To Roll or Not-to-Roll

There's a little uncomfortableness in the raiding guildies at the moment, about the number of drops people are getting.
People seem a little unhappy with the way the loot is being distributed. The intention was, originally, to keep it as fair as possible. Anyone who is in the raid, with their main, may roll on any drop that is an upgrade for their main-spec.

If there are no takers, then it is offered to roll for off-specs, if nobody wants it after that it gets DE'd for shards in the guild bank.

If a BoE item drops, then the same rules apply, but instead of DE'ing it at the end, it gets put on the AH, and the raiders that night split the cash from the sale.

This seems a pretty straightforward system. And it doesn't favour the more hard-core raiders over the newbies, as everyone gets an equal chance to roll.
Sure, this might mean that someone who is new to the raid, or has sketchy attendance, gets a major upgrade, meaning that someone who has been loyally raiding every week, misses out. But I don't see any fairer, and as uncomplicated, way of distributing it.

Buty people are unhappy... So would it be fairer to bring in a DKP system (Dragon Kill Points)?

My understanding of DKP is this:

Every raider who is present at a boss-kill gets points awarded. When a drop appears, that they want, they use those points to bid for the item. The points roll-over in to all future raids, so people can build up a larger number of points.
This means that regular raiders obviously have more points, and have more bargaining power, and newer raiders have fewer points and so less chance of winning an item.
But this also means that people are more likely to pass on a minor upgrade, with the intention of saving their points to bid for that special drop that they want.

In some ways this seems even fairer than the system that we use now. And new raiders aren't going to miss out on every drop simply because they don't have any bidding power, as the more experienced raiders will either already have the item, or will be saving their points, and so will pass on the item anyway.

I know there's addons to help with the DKP systems, but having never used one, or been in a guild with a DKP system, I'm not sure how much work it would be to manage one. Or whether it would be worth the hassle.

Unfortunately for me, it wouldn't help much, as my main competition for drops is the only rogue in the team, who happens to be the raid leader, and so will always have more DKP's than me. But I'm not worried about that. Besides, his DPS could do with the upgrade more than mine ;P

Everyone's a Crit-ic

Apolgies for the delay between my posts again, but I'm sure the world isn't going to come to a standstill just because I stop babbling on.
Things at work are going to get a little more back to normal from this week, so my frequency of posts should go back up too.

Anyway.... Crit vs AP... Discuss.

My DPS is usually at the top of the meters for an overall run, but that doesn't necesarily mean that I do the most damage on bosses. Particularly on ones like Heigan, where I can't even send in my pet.
But generally speaking I'm happy with the amount of damage that I'm doing.
My question is, how do I do more?

At first I was stacking as much AP as possible, and it was working, I saw a steady increase in my DPS. Until I reached 4k AP unbuffed. At that point, my DPS seemed to level out a bit, and even when buffed up to 6k+, I didn't necessarily notice the major improvements that I would have expected.

So I switched out as many gems as I could for +Crit instead of +AP. Which now gives me just under 4k AP (Unbuffed), and about 28% Crit (Unbuffed).
Lookign at my last ReCount meter from Naxx, it shows I averaged 36% overall Crit, and yes I was 1 Million dmg above 2nd place (overall), but my DPS hasn't really moved at all.

I've also picked up t7 Gloves and Chest, so my pet is now 5% dmg higher (which should equate to about 50DPS)
Although I'm still stuck with my Blue helm and shoulders, and both rings, and 1 blue trinket. Unfortunately, the only place I can pick up decent upgrades for all of them is Raids, and my luck on drops hasn't been too good.

So, any ideas? Should I be stacking Crit, or should I go back to raw Attack Power?

Smythy

Naxx-Woes

I filled in for a missing ranged DPS spot last night. In the guilds Naxx(10) run.
Military Quarter and Frostwyrm lair.

The DPS was high, the healers were capable, the tanks were tough enough, but it just goes to show that sometimes a team just doesn't work.

