(WoW) Cataclysmic Log p5

Stood in Fire
I was cheerfully taking care of some daily quests and had taken a portal to Uldum, then flitted over to the Ramkahen quest giver on my hippogryph when something happened. Mind you, this rough sequence of thoughts took place very, very quickly:

- Okay, almost there...
- Is that a beam of fire? Wait, why's there fire all around?
- Was that a level-up fanfare? No, wait, that was an achievement.
- Why am I dead all of a sudden?
- Oh. OH! Deathwing made a pass at the zone and killed everyone. Well I didn't expect that in Uldum.
- Awwwww. I don't even get to see him? I pan around and all I see are the flaming fields.

Blacksmithing Blues
And not rares, either. No, as I'm leveling up blacksmithing, I'm feeling increasingly disappointed with it. It's not even that it's bad per se, just bland.

Every profession gets a self-buff of sorts. Gathering professions probably suffer a little in the long run due to having static benefits that don't scale in any way. Engineers get to make BOP helms (and now get special "gem" things) and have additional enchant-like modifiers, scribes get BOP shoulder enchants, enchanters get ring enchants... Blacksmiths get to add a socket to both gloves and wrist items. That's reasonably balanced with all the other bonuses, though it requires cut gems (from jewelcrafting) to actually get a benefit. Reliance on a second other profession (blacksmithing already relies on mining for materials) sort of sucks, but it's not so bad. Anytime I've looked at the numbers, blacksmithing seems perfectly middle-of-the-pack in this regard.

Then crafting professions do other things, usually BOE, that provide some benefit. Scribes make glyphs ("necessary" for everyone, but only once each), enchanters enchant items (constantly "needed" with upgrades), leatherworkers craft leather/mail armor and cloaks, alchemists make potions and flasks. Engineers probably suffer the most here - their helms are competitive, but self-only. Blacksmiths make plate armor, shields, and sometimes weapons. This stuff is not strictly necessary, as it's generally equal to what drops in current raid levels, but it's usually slightly more available. You can get it before setting foot in a raid at the current tier. The smithed epic items have some drawback of requiring heroic-dropped resources (currently-BOP chaos orbs this time). Later-tier epics usually require recipes that drop in that tier of content, making them just a little bit redundant. Perhaps more annoyingly, they now tend to require truegold. Unlike titansteel, truegold is only created by alchemists, which makes blacksmithing reliant on yet a third profession to get the most out of it. And the smithed items fitting for leveling periods (level 81-84 now) are decent, but often outclassed by quest (or dungeon) drops within a few hours of play. And before Wrath, blacksmiths could make mail and sharpening/weight stones. So as far as general functionality, blacksmithing is "okay," but not really great.

Then there's the other perks, the non-stat-oriented benefits to a profession. Engineering is probably the big poster child here, able to make a number of companion pets, personal vehicles, and the motorcycle mounts of Wrath. Tailoring got vehicles, I understand enchanting is getting pets, scribes get a transformation book and fortune cards and a few other little things. Alchemy is getting a self-transform to rideable mount. Blacksmithing gets... umm... nothing? Nada. Zip. Zilch. No mounts, no pets, no flavor. Even the specialties of old, which really only narrowed your choice of craftable gear, were phased out. Well, okay, I have to grant one very small point here: keys. Blacksmiths can make keys to open locked boxes, which rogues can open anyway. I seriously cannot remember ever needing to use a key, and only ever crafted them for skill points.

Overall, I find the fitting phrase for blacksmithing to be "functional, but lackluster." It relies on mining for gathering, jewelcrafting for the self-benefit of its additional sockets, and now alchemy for high-end materials. Its products are good, but not indispensable. And it's utterly lacking in anything to make it fun or interesting beyond just pounding out armor and weapons.

Now, there's always a "grass is greener" situation to some extent. Everybody likes what they see in other professions that they don't have access to. Still, I can't help but feel blacksmithing really could use something to spruce it up a bit.

Blackrock Caverns
Almost defeated by the addon boss.

I got to take my first dungeon run into BRC with guildmates. It was fun. It was pretty easy, honestly. All the talk about how difficult Cataclysm dungeons are does not really apply to the early ones in non-heroic mode.

One boss does a chain-and-nuke move that you have to break out of and avoid. One buffs assistants until they max out and become adds (as I understand, there's three in heroic and you have to let them through one at a time rather than just burning the boss down as in non-heroic). The core hound is pretty straightfoward, though I think it fears on heroic. The end boss does some sort of swapping move with adds, but that didn't really make things more complicated.

Smack in the middle, there's Karsh Steelbender, a boss the tank has to draw through a lava flow to buff/debuff so he can be hurt measurably. This was the only "hard" part for me, and it still went by very fast with a few level 85's in the group. First, I wasn't sure if I could go through the lava myself without sucking tons of damage, but I'm assured that's what I should do. Second, the debuff stacks WAY faster than I thought - seemed like once a second or more. Third, one of my addons started popping up lua errors right in the middle of my screen, making it really hard to see what was going on. On heroic, that probably would have wiped us right there.

The only aggro issues I noticed happened when our death knight was 1) attacking a target that I wasn't directly on or 2) running ahead and pulling trash. Sloppy technique there, though not something we couldn't get away with under the circumstances.

Unsurprisingly, no upgrades for me, but it was nice to get back into "real" tanking after a week and good to acquaint myself with some of the new dungeon mechanics. I look forward to more.