Divine Plea

TOR - Good vs Evil, and Light vs Dark

2012-01-09T14:41:00.000-09:00

Spend twenty seconds (maybe less) around anything Star Wars related, and you'll be exposed to the Force in some form or another. Good, bad, may the Force be with you - all of these things come up when interacting within the universe of Star Wars. Instinctively, and though observation, we come to learn that the Light side of the Force is all that is "good", and the Dark side is "evil". Here's where my questions begin though. As a confession, I'll admit that my research is pretty limited on this, and entire philosphy courses are held just to discuss the concept of "Evil" - so here's my thoughts in blog post.

Dark Side vs Light Side

In TOR, most of the interactions (read, quests) that you conduct will at some point give you an opportunity to gain either points in either Light or Dark, and that choice is generally pretty clear cut. Kill someone, and you're probably going Dark. Let someone live, and it's the Light for you. Of course, then you get past death, and you really run into some grey areas.

An ealy Sith Inquisitor quest gives you the opportunity to torture someone with lightning, Palpatine style. This action of course, earns you Dark points, but gets you the information you want. Now, on the Jedi Knight side, you have an opportunity to use a "Jedi mind trick" to convince some Twi'leks that they need to move on about their business - yet this is a neutral action (note that slaying them all is Dark).

What the hell? Since when did physical torture override mental manipulation as "evil"? Ask anyone who's been conned, or even really tricked or maniuplated, how they feel, and it's often compared to mental rape. That's what the Jedi just did, he went in and violated your mind and your free will, to get what he wanted. Obi-wan on Tattooine, again with the death stick incident in Clones (yes, I've watched all the movies, including Jar-Jar). Are you really going to tell me that the incident with Qui-gon and the giant fish at the start of Episode I wasn't him bringing some fish in?

What about the Jedi vs the Sith in TOR? As a Jedi Consular you're throwing rocks, droids, chairs, etc at your enemies - generally with the intention of killing them. Sith, you're shooting lightning like you're working for Texas Electric. Why is one action inherently worse than the other?

Getting Deeper

Now, this is where I think that the users of the Light side claim that the ends justify the means - as long as it's done within a certin set of boundries. Flesh Eaters are attacking a settlement and killing off the refugees. You go out, find the ring of some dead leader, and along the way are given a side quest of killing say 20 Flesh Raiders along the way. Now I know this is an MMO, and quests are part of the gig, but is this really any different than Anakin killing off all the Tuskan Raiders?

Maybe if the quest giver (the guy who sends you off to find his father) had done the killing instead, HE would be turning to the dark path. Since it was done by proxy though (granted you don't kill of any younglings, maybe that's the line in the sand?), it's all OK? It really seems to me that it's all kind of arbitrary, as the Jedi are just as big a group of killing machines as the Sith.

Stage Two - You are a lying son of a bitch

OK, so we've kind of established (though this very scientific and well researched post) that killing people seems to be Dark, and mind control is "Light". It seems lying and betrayal can also fall into the Light side, since there is more than one quest where you change your stance on something. Oh, you mean the crazy old man wasn't telling the truth? Well here, let me do the right thing for you, and I'll just TELL him I did the deed. He'll never know. If he does question it, I can just mind trick him, or threaten him. Those appear to be valid responses, though I can't just shoot him.

Same thing goes with the damn companions. You might think you're saying the right thing, but then noooo, that -1 appears because you've crossed some imaginary line in the sand. These people are more fickle than a prom queen. Even if you're ignoring their reactions they still have to butt in with their opinions every now and then.

The Light and the Empire

The real bitch of this whole thing is, the Empire is clearly the evil faction in Star Wars. You can make a pretty legitimate case for the Horde and the Alliance in WoW, but it's really tough to try and say the Empire is actually a bunch of misunderstood good guys with a different agenda. Sure, the Republic does its fair share of dastardly deeds (heaven help you if you're poor on Coruscant), but I think the overall goal is for "good".

This kind of throws you in a lurch if you want to play a character of the opposite force side. A fallen Jedi? A goody goody Bounty Hunter? Actually, I have both of those, but it still makes life interesting. I'm also fairly certain that Light Side choices give me better rewards than Dark Side, which is pretty much a bunch of crap. At the very least I should be checking the pockets of people I impale.

In the end

In reality, at this point of the game, your Light/Dark choices are purely a RP tool. You get to look all evil if you go Dark, and there are of course some game changes either way - but nothing that will basically end your character. I do think that would be a funny option though. Mouth off to a Darth and he just up and kills you. No Medical Facility rez, just reroll. I'd play that game.

I think I'm just irritated by the whole Light side thing. Part of this may stem from my disdain of organized religion (don't even get me started on that - it's bad enough my wife is Catholic). Really though, if you can say that it's impossible to understand the ways of the Force, and the Force brought us together, how do you know the Force didn't bring my lightsaber into your gut? Oh, NOW you question the Force. This is why evil wins. They cheat.

Here's to lying, cheating, and killing my way through TOR. One rebel scum at a time.

Gen - Direction of me and this blog

2012-01-04T10:51:00.000-09:00

Like many WoW players (this is based purely on the people I know), I'm currently playing TOR as my primary MMO. WoW is still there for my primary raiding needs, but I'm thouroughly enjoying a game that I haven't explored from top to bottom. I've killed Deathwing. I've collected a ton of pets. I've pretty much done everything I've set out to do. Of course I'll still be here for MoP, but probably in a much reduced capacity.

Nothing much to talk about

Right now there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot to discuss regarding WoW. We've looked at talents, raiding, guild applications, and fail PUGs. MoP will bring some more discussion out of the woodwork, as we look at the severly reduced talent trees, companion pet combat (never before have I so wished I had a zergling or Diablo) and the new instances and raids. Right now though I am 100% certain that my only raiding will be done via the LFR, as upcoming life changes will eliminate my ability to commit to fixed raid schedule.

So where do I go from here?

I still need an outlet for my occasional thoughts and rants, so Divine Plea will stay open for that purpose. I'll be talking about TOR from time to time (I never did think this day would come), especially the points that I think are more interesting - like Light vs Dark. I'll also be writing about interesting WoW changes. Don't look for boss strats or BiS lists anytime soon though.

Thanks to everyone who's followed along so far, and I hope to see you around here still.

TOR - Looking past the shiny package

2011-12-21T08:57:00.000-09:00

Yesterday, like many I suspect, I spent a few hours playing Bioware's new MMO - The Old Republic. I would be shocked if anyone reading this blog didn't know what I'm talking about, so I'll cut through the nonsense and get right to the heart of it. I'll do a little compare/contrast to WoW, what I think is done right, what I think needs improving, and where we go from here.

Yeah, I've got a lightsaber

Actually I don't, it's just some stick with a few bands of metal on it. I'm sure if I did some lore digging (or other searching) I could figure out what this is, but it's obviously some type of Jedi training weapon. Whatever. It almost sounds like a lightsaber, and hey - isn't building your own lightsaber supposed to be part of the Jedi training?

Right now I'm starting off with a Jedi Consular, though I'm sure I'll try all the classes at least once. My plan is to level this Jedi up taking all the "Light" choices, a Sith with the "Dark", and then I'll probably do some combination of Republic/Dark and Empire/Light. The fact that those choices are even possible seems pretty awesome right now. We'll have to see how they actually pan out.

The first 3 hours

Once I finally got the game to install (I didn't pre-download), I went through the character creation process. There was just enough cusomization, and it was pretty standard Bioware fare. You couldn't customize your outfit, but given the changes to your outfit from gear, I'm not surprised. Plus if you were able to design your own look, we'd have a thousand bounty hunters running around in Mandalorian battle armor. I did notice thought that I look suspisoucly like Neo after my first few levels. Robes, the shades (I went with the blind race, Miraluka), and even the face. Hmm...

So, character created, I started out learning the ropes. Really smooth, controls just like WoW (and every other MMO I'm sure), and the tooltips and hints were pretty handy. It took a few minutes to learn what all the symbols on the minimap were (I was still looking for big ! for quest givers), and I was off and running. I didn't spend a lot of time with keybinds or anything, I just wanted to get into it.

Voice quests

I really like the interaction with the quest givers, though I'm sure it would get old if you were running the same zone for the 14th time. I like that there's some interaction between you and the NPC, instead of simply "go here, bring a package to Jim, and kill 15 Flesh Eaters". While the basics of the quests are still the same (kill 10 rats, FedEx, go find something), they certainly feel different. I'm chalking a lot of this up to the voice acting though.

Music

Oh my goodness, the music is fantastic here. It changes when there's danger or combat, and it's definately "Star Wars" in feel. I've actually been playing with the game sounds all turned on, and it's really immersive. Also the sound effects, so stellar. While the game was obviously developed with Lucas Arts, I do love how authentic it feels.

Of course, there's bad news

First, I'm fairly certain that Barrens chat follwed me, even though I chose to roll on an RP-PVE server. While some of the chat text was helpful (I left it on for a bit), I was really disappointed to see that there were still Anal jokes, bad manners, etc. I'm still trying to figure out just what credits are really worth - for example is 5,000 credits for 10 bag slots a lot? I don't have anything to reference it with. I mean, how much will a "mount" cost me? Do they even have personal mounts? I'm sure there must be, though the taxi system (and 30 min, go wherever you want hearthstone) is really nice.

The game is also, unashamedly, a WoW clone in pretty much every aspect of gameplay. I haven't done any grouping yet, and there are definately some features I wish WoW would adopt (area looting, please for the love of all things holy, let me loot ALL the things), but overall it is different enough to be a good game.

Closing thoughts

I'm not leaving WoW for TOR, and I certainly don't think TOR will be a WoW killer. Right now I'm enjoying the newness of the game in a way I haven't done in WoW for about 6 years. There's no pressure to max out and raid, no speeding along, just enjoying the scenery. I mean hell, I won't roll a new alt in WoW until I have all my heirlooms, and I haven't enjoyed questing for the sake of questing in a long time. While I'm sure the new car smell will eventually be replaced by sweaty gym bags, I'm enjoying the fresh perspective on a MMO, and enjoying a new game on its merits - not as a replacement for another game.

Holy Paladins - we're still not raid healers

2011-12-13T10:43:00.000-09:00

First, I'm back from my break for NaNoWriMo. My novel turned into more of a personal therapy writing session - so it's not going to get posted anywhere public. I learned a lot writing it though, and I'm certainly going to try my hand at the novel that I'd intended. With any luck I'll be able to churn it out over the next few months, though I'm not going to put myself under the time constraints of NaNo.

Now, with that out of the way, let's talk about Paladin AoE/Raid healing, and why we're still not the best choice for this role.

Holy Radience

In 4.3 Holy Radiance got a drastic change from being a fire and forget AoE heal centered on the caster (with a decent CD), to being a spammable AoE heal. This is a huge change to our AoE healing arsenal, which up to this point was limited to one AoE every 30 sec, plus Light of Dawn (more on that in a minute). Unfortunately, it's not all pretty flowers and sparkles in HR land - there's more than one drawback.

First, HR is slow. It's not debilitatingly slow, but it's the same cast time as our Holy Light and Divine Light. The only upside there is that it's affected by Infusion of Light as well, so we get that haste buff. It's also expensive, with the same cast cost as Divine Light.

Second, the overall healing of HR isn't something to write home about. Baseline, the spell heals for 2523 - 3205 on the initial cast, and then an additional 493 every second for three seconds. While we can eek out another tick or so with enough haste, we're still not going to be setting any records here. My average tick is hitting for just over 3500, however that's averaging out the total heal. You can reasonably assume that the most you're going to see (per person) out of this heal is about 7k over a 4 second period. In addition, HR only hits targets that are within 10 yds of your recipient.

Finally, HR healing does not transfer via Beacon of Light (BOL). This essentially cuts our healing in half, since every other heal in our arsenal transfers at least 50% of the healing done to our Beacon target.

***Edit*** I was hoping to get this out earlier, but I missed the change to our 4pc set. Originally the 20% boost for our 4pc T13 would have made HR very powerful, however this has been reduced to 5% - making it pretty lackluster.

It's not all doom and gloom either though

On the upside, through Tower of Radiance, we are guaranteed to generate a Holy Power every time we cast this spell. Also, since HR is spammable, we can sprinkle HR throughout the raid, though it's not the most powerful AoE heal in the world. Because of the cast time though, and the cooldown on Holy Shock, HR lines up neatly with getting a 3HP LoD off every 2 casts of HR. This can start to become a fairly powerful combo, though it will put some holes in your mana bar. Depending on how stacked your raid is though, this combination will provide a decent amount of healing in a short period of time.

Light of Dawn

Another change to our AoE healing was the revamp of the Light of Dawn (LoD) glyph. Previously the glyph would let you add one target to your LoD healing, providing a very solid increase to the BoL target - if you hit all six targets. This was mostly used in 25m raiding, as getting 6/10 players in your 10m raid to stack up in the right spot was pretty tricky.

With the change however, 10m (and 5m dungeons) see a pretty significant boost to LoD healing. Instead of increasing the number of players hit, the number is actually lowered - but the overall healing is increased by 25%. This allows us to get the same kind of throughput to the BoL target, and actually heal our raid for a little more than before. This also gives us a 4th major glyph to choose from, and it's actually a pretty solid choice now.

AoE vs Single Target - Communicate

OK, so we've gone over the base numbers for LoD and HR healing, and they don't look too bad. They aren't stellar, but it's certainly more than we had before. What we're left with now is deciding what our healing roles are, and where we should be focused in the raid. A lot of this will come down to your healing team composition, but also what is going on in the raid at any given moment.

Because HR is not transferred to your BoL target, we have to make a split second decision on what heal to use (finally!). Here is my mental checklist, that I run through on pretty much every heal. Fortunately, it doesn't take long, especially once you've practiced it.

Is Holy Shock on CD?
Is it raid wide damage?
How much damage is my BoL target taking?
Do I have 3 HP?
Where am I in the fight?

Running through this list quickly will let me determine what I need to cast. This is important especially when we look at the damage our BoL target is taking. Remember that Holy Light now transfers 100% of the healing done to the BoL target, instead of the 50% that Divine Light, WoG, or HS will transfer. Because of this, I will almost always cast HL on the target if it is not my BoL target, otherwise they get a different heal. HL costs (and heals) for about 1/3 of what DL does - but the transfer to your BoL target is what makes the difference. Also if you're 3/3 in ToR, you're going to get that HP if you use DL instead.

Conclusion

At the end of all this, Paladins are still the kings of single/dual target healing. Our AoEs have been buffed to the point where we're no longer a hindrance when it comes to raid healing, however we're certainly not as powerful (or efficient) as any other class when it comes to pure raid/AoE healing.

NaNoWriMo

2011-10-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

I have to admit I'm more than a little intimidated at the prospect of churning out 50,000 words in a month. I suppose if I could just talk instead of write I'd do it easily, but coming up with a coherent story is going to be a challenge. Part of the challenge is that my wife has her Masters in some kind of literature, and is a professional writer/editor. Since the story isn't supposed to be polished I'll probably be ok, but she may start redlining everything.

I'm also taking a little vacation (just a week) in November, hopefully 4.3 will drop "soon".

All in all I've been really satisfied with the Firelands, and I even got to hop in and heal H-Bael (which was nice). I was a little undergeared, but hey, that's what makes it exciting. I'm rapidly approaching the magical mitigation/avoidance cap in my prot set, though my ret gear is in a poor state. It doesn't help when we have 2 plate main spec DPSers in the raid. With the changes to the LFR loot system (which I approve of), I may have to do some runs in my off-specs just to help bump up the old iLvl.

So here's my support for everyone who's participating in NaNoWriMo, my prayers for an early 4.3 launch, and my double prayers for an early Diablo 3 launch.

A second look at MoP

2011-10-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

After taking a few days to really chew over the announced changes to World of Warcraft, and to really think about the annual subscription package, I realized that I'm not quite as upset as I was on Friday. While I'm still a little miffed about some things, and I'm not going to be holding out any hope that we'll even see a Beta for MoP in the near future, I think that there are definately some good possibilities on the horizon.

Games evolve - it's part of the process

I think the first thing I had to get through my head was that despite the fact that MoP, BC, Wrath, and Cata are all "World of Warcraft" expansions, they are really their own game when you stop and look at them. While they offer the definite plus of being able to carry your account/characters forward to each expansion, each expansion has offered us something different. We fall into the trap though of looking back at the original release, and holding each expansion up in comparison. We get used to a certain style of play, and then every other year or so things get shaken up - and we're back to learning our class again - at least for a couple of hours.

Of course class changes aren't the only thing that takes place, the game changes in so many other ways - many of which we don't see or even care about. For example if you don't PvP, you couldn't care less about Arenas - and the same goes for PvPers that don't raid. We get so wrapped up in these changes though, that we lose sight of the fact that WoW is a game - and a pretty damn big one at that.

Do you really miss Vanilla?

I know I personally make a lot of comments about "back in the day", but I wouldn't trade what we have now for a Vanilla server. I honestly don't think that raiding was more challenging, just a bigger pain in the ass. You can argue all you want about the "skill" you needed to be a great healer, knowing when to downrank, when to cycle out for mana, etc. - but I don't think that really added anything beneficial to the game. Same goes with needing a complex spreadsheet just to figure out if 5 spellpower was better than 2 intellect and 3 spirit.

Remember Rum Tum Tuber surprise and Whipperoot tubers? Farming out Goretusk livers just so you could get a pair of stamina buffs for the night? Resist sets? How much time did we spend running a level 45 dungeon farming nature resist gear so we could fight HuHu? And the elixirs/potions required! I'm going off memory here, but I'm fairly certain any given fight would see me taking no less than 5 elixirs as a tank - same for BC when it first launched. Elixirs for all your primary stats, plus any that might give you an edge. You'd take STR for the Block Value and Parry, AGI for the dodge, a flask, Attack Power for threat, STAM because you could stack flasks and elixirs, a food buff, plus anything else you could find that would give you just a fraction of a point somewhere. I gaurantee I spent more time farming mats and grinding out raiding materials than I spend doing dailies.

None of those things make for 'better' raiders, they just make for raiders with more time. If you really think the content is dumber now than it was then, I feel you're really mistaken. For example let's look at Lucifron (first real radi boss in MC) compared to say, Halfus (first boss in Cata). Lucifron saw you doing some tank swapping, cleansing curses and mind controls, and healing. Halfus has you dealing with variable abilities based on which adds are available, and oh by the way you aren't afforded the luxury of simply assigning all your mages to be on decurse duty becuase you have 35 other riaders to deal with the different mechanics.

When you take all the raid changes, added changes to the UI, and then toss on "Old World" flying - you can take your dreams for going back to Vanilla and toss them out the window. Of course there are those illegal private servers kicking around out there. You're willing to take your chances with those, after all, you're the one that has to look yourself in the mirror every day. And hey, there's loads of entertainment to be found in pirated/illegal games - even if they are just a few years old. Hit me up later and we'll play some M.U.L.E.

Some good, some bad

Like everything that changes, there's always going to be something that you think has changed for the worse. I'm sure that somewhere there's a whole passel of folks complaining that the assault class in Battlefield 3 is now the class that carries medkits - but damn if the graphics don't just blow BF2 right out of the water. I get that some cows are considered sacred, and that we should protect them at all costs - but really they're just another source of BBQ (hey Cloudpoofer, let's talk a trade - BBQ for Apple Spice). Even a mouse will eventually find the cheese you moved, or he'll just eat your shoes.

I'm also aware that not everything that gets announced at Blizzcon makes it to the live servers. From Dance Dance Revolution to Archeology - the changes might look one way, but be something considerably different by the time the final product comes around. Anyone remember the original LFG from BC, or the proposed guild paths from Blizzcon 2 years ago?

I don't know if Pokemon battles will actually go live, or how I'll actually feel about them till I see it in action (makes me REALLY wish I had the original collectors edition for that mini-Diablo) - but just like Arenas, I can choose to not participate in this activity. Hell, unless they add in gear or something like that, Arena's still at least provide me with something I can use. So why should I really get overly upset about someone's collectable game?

Panadas are right up there with the Karluk or whatever the walrus people are called. I thought those guys were really dumb looking, but I'd probably still take one of them over a gnome. I'm not concerned about them being cross factional, red is still dead - I don't need a shilouette to tell me what I'm going after. Besides there are so many avatar changing abilities out there now that it's tough to be 100% sure what you're looking at anyway "Is that a cow or a skeleton coming after me?". I'm sure I'll roll a Panda, and I'm sure I'll roll a monk - just as I'm sure I'll buy the game. I can't imagine the Pandas being any more silly than gnomes or goblins. Of course the goblin starting area WAS pretty bad IMO.

A lightbulb just went off

I just realized that my last sentence cemented in that I will definately pick up MoP, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it as a game. I rolled a Goblin (after letting a few months go by), and I even tried a few Worgen (still never finished the whole starting 20 levels or whatever), and while I hated those experiences, I still like Cata as a whole product. The Goblin starting zone was an abomination, and I'm actually not a fan of Goblins in general (they are better than Gnomes though), but their existance didn't ruin the game for me. I think the Worgen "Running Wild" animation is terrible, but that also doesn't end the game for me.

The things that WoW does right, at least for me, far outweigh the things that are done wrong. I still find the raids challenging, and apparantly I'm not in the minority here since only a handful of guilds have killed H-Ragnaros compared to normal Ragnaros (especially pre-nerfs to the rest of the heroics).

A final thought on the Annual pass with free D3

After my initial fears about this possibly resulting in the launch of MoP landing somewhere after next year's Blizzcon (I'm still not convinced that won't happen), I sat down with a calculator and did some quick math. Based off the 6 month billing cycle, which comes to $12.99/mo - a year of WoW runs me $155. I'm pretty sure D3 will run me $60, so that cuts my annual WoW bill down to $95. So even if I want to "quit" WoW, as long as I get 7 months of enjoyable playtime out of it, the whole deal is a wash. Even with ToR, D3, and SC2:HoTS coming out, I'm pretty sure I'll still get 7 months of enjoyment out of WoW.

Conclusion

After all is said and done, I'm still enjoying WoW, I'll certainly at least try MoP, and I'm still not convinced that ToR will take me away. Pandas won't ruin the game, and yes - I'm a fanboi.

Scariest news of the day

2011-10-21T14:27:00.001-08:00

So today I wanted to write about how I'm making the move back to Adgamorix - my original angry bald Paladin. I've been tanking in Firelands, healed it some more, and even have a viable ret build. Slipping back into the Paladin role has been like putting on an old pair of shoes, fits perfect every time.

Blizzcon goers taken hostage

Unfortunately, I can't really talk about that today. As I'm sure you're well aware, Blizzcon started today, and there has been an overwhelming ammount of WoW info coming forth. As I expected, the next expansion has been announced, and I'm sorry to say that I am underwhelmed to say the least. If anything, I'm terrified.

The only thing I can really hope is that everyone at Blizzcon, and watching the stream, is currently sitting there with a gun to their head preventing them from admitting that the news we're getting is really just the world's best April Fools joke. Please let this be true, otherwise I'll probably be found setting fire to my authenticator if all the announced items actually go live.

Issue number one - it actually is Jack Black

Kung Fu Panda here we come. Not only are we getting Panderans, but the new class is a freaking Monk. Panda racial is "Bouncy - take 1/2 damage from falling", and other such nonsense. The trailer video looked like "Kung Fu Panda" gone crazy.

Not. A. Fan.

Issue number two - talents revamped again!

This one isn't really so much of an issue, as it is something that makes me laugh. Every expansion, hell every Blizzcon, they talk about wanting to make talents count, and your decisions matter. They wanted to move away from cookie cutter builds, and focus you more into your particular spec.

This was a HUGE fail for Cataclysm, since the revamp to 41 points, with 31 minimum in your selected tree made for the greatest cookie cutter builds of all time. There is little to no variation in your builds, even going from PvE Holy to PvP Holy involves shifting two or three points. Glyphs are the same thing, there's no variation - your choices are pretty cut and dried for most classes.

So I'm happy to see the talents changing, but I don't seen them really making any significant impact on the whole system. I could be wrong of course. It has happened before.

Issue number three - Pokemon gone wild

I honestly was speechless when I saw this news. Your pets, our little non-combat pets, will now have stats and be able to battle? And you can battle "Masters" to get more powerful abilities? I really have no response for this. This is so far away from what we have now, much less what Vanilla was, that it's actually difficult for me to comprehend it on any rational level.

My only hope

Much like the announced changes to guilds, the Archeology system, and many other sweeping changes announced at Blizzcons of yesteryear, I can only hope that many of these changes go the way of the Dance Studio and dissapear into the Twisting Nether. Maybe I'm totally wrong and they will be the greatest changes ever, but I kind of doubt it. To be perfectly honest, if I hadn't seen the new Heart of the Swarm trailer, I probably would have already written the whole convention off.

The other truly scary thing I see (for WoW) is that if you commit to a one year subscription, you will automatically get a Beta invite to MoP (right now I need a mop for my vomit), a mount that looks like the Sparkle Pony and the Winged Gaurdian had a baby, and....Diablo III for free.

