The Cost of Victory

As per my previous post, things went very well in Ulduar on Thursday.

I'm looking forward to tonights second half, fingers-crossed that I get a place in the squad, and can live up to my tanking duties resepctfully. Since I've played with my Spec a little, and fuiddled with my Glyphs and rotations a little, I've seen a slight improvement in my tanking skills. I haven't been monitoring them with meters or anything, since that's pretty hard to do. But I've definitely struggled less to grab aggro, and keep it.

What I didn't mention in my previous post is that I actually won a few drops from the last Ulduar run too. A got a couple of Tanking pieces, namely bracers, and a new sword. And a couple of Healing pieces, mainly because no-one else could use them, so it was that or DE'ing them.

My healing set is pretty much just thrown together but, through almost total chance, is now mostly epic. It's badly gemmed (or even not-gemmed, in some cases) but it serves well in cases of emergency, or adequately in Heroic 5-Mans. I haven't found one that I can't heal so far. The bonus to that is that my Healing set requires practically zero cash. Once I'm fully satisfied with my Tanking set, or feeling rich, I'll sort it out properly, but for now it's good-enough for day-to-day use.

My Tanking set is undergoing constant change. Upgrades are coming in from Ulduar, and my stats are generally constantly improving.
The downside to this is the cost. I had some of the best gems and enchants on my gear, and having to replace them on each new tanking piece is costing me a small fortune.
Not only that, but some of the upgrades are not direct stat improvements. For example, my new sword has much better overall stats than my previous one, but the new one has absolutely no +Def on it. Where as the old one had a nice big lump of it.
That leaves me in the position of having to switch my gems again, to put some +Def back in to my other gear.

Unfortunately, that's now left me almost Bankrupt. I haven't done any dailies in weeks, and the costs of flasks, respecs and upgrades has taken it's toll.
I'm now sat at 539 Def, so need the extra point before being crit immune again. I'm in need of an Enduring Eye of Zul gem, to bring me back above the cap. And now it's all going to be a bit rushed.
I have stuff on the AH that should provide enough cash for the 160g price of the Gem, but I'll probably be late online tongiht anyway, so will need to be quick if I'm to cash in at the mailbox, buy the gem, and make it to the raid in a decent time.

Raiding is a gold-intensive sport. It's fun to do, but it costs more and more gold the higher the level you do it at. If you imagine Herocis as being your neighbourhood football team, it costs you bugger-all to go and see them play. Naxx would be your local heroes, who have a stadium, it costs you more to see everything, but nothing that would keep the locals away, and then you have Ulduar and Above. The Premiership, or the European Teams, who can charge an arm and a leg for entry, because even if you won't pay it, they know for a fact that someone else will.
David Beckham might be worth a fortune, but I bet if you added up all the in-game gold spent on defeating Yogg Saron, it'd put some transfer deals to shame.
Not to mention the amount of real money spent on subscriptions to play the game in the first place.

Fingers crossed for tonight. Raids going well = extra gold. And I don't mind grinding the dailies if it's for a good reason... like the enchant on a new shield.