The organisation was just not working, people weren't sure of their roles, there was a little confusion about positioning, and a few cases of people just not listening, or not paying attention during fights.

Result? About 10 wipes. Saph finally downed, and 1 attempt at KT was enough to know it was a definite no-go.

With the new raiding style, movement and positioning is key. Tactics can be learned, but unless everyone reacts at the right time. It's going to be a wipe. Unfortunately, 1 slow reaction, or mis-placed player can wipe a team. And that's what was happening.

I'm sure Thursdays team will do much better though, they're the more experienced and more team-work oriented group.

If you read this though Vedd, I'd really suggest that we don't leave the military quarter until last anymore.
In my opinion, it's a much easier set of fights than the Construct Quarter, so if we pull of the Arachnids, Plague, and Military in one-shots.
We'd even have time to start on the Constructs in advance of the following Monday. Meaning more time to perfect the KT tactics, and possibly move on to harder things.

For anyone who doesn't know. Sapphiron is basically just a tank and spank, with only a few minor twists.

Team-Work and positioning is king in the new raid design, and it's hard, but I like it.
It reminds me of the Shade of Aran encounter in Kara. Difficult to master, but alot of fun.

Happy EVEr after?

No, not really.
My trail period of EVE is reachign a close, and to be honest I'm very underwhelmed by the whole experience.

The game felt like I was just going through the motions, trying to achieve something that wasn't really going to make a difference anyway.

Despite all the training, and despite several ship upgrades, and despite seeing marked improvements in my stats. Not just in numbers, but in actual battle situations. I was bored.

Maybe I just couldn't relate to my ship being my character. Especially when I could change it at will, or adapt it to take on any challenge. In PvE encounters, it was ridiculously easy to fight off an attack by upto 20 enemies, in what I expected to be a very difficult encounter.

I did actually manage to lose one of my ships, but since money was also unexpectedly easy to come by, I simply replaced it with an even better one.
Also, the majority of the time, you're not actually face-to-face with whoever / whatever it is you're even fighting. They're nothing more than a reference in one of your control panels. Getting toe to toe with them was a bad idea anyway, and since my attack range and damage output was so high it was a simple case of "Lock-On Target"->"Orbit 5km"->"F1+F2+F3+F4"->"Boom". I never saw them, they never saw me...... Lather, rinse, repeat.
I spent longer looting the ships than I did fighting them.

So my days with EVE are over, and I don't see myself going back there unless the Munquis decide to up and leave Darkspear for the 'New Eden' realm, in which case, It'll suddenly become alot more fun.

Food glorious food

It's been a while since my last post... again.

Apologies if any of you ahve been waiting with baited breath for the next installment of my rantings. But I doubt there's many (if any) of you.
I've just been too busy at work recently, and with a pending promotion possibility, that is obviously taking priority right now.

But I haven't been neglecting my WoW duties either. More progress in Naxx, the Munquis have reached Kel'Thuzad but, despite tactical changes and hours of wipes, the Positional-Fu was just not with us that night. And we had to give it up. But it's a definite win for next time.

I've been using the rest of my spare time to level up my cooking skills.
Not too bad at all. I'm now on 420 cooking. And it cost me a minimal 400g on the AH to buy all the mats I needed.
Many of which I then re-sold for a small profit, and so off-set some of the cost.

The rest I picked up myself. Which made me even more money, since animals tend to have nice skins, which I also take, and are often surrounded by herbs which I also take, and occasionally they also drop nice items, which I take.
So after almost reaching the max cooking skill, I now have 1500g in the bank (1k more than I started with), and another 1kg sat on the AH. What credit crunch?

As a side efffect of killing all of those mobs, my gorrila also hit 80, and has become a practically unstoppable killing machine. He's more than capable of tanking about 10-12 level 80ish mobs, and since my DPS is high, I can nuke them all within seconds, and we move on to the next batch.