That's right. Spend up to $180 (it's less if you pay for it all up front obviously) and get a copy of D3 (which will be what, $60?), a BoA mount (typically $25) and a full year of WoW. Plus the Beta invite, if that's worth anything. This to me says volumes about the state of the game. HoTS and D3 will do well, no matter what WoW does, so you know that 2012 is going to be a banner year for Activision/Blizzard earnings. Maybe they need the extra cash infusion at the end of 2011 to push over some bonus numbers - who the hell knows.

What I do know is that if I had to commit right this minute to playing MoP, I'd probably pass. While I haven't actually seen the footage from Blizzcon, I'm just feeling pretty sour about the whole mess.

My biggest fear of all

Right now I'm truly afraid that we are looking at another year of Cataclysm. While I can't put my finger on exactly when ICC launched vs Cataclysm, I know it was a long damn time. Twice now they've hit us with "shit, we need more content" patches, and both the Sunwell and Ruby Sanctum felt like failures (though for different reasons). I'm afraid 4.3 won't launch until Thanksgiving, and I truly hope and pray they aren't waiting for Christmas to directly compete with TOR. I don't think I can handle eight more weeks of Firelands. I am not a groundhog you know.

My parting gift

I won't show the MoP trailer here, but I will at least show the truly awesome trailer for HoTS. I cannot wait for this to launch.

This just in - a new rant about Void Storage pricing

2011-10-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

AMFG are you kidding me? 100g to unlock, 25g to deposit, and withdraws are FREE?!?! Now every nub on the server who can't farm up a few thousand gold will have the same void storage privileges I do. This is an insult, and a slap in the face to every Gbolinesque person out there - or hell, anyone who can run a few quests/dailys and get some gold. I swear, if they don't up the price back up to somewhere in the 10k range PER DEPOSIT, you might as well call it Hello Warcraft Kitty Rift Island TOR Adventure.

What a load of shit.

/end sarcasm
/end rant

Things to do before 4.3

2011-10-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

With 4.3 on the horizon, it's now time to take stock of what I need to do before it hits. This is something I do before every patch, though it's something I'm generally bad at sticking to. After all, what's the point of making a list if I can't deviate from it later?

Step One

Do nothing. I'm serious here. I've taken this stance since TOC was released, and it hasn't failed me yet. As much as I read up on class notes and such, I'm the last guy who knows where anything is come patch day. It's my 5 minutes of finding something new - back up off me. I still look back with fondness at the utter chaos at trying to find our way back to the ICC 5 mans when they first came out. Wait, you fly up where?

Step Two

I'll probably spend some time thinking about PvP, and if I'm really on the ball I'll stock up on 4k/4k Honor and JP so I can buy the previous season's PvP gear. I know I won't PvP that much, but it'll save me some hassle for those few weeks when I think it's something I want to do. Every season I think about doing 2v2 and 3v3, and then I remember the day I left my shadow in Nagrand after getting hit by a pair of trinket-POM-Pyro mages in Season 2 (or was it 3?).

This really is a good step to take though, since I'll be able to kit out quickly. Alternatively I'll be trying to decide which alt I think I want to PvP with (right now it's a hunter or a Disc Priest) and I'll try to power-level them up and max out their honor/JP.

Step Three

At some point when reading the patch notes I'll pick up on things like "Chaos orbs will no longer be soulbound" and other such goodies. At this point I'll make a plan to /need on as many as I can before 4.3, so I can sell them all off. At least now you have to have the profession to get them in 5 mans. It seems like after the patch everyone will be able to roll on them again, and you know everyone will be /needing on them to either sell, or hand off to their one crafting toon. Whatever, that's what the need button is for, right? Let's not get into the whole debate that my need for gold is less than your need for anything else. Or my need to cause misery to others. After all, I play a Warlock and a Paladin - between sucking souls and being self-righteous, I can make anyone's day worse.

Oh, and I sing to Voss. He loves it, he just can't admit it in front of the others.

Step Four

Play a few more alts, and enjoy how easy it is to level up now. I really can't wait for the nerf to the required XP for 71-80 - but it's still stupidly easy to level. Stuipdly easy I say. Oh, and hunters are idiotically OP in lower brackets of PvP - you know, just in case you've been avoiding that. I might also play with twinking out a toon, but that motivation usually lasts about 24 hours of real time.

Step Five

Forget everything above, and do nothing but play Starcraft II (I'm so bad at ladder, I'm in the plastic spoon/rounded scissors league) and Space Marine, while waiting on BC3.

Editor's Note - that's me

Thanks to Sin for pointing out that I've been calling the "Dragon Soul" patch the "Demon Soul" patch. Whoops.

A second look at the nerfs

2011-10-04T08:35:00.000-08:00

So the nerfs have been out for about two weeks now, and BT has rocketed from 2/7H to 6/7H in that time. Of course, there are still some issues with the fights, most notably Beth. It's kind of aggravating that one hunter can cover all the little spiderlings, but that it takes all of our other ranged DPS to do the same thing. That's just a small issue though, and one that we've been able to work through without too much hassle.

Alt time shenanigans

So Sunday night, we rounded up a handful of alts, and rolled into Firelands to see what we could do. I was personally sure we would go 7/7, but I really should have taken bets. I know quite a few of the raid team weren't expecting the nerfs to be as big as they were. I'm sure it helped that our MT was an alt of our regular MT (just a DK instead of a War), our heavy hitting mage was on his PvP mage (so Alysrazor flying was covered), and one of our main healers was on a druid healing alt. We only had one "new" player to Firelands, but he was a pretty solid raider in T11, so it wasn't a big hump for him to get over.

Our average equipped iLvl was around 358, easily obtainable through Zulroics and capping out your VP. Toss in a few nerfed T11 raids, and you're right there. I think out MT was wearing a 319 helm, and Direbrew trinkets - with a smattering of other random drops thrown in. I'm fairly certain my Paladin was the highest geared, and that's just because I had my heroic T11 gear.

Now while we did 1 shot every boss except Shannox (killed the wrong dog first - oops), I can certainly see where another group would have trouble with the mechanics. I'm still not sure how healing on Baelroc is supposed to work, I just built up 11tybillion stacks on our Spriest, and then healed the tanks. Rhy was driven by someone who'd never done it before, but we never were in trouble. Overall it was easy, but I think a good part of that is due to our experience with the encounters. I'm pretty sure that a group who was stepping into it for the first time would at least find it challenging.

Added benefit to the nerfs

I'm sticking with my hope that Demon Soul will drop in October after Blizzcon. Now we haven't seen any bosses show up on the PTR yet (***Edit - looks like the PvP boss is up for testing***), but it's still a possibility. I really can't see them dragging this out until TOR launches in December. So what does this mean for us? If you have an inkling that you're going to be losing members hard and fast on Dec 20th, now is the time to get them into the easier content for gear. Alts can get geared up very quickly in this environment as well.

The other thing that this nerf buys us is that most valuable commodity - time. If you're a guild that is wholly uninterested in doing heroic content, you should be able to finish out Firelands without too much difficulty before Demon Soul - and can focus on other aspects of the game. From taking some time off, to gearing an alt or maxing your honor/JP - you should now have a little more time on your hands. For us it means two days a week working on H-Rag, for you it might mean something else.

I still support the nerfs

Even with the complete faceroll we performed on Firelands this week, I still support the nerfs to the zone. I will concede that it would have been nice to include a "no thanks, I want the pain" option for those that didn't want the nerf - but when I'm doing an alt run, the last thing I want is to spend two hours beating on Rhy's legs. I do alt runs for laughs - and the enjoyment of hanging out with my fellow guildies. I don't do them because I want the massive challenge.

So however you're handling the nerfs, I think we can rest assured that the Demon Soul is just around the corner, and that means exciting times ahead.

Raid Finder details released - double raiding remix?

2011-09-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

Blizzard released some of the initial details about the upcoming Looking For Raid (LFR) tool, which is scheduled to launch with 4.3. While I was hoping that a different raid would be designed for the LFR, a scaled down version of the Demon Soul raid will be the only available option at the start. In a way, this makes a lot of sense, especially when you take the recent Firelands nerfs into account. There will also be reduced pressure on learning a new raid that isn't available in a normal environment.

Tell me about what matters - the loot!

Right now in Firelands we're getting 378, 384, 391 and 397 gear, with the standard 13 iLvls between normal and heroic, and 6 iLvls for Rag. Much like the 1/2 step we saw between regular heroics and Zulroics, I can certainly see the LFR handing out 397 gear - just like Sinestra's loot was around the same iLvl as starting Firelands. I full expect to see 397 from LFR, and then 404 and 417 (with possible 1/2 steps from Deathwing) from normal and heroic DS. All sounds fine, yes?

Not necessarily.

The first alarm bell that starts ringing in my mind is that the LFR will also drop tier tokens, even if they are slightly lower iLvl. So now you have a potential situation lining up where raiders can be expected to not only raid the standard Demon Soul, but also use the LFR to pick up slightly lower gear. While this may not be as big an issue for your top tier guilds that already have full Fireland heroic gear, I'm betting that there are still some slots folks would like to upgrade. So here we have a similar situation to ICC/ToC 10/25, where you had to run both raids every week, just to make sure you were getting as much loot into your raid group as possible.

This isn't a real issue for a 25m guild, where you can control (to some extent) how the loot is handled in the LFR - but this becomes a bigger issues for 10m guilds that are trying to get a few extra drops for the week.

Need before Greed shenanigans

So now my question is, how will the loot be handled in Tank/Healer/DPS situations? Based on what I'm reading right now, it looks like it will perform just like the LFD. If you can use it, you can roll Need on it. So there will be ample opportunity for some shenanigans to take place - especially since you can queue in a large group. As it stands now, you can roll into the raid with anything from a single player to a full 25m raid group. As long as loot is still tradeable between raid members, I can certainly see an entire group rolling Need on an item to increase their chances of getting it to the person they want to have it.

While this type of thing can occur anywhere, I think the anonymity of the LFR will take the asshattery of LFD to a whole new level.

So will I use it?

I really don't know. I imagine I will give it a go with the guild as much as I can, and I'll probably throw my Paladin into the mix just to see how it plays out. I have to hope that enough checks and balances will be placed in the system to make it at least semi-decent. It certainly won't hurt to get some extra practice on bosses, and a lot will depend on how nerfed the encounters are. I really hope that they don't turn the LFR Deathwing into a nerfed Shannox on the first day.

Tier set bonuses - still a work in progress

2011-09-30T08:19:00.001-08:00

If you know me well at all, you know I feed on the tears of those that nerd rage about things that I consider to be inconsequential, or at the very least - not worth raging about. Near the top of this list are rants about changes on the PTR, especially in the early days of the PTR.

All Paladin healing has been reduced by 25%, and mages will now spontaneously combust and take 3456 damage per second of being within 100yds of a Warlock - friendly or hostile.

Now if that was a real patch note, what do you think the odds of it actually going live are? You can bet money though that a handful of folks would read that and set the proverbial forums on fire.

Love those people.

Legitimate theory-crafting

Now it's certainly permissible, and encouraged even, to put forth some solid theory-crafting and speculation towards anything you happen to see - that's the beauty of having a public space to talk. Having said that, let's look at the two set bonuses that I really care about.

First, the Paladin. The new 2pc bonus is similar to all the other healers - 25% reduction in mana costs to all healing spells cast for the next 15 seconds. This is really sweet for us, because it's triggered off of Divine Favor, which increases our haste and crit - so when we really need to pump out the heals, they're cheaper. This is a lot nicer than the Druid or Shaman bonus - they have their cost reduction tied to their mana return talent.

The 4pc bonus is a little iffy, though it will depend a lot on how the proposed changes to Holy Radiance pan out. Right now I generally cast this on CD anyway, so 20% more healing isn't something I'll say no to. With the new changes making this a concious choice to switch into an AoE healing mode, I think this will be even better (especially with BoL transfers and Mastery hits).

And the Warlock. When I first looked at the Warlock bonuses, I had a small fit. First even though the Doomgaurd is pretty powerful, it's still a 6 minute CD with the bonus. Now if the fights are long enough that you can get two full uses out of him, well then that makes this a pretty amazing CD. If not, it's pretty lackluster. Sure the demon does some great DPS, and it's nice that it's a fire and forget type buff (cast the demon and keep doing your thing) - I just think it's kind of unimaginative.

The 4pc bonus is a nice DPS boost every 45 seconds, and the recent change certainly makes it better. Soulburn an instant Soulfire, and you get a shard back with the 4pc set. Affliction locks may want to still use Seed of Corruption if they have the talent, since this will reapply Corruption when it detonates, and gives you some AoE damage as well. It's not an instant cast though, so casting a fire spell may actually be a DPS increase - that's something we'll have to sim out later.

In the end

I expect to see a few more changes to the set bonuses between now and when the patch goes live. As much as I would have liked to see the patch go live without a PTR, this is one of the big reasons why they exist. A lot of little tweaks and changes will take place between now and the go live date, though I do hope they don't draw this out too long.

If I was a betting man I'd count on at least one more round of changes to the tier bonuses, and 2 or 3 balance changes to the notes already posted.

Why I don't PTR/Beta

2011-09-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

Betas, PTRs and Demos oh my! Space Marine, Battlefield 3, SW:TOR, Diablo 3, WoW 4.3 PTR - you've got your pick (yes, I know Space Marine is live - and it's AWESOME) of games to select from. I'm sure there's a bunch of others available as well, these are just the ones that have caught my attention.

Now, there are certainly differences between a demo, beta, and PTR - but they're all basically designed to do one thing. Whet your appetite for the real deal. Some do it by giving you a (hopefully) polished taste, and others do it by letting you help to test out the upcoming content. Either way, it's a great way to get a feel for the new stuff by playing before the full package is released.

Too much too soon

One of my biggest issues with these is that you start burning through the actual content early. One of the biggest complaints I hear about games is that you run out of the "new" too soon. Well by participating in the free play, you're just burning through it that much faster. You also spend your time playing in an environment that may be less than stable. While instability isn't limited to non-live environments, it's certainly more prone to bugs and issues.

Now if you're actually interested in testing software and actively reporting bugs, then by all means please continue. I appreciate your efforts to make my experience better. Personally though, I do enough testing and trials at work, and I'm compensated quite well for it. I don't feel that getting access to content early is enough to justify the work that I would want to put into being a proper tester. There's also something that is kind of disappointing when you know that everything you just did, you'll have to do again when the game goes live. I get enough of that just leveling alts in WoW, thank you very much.

Demos save you money?

I know some people play demos to help make a decision about the games they want to buy. While I can appreciate this, I'm generally either sold on a game long before it's released, or I show up to the party 6 months late. I was mentally commited to buying every game that I have on my list (BF3, TOR, D3, SC2 Swarm) long before a beta was even announced. I love Star Wars, Space Marines, and the previous Diablo and Starcraft games. Until a company lands a giant turd on my desk, I'll usually stick to a few specific producers. Of course I didn't really like ME2 or DA, but who knows - I'm really hoping that Bioware delivers with TOR.

In the end

At the end of the day, these just aren't for me. While I'm not severely limited in the playtime that I have, I'd much prefer to actually progress my character than spend time in an environment that will soon reset, and I'll have to start again. I have no illusions about ever being a Masters SC2 player, getting a world first WoW kill, or topping the kill charts in BF:BC2 - I'm just looking for a few hours of entertainment.

Warlock 4.3 Patch Notes

2011-09-27T15:24:00.000-08:00

Shadowbolt has a new spell effect.

Well, color me excited! This is almost as huge as Felfire being green. HUGE.

Honestly I'm sure there's more coming, once part 2 of the balance changes is released. There appear to be several interesting changes to the Paladin healing mechanic, including changing the need to judge from 8 seconds to 30 seconds. It looks like overall there are going to be some decent changes, which are usually met with mixed feelings. Everyone loves to be buffed, hates being nerfed (scissors are fine, nerf paper), and learning new mechanics (or how to incorporate the changes) is always interesting.

I'm looking forward to seeing 4.3 come out, though I hope we're not looking at 8 weeks of PTR. With SW:TOR announcing the 20th as their launch date, it would be pretty poor to have 4.3 wait that long. I don't care about it interfering with TOR (I'll be picking that up regardless), it's just that another 3 months of Firelands instantly sucks at my soul - especially given the recent nerfs. Going from 2/7 to 5/7 in one week is awesome, and I love killing new bosses. Farming the same 7/7 (or 6/7 with H-Rag work) for 12 weeks is not something I'm looking forward to.

Here's to a new spell effect for Shadow Bolt.

/cheers

What if there was no PTR?

2011-09-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

So last night, after the nerfs had been live for about 2 days, we got our 2nd kill on Alysrazor which really put a shine on the nerfs. First kill last week ended with our mage ice-blocking at about 3kHP while DoTs finished her off. This week - we finished her off with 2 healers dead.

So the nerfs helped, and I think this is definately pointing to new content coming out "soon". We're 4 weeks away from Blizzcon, where we're going to be dazzled with Diablo 3, SC II Swarm, and the latest patch stuff. Now, this is kind of a mixed bag, because there's two giant WoW announcements that have to happen at the same time.

First, there's the Demon Soul patch. The culmination of the Cataclysm encounters, we've already been shown some information on the Deathwing encounter. Now while there's nothing saying that they couldn't cut the raid until after 4.3 has been out a while, the odds are good that we'll see it launch on time. So, Blizzcon will probably be used to preview this raid pretty heavily.

Second, Blizzard is probably going to give us a good view of the next expansion. I can't imagine that they'd wait until spring/summer of 2012 to announce the new xpac, and waiting until Blizzcon 2012 would mean close to a year (or more) of 4.3x being live. That's way too long, and would result in some kind of SWP or worse Ruby Sanctum type filler raid.

So what to do?

I would really like to see 4.3 launch without a full PTR for it. While this has the potential to present us with some buggy encounters in the raid, it's not unprecedented for Blizzard to release gated/winged content, giving them more time to finish the polish on the Deathwing encounter. Since the raid is only 7 or so bosses though, this seems like it would be some really small gates.

Blizzard was also recently hiring game testers for in house testing, which may indicate that they are at least doing more internal testing. We know that fights are released broken even after weeks of PTR testing, so I wouldn't be 100% opposed to no PTR. It would help keep down a ton of spoilers and would bring back some of that feeling we had in MC where there were no real strategies or videos to watch at the beginning.

My bet

I'm pretty sure that we're going to see 4.3 launch extremely close to Blizzcon, like the Tuesday immediately following. With D3 and the SC2 expansion coming out later this year/early 2012, it would be a good time to announce the next expansion as well.

Here's hoping for no PTR, and Demon Soul going live in just 4 weeks.

Initial thoughts on LFR

2011-09-21T14:31:00.000-08:00

The first thing I did when reading about the new LFR tool that would work like LFD, but on a 25 man scale is punch myself right in the throat, with a quick knock to the nuts. Why you ask? So I would be adequately prepared for the pain that this feature will be bringing to WoW. I think a car battery hooked to my tongue would also help.

In theory

When you first look at what the LFR is intended to do, it seems like a really good idea. Decent ilvl gear, supplemental tier gear, and the opportunity to raid in an environment that is tuned easier than the existing raids. I support all of these ambitions, and think that ad-hoc raids are an amazing idea. Imagine, being able to learn how raiding works, without being in a guild that raids! Just like the LFD, this tool will give players who want to raid - but can't for whatever reason - the opportunity to do so.

Providing they can survive the asshattery.

I mean, let's be honest. While the LFD is a huge improvement over the 2AM "LF Tank for Daily Heroic" search, you can't do a Google search using the word "fail" without getting 15k hits on LFD nonsense. I am a huge, HUGE, fan of the LFD, though I have to make sure my sanity meter is set to 11 before I start a run of them - especially at the heroic level. My god, can you imagine the epeen crowing that will be taking place here?

What I hope it has

First, I pray that there's an efficient way of getting rid of LolArthasDK tank who is in 333 blues and doesn't know the difference between Death Grip and Death Coil. DPS that can't move from the fire, because that's what healers are for. Etc, etc.

I hope that there are 'teaching' mechanics there, and that it's not just a super nerfed version of some content.

I hope there are rainbows.

Holding out hope

I'm going to hope that Blizzard does this project fairly well, because it does have the potential to be an amazing feature in the game.

T12 Nefs - bring em on and quit your crying

2011-09-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure you're well aware by this point, Blizzard has announced that starting next week (well, the week of the 19th) all the T12 content (supposedly H and Reg) will be nerfed. The expectation is that this nerf will be in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 percent, both to the boss's health pools, and the amount of damage that they'll do.

Unprecedented? Hardly.

In ICC they rolled out a progressive 30% buff to player HP and DPS/HPS. While this buff would enable you to possible progress past a boss that you previously had been unable to defeat, it didn't make the content LOLSTOMP. As Kurn pointed out in her blog, you could still wipe your raid with a badly placed plague or unchained magic explosion. Of course you could tell Hellscream to go climb a tree and turn the buff off, but the buff was still there.

It seems like this isn't going to be an optional nerf to Firelands, and personally, I'm glad. IMO giving the ability to turn a buff on/off just leads to a whole other level of drama and bullshit in your guild. What gets me is some of the overwhelmingly violent objections to this nerf.

Well here's my excessive support

First, let's establish one standard/fact/baseline. Either normal raids are the standard, and heroics are "something extra for the hardcore", or heroics are the standard and normal modes are something you have to progress past to get to the real content. Doesn't matter which one you decide you're for, because Blizzard has already stated what it is that they want.

Normal raids are the content, heroic modes are the extra content for those that want to work at it.

Not everyone is supposed to clear heroic content (supposedly) and I guarantee you that this nerf won't suddenly boost a guild from 1/7 to 7/7. No a chance in hell. If you can't move out of Rag's hammer now, you're going to still die to it at 20% less damage in the future. Even if this nerf is a straight flat 20% reduction to ALL damage done in the encounter, you're still going to have to learn the mechanics.

Tied in with this though is the boost to guilds who run sub-optimal raids. I'm talking about guilds that don't stack to get every buff, don't swap out main-spec DPS for that 3rd healer and instead have them going OS DPS - or still three heal. Guilds that still have members who need the boost of extra healing, because they bring members who can't figure out how to do the Alysrazor tornado dance.

This is not Vanilla

I tell a lot of stories about "back in the day", but you know what? That's what they are. Stories. Like my dad telling a story about getting beat in school for using profanity. For better or worse, schools don't work that way any more. The same thing with WoW. This is not the WoW of yesteryear. I spent many, many, painful nights trying to force my way through BWL and AQ40. In BC I moved from guild to guild trying to find one that met my timezones and was actually progressing - imagine if we'd had these nerfs back then!

In Wrath, when the group that finally formed joined up, it was with the goal to a) never miss content again and b) strive for server firsts. We did that through Ulduar, ToC, and ICC (I'm still pissed Tirion is on my statue). By the time Cata came out, our lives and goals had changed. By the release of T12, we'd pretty much moved on to other guilds and games. In fact my deepest regret in the disbanding of TI was that Monger and I didn't get to finish out T12 just 2 healing everything.

What I'm trying to say here, is that the average raider isn't interested in wiping 400 times to get a boss kill. If we're honest with ourselves, the majority of the player base probably wasn't interested in that back in Vanilla either. If they were, we'd have seen a lot more guilds getting into Naxx, instead of the 2 or 3 per server that we really had. Instead we saw guilds breaking at the entrance to BWL, never mind the Twin Emps. We went from being able to let a full 1/3 of the raid sleep through MC, to needing everyone to pay attention in the start of BWL, and AQ40 jumped the difficulty right through the roof.

Where the wheels came off

By accident or design, Blizzard has designed a game of instant gratification, and they are now forced to keep up that premise. There are any number of places to point at and say "This here, this is what killed it", there's no single point of failure here. Heroics dungeons in Wrath were easy at the start (with very few exceptions like Loken), and by the time Ulduar was out they were pretty laughable. By the end of the content they were horrifically easy - a 180 degree shift from heroics in BC.

Achievements were introduced to give you that feeling of "I did it", when really all you did was hit level 10. Whoop dee fucking doo. Hey you bought a mount at level 20! Here's an achievement to let the world know you managed to mount a pony and ride it around the yard without falling off. You bought bank tabs - YAY! With this type of instant atta-boys being tossed out, is it any wonder that content is being nerfed early?

As much as I love the LFD tool, this was another change that helped push us to this point. Now I absolutely LOVE the LFD. For all the mouth breathing, drool sucking, keyboard turning, foul mouthed racist asshats that we get to deal with - we get the occasional great run. More importantly, I don't have to sit in Dalaran/Shatt/Org/where-the-fuck-ever spamming "LF x for ABC run - PST". Now I can keep farming, let the LFD pick me a group, and be whisked away to my run. Hell, I don't even have to know where the damn dungeon is. In, out, and on my way.

At the start of Cataclysm Blizzard tried to bring things back to the BC days. Dungeons were difficult, heroics were absolutely brutal, and the cry for nerfs was heard round the world faster than you could say "Told you so". In my experience the average player can't be bothered to wipe once or twice, much less take 18 seconds to either admit they have no clue what the fight is about, or to explain it without calling them a useless fucktard. Oh noes, the tank doesn't have the fight memorized and isn't in gear 2 tiers above the current content, and the DPS is doing 9k DPS - GTFO and L2P NOOB.

