs- we learn it. We learn it well. During the course of our learning, because I had nothing better to do and I was feeling a little proud, I took this screenshot:

I know, I know, I should have lightning bolted- Screenshotting is not high on the Priority List. D:

Yaay, me on top. Amirite? But what annoys me about this screenshot is how low the margin is between myself and the other dps…considering I had to use a 20minute cooldown ability to get this high. Enhancement Shaman DPS at the moment is the lowest of the melee hybrids, which is fine- someone always has to be the lowest. We’ve been competitive throughout WoTLK, and we’ll bounce back. 3.3 changes are already looking positive. What is not fine-to me- is that the only way for us to BE competitive is to rely on a cooldown that is only up every 3-4 boss attempts. Fire Elemental, since it’s 3.1 buffs, has been made into a powerful DPS tool. On a single target fight, it does a good 1k dps. On a Cleave fight like Twin Valkyrs, it does even more. On burn phases/times where your damage is buffed (such as XTs Heart Phase), it really shines. (On a side-note: It does replace magma, which can do 800ish dps itself, so even if your FE is doing 1200 DPS it’s not an insanely more powerful dps tool- it’s a great one, though. Also, magma requires much finer control, and can be a bitch on moving bosses- an issue Fire Elemental does not have.)

I could understand the 20 minute cooldown if we enjoyed a place on the DPS ladder similar to Death Knights, where we’d be fighting the pures for dps meters. Currently, though, we’re not top dps, and I’m not sure why I need to feel naked for the 18 minutes he/she is not alive, or worry about popping it on attempts knowing that we might wipe later.

(Note: I’m not an advocate for the idea of no cd on FE. I do think we should be required to make the choice of when in a boss fight to pop FE-these choices are needed to make DPS an interesting thing to play. I just don’t think we should need to make the choice of which boss fight we’re going to purposefully lower our dps on in order to provide higher dps for one that we may or may not see within 20 minutes. Personally, I think FE should get a bloodlustesque treatment- 10 Minute CD and 10 minute Sated debuff, allowing it to be up for every progression attempt.)

(Second Note: Fire elemental is not the only reason my topping the DPS meter is rare. As the rest of our DPS- particularly our melee- gear up with 245 weapons, I’m still sitting her rocking Uld25reg/toc10 weapons. Both of our ret paladins are currently running iLevel 258s, and on quite a few fights I have to work my ass off to just come near them. This isn’t a complaint- RNG with weapon drops simply isn’t working in my favor, which is fine. I’m just pointing it out because I said earlier in the post that I was proud of my topping dps- now you know why. )

So yea, I was up to 3k gold this week. Which is pretty spectacular for me, as I’m the one who went an entire expansion and a half without epic flying because I hate making money. I’m bad at it. Mainly because making money is booooring, and I’d rather be writing a blog, cleaning my sock drawer, giving a bath to an angry dwarf, saving the world, watching the plate spin in the microwave, etc. Nevertheless, through freak happenstance and me forgetting to spend money, I somehow managed to hit 3kish gold between Notelam and Elam. (Thinking about it, it was more like 3.5, actually.)

So, what did I do? Did I invest in the stock market? No. It’s wow and the stock market doesn’t exist, and if it did I wouldn’t trust it. Cairne/Thrall/Garrosh don’t exactly scream GOOD WITH NUMBERS to me. Did I decide to follow one of the thousand inscription guides and buyout herbs in bulk like I’m a drug dealer so that I might get rich of other people respeccing? No, because after the 82nd time my glyph of fan of knives didn’t sell last month, I decided that listing and relisting is a woman’s job. (I KID!!)

So, what did I do? I rescued all the money from my assorted character, assembled into one big pixelated pile on Elam, and dropped my herbalism tradeskill. Why? I have it on Notelam AND Grazeless too. Both my other 80s. >.< So, I clicked the little red “do not click this box” box, dropped my ability to go “^_^” and pick flowers while skipping through mulgore, and started enchanting.

