Tank for hire
By Teris | May 18, 2011
Trade chat has occasionally played host to a healer looking for a tank, a dps looking for a quick group, and, very occasionally, a tank offering their insta-queue powers. it was after a rapid-fire set of tweets from wowcynwise that I started considering how a tank (and probably a healer as well to maximize the effectiveness of the group) could turn a couple hours “work” into a tidy profit. When it comes to selling goods/services on wow, there are three basic considerations that buyers have:
1) price – very straightforward, the amount of gold that leaves the buyer’s pocket for the good/service.
2) speed of delivery – the amount of time it takes for the good/service to go from the AH to their mailbox; or in the case of services, the amount of time it takes for the crafter to get to the buyer (or visa versa)
3) quality/quantity – Is the price set for 1 item or 1 stack? Does the crafted item also come with an enchant and gems?
For AH goods, the only real considerations that (most) buyers have is “how much is it going to cost me to buy it out right now” regardless of the range between the bid and the buyout (or the amount of time left on the auction). For materials like herbs and fish, quality doesn’t factor into the equation (there is no “low grade” or “high grade” [Stormvine]) and all that matters is the price-per-piece and if there is a buyout.
Crafted goods have SOME leeway, since the convenience of having a crafted item and its enchant/gems could inflate the price, but that’s only if the buyer doesn’t want to go through the process of finding an enchanter/jewelcrafter themselves (or no guildies are online to do it for free/cheap). Even if you find a buyer for the crafted item, you will likely have to discount it so it’s 10-100g cheaper than its component parts in the AH which might be a mild setback for you, but at least you’re getting the revenue from not just the crafted item, but the gems/enchants as well. This can be avoided if you use some of the rarer enchants/gems (like the BoE enchant recipes for bracers) that happen to be off the AH at the point of sale.
“Bought heroics” would be unique in WoW as they would be pure services (enchanting used to be a pure service, but when vellums were introduced they took their place alongside the other crafting profession). A buyer for a “bought heroic” would pay for the tank and healers time/expertise/synergy to make the run as smooth as possible for the valor points (and gold) the heroic would give. There would be no goods exchanged, just time and gold.
The three considerations listed earlier also apply here, however:
1) Price: how much would each dps have to pay? 100? 200?
2) Speed of delivery: How quickly can the healer/tank recover after each pull/boss for a quick overall run?
3) Quality: How many wipes would be tolerated? Would a refund policy have to be made up if everyone kept dying?
Of course, the DPS buyers have to be of a certain quality (probably judged by ilvl and/or personal reference) to make even a ”bought heroic” any good. If they spend the entire time on /follow or dead, then the onus is on the remaining dps and tank/healer, which is fine if only 1 dps is down, but if all 3 dps are paying and all 3 don’t know that fire is, in fact, still bad, then all parties involved will be in a losing situation (the tank/healer lose the money they’d make due to repairs, the dps take just as long to finish a heroic with “professionals” as they would with “randoms”).
So all this theory is nice, but how could you make a small successful business out of it? Here are my initial thoughts (and if I can find a healer that would be interested in testing this, I might have something for next week):
1) Charge each dps 100g for a regular heroic and double that for a ZA/ZG heroic to be paid half up front, half at the conclusion of the heroic
2) The DPS has to be ilvl 335+ for regular, 350 + for ZA/ZG
3) The service is for the valor points, not gear. If it’s an upgrade, need-over-greed applies, but needing all the vendor-able drops to recoup losses isn’t part of the deal, the tank/healer are here for the cash, not for charity
Assuming a heroic run with little/no trouble (we’ll assume 2 wipes) and a total run-time of 1 hour with 3 paying DPS, here’s a rough approximation of what the tank and healer each walk away with:
150g in payment (100 x 3 divided by 2)
70 valor + 80g in heroic reward (assuming it’s one of the first 7 heroics you do that week)
50g in loot/dropped cash
-30g in repairs (assuming 10g per wipe and 10g after-heroic repair)
140-280 justice points (killed bosses)
So all told that’s about 250g an hour plus valor/justice points… which isn’t a horrible return on your time for something that you would ostensibly be doing anyway by queuing up. Perhaps it’s a little on the cheap side as far as per-DPS payment goes, though going much higher than 200g apiece is going to start curbing your demand very sharply. I’ll see if I can get some data this weekend to share next week. Who knows? I might start a small business on this server.