And that ladies and gentlemen, has led us to where we are today.

The idea that we should have it all

Somewhere along the lines, it was decided that everyone should be able to access all the content in the game with a moderate amount of effort. Designing spectacular raids that 1% of the player base will see just doesn't make financial sense, so we got the heroic version of raids. Heroics were supposed to be the pinnacle of the end game. Yeah, you can beat Arthas, but can you beat him on super+ hard mode with x% more badstuff? This was genius in theory, because it let all the "I'm just interested in seeing the content" players actually "see the content, and it gives the Paragons and Stars of the world something to race for in world firsts.

Now what happened though is that the average raider got it in their crazy mind that heroic content should be for everyone. You might link this issue to gear, or prestige, or epeen - but either way, it happened. I personally think this is crap, because the average player isn't willing to do what it takes to actually accomplish the heroic content. They want the kill, but they don't want to have to force Jimmy the Bad, or the Horrible Wife to sit out. They don't want to be forced to grind VP on multiple toons, carry the "perfect' professions, or grind out Archaeology until their eyes bleed because the BiS trinket or weapon comes from that instead of raiding.

Making sacrifices and hard calls

While that style of play isn't wrong, it's wrong to think that they should have access to all the heroic content. I wanted to kill Sinestra in T11, but I wasn't willing to do what it took to get there. I didn't want to play in a guild with more than 10 people - so we had to run with the players we had. We didn't want to raid more than six or maybe eight hours a week - so we did what we could as we could. We didn't want to extend lockouts, farm guild levels, or any of the other things that we might have done to get us to 13/13. Instead we hit 5/13, said that's enough, and took some time off till T12.

And this is what it boils down to. I think it's awesome that my current guild is 1/7-HM, is really close on a few others, and all while keeping a good roster of players that rotates. We dont' stack buffs effectively, we don't sub out or swap players, and we rotate everyone throughout the week. I love it, and I respect that the leadership has stuck to their guns on these topics. We're either going to get it our way, or we're not.

I approve, and I respect it. I also have to say that expecting to be able to go 7/7-HM while doing that may be a little much.

What I'd rather see

Personally I'd rather see Heroics left alone, and nerfs to the regular mode. I'm OK with the possibility that I may never see Ragnaros walk outside of a YouTube video. I'd love to do it, I'd love to see us pull it off without any nerfs even. I'm also secure enough in my epeen that I'll still take a nerfed kill. Hell, I'd still do Sinestra if I get the chance.

I don't want to see an option to leave the buff on or off, and I do agree that increasing player DPS and HPS/Stam is very different than just nerfing the HP and DPS of a boss. At the end though, it's still a nerf. I don't think this is going to "kill WoW", and I don't think this is a last ditch effort of anything. What I do think is that we're about six weeks away from Blizzcon, where we should be seeing announcements for the next expansion. I'd like to think they're just playing 4.3 close to the vest, but that's probably not the case either. We'll probably start seeing some raid information trickling out soon, especially since we're getting Tier previews now.

Conclusion

In the end, this isn't Vanilla, this isn't BC, hell it ain't even Wrath. It's year seven (eight?) of a MMOs life, and things are bound to change. You can't walk uphill both ways to school, with no shoes, in the winter, and without a coat even forever you know. Eventually you're going to get some shoes, maybe a bike, and hell - maybe move to someplace warm. They're nerfs, they're here, and I don't think it's a bad thing.

On substitutions - and Healers getting the shaft?

2011-09-08T16:23:00.000-08:00

One of the tough things about having a blog that your guild mates know about is that it can be tough to have two separate opinions on a subject. Today's topic was inspired by some discussions going on in our guild right now, and I'll say up front that while I may not agree with the decisions that may come out of the discussions, they aren't discussions that need my input. I'm not a healer here, so any talk about healing strategies doesn't really concern me. When it comes to decisions about running a raid, once again - if my input is asked for I'll give it - but at the end of the day I'm just a raider, not an officer or the Raid Leader.

Damn, this could be a post on it's own. Short version here is, while I may not agree with all the decisions, I support them and respect that they've been made. Having said that, I'll get on to my real points today.

Raid Substitutions

Back in the day, and more so in BC, raid substitutions had to occur pretty regularly in some guilds. In Vanilla you might have been happy just to have 40 members for a raid (or 20 for the ZG/AQ). Unless you were a big guild (or farm night for us), you didn't have more than that showing up anyway. When raids dropped to 25m in BC, you started seeing more players being subbed in for specific fights. More/less AoE, different tank types, etc. While a lot of it depended on how progressed your guild was (chasing server firsts vs server 81sts), a lot was based on what someone read was the right way to do a fight.

There's another type of substitution that occurs as well, and that's based on loot drops. Some bosses are notoriously stingy with certain drops, and depending on your roster rotation and the fickle nature of loot - you might never see that upgrade you're looking for (shields, weapons, and trinkets are notoriously bad). I'm sure we all have at least one tale involving a missed raid, and a specific piece of gear dropping, and never being seen again. Except when someone opened the trade window and taunted you with it.

Unfortunately, these types of substitutions are a pain in the ass to deal with. Depending on your guild culture, your RL probably spends a fair bit of time every week dealing with scheduling issues already. Between making sure that all your players have an opportunity to see/kill all the bosses, meeting day off needs, and dealing with last minute misses - the RL has a lot on their plate. Adding in the additional stress of making sure that Bob gets in for a specific kill is pretty much just asking for them to eat the muzzle of a gun.

In addition to the bother of having to keep track of who needs to swap when, changing out players can be a big hit to momentum. This isn't as big of an issue in a 25m if you're just swapping out a single player, but in a 10m it can be a big hit (especially if it's a tank or healer swapping out).

Now I will state that there is an exception to my general dislike of substitutions, and that is when the players take the responsibility of subbing out themselves. This includes everything from making sure you coordinate the swap appropriately (right bosses, etc), to being right outside for the swap. You also have to make sure that you're willing to swap out for the other guy, and even be willing to give up your regular night if necessary. Of course all of this has to be run by your RL before you try and pull it off.

I'll type that again for the reading impaired.

DO NOT SUB OUT OF A RAID WITHOUT COORDINATING WITH YOUR RL

I really can't stress that enough. If the RL says no subs, that's the end of the conversation. Period. Will it suck if a drop gets wasted? Sure. But this is one of those situations where you have the option to either just roll with it, or vote with your feet. Don't get sour about life if the decision doesn't go your way - just soldier on.

Healers get the shaft - again (still?), or working as intended?

More and more I believe that Blizzard really hit the nail on the head with 10m raiding. Most of the 10m Firelands (Baelroc is the only one I'd wonder about) can be two healed right out of the gate. I've talked before about the differences between two and three healing content, and I'll stick by the notion that it's certainly up to your specific group. There are some distinct benefits to both types of play, and it really doesn't matter which one you do. Most bosses are perfectly fine with the 2 tank, 2 heal model - which works well since that's what you need for two 5 man groups.

Where things take a twist though is with heroic mode bosses. I firmly believe that not everyone is meant to go 7/7 heroic in this tier (or 13/13 in the previous one). Heroic mode fights however are completely different. You cannot simply adjust your DPS order or tank rotation and call it good. DPS requirements are generally sky high, and the encounters are fairly tight for all parties. Healing has to be spot on and higher, tanks have to be right on the mark with CDs, and the DPS needs to just pour it on.

More importantly though, the DPS has to avoid every scrap of incoming damage possible. You cannot stand in a blaze, miss an interrupt, or let your head slip up your ass for a second. If you have a personal CD, you have to use it. Self heal? Better cast it. Losing some DPS for a few seconds to either avoid damage or heal yourself back up is completely worth it.

Now, what this will eventually lead to is most groups being forced into a two heal model to meet the DPS requirements. Either that, or you're going to spend a lot of time getting your DPS geared up to the point that they can cover that sixth DPS.

This does a number on guilds that run a three heal model for two reasons. First, the odds are pretty good that their healers don't have a DPS spec/gear/experience to do competitive DPS. What this means is that the odds are good that one of your healers, someone who's put in the same amount of time getting you to this point, is now sitting out for another DPSer. This can put a lot of stress on those healers, because they're basically being punished for playing the class you needed. Guilds have broken up over smaller issues than this.

Now this discussion is currently happening for us, because we're running into some issues with heroic progression. Is it a healing issue? A DPS issue? Who knows. What I do know is that knee jerk reactions to change the makeup of your raid is a dangerous thing. Personally, I think that if you're not hitting an enrage timer, you don't change anything. Now if you don't have the DPS to kill mandatory adds or the boss, it's a different story. Then you have to make a swap. Again though, if you do this your DPS loses any cushion that they might have had for mistakes.

IT IS VITAL YOU AVOID DAMAGE IN A TWO HEAL FIGHT

Can't stress it enough. If your guild switches form a 3 heal to a 2 heal fight, you cannot stand in the giant big for one second without using your own heals/CDs to get through it.

Remember - it's not your call

Finally, remember that if you're not the RL, or maybe an officer in on the discussion, once the decision has been made, that's it. Let it go, and don't keep pushing an issue. The officers and RL have enough on their plate already, they don't need you taking an issue beyond a discussion and into the petulant child realm.

AFK - Serving the God Emporer

2011-09-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

Everything I ever hoped for in a 40k game.

Ask Mr. Robot - What are you doing?

2011-09-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

I love Ask Mr. Robot. I really do. It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent thousands in reforgeing my gear, or that I’ve swapped out gems/chants just to please that little optimize button. No, where I scratch my head is how the stat weights actually are computed. Now normally I have one simple rule for doing my reforge. Hit to 17% > Haste > Mastery > Crit. That’s it. It’s really similar to my standard Paladin reforging. Haste > Mastery > Crit. Sure, I’ve played with heavy Mastery builds, or looked at high crit builds, but once I find something that works, I usually stick with it.

Mr. Robot throws that right into the frigging blender.

Now I will admit that it’s a bit more of a challenge with a DPS than the Pally. Keeping that 17% hit mark is a fine dancing game, and I’ve probably reforged my Darkmoon card two dozen times since starting in Firelands. It’s just so much mastery that can be swapped out, it’s a big bump. With the Pally it’s generally look at a piece of gear. If Haste = 0, reforge something to haste, otherwise, leave it alone.

Here’s where I run into the /headbang moments with my lock.

See, I regularly raid with two specs, Demo and Affliction. Personally I like the feel of Affliction better, but some fights (H-Rhy and Rag right now) require that I be Demo for one reason or another. For Rhy it’s the awesome AoE, and for Rag it’s the fact that without being Demo, I have exactly zero stuns for the sons. OK, so that’s fine, but where Mr. Robot throws me a wrench is that even though both builds value Haste > Mastery > Crit (according to Mr. Robot), they value them at different rates. So in one build I might be told to reforge 3 pieces, then I’ll log out as Demo and be told that 9 pieces need to be swapped. I “KNOW” that the plus/minus is minimal at best between the two, but I often forget that I’m logged out as Demo instead of Aff. It’s just mind boggling that there is such a difference, when ranking wise the stats are the same – they just have different values.

After more than one trip to the loan sharks to pay for my reforge, I pay a bit closer attention to how I’m logged out before getting the Robot’s opinion. Personally I find the tool to be invaluable for getting me as close to the hit cap without going over – and completely irritating when I’m not paying 100% attention.

A band of fire

2011-08-31T15:30:00.000-08:00

Rag, is a fiery being

And he casts, a fiery ring

Voss, with his tanking ire

He stepped into the band of fire

Voss stepped in to a burning band of fire

The tank went down, and the sons went wild

The raid burned, burned, burned, in a band of fire

A band of fire

Voss stepped in to a burning band of fire

The tank went down, and the sons went wild

The raid burned, burned, burned, in a band of fire

A band of fire

The traps, they burn your feet

Your heals, they must be leet

Smash, lands on your head

Move, or you’ll be dead

Voss stepped in to a burning band of fire

The tank went down, and the sons went wild

The raid burned burned burned, in a band of fire

A band of fire

My Raiding UI

2011-08-26T11:28:00.000-08:00

This isn't the post I was planning, but it's what I've got available today. This is a fairly basic UI layout I think, and it does have some double information, specifically ICE HUD and the standard portrait info. I use ForteXorcist for multi-mob DOT tracking, and Power Auras to track DOTs on my current target. I added scrolling damage text so I could get an idea of how hard I'm hitting, but I'm pretty sure that's going to be coming off soon - it's just too confusing.

There's really no need as far as I can tell to keep scrolling damage on my screen. Maybe if it was BWL and I needed to see if a mob was resistant/immune to a certain type of damage, but that's not the case with anything really. Plus, I think I'd figure it out after a few seconds. IceHUD is probably going to be following it pretty quickly as well, though I have gotten pretty used to having that up there. I think if I add an aura for < 35% mana, boss < 25% HP, and no Soul Link - I can completely remove that.

I'd also like to get rid of Recount, or just set it to only show after combat - it's just one more thing taking up space, and it's not like I'm going to change my rotation mid through the fight. Omen is already disabled, thanks to the change in tank threat. Since I open CoE>BoD>Corr - it takes a few seconds before I'm even dealing damage - more than enough time for the tank to secure agro.

So there you go - my delicious, overcrowded, needs some work UI.

The Transmorgify opinion I haven't seen yet

2011-08-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

Note - this isn't how I feel, but the post/opinion I'm just waiting to see.

OMG BLIZZARD, this is such a huge slap in the face to well, pretty much everyone. New players who have never gotten this gear will have to go try and get terrible groups full of ninjas to try and have a shot at filling out their sets. Players who have been here (like me, since Alpha you know) have had to discard entire sets of gear that I would LOVE to have, just becuase there wasn't enough bank space. Now I have to try that all over agian, and compete on a /roll with some new player who picked up the game in 4.2! WTF. I DEMAND YOU FIX THIS.

Warlock - What I like, don't like, and don't understand

2011-08-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

I think I talked about my frustration (and yet, approval) of the fact that each spec available to the Warlock is both different, and requires different emphasis on secondary stats. Affliction loves haste, Demo wants mastery, and Destro favors crit. Even without helping to finance the reforger's vacation home in the Isles, you can still be fairly competitive with any setup as long as you're hit capped.

Which spec do I prefer, and why?

Right now I've been playing a lot of Affliction, both in PvP and PvE. I really like Demo, but I don't like that either a) I'm completely missing something, b) I have to be in melee range to get the full benefit of my Metamorph, or c) that the tanks keep dragging my target out of the Hand of Gul'dan. Seriously, that is a shadow patch you CAN stand in - though I do admire your survival instincts. Destro really feels complicated and clunky. So much of your DPS depends on keeping up a buff that 'should' be proccing from your demon, but I've found I have to hard-cast more often than not. I'm actually pretty sure that my obsession with getting my three hasted casts off is what's killing my DPS as Destro, but who konws.

For whatever reason though, Affliction just feels more like a Warlock spec than the other two. In all honesty though they are so very similar that it's kind of funny. You have three DoTs you want to keep up at all times (Corruption, your Bane, and either Unstable Affliction or Immolate), a Curse (usually Elements), one or two spells with CDs, and a filler. In this regard, I'd rate the specs (in terms of difficulty) as Demo>Aff>Destro - but that's just me.

I am glad though that they aren't just different versions of each other, and that there are slightly different aspects to each spec. I guess the one thing I don't understand though, is why does Haunt refresh Corruption instead of UA? Goes back to that slightly different feel again.

A new home, a new role, and a missed guild first

2011-08-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Over the last three weeks I've made some indication that I was currently trialing with another guild as a Warlock - pretty much a 180 degree shift from healing on a Paladin. I went from being at the top of the game to being just another guy fighting for a raid spot and guild invite. It's been a pretty crazy three weeks, especially when you consider that I started as a fresh 85 wearing greens and am now rocking 4 or 5 pieces of BiS Firelands gear. I'm sure that at the very least this is a reflection on how the game has changed over the last seven years, and I will still say that it's for the best.

I'm still settling into my new home though, and there's that growing period where you're learning the new jokes, and the other members are trying to figure out why you keep offering them watercolors. I even did a complete quote segment from Bull Durham, and the only person who got it was Ed. /sadface

Learning the Warlock has been crazy fun, though I will say that if there's one thing that really irritates me it's that each spec focuses on a different secondary stat. WTF is that about? Now to be fair, I'd probably be bitching the other way if every Warlock spec was the same except for the spells you cast (though they aren't far off now). No, it's just the fact that Affliction needs haste to the point where I'm trying to find a Meth dealer in the dwarven district (I miss the Belves and their crazy drugs). Demo abuses mastery to no end, and Destro wants crit like the fire mages they are. While your basic gear is enough to get you through most spec changes, a reforge is really in order to eek out those last few points.

Of course I've put that reforger guy's kids though braces, perp school, college, and even set up a substantial dowry for them at this point. Of course Night Elves don't reproduce that often, but have you seen their teeth? Good lord, no wonder he's so happy to see me every other day. Now I really wish I had that old screenshot of Psycho's teeth - enough to make a baby cry. Seriously. Worst. Teeth. Ever. Even worse than Jaws in Moonraker (no Mr. Bond, I expect you to die [yeah, I know that wasn't Jaws] ), Psycho's teeth were terrible.

Of course, I don't NEED to reforge every fifteen seconds, but damn if it doesn't hurt when I don't have enough crit as Destro. Hard casting Soulfire sucks.

Missing a guild first

Since I started raiding in Vanilla, I've missed only one guild first kill - and that was the original Ragnaros in Molten Core. Every other guild first, when I've been a "raider" in a guild, I was there for. My pedigree is long and distinguished (just like Iceman's johnson), and while my guild first kills were rarely server firsts (and never, ever world firsts, they were still GUILD firsts.

Monday was the first time that I'd missed a guild first kill, and ironically enough, it was Ragnaros again. What a bastard. Monday night happened to be my night on standby, and the guild got an awesome kill after an especially heartbreaking .4% wipe. Those are the worst. I think it's especially bad on a fight like this where you know you only have to hit 10% (like the Lich King fight). Obviously the fight is tuned to the point that the 10% mark is really where it needs to end, but it's still a ball breaker.

The good thing is that I know I'll get in on the next kill, it's not like he's going anywhere. And I'm sure I'll be in on a guild first heroic kill that someone else has to miss. It's just the nature of the game and the guild. I certainly don't regret that I have one night off every week, and that I have the flexibility to miss a night if needed.

Where I landed

So if you're looking for me, you can still catch me from time to time on Pistonhondo, and I'll still be putting in my 2 cents on the state of the Healadin (Holy Radience is fine - seriously - we do NOT want a channeled heal), as well as my thoughts on being a Warlock. You can find Apokalyptiko hanging out on Moonrunner with Vidalya of Manalicious. And seriously, she hates the onion jokes. They're old.

Thoughts for Rookies

2011-08-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

I've never tried to make it a secret that in my opinion, WoW Insider, while a decent read, is pretty much useless for anyone playing beyond the base 85. This isn't a knock against the writers or the site itself, there are just better sites for getting the nitty gritty info that you might need for raiding or serious theory-crafting. I will admit that I've picked up a few tidbits for UI tweaking and the like, and for news they're pretty good - but I've also come to the following realization.

I am not their target audience.

Now, where WoW Insider does do a great job is with their WoW Rookie series. Sure, it's tough to get everything you need in a couple of blog posts, but they try to give you at least a sample of what to expect and where to go for more. After all, you shouldn't get the entire game spoon fed to you. Believe it or not though, there are actually new players picking up the game. While it's easy to dismiss the 45th hunter wearing spirit cloth off as a complete noobcake, it's very possible that they simply don't know any better. Like I mentioned before, I currently have a guildmate that didn't know what a TABARD was for - how can I expect him to grasp the intricacies involving haste and mastery? Should I REALLY be surprised when he's wearing Spirit cloth as a non-Spirit user?

Helping someone in the LFD

I'm fairly certain that the LFD has passed the random BG in terms of being a complete cesspool of humanity. At least in a RBG you can get away with turning off BGchat and you'll still do fairly well if you keep your eyes open. While I'm not advocating the Lone Ranger type play, it's easier to pull off than in a LFD group. Of course given the average communication in a random is maybe a "hey" or "go faster", it's not surprising when the first real sentence to escape someone's mouth is nothing more than a string of profanity and insults.

I'm getting off track though, which just goes to show you the power of the LFD idiots. What I wanted to talk about today was how taking five minutes might actually help someone enjoy their game, instead of logging off in a fit of frustration, or tears. While I know it's tough to imagine, all of us were new to WoW at one point - even the elite players in Paragon and Stars. While past experiences might give you an edge, everyone has a first time, and that first time will set the stage for future play.

The hunter in Spirit gear

We've all seen at least one, admit it. While catching one at 85 in a heroic is grand cause for a /facepalm, what about one at level 20? While I've recently been spending all my time grinding Ramkahen rep with my Lock (yes - I still need rep, and the boots are better till I get a pattern or Shannox coughs some up), every once in a while I need to do something different, so I work on my baby Druid. Now the LFD is a pretty quick way to level to 60, even if I am queueing as DPS, and it saves me the stress of having to heal the retarded tank of the day.

Back to the hunter.

So this morning I get in a group with a nasty mouthed tank, a healing priest, warrior, and this hunter. I'm the only one rocking full BoAs, and we all know that it's really easy to just decimate an instance when you're geared that way. So I'm watching the group while learning how Eclipse works, and I see this hunter - in cloth - keeps pulling mobs. Now, he's not pulling and then FDing on the group, he's either a bot or just used to being able to kill non-elite trash. Immediately calls of Huntard, "Stop pulling noob", and much worse go out. I felt bad for the guy, so I took a minute to actually talk to him.

It turned out that this WAS their first toon (or they were just acting), and they simply didn't know what they were about. They were wearing a dress because it was enchanted, and they had no idea why they should be looking for any kind of special gear. Instead of belittling them, I pointed out a few quick tips, directed them to WoW Rookie (sending someone like that to EJ is just cruel), and the rest of the run went smoothly. Well, as smoothly as that type of run can go.

Even Ed has feelings

While I do have some difficulty beliving this statement, it's true. Behind the keyboard (usually) is another person, and that person probably has feelings that they'd like to keep intact. Even that hunter doing 4k in your 85 heroic might not just be a turd, but someone who has never had anything explained to them. As easy as WoW has become over the years, there's still nothing in game that tells you "Get some AGI and skip the INT gear hunter boy". Despite the new information about available talents, stat bars, and ease of leveling - it's tough to really max out your characters without going for external information.

So instead of opening up with hostility, maybe take a moment to try and help someone on the other end. While I don't advocate holding their hands all the way through, at the very least you can point them to a good resource, or offer a nugget or two of information.

Analyzing a death/wipe - and recovering from a bad night

2011-08-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

So I was going to write a post for an actual WoW rookie that is in my guild. I'm constantly surprised by the questions he asks, and they aren't just /facepalm questions either, but questions like "What are tabards?" and a complete lack of understanding as to what a raid is. I mean, how do you respond when someone sees a 10 Tabards achievement pop up, and they don't know what a tabard is? Or how to check ranks in a guild? But this post is not for him, it is instead for me - and everyone who's ever had a night of raiding that didn't turn out like you'd planned.

Analyzing a death

Now part of this carries over from my time as a raid leader/MT/healer, but this is what I do. When I start tanking floor I immediately pull up Recount to see my death log. I want to know why I died, and if I could have prevented it. This goes double right now, because I'm still a trial raider, and I hate dying to environmental that I can avoid. Plus I know my DPS still isn't as high as it should be, so I'm really critical of my own play.

Now wipes happen, and bad raid nights happen. We used to be pretty cyclical in TI, in that one week we'd go 12/12 in 18 minutes, and the next week we'd struggle to get 3/12 (ok, not that extreme, but you get the point). This is compounded when you're rotating raiders, and having tanks/healers fill the different roles. While that's good (in that you're not dependant on that one tank who always goes up on Beth), it can also lead to extra wipes because they're doing something different.

Of course since I'm not healing at the moment, and I'm not raid leading, my primary focus is me. Tank fell over and went boom? I look at what I was doing, and if that in any way impacted the death. If the answer is no, I go back to analyzing what I was doing right (and wrong) up to that point. Now if I'm the first one to hit the deck, it's another story - and then it's really time to pour over those logs.

Looking at my deaths

So last night I think I had two (maybe 3?) deaths where I was the first to hit the deck. One, on Alysrazor (I'm sorry Kurn - she's forever Alice-razor in my mind), I died on our first pull. First transition to P2, and poof - dead warlock. Looking at the logs, I died to Searing Winds - in the exact mirror position of where I normally am (I usually get assigned to the right side, not the left). The only thing I could see is that my skeleton was actually off the ground by about 10' - so I have to think that the game assumed I was up in the air, even though I only had one feather (as a note, I don't normally get one - maybe this was it?). So I chalk that death up to something I can't control. I wasn't too close to the middle, I wasn't high up on the side - I just died.