Now, I was -planning- on paying my way to 300. After that, I was heading to Outland later this week to FARMFARMFARM my way to 350, and likewise until 450! I went about merrily on my way, spending maybe 500-1k gold getting to 300. Not so bad, I decided. Why not push for 350?…

Ok, goldsinks known as “runed STUPIDEXPENSIVE rods” aside (honestly, these are where the cost of leveling enchanting lies. They’re fucking 500ish G a piece at 350+), it was oooonly another 1000+ gold (and a loan from a qt rogue!) to get to 350. And besides, those ring enchants look miiiighty nice. So, I pushed on, scrounging up every green from between my alts, stalking the auction house for low cost infinite dust and got myself to 400 enchanting. And, with the 80 gold between -all- my characters (yes, I stole gold from my low level alts using it to level), I wasn’t even able to afford my level 380-400 enchanting recipes, so all I got was my 40 AP ring enchant.

Maybe I’ll be able to make half of the cost back from the thousand scrolls of enchant -something or other- that I made. True fax, inscripion+enchanting are almost as good a team as Sonny and Cher. Except, they both stay alive.

Was 80 Attack Power really worth it?

Would it have been more prudent for me to have been patient and farmed the mats?

Who framed Roger Rabbit?

These answers and more on the next episode of Unsolved Mysteries. :S (SRSLY, WHERE THE @#$% DID THAT SHOW GOOO.)

((Oh, and the answer was “probably not, but the 20 abyss crystals in my bank say ‘it’s cool, we still love you.’ Enchanting is freaking fun.”))

This is Failam. You’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the weeks to come.

Failam is a premade Alliance Shaman, coming equipped with some really cool Alliance t9 (which I’m jealous of), a 1% hit aura (which I’m also jealous of), and some axes that look pretty pansy (Not so jealous of.) Failam, along with my new Bear/Resto drood Treelam, my fancy Disc Priest Healam, and possibly the rogue Stealam (I have a hard time thinking outside the box, ok? D:) will be my fun companions through the next few months or so of testing on the PTR.

That journey started today, with some pretty awesome testing on Fire Nova totem. (7500 dps on Sarth 10, with no 13% spell damage debuff OR might is nothing to sneeze at), but unfortunately I’ve been feeling pretty sick…and I got distracted by the shiny bubbles of discipline healing, and I read my way through the Elitist Jerks compendium for disc priest. (Fun fact- I have in fact read every single EJ thread for every class, at least as of midway through 3.1. However, having not played a lot of the classes, I find myself realizing that while I might have read the threads, I definitely did not understand them until faced with playing said class. )

I’ve got Shakespeare, Urban Anthropology, and Romanticism in the AM, from 10:00-2:15. After that, there might be some napping, chilling with my boyfriend at his lame apartment where he gets no interwebs, and watching Heroes (and hopefullypossiblyraidingonlivetomorrownighthinthintNaithin.) Oh, and spamming my guild leader with happy birthday text messages. If I have time during this packed day of lounging about, I’m going to write some pretty sweet blog posts, pertaining to:

• The awesomeness that is Fire Nova.
• Why you all should join <Best Shaman on Server>, as the PTR is a scary place to pug. (Srsly, ending up solohealing OS10 as my first ever instance on a Disc Priest was fun-espescially when the group was all like “OMG U WERE AWESOME,” but I didn’t like the going through 8 different members getting there because the tank couldn’t hold aggro/the group leader sucked/ the mage in full t9 was doing 2.1k dps.)
• Pit of Saron- However, I want a few more attempts at this, as I don’t fully understand the boss fight mechanics yet. That might be a post for a later date.
• The new incarnation of Black Magic to weapon-it’s shiny. Possibly.
• The new map feature on the PTR. Also shiny.
• Why I hate people.

I do need to apologize for the lackluster nature of posts over the past week, but I was having a bit of a struggle with apathy and writer’s block. This is weird, as we downed every Uld10 hardmode from XT-General (XT, IC, Freya, Hodir, Mimiron, Thorim, General) last Saturday night in a 3 or 4 hour raid, and we got our first guild kill of Heroic Northrend Beasts Wednesday after throwing recruitment open. These were both awesome fodder for blogging, but I was a little “meh” over the past week. I’m not going to pretend it won’t happen again because we all feel shitty sometimes, but do know that I will return- and with a passion! (In this case, a passion inspired by testing!)