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Al’akir
By Teris | May 16, 2011
Let’s get this out in the open: I want a 12/12 killed on heroic mode. I would love to see the guild pushed to the top of the realm rankings. That being said, I know it won’t happen. Not because of a lack of gear or time, but because after we drop Al’akir once, I’m not going back to Throne. Probably ever.
The Al’akir fight is not one that is very difficult in theory:
Phase 1) run in for wind blast, don’t get hit by tornadeos, stay spread out to avoid chain lightning.
Phase 2) Kill adds so the debuff stacks on the boss, don’t get hit by tornadoes
Phase 3) Gather together at the base of the boss, stay close to the boss to counteract wind blasts, run away if you get lightning rod, stay out of the lightning cloud.
Each one of these phases can be replaced with “hope RNG doesn’t screw you over.”
Now granted, I know that if you have the best of the best, RNG gets marginalized to the point of silliness, but sadly BWR does not have a Method or Paragon or Ensidia that has 5-night raids, we have 2 nights of progression and 1 night of farming content. We have an handful of hardcore players, a few people who just like raiding, and a few who are, sadly, simply unable to utilize the Z axis effectively. Do I think we can win: yes, for regular. Do I think we can do it in hard mode: not without some serious modifications and/or replacements. And frankly, though 12/12 would be nice, if this means we only get 10 or 11, or 12/13 (Sinestra), I somehow don’t think I’ll cry that much over it.
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Gbank funds: Scrooge or Saint
By Teris | May 5, 2011
As a wage-slave like the vast majority of WoW’s populace, I certainly understand the employees’ complaint that “the man” doesn’t share the wealth and only the rich get richer. As a guild leader, however, I want to make sure that we have a nice pile of cash in reserve in case every member starts maxing out their cash-allowance for repairs. However, I don’t really now where ”conservative” ends and “scroogy” begins.
Realistically, I want to maintain a slight week-over-week profit, not because I take any money for myself (being a maelstrom crystal trader gives better returns), but because when we have extra cash, we can simply buy what we need as a guild. This would be stuff like fish, gems, herbs, etc. True, we end up getting much of what we need simply through donations, but herbs/fish are especially quick movers. So that stuff gets eaten through quick-like.
But this got me to thinking: we could buy the stuff we need and give the gold to someone else, OR we could redistribute it to the guild. But how to go about doing that? I’ve toyed with the idea of having “set rates” for certain items like[Lavascale Catfish], but I’d much rather have something that can’t be exploited. For example, if I buy fish at 20g apiece and, for some reason, the AH price drops to 15g apiece, someone could buy up all the fish, toss them in the bank for a tidy profit and could, ostensibly, gank a lot of cash from the guild. Now granted, it wouldn’t be an absolutely horrible thing for us to get a lot of fish that we need AND a guildie took the initiative to watch for low prices, but then we’d have to be constantly watching the AH for major price shifts for stuff we’d pay for… and managing a guild is enough work already.
The second option I think would be plausible is holding tournaments/contests for the mats we need, akin to the Fishing Tournaments held in Dalaran . You hold the tourney over a day or two, then the highest grossing guildies get cash prizes. The cash would have to be substantial to make the most of the tourney (ie: more people), but with a high enough gold surplus, it could be very useful. Of course, you would have to account for the harder-to-find items, like [Lavascale Catfish] and [Twilight Jasmine], but if you have those count for 2 “points” instead of one, it balances out better. For those who don’t win the big prizes: perhaps a consolation prize of 100 gold. The ethically iffy part would be this: if I wasn’t sure I was going to win one of the guild-prizes, why not just keep the fish and sell them on the AH for more cash than the consolation gold? I don’t think we have anyone THAT mercenary that would actually participate, but it’s an interesting ethical question (at least to me).
The more I think about it, the more I like the tournament idea. It lends itself well to both bettering the guild and divvying out the extra cash we’ve been building up. There’s just the question of execution (ie: how to collect/tally the totals). There was a problem. You're most likely blocked by the armory. had a pretty solid way to make it both transparent and harder to scam: you clear out a bank tab, allow people to deposit their mats, and count up the totals. If the tab is set up so no one can withdraw anything, even people who see they aren’t winning can’t change their mind and cash out in the AH. I know repairs are getting more expensive as the epic gear starts stacking up, so maybe this can alleviate some of the annoyance with wipes and share the wealth as well.