WoW - 1, Apok - 0

Now my next death was on Rhy. I died to Volcano Eruptions - something I can't control. Even looking at the WoL, while I took some stomp damage (that's on me), I was also getting smacked by some adds (DPSing too early). Because the death was due to high volcano stacks though, I'm chalking this up to something outside my control.

WoW - 2, Apok - 0

Now this death was embarrasing. I had my camera slaved over to the side, becuase I KNEW a lava line was coming. While looking for it though, Rhy crossed over me, and the lava was under his foot. I died, but what I should have done was move. This was my fault, as I should have been moving when I saw him coming to block my vision. I was so focused on killing the adds though, I didn't move, trusting that I'd see it when it spawned.

WoW - 2, Apok - 1

Looking deeper

Over the course of a night, that's not too bad (other deaths were just wipes - this is only deaths where I died first). It wasn't flawless play, but it wasn't bad. The problem is, our entire raid was having the same kind of night. When that happens, it's a long freaking night. I fully expect that tonight we'll knock things over and get time on Rag, but it's still frustrating.

At the end of a night, look at the death log in WoW to see what happened. Check and see if players are using self CDs, Healthstones, pots, etc - anything to delay their deaths. It's also a good way to see if someone stood in the giant big, or if they died to some other mechanic.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something for our WoW rookie. I feel kind of bad for him - I know it's got to be confusing to watch gchat and not know what's going on.

To host ads or not

2011-08-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

First - I will say that I will not be putting ads up on my blog. I'll cover my reasons behind this in depth, but the long and the short of it is that I think in 99.9% of the cases, they're just dumb. Obviously, I don't have any math to back up this revolutionary thought, but I'll give a go at why they make no sense.

I don't visit your site in the first place

I do the vast majority of my blog reading though a feeder. The only time I visit a site directly is when I feel the need to comment on a particular topic, and that's not too often. Usually by the time I get to a site my comment has been voiced 85 other times, and it just gets lost in the noise. Unless I feel like I'm actively discussing something, I don't comment. I accept that this is how I work, and so while I love comments, I don't freak out when I don't get any. A comment of "totally agree" just doesn't do much. A comment that continues discussion is pretty nice.

More to the point though, is that I don't even know what my site looks like half the time. I do a lot of my posts via email, and I kind of forgot that my site was even as dark as it was. I actually get surprised by the design of some sites, just because hey - I've read their posts for years, and never visited the site once.

What really detracts from a site though is ads. They're in your face, flashing, trying to seduce you into clicking on them. Does anyone still click on these? I can't remember the last time I saw an add on a website and thought "oh man, that is EXACTLY what I've been looking for". I don't even click an ad to get to Amazon. If I want to find a site I'll either Google it myself, or put in the URL I know.

How much money are you really making?

Unless you're getting thousands of hits a day, and by thousands I mean 10s or 100s of thousands, your annual revenue from click through ads is going to be somewhere around $4 a month - maybe enough to get yourself a double-double and a doughnut at Timmy's. Most of us probably lose more than that in our couch cushions - I know my wife pulls more than that in change out of my backpack every week.

So again, unless you're racking in the hits, your odds of making any kind of cash through something like Adsense are really, really, low. Plus, unless you're negotiating for your own ads with companies you support, I don't think there is really any control over what ads show up.

Is it worth the cost?

In the end you have to ask if the revenue you're generating from random ads is worth the cost to your soul. If you can slap on an Engin banner and get free hosting - maybe that's worth it. Right now though, my blogspot account is free, my Vent/Mumble server costs something like 3 bucks a month, and I think the guildlaunch no ads site is what - $10 a year? I'll throw that money out of my own pocket to know that I don't have junk on my site that I don't want.

Crazy mouse/camera problem

2011-08-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

I have an issue going on right now that I'm hoping can be solved pretty easily. Every once in a while, usually I think when I'm transitioning targets or moving my mouse around pretty crazy, my camera shoots straight up - so I'm looking at the sky.

WTF?

Fortunately it hasn't happened while I"m trying to dodge a wrench or something, but it is disorienting and confusing as hell. It's easy enough to recover from, just - makes me curse a bit.

If anyone knows a camera setting I can make in the interface to prevent this, that'd be great.

Three heals or two?

2011-08-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

Ahh - the question that has plagued raid leaders for years, or at least since 10m were introduced in BC. Raid composition and roster juggling is one of the major headaches for any raid leader or GM. Maintaining a bench is hard enough, but making sure your bench isn't just filler is even tougher. Don't rotate often enough, and your bench players won't have the gear or experience to get you though those new nights. Rotate too much, and nobody gets enough. It's a fine line to walk.

Tanks, healers, and special cases

Regardless of what you might want, there are certain players who are always needed - at least one tank, two healers, and any special cases (legendary fragment recipients come to mind) that must be in a raid. Now, a good raid leader will make sure that every tank/healer combo is a) valid and b) has time on boss. It doesn't do you any good when your 3rd tank has to become the MT for a fight, and they've never seen it before. The same goes for anyone in a 'clutch' role. If only two people know how to do Magmaw's chains, and one is missing, you're probably going to wipe the first time someone new steps in.

In a standard setup though, you're probably going to need at least two tanks and two healers. Adjustments after that are generally case by case.

How many healers is enough?

Most guides I read call for a two tank, three healer, combo for every fight. This setup is pretty safe, since it gives you extra healing for those AoE moments, and gives the healers a chance to compensate for poor play on the part of the DPS and tanks. Now by poor play, I mean the combination of several different things. Tanks that don't use CDs, players that take avoidable damage (flame waves on Ragnaros are NOT delicious, nor are they fun to ride), and other healers who have poor spell/mana control. The other thing a third healer gives you is flexibility of playstyle.

Flexibility of playstyle isn't compensation for poor play, but instead is a different mindest to work off of. With a two healer setup, each healer has to be completely fluid in their play. You can't go with static assignments on the majority of fights (Chimaeron is an exception to this), and you have to be able to cover a lot of players in a hurry. This type of healing really requires your raid to avoid as much damage as possible, and to use self healing where applicable. This type of healing is (in my opinion) a lot more fun (read - stressful) since you can often find yourself on an island without backup.

Why three healing is better than two

Three healing fights instead of two healing gives you one major advantage - healers can focus on specific assignments. Raid healers can ignore the tank, Paladins can do what we do best - keep the tank(s) alive, and DPS can use fewer CDs on self healing (sloppy play will still get you dead). This isn't my preferred style, but there's nothing wrong with doing it. It also allows you to have a healer absent, and still work through two healing an encounter - solo healing is going to be pretty tough in most of these encounters.

Why two healing is better than three

Things die faster. Bottom line. Let's say your DPS is all sitting within 3k of each other - so you have a range from 17k to 20k on any given boss fight (yes I know numbers fluctuate all the time, blah blah blah). Now, if a boss has say 67M HP, and your raid is doing 100K DPS - it's going to take you 11.1 minutes to defeat that boss. If instead, you bring 120K DPS, you're now looking at 9.3 minutes. That's pretty significant. Bosses dying faster means you're though transitions quicker, healers need less mana, tanks have less "scary" time in a certain phase - everything is just faster.

The bottom line

The real bottom line though is that you have to do what's right for your group/guild, and for the specific boss. For example we 2 healed H-Atramedes, but had to use 3 for H-Chimaeron. Even though I totally believe we 'could' have done H-Chim with two, there were just too many insta-gib moments to make it worth it. Even with three healers we'd still lose a tank to a missed block, a slow 10k top off, etc. H-Atramedes and H-Maloriak on the other hand just required that the raid avoid all the incidental damage possible.

Your raid makeup also plays a big part in this. Getting a lot of incidental healing from a healing stream totem and vampiric embrace? Are your raiders using GCDs to heal themselves with things like recuperate, word of glory, or drain life? Are your tanks avoidance or stamina tanks? Are your healers even comfortable two healing? Does your Warlock life tap right after you've topped off a raid and told the mage to go ahead and trigger Ragnaros's trap, sending someones blood pressure straight to the top?

All of these things, and more, play into what kind of healing strategy you bring to the table. The only wrong way is the one that doesn't get bosses killed. As long as the bosses are dying, use five healers and three tanks (in 10m) if you need to. You may not get the fastest kill in the world, but if you're having fun doing it, who gives a shit.

How much is that Thunderfury in the window?

2011-08-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Or put another way - it's time for another Internet rage!

There are some topics, and I'm pretty sure this will be one of them, that whip the blogsphere into an absolute feeding frenzy. The hell with Shark Week, this is where the real blood is.

The newest chum in the water

Sometime in the last few days Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 will have a cash AH, meaning that crazy sword that dropped can now be sold for cold hard cash instead of being pawned off on a vendor or sold on an AH for mere electronic gold. Of course there will be an AH for that as well, and if you don't have enough gold to buy it, you can always get more from the cash AH.

That's right - there is going to be an exchange for real currency here. I can sell you my Giant Codpiece of the Whale for your cold hard US Dollars (seriously, can we get the Activision/Blizzard guys in Washington to settle this debt thing?). Now there are a few caveats to this service.

THIS IS NOT FOR WOW - I felt it needed to be bolded and capitalized for emphasis. I swear I've read more comment/posts about how it will affect WoW, and at least for today - it won't. I'm not saying it won't show up, or that it's even a bad idea - just that right now this has zero impact on WoW.
Blizzard is going to hit you three times - Right now, when you sell something you have three fees between you and your money. First, you have to pay a cash deposit to list the item. Auction expires, you lose that money. Second, you lose a cut of the auction to Blizzard when the item sells (I don't know if you get your deposit back or not). Finally, if you want to cash out your Blizzard.net account (where the money sits), you pay a third fee for that.
There is no spoon - I don't really have a third point here, other than since I think D3 isn't an MMO, won't have balanced PvP (i.e. less balanced than WoW is), and there's no real race for world Hardcore First (maybe there will be?) - selling the items doesn't really impact anything.

Going forward

Personally, I think this is a genius move by Blizzard, and I'm surprised it took so long to become reality. I'm not sure I'd like to see this in WoW, because while I'm perfectly ok with dropping 2500g to powerlevel tailoring on my Warlock, I'm not sure how I'd feel about spending say - $25 (probably way more than that) to accomplish the same thing. I mean, what is a stack of Embersilk really worth? 50g? Sure, why not. Fifty cents? I don't know. Of course with microtransactions it's easy to get nickle and dimed into spending a small fortune. Oh, look - just $1.00 for a whole stack of crystals! I'll just get three of those, and $2.00 worth of herbs, and....shit, the mortgage is due.

I'm going to hold off my final opinion on this type of AH until D3 actually launches and I see it in action. Right now I'd be hesitant to see it in WoW, but I'd bet money that if it works well in D3 we'll see it (or something like it) in Titan. We have to accept that companies are going to make money any way they can, and also that players will use any method possible to gain power and items. As long as someone is selling, the parent company might as well attempt to regulate it - and make money on it.

Holy Paladin Talents - where does that last point go?

2011-07-28T12:30:00.000-08:00

Ever since the change was made in Cataclysm to force you to have 31 points in a given tree before moving on, the talent builds have gotten very lackluster and a lot of the 'options' that we pretended we had in Wrath and BC moved away. In reality this just helped out the guy who would have built a 16/10/5 Holy build and tried to play it off. Instead each tree seems to have 2 or 3 talents that are 'optional' for that build, but seem more inclined for solo play or PvP (which let's admit it, is generally solo play with a bunch of other individuals).

So where does this leave the up and coming player? What talents are 'required' and which are optional? Is there any real flexibility in a raid environment?

The answer, as usual, is "it depends".

Talents I consider 'optional'

If you read EJ, at least their warlock guides, you'll see that the talent builds have a lot of 'optional' marks, though there's really only 2 or 3 points to play with. The same goes for the paladin, and I'm guessing every other class out there. So, here's my list of 'optional' talents for the Holy Paladin. Remember, even with the 'flex' points that you have, you still need 31 to move on.

Protector of the Innocent (T1) - Technically one point here can be pulled to fill in a gap somewhere else. Personally I really like the extra self healing, as every GCD not spent on me is one I can spend elsewhere.
Arbiter of the Light (T1) - This is a ret or prot talent plain and simple. This doesn't even belong in a PvP/Arena build. Stay away.
Last Word (T2) - Generally only one point gets put here. With the crit we pack on our gear already, a 60% bonus crit on a target that is sub 35% health is a situational talent at best. While the 200% crit bonus makes it a little more attractive, it's kind of overkill. Losing a point here is certainly viable.

Because of talent point availability, you'll need to max out one of these two talents to move on to Tier 3, either that or take a ret/PvP talent, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Blazing Light (T2) - I put this in italics, because it's really a shockadin/PvP talent. Great for soloing or for something like Chimearon burn phase. I'd question this talent in a group outside of PvP/Arena.
Denounce (T3) - I put this in italics, because it's really a shockadin/PvP talent. It can prevent your target from getting a critical strike, but since all tanks are crit immune anyway, it's pretty pointless for PvE - to the point where I'd really question a group healing build that had one (outside of PvP/Arena).
Enlightened Judgements (T4) - A lot of paladins take 1 point here to get hit capped. The 2nd point really only provides a little more range (5yds), and a touch more self healing (1400-2800). Personally I say skip the 2nd point here.
Sacred Cleansing (T4) - This is the first real talent that you can skip in a large raid, as long as you have enough other cleansers in your raid. If you're doing 5 mans, any kind of Pugging, or just don't want to lose a powerful utility spell - put the one point here. If you're really starving for poitns you can take one somewhere else. Now if you're doing 25m HM content only (or trust your other healers to get all the cleanses) then by all means, skip it.
Aura Mastery (T5) - I put this in bold because it is a rediculously powerful raid CD, and if you skip this point so you can have harder hitting exorcisms or something I will track you down and beat you to death with your own mouse. There is so much fire damage in T12 that this should be used almost on CD. Don't leave home without it.
Tower of Radience (T6) - There is a lot of debate around this talent, especially in the 10m circles. If you're running a high Mastery build and just slamming huge Holy Lights (with fewer Divine Lights) into your BoL target, this isn't worth maxing out. It's great for generating HP if you're doing a fast DL build with lower Mastery and you spend more time casting on your BoL target (I know I do).
Blessed Life (T6) - Taking 1/2 points here is all you need, even in a full PvP/Arena build. You're either getting hit so often that it won't matter (with the 8sec ICD), or you're not getting hit very often at all, in which case your raid probably isn't, so you don't need the free HP. Most fights you can pick up 4 or os extra HP every minute or so. A lot of AoE affects don't trigger this though, so YMMV. You can drop a 2nd point here if you skip LoD.
Light of Dawn (T7) - our 31 point talent, this baby is either zomgwtfop, or extremely lackluster, depending on your raid. If you're not getting six people (glyphed), your HP is probably better spent on hitting a single target with WoG, especially now that it's been buffed. If you're finding yourself in a lot of stacked spots, it may still be worth it. If you're not hitting 5 or 6 people though, drop this and use WoG. My only caveat against dropping it is that we only have HR at that point for any kind of AoE heal.

After you put 31 points in your Holy Tree, you can start to branch out more. Using a lot of WoG? Pick up Eternal Glory for some free HP. I can't confirm this, but I believe the ICD on this has been removed, so you can get back to back procs. Also, if you're not using WoG, drop EG entirely, and dip down to Pursuit of Justice in the Ret tree. It's more speed than you get from an enchant, and it lets you play with other enchants. If you have some overzealous DPS, you can also cut down your Crown of Shame CD by picking up Gaurdian's Favor instead, but remember - this completely removes any free HP you'll get from Eternal Glory.

It's more than it looks, but that's what there is

So in the end, there are a few more options than an initial pass might reveal, but the base 31/5/5 build is still really solid. If you have the raid comp to let you play with some extra talent points here or there, I say go for it. In the end, I don't think any one 'valid' comp will make or break your raid, unless there's some kind of gimmic you need the HoP CD reduced for. Be prepared to defend your choices if you stray outside the norm, but know that we're still the kings of single target healing.

OT - A salute to the greatest Canadian ever

2011-07-26T09:40:00.000-08:00

No Ed - I'm not talking about Celine Dion here. I'm not even talking about Gordy Howe. I might be talking about Deamill, but he's still no doctor.

No, I'm talking about a man who changed the face of Canada forever.

Tim Horton.

Now, I don't know shit about the man himself, other than he played hockey and died in 1974. I don't even know how much he had to do with the franchise as a whole. What I do know is that Timmy's is everything Dunkin' Donuts wants to be when it grows up.

My first taste of the double-double

Now I don't normally drink fancy lattes or mochas, I tend to keep my coffee simple. I usually drink French Press or drip coffee, but will get an Americano if the place doesn't have basic coffee. I also have been known to order two or four shots of espresso and just drink them like - well, espresso. The key point here is that 95% of the time, I drink plain old black coffee. Like Dennis Leary said, coffee needs a cup - that's it.

Now when I first started working in Canada I was living in a Marriott hotel, and the only to-go coffee I could get was a Starbucks. Now while I appreciate what they've done as a chain, I really don't enjoy Starbucks. Every day though I'd get my Pike Roast coffee, walk the 3 or so blocks to Gulf Canada Square, and start my day. Of course, there was one sight I always saw, and that's the line going around the corner at the Tim Horton's. I couldn't figure it out.

So one day, after I'd complained (not for the first time) about some other coffee shop called "The Second Cup" and thier distinct lack of regular coffee, my team dragged me to Tim Horton's. I of course ordered a black coffee (mocking those that ordered it with cream and sugar), and then I almost died. It was delicious, and oh so amazingly strong.

So then it started, this love affair with Timmy. First, it was delicious, and second, it was super cheap. One twenty-five for a large coffee? Yes please. I expanded into the double-double on a bet, and I was hooked for life. Real cream. Real sugar. As a going away gift my team bought me a 64oz mug (it was larger than my laptop), to help feed my addiction.

A recent reunion

So now I've been without the love of Timmy for about four years. Then, just a few weeks ago, my in-laws returned from a foray into the Canadian wilderness and returned with a tin of Timmy's just for me. My wife doesn't understand it, but she's certainly ready to drink the coffee. I have to ration it out though. This is my last can of Timmy's until September, when some friends of mine are going to Canada for an endurance race. I'm trying to bribe one of them to smuggle a case across the border for me.

So to all the Canadians that I play with, I envy your access to this delicious nectar. Forget oil and gold, Timmy's is your greatest natural resource.

Tomorrow - Naga bindings!

84 to 364 in just over 24 hours of /played

2011-07-25T11:39:00.000-08:00

Just over a week ago now I was faced with a difficult quandary - stop playing, find a new home for my Paladin, or find someone to take a chance on my Warlock. Of course, this was me taking a chance as well. I mean, I've spent the last few years healing, and the years before that tanking, with only some side jaunts into the realm of ICC ranged DPS (after the 30% nerf) or as a fury/slam warrior. Could I do it? Could I find that guild to take a chance? Would it really be all that I hoped for?

It was certainly time to find out.

So after an application and an interview, I transferred servers and started getting raid ready. Let me set the stage and timeline for you here. First, I was installing new floors (finishing them actually, and damn do they look good) and so tensions were high in the house. Then I'm juggling qutting or taking a lock spot. Fortunately my wife is awesome, and while I'm sure she'd like it if I played WoW (or other games) less, she knows it's better than me joining a bowling league.

So there I am on Friday night (the 15th), taking a quick hour to push my lock to 85. As soon as I hit, I get him some VP bracers, JP boots, and some relatively inexpensive BoEs off the AH. I grab the tabards I needed, and started hitting the heroics. I thought about hitting the Firelands quest areas, but I'm not keen on suicide. I was a fresh 85 lock on a PvP server. Nothing screams "I taste delicious" like someone wearing magic-toilet paper (thanks for that phrase Cyn!) that isn't even heroic level, but just some greens.

Instead, I take stock of what pieces I need first, and what I can get my hands on in a hurry. The first thing I noticed was that in my original leveling (since I stopped him at like 83 to go back to the Paladin - raid needs come first) I completely skipped Deepholm. Now, I don't mean I did part of Deepholm and stopped just short of the Therazane folks. I mean I somehow skipped the entire zone. I think I was just a little tired of it by the time I was leveling the lock, and did I mention I was on a PvP server? So I started the zone while queueing for heroics. I'd slapped on the Dragonmaw/Wildhammer tabard, figuring the neck would be a good holdover (I didn't know about the neck from Firelands questing), and off I went.

24 hours of /played later

I'd server transferred, faction changed (human was the only race I could stomach as a lock), hit exalted with Therazane, capped my VP twice, nabbed two epics from Firelands T12 raids (MH BoE dagger and OH), and am now sitting at a 364 iLvl. While it took a fairly intensive week to do it, I'm so far ahead of where I was, it's not even funny. I certainly wouldn't want to do it again any time soon (that was a LOT of PuG Zulroics), but I will admit that it took a lot less time than I'd anticipated. Of course a lot of it I owe to the guild that I'm trialing with. They took me into T12 content when I was pretty undergeared, hooked me up with a BoE dagger, and have been pretty awesome all around.

I don't think I'll get to raid tonight, but that's ok. I'm on standby while they go for a repeat on Domo and try to get Rag for the first time, and I can use the time to work on my PvP gear. I don't know if I like PvPing as DPS as much as I did on my pally - it's a lot different. I think in a random, where I don't have my wingman Wombcrusher looking out for me, the Lock is better. I've noticed that healers in PvP that don't have a good peeler with them just get crushed. Because I know this however, I can keep a good eye out on any healers in my area and save my fears/deathcoil for helping them.

Wrap-up

I've thoroughly enjoyed the last 10 days of warlockery. It's pretty impressive to watch my DPS get better every day, and not just because I'm adding epics. I know my rotations are getting tighter, and I'm building that internal timer that I need to keep my DoTs rolling. I had the same timer with my Paladin, where I could just feel when things were coming up. I used to joke that my healing was done on a metronome in Wrath, you just knew that a heal was landing every second (hello haste cap). Now I'm working on that for the lock.

The hardest part I'm having is, is it worth hard casting a 2nd Shadowbolt to get the 3rd stack of Shadow Embrace up (DoTs tick 5% harder), or is it better to get the DoTs up and ticking, and let the 3rd stack land when it can.

I guess the other issue is what to do with that last little bit of time between the 2nd and 3rd Haunt. With an 8sec CD and a 12 sec buff, there's a little wiggle room, but not much. I'm guesing add in another SB, and maybe a lifetap. I've certainly discovered that tapping early and often is better, since I don't have Mana Feed in my Affliction build.

CoE, SB, Haunt, UA, Cor, BoD, SB, SB, Haunt, UA, SB, SB, SB - I'll get my metronome set yet.

More maintenance, VP changes, and some butterflies

2011-07-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

First to Saunder - man, that would suck to have maintenance occur at that time. It is too bad that the Oceanic folks don't have servers that are a little closer to an AUS timezone. I mean, even if it was just a little closer that might be better. Of course you live in Australia/New Zealand - and imo that's just the cat's meow - so you don't really have anything to complain about. Man I loved visiting Kiwi land. Friendliest people I've ever met. Heck, they make Canadians look like the guys from Deliverance.

More Maintenance

Again, sypmathies to the Oceanic folks, as once again the servers were down for maintenance to repair some issue with Honor points that were supposed to go out yesterday. These points were Blizzard's attempt to make whole the people who bought the new honor gear at the end of last season, only to discover a week later that a whole new tier of equipment had been added for the same costs. I would have been upset myself, but the fix seems to be a general bandaid instead of actually adressing the issue. While it probably could have been addressed faster, or cleaner, it's at least something other than a giant middle finger.

Elegant? No. Efficient? Yes. Well, other than that whole second day of maintenance thing.

VP Changes to T11

Also updated this week (or hotfixed in, though why they wouldn't wait is beyond me), T11 bosses now award 35VP each, allowing you to pick up 420VP if you do all 12 T11 bosses. I don't know if the BH boss was included in this or not. While there's certainly those that think this is a "Slap in the face" to raiders in Firelands, becuase now you can get T12 without actually doing T12 content - this really doesn't change anything. You're not going to get more VP than before, it's just another way of getting it. Maybe this will save you from the ZG run I had, where one DPS would AFK, the tank was sloooowwwww, and his 2nd DPS buddy was pulling 6k. I had been 85 for like 12 hours and was doing better than that. I think that run took 2.5 hours to complete, but time slows when you're that numb from pain.

So what does this really do for you? Well, to start, if you're not raiding, you can cut out 1/2 (or even all) of your troll dungeons if you're actively clearing 12/12 in normal T11. The upside to this is standard heroics take less time, have a greatter margin for error, and may even have faster queue times. Granted, you have to run 2 regulars to equal one troll, but some days it may be worth it. Too bad you can't queue for either/or at the same time.