It's got to the point where, if I see a group of mobs close together, I'll even dismount, just because it's so quick for me to kill them, and the rewards are so high.

Unless Blizz bring in a patch that makes them uncrittable I don't think he's going to be tanking any heroics, but he's more than suitable for an overgeared group, or for trash.

It's like having my own personal Paladin. Can't wait until next patch when I can take my DPS pet out, and switch between them without having to visit a stable.

Online with EVE

Well, I signed up with steam for my 21 day free trial of EVE. And then un-installed steam and used the seperately downloaded client.

It was a 1.1GB download but luckily I live in a city, the same one where my ISP has it's head office, so I generally get decent speeds. Last night, my 8Mb connection was actually running at 9Mb for some reason, so it took me about 26 minutes to get the full game. Not bad at all.
So I used the time to finish off another few levels of Army of Two.

Anyway, I installed the game, tweaked a few things, and logged in. After being guided through the setup process, I was dropped into the middle of the universe in a ship. And a little system-shock style computer guided me through a few of the basics.

Before long, I'd destroyed 3 other ships and mined a little ore. And then My other half came home so that was the end of the nights exploring. In total, I think I moved about 30km from my starting position. I guess it's "One small step for man" in this case.

My first impressions are good. It's a nice looking game, but only after much tweaking of graphics settings. At first I had giant black blobs on my screen where something was wrong with the clipping and shadow effects. But managed to get it sorted with only a couple of attempts.

The UI is a bit daunting at first, but I was expecting that anyway. At one point I lost one of my info screens, and never figured out how to get it back up. (The one that shows me what's nearby).
This was probably the most useful screen, so I was a bit lost without it.

The other good news is that at least 2 of the other Munquis also play EVE, and that would obviously make the whole experience much better. And from what I've read, it's much easier to function as a group, and easier to make profits etc...

I haven't made a decision on the game, after my only minimal amount of play, but things are positive so far. Who knows, if things pan-out maybe there'll be a Munqui Corporation?

Don't worry though WoW fans, I'm not planning on hanging up my hunters bow at any time soon. But it's nice to have a change of scenery now and then. And you couldn't ask for a bigger change than WoW -> EVE.

Watch this space... or that space... or any space for that matter, you just might see a player named Smythy flying through it.

EDIT: BTW Brast, I don't know if it's only happening to me, but every time I try to log onto the Munqui forums my Browser crashes. Never done it before. Any ideas?

EVE-HO!

I've been reading up on alot of the other MMORPG's lately, and the one that's grabbed my attention most is EVE Online.
Yes, it's been in the news alot recently, about political assasination, plots to overthrow major corporations, dirty dealings and scandal. But it's apparently all hapenning in EVE too. ;)

Now I don't believe that I'd be dropped right into that whole mess of things from the word go. It obviously takes months, if not years, of practice to become that involved.
But it did open my eyes to the concept of the game. And that appeals to me.

It seems to mirror life in alot of ways, and I could happily see myself as a rogue mercenary cruising through the universe taking out anyone for the right amount of money.
Or as a 'transporter' who moves 'goods' around without asking too many questions.

I know there's a free trial of the game available, and I'm considering downloading it and giving it a go.

I may report back from the far reaches of space in my next post. (or Not)

Long Time No-See

Well hello there, long time no-see.

It's been a while since I updated my blog. I usually write at work, and I've just been too busy recently.
But since I've got a bit of down-time, here's whats been happening lately;

First off, I got my Drake. It's the red one from Wyrmrest, that costs 1600g.
I had to borrow a little gold to be able while I waited for my AH stuff to sell, so 'Thanks' to Funk for that one.
By the way - I hope you got the cash I mailed you back? Haven't seen you online since.