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Aff-locking for 4.1
By Teris | May 4, 2011
You’ve finally come to your senses.
You want something better than imitating fire mages.
You want to kick your simpering imp right in his teeth and break out something that won’t complain (or talk at all).
Welcome to Affliction, we’ve been waiting for you.
4.1 makes a number of (fun) changes to warlocks, the best of which is this: if you’re going by the numbers, Aff-locking is gives the highest theoretical DPS for raids and-
What’s that? You just want to know what to do? OK then.
The Spec and Glyphs
Here’s your spec. Many gnomes died to bring us this information.
The Rotation
Fights can be broken into 2 basic categories , Many mobs (more than 3) or few mobs (a boss fight or only 3 enemies)
For Many Mob fights:
1) Soulburn: Seed of Corruption
2) Spam regular Seed of Corruption
For Few Mob fights:
1) Haunt
2) Corruption
3) Unstable Affliction
4) Bane of Agony
5) Curse of Elements
6) Soul swap to another mob
7) Shadow Bolt Filler while Soul Swap is cooling down (If this is a boss or some other mob with a lot of life, use Drain Soul instead of Shadow bolt.)
8) Soul swap your target’s DoTs to another target.
Pet:
Felhunter. Most dps and versatility for Aff-Locks (devour magic for enemy buffs, spell lock for casters). Just put it on defensive so you don’t act like a huntard and pull mobs your group isn’t ready for.
Advanced-Beginner Stuff: Reforging and Gemming
Still want more? Here’s what you go for as far as reforging/gemming goes.
Hit rating should be at 17%, which means that unless you have a lot of +hit stuff lying around, you’re going to need to reforge your mastery (and your crit second) to hit rating. You can also use gems to go for hit raiting. Don’t break the gem set bonus though, just gem int+hit for red and haste+hit for yellow (blue is pure hit, naturally). If you have 17%, reforge/gem the rest for haste.
And there you go: a less-than-400 word blurb on how to aff-lock. Am I oversimplifying? Of course I am! I didn’t even mention strategic use of Demon Circle, when to use your Guardian pet (or even what the guardian pets are), when to soul shatter, etc. But that is all VERY well covered at Elitist Jerks. This is just to get your foot in the door and get you at around 75% of what you are capable of. The rest will come with time. Happy Gnome-hunting!
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Again!
By Teris | May 3, 2011
And once again, I rear my ugly head.
Updating this blog is an on-again-off-again endeavor not because of a lack of opinions (believe me, I have those in spades), but because more often than not, those thoughts are reprinted elsewhere under other, more dedicated authors. This is the, what, 4th time I’ve tried to get a blog going? And even I don’t know what the emphasis lies. Is it a guild management blog, WoW economics? Platform to announce progress? It looks/sounds rather schizophrenic at times, so I might as well call this what it is: a spot for me to get WoW crap off my chest and on paper, if for no other reason than to read it back and see if it makes sense.
Recently, there has been a good bit of grumbling about raiding, raid spots, and group organization. There are complaints about elitism/nepotism/favoritism in who I chose to group up with and, as a result, those who don’t get invited feel that I’m deliberately sidelining them because I don’t like them personally and/or feel insulted by something they said/did. This is a game, there are very few people I out and out don’t like (and those people play WoW) and it would be childish of me to hurt the raid (and the larger guild) by saying “I don’t want to run with you because I don’t like you.”
When it comes down to it, I run with people that I know are capable of
1) changing their strategy,
2) taking constructive criticism
3) speaking their mind (constructively, of course), and
4) being good at what they do.
If we can’t kill a boss (cho’gall most recently), then I have to make a change to our strategy. For example: the blood adds weren’t dying quickly enough, so Elegies went Frost and spent more time killing the adds instead of hitting the boss. If he hadn’t been able to adjust (ie: stay on the boss the whole time) and relearn/brush up on Frost tactics, then we probably wouldn’t have dropped Cho’gall and we’re still be bashing our heads against that particular wall.
Even if we use a great strategy, people are still going to screw up. It happens. We’re human. But the difference between making a ton of excuses and a simple “OK, I’ll fix it” is truly epic in scale. “Oh I didn’t see the fire there,” “I glitched out,” and “I’m lagging” are all legitimate excuses, but so is “I’m replacing you because you never lived longer than 15 seconds because you didn’t get out of the fire.” Once is a fluke, twice is a mistake, thrice is a problem. I do my best to keep my voice level and my tone civil even if I would love nothing more than to nerd-rage out. But screaming into a microphone at people miles away over a game is not how I want to remember my evenings, dropping bosses is. If you make a mistake and don’t fix it, I assume you don’t notice it and I bring it up. Malice isn’t in the equation.