This past week was my first week of classes: 19th centruy romanticism, Shakespearean tragedy, Urban Anthropology, and History of Sex Education in schools have stolen my soul. On top of this, I went back to work after the end of my summer vacation, so I’ve been spending my free time reviewing these grants and survey things that I need to develop “teen programming” for. And, I’ve been raiding. Thus, busy! (Oh and Notelam might have hit level 80. )

I will be back updating, hopefully by tomorrow night, or by Saturday. I want to get in a hardmode NB kill on either 10 or 25, with screenshots, as that is what I will be posting about!

Talk to you all in a few, and sorry.

http://i774.photobucket.com/albums/yy28/FueledByShaman/SupAnub.jpg

I think we’re as bad at posing for pictures as anub was at avoiding dying.

He dropped his axe, and I did in fact nerd rage offline for a good fifteen minutes before calming down and realizing A)The Rogue who got it has spent all of WoTLK trying to make Combat work since he loves the spec, and now that it’s competitive with mutilate and he has this axe he never has to respec. B)He’s both good, and has been with the guild way longer than I could even come close to. C) It’s my fault I didn’t have the EPGP priority. One or two more raids I hadn’t missed would have meant the axe was mine, so the only person I could be annoyed at is myself. Doesn’t make it suck less since I still need two, but I’m happy for him.

At any rate, here are my first impressions of ToC (Number/5 is my personal rating system-1 is worst boss in instance, 5 is best):

Northrend Beasts, 2/5: To be quite frank, I’m not sure how this belongs in a raid that drops iLevel 245 loot. It’s not the loot pinata that non-hardmode Flame Leviathan is, but it’s fairly close. Snobolds on the first phase can be somewhat annoying-even with nameplates on, I find some of them spawn too far out of range of my nameplates and I don’t see them, so I watch for our qt rogue leader man to take off in a random direction.

The two jormungars are relatively easy, with the only real problem being slime pools- I got poisoned, ran toward the tank with burning bile on him, and a slime pool spawned. He turned left while I was running right around the slime pool, and I and two other melee would have been paralyzed had the worms not burrowed and he ran towards us.

Icehowl is obnoxiously easy (this coming from someone who died on him on his first attempt in 25man-I thought you had to click whoever he targeted to see if they were near you. xP) Beyond the fact that he spins around to face the direction he’s going to charge, Deadly Boss Mods now offers a GIANT BLUE POPUP OF TEXT saying “Charge near you, run!” so as to remove -any- doubt that the giant thing now staring you down might be charging you.

And, taken as a whole, I dislike this fight because it isn’t melee friendly, and it definitely isn’t totem friendly. First phase: Chase down Snobolds. Second phase: Avoid slimes, run debuffs, chase down burrowed worms. Third phase: Increased damage for 10-15 seconds!…which doesn’t help when I’m across the room because he targeted someone in the complete other direction. However, not every fight can be melee friendly, so it’s not worth being mad about. xD

Lord Jaraxxus 5/5: I love this fight. I’ve loved it since we first engaged it weeks ago and our entire group of melee got one shot by a portal we stood too close to. It’s a mindfuck for DBM-I don’t think I’ve ever had that addon go off more in a fight than it does on Jaraxxus. Part of my enjoyment comes from the kind of epic high-fantasy feel of the fight: You’ve got succibui, demon lords, creatures made of green magma, magic volcanoes, fireballs, curses, gigantic purple portals and more. Part of my love for it might be because I get to do more than just dps on it- I’m a windshear and purge spambot. And, the last third of my fangirl tendencies towards Jaraxxus come from the fact that it’s very melee-friendly, while the ranged get to be the ones who chase down the adds.

On a side note, healing Jaraxxus is fun too. I wasn’t able to figure out how to make incinerate flesh show up on Grid, and I may have forgotten to earthliving my weapon…but I’d do it again if I had to. I’m actually really enjoying the more spot-healing aspect of restoration at the moment.