Secondly, I ran a few old dungeons with some other Munquis. they were both in the Caverns of Time. Black Morass (Opening of the dark portal) and Escape from Durnholde Keep. Both are excellent examples of why some of the old content is much better than the newer stuff.
Sure they are both TBC heroics, but they, and some of the pre-TBC stuff are much better designed and much more fun than the average instance these days.

With some of the old dungeons you felt that you had a quest to accomplish, even if it was destroying the world, or rescuing the leader of the horde, or reaching a pirate ship in the middle of a cave. And the sense of achievement when you complete them is much higher than say Utgarde Keep.
In Utgarde you're basically just grinding through mobs to reach the bosses, with no emotion or feeling, and no real sense of what you're doing it for (other than a drop or an emblem).
Being sent into the Deadmines to put a stop to the threat of the pirates, or into the Stockades to put down an uprising... these things felt more epic than "Ingvar works for Arthas. Go and kill him".
In a way, I think attunements should be brought back in. Yeah it's aggravating if you want someone on your team who isn't attuned, but so what, at least you feel more a part of the storyline. And you've actually earned your place on that raid team.

I'll stop waffling on now... Maybe

Thirdly, I've been grinding money, mainly for my new Drake, and mainly in Sholazar.
Just doing circles of one small corner of that place provides me with enough skins and herbs to keep me going. And I can make hundred's of gold in around an hour. It's also a good area to level my pets up. So my Gorrilla (tank) is now almost 80 too.
It was amazing watching how much better he gets just for the sake of a couple of levels.
When he was the same level as the mobs, he was being hit hard, and I pulled aggro constantly. Now he's only 2 levels higher, he's almost unstoppable and it's much more difficult for me to get hit. Which is perfect for grinding.
With his AoE thunderstomp, it's like having a Pally in my pocket. Send him in, get him to round up all of the mobs in the area, throw him a heal or two, and Volley the shit out of anything near him. When there's 10+ mobs in his range, it takes me at least twice as long to skin them than it does to kill them.
It's a shame that Hunters can't cast 'Thorns', it'd make for a proper mini-pally.

I can't wait until Blizz allows me to switch pets without going to a stable, it'll be so much more useful to have a spare tank in my pocket for the times when something more tactical than a tank-and-spank is called for. Or to switch between my Cat and a Corehound for caster encounters, or maybe a Scorpid for when range is essential.

Arms Race

The Munquis ran their 2nd night of official Naxx raiding last night.
It didn't go well. Hours were spent wiping and rezzing took forever, because some of the players had mis-spent their youth, and not played computer games. (You know who you are).

My DPS was top of the charts... Great. It just concerns me a little that I was waaaaaaay out in front last night.
By the end of the run I'd dealt around 1,200,000 damage more than the next nearest person to me (Grenthal - DPS Warrior). And half a million more to the next person below that.
Yes, some of the other DPS'ers were busy with other tactics, but that's just not right. And we only killed 3 bosses.

I'd bought a new scope for my bow before going. Changing +15 Dmg to +40 Crit, I like that change, and I'll stick with it. And I had an Endless Rage potion, which brought me up to 5102 AP (Buffed).

Alot of the bosses in Naxx seem to be more suited to ranged DPS than Melee. That's a bit unbalanaced too.

In case Blizz asks though. I never said that.

*Ducks the Nerf-Bat*

Definitely Maybe

My hunter managed to pick up his new staff from VH the other day. It was incidental, not planned.
I was just grinding emblems for my Pallies XP boosting shoulders. Got them now.

However, there was an ulterior motive. I actually arranged the group to do a CoT: Stratholme run, for another chance to roll on the drake.
Unfortunately, we were nowhere near quick enough. We actually wiped a couple of times. I'd never done that before in Strat.

So the emblems were helpful but no Drake-roll.
However, for the last few weeks, I've been wearing my Wyrmrest tabard. And didn't realise how close I was to Exalted. I dinged during the VH run.