That being said, I’m human too, so I’m going to screw up. If there’s a huge, glaring error with something I say, I’d appreciate a tell. Conversely, picking out tiny problems in a plan just takes up our time as a group. “Hey, you didn’t say anything about the adds” is a legitimate oversight on my part and I SHOULD be called out on it. “Hey, if we have the dps set up three yards to the left to give us another 2 dps” is not something that should be called out in vent.
Lastly, and this is the biggest problem, is simply being a good player. No one logs on and thinks that they are a bad player, why play something that you suck at? But everyone, and I mean EVERYONE can get better. If you can learn one new thing about your class, or correct one frequently-made mis-step each time you raid, then you are well on your way to becoming a phenomenal player. Getting complacent, especially with a game that changes as often as WoW does, will cause your performance to suffer. Patch notes are not pleasant suggestions as to how the game MIGHT change, but cold facts that put, in words, how your little character’s world just got rocked. There are two kinds of players: the ones who bemoan how Blizzard destroyed their class and it isn’t fun anymore and complain that Blizz took their heals/dps/tanking, and then there are the players who read the notes, adjust their game play, and get back at it.
I also happen to be rather loyal to those I run with (as most of them have stuck around for quite some time). So the typical “you aren’t cutting it, you’re off the team” crap rarely happens with me. I firmly believe that any raider, new or old, can become truely adept at their role/class given the right prodding/guidance. That being said: if I have to explain every little nuance of your class to you (or you refuse to adapt/learn), don’t expect to be raiding with me for too long.
In short, I don’t ask a lot of my raiders/guild. If you want to raid, show up on time and bring your A-game. We have enough cash in the gbank to completely offset flasks/food (and even that being the case, we still have guildies donate herbs/fish) so all you need to bring is cash for repairs (some repairs are subsidized by the gbank). But what few things I do ask are essential for a good (successful) raid.
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Lateral Thinking and Progression: Where Guides Go Wrong
By Teris | February 18, 2011
I know that for most guilds Halfus is a non-issue (and is likely farmable content for several guilds), but for whatever reason, Halfus was a major roadblock. Prior to Halfus, we were reliably dropping a new boss every week, but after losing 1 DPS, then a healer, we’ve been struggling to get back in stride. The fist run didn’t start out well, as we had 2 folks offline, a tank and healer. We eventually pulled in a pug tank and a guild healer and, about 45 minutes into the raid, we started pulling.
Sadly, it started looking like the same problems we were having previously: everyone was taking more damage than could be healed through. After the second wipe, the pug tank asked why I was pushing for the kill-order we were using (Slate, then Time Warden, then Whelps). I mentioned that it was because that was the order Tankspot had, hitting the big nasty guys first (like slate and storm), then afterwards going to the other less-vital drakes. After some quick back-and-forth, we changed the kill order from slate/time/whelps to time-and-whelps/slate/boss. The progress was immediate and, to me, relieving. Yes, we ended up taking the rest of the night to drop the boss, but he did drop (with some decent upgrades for both tanks and the pally healer we pulled in. Needless to say, the pug tank was brought in to the family (welcome Ice!).
It was an interesting mental exercise (if a frustrating raiding exercise) to have the kill-order we WERE using turned on its head, but in the end we finally killed Halfus, so I can’t say it wasn’t productive. Knowing how our guild runs, that means that future Halfus kills will be much easier to deal with.
After that week’s reset, we ran right back to Bastion of Twilight and dropped Halfus after a few wipes. the Double Dragon encounter was next on our list of kills and, frankly, it was a lot easier than Halfus was. We beat them by the end of the evening and, with 3 kills over 3 hours (including a BH kill), I would consider the night a success.
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Heroics, Raiding, Gear: The Cycle Continues.