My butterflies

Last week after Team Intensity broke up (or at least stopped raiding and started seeing other people), I had an opportunity pop up that I've managed to make work. I moved my Warlock, and have been raiding on him - or trying to. I hit 85 about 5 days ago, burned through about 15k in gold to powerlevel alchemy and buy some BoEs, slapped on some VP bracers and JP boots, and a whole lot of enchants. So after being 85 for less than a week, I've got 4 pieces of BiS gear, almost got myself a new neck (have I mentioned my distaste for dailies?), and even managed to snag myself a nice dagger upgrade.

The problem is, last night was my first raid with my new guild. While I only had one death that I would attribute to my failure (I ran between two lava sprinklers on Alysrazor), my DPS numbers were (in my opinion) low for the gear I'm sporting. Some things will come with a bit more practice (choosing BoA vs BoD, manually keeping my pet on one target instead of having them run around, when to apply CoE vs leaving it off, life-tapping on the run, etc), and others will come as I get used to the rotations.

Right now there are three, maybe four, things that I'm going to focus on tonight to try and boost my DPS.

Take my pet off assist, and have them manually attack the target that will live the longest/move the least. Watching my Felhound/Felgaurd run around chasing Riplimb made me sad.
Less chasing targets to apply DoTs. I spent a lot of time moving when I should have just planted and casted, waiting for the target to get back into range.
SWITCH TO SOULFIRE AT 25%. This alone, especially on bosses or adds that live longer than 8 seconds, will push my DPS way up. Soul Burn for the instant at 26%, and away we go. Of course I have to keep my DoTs up while doing it, but still.
Immolation Aura and Shadowflame. When I can, get into melee and get these rolling. Great for Alysrazor and Beth where you're stacked up on them. Less so on Shannox where there's traps everywhere.

I've also been tempted to pick up Destro as an off-spec. I know it's a few % lower than Demo according to the fine folks at EJ, Bane of Havoc looks to be pretty nice for those fights where it's a little tougher to get in ranged of that 2nd or 3rd target. Affliction might also be an option. I'll have to spend some time this weekend playing with the two builds to see which I like best. The only reason I lean towards Destro is that the defensive CD is pretty amazing. I certainly appreciate whenever someone can reduce the amount of healing they need due to unavoidable damage.

So we'll see what happens. Right now I'm just practicing my rotations and trying to stay out of the bad. Oh, and if anyone knows of some decent Warlock blogs, that'd be awesome. Don't fear, my Paladin isn't shelved forever, and I'm still going to write about Pallies (especially now that even Kurn is on board with Mastery) - but there's going to be some Warlockery thrown in from time to time as well.

Maintenance

2011-07-19T05:35:00.000-08:00

Maintenance. It happens pretty much every Tuesday morning, and generally lasts for five hours, plus or minus 20 depending on if it's a major patch day or not. It's happened every Tuesday since the creation of Azeroth, and really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's played the game for more than a week or two. Every Tuesday, around 3AM, the servers go down.

So naturally, I felt a little bit like Gomer Pyle when I woke up this morning to find the servers were in fact, down.

See, Blizzard normally puts up a little message on Monday evening letting you know what's happening the next day. Servers will be down, rolling restarts, whatever. While I was a little suspicious that there was nothing on the page, I chalked it up to the fact that hotfixes were being applied instead.

I was wrong.

While I had every intention of finishing my Alchemy powerlevel this morning, I instead spent 15 minutes looking for confirmation that maintenance was happening, and another 15 trying to figure out why I couldn't download SC2 again. I'm not real quick before my coffee.

Tonight I'm off to see Harry Potter. Yes, I know Snape kills Dumbledore (AMG SPOILER FROM BOOK 6!), and while I didn't really enjoy 7.1 (I prefer the books to the movies), I am interested in seeing how they end it in the movie. Personally I'd rather see Transformers or Captain America, but my wife wants to see Harry Potter, and I want to keep eating my wife's cooking.

The plug has been pulled

2011-07-14T15:24:00.001-08:00

Last night, after some serious wrangling to get folks to talk about the elephant in the room, Team Intensity decided to forego any more raiding - probably forever. For most of us, it's the camaraderie that keeps it all together. The years of jokes, history, love(fear?) of Old Greg, and the way we all mesh as a group.

Unfortunately, the nature of Cataclysm and Firelands has kind of worn on us. Now, don't get me wrong. I still think WoW is a great game, and the mechanics of the bosses are pretty cool. I like the zone as a whole, and I think they're doing a great job of telling the story. Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true for everyone, and if there's one part of the game I'm 150% done with, it's that of recruiting and running a guild. Just thinking about trying to recruit a couple of people makes me queasy.

So where do I go from here?

Right now I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do. Like I mentioned yesterday, I haven't done a single daily quest for the new zone, and the only way I'd hit the ZA/ZG VP grind is with a guild group of folks I was raiding with. It's not that the PUGs are terrible, it's just not enjoyable to zone in - maybe exchange three lines of "hello" (if you're lucky), and then start running the zone. The DK that doesn't understand that if you don't wait for a warrior's Thunderclap to go off, he won't have any threat. The tank who says "CC GO" over and over - without marking a damn thing.

I've said before that I'll know I'm done with WoW when I'm no longer willing to pay the $55 to transfer a raiding toon (with faction change if necessary) to a place I want to be. While this thought isn't dead yet, it's the other things involved that make me nauseaus.

For a minute I thought about grabbing my almost (2 bars) 85 warlock, and transferring to Vidalya's server to fill her need for a warlock. I mean, maybe going to a DPS role would reignite the spark of Firelands (ahahaha - I'm so clever), but then I get this thought chain.

OK. So we're a brand new 85 warlock. First thing, get that shoulder enchant rep going to at least Honored doubletime quick (Therazane), immediately follow up with the head enchant group (Hyjal). So now I've got two factions I need to grind immediately, even though Blizzard teases us with setting the Arcanums as BoA (Battle.net account), you still have to have the rep to use them.

While I'm doing this, I can grab the BoE boots for JP, and spend what VP I have on my pally for the BoE bracers. This, plus some quick AH action should have me geared enough to at least enter ZA/ZG. Since this guy was a double gatherer, I can spend my queue time gathering enough mats to power-level him up in say, JC and Alch (or maybe just Alch and keep the Herbalism - but really, you should have two crafting professions if you're going to be serious).

So now I'm grinding this, which of course will grant me my regular VP/JP gains, plus rewards from the Firelands/Hyjal dailies, and whatever my 100k+ bankroll can get me off the AH. All told, I should be 100% raid ready in about a week - if I'm reliant on PUGs for my dungeon runs.

And you know what? The thought of doing all that just immediately turns me off to the whole thing. I think raiding on my Warlock would be awesome. I'm sure Vadalya's group is great, and hell, I wouldn't even mind being Alliance again (though I do hate me some Gnomes - and Worgen - especially Worgen Gnomes). In fact I'm sure I'd play a Human for the Rep gains alone.

I'm certainly not adverse to dropping the cash to make it happen, I just don't relish the thought of having to run all those dungeons again - plus dailies - just to get raid ready.

And so,

I have no doubts that with some looking I could find a guild that meets my needs/wants/desires - and might even have some personalities that I agree with. I'm not going to say that I'm totally adverse to the idea either. I drew up a list of requirements that I'd have for any guild though, and I know it will be tougher to find this layout.

PVE Server - I'm just tired of the idiocy I've found on the PvP realms.
Horde/Alliance - either way, I don't care.
10m raiding - I'm not interested in 25s at all.
2 or 3 days tops - weekdays only - and starting no earlier than 6 PDT.
Enough of a roster that I can miss a day if I need/want, but not so many people that it's 19 people clamoring for 10 slots (a guild that had multiple raid groups would be OK).
Enough of a roster that getting a couple of guildies for heroics/dailies isn't a huge issue.
Progression - don't care if they're 7/7 or 2/7, just as long as bosses die in a reasonable fashion.

Not shutting down

So barring me finding that kind of group, or suddenly deciding that in fact I DO want to go through what it would take to get a toon raid ready, my WoW time will certainly be much more limited. I'll be spending some time in BFBC2 shooting faces and healing my teammates. On Sept. 6th I'll be taking up arms against the forces of Chaos, introducing them to the Emperor's justice by way of Chainsword and Bolter.

As soon as ToR is out, I'll be rolling some type of force using healer (Jedi/Sith - whatever), as long as I can heal with a lightsaber, I'll be happy. If the 40K MMO ever becomes a reality, I will once again be the will of the Emperor as either a Chaplain or Apothecary. Who knows, we might actually see D3 launch sometime this year. Hey, dreams come true every once in a while.

So while the WoW content might be light, I'll be around still. I need an outlet for my writing, and I still like WoW. Hell, I spent 30 minutes today helping out someone who emailed me about 2 healing content. I may just be burned out on healing, the Horde, and the grind. It has been a 7 year commitment (albeit with breaks here and there).

For this week though, I'm focusing on one thing - getting my new flooring in. Right now my man-cave looks like a bachelor pad, with the mattress on the floor. Fortunately my wife put the second coat of paint on this morning, and I can get straight to the floor as soon as I get home - well, right after I reintroduce myself to Mr. Gustav.

In which I am a baid raider

2011-07-13T11:40:00.000-08:00

I think it's kind of strange. 4.2 has been out for about what, two weeks now, and it already feels like it's been forever. Right now I've killed 4/7 in Firelands, and have completed about three quests in the new Hyjal - just enough to see Thrall get smoked by the new fire druids. It was entertaining, though you have to ask yourself this - if Malfurion, Thrall, etc can all get stomped by these guys - what are we supposed to do? I mean, if I've got to go take this idiot out, how come I'm not the one getting all the love? Fuck Rhonin, where's the book about me?

Anyway.

So as a raider, I'm supposed to be doing everything I can to help out my raid team. This includes things like being on time, having flaks (or using a cauldron), having all my gear enchanted with the best/correct enchants, eating buff food, etc. Another part of that is making sure that I'm supplementing my raid drops with as much of the farmable/crafted gear as possible. And this is where I'm slacking.

I admit that the first week 4.2 was out, I didn't max out my VPs. This puts me slightly behind the curve. I also have done exactly zero of the new daily quests. This is mostly because I know that right now it's a PvP gankfest over there, but mostly it's a serious lack of care. The rewards aren't that great, and are marginal upgrades over my raid gear.

So, for the last two weeks I've been a bad raider. I could blame it on the fact that I'm installing new floors in my house, that we've raided about 10 hours total in 4.2, or that I chose poorly for rolling on a PvP server. Really though, I'm just not keen on doing the daily quests. I didn't do most of the quests for ToC, and unless I decide to move/reroll on a PvE server somewhere and am trying to gear up a new toon, I won't be doing them.

Of course we've two healed our way to 4/7, and I even ranked on Aleysrazor - so I think I'm doing pretty well for myself.

I love being right

2011-07-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

Back when the changes were announced for our mastery in 4.2, I stood up against the tide and stated that the changes were good. Maybe even amazing. Do absoloutely nothing, and you automatically get a 10%, stacking, FIFTEEN SECOND LASTING, shield for almost every heal you throw out. The fact that folks didn't jump up and cheer for this still boggles my mind.

Now, some of the top guilds are even bringing a mastery stacking Paladin to the raid, for the sole purpose of dropping gigantic shields on the tanks. Stacking full mastery, with reforging and gems, is delivering a mastery rating that gives you a shield that is 35% of your total heal. This is even higher than I anticipated, and the possibilities just boggle the mind.

Not everyone can be special

Now, this type of healer is a very specialized role. Heals will be slower, mana return will be lower, and your ability to crank out AoE healing will be greatly reduced. What you will be however is a shield generating machine. You'll probably be leaning on Holy Light a bit more, with Divine Light tossed in for those big moments, but look at the shields you'll get.

A 20k Holy Light crit will net you a 7k shield, and I think we can all agree that prevented healing is better than reactive healing (which is why we all love our Disc preist buddies). Even if you just roll Holy Lights without regard for incoming damage, your shields will continue to stack up for those moments when you really need them.

Unfortunately, you need to really be a part of a balanced heal team where everyone knows their role for this to work. This setup, while powerful, will probably have reduced results in our 10m where I'm paired with a priest and we try to two heal everything. I need to have faster heals, and as much mana and mana return as I can get. I can't afford to simply heal the MT, though I do spend more of my time doing that than healing the raid.

It's all about balance

And I'm not talking about the feathered bigfoot known as the critchicken. What I'm talking about is finding the balance in your stats, and the balance with your healing team. If you can afford to stack Mastery, then I say go for it. Personally, I'm still putting Spirit at the top - enough Haste to give me the 1.99 second HL/DL casts, and enough crit to keep Conviction up over 90% of the time. Everything else I'll put into Mastery if I can

World PvP

2011-07-01T06:42:00.000-08:00

This is what I think of when I envision world PvP. It's not evenly pitched battles that raged for hours between Taren Mill and Southshore (did those really ever exist?), becuase that generally was just a handfull of 60s making life difficult on toons trying to level in the Highlands. Same goes for Crossroads raids. LOOK MA, I KILLED THE FLIGHT MASTER LOLOLOLOLOL!

Idiots.

Anyway, this is my vision of world PvP - and I think deep down inside, it's what most of us consider to be successful PvP as well. Remember, unlike sex, PvP is ALWAYS consentual. There are no grey areas in this discussion, no room for debate. Cry foul all you want at the fact that you just got rolled by someone 4 times your level, the point here is you consented to the treatment you're now recieving.

Play on a PvP server and left your starting zones? Consented.
Flagged for PvP? Consented.
Entered a PvP zone (enemy capital, Baradin Hold, Gurbashi Arena, etc, etc)? Consented.
Attacked someone (by hook or by crook, you still did it) who was flagged as PvP? Consented.

Put a post up on the world forums stating your intention to hold a mass gathering of folks in a PvP zone, on a PvP server, then added the line "Please don't come mess this up"? Yeah - you consented.

Ambushing a group of players when they least expect it. "That's the way dad did it, that's the way America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far" (Tony Stark).

Why I wish Firelands was like Ulduar

2011-06-21T16:34:00.000-08:00

As we near the release of 4.2 and the new raid content of Firelands, I'm left feeling a small twinge of nostalgia as I think about the awesomeness that was Ulduar. I'm not necessarially talking about all the fights here, or even the story behind it (because really, it was just kinda dropped in), but more along how Blizzard handled the most important aspect of the game.

Raiding.

What, you were expecting something else?

Honestly though, Ulduar is where Blizzard hit it right in my opinion. Lore over at The Daily Marmot really hit it on the head this week, when he talks about how great the boss fights were, the trash to boss ratio, and even how they handled 'hard modes'.

Now I'm sure that my personal experience with Tier 11 content has jaded my experience some, and Tier 10 and 11 were certainly better than Tier 9 (ToC). I mean, that's where the wheels really came off. ToC was terrible (it's a circle!), and the fact that you had to clear it twice in one lockout was really aggrivating. At least with ICC you could turn heroic modes on and off.

Forget Heroic - just bring back Hard

The thing I really liked about Ulduar though, was you could make the fight harder, and it actually incorporated something beyond "hey, here's some adds!". No, instead you could choose to kill bosses in a certain order (Council), kill off supporting adds (Freya), reach a DPS speed goal (Hodir), or choose to give the boss extra powers by pushing a button (Mimiron). This mechanic was so much better than the current method of switching it over to 'heroic' and having the bosses hit harder. Woo-hoo.

Sure, some fights introduce extra abilities, but for the most part, it's just a bigger DPS punch, or possibly an add. Imagine Halfus - instead of fighting him with all the drakes, you could choose to 'wake' his drakes. This way you could choose to have none (fine, there's a minimum of three) drakes go active that have to be released and killed, or you can go with all five like you get now. V&T you could make a portal that siwtches them, I don't know.

What I do know is killing the same boss (esentially) twice just sucks. Come on Atramedes - at least get some sparkels or something.

Maybe I just don't know what I want. Maybe I just want some Ulduar.

Why the authenticator changes are bad

2011-06-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

Like many WoW players, including Lodur over at World of Matticus, I'm earn my not insubstantial paycheck as an IT Manager. Unlike Lodur, I don't think that this authenticator change is a good idea. While I don't have any issues with the technologies being used to help ease the burden of using an authenticator, I do see a few potetial pitfalls ahead of us.

Now, all this is being said with no real testing on my part. I didn't spend hours and hours running parse logs, examining my firewall, or trying to do things like spoof my MAC address (or run through a routing host like PingFree). In fact, my concerns aren't technical at all, but lean towards more of the Social Engineering side of hacking.

Changing mid-stream is bad

Ask anyone who works in Customer Service, and they'll probably tell you that changing the way someone operates is generally a path to heartache and failure. Anyone who upgraded users to the 'Ribbon' feature in Office probably experienced this. It's not that there was a reduction in fucntionality, but the way it looked was simply different. Heck, it was dedidedly better than the previous version, but things just didn't look the same.

Now with security measures, this is even more extreme. You want people to follow them, embrace them, love them even. It doesn't matter what it is, they have to do it every time. How many of us, just out of habit, erased our username when logging onto WoW because we hit Tab and then entered our Authenticator Code - KNOWING that it wasn't there any more - we just habitually did it.

Making a habit something that is hit or miss

So now, years later, Blizzard has finally gotten (I'd hope) the majority of the userbase accustomed to using an authenticator. It doesn't matter if it's on your phone, your iPad, or a dongle - you're using it. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass when you get DC'd in the middle of a boss fight and you have to pull up the application on your iPhone (I assume, I use a dongle), but you're used to it. Hell, as soon as I DC I'm already reaching for the thing.

So now it seems that Blizzard has changed the way this works. I don't know if it's live yet, but based upon the blue post I read, sometimes you'll have to use it - and others you won't. Based on Lodur's findings, it'll be only the first time you log in after a reboot. I don't know how accurate this is, but it sounds feasable.

So here's my concern

Now you've got a bunch of folks that reluctantly agreed to use the bloody authenticator in the first place. They get used to not having to enter the code, and now - they're hacked. Seeing the box pop up every time, having to enter the code every time - this was reinforcement of good behavior. Now? It's hit or miss. What if you're a player that doesn't read the forums, or blogs, or anything else? Am I going to get an email in my BNet account about this? How will I know it's not another phishing attempt? How long will it be before someone writes an application that will cause an authenticator window to pop up?

Who knows.

Now granted, part of my job is to do network security, so I'm naturally paranoid and suspicious. I'm sure that the good folks at Blizzard have thought this out from a technical standpoint - but the thought of not having some kind of indication that you've actually authenticated securely seems like an oversight to me. Maybe just putting some kind of notice on your latency meter - I don't know.

A Val'anyr for every Healadin

2011-06-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

At this stage in the game I'm fairly certain that the community as a whole is made up of a bunch of whiners - and specifically I'm talking about Paladins here - and more specifically I'm talking about Mastery.

Back in the days of Wrath I lusted after one single item - Val'anyr. Forget the fact that it was legendary, had an awesome animation, or helped me get over my priest bubble envy - this bad boy had the most amazing proc for healers; Stacking shields. This was huge, and close to being as overpowered as you could get, without being game changing. 15% of all healing (while the buff was up) was passed on as a stacking absorb shield. Mmm - I loved it.

Then came Cataclsym, the nerfing to a 10k max shield, and the inability to put Heartsong on it. /sadface.

Mastery was supposed to be a quasi answer, but it didn't stack, didn't last for very long, and was generally accepted as being extremely lackluster. We've seen a few small buffs to this stat since launch; increased percentages, increased time, and now - stacking shields.

Well color me happy

Shitfire and potatto sauce - we've finally gotten it. Sure there's no awesome animation to go with it, but we finally got stacking shields - that last for 15 seconds. This shield is applied by the majority of our heals, and it stacks! We have essentially been given the power of a legendary, without having to do anything other than equip the gear we normally would anyway. Plus, because it is tied to a stat, you now have the option to decided just how fast you want those shields applied. The world of mathcrafting just got a new contestant in my opinion.

Balancing your stats

So as it stands, any Holy-Paladin who reaches whatever level is required to get the Mastery skill, automatically get's a 10% shield applied when they heal. Ten freaking percent, and all you have to do is show up. So now it's time to start looking at stats, and seeing where we can land and where I think we'll be with some ideal settings.

First - Spirit. No mana = sad panda, so stack this until you're comfortable where you're at. Personally, I can never have enough mana, so I stack Spirit like it was the last candy available.

Second - we want to make sure we keep conviction up at all times. That's way too much healing to lose simply becuase we let a buff fall off. With heals critting for 100% in 4.2 as well, extra crit won't be as much of a waste, but we still don't need 'that' much. Anything in the 13 to 18 percent range is probably fine.

Third - Haste. This is the big one as far as I'm concerned. Right now I'm certain that it's impossible (at least not without BLust and everything else) to reach the 1 sec GCD for HL/DL. So, what we really want to look at is Holy Radience. 6% haste gives us an extra tick of HR, and we don't pick up another until 14.5%. This is reachable (by reforging) in the current tier without too much effort. Pushing for 23% is probably not possible, at least at these gear levels (or giving up a lot of stats).

So where does that leave us?

While an extra tick of HR is nice, that's really not going to provide 'that' much extra healing. So you need to find that sweet spot. Personally as long as I'm under a 2sec cast for DL/HL, I consider myself to be ok (until I can hit 1 sec, I'm not going to worry about it). This means I can play with more mastery without putting myself in harms way. Kurn did a chardev where she maxed out her Mastery and sacrificed her haste, and came up with 8% haste and 19 mastery. This is a flip from her 15% haste and 9 mastery in her current raid gear.

So let's look at those numbers. 15% haste will provide you with that coveted extra tick of HR, while 6% will still give you 2 sec HL casts, and a lot of extra Mastery. If you're raiding 25s, with a lot of grouped fights that HR will really affect, this may be worthwhile. In 10s however, you're not always going to be getting the most from your HR, so running one tick less won't make/break your game.

The big downer

Now the Mastery changes aren't all roses. The drawbacks still exist, primarially that your BoL target and PoTI doen't casue your shields to stack. HR doesn't affect it either, but that's ok. What we're really concerned about is shields on the tank. Here's the deal though. Can you imagine if all the healing your tank recieved via BoL was affected? You'd have huge shields, and tanks that were nigh-on indestructible. When you add in the 100% HL transfer, and 200% crits, it would really get out of hand in a hurry. By the time 4.3 rolled around Mastery wouldn't transfer anything, and we'd be using bandages.

The wrap up

Face it - you got a free Val'anyr, just for rolling a Healadin. Never add another drop of Mastery, and you've still got 10% shields affecting the majority of your targets. Stack Mastery now, and you can get about 30% of your heals transferred as shields, for something you were going to do anyway. That my friends, ain't too shabby.

The Shockadin - letting any class tank

2011-06-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Do you long for the glory days of Vanilla WoW where Shamans had a talent that gave them shield block? Want to tank, but don't want to bother with those pesky talents that keep you from being crit? Even better, ever had to tank as a cat spec'd druid? Well folks, we just made it easier!

That's right, now you too can experience the thrill of tanking any boss encounter, providing you have the right tools available. No, I'm not talkint about tank gear, some crazy Uncleslam block/dodge set, or even having the right spec.

No, the tool I mention is far more rare than that. Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm talking about the Shockadin.

Lolwutadin?

That's right, Blizzard has now announced that we will be the only class available which can in turn, allow any class to tank. Now even that terrible DK who queued as a DW Frost spec (frost stance even) tank will be able to live, providing there's a healer around to help prop them up. How's this possible you ask? Are our healing powers getting a buff instead of a nerf? Are the days of watching our mana bar go up WHILE CASTING back? Did they bring back the full Illumination?

Sadly, no.

Instead, we have something far more powerful. We have the power of the Light, and it's so strong, that our willingness and desire to openly, and publicly, condem our enemies with the power of our non-scaling patheticly weak nuke - buffed by Denounce. Why this change you ask? Have our enemies grown so strong that our 12k strikes now cause them to double over in laughter? Is that how we're getting to this point? Probably, but not officially.

No, the official stance on Denounce is now it will prevent the target of your Exorcism from (wait for it) from creating a critical effect (100% chance for 2 points) for SIX WHOLE SECONDS! Oh yeah, we're huge now. Of course with the effect only lasting six seconds, and a 1.5 second cast, you're only going to be able to weave in a couple of heals (3 if you're REALLY fast). Oh, and don't forget to keep your judgements up as well.

Who cares though - now we can let anyone tank!

OK - maybe it's for PvP

I suppose the other intent of this spell is for PvP, but I am really struggling with how it fits into the scheme. I'm not a big arena (i.e. never in Cataclysm) player, and the PvP experience I do have in Rated BGs is mostly spent mashing FoL and HoP/HoF as often as I can. Instant exorcisms are great, but rarely do I get to sit back and just nuke on someone. Heh, nuke. Leveling it's not as big of a deal, as the GCD really prevents you doing anything during that time - but still.

I suppose I can see where you might cast this on say, a Healer in Arenas to keep them from getting that clutch crit heal off on someone, but really - wouldn't you be better actually healing your team in that time? Odds are, if you can spare the GCD to cast at their healer isntead of the target you're focusing down (or you know - healing your team), the game is probably already won/lost, and your cast won't mean much.

