I’ve stopped raiding.

Don’t get me wrong – I love raiding, and I really like the group I’ve been raiding with. But right now, my son just came back from his summer in California and has started school (he’s in 5th grade this year – I can barely believe it), my wife is going back to being a full-time student (to finish an English/Business degree), and I’m working 50 to 60 hours a week (and that doesn’t include the time I’m spending training up on work-related skills). Plus, we have a new dog who needs to go out regularly. All of that comes together to put me in a situation in life where I really can’t put together three or four uninterrupted hours at the times when my guild raids.

Because I feel guilty about not raiding, I’ve been avoiding playing my priest – I think I’ve been in the new 5-man all of three times (not for lack of trying – someone else always gets to the healing spots first), and of the new raid I only ever saw Northrend Beasts. I’m kind of tired of dailies, and I don’t do heroics (for a lot of reasons – one being that as a healer, I’m the one who’s going to take the blame, deserved or not, if the group fails). Instead, I’ve put a lot of time into my rogue alt (she’s level 44 now – I’m averaging about a level a day for the last two weeks), since I can play her in little bits. (Heirloom shoulders, chest, and dagger mean she’s doing just over 100 DPS and getting 120% XP from killing and quests, so I’m cruising right along. I’ve been out of rested XP since level 27…)

I try to log on to Theande and Sisuphe once a day to transmute and do the Jewelcrafting daily, respectively, but I don’t always remember, and I’m running out of green Northrend gems to feed the daily – and I really don’t want to have to fly around Storm Peaks two dozen times gathering ore again. (I know, I bought Sisuphe’s epic flyer so she could do exactly that, but I do my best farming when I can play uninterrupted and, as above, I don’t really get uninterrupted time these days. That’s one of the reasons I love my rogue – if I have to step away, I can just stealth in a corner until I get back.)

I am happy about most of the changes in 3.2 (the Penance cooldown was a nerf, and honestly we should have taken the +5% crit they offered us in exchange in 3.1), and I’m really looking forward to the reworked Onyxia in 3.3 and to Cataclysm. But otherwise – well, I don’t really have very much to say about WOW right now, I think.*

All of which is to say that I’m sorry posts have been thin on the ground here lately, and I don’t know when I’m coming back.

* Yes, I’m consciously invoking this in order to kick-start my creative brain. Don’t tell it that, though, or it won’t work.

My draenei Death Knight Sisuphe (I tried to be thematic without being stereotypical) hit 70 last night. As a matter of self-congratulation I bought her the Glyph of Death Grip, to replace Glyph of the Ghoul (I don’t generally have my ghoul tanking, and I’m willing to make the slight DPS sacrifice for the added pulling speed).

I mentioned to Jess last night (who’s just starting her first two Death Knights) that as long as I keep an eye on runes and Runic Power, I can pretty much go indefinitely (thanks to Death Strike, Rune of the Fallen Crusader since 70, and, when I need it, Blood Presence). It’s pretty amazing – especially having leveled a priest first – to realize that I’m breaking 200,000 XP per hour, without the Rested bonus.

My Death Knight, Sisuphe, is about 120k XP from 70 right now, and it occurred to me today (since I’m starting Howling Fjord, which is recent enough in my memory from leveling my priest that I can compare) that solo fighting as a Death Knight is different from soloing as any of the other classes I’ve leveled. In particular, because a Death Knight’s cooldowns are generally moderate – not short like a caster’s usually are, and not long like a warrior or rogue’s – and because all of their pulls (aside from body pulling, which I generally don’t like to do, largely, I suspect, because I’m used to playing casters) have dependencies that don’t recharge out of combat, I spend a good deal of each fight setting up the next pull rather than maximizing my DPS.

For example: let’s say I use Death Grip to pull Mob 1. Death Grip has a 35-second cooldown, lowered to 25 seconds by Unholy Command; I can usually finish a fight in about 10-15 seconds. This leaves a gap of 10-15 seconds when I can’t use Death Grip to pull Mob 2. Therefore, I have to keep an eye on my Runic Power; my other pulling ability of note is Death Coil, which requires 40 Runic Power. Ideally, I’ll have plenty of RP left over after a fight – unless I’ve used abilities that consume it to increase my DPS, like, for example, Death Coil. So I have to moderate my DPS in order to save up Runic Power so that I can use Death Coil to pull the next mob I need to fight. (Ideally, in fact, I’ll have 80+ Runic Power, because I keep my ghoul set on Defensive; casting Death Coil causes him to go after the targeted mob, and so I need to throw up a second Death Coil to keep the mob attacking me!) Of course, by the end of the second fight, Death Grip will have cooled down, and I’ll be able to use it to pull Mob 3.

(Naturally, this could all be avoided if I just went and bought a Glyph of Death Grip, which resets the cooldown on Death Grip when I kill a target that yields honor or experience. That would make this a trivial exercise. :)