But now I'm in a quandry. Do I just keep running CoT: Strat for the timed Drake. Which depends heavily on the team I'm with, and how many are rolling on it. Or do I spend 1.6k Gold on the Wyrmrest drake. (I'm about 500g short, so will need to save up anyway).????

Decisions, Decisions. Not sure what to do about this one.

Prot-Power

I made my mind up over the weekend. My Pally will be my next lvl 80.
My Hunter is in lockdown now until Naxx. His only job may be to collect another 14 emblems for some heirloom shoulders for my Pally.

Re-Specced my Healadin to a Tankadin. Did some research, figured out the mechanics. I've been a pally tank plenty of times before, but it seems to have changed quite alot since I last did it.

Spent about 30g on the AH, to replace my Kara epic healing gear with stuff that gives Stam & Strength, and I was off into Northrend.

The result? Suprise.

Yeah, I'm not a noob at the game, and I'm no stranger to Pally mechanics, and my Macro skills help alot. But you can't tell me that I'm supposed to be able to ride into the middle of Skorm with mainly healing gear equipped (even if it was epic). Aggro 12 or more mobs and finish the fight with full mana and almost full health?!?!

I'm not complaining, much. It's going to mean my Pally is much quicker to level than even my Hunter was. And when he gets his heirloom shoulders the +10% xp will boost it even further.

Rested xp meant about 2k per kill. Even keeping to 10 mobs at a time, they'll all die easily within about 30 seconds... that's 20k per group, and 40k per minute.
And those mobs respawn fast.
Even allowing time for repairs (because it's a lot of wear and tear on my armor) that means I could do nothing but grind those mobs for just over an hour, collecting loads of trash, cash and loot, and have gained a level by the end of it.

Did someone say "Nerf"?

House Call

I've been reading Tobolds Blog, as I always do.
And one of the comments on "How to spend Gold in Warcraft" has intrigued me.

It suggests a new profession, linked directly to Player Housing.

I think we would all love Player (or at least Guild) Housing to become a reality, and if it ever does, what will you do with that nice new hovel you probably just paid 100,000 Gold for?

Furnish it, of course.

So what about a new LumberJack / Carpentry profession combo? I think that is a great idea (Credit to the original poster).

And to ensure that the profession doesn't dry-up as soon as everyone has already bought their furniture (like Inscription sort of has). How about a durability rating for the furniture?

Over time / use the furniture degrades and needs to be repaired otherwise it will be un-useable.
So the furniture requires maintenance, and materials, which obviously have to be paid for.
This keeps the Carpenters in business, and provides another gold-sink for Blizz.

And what about the combo of StoneMason / Builder, to build the housing in the first place, with a durability rating on the houses themselves?

Or Mortgage Lender / LoanShark to get you the sort of money you're going to need to pay for all this stuff.
I suppose Blizz could do this via an NPC though, and if you don't make your payments on time, they'll make you Bankrupt and re-possess everything you own. Or maybe that's just too much like real life these days.

Seriously though, there's also a few other profession combos that I could see working within the game:

Inker / Tattooist - Collect Inks, maybe from Herbs, or dust looted from mobs. And then Use them to create Tattoos, which augment the body. Stats boosts etc...

Inker / Dyer - As above, but creates Dyes that allow you to re-color your gear, or even Paint your house with them. I'm guessing that a bottle of Black dye would be very expensive.

PackHorse / Mercenarys - If this gets introduced, I think it should be a profession. The crafter uses weapons and armour to kit out a 'New Recruit' NPC. The better the gear, the better the NPC's stats. This could find a use for all those trash blues and greens that drop from heroics / raids. The Mercenaries can then be 'hired' on the AH. As the crafter, you get the bonus of being able to equip your own Mercs with more gear once they are complete, and they don't have a time limit. (Similar to the Diablo II system).
The NPC's obviously couldn't have too much HP / DPS or it would over-balance things. And, for the non-crafters, a time limit of a week. Then you'd have to 'Hire' another one.