A PvE/PvP scenario

One setup where I can see this having some marginal benifit is in AV/IoC, where you have PvE in your PvP. If you don't have an honest to goodness tank, you might be better served by preventing them from being Crit than healing. Maybe.

Another scenario is the Chimaeron fight, but again, it doesn't really matter here. He hits so hard that the first one will knock you down (Finkle will save you!), and the second one will kill you - even if he doesn't crit. Who knows, maybe this buys your a third strike on that fight. Odds are though, unless you're like me, you aren't picking up a Shockadin build just for that fight. I don't think the DPS is needed now, but for our first H-Chim kills it was nice to have.

So uh - really? What's the point?

I'm not sure to be honest here. Maybe some PvPers can school me in the applications of Exorcism in Arenas, but I'm not seeing it. The mana reduction will be nice for leveling still, and allow you to spam it when you have time, but it just doesn't hit hard enough to make us actual DPSers.

Hey - at least BoL isn't dispellable now.

Going back to my roots

2011-06-03T17:06:00.000-08:00

With Team Intensity on an official hiatus until 4.2, I'm now faced with the challenge of filling my playtime with something that is both entertaining, and well - entertaining. While I'm not Gevlon rich, I have enough gold to do pretty much whatever I want. Granted that cash won't last long if I start buying up all the companion pets I don't have, but it's more than enough to carry me through another content patch worth of raiding. I'm holding out that everyone actually returns for 4.2, so I'm not guild shopping yet, I'm just treading water (and counting down until Space Marine is released).

So what to do with all my time?

While I'm picking up Hunted this weekend to get some Gears of War type co-op play in, WoW is still my preferred time waster. Of course without a regular source of raiding, and I'm not really keen on just running PUG raids for points, I've begun to explore some of the other avenues of play.

PVP is fine and all, but a large portion of this game (at least for me) is the social aspect of it. While I occasionally PvP on my own, it's usually only if I'm working towards a goal - like getting all my blue PvP gear, or buying another piece of BoA gear. Of course there's only one reason to buy BoA gear.

Alts

Now generally I'm against alts, but not becuase I don't like them - I just don't like them in my raids (or in my 5-mans when I'm still trying to heal them on my main). What alts do provide though is an immediate opening into a vast world of knowledge about your fellow players. One of the first alts I leveled to 85, and did any kind of instancing on, was my priest. Why? Because Monger is a priest, and I wanted to learn how the other half was living. It helped me to learn some of the finer points of playing a priest, and to better understand the 'how' and more importantly the 'why' of his healing style.

Of course alts also offer you the ability to make a boat ton of money while questing.

Enter the warrior

Over the last few weeks I've been playing with a pair of tanking alts, the DK and the Warrior. The Death Knight was fun for a bit, but I'll have to admit - trying to manage runic power, runes, and cooldowns was a lot to handle while trying to tank in PUGs. That and you don't get a real taunt (short CD) until level 66 or something. WTF man. I also don't feel any kind of connection to my mini-Hulk, he's just someone I was messing with to pass the time.

Then I rolled my Troll Warrior.

I've commented before how I regretted race changing my NElf warrior to a tauren, and that was my one real regret about going Horde. While I love my Paladin, and I thouroughly enjoy healing, I've been missing the graceful movements of the Nelf warrior. I spent a lot of hours watching him spin around while tanking, and the Tauren just doesn't have the right flow. I'm not exactly sure what promted me to pick the Troll this time around, but I'm certainly glad I did.

Playing a new warrior from level 1 up has certainly been entertaining. I quested until level 15, specc'd Protection, and haven't done another quest since on my way to 45 or so. Instant queues as a tank are still available, and having a full set of BoA gear (seriously, no BoA shield?) really helps. I'm still as cautious a puller as I was three years ago, and I think most of the reflexes and skills are coming back. Thunder Clap plus Rend is a pretty amazing threat tool at this level, and it's certainly odd feeling to finish a dungeon having done over 50% of the damage as a tank.

While I have no intentions of changing away from the Paladin any time soon, I'm definately enjoying a small break while learning the ways of the Warrior again. I suspect this will wear off right around the time my first heroic pops though. I'm a man of little faith.

Choosing the recipent of a Legendary - who gives a rip

2011-06-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

With a new expansion comes a new legendary (or three) to whet the appitites of raiders everywhere, and cause strife an agnst in more guilds than even I have been in. This time around our staff wielding DPS friends are the eligible group, and I'm sure there will be a whole lot of drama around this new bad boy.

Picking the winner

Now I may be a bit jaded, or maybe the opposite of that, but my personal feeling on this is "who gives a shit". I gaurantee that picking up a legendary item will not suddenly allow you to bowl over heroic bosses that have given your guild pause or challenge in the past. Members who stand near the wielder will no longer fail to interrupt, or move from the fire. In addition, unless something changes between how the items were forged in Wrath, you have to have an entire guild behind you.

That's right - in order to get your weapon of awesome, you need your whole guild.

Now this brings up some interesting thoughts. First, let's look at some of the previous legendaries.

Thunderfury - My personal favorite, this bad boy required two rare drops off bosses in Molten Core, 10 ore drops from Blackwing Lair, and a whole lot of Arcanite Bars. After that you needed to kill a summoned raid boss in Silithus and you were done. So the only real assitance that you needed from your guild was to kill the additional boss. Everything else you were doing as part of a normal clearing of raid instances. Back in Vanilla we handled bindings with DKP, and then sold the rest of the mats. I had to beg/borrow/steal a ton of gold to buy my ore, but assistance from the guild wasn't 'required'.

Sulfuron's Hammer - or whatever it was called. About the same as the Thunderfury, but with a whole lot less awesome, and there was no additional summoned boss. You needed parts that dropped from the bosses you were killing anyway, and a crafted piece that didn't requrie the whole guild pitching in to get. Hell, if you were a blacksmith and had some deep pockets, you could get the first part all by yourself.

Ateish - The first super grind legendary, not only did this require 40 shards that dropped off the original bosses in Naxx, but you then had to kill KT and C'Thun. Oh, and you had to be at least nuetral with the Brood of Nozdoramu to even get the quest. So if your guild wasn't clearing Naxx, and then willing to go kill C'Thun, you were boned. At least it only involved doing what you were trying to do anyway - kill bosses.

Twin Blades of Azzanoth - Arguably the easiest of the legendaries to obtain, nabbing thie pair of swords only requried you to kill Illidan - something you were probably trying to do anyway.

Thori'dal, the Stars Fury - Another legendary that simply dropped off the end boss, though certainly far fewer guilds killed Kil'Jaeden than killed Illidan.

Val'anyr - Similar to Ateish, this weapon involved gathering drops off bosses, even the non-hard mode versions of the bosses. Final completion involved killing Yogg+3, which was the first of the 'hard mode' methods of killing him(her?). Again, this didn't take anything special from your guild - just a willingness to give you the fragments, and then the ability to kill Yogg+3.

Shadowmourne - The final legendary at the end of Wrath, it was the first that required more of your raid than just killing bosses. First there was the saronite you had to collect - easy enough. You could level an entire stable of saronite farming whores to run through the heroics for you. You needed a drop (gauranteed as long as you had the quest) that came from two of the bosses in the plague wing, and you should be killing them anyway. Then you collected 1000 souls. After that though, things changed.

First, you had to start collecting 50 shards off the bosses - similar to Ateish and Val'anyr. Again, nothing up to this point has required your guild to do anything but kill bosses you were killing anyway. Then though, the real fun began. You now had three quests involving the wing bosses, and killing them in very specific ways. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure most guilds did these kills on normal mode, meaning you missed out on a shot at the heroic loot that week - just so you could get a quest completed. I know we wiped a lot trying to let someone get their quests done, though they certainly weren't impossible. Then it was just a matter of killing Arthas, and boom - a shiney axe.

Rewarding one, sacrificing everyone else

So when you're making a decision about how to divvy out your legendary, remember a few things. First, everyone better be commited to making it happen. Second, it's a piece of loot that will probably sit rotting after another content patch. Val'anyr managed to be useable all the way through ICC, and Thunderfury was hands down the very best tank sword available in Vanilla (and even into the start of BC).

The legendaries are hot, but not becuase they're legendary - but because they're the best available. Personally, I think handling them differently than any other loot is pretty dumb, especially since most folks will finish off with 3/4 of it completed, and unable to polish it off until several patches later. Not that I'm bitter about not getting my mace until well into ICC.

In the end, give the legendary to anyone you want. I gaurantee

If you plan on moving - now's the time

2011-06-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

So it was a pretty sobering moment earlier this week when I actually looked at a calendar and realized just how long we've been raiding this current tier of content. Cata was released what, in early December? It's now the first week of June - so figure we've been looking at the same bosses for the last five months.

Ouch.

This has definately taken it's toll on the raiding population, at least from what I've seen. Some guilds are still going strong, and others are going down in flames faster than Gary Busey's acting career. One thing is pretty clear to me right now though, and that's this.

If you haven't killed Sinestra by now, you're probably not going to by 4.2.

Now, there's nothing to be ashamed of here. Heroic content is hard, and it takes a lot out of a group to pull it off. Rotating players, not being afraid to give and recieve criticism, stacking your raid. Sure, it's easier now than it was when the world first happened, but there's a reason most of us aren't in world first guilds.

And you know what - it's ok.

Now is the time to find that home

So with 4.2 a few weeks away, it's time to take a good hard look at where you're at as a guild, as a player, and where you want to be (with both). Maybe your guild needs to take a breather, rebuild the ranks for 4.2, and work on getting those new players integrated with the group. Maybe you as a player need to take some time off, and come back to 4.2 actually WANTING to log in. And if you're guild won't let you, maybe it's time to find a new guild.

Either way, now is the time to be recruiting, or be recruited. Once 4.2 hits you're going to see guilds wanting to recruit players with Firelands experience. If you're missing it, you may very well have to slug through with guilds you don't really want to be in, just to get the experience. Wait too long, and you'll be re-reading this post when 4.3 is on the horizon.

Where I am now

Unfortunately, we're in the boat that it's resting on troubled waters. We've got some RL issues pulling folks away, and the desire for raiding is definately lacking in others. The commitment is still there, but when you're trying to push new heroic bosses, I don't think showing up is enough. What we have to find out is, will this boat sink or sail in 4.2. If these guys are done and just going through the motions, then it's probably time to find a new home. I don't want to be waiting around to 4.2, only to find out that the desire still isn't there.

Of course the killer is that I love playing with the people in my guild. These are the guys I played BC2 with, raided Wrath with, and will hopefully be killing Orks and Jedi with in 40k and SW:TOR. We have more inside jokes than we know what to do with, and really - if I can't get into a guild where Old Greg is more than just a funny video on YouTube, I might just cry.

So today, I'm window shopping. Need to have a full sit down with the folks involved and figure out exactly what's going on. I'd rather raid with them, but given the choice of no raiding - I'll go somewhere else and we can hang out in BC:3.

Why I love the idea of the dungeon journal

2011-05-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

Sitting here it's tough to think about how long I've been playing WoW. I remember the five year anniversary, so it's been what - six or seven years since release now? Back in the early days of Vanilla I remember running around without any knowledge whatsoever. Every boss was new and exciting - and also irritating when something unknown would happen. By the time we got to BWL though, there were fight videos and strategies everywhere. Raid leaders would post links to strategies and videos, beg their raiders to at least look at it, and then cry giant tears when idiotPlayer5 says "Oh yeah, I know the fights" suddenly wipes the raid on Vael becuase he didn't run away.

How it will affect me now

In our current raid envrironment Gary Busey (no, not the imitation mage that app'd to our guild, but our Pallatank) does a lot of the raid leading. He has quickly discovered that reading us 34 pages of fight notes, and or trying to make us watch videos, is pretty much a waste of time. Give us bullet points man. You know, like telling us there's a phase three where Nef comes out and shits shadow bolts all over the raid. Information that would have been handy yesterday - know what I mean? The last time this happend I felt like Day 9 in his trumpet episode (hopefully embedded below). Shadow bolts? What the!?!?!

So, this new dungeon journal will give us a quick insight to the boss mechanics, instead of sending JM out on a wild goose chase to check BossKillers, WikiWoWPedaiNow (or whatever the hell it's called these days), or any other potentially unreliable source. If you've ever studied a kill video from say the PTR, only to find out it's changed radically on live you'll know what I mean. Damage is also sometimes WAY off - like Cho'gall's shadow nonsense in P2 doing 50k per person per tick (on a 2 seconds timer). You just kind of stand there going - alright, so 7 heals, 2 DPS and 1 tank? The running joke for us in BC were the stage hands in Karazhan that exploded for fire damage. The Wiki writeup simply said "Fire bomb hits HARDER THAN NEF". Thanks. That gives me something to shoot for (?).

Another big benifit for me, is that this journal will give me something to reference when I start leveling my DK up through the dungeons in Cataclysm. Yeah, I've healed them all a thousand times, but that's different than tanking them. Plus now I generally watch a movie while auto healing. Zzzz. Well, until I get the Frost DK who's dual wielding - and didn't get the memo that Blood is the new tanking tree. Then I drop group and make a snack.

A giant leap for PUG kind

Now this tool isn't going to take the Donald's of the world and turn them into the next Kungen (or whoever is leading the charge from Vodka/Paragon - whoever) overnight. It won't help the idiot that can't avoid the sonic rings on Atramedes, who stands in the fire, or what have you. What it will do is give the PUG raid leader a fighting chance at survival. At the very least they can link abilities in party/raid chat.

This is doubly true in heroics and the LFD dungeon. Players are much more likely to spend 15 seconds looking at a boss in this than they are to go out and research it themselves. It's in game, and it's more convenient than an addon. Of course there will need to be some kind of tutorial or auto-popup to let folks know it's available. Maybe it opens up automatically the first time you enter a dungeon or boss's room. Kind of like the paperclip.

I fail to see a downside

Overall I don't see a huge downside to this feature. Blizzard has done a great job (well, ok - decent job) of integrating popular addons into the game - this just rolls up a little BossKillers + AtlasLoot. It's certainly going to be better than having someone say "when you see the big green beam thing, make sure you do the HokeyPokey". It's certainly not going to let the guild made up of window lickers roll over H-Ragnaros - just because you have a ticket to the dance, and even know all the moves, doesn't mean you've got the rythem to pull it off.

Why Archeology works

2011-05-25T10:14:00.000-08:00

Perpare your pitchforks and torches you haters of Archeology, because today I'm here to defend it as a downright awesome profession. That's right - it's awesome. Well, ok, it's not "awesome" the way seeing someone slip on ice right after laughing at you for walking across the parking lot like you've got a stick up your ass awesome - but it's certainly not the worst thing to ever happen to WoW.

Like most things announced at Blizzcon the year we heard about Cataclysm (and I watched a really sad performance by Ozzy - I love ya man, but really - I was afraid you were going to die on stage), Archeology went through a plethora of changes during the development cycle. Some things were cut, others added, until you had a nice boring secondary profession. You get a little lore, some fun(?) toys, and the possibility of a couple of really great BoA epics (arguably BiS for their iLvl). Oh, and don't forget about the greatest item of all - the Ultramarine mount. Personally I'm disappointed it looks like a bug, but hey - at least it's the right color blue.

The complints - in summary

Once you work your way down through the general complaining, you tend to settle on just a few actually unique complaints about Archeology as a profession. First, it doesn't stack up against professions added in previous expansions. Second, it's tedious and boring. Thrid, it's about as random as it gets - though I still haven't seen bracers off Cho'Gall yet.

After that you get into the general hatred towards anything Blizzard produces, from nerfs to buffs to sparkle ponies to free epix for everyone! Let's skip past the bellyaching for now, and focus on the real issues.

Archeology vs. Jewlcrafting/Inscription

First on the hit list is how Archeology just doesn't stack up to JC/Ins as a viable and awesome profession for an expansion. Jewlcrafting and Inscription both had dramatic and immediate impacts on the game, primarially in the way of glyphs and gems. Sure, there were a few other items along the way that were nice, but those two are the heavy hitters. They provided (and still provide) great sources of revenue, and a lot of power to your character. The only profession that even comes close to these in terms of raw power gained in enchanting - and that was released with Vanilla.

Look at what you get with JC - and this is on my hastily tossed together PVP gear.
4x 40 INT
3x 20 INT + 20 SPI
2x 40 RESIL
1x 54 INT + 2% Max Mana(!)
1x 20 INT + 20 Haste
2x Cogwheels (ok, yeah they're ENG, but they follow the same principal).

Holy shit that's a lot. 294 INT, 60 SP, 20 Haste, 40 RESIL, and the mana boost.

Now let's look at Inscription.

5% more crit to Holy Shock, 10% bonus to Word of Glory (instant and no mana cost), plus 5% bonus healing for using the right seal. Then there are the major glyphs, which give everything from 10% mana when using Lay on Hands, 6% more of you MAX mana when using Divine Plea, and the ability to get instant Turn Evils!

Now the problem with all this, is that just like elixers, flasks, food buffs, and the luck of the Irish, Blizzard has to assume that anyone raiding will have these bonuses, and they have to adjust the bosses accordingly. Of course if raiders have them, then so will the PvPers, so it has to be counted there. It's really no different than if they just boosted the stats on all the gear they hand out. All it does is give you a tiny option of customization. That's generally an illusion though, since there are pretty cut and dried answers to which gems/glyphs are the best for your given situation.

This would be what Blizzard would have to balance around if they added say, the ability to add engineering boosts to everyone's gear - but to the nth degree. I'm talking jet packs, shoulder mounted missles, handheld sharks with frickin laser beams - it doesn't matter. You have to assume that whatever buffs that profession can provide to a group - everyone will have at all times. Just like the assume every group will have replenishment, you can bet your bottom dollar they count on every raider having a flask/double elixir and a +90 stat food buff.

Archeology vs Other Secondary Professions

Ok, so now that we've looked at that, and how trying to balance in a new profession (where will it get the raw materials, who's the competition in the AH, etc) as a primary would be a nightmare, let's compare Archeology to the other secondary professions.

Cooking

Arguably the best of the secondary professions, Cooking allows you to prepare buff foods that are virtually required at the end game. Sure, you can make some tasty snacks along the way, but I am willing to bet that if anyone is honest they won't claim to make a big use of this profession along the way to 85. Sure, there's a few quests that you can do, and there are some special recipies you can get along the way, but at 85 all you really care about are those +90 foods and maybe a feast or two.

Leveling cooking can range from the rediculously simple (during the Pilgram's Bounty event), to the averagely irritating (while fishing), to the mind numbingly painful (those last few points). You can make some decent money selling buff foods from farmed or purchased raw materials. There's quite a few achievments for cooking, and a couple of novelty items. Overall it's not a bad profession, and one morst players probably have maxed out on at least one character.

First-Aid

Ahh, the bandage. Let's be honest with ourselves here - given the current state of leveling, the number of self heals that it seems every class has, and the sheer abundance of available food and potions (esp while leveling), who really uses bandages? Arenas, sure - if you can get a free second (well, 8) - I mean 35,000 HP isn't too bad. Raiding, not really - any incoming damage breaks the channel. Regular BGs, sure. Leveling - yeah, I guess. When you compare 35,000 to your HP pool at 85 though, it looks pretty bleak.

Now leveling up First Aid is as simple (these days) as spending a small fortune at the AH and standing around for an hour while you make bandages. Whee! There's nothing really fun about First Aid, there's certainly nothing painful with it. I know we've been clamoring for bigger bandages from day one - but it's really just a nice thing to have. Given the cost of Embersilk, I don't know how many players have maxed First Aid, much less maxed out on more than one toon.

Fishing

Ahh - Fishing. The classic time waster. Providing the raw materials needed for some of the best food buffs in the game, fishing is arguably the most profitable of the original three secondary professions. Like everything else, leveling fishing has gotten far easier over the years, and if you play your cards right you can even pick up a pretty damn nice BoA ring in the process. You can make a pretty penny supplying folks with raw fish to convert into feasts or buff foods, and you can even fish up eternals in the right spots.

Now as far as excitement goes, fishing is just about the most boring thing on the planet. You have to watch a little bobber, and wait for the right moment to click on the stupid thing. Too soon, and you miss - too slow, and the timer will probably run out. It's not a bad profession, and you certainly don't need to have it maxed out (unless you were fishing up the Lurker in BC or that other boss in ZG with your mudskunk lures), though I remember seeing some raiding guilds (back when it wasn't a shoppers market) requiring just to show that you had a lot invested in your character. Dumb.

In total, these three professions aren't game breaking or terribly exciting. They don't provide anything you can't get off the AH from some other sucker who bothered to level them up (though you can't use the bandages w/out the requisite skill), and they certainly won't give you any tangible benefit once you've maxed them out - unless you count money from the AH.

Archeology

So here's where the black sheep comes in. Archeology is pretty boring to level, since you don't get skill ups past what - 50 or 100 - for actaully digging up fragments. It's a tedious grind to the top, and the actual mechanic of surveying can be pretty annoying. Survey. Run 40 yds. Survey. Run 40yds in a different direction. Repeat till you hit the money. Sometimes it's fast, othertimes - not so much.

Archeology does offer two very distinct advantages over the other professions though. First, you get XP for digging up the sites. Like mining and herbalism, this gives a little bit of a boost along the way. Unlike those two however, you can't just gather the ones on your path, you have to survey in very specifc areas. It's not as convenient to be sure, but hey - if you're in the area - might as well nab a few free XP.

The second major advantage Archeology has over the other secondary professions is the possibility of gaining some pretty amazing BoA epic items - as well as some great cash prizes. There are a few pets, some mounts, a trinket I'm still using, and other great gifts. Too bad there's no Running Man home game.

Of course there are comprable items to the jackpot hits available for far less stress. Magmaw drops a mace for the 2H crowd, you can buy some decent trinkets for VPs and from Tol Barad, same with rings and such. If you don't care about collecting mounts or pets, or other sundry items (hello Inkeeper's Daughter!), then it's probably not worth having.

The conclusion

In the end, I don't think Archeology missed the mark too badly for a secondary profession. There's some sweet bonuses if you can get them, but there are other options available if you can't. You can make a little bit of money selling off your crafted junk, but it's probably less cash per hour than fishing. Plus at least with fishing, you can sit in one small(ish) area. With Archeology you're crossing the continent a couple of times an hour.

It doesn't have the market and end game impact that JC and Inscription did (thank goodness), and I would say it's at least marginally more useful than First Aid. Is it perfect? No, but nothing is. I'm sure I'll never level it up on another toon - but it gives me something to do while waiting for random BGs to pop.

Chaos vs. The Dance

2011-05-23T17:27:00.000-08:00

No this isn't a post about Slannash taking on Garth Brooks, though that would be an interesting Celebrity Deathmatch. I mean, my money would be on Slannash, but I'm fairly certain Garth would win out in the long haul. The Dark Side is strong in that one.

No, what I'm really talking about here is the fine line between scripted fights and pure chaos - and to try and look at what folks REALLY want from their raid encounters.

Now, I don't have any scientific evidence, polling data, or anything really beyond my own feelings. However since I represent 10% of a top 10 guild on Stormscale, and I have my own blog, I'm going to consider myself expert enough to make the calls on this. Hey, don't look at me funny, apparantly that's more than you need to be an 'expert'. Just ask Tobold or Wolfshead.

To the point

So one of the largest complaints that I've heard/seen about raid bosses in WoW is that they are scripted to a major extent. Timers exist for 95% of the abilities in he game, and the other 5% are pretty easy to suss out on your own. To this extent raiding at the end game is more about learning the dance moves and executing them properly than anything else. Boss does X, you do Y, and so on down the line. Stack here, spread out there. A finely tuned raid really is like a great ballet. DPS rotations are optimized, so it's just a matter of processing that sequence properly, and adjusting when you have to move and start over again. Even healing is fairly scripted.

Of course it's not 'really' that easy, or we'd all be killing Sinestra in the first three weeks of content release. Now it may be that more players than not are just 'bad', and terrible MMO players who are really nothing more than a bunch of basement living mouth-breathers. Either that, or the players who are actually killing/have killed all the heroic bosses are a bunch of no-lifers who have never been laid, don't have jobs, and it's the rest of us that suck.

Obviously neither of those extremes are true, and there are more factors involved than what's on the surface. This isn't a debate on your hobby of mountain biking and climbing K2 are more deserving of recognition than someone who's hobby is slaying internet dragons. And if you want to toss in the grand old slander of "well I'm sure those no-lifers have never gotten laid", remember that priests and nuns are supposed to fall into that catagory as well.

Back to the topic - Chaos vs. Structure

First I think calling it Chaos is just incorrect - in reality what it seems some players think they want in end game raiding is complete randomness. Even the most random bosses in the game (that I can think of) are still fairly predictable once an event occurs. Take for example Hex Lord Malacrass in ZA. While his selection of which class to pull powers from is random (taken from the pool of available characters), what he does once those abilities are gained is fairly straight forward. Same with Daakara - you don't know which two forms you'll get, but once you learn them all it's not a big deal.

