Oh My

This just is not right.

Back from Hiatus

Back this week from Chicago. Got to meet up with someone I've raided/grouped/guilded with for years, but never met before in person. It was very cool. I think I was expecting it to be stranger than it was. In fact, it was just as comfortable. Although I'm not sure I always looked at him while I was talking. ... kinda falling back to WoW communication. ;-)

Had a lot to catch up on at home before jumping into WoW at all. Got in last night for a guild-first kill on XT-002. That was cool. I did my job pretty well. Because of my break I haven't leveled up my wolf to 80 yet. So I was still raiding with my cat.

I got some new boots from that silly robot. The Twisted Visage also dropped, which is nice to see. Also picked up not one -- not two -- but three achievements. Nothing amazing, but still fun.

Umm what else... oh thanks to the new arena starting and since 3.1, I've upgraded three pieces of PvP gear. I'm now at 605 Resilience. Since dual specs came out, it seems like there are far far fewer heals being thrown around in random BGs. Maybe my sample size is just too small. But it makes sense. And the Resilience certainly seems to be helping. Maybe even more than balancing out for it.

Armor Penetration

One of the juiciest GC posts I've seen. But then, I'm a numbers guy. I'm copying it here in case they decide they shared too much.

Okay, here is a fairly technical explanation we put together for how armor pen works.

We didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against low armor targets, like it had been in BC. We also didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against high armor targets.

So, we decided on a system where there is a cap on how much armor the Armor Penetration Rating can be applied to. So, the first X armor on the target is reduced by the percentage listed in the Armor Penetration Rating tooltip, and all armor past that X is unaffected. Another way of understanding that is we multiply the percentage in the tooltip times the minimum of the two values: the cap, and the amount of armor on the target after all other modifiers.

Computing the cap is a little tricky unless you are already familiar with how World of Warcraft armor works. There is an armor constant we’ll call C. C is derived as follows (in some pseudocode):

If (level<60)
C=400+85*targetlevel
Else
C=400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59);

For a level 80 target, C=15232.5. For a level 83, C=16635.

The cap for Armor Penetration then is: (armor + C)/3.

A level 80 warrior creature has 9729 armor. C=15232.5. So, the cap is (9729+15232.5)/3=8320.5. Let’s say a player has 30% armor penetration from armor penetration rating and no other modifiers that complicate the calculation (talents, Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, etc.). The game chooses the minimum of 8320.5 and 9729, so 8320.5. That is multiplied by 30% = 2496.15, and so that much armor is ignored. The effective armor on the target is 7232.85 (9729-2496.15). From a player point of view, the armor penetration rating didn’t ignore the full 30%, but instead ignored 25.66%. (85.5% as effective as expected).

These equations should help you be able to test and verify that Armor Penetration Rating is working correctly and as we designed. The tooltip is not actually inaccurate, as it states: “Enemy armor reduced by up to 30.00%.” That "up to" is key.

Please be sure to test without any other effects which modify the armor calculation (Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, Mace Specialization, etc.) as they may involve other systems that add additional complexity to the calculation.

Where's Kheldul?

I'm traveling for work. I hopped on briefly and managed to get some exorbitantly-priced Explosive Shot and Kill Shot glyphs. (200 and 175 gold respectively!) Yes, I grabbed them at that price anyway. It's not like it's real gold.

Status Check

+ I thawed my corpse out of the frozen in time instance.
+ I got my button bars a little less overloaded with a castsequence SrS/BA macro to save a button slot. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I think tweaking the time, having BA's CD visible seperately and simply not accidentally hitting it when it isn't necessary would be a good start. I may have to scrap the whole idea and find another slot though.
+ Went into MC and took down a couple bosses. This helped me learn that I probably shouldn't be full tank spec for lvl 60 raid bosses. It took forever to get them down.
+ After the MC run, I got my tank glyphs... yes, I had been empty. And yes, I went with Mending over Arcane Shot.
+ I sold my uber ammo bags and quiver. I bought normal 20 slot bags. It felt sad. I was not happy to get the extra space. It feels generic and wrong. It's an optimization in our favor, but takes away the flavor. I'm also scratching my head wondering if I have enough ammo. Having it land in any open slot is also pretty annoying.

+ I got my new friend (I went with brown eyes) and leveled him up to 76. Level 75->76 took about 80minutes of non-stop farming in an instant-pop zone.
+ I saw the new Vault boss destroy us. We were 24-manning it and were often about 3-4k dps short so with some upgrades and a full attentive raid that seems do-able.
+ I went into Ulduar and didn't chain-DC or get frozen in time. And we beat Flame Leviathan in 25man. The trash after him is an interesting challenge. We hit the lava pot-belly boss afterward and got some steam burns. We were pretty short on healers at the time.

Still to do:
+ Need my SV PvE glyphs. Still nobody has them.
+ PvP button bar needed.
+ Some better PvE tank bars/macros needed.
+ Re-gear for PvE using the new spreadsheet suggestions.
+ Get my new brown-eyed wolf up to level 80. Once he's level 80 he will get a name.
+ Put together a couple tank sets.
+ Fix and improve tank button bars.
+ Find someone who has the SV Glyphs I want. Oh! Did I say that twice? Yep! I guess I really need them.