Faction Champions, 1/5: I very rarely feel negatively towards Blizzard. They’re a hardworking group of people who will never be appreciated by the majority of players who feel that their class is somehow more worthy than others to be better. That said, Blizzard’s Human Resources department needs to have a chat with whatever designer came up with the idea of Faction Champions (and, preferably, put him/her down for a mental health evaluation.)

Seriously. Does no one remember the massive amount of QQ that surrounded Priestess Delrissa in Heroic Magister’s Terrace? She was hated. And no, the “You just don’t like it because it forces you to think outside of the box” argument holds no water. PVPing is not thinking outside of the box, it’s just a different box. I choose not to partake in that box, I like my box with the shiny PVE label, tyvm. At least I already have my nice expertise trinket, so I don’t need to do a Burning Crusade and do this mockery of a real fight 33 times in a row. :/

Twin Valkyrs 4/5: Twins are a fun fight. The relationship of light and darkness is a theme that’s been explored in almost every form of media, and it’s fun to see how they took that idea and designed an encounter around it. Execution-wise, it’s a cakewalk. Provided your rogue leader doesn’t forget to tell the melee group that all physical dps are on the left valkyr and you and two others end up going right and the raid wipes due to lack of dps on the left side twin pact. Other than that, the only semi-difficult aspect of the fight is avoiding the globes of color opposite what you’re buffed with, and doing your best to grab the ones that match your color. Or, you could do a me and switch colors to avoid a dark vortex, but then end up one shotting yourself because you forget that when you switch colors to avoid taking aoe damage you don’t want to continue picking up the same colors as before.

Anub’Arak 3/5: This fight deserves more than 3 stars. It has an epic intro- if you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil it for you, but make sure you bring your glyph of water walking and a guild member with a sense of humor/your worst enemy and have fun murdering them. Beyond the intro, the fight itself is well designed. Phase 1 is pretty melee friendly, as your ranged friends get to shoot down pyrite permafrost and nuke the adds, and phase 2 is more ranged friendly as you run around through snares avoiding Anub’s spikes and try to kill adds. Phase 3 is a good old fashioned dps race, and DPS races are always a tension-heavy way to end an instance.

As I said, this fight deserves more than 3 stars…but it doesn’t get them, simply due to the rather terrible tuning of Anub 10.  4.2 Million HP is 2/3 of what Kel’thuzad had- and with adds that barely require any attention from the ranged (we just let the single bad add be tanked on anub and die to incidental aoe) and a really small health pool, Anub’arak can be kept from going under more than once just from average (4.5-5.5kish)dps per person. On 25 man, the fight is much more finely tuned (it took us 8 attempts, iirc, vs. the 1 attempt with not deaths we got in ten man today.) I kind of hope they stealth buff Anub- I don’t want to be elitist, and I really don’t want to be the type of person to throw out cliched phrases like “catering to casuals,” but Anub really is too easy.

As a Whole: I like ToC Reg. With the exception of Faction Champions, the idea behind every fight is cool to me, and they all seem well designed. But, it’s entirely too easy of an instance. Ulduar was difficult at times-we’ve been perpetually cockblocked by Hard Mode Iron Council for a month now (partly due to end of summer attendance issues), and our first Yogg kill came on an off-night where we decided to push through the slump of days of attempts and kick his ass. Anub was not Yogg. There was accomplishment, but there also was the feeling of “we should not be able to down the last boss of an instance the day it’s released. We’re not that hardcore.”  I do understand the casual-logic of “Well, hardcore players are not the only ones that deserve to see [major lore character], but they should at least have to work for it, aand I don’t get that sense from ToC.

That said, I am quite excited to see the heroic version, as I do believe it will be harder. I’m also excited to see Icecrown Citadel-it seems quite apparent that ToC was the side project to keep us tied over until IC, and I’m perfectly fine with that- provided IC is badass. I have faith in Blizzard that it will be so.

(I’m also excited to see Cobra Starship and Boys Like Girls in concert together on November 20th. Just bought tickets. )

((Yes, it is 5AM in the morning, Yes I am blogging, and No I have not slept yet. :/)

*I have nothing against Ringo Starr, though I do prefer every other Beatle to him. I just thought it was a catchy first line, so don’t flay the skin from my body or something.