Blizzard tried to introduce some randomness to the encounters with Halfus in BoT, and I saw a lot of complaining about the fact that each week you had to essentially relearn the fight until you mastered all of the combinations - some of which were exponentially more difficult to handle than others. But even this wasn't truly random, as the abilities still had scripted responses.

So what is it that someone is looking for? A boss with every ability that has ever been concieved in the game? Think about how frustrating that would be, for any skill level of player. Imagine a boss where the first time you pulled him a Defile was dropped on the ground, and the boss then immediately did a Chimaeron massacre, with a Crackle following close behind. Then on the next pull you get a class call from Vanilla Nef where all your hunters have their bows instantly break. This is followed up by the summoning of some Sons of Ragnaros, and then the boss submurges ala The Lurker Below. Oh, and add in a randomly spawning (with random mobs carrying the orb) shield generators.

Does that kind of encounter really sound like fun? Is the prospect of losing your raid becuase the boss did two completely different abilities really make you think that it would be a good boss? You couldn't have the boss simply take on the (Form of, Earth!) characteristics of other bosses for a few moments, because then he'd be predictable again.

The right answer

Unfortunately, I don't know what this is. I don't blame anyone for what WoW has become, because hell - I still love the game. I started leveling a new DK, just so I could experience the pain of tanking at 85 (that and I've heard that DKs are the worst tanks while leveling).

No 'new' game will ever bring back the memories and exclusivity that older players (I won't even call them veterans) feel like they used to have. I don't miss the pain of 40 man raids and Vanilla WoW, the torture of trying to solve Zork, or being on active duty. Sure - all of those things had some bright moments, but then I remember the shit that went with it. Eff that.

Remember, if you're not first, you're just following in someone else's footsteps - and that ain't all that bad.

Tier 12 - the latest and greatest update

2011-05-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

Ladies and genltemen, it's PTR time again, and you know what that means. That's right, it's time to get up in arms craaazzzzyyyy over changes that might not last out the week. Earlier today I talked about the massive slap in the face that occured with the proposed increase in our spell costs, never mind the fact that I pump out more HPS than Monger does, and make our shaman look just plain silly. Hmm - on that note I'm thinking Mastery might be worth looking at again for 25m raiding....but anyway, I digress.

No, it's now time to look at what (is now) the second round of changes to our T12 gear! That's right, for the low low cost of just a single mouse-click, you too can be outraged and mystified by Blizzard's line of thinking! Or, we can be rational - but we all know that ain't happening.

The latest T12 Bonuses

I'm not even going to bother with what the T12 bonueses were on Tuesday, since they're OBVIOUSLY so outdated. I mean, 1% mana back when healing your BoL target is SO yesterday. No, I'm just going to touch on the latest version - which will probably be changed by the time I post this.

2 piece bonus - Healing with Holy Shock has a 40% to return 6% of your base mana.

Hmm - well that's not bad I suppose. I mean, the law of averages means you're bound to get a couple of procs. After all, Eternal Glory procs pretty regularly. Even so, it's not really much of a boost. In fact, all it's really doing is lowering the cost of that one Holy Shock to 3% of your base mana. Whooo. Nice to get a mana reduction on a spell we use a lot, but I don't see myself scrambling to get this 2 piece bonus.

4 piece bonus - Divine Light, Holy Light, and Flash of Light also heal a nearby target (within 8yds) for 10% of the ammount healed.

So, your 50k DL crit will heal the hunter's pet for 5k - unless it's a smart heal. Again, this is a "eh, that's ok" bonus vs. a "AMG MUST GET" bonus. Any incidental healing you get from this will be nice, especially if it also procs to your BOL target (look, I'll never turn down extra healing for my BoL target), but it's not going to be a break the bank scenario. At least the priest one calls down a pillar of healing fire - where the hell is our pillar of healing wind chime?

Conclusion

While I'm sure I'll nab the 2pc bonus just becuase I'll be buying the gear, I'm not going to set a new speed record to try and pick it up. I like that the bonuses aren't automatically superior, because as long as the off set stuff actually matches (cause you know looking good is 1/2 the battle), you will have some choices in how you gear. Anyone who doesn't think that having matching gear and the proper hair-do gives you at least a 10% bonus to awesome - well - you're just missing out.

2011-05-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Everyone head for the hills. Save the women and children! It's the end of the world as we know it!

Or maybe it's not. I mean, it could just be the inevitiable change that we had to know was coming. After all, it only makes sense, and I think anyone who didn't see it (at least those of us in heroic raid content) are just fooling themselves.
What is this catastrophic event of which I preach? Why, it's the nerfing of our mana pools of course. OK really it's just increasing the cost of our baseline heals, but that's really the same thing. Right? Come on guys, right!?!? I mean, isn't this a total slap in the face to Paladins everywhere?
Or maybe it's just bringing us in line with everyone else.
I don't know about other Paladins, but mana is not my issue in raids. Now while I can't just spam Divine Light every two seconds, our mana bar lasts a good long while. Find me 10 seconds where I don't have to heal anything, and I'll show you someone who just picked up at least 30% of their total mana pool.
A look at some numbers
Now I haven't seen any numbers on gear from Firelands yet, though I'm sure they've been datamined and are available. Looking at our current gear and numbers though, it's pretty easy to see that without an increase in the base costs of our spells, we would be nigh on unstoppable as the expansion moved on.
Divine Light - Now is 7026. Will be 8197.
Flash of LIght - 6323 going to 7260.
Holy Light - 2342 to 2810.
Holy Shock - 1873 to 2107.
While that's a noticeable chunk, let's look at the next set of numbers. Stats on gear.
We pick up an average of about 30 points in Intellect every step in gear - so 346 to 359 to 372. That's fairly big, especially when you think about this. For every 100 INT we gain, we get about 1800 more mana, plus the increases in mana returns from Divine Plea and our Spirit. Sure, the bosses should be hitting harder, and AoE damage may go up - but so will the size of our heals.
Imagine if our heals went up in power, and our ability to cast them for a longer duration scaled with it? Especially given our regeneration mechanics now. Divine Plea would be nerfed so fast it would make your head spin, and we'd be back to sucking fumes for the majority of the fight. Plus with the new 2pc bonus, we'll not only be getting Holy Power from casting on our BoL target, but mana as well. Sure, it's only 1%, but that's 234 mana. Better than a kick to the head.
Who it's really going to hurt

Just like the previous changes to Paladin healing, this is going to have the most profound effect on the player leveling a new Healadin, and especially one trying to get through those first heroics and lvl 85 dungeons. Once a few pieces of 346+ gear drop, and remember you'll be able to buy T11 with JPs instead of VPs in 4.2, things should be smooth sailing.

In the end, I think this "AMG MASSIVE PALLY KILLING NERF" is really going to be like water off a ducks back. We probably won't even notice it after the first week of 4.2 being out.

Flexibility - you've got to have it

2011-05-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

Flexibility. This feature is what has allowed us to succeed as we have throughout Wrath and Cataclysm. As far as I can tell, you have to be flexible in one of three main ways to last as a raiding guild - and we just got our core one cut out from under us.

Method one - having a bench

This method is probably hands down the most common approach in serious raid guilds. Raiders are expected to sit out from time to time, so that an entire stable of players can get gear. Every role has at least one viable backup, and nothing short of the servers being down keeps the train from moving forward. While the reality may be that 20 of the 25 players make every raid, every night, this setup does allow for the occasional missed raid without killing the team.

Method two - multiple nights

This is the method we chose to run with. Every member of the group was willing (and able) to adjust the weekly raids to a night that lined up with the schedule of everyone else. We carry no bench, don't swap or sit out players, and (to be brutally honest) haven't had a full raid week in a long time. This is pushing us into the third option.

Method three - skipping nights

Unfortunately, this is where we're heading (hell, where we already are). A lot has changed since the launch of Cataclysm, and it's had a pretty significant impact on our schedule and ability to be flexible using Method Two. I got married, our mage changed carrers, and my healing partner got a girlfriend. So now we're down to (I think) maybe three days a week where everyone is even available to raid. This means we now have zero options if someone has to miss a raid night.

The hard truth

Unfortunately, we're at a crossroads now as a guild. We have to decide if we're willing to raid less than three nights in a week, if we want to recruit in additional players and become a 'normal' guild with loot rules and everything else, or if it's time to embrace the horror and accept that while it was good while it lasted, there's little hope.

Right now there are more guilds than ever recruiting. Finding quality players can be a challenge, and I don't know if anyone in the guild wants to really go on the recruiting push. The other issue is that most of us want to raid more than anything else, and going a few weeks with no raiding is going to be tough.

So we'll see what happens. I know that I'm personally keeping an eye on the options, though we will probably have a guild chat sometime in the future (i.e. this week) to iron stuff out.

I hate shopping for a new guild almost as much as I hate recruiting.

Day 20 - My last day of WoW

2011-05-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

So if today really was my last day of WoW, and the servers weren't shutting down for good, I'd do precisely - nothing.

I mean, let's be honest here. There's nothing I have that anyone in my guild needs. Sure, I could give away my money - but I don't think any of us are actually hurting for gold. Besides, what if one day a new expansion comes out and I decide to return?

See, that's where I would have to say it's probably NOT my last day of WoW. The day I decide to quit for good, and vow to never return, I'll probably go through and delete every single one of my characters. Leaving them active means that one day you just might return. Heck, I stopped playing City of Heroes for about five years, and when I fired it up to see what had changed, there were my old toons - just waiting to be played (I'll be honest, it lasted about 2 days).

I certainly wouldn't fly off to some remote spot, or hand out my gold to strangers, I'd just log out and be done. Same with this blog. When I decide that I'm done blogging, I'll probably put up a "This site will no longer be updated" post, just so the anal-retentive OCD folks who like clean feed readers can remove my site, but I won't put up a long "So long and thanks for the memories" post. That's just not who I am.

That day is not today though, as I still enjoy playing WoW. I'm less certian that it's not the people I play with any more, as we had a hell of a time playing Bad Company 2, but the game still keeps me going even solo.

Thanks for following along through my 20 days of blogging non-challenge/challenge. Later today I'll explain why our OT needs to be punched in the face.

Day 19 - What's in my bags/bank?

2011-05-03T14:29:00.001-08:00

I feel pretty silly writing this, because my bags are filled with the most mundane things. Since we can caccess the guild bank remotely now, and I have a Jeeves, carrying all this seems silly, but I really don't care. I use ArkInventory to organize my bags, which is really handy. I would love to find a way to sort out items that are in item/gear sets, or even just to say anything with STR goes in this column, and INT goes in this one. At least that'd be a start.

So, in my bags I have the following.

A full set of tank gear. I don't think it's all gemmed and enchanted any more, but I have it. I try and keep it updated, but I haven't tanked in at least a month or more.
Some swap out healing gear. I have some extra trinkets and weapons with different enchants. To be honest though, I can't remember the last time I swapped them out. I generally have what I consider to be my BiS equipped - and anything less is well, less. I may build up an alternate set for Mastery, but I wouldn't count on it.
100 Fortune cookies. I'm far too lazy to fish up all the different foods I need, and the stupid INT fish don't swim in pools anyway. I might fish them up if they were (just for the achievment and the fish feast), but since they aren't, I don't care. I just buy fortune cards and make cookies. I haven't hit the jackpot yet, but it's cool. It's all guild bank money anyway.
Flasks, pots, and other raiding sundry items. I like to stay stocked up, even though I rarely use a mana pot, and we have cauldrons for flasks (hello 3 hour flask buff).
My fishing gear, just in case the mood strikes me.

My bank looks pretty much the same. A few stacks of food, some eternals and herbs for crafting, some enchanting mats. I should probably liquidate it all, but really, I don't need to. Of course even with this, I still want more space. I'm currently scheming how to get my hands on a bunch of Illusionary bags. Now, do I "NEED" 26 slot bags? No. Between mules, alts, etc, it's kind of silly. But do I WANT 26 slot bags? Oh yes. Unfortunately, I don't see a bank split in our future (at least not until 4.2), so I might have to actaully work for them.

Nah.

Tomorrow, the conclusion of this series. What would I do if it were my last day of WoW?

Punched in the face by Call to Arms - Healer

2011-05-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

Last night I took the Nestea plunge and decided to queue up for ZA/ZG, solo, in the LFD system. For whatever reason both Healers and Tanks had the CTA bonus, so I figured why not? I'd run them both once already and had a feel for them, let's stick our toe in and see how things go. After all, I'm a big supporter of the LFD tool, so it's only right that I actually use it every once in a while.

6k DPS does not a hero make

First stop, ZA. Here I was greeted by my new mini-friends with the expected commentary.

Me> Good evening all.
Tank> Everyone know fights?
Bad Shaman> Yeah, let's go.
Bad DK> I hope heals is good, last heals was terrible and we wiped.
Tank> I take that as a yes. Try and keep up.

Ahh. So refreshing! So we proceeded to go for the bear boss first, which is fine, since I'm not expecting a mount run with a PUG anyway. Here however was where the real fun began, and by fun, I mean it was great practice for 2 healing H-Halfus.

First, the shaman was pulling 6k DPS, including on the bear boss. Now I understand that elemental shaman may not be rocking the charts, and you can certainly cheat the iLvl requirements - but even I find 6k to be abysmal. That's ok though, I could handle it if only he'd been backfilling with one thing.

Interrupts.

I had more interrupts as the healer than the rest of my group combined. Of course if I'd had just one interrupt that would have been more, but you get the idea. Holy moly, even after asking them to interrupt, I just got resposnes like "can't, interrupts my DPS". Thank goodnes my mana regen is good.

The little DK that could(n't)

This guy was AWESOME. Couldn't/wouldn't/didn't interrupt, Death Grip pulled before the tank had agro, stood in every environmental damage zone possible, and didn't know he had a B-Rez. Now the battle Rez I can 'kind' of forgive. After all it's a big change and not everyone reads the patch notes or WoW related websites. Given how much his mouth was flapping though, he certainly thought he was Pro Player Stadium.

The wrap-up

It wasn't all bad to be honest. It took longer than I expected (normal), we wiped two or three tiems (also normal and ok), and we did finally get the bosses dead. The group wasn't overly abusive, though the DK did lip off a few times because I let him die. Fortunately, I have lots of room on my /ignore list.

The real kick though, was the satchel. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a dozen flasks, a new pony (though that would have been nice) or anything - though I guess I did have higher hopes. Instead I got 66g34s and an Earthen Potion (whatever the armor one is). Whoop dee doo.

For 150g, I might go again, maybe. Certainly not for 66g though. I dang sure won't respec to Prot for that small a purse. To spec Prot and back is roughly 250g (respec x2, 6 glyph replacements x2). Bugger that.

Don't misunderstand me here though. The group wasn't "that" bad, and the instances are a nice retro throwback. I love the look of a lot of the gear, and I'm certainly not upset that they redid the zones. It's just that short of some 353 bracers (damn you Cho'gall, damn you), there's nothing in there for me. I don't really need Valor Points, though I should start trading them in and getting some PvP gear. I suppose that if I was going to farm VPs, this isn't a bad way to do it. Otherwise - sorry CTA, I was wrong about you. We won't be BFF, and I doubt I'll call you later.

Day 18 - My favorite outfit

2011-05-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

Hmm - this is a tough one to crack open. What is my favorite outfit? My initial response is, whatever happens to be BiS at the moment, and that I have available. What I mean is, I don't have a lot of excess outfits kicking around. If a > b, then I keep a and vendor b. I don't think I even have a suit or dress from say, Noblegarden to wear.

Now my favorite tier set, or at least the set I have the fondest memories of, was the Wrath set (old T2). The helm was kind of silly, with the axe blade on it, but damn I liked the look of those shoulders. I always thought they'd somehow consipre to cut my warrior's head off though. Of course, this outfit isn't complete without the Elementium Reinforced Bulwark, and my Thunderfury.

Why my T11 set is pretty damn cool

So even though it's not my 'favorite', I do love my T11. Why? Becuase it looks like I'm wearing a smokestack on my head. Dual exhaust on my chopper, and a smokestack on my head. I must say that I like the T12 preview, though it looks like the Paladin and Mage sets got swapped. At least we got a kilt/skirt this time around. I'm glad Blizzard is rotating through the different leg styles.

Tomorrow - What's in my bank?

Radiant, H-Maloriak, and breaking some rules

2011-04-29T11:59:00.000-08:00

This week saw a lot of chaos thrown into our little raid group. Our MT and Spriest were basically raiding from boats due to the rain they've been getting. Our rogue and shaman are in Alabama, and had some tornado scares. Oh, and our Boomkin is traveling for work.

What this boiled down to was a 4 hour raid week, which isn't much. We did manage to get some things accomplished though, and break a few of our own rules along the way.

First - Radiant

I had a chance to look over my logs from last night, and what I'm seeing about Radiant isn't blowing my hair back. Now don't get me wrong, 540 Spirit for 6 seconds is great, but as I mentioned earlier this week, it's not enough to even cover the cost of the spell. What you're really getting is a lower cost to your Holy Shock, not a full time buff.

On average I was getting a 60% uptime on Radiant. This means I'm not casting HS off every CD, but that's to be expected. There's no point in casting it if no healing needs to be done, and sometimes you just don't want to use your GCD for that. Say right after an electrocute on Nef. I'm going to be pumping out Divie Lights, not worrying about getting Holy Shocks out. Now once the raid is stabalized, I'll go back to that setup. While the 2 heal combo punch of HS/WoG is great, sometimes I need more than that. It's a decent bonus though, and I'm hoping I can nab some shoulders off Cho'Gall to give me that 5th piece so I can have options.

Oh, and on that note. Hunter/Shaman/Warrior tokens need to stop dropping. Our shaman, who we picked up maybe 2 weeks ago, now has all three shoulder and helm sets. It's annoying.

Breaking some rules

I don't know if they are rules, so much as guidelines, but originally we wnated no more than 10 raiders in the guild. What has happend though is that between RL stuff, patch days, etc, we've had maybe one full raid week every month since we started raiding. So Monger snagged us a backup DPS, and maybe a backup tank as well. We don't have (in my opinion) a backup healer on par with Monger or I, but we do have three other players that "can" heal. Our boomkin does a smashup job on healing Nef and Halfus (and she's done H-Chimaeron), and our shaman is putting forth some decent healing as well. I question our Spriest, but in a pinch he's ok.

So hopefully adding these players gives us options and not drama. We'll see.

H-Maloriak

We finally pushed this guy over last night, though I managed to die to an ice-ball AFTER he was dead. WTG nub. We three healed this fight (Disc, Shaman, Pally), and it worked out well. While it's possible that we could cut a healer on this, I don't know that I'd want to. Personally once we find a pattern that works, I'm loathe to change it. Plus if you get a healer frozen in the blue phase, you're probably in real trouble.

The black phase is all about your team moving out of the goo. You can't heal through them standing in it for more than a second or two. The fight is REALLY long though, so you have a lot of time to use cooldowns. You can generally get a Divine Plea off between cauldron colors as well.

I really like the fight, though him clipping his own casts for releasing the adds does suck. It can get a little hariy for a few moments.

Next week I'm hoping we can put the double dragos down. Mmm.

Day 17 - My Favorite Spot (in game or out)

2011-04-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

Like my other posts about favorites, it's tough to nail down just one. I used to spend a lot of time hanging out on the bank steps in Dalaran, but now that we have flying mounts I usually just log out hovering over Org. I don't have a spot that makes me think "oh man, this, this is the view - I need a house right here" or anything like that. I suppose if I had to pick just one spot, it would be this.

Over the body of a new kill.

I'm not talking about "oh hey, H-Chim for the 10th time". I'm talking a new raid boss, Heroic or otherwise. That feeling of accomplishment that the group came together and pulled it off. We don't do a lot of kill shots any more, though we still get the sandbox tiger from time to time.

On my mountain

This is my favorite spot outside of WoW, other than maybe my couch. There's a hike I do once or twice a year that takes me to a secluded hilltop out in the Alaskan wilderness. A sunrises makes the mountains look like they are on fire, and that's where I go to recharge. I've only ever seen one other person out there, though I have run into a few bears. It's close enough that I can drive down after work and hike in by 2AM or so, then have my sunrise and cofee, and be home by dinner.

That's one thing I love about Alaska though. In 15 minutes I can be on a trailhead, and in an hour I can be completely out of civilization. Plus, we don't have tornados.

Up next - my favorit outfit.

New Tier 4 bonus - Good, bad or ugly?

2011-04-27T15:10:00.000-08:00

With the arrival of 4.1, we finally see the change to our Holy 4pc T11 bonus. I commented on this back in March, but I though it'd be worth touching on again in case someone missed it. In short, the 4pc bonus now grants 540 Spirit for 6 sec, every time you cast Holy Shock. Since we should be casting Holy Shock every time it's off CD (assuming we're healing) this will be a nice boost for us. Since realistically you're probably looking at more like a 50% cast time, it's still a nice bonus.

Show me the math

So the formula for calculating mp5 is rediculous, and I'm pretty sure that I screw up the order of operations half the time, but here it is.

.0025 + SPI * sqrt(INT) * .0083625 Of course I've also found this formula .016725 * sqrt(INT) * SPI

Either one makes my head hurt, but what I do know is this. I get about .33 mp5 (in combat) per point of spirit. So a bonus of 540 SPI will give me about 178 extra mp5. This of course is calculated by dividing the bonus mp5 I get from Spirit by the mana regen I get while in combat. So this number is probably wrong as well.

Either way this should, at a minimum, provide a minimum of 270 SPI for the duration of the fight, and that's nothing to sneeze at - especially if you aren't getting the heroic drops. You can certainly push the SPI return up if your HS is consistantly cast as soon as it comes off CD, but the math makes that tough. Even with a 2 sec cast on DL, as soon as you use an instant your ability to cast immediately after it's available will be tough. It would have been nice of Blizzard to make the duration say, 8 sec, so we could keep the buff up full time.

So is it worth getting?

This goes back to the debate about the T11 in general. With the small buff to Mastery in 4.1, I think the T11 gets a little more love, though I'm still not crazy about our Mastery. Personally I'll be swapping to my 4pc, at least until Chimaeron drops my shoulders (Heroic version) - and then it'll be time for some serious math.

Day 15 and 16 - My desktop and things I miss

2011-04-27T09:52:00.000-08:00

I'd include a screenshot of my desktop, but I'm afraid to shock you all. I will describe it for you though, if I can find the words. I believe it is called "Windows.jpg" - it's basically the standard blue Windows desktop background, with the little flying window in the background. That's it. When I first got my desktop there was an Alienware logo on the desktop, because that's how the folks who built it had set it up. Once I rebuilt the machine though, that went away. I even got crazy once and set my desktop to all black (no not the All Blacks), but to be honest I just don't care.

See, I don't spend a lot of time staring at an empty desktop. If I'm at my computer I'm either working or gaming, what do I care what the desktop looks like? If I want to look at a picture, I'll open that up - otherwise I just don't care.

Things I miss post Cataclysm

Uh - a Worgen PC free world? The cries of gnomes everywhere that wished they had a capital city that wasn't overrun by troggs and irradiated gnomes? Jousting (just kidding)?

I don't really miss anything in the game world, except maybe BoL transferring 100% of my heals. The game changes, and I didn't spend a lot of time in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalmidor once BC/WotLK launched. Call me unsentimental, but there's really no point saying "oh don't you wish it was still like back then".

Bah-humbug.

Tomorrow - my favorite spots (in and out of the game). Guess which one will be longer?

Day 14 - This upsets you

2011-04-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

Ahh, finally a list of things that I can get my teeth into. This list is certainly shorter than it would have been four or five years ago though, as what I let under my skin has really changed. Of course I've got my wife completely convinced that I'm practicaly incapable of getting upset about anything short of really bad behavior towards her, or poor customer service. Of course, she also refuses to play poker with me.

So in no particular order, here's a list of things that upset me in WoW.

1) Not being respectful of other's time. This is a big one for me, but it can stem from so many things. No call/No Show to a raid. Being unprepared. Frequesnt AFKs. Pretty much everything I ever had to deal with as an officer in a larger guild. Now all I have to worry about is if one raider is out of town for something, and I think we've only had one last minute cancel since the release of Cata.

2) Getting camped. Now, I'm the first guy to admit that I have no issue with popping a lowbie if I'm in the area. Once. Yeah, whoohoo gg lvl 85 mage who popped Icy Veins and TimeWarp. You totally smoked my lvl 58 hunter self. Whatever. That doesn't bother me. I get upset when they decide that my body is a National Forest, and they set up shop there.

3) That guy in random BGs. This guy doesn't upset me so much as just make me want to cry. I'm talking about that person who doesn't try to coordinate, just says things like "FFS defend!" as he's running off to solo the mine against 3 people. Or the guy who says "Damn, no healers again" as he's playing a warlock. Of course he has a Season Nine Super Gladiator healer, and placed in the Arena tourney - this is just his alt on a friend's account.

4) Funky boss mechanics. I'm not talking about strange things you have to do, I'm talking about things like Atramedes spawning his fire in P2 ON YOUR HEAD, as you're running. You can't dodge that, or even gong it off. Chimaeron double attacking and both hits landing in that 4% range that your MT has where it's a pure hit, not a parry/dodge/block/miss.