By Teris | January 17, 2011
The complaint I hear most, both in and out of guild, is that heroics are hard. Vanessa VanCleef is no slouch (though Admiral Ripsnarl, in my opinion, is the hardest boss in the zone). In fact Ghostcrawler on the wow forums have said the same thing. Many of the folks in the guild simply will not run heroics without 2-3 guildies with them (a couple flat-out refuse to run without a guilded healer AND tank). The reasoning behind this: we want the speed of pre-Cataclysm heroics, but we have post-Cataclysm gear. Even with a solid group where the mobs are CC’d (and not broken), the tank takes 90% of the damage, the healer never goes OOM, and no one stands in the fire, heroics still take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. To those who are complaining about the difficulty of the heroics these days, I have one simple observation and an even simpler request:
This has happened before when Wrath’s heroic content first came out.
Quit whining, it’ll get easier.
When Heroic Culling of Strathome first dropped, I remember cutting corners, urging the tank to pull when the healer had 25% mana, and recklessly AoEing the zombies in a mad dash to get to the bronze dragon at the end of the instance. I also remember falling on my face and being anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes late for the achievement/drake. But somewhere after Naxx and before ToC, the guild started gearing up to the point where the heroics that took an hour cut their time in half. Even scripted events like Strathome took a fraction of their previous times and a bit after Icecrown came out, all five group members would often just pass on the bronze drake. As we geared up, the content became less difficult, and the 15 minute heroic was born. It’s nothing more than content cycles.
Heck, we got a taste of this when the ICC 5-mans first came out. Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron weren’t horrible, they just required a little coordination (which, sadly, most Wrath-babies lacked). Halls of Reflection, however, caused more angst than the other two instances combined, be it regular mode or heroic. We got another taste of it when the elemental bosses were released directly before Cataclysm (Princess’s ground-pound ability was meant to be dodged, I’m sure, but damn… I was watching for it and STILL got creamed 80% of the time).
To put it simply: if you really don’t like heroics, just run regular dungeons for the justice points, run your daily quests for rep, and you will eventually have the gear to survive a raid or two (if only the first few bosses). After 4.1 drops, you will have access to the 4.0 valor gear and can begin running heroics in relatively safety. By 4.2, you will be able to burn through heroics at 30 minutes apiece so when 4.3 hits, you can begin complaining about how easy heroics are.
Mark my words, this will happen.
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Cataclysm, Christmas, and the New Year
By Teris | December 30, 2010
The holiday season is an interesting time of year, both at and away from the keyboard. On the one hand, I have a number of family obligations that require me to talk with other flesh and blood people that DON’T have a vested interest in Azeroth (horror of horrors!). Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy going back home and hanging out with parents, brothers, sisters, and relatives. On the other hand, after a few days away from my WoW-based family, I start to feel disconnected and feel I’m missing out on a joke, easy gear runs, and raiding attempts. Regardless, as there are a number of family-oriented players in the guild, Thanksgiving and Christmas are times of low population and thus the momentum we gained during the rush to 85 slows to a crawl by the time New Year’s rolls around. Couple that with the (extreme) difficulty of the raid content, it looks like the next few months are going to be some of the hardest we’ve gone through since our first Lich King kills.
Going from the constant-raiding in late-game Wrath to doing long-running heroics and the occasional Baradin Hold raid is a bit of a shock, but unfortunately most guilds (especially the smaller ones) still have a lot of work to do in order to be prepared for the new raids. Individual raiders need to bring food for the short term (as fish feasts are not provided yet) and flasks are extremely expensive (as cauldrons aren’t available). Couple that with enchant costs, craft-able epic prices, and low-power gear for high-damage fights, raiding for low-level cataclysm is an order of magnitude harder than low-level Wrath every was. That isn’t to say that it is impossible to do (mmo-champion has been reporting first-kills for heroic mode all week), it’s just going to be a rough ride. And personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In short: releasing Cataclysm directly before the most unstable raiding-time of the year (Xmas and New Years) was a bit of a pain as that means there was little to no chance small-scale guilds (like mine) were going to raid consistently until the holiday season had finished up. On the other hand, it gave us time to concentrate on enjoying the quests, seeing the fun stuff archeology had to offer, and take our time getting the reputation-gear we needed without it being a mad dash to be the first ten 85s. It also allowed us to set a reasonable but mildly ambitious goal: to start raiding in January, which was less than a month from Cataclysm’s release. This meant that while we could take the Xmas break off and didn’t have to be on every day, if you were serious about raiding you have to put in the time in order to get the gear as sheer skill alone, sadly, isn’t enough when we’re all in mostly blues with the occasional epic.
Happy early new year folks. Here’s to 365 (minus maintenance) days of progress, pwnage, and loot!
