I was having a discussion with someone the other day about gear, and thought I’d write up a bit about gear in case anyone else can benefit from it. I’ve included item links below so you can click through to  the items and see the information being discussed.

To start with the basics, gear has “what material is it” (cloth, leather, mail, plate) which determines if you can wear the piece at all and stats. For example: [Web Winder Gloves] has Stam, Int, Haste and Spell power. At the same time this is a piece of plate. This would be a fine piece for a Holy Paladin (since no other healer could wear it) but it would look kind of funny on a Death Knight as they have no use for int or spell power.

Depending on your class and spec different stats are more important. Depending on your current gear, different stats are more valuable to you. For example hit isn’t a primary stat for Protection Warriors, but if the Prot Warrior is below hit cap (how much additional hit is needed to not miss a mob) the hit rating of a piece of gear may make the item more valuable.

Next up is the “color” of the gear. For the most part we are looking at “greens” like [Ancestral Chestplates], blues like [Patina-Coated Breastplate] and purples like [Breastplate of the Afterlife]. If you mouse over click the links those items you will see that the name of the item has a particular color. Greens are known as “uncommon”, blues “rare, purples “epic”. As you might guess greens < blues < purples. So when you hear someone say “oh he’s in all greens” that’s what they are talking about. A very simple gear check (which may or may not be useful) that people will do is to just check the color of the items in a person’s gear.

Now the greens < blues < purples is a general rule but that isn’t always the case. With each expansion the old purples became worth less than the greens of the next expansion. So for example [Blinkstrike], a nice purple sword from Outland, might get replaced by a green [Blade of Diligence] from Northrend. You might guess this simply from the stats, but another way to see the difference is from the item level (ilevel).

[Blinkstrike] has an Item Level of 100.
[Blade of Diligence] has an item level of 158.

As a general rule the higher item level is likely to be the better gear – but again, the stats, and how they relate to your class and spec are what are going to be primary. However, when someone says “Oh their gear score is X”, what that is based on is the item levels of the gear they are wearing (and whatever formula their addon does to come up with the number.) Again, it can be used as a quick glance evaluation of someone’s gear, but again with variable usefulness.

Next up is Tier gear. Tier gear is gear that makes up a “set” and when you wear enough pieces of a set you get a “set bonus”. For example

[Wrynn's Pauldrons of Conquest] has 2 set bonus that affects taunt and devastate, and a 4 set bonus that decreases the cooldown of shield block. If a toon was wearing 2 or more pieces of the Wrynn Plate set they would get the 2 set bonus, if they were wearing 4 they would get the 4 set bonus (in addition to the 2 set.) Tier gear usually is associated with a particular raid instance. Tier 8 gear came from Ulduar, Tier 9 is associated with Trial of the Crusader (ToC). Tier gear is acquired by getting a token for the piece of gear and/or by using emblems. For example

[Breastplate of the Wayward Protector] a token can be used to buy one of six different ( tier 8 ) chestpieces. These tokens were acquired either by them being dropped in the raid instance or by buying them with emblems ([Emblem of Conquest] in this case.) The vendors for the tier gear are either in Dalaran, or in the case of Tier 9 at the Tournament Grounds. You can find how many emblems you have in your character tab under currency. Also note, not all gear bought with emblems is tier gear. (Look for the set bonus information if you aren’t sure.)

As you might guess, the higher tiers are designed as upgrades from the lower tiers. So is tier gear better? Not necessarily. Often it comes down to evaluating stats versus set bonuses. If you look at the Best in Slot (BiS) lists a lot of the gear is not tier. Again, it depends on stats and what type of a gear set you are looking for.

Gear sets? Yes, in addition to general for your class stat priorities there may be different functions you want your gear to perform. This usually isn’t relevant until you are working on refining your game for specific fights. (And I don’t know if it is relevant for all classes. I’ve only seen details on tanks and paladin healers.) When gearing up your first priority is to just get a good set of gear that meets the needs of your class and spec. You can ignore this next section if you want but I thought I should include this since it is something discussed in the forums and something that took me a while to get my head around.

The specific purpose gear sets are sort of an elaboration of the “what stats are important”. For example, a protection tank may have 3 (or 4) different priorities, Effective Health – how much damage they can take from a boss before they go splat, Avoidance – How much they can avoid being hit by the boss, or Threat – How much they can make the boss pay attention to them over the rest of the raid team. Different sets would be used for different fights depending on the boss mechanics. Because of the limits of the stats you can’t have maximum health, maximum avoidance and maximum threat, you have to pick one. While it is something you can do to some extent just playing with the gear you have, I usually look around on the forums and look at examples that other people who actually find all the gear and do the math come up with.

I know that this covered a lot of details on gear. To recap start with the basics. Know what stats are relevant to your class, and what your various “caps” are. Then work on getting better gear moving from greens to blues to purples. Often looking at what drops from various bosses on WoWWiki can give you an idea of places to go for upgrades. You can also look at sites like Wow-Loot, and many more. As usual if you have questions or corrections, fire away.