Bear with It

I recently decided to roll a new toon. A Druid.
I've always fancied the class, but never gotten round to actually making one.
The theory of being all the classes rolled into one seems appealing, mainly because it gives flexibility to the guild.
Spec'ing Feral would allow me to focus on DPS, but also provide Tanking for guild runs if needed, by using the same talents, but maybe a change of gear.
And when Dual-Spec finally arrives, I'd be a potential DPS / TANK with the bonus Healer option thrown in.

Druids are the only class that can do this. Pallies are excellent. And I still love them, although I resent the fact that I rolled a dwarf. I don't know why, but that seriously irritates me, and puts me off playing it.
But even With Dual-Spec a Pally can only do 2/3 things, because the talent trees are totally seperate. Ret = DPS, Prot = TANK, Holy = Healer.

Only problem is, it means levelling an entirely new toon from 1-80 and I don't know if I have the patience for it.
My Hunter can't really get any more upgrades from the Emblems of Heroism, but has quite a few spare, and will be getting plenty more from Naxx soon.
With just another 19 of them, I can buy a set of the Heirloom shoulders to give +10% XP, then maybe I'll send them to my Pally, and try and power level him to 80.
Only problem there is, If I buy the Plate ones, they'll only be useable by Pallies and Warriors.
I suppose 40 emblems isn't really too hard to get though, if I wanted another set.

Concerning my Druid... I love the theory, but will it pan-out in practice. I don't know.

Knowing me, I'll proabably get the shoulders, and maybe a weapon, and send them down to my Pally to boost him through to 80.
I can live with ONLY being a Tank and a Healer. If DPS is required, that's what my Hunter is the expert at.

Raidical

We did a guild run of Sartharion last night. All went well, I was 2nd in the DPS meter, but it was a very close thing between Grenthal and Myself, with the number one spot changing places a few times.

We did great, took Sartharion with no drakes up, and only 1 death from a semi-squishy melee. Pretty good for a first attempt... a little too good in fact.

My main concern is how easy it all was. It felt no more difficult than a standard heroic. And out chances of failure were very slim.
Having now run the Arachnid Quarter of Naxx, and the Obsidian Sanctum on 10 men, I can safely say that 10-man raiding isn't what it used to be.

These days it seems to be more of a case of a standard heroic, but with 10 men, instead of 5.

Kara used to be a challenge, with a steep learning curve, whether you knew the boss tactics or not, you had to stay on your toes.
With the raids I've done so far, that's not the case.
Sure, there's a bit of positional tactics going on, and a few techniques. But I haven't seen a wipe yet. Only the occasional squishy going down to a random hit.

The Munquis are investing alot of time into preparing for raiding, and to be honest, I'm not so sure if it's going to be needed. The same team that made the run last night would appear to be able to clear Naxx quite easily, or at least with very minimal wipes.
I think we may be over-thinking the whole Naxx thing.

Should it really be this easy? Or maybe we're all just better than we think?

PUG'ing Hell

The other guildies were all busy yesterday, when I logged on.
So I played with my spec for a bit. And re-tuned my glyphs and macros to match.

Looks like I'm on to a winner with my new build design. (See previosu post).
But any nerfs or changes to the global cooldowns could throw the whole thing out of whack.

Anyway, for a bit of field testing I decided to try a PUG.
Yes, you read that right, a Pick Up Group. Anyone who knows me, has a fair idea that I have a very low opinion of PUG's.
Generally I consider it a better idea to do guild runs, and PUG empty spaces if needed. That way, there's usually only 1 slacker to deal with, and sometimes you can be pleasantly suprised with how good they are. A few of the Munquis themselves were picked up in that way.

So Violet Hold is the daily... great... nice and quick, and a possible chance for my staff too.

Luckily enough, I tend to get picked up quite quickly in the PUGs if I post my Attack Power in the Comments... Funny that.