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Tol Barad: My Pain in the PvE
By Teris | December 22, 2010
Let me make this clear: I hate PvP. Maybe it’s because I was scarred due to being ganked in Stranglethorn while leveling. It could be because Lock = lunch in most battlegrounds. Perhaps I wasn’t hugged enough as a child (or hugged too much?). Regardless of the cause, PvP is my least favorite activity, taking the lowest spot on my WoW-priority list, even after faction grinding, daily quests, and running Crucible of Carnage for the 100th time. Sadly, Tol Barad is a zone I find myself in frequently, thanks to the epic hit-trinket I’m grinding and, more importantly, the Wintergrasp-esque raid. Too bad I’ve seen the alliance win Tol Barad a grand total of 2 times. And one of those times our strategy was “hey, let’s just zerg one of the flags and sit on it for a few minutes.”
For Blackwater Raiders, Alliance PvP (that is: world PvP) is lacking (to put it charitably). There isn’t a solid PvP-centric guild on the server and, as a result, Wintergrasp, Tol Barad, Halaa, etc. are usually under Horde control. Now for places like Halaa, that isn’t a big deal given the benefits the Alliance are losing (the 5% damage buff from Halaa). But for Wintergrasp and Tol Barad, the loss of the zone is more severe. Losing Tol Barad deprives us of additional daily quests (which translates to less rep and therefore gear) and, of course, the raiding subzone. So what’s a PvE raiding guild to do?
Unfortunately, there’s only 2 options:
1) Whine and wait for some other group to tip the scales.
2) Wage the war ourselves.
That’s right. I will be (willingly) going into a PvP battle. The question is: how will we go about winning? The Horde WILL start with Baradin Hold, so we’ll be attacking the three flag points. There should be about 10-15 of us, which means we could split into 2 or 3 groups of 5 and move as separate cells instead of one massive group. In theory, if we got up to 20 people we could split into 4 groups, one for each flag and 1 floating. The floating group would definitely have to be stacked with the heavy hitters (ie: the PvP folks).
Personally, I think the hardest part will be dealing with CC. Most folks are just now rediscovering they HAD CC thanks to the raiding mentality of Wrath, so going from the zerg mentality in a PvE environment to a CC mentality in a PvP environment is quite the stretch. Any other PvE guilds having similar PvP-to-PvE problems?
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Secondary Stats: how to hit the caps.
By Teris | December 20, 2010
Gear. Bosses have it, we want it, and will end up getting it after we pry it from their cold dead hands (or claws, etc). While gear does not make the player, it does make running heroics easier and raiding possible. You could be the greatest tank in the world, but if you have only 90k health, you’re going to drop like a stack of [Elementium Bar]s once a heroic boss gets to you. Naturally, having one’s skull caved in isn’t exactly plan A for most players, so they gear up with Justice Point items, reputation purchases, and – of course – dungeon crawls.
The biggest problem for most dps at the moment is getting to the hit cap, which for ranged is 17% and for melee is 8%. Heck, this is a problem for everyone (except healers, naturally) since epics are hard to come by at the moment (grabbed by acheology, random drops, crafted, or reputations). Yes, technically raiding will give you those epics, but walk into a raid without being hit/expertise capped and you will very likely get laughed right out of the place.
Sadly, this means instead of raiding, it is rep grinds that are required to gear up. Specifically: grinding up for Baradin’s Wardens given the epic hit rating trinkets they hand out for 150 commendations (meaning several days of daily grinding instead of just a handing over gold). Most caster DPS will likely end up grabbing the [Desert Walker Sandals] from Ramkahen and the [Stump of Time] from Baradin, which (combined with a bit of reforging or other +hit items), should get them to the hit cap.
So what’st the best way to get capped? Run heroics, for the rep, not for the gear. Then reforge everything you can in order to hit those caps. This will mean taking slightly-less-important stats (haste and crit specifically) and picking up 40-50 hit rating here and there. Yes, it’s going to make your non-instant abilities slower/crit less, but it’s better than missing a shot altogether (or screwing up the rotation).
Also: for mages/warlocks/shadow-priests: find a tailor and bug them until they make the +hit belt. It’s (relatively) cheap and easy to make (4 [Dreamcloth]). If you hand them the volatile air/fire/etc, you are MUCH more likely to get it quicker (and cheaper than the 15k-ish the belts sell for on the AH).
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