Now, with that awkward vignette out of the way, you shoud click below this shiny line to read my ramblings about why On Use trinkets are underrated additions to your enhance arsenal. (Also, that sentance ending was LIKE assonance, but not. >:()

Trinkets tend to be seperated into two distinct groups- On Use and Equip. Anyone familiar with itemization at level 80 probably understands difference between the two: Both trinkets tend to provide a passive bonus (such as 84 critical strike rating), but On Use trinkets also provide a temporary bonus you click to activate, while Equip trinkets provide a temporary bonus that activates after filling some sort of condition: e.g, after getting a melee critical strike, you have a chance to gain 1000 Attack Power for 10 seconds. Equip trinkets tend to be viewed in a better light than On Use trinkets, mainly due to their lower Internal Cooldowns- the majority of Equip trinkets you’ll get have ICDs of 45 seconds with durations of 10 seconds, while On Use trinkets generally have cooldowns of around 2 minutes, slightly less powerful buffs (670 On Loatheb’s Shadow, iLevel 200, vs. iLevel 200 Mirror of Truth‘s 1000AP) but 20 second durations. The assumption becomes that on use

This means, assuming the above stats and RNG favoring you enough that the trinket procs as soon as the ICD expires, that on a 6:00 Patchwerkesque fight your Mirrot of Truth will have an uptime of around 70 seconds (10 Sec First Proc +45 Sec +10 Sec +45 Sec +10 Sec +45 Sec +10 Sec +45 +10 Sec +45+10+45+10 Sec). 70/360 Seconds is just below 1/5 of the fight. 1/5X1000AP means Mirror Of Truth is optimistically a static 200 ap bonus. However, Mirror of Truth only has a 10%chance to proc, and that chance to proc comes off crits, not just any hit, so first you have to crit, and then you have to factor in the 10%, so the uptime of MoT is probably more around 50-60 seconds. Pessimistically, assuming it has a 50 second uptime on a 6 minute fight, MoT comes out to 140ish Static AP.

Loatheb’s Shadow, on the other hand, looks like this: (20 second use + 120 second cooldown +20 second use +120 second cooldown +20second use  +60 second cooldown till end of fight.) Because you chose when to use it, and you used it as soon as it became available to use again, we know that the trinket has an uptime of 60 seconds. 60/360 is 1/6 of the fight as uptime. 1/6+670 is about 110 Static Attack Power. Your RNG would have to be pretty far off the mark for a fight to only have a 40 second uptime on mirror of truth-you’d have to go about 30-35 seconds after the ICD without proccing it every time- but that is about the amount of time you would need for the two trinkets to be equivalent. This would be why On Use trinkets tend to be seen so disfavorably.

However, I’d like to offer up some reasonings as to why every raiding DPS, melee or caster, (healers/tanks are a different story-more on that later) should HAVE at least one appropriate iLevel On Use item, even if it’s not a part of their regular gear set. Here is the main reason:

Every Boss Isn’t Patchwerk.

We tend to speak of DPS in terms of ideal situations-Patchwerk is the closest thing to these ideal situations, as all you do is sit there and hit him. However, here are some situations where I believe On Use trinkets might win out-and guess what? None of them are Patchwerk.

A) Masochistic Bosses make On Use trinkets fun. You get to time your trinket to go off at the best possible moment to maximize your damage output in accordance with other things that buff you. On some fights, this may simply be a bloodlust. On others- Deconstructor Heart Phase or Hodir when Singedx30 is up while you have Storm Power AND a Haste Cloud are both situations where you want to be able to hit harder on command. If your MoT procs during transition into the heart phase, or your pyrite infuser infuses you with pyrite while the storm cloud is sitting tight in the ranged and your precious moonbeam of gloriously fast blows has a giant ICICLE OF DEATH rune sitting under it, it doesn’t matter that you’re hitting slightly harder than normal. If you could have timed your trinket, you could be hitting much harder than normal.