A Pally, a Warrior, a DK, and a Mage. Excellent, no Druid competition for my staff either.
But that's where the good news ended. The Tank was slow in picking up adds, so they were running around all over the place. Meaning I had to use my pet to off-tank when they charged the healer / mage.
And the Mage had a tendancy to let loose before the tank had even started to tickle them, which made the bad tanking even worse.
The DK was also quite low on the DPS meter, so although he/she wasn't doing anything wrong, we were struggling to clear the mobs before the next portal appeared.

Somehow, we managed to reach the final boss but only with 4 men. The DK had died almost 4 portals ago, but there had been no time to rez him, and he obviously felt it was too much like hard work to just run back in.
So the healer got ALOT of greif and was ordered to rez him when Cyagnosia had already spawned. Dumb Shits.

The healer did as ordered, and the group wiped within about 10 seconds. Amazing!

That not being bad enough, the other 3 imediately started to flame the healer as a "Nuub", and not politely.
I gave them some stick back, and told them to STFU, if they thought they would have got as far without him they were wrong. His healing was more than good enough, considering the lack of control on the adds.

Unsuprisingly, the healer quit the group. At which point, I quit too... Badges or no badges, Staff or No Staff, I'd rather live without them, than spend any more time with dicks like that.

I whispered the Healer to try and re-assure him that his healing had been fine, but got no response.
In fact, the healer hadn't said a single word throughout the entire run, other than a "rdy" at the very start.

It's for all the reasons above that I seriously despise PUG's. That healer was a Pally, and good at his job. But with dick-heads like that greifing healers everytime things go wrong it's no suprise that most people don't like to play healers. And the next time I see that Pally, he'll probably be waving a shield and spamming consecration.

PUG-Off

Spec Spending

After the improvement I've seen in my DPS since my little re-spec the other day, I thought I'd do a bit of research on my chosen talent points.

It turns out that many of the tooltips are either a little misleading, or when you do the maths don't really add up to much.

So at some point this weekend, I'm going to try out a new build:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cEb0zxxRVu0esuce0bZx00b

(Note: It requires an addon to use this build effectively, such as Track-O-Matique)

Rotation Rotation Rotation

That's the mantra for Hunters.

Mark -> Sting -> Shoot -> Lather -> Rinse -> Repeat

I've been wondering lately why my DPS seems to be dropping, when my gear is getting so much better.
Obviously, the Hunter Nerf had some effect, but I should still be seeing an improvement.
So, having a bit of spare time last night, I thought I'd do a bit of testing on the heroic target dummies. And, suprise suprise, I figured out the problem.
My all-purpose macro's were mis-firing 1/3 of the time. They worked fine pre-patch and blizz didn't mention anything about changing them, but hey... since when do they tell us everything?

So with a bit of tweaking I got things back to normal, and then realised that my Talents were a little mis-placed after the nerf, so also did a small respec.

........35g Later.

I now find myself with 4k Attack Power, and have a spare 103 Hit Rating. So I can re-gem a few things, and increase my Attack Power or Crit even further... Result!

4k AP (with Hawk Aspect), 100% Hit, 25-27% Crit, and 17kHP all Unbuffed... Sounds good to me.
Now I just need to pick up some shoulder and helm enchants (but nothing too fancy - not epic yet) and change a couple of gems to re-use some of that wasted Hit Rating. Arthas here I come.
And still not one item from raids. All this is from Heroics only.

EDIT: Decided to try an pick myself up a Staff of Trickery - Looks like I'm not going to find anything better pre-25 Mans.
It actually already dropped for me once, but I passed for a druid (Tins I think) who needed it more at the time.

Naxxed Out

Its taken me the whole of... well... just a couple of weeks really, and I'm now maxed out in pre-Naxx gear:

Head: Plunderer's Helmet (Heroic Drop)
Neck: Pendant of the Outcast Hero (Emblem Reward)
Shoulders: Spaulders of the Abomination (Heroic Drop)
Chest: Polished Regimental Hauberk (Rep Reward)
Waist: BatRider's Cord (See below)
Legs: Giantmaim Leggaurds (AH 300g)
Feet: Boots of the Neverending Path (Rep Reward)
Wrists: Giantmaim Bracers (AH 300g)
Hands: Handgrips of the Savage Emissary (Heroic Drop)
Ring 1: Dream Signet of the Bandit (AH 50g)
Ring 2: Stained-Glass Shard Ring (AH 50g)
Trinket 1: Mirror of Truth (Emblem Reward - Ignore the tooltip, it procs in ranged too)
Trinket 2: Crusader's Locket (Quest Reward - Green, but no better AP trinkets till Naxx)
Back: Ice Strikers Cloak (Leatherworking BoE - 300g Mats)
Melee: 2x Fang of Truth (Rep Rewards 62g Each)
Ranged: Drake Mounted CrossBow (Heroic Drop)

The only thing I still have to buy is Vereesa's Silver Chain Belt. And a couple of better enchants / gems. But I'm almost out of cash, and epic enough for now.

Be.Imba actually rates me as capable of handling even the hardest 25-man raids.
And all within just a few weeks of starting heroic runs, a bit of research, and very little gold spent on the AH. That sounds like a bargain to me!

So to all you out there who think raiding is only for the 1337 people... I say:
"Bullshit. Pull your thumb out of your arse, make a bit of effort, and suprise yourself."

With the Munquis now making plans to start raiding Naxx, and a few test-runs already big successes, things are looking promising.
Watch the forums for Munqui Raiding info, coming soon.

Naxx the way (a-ha a-ha) I like it

Actually, I didn't, really. I wasn't that impressed by Naxx.

The Munquis made their second venture into Naxxramas last night (Arachnid Quarter).

It was a last-minute raid, we were all planning on doing Heroics when Shirt suggested that given we had about 18 level 80's on, we look at Naxx instead.
Apologies to anyone who felt left out that they couldn't come, but space was limited, and specs were the priority, followed by those who asked first.
Official Munqui-Raids will be much more organised.

Result:

2 Wipes, which were both entirely just the learning curves, and 3 Bosses down.
The run took a couple of hours, but to be honest, we wasted alot of time waiting for people who were afk, and without the wipes, which I doubt would happen next time it would be much quicker. Probably about an hour, or less, to kill the 3 bosses.

The Group:

Tanks:
Vind (Karudan)
Bronze

Healers:
Raq (Diliana)
Amandala
Rolfi (Pinarello)

DPS:
Vedd
Knicks
Babe (Hetebliksem)
Shirt (Shirtimus)
Me (Hunter)

Summary:

I'll try not to name and shame here, but we probably could have 9 (or even 8) manned it. The Tanks both did fine, with the Healers 2/3 were great, 1 did well enough, but not excellent (although he was also leading the group, so we'll let him off).
With the DPS, we had 3/5 that did similar amounts of damage, at the top of the meter (Yes, I was at the very top, but I won't mention that).
the Other 2 DPS'ers were lacking a little, no offence to them. I know that neither of them have been 80's for very long, so maybe they're still a little undergeared. One DPS'er at the top of the table almost counted for both of the bottom 2. But that's not the point.

My Opinion(s):

The point is..... Naxx IS very easy. A little bit too easy in my opinion. It didn't feel like as much of a challenge as I expected, in fact it was as easy, if not easier, than many heroics.
Also, I wasn't keen on the style of the place. It just didn't have the same atmosphere as somewhere like Karazhan, one of the best designed dungeons in the game IMHO. And the boss design in Kara is awesome, lots of tactics to learn, and all different.
I know it's supposed to be the way it is, but it just didn't feel very 'Epic' in there.

I'm not dissapointed... yet. There's still lots more of Naxx to go, and it may improve. But I didn't expect a disorganised group of udergeared first-timers to be able to make any progress. Fingers-Crossed.