Boots

When I logged on yesterday early evening, I still had crappy blue rep reward boots. But then I checked my mail and had a pleasant surprise. During a recent Naxx-10, Dethno had taken some boots and then realized they weren't actually an upgrade for him. So he petitioned a GM, who had them sent to me in the mail. Nice. I enchanted them and then noticed they actually had slightly less +def than the blue ones, so I went and bought a lot of enchanting mats so I could finally get around to adding the +20 def to my shield and get back to the cap. That got me there without having to swap to another +27 def (JC) gem. Since I was on a gear roll, then I went and used badges to grab my T7 gloves for the 2-item bonus.

Then right before the raid, Ragonbadger msgs me. He upped on boots in Heroic Naxx the previous night and they're weird. First, they're BoE, which is unusual. Then, while they have a socket, they have very low defense and very low stam. If you socket for +def (seems necessary), you give up about 30 stam versus the ones I had just got. However, they have an unusually high about of +block value, +77 and a fair amount more strength. So they'll have decent extra physical mitigation. Plus, I've been becoming a big fan of block value because it directly improves my dmg and threat from Shield of Righteousness. You also give up dodge/parry, so I think they aren't actually as good for MT, but could be perfect for my frequent OT role. So I took those too (and fixed the DKP in both cases). So now I have 2 pairs of purple boots and I hadn't even killed anything yet.

We spent awhile on Thaddius. It took some time for people to get into the rhythm of rotating with the polarity debuff, moving quickly and taking the correct route. I decided to work on cranking my dps and threat so that I'd sit right behind Ragon on the threat meter. Then I'd cast Hand of Salvation on myself and keep going. This worked to let me do a little dps and also be right there if something bad happened to Ragon, like the positioning getting off and him getting pwned by 10 people with the opposite debuff. This happened a couple of times, including the final winning pull, but I was able to easily transition smoothly into the tanking role and we finally rocked him down.

To do 30m damage in 6m, you need everybody cranking dps and getting the maximum advantage from the polarity buffing. Which means nice tight grouping with the others who share your polarity. And no deaths, if possible (it wasn't possible, but we managed it with 3 dead early).

Then we went and got Razuvious down easily (much more quickly than last time). But we called it there and decided to go back for a 3rd night on Sunday. We'll warm up with Gothik and if we can get the 4 Horseman under control reasonably quickly, we'll go try Sapphiron and maybe Kel'thuzad too. That might mean no Naxx-10 for some of us this week, but I feel like progression would be good.

Gearwise, I still have crappy blue bracers and a cloak. I'm going to grab the valor badge cloak after the next Heroic raid, so that'll take care of that. Either bracers will eventually drop, or I'll wait for 60 more valorous badges for that piece. I still have the lvl 70 JC trinket to replace (with something that has lots of +def) and I should really make more of an effort to run Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle and get the good def sword. That'd get me within an item or two of best-in-slot across all gear.

Then I can work more on my holy gear, lol. The first order of business there is ~15 JC tokens to get the epic JC ring and 3x +27 int gems. Should have that in about a week. Then maybe the neck and start looking for a decent cloak, etc.

I'll be taking it easier for the next couple of nights. Probably on late, check for a heroic and just do dailies if everybody is busy and stay fresh for Sunday.