Happy gearing up!

Since we ate at home so rarely common meals at home were fancy with Spanish foods or perhaps Middle Eastern fare.  However, for Thanksgiving it was pure (US) American tradition.   Our meals usually were:

• Turkey (of course)
• Stuffing
• Whipped mashed potatoes
• Sweet potato/yams with marshmallows
• Green beans with slivered almonds
• Cranberry Walnut Relish
• Pearled onions in cream sauce (no we didn’t keep Kosher, and no I never ate this.)
• Pecan Pie
• Pumpkin Pie

The Thanksgiving meal I make is usually similar to the above, without the onions and usually only pumpkin pie.  The cranberry relish became a family tradition and probably was clipped from some recipe section in some newspaper.  My grandmother liked it so much she asked for the recipe and made a very interesting variation on it, but that’s a family story I’ll skip for this year.  I mentioned the cranberry relish on Twitter and some folks thought it sounded good, so I thought I’d post the recipe here.  It’s super easy to make and really quite yummy.  Usually I have it on toast for quite some time after Thanksgiving, and somehow it is only made for Thanksgiving.   Without much more ado, here is the recipe:

Baked Cranberry-Walnut Relish

1lb cranberries
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup coarsely broken walnuts
1 cup tart orange marmalade
Juice of 1 lemon or lime

Wash & drain the cranberries.
Put in a shallow baking pan & stir in sugar.
Cover tightly with lid or foil and bake in a moderate ove (350º F) 1 hr.
Put walnuts on a tray and in the same oven to toast during the last 10 minutes of baking
Add walnuts & remaining ingredients to cranberries.
Mix well & chill.

Enjoy!

Many people have talked about how they blog less because they tweet.  Tweets aren’t just “I’m having a cup of PG tips right now” (which I am), but are often advice, philosophical thoughts, commentary on something someone found interesting.  In short it is “microblogging” for many.  I don’t have an issue with people having ads on their blog, so why would I have an issue with people having an ad a day on their twitter stream?

I think perhaps there may be two parts.  One is, an ad on blog is separated from the content, and I know it is an ad.  In a twitter stream, given our conventions, it seems like the person is speaking the ad themselves.  The second is a blog seems like it has a potential to be more polished more a “work”, while tweets of 140 seem more casual, and so I run against the “wait you can’t make money for that” bias that is common in our populist movements of the web.

Ultimately, something like ad.ly makes me think.  I haven’t signed up myself, but I think my resistance may be based on old patterns.  When is ok to make money for something?  Is an ad in a tweetstream changing the nature of the medium?  What do you think?

In the talk he hints to the importance of clear direction, yet given in a way where there is a place for everyone’s story.  However more than just leaving the space the ideal conductor brings out and encourages each member of the orchestra.   As a leadership style it is an interesting and challenging style.  It requires finding the balance between clear direction and yet allowing each person their place, until ultimately the harmony of the organization can come out seemingly with the leader doing nothing, yet clearly still being present and leading in a near invisible way. 

The final video shows this combination and it is quite impressive.  In the end the leadership needs to have provided enough support and direction until the team is at a point where the vision of the task is shared, yet each expresses it individually and with unique competence.  More than just great leadership it requires a great team, perhaps one that is developed, or perhaps one that is selected.

And with that, I leave you with the video of the TED talk by Itay Talgam on Leading Like the Great Conductors

Her website is: Levana Cooks.

And to give you a feel for her flare let me point you to a video of her’s that favorited on You Tube,  Levana Cooks Oatmeal.  Yes oatmeal, the stuff everyone knows how to make – but she takes it and transforms it into a full cooking lesson on cooking and seasoning in general.

Bon Apetit!

I was reminded of this today when I was struggling to come up with what to post about.  Some days there are lots of thoughts that lend themselves to writing, but other days I’m just mulling over many ideas, but nothing has settled.  I was ponder, maybe I could just let it slip one day.   I decided against that, and as I did I remembered when I was doing my “Me Today” videos for a month.

I managed to some how do a video every single day that month.  I videoed early on Friday, late on Saturday and sometime all the other days.  Now admittedly some of the videos were pretty minimalist, but I always found a way to squeeze a few minutes to video, upload & post it.

How was I able to have such persistence at the task?  Was my life just better ordered?  Was it my love of being on camera? That could have been part of it, but I think the real draw, as much as I’d like to think I was above such material things, was that each video was an entry in a chance to win an iPhone.   I never did win the iPhone (although I got a t-shirt) but I did connect with people and get much more comfortable with video.   The significant thing was that some how the potential of a material reward, just a chance at it, was enough to motivate me to do something every day.

How many goals have I set aside, or attempted half heartedly because I thought the goal should have been its own reward. Perhaps this needs a bit of rethinking.

The challenge, of course, becomes what would be a reward that would entice and motivate, when I am the one setting the reward and could simply decide to buy it/get it today.

For your viewing pleasure, I present a tour of Ulduar: