Molten Burnout

I was reading a post at Kurn's about how she was getting burned out by everything that needed to be done in order for a responsible PvE raider to max out their effort every week in terms of valor points, dailies, rep, etc.

It's a lot, and I'm at the point where I'm close to throwing my hands up and saying "Screw those Molten Front dailies, screw those heroics, I don't care if I need more gear." I only raid twice a week on my druid main because I want relatively low commitment gameplay, but the Molten Front material takes almost a month to fully unlock, and I've been slavishly doing all their dailies since 4.2 landed (even on the nights I would normally be off WoW) because a day I don't do is another day's delay to the end.

Worse, I'm doing this on two characters so my engineering paladin will be able to make the Flintlocke's Woodchucker scope for my guild's hunters.

And I think it's retarded that it's more time efficient (at the moment) to get valor points from heroics than raid boss kills.

Then, like Kurn, I have a holy paladin that's occasionally running with a second guild other than the one I lead, because it's nice to go to a raid and not have responsibility.

But all this is sucking up a huge amount of time.

Now that I've unlocked the Druids of the Talon on my druid and the Shadow Wardens on my paladin, the number of dailies I do each day on both my 85s has skyrocketed and I'm doing them everyday.

I suppose I don't have to, but I feel like I should to be a good raider on my main and to get the engy schematic for my guild's hunters on my alt (because I'm sure the first few engineers to get the schematic will be gouging on the AH).

The thing is... I know the rep will come with time. As we kill trash and bosses in Firelands I'll eventually get Avengers of Hyjal rep, so I can close my eyes and say there's no need to do trash runs. Yes, it would help get gear sooner, but I can at least pretend any gear upgrades are minor enough on my main that it won't make much of a difference.

The valor points will come with time as well. I'll still be raiding twice a week and we'll kill bosses.

Both rep and valor points will come while doing pre-planned scheduled events.

But the stupid Molten Front dailies... I think the reason I'm so annoyed by them is that they aren't a fun group activity and they're mostly the same thing day in, day out and they're taking up time when I'd otherwise be doing something else that is most likely not WoW.

Previous daily quest grinds didn't seem to be such a big deal.

The Netherwing dailies weren't for gear, so I never worried about missing a day in TBC. Hodir gave shoulder enchants in WotLK, but it was relatively easy to get the blue versions and even then there was perhaps a max of seven dailies and I only was working on one character at a time. The Argent Coliseum dailies didn't even give anything to raiders. They were mostly just for fun, city rep, and titles. Gear was only really needed by alts.

In Cata, Therazane and Dragonmaw were probably best known for having dailies, but they also had tabards so dailies weren't the only way to get gear and enchants. I could combine gaining rep with heroic runs so it felt very time efficient.

But the Molten Front gives competitive gear as well as the means to craft competitive gear. I just realized there's a neck unlocked a few days ago that's better than the one I'm wearing, and there's a relic I could use while I save valor points for my tier pieces. And of course no hunter is going to want to be without the Woodchucker.

I'm just not sure how much longer I can keep this up before I'm going to want to take a step back from the game. I think if there wasn't such a clear gating mechanism, with its own story, and with competitive rewards I'd take my time and play through the sequence leisurely, but since it's not, I feel compelled to burn through it.

And the worst part is... there's all this new craftable gear, but no new engineering helm. The engineer in me is sad.

[Paladin] Goodbye My Nitro Boosts

Despite all the nerfs that engineering gets hit by, despite all the complaints that it doesn't have any worthwhile self-enchants, I've been reasonably happy as an paladin engineer. Do I wish it was better? Sure. But I've had my fun with target dummies, repair bots, the portable mailbox, parachute cloaks, mote farming, the goblin rocket launcher (favorite way to do the first pull in Mechanar back when it was possible to tank as holy), and of course the overpowered goggles I could make before I hit the then 70 or now 80 level cap.

I admit one of the reasons I selected engineering over blacksmithing back when I first created Gillien was because I wanted the goggles. They looked cool, and blacksmithing had very little to offer a holy paladin that didn't come out of the Black Temple. And I found that despite all the whining about the profession, it actually wasn't half the pain to level that I thought it would be (I made a tidy profit while leveling through all the vanilla content).

Recently Blizzard took away the stealth detection from my goggles, which was a bit annoying, but to be honest I didn't use my goggles for my PvP helm. I'd taken a spare PvE helm with a fair amount of haste on it and socketed/enchanted it specifically for PvP.

What bothers me at the moment is the nerfing of my Nitro Boosts.

After several attempts to balance the Nitro Boots ability in the arena, we have decided that we currently do not have an acceptable solution. Until we are able to better balance this ability it has been shut down in the arenas. We fully plan to continue working on this item and we intend to adjust it in upcoming patches.

Last night's arena games may very well be the last time I'll ever do my favorite escape move (Hand of Freedom followed by Nitro Boosts to LOS an opponent who's snared me).

The Nitro Boosts had already been nerfed from their earliest iteration, but even nerfed, those 2 seconds of increased speed were fantastic. Nobody expects a paladin to sprint away from them.

Apparently they were too fantastic.

/sigh

Crygil goes on to say:

We have plans to make certain that this item is still worth the investment made in it. So don't vendor it just yet.

But the thing is, it's not like the boots are something I'd vendor. They're my WG PvP boots, and the Nitro Boosts (there are no Nitro Boots) are a self-only "enchant." I don't think I can wait for a future patch to fix them (because while turning off the Nitro Boosts in arena is easy to do, compensating their nerf in other ways requires testing so we probably won't see anything until the next patch) so I'm going to have to enchant them with something else in the meantime.

I'll have a choice between the +22 stam enchant or the Tuskarr's Vitality for +15 stam and increased run speed. I'm already using a Tireless Skyflare Diamond for my meta to get a run speed increase, so going with the latter of the two boot enchants will mean getting a new meta, and if I get a new meta I'm strongly considering the one that reduces the duration of silences.