B)Dying because you didn’t DPS hard enough sucks: Think Iron Council Hard Mode, where you have 90 seconds to do about 14million damage. 4/9 of that fight will be bloodlust, and during that bloodlust you’ll be popping everything- feral spirit, potion of speed, firing off some rapid prayers to your deity of choice, etc. It’d be so uncool to see your wolves fade into oblivion, your potion of speed sweated out of your pores, and your bloodlust fade…just as the 45icd on your Equip trinket comes up and you feel awash in the Belated Blood of the Old God while the rogue who popped his trinket mutilates his way up the damage meter.

C)Some bosses make you move. More at 11: Nearly every 80 raid fight in this game has something you have to avoid, run out of, run into, etc. It doesn’t matter if your trinket gives you 10,000 Attack Power- you still just wasted it running away from your raid because Grobbulus’ gave you his beauticians number his disease. It doesn’t matter that your trinket has a 15 second duration when it procs while you’re meleeing the first brain-room tentacle on yogg-it won’t be up for the brain phase that matters. Trinkets that proc prior to you needing to move are wasted dps.

That said, there are some fights where double equip trinkets are great. Kologarn, Patchwerk, General Vex, Sartharion, etc. all maximize time on target (for melee) and don’t buff your dps in any way.While an On Use trinket might be beneficial during a bloodlust, you might see better result using two very good Equip trinkets.

There’s more to this story for other classes: Warriors/Death Knights might want to use Mjolnir Runestone/Death’s Choice/Verdict nearly all the time despite their being On Use, because Strength and Armor Pen are so incredibly powerful for them. Healers don’t want their Egg of Mortal Essence to haste them up during XT Heart Phase, but Tears of the Vanquished’s 500 mana back proc is highly coveted. And tanks probably exclusively want On Use items, as procs aren’t reliant forms of damage mitigation.

In my opinion, for DPS, you want to have a set of one reliable On use trinkets, and two pretty good Equip trinkets- just ike 3.2.2 will make it so that we might want to switch out totems for different fights, we should ideally be switching out trinkets the same way. This becomes a bit of an issue in ToC, as the only on use trinket that is really ideal for us is Vengeance of the Forsaken/Victor’s Call, but there is no matching Equip Trinket that gives us 83 expertise. Since expertise above the cap is worth absolutely 0 dps, we either A)Don’t use this trinket, or B)Remove Expertise Gear/Gems/Enchants to match the expertise on the trinket. The second option isn’t great, however, because we then are stuck using the Expertise trinket for every fight-we can’t sub it out for anything else or we’d no longer be  expertise capped, and we can’t sub it in for a normal trinket while expertise capped because the 0 benefit it’s passive stat would give us outweighs any benefit of having an on use trinket.

TL:DR: On Use trinkets are situationally use them. Use them in those situations- don’t just right them off because they underperform on Patchwerk.

If you head over to the front page of mmo-champion, you’ll see this little tidbit of news:

Totem of Quaking Earth now gives 400 attack power for 18 sec each time you use your Lava Lash ability. (Up from 200 Attack Power)

Now, this makes sense. If you compare that totem with the death knight and paladin relics and understand itemization, you’d know that 200 Strength =/= 200 Attack Power, so the Totem of the Quaking Earth was not incredibly well itemized for it’s tier. 400 Attack Power makes a lot more sense for an iLevel 245 item.

(For some quick math, 400 AP that is up 100% of the time-with an assumed Trueshot aura/Unleashed Rage/Aboms might-is a static 440 EP.  Haste, on the other hand, shifts ep with each few points of haste you add on, so it’s nearly impossible to develop a static ep value for the entire 200 you’d get from Electrifying wind. It’s -possible- that you EP haste at like 2.7, which I saw on the shaman forums today, where Electrifying Wind might still be better. For the most part though, the 85%ish uptime and around 2.0 EPs will mean that Quaking Earth remains on top.)

I’m not annoyed about this change. I’m glad that Blizzard listened to Enhancement shaman who were annoyed by the lackluster totem. However, I’m not a fan of how it effects those of us who already spent our first 25 emblems of triumph on the elemental totem having to spend another 25 on the next totem. I don’t feel we should get reimbursed for our totem- giving Shaman 25 free Emblems of Triumph is unfair to other classes. I do feel that the best response would be to refresh the item sellback time on all totems, so that when we log in after 3.2.2 we have 2 hours played time to trade the totem in.