Upgrades...

...suck.

Okay, that was harsh. Everyone loves upgrades. Especially at the lower tier levels, when you can swap gear in and out with impunity. More expertise? Great! More hit rating? Kickass. More strength/attack power? Everyone needs more of that.

A strange thing happens as you get more and better gear though. You have to start juggling stats, because you start hitting ceilings. I'm sure everyone sees this and it's old news to them... but as a healer, it was never something you had to worry about. There were four stats to focus on as a resto shaman; Spell power, MP/5, Crit, and Intelligence. None of those stats had a soft or hard cap on them (Okay, maybe crit, but that's so high as to be a non-issue) so you could stack to your heart's content. Obviously some stats were more desirable than others, but for the most part, and upgrade would always be an upgrade.

DPS and tanks are different though. Caps exist on some abilities, and you should always strive to hit those caps, but never go over them. Hit rating is the easiest example to use. For non-DWing melee DPS, the hit rating is 263. Go below that, and you suffer serious DPS losses due to misses. Go above that and you're wasting stat points that can be better spent elsewhere. It's a fine balance, but usually not to hard to adjust around with gems and enchants.

Until you get things like expertise thrown in.

And whether or not your only raiding shadow priest shows up, costing you that 3% spell hit.

And keeping a minimum crit rate to fuel your abilities.

I'm just lucky I don't have to worry about fuckin' Armor Penetration (yes, pun intended) as of yet.

The point of this rant? I have two, soon to be three, upgrades sitting in my inventory that I have no idea how to adjust around. It's because of expertise. Remember that axe I won off of Ignis? The Worldcarver. Now, don't get me wrong. I love that axe to death. It's a thing of pure, bestial, raw sexual beauty. I still get compliments from random people on it.

But it's holding me back, I think. Expertise rating of 87 on it alone. That's 10.67 expertise. Add another five because of my Orcishness. That's 15.67 expertise out of a soft cap of 26 from one item. 60% of my soft cap'd expertise comes from one solitary item. That's... a problem. Especially considering how much expertise the rest of Ulduar gear boasts, it's no wonder I'm over the cap and still climbing.

Right now I sit at 28 expertise - two points over the soft cap. If I put on my two most recent upgrades, I go up to 31. Others keep asking me if I'm ever going to use the Runed Orbs for my belt to be made, but I can't because that has even more expertise on it! Sigh.

The running joke is that I attack mobs from the front simply because I can without issues. At least I don't have DPS issues during Crazy Cat Lady. That's a bright side, yeah?

I should be thankful though. At least I have a great weapon. Six kill on 25-man Iron Council and Relg still hasn't seen his sword drop. He wants it bad. Every time the raid says "We're skipping IC tonight", I can hear his heart drop just a bit. Poor guy.


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On a non-WoW issue, my wrist is still healing. Some days are better than others. Today is a good day, hence the long post.

Oh, and Thornley is my new favourite artist of the month. Check his music out. I recommend 'All Fall Down', 'Another Memory', and 'So Far So Good.'