5) Douchebags from your own faction. I don't know why I expect people from my own faction to behave better than the enemy faction. At least on a PvP server if someone decides to act like an idiot I can attempt to resolve the issue by melting their face off. It's also typically Gnomes or DKs. Or Gnome DKs.

6) Worgen. I hate the Worgen more than I hate gnomes. I don't like their cast animations, attack animations (seriously, a summersault with a 2H axe?), sniffing, that running wild nonsense. You can take the Goblins back too in my opinion. I really hated the starting zone. I think I liked the Exodar better. Forget mourning the loss of Arcane Torrent, Worgen might nust be enough to keep me from faction changing if I ever have to find a new guild.

7) Wireless mice This is only an issue if you forget to change your batteries before a raid. Wiping us becuase your batteries died is grounds for a RL ass whipping. Or at least a creepy late night visit from Lijah Cuu.

8) Losing a comment/post This is more for blogging. I hate it when I lose a good rebuttle or post, just because I took a 5 hour break while writing it.

I think this is enough for now. Day 15 is going to be really short, so I might roll that in with Day 16.

I might also have a real content post now that 4.1 has gone live. Time to play with Mastery some more I guess.

Day 13 - People (players/bloggers) I admire

2011-04-25T11:13:00.000-08:00

This is a fairly short list, though I do admire what some folks have put together. In general, I admire what they've accomplished, not necessarily who they are.

Mido

I have no idea who this guy really is, and I never really faced him in PvP. What I do know is that he was one of the most feared rogues on Malygos - and it didn't matter which side he was fighting for. His legend carried into BC, and those rogues in Shadow Labs that would one shot your healers were named Mido in his honor. To put it bluntly, if Morores had been Mido - he wouldn't have needed four henchmen to take down a raid. I don't know where Mido is now, but I tip my hat to that level of gameplay.

Legs and Cranius

For those that don't know Cranius, well, let this be a brief introduction. Cranius is the voice behind Big Blue Dress, The Lament of Captain Placeholder, and others. Legs does the machinima work. Together they create some amazing videos, and I admire that. While I certainly which Cranius would release more, I can appreciate that it probably doesn't pay very well, and doing all that video capture and editing has to take time.

Matticus

I don't know Matt over at World of Matticus, but I do have a lot of respect for him. He runs a fairly successful progression raiding guild, that has a decent PvP arm as well. He maintains World of Matticus, maintains Plus Heal, and is involved with a few podcasts. While I don't always agree with his opinions, I do have to admire the fact that he keeps it all held together. Even if there really are a string of people in the background working on it to keep the whole thing floating, I admire the ambition.

That's about it

It's tough for me to admire someone regarding the game, especially when I don't even admire a lot of folks in general. I might admire their gumption, or ability, but as a person? It's tough. One of the men I admired most in my life died on Easter morning this year. My uncle succumbed to a second fight with cancer after beating it for a bit last year. He was 79 years old, had cycled across most of the world, and could spin a tale with the best of them. After admiring a man like that, it's hard to follow someone else.

Day 12 - A usual day in my life/online

2011-04-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, at least for me, my usual day is fairly boring and routine. Here's an average day, now that the weather is good and the snow is al gone.

5:00 - Wake up and start my first coffee. I generally make 6oz of espresso in my awesome Bialetti espresso maker. I can put the water on, and by the time I'm finished with prepping my oatmeal, I've got awesome coffee. Personally, I pour it right into the cup and drink it, but I use a Bodun milk frother to make my wife lattes. Hey, coffee is one of the good things I make, don't judge.

At this point I'm usually either playing on an alt, reading blogs, or (lately) reading some 40k. I generally try and avoid doing any log analysis during this time, and I'm not a big fan of doing dailies.

6:00 - Make a new pot of coffee and (attempt) to wake up my wife. This is a process that can take a while, as she is NOT a morning person.

6:30 - Out the door and biking to work. If I'm in a hurry I take the straight shot on the roads and get to work pretty quick (it's about 5 miles) - otherwise I'll get in a 20mi ride.

7/8:00 till 4/5:00 - Conduct business at an engineering firm where I'm the local IS Manager. This is where I usually find 15 or 20 minutes to do a blog post at lunch, and go over some WoL reports if I think we're having issues.

4/5:00 - Bike home.

5:00-8:00 - Raid, hopefully, on W/Th/Sat. Otherwise I do some schoolwork (here's to paying for a degree online through Phoenix) and/or keep working on my mage. He needs to hit 85 so my guild can kill him. Dwarf mages are friggin rare!

8:00/10:00 - hang out with my wife and either get my ass kicked at scrabble/Trivial Pursuit, or watch some Iron Chef.

All in all, it's a pretty boring day. I don't spend a lot of time stressing over WoW anymore, becuase we're either going to raid, or we're not. I'm not an officer of a big guild anymore, and I don't think I ever want to go back to that point. We don't spend alot of time online as a guild outside of raiding. On raid nights, we have some folks that have to get to work right after the raid, or get to bed since they're on the East Coast. Half our guild raids with another guild on a seperate server on Mon/Tue, and while we all have alts - most of us aren't interested in getting them into raiding or even heroics - they're played for fun.

Right now we're working on H-Maloriak, but I don't think we have a full raid week available till June. Ah well.

Tomorrow - People I admire (it's a short list).

Day 11 - Bad habits and flaws

2011-04-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

Oh man, talk about looking deep at yourself. Are my future employers going to be looking at this? I hope not. I have a few bad habits that stick out, and I used to have a few more that I've curtailed over time.

1) Drunken raid leading. I haven't done this in a few years now, but oh man was I ever "that guy". I'd drink a pint of scotch and MT my way through Vanilla and BC content just screaming up a storm. Whoo - bad nights.

2) Taking over raids. I've got a strong personality, and one thing I can't abide is weak leadership. I've helped hijack more than one raid/guild, simply becuase the leadership was weak.

3) Stressing over the game. I spend a lot of free time thinking about WoW, the guild, raids, etc. I do a ton of napkin math and pouring over logs. It's good, except it takes away from other things.

4) Using CDs. I'm working on it, but my cooldown usage still isn't perfect.

That's the big ones - though I'm sure others would point out more.

Up next - A usual online day.

Day 10 - Blog/Website favorites

2011-04-22T08:23:00.000-08:00

For this question, I'm going to respond with but a single answer.

Google.

Seriously, is there anything that search engine can't provide? Sifting through the crap can be tiresome, but that is one location I can always count on to eventually get me to where I want to be. Why would I bother bookmarking anything else?

Alright, fine. Here's a few other sties that I visit regularly, outside the standard wowhead and EJ.

Dark Legacy Comics - they're funny because they're true.

XKCD - I'm a computer nerd who works in an engineering firm, and has Math and English majors for friends. This might as well be my second home.

And that's really it. I have a ton of blogs in my blog reader, but none that I freak out about if I miss a day. Toby gives me all the Warhammer 40k and SW:TOR updates I can handle, and I just don't spend a lot of time on community sites.

Up next - bad habits and flaws. I'm gonna need a longer list....

Day 09 - My first blog post

2011-04-21T08:21:00.002-08:00

Two words for you on my first blog post.

Bore ring.
Seriously. My post was the equivelant of the programming script that produces "Hello World", nothing more than me poking my head out of my gopher hole. I'm here to tell you from personal expericence, that it's a dangerous move. More than one gopher has gotten shot with my trusty .22 just for sticking his head up to see what's going on.

Come on, think about it for a minute. We all remember the whack-a-mole game from Chucky Cheese (or whatever your local bad pizza and games site was as a kid), and we certainly make enough references to it in regards to healing. At the very beginning, I'm pretty sure I was more than a little nervous about voicing my opinion out where everyone could read it. I mean, what if they don't like me or agree with me?

And that right there, is what prompted me to write more. Because if I can infuriate just one troll, and maybe help one other person, then it's worth it all.

That, and I need a place to share stories about Old Greg.

*Edit* Fail blogger is bad. Damn scheduling.

Day 08 - 10 things you don't know about me

2011-04-20T04:29:00.003-08:00

Oh man - where to start with this one. From the mundane to the insane - here we go.

1) I'm 1/2 an Ironman. 1.1 mi swim, 56 mi bike, and a 13.2 mi run. Hooah baby. Hooah.

2) I once (well, ok more than once) spent a large portion of my time jumping off high objects into questionable pools of water. Often while intoxicated. At night. Yeah, I wonder why I'm still here myself.

3) Despite #2, I'm terrified of hights - like, rediculously frightened. I get nervous on a step ladder. Don't ask me how I jumped off a bridge into the White Salmon river, just above some rapids, I'm not quite sure myself. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that a) I thought the white water was generally boring (I was once thrown over the high side of a raft - and at 280lbs that was an impressive sight I'm sure) and b) at some point during the trip I had ripped the ass out of my wetsuit - so I spent the whole trip mooning everyone.

4) I used to ride in the rodeo. I never did bull riding, but I've covered more than one bareback horse, and I used to jump off a running horse onto a steer - just to wrestle him to the ground. I also did well in the wild cow milking.

5) I've lived above the Arcitc Circle.

6) I once took sixth place in the Arctic Circle Championship sled dog races. Yeah, there were only six people entered, but they paid out seven places - so I still made money.

7) I hate mystery citrus showing up in my food (you know this if you listened to the TNB while I was a guest). Nothing ruins a delicious dish faster than a cake fart, but strange orange showing up in my pecan pie is a close second.

8) I share a brain with Wombcrusher. I swear, I'm Ed Norton and he's Brad Pitt. The number of times we've had the same thought at the same moment...scary.

9) I have, on more than one occasion, been the only answer to the question of "Who drank an entire bottle of scotch/gin/whiskey/rum/etc".

10) I did inhale. I also have used a wide variety of hallucinogens, pain killers, and other mind/body altering drugs. While I can't condone their use (legally) - I do have some pretty crazy stories from those nights. Again this begs the question, how am I still alive?

BONUS FACT:
I once took out a barracks window using 100mph tape, a Boones Farm bottle full of Red Man spit (mostly mine), and a half dozen MRE heaters.

BONUS FACT #2:
Often accused, held overnight, interrogated, and charged - but never convicted.

Next - My first blog post.

Day 07 - The reason behind your blog name

2011-04-19T04:04:00.000-08:00

I wish I could say that the name Divine Plea was chosen for some kind of lofty goal or reason. In all honesty, it just seemed to be the last Paladin spell not claimed.

Blessing of Kings? Taken.
Avenging Wrath? Taken.
Righteous Defense? Taken.

In the end I was left with Divine Plea, and it's worked. I mean, really - who doesn't want a blog name with the initials DP? I kind of makes you wonder about the talent to be honest, especially with my raid group. For example, I would never - ever- say that I'm hitting the DP or taking DP. Nooooo. The only thing I say is "Pleaing" - and I'm sure that gets cut off at the pass by some vent lag and Monger just thinks I have a bladder problem.

I also really wish I had come up with Divine Plea because it was an amazingly overpowered talent. 20% healing reduction for a 25% mana bar return, on a 1 min CD? I laugh at your mana problems. At least it's had the duration reduced to 9 seconds. It's so much easier to squeeze one in now - and I'm definately feeling the mana crunch on some of these heroics.

So there it is - the secret behind Divine Plea. I was so loate to the blogging party, it's all that was left.

Oh, and Drunken Raid Leader was taken too.

Ladies and Gentlemen - Gary Busey

2011-04-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

So Vonkaiser - aka Gary Busey - has decided to dust off his blog and start posting again.

Gary is the MT of Team Intensity, and don't let him fool you. That sucker really is Gary Busey, I know. Wanna know how I know? He's mysteriously absent the day before the next episode of The Apprentice. Coincidence? I think not. Oh yeah - I've also seen the piles of coke.

Anyway - go check out the 5th blogging member of Team Intensity at Wrath of the Lightbringer.

I'd be impressed that we have five bloggers in our 10m guild, but Eluethera and Monger don't post much any more, and Wombcrusher only occasionally graces us with his love.

Day 06 - My Desk

2011-04-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

So here it is, in all its spelndor. There are a few key elements to the space though, and we'll cover them from left to right. I apologize if the photo image is terrible, I took the picture with my phone this morning.

The Green Blanket

On the far left of the deak you'll see a green blanket folded up, with a roll of CAT5 sitting on it. This is ironic, because normally it's my cat sitting there. She likes to hang out and watch movies with me, or generally interfere with my ability to manipulate the keyboard. The network cable is usually under the desk, in case I have to string CAT5 across the house because my wireless is acting up.

The monitors

I actually don't run dual monitors, I run two desktops. The one on the left is currently showing The Thomas Crown Affair I think - and this is where I run my music or whatever YouTube nonsense we're sharing at the moment. The center monitor is my gaming screen, and is still too low, even though it's sitting on a phone book and I think the sixth Harry Potter book.

Monster

I drink more energy drinks than is healthy I'm sure. Lo-Carb Monster is my drug of choice these days, though really I'll drink whatever is on sale. I suppose this is a step up though, since three years ago that would have been a bottle of scotch sitting there.

The mousepad

Probably the last real interesting thing on my desk is my mousepad. It USED to be a super nice pad I got from ThinkGeek, however it has about a million hours on it, and so all the texture has been rubbed off, and it's now slick like glass. If you look closely you'll see that there's some white duct tape and some blue painters tape holding another card on top of it. It's actually the plastic bottom of a shopping bag, but the size was perfect so I just taped it on. I might get a new mousepad for Christmas, or I might just cover the thing in duct tape and call it good.

For those wondering, this modification (much like the running of the CAT5) was made mid raid, after I'd had one too many incidents where my mouse wouldn't track vertically. That's dedication for you right there.

Tomorrow - The reson this place is called Divine Plea

Day 05 - Favorite item in game

2011-04-15T15:35:00.000-08:00

Again - too many that I love to really choose a favorite. Some of these I've had, some I've just seen used, and others are only really fun because of who uses them. So here, in no particular order, are my favorite items in game.

Thunderfury

I'll come right out and say it - I loved this weapon. Besides being a huge guild acievment, it was just an amazing weapon. I thought it looked great with my T2 and my ERB (still my favorite shield), and I used it until it was completely useless. I really regret making my warrior a Tauren now - so ugly.

Noggenfogger Elixir

This item isn't my favorite to use, but our Boomkin has a 22 slot bag full pretty much for every raid. There's something about seeing a mini-Boomkin just tearing it up that is pretty damn funny.

Parachute Cloak

This might be one of those, favorite moments items instead, but I think fondly on jumping off AB or into the mine with my wonder twin Toby. It's tough to tell a Retadin and a Holy pally apart when they're both rocking the same looking gear and weapons. I don't know how many times carrying a two-hander has gotten me ignored while I just sit back and heal.

I may take the weekend off - so Monday will be day 06, a shot of my desk.

10m H-Halfus - with no mage

2011-04-14T14:43:00.000-08:00

Last week we lost our mage (if anyone sees a panel van in the greater KC area where the driver is constantly screaming "YOU DOCTOR YET!!?!" at every Asian male he sees, call me) and were forced to go out and find ourselves a replacement. While we didn't land a mage right away, we did pick up a shaman who seems to be fitting alright - at least he has an active desire to learn.

Catching an interrupt

Traditionally on H-Halfus we used our mage to blink out of the AoE stun and get his interrupt off on the shadow nova. As long as Crathia (our hunter) wasn't being an idiot and releasing the wrong drakes "But guys, it has an X - it must be right!", this worked every time. As long as we lived through the first two drakes, the the fight was in the bag.

Now, not so much.

Things we tried

First thing we did was send Crathia out for a spanking new Nether Ray. Supposedly you can talent them for a 30% stun reduction, and they have an interrupt. Now I don't know if it is because the pet wasn't lvl 85, if the stun duration wasn't enough/talented, or if it just doesn't work any more.

We also had our shaman - who was resto - put in a stun duration reduction meta gem. That plus the Orc racial (that's right, he didn't sell out and go Goblin) should have been enough to give him time to get a wind shear off. But that didn't work either.

We finally resorted to a pally bubble rotation. Fortunately we have three Paladins, so we were able to bubble through the stuns and get an interrupt off every time. I suppose we could have used HoP on our Shaman once as well, HoP the shaman, three bubble rotations, then HoP again. Though I really hope we wouldn't need five interrupts.

What happened to BTP?

Now I know Bring the Player not the Class has some restrictions on it. You obviously can't bring all tanks/healers or what have you, and a raid of all melee DPS might have some problems, but this is rediculous. You could save your potion CD for a Free Action Potion, but then you cut out your DPS boost or a mana pot.

So I'm ok with having multiple ways out of this, but damn. Paladins have a 5min CD on their bubble. Spriest is a 2 min CD on Dispersion. It's kind of a gong show if you ask me. I suppose we could have our interrupters get a PvP trinket for the fight, but even that is on a 2 min CD. /shakes fist

I suppose it is better than Razivus still though - where you HAD to have Spriests for the MC, and back in the 40m raid days you had to bring a whole stable of them. Speaking of that - was Naxx bigger in the 40m days? I'm thinking about some of the fights, and damn if it wouldn't be super crowded with 40 people in there.

Day 04 - Your best wow memory

2011-04-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

Coming up with a best memory is really tough. You could say "these are my top 5 best memories", but that would be pretty silly when you think about it. I mean, the definition of best is that there's nothing better, otherwise what would be the point of being the best? That's like when someone tries to say that Infinity+1 is a larger number than Infinity. It makes no sense because a) Infinity isn't really a number and b) Infinity already covers Infinity.

But I digress.

Instead of listing my best memory, I'll instead list my top memories. I might even have a screenshot this time.

So, in no real order (because that would then give weight to the fact that one is indeed the best), here are some of my top memories in WoW.

The /GUIT

Back on Bladefist towards the end of our active raiding, we joined up with a guild to try and do 25m raiding. Now, you have to picture this - you have a guild of people who want to raid, and 10 of us come in and basically dictate terms and enforce our will on the guild. Personally if I was the GM I never would have taken the 10 of us on with the demands that I made, but that's his problem not mine. Now as you can imagine, there was a lot of tension once we came on board, and a lot of the old gaurd didn't like the new swaggar attitude we brought.

During one particularly tight moment, someone tried to ragequit the guild. I forget the exact reason, but the short of it was they made this huge rant speech about how everything was going to hell in a handcart with the guild, and then typed in guit. While I'm probably sure they died of shame after that moment, it was still pretty danged funny and it's a running joke still.

/AMGWEKILLEDRAGAROS!!!!!!111111ONEONEONE

I'm sure I misspelled that, but you get the idea. This was spammed in /guild after our first Ragnaros kill back on Malygos. It was back when I was still playing a rogue, but damn if it wasn't a great moment in the game. I was still a total noob, and this kill opened a huge door into a new level of raiding for me - it also opened the door to tanking as I switched to my warrior soon after.

My buddy and me!

Back when I first started playing, my buddy Mini and I were some total noobs. I remember trying to do the Deadmines as a rogue/hunter combo - because we had no clue what we were doing. It wasn't our greatest WoW momeht, but it's definately a great WoW memory.

Thunder, Thunder, Thunderfury!

This was a really big moment for me, because it was our guild's first Thunderfury. Getting it was a challenge, and I'm sure Toby thinks I still owe him money from this. We weren't really even in BWL yet, so we wound up buying the ores from some gold farmer in IF. It was a big highlight for me, and I do miss being able to just wave it around and have more threat than I knew what to do with. It also sounded awesome when you used it, and I packed that baby around until the 2nd or 3rd nerf in BC. Easily my favorite legendary.

Every new bosskill

May sound sappy, but I love new bosskills, especially with my current guild. Paired with this is every time a BoE epic drops that we can sell for a million dollars (I'm gonna be Oprah rich). I just love getting new boss kills, and I love not having to grind out any kind of consumable or repair money. Speaking of, it's about time to make someoen else rich - I need more fortune cookies.

None is best

So you see, none of these are better than the other - and I"m leaving out a lot as well. The Starscream incident, every time Twerpinator died, every gnome I've ever killed....

Day 03 - My first day playing WoW

2011-04-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

I think it was a Friday. My buddy Mini had come up to Alaska to visit, and we were looking for a new game to try out. We'd done a lot of Neverwinter Nights, Starcraft, and Diablo - but we needed something fresh. We'd played Warcraft as a RTS, and there was this new game on the market called "World of Warcraft". It looked pretty amazing, so we grabbed a couple of copies and loadeded it up.

What a bunch of noobs

So while I don't have my /played or account info in front of me, I'm pretty sure that we started around March in 2005. I know it was early enough in Vanilla that Scholo and Strat were raids, UBRS was 15 man, and it might have even been before BWL was opened. Of course, I didn't know what BWL was, what a raid was, or really anything.

What I did know was that I wanted to play a Paladin. They looked amazing, and I've always enjoyed the Paladin in DND and Diablo II, just without the Lawful Good. I think this lasted a few days, and then I ditched the Paladin and it took the end of BC to bring me back to it.

My biggest noob memory

While this wasn't on day one, this is my biggest noob moment from the starting days. I had rolled a NE rogue and was trying to get from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms so that Mini (who was a dwarf hunter) and I could level together. I had no idea that there was a boat in Darkshore, so I started running across the continent thinking the ships would be on the Eastern shores. Fortunately a kind soul took mercy on me and got me running in the right direction. /facepalm

Day 02 - Why I decided to start blogging

2011-04-12T07:30:00.000-08:00

Ah ha! It's day two, though as Terpinator pointed out so candidly to me last night - I really fail at the whole 'challenge' thing. So now I'm challenged to stay awake for 2000 hours. Though not all at once, or individually if I can get my guild to participate.

Why I started blogging

It's pretty simple to be honest, I like to talk. Ask Hydra from the Twisted Nether Blogcast - I was chatting up a storm on their show. I think I'd really like to find a permenant 'guest' spot somewhere.

Back to the blogging.

Back when I started, I was in a 25m guild doing Ulduar and Naxx. It wasn't fancy, but I had found myself (repeatedly) writing strats, answering questions about the different classes, guild rules, etc. So I thought hey - I read a lot of blogs, how hard can it be? The truth is, it's easy - to get started. Keeping a regular post schedule is a little tougher though.

The other reason I wanted to start weighing in with my own voice is I saw so many blog posts that were just - wrong. Or they weren't focused on the heroic end game, but how to gear your starting Paladin. Sure that's interesting, but I really want to know if that extra .05% haste is worth giving up .02% crit and 50 Spirit. Those are tough decisions that need more than a "Stack spirit till you die" response.

Why I keep blogging

I enjoy it. I don't have the writing flair that some do (looking at you Toby), or the graphical style to make it look good - but there's something about writing that actually just 'feels' good. Who knows. Maybe it just eats up time at work and that's why I like it.

Day 01 – Introduce yourself

2011-04-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm handling the 20 days of blogging challenge less like a challenge, and more like a chance to get some filler content when I'm not talking about how big the check has to be for me to whore out to the LFD or the state of the Paladin in general.

Introduce yourself

I'm Adgamorix (Hi Adgamorix!) - though that's really just the name my toon happened to have at the moment I decided to start blogging. If you went back to Malygos in 2007 you would have found me as Tarde in Vanilla, Apokalyptiko in BC (damn name change), etc. Hell, one of the biggest problems new members to our guild have is that we all use different names for each other. For example our MT is named Vonkaiser, but we generally call him JM or Gary Busey.

But this is supposed to be about me I suppose, and not my toon.

I'm a military brat to start, and I wound up in Alaska working in the oil fields after I got out of the Army. I'm curretnly employed as a Network Administrator of some type at an Engineering firm, and have been doing IT work for about 11 years. Way to jump in right after the .dot bomb went off. I do find it ironic though that I make a rediculous salary for having about nine months of tech school under my belt, while my wife has her masters degree from Notre Dame and takes home about half of what I do. Funny how shit works out.

Enough about that

Really though, right now I'm Pistonhondo - Holy Pally and one of 10 officers in . Seeing as we have 10 members, it's not a lot of power. I've been a guild leader, raid leader, and guild destroyer. I've gotten server firsts, and missed out on entire raid patches. Kinda like life I suppose.

Next - Day 02 - Why I decided to start a blog.

They're getting closer

2011-04-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Blizzard announced the Call to Arms for LFD, and I pretty much think it's a joke. John over at BBB flat out states that Blizzard is essentially calling every tank and healer out there a whore - it's just a question of price.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I (and my whole guild for that matter) can be bought. In Wrath we sold everything we could - from drops in dungeons, Ulduar titles, and mounts - all the way to just flat being working whores in ICC GDKP runs. It may not be glamorous, but damn if I haven't had to farm for anything in a long time. This is what allowed me to focus on Archeology and get my little doll in the first few days of Cata, because I just threw down the cash for my Tsunami deck (probably close to 35k).

Entering the other zone

One thing I do enjoy, but rarely get to do, is PvP. One of the main reasons I don't PvP that often is the barrier to gear that develops, quite similar to the gap between a fresh 85 and someone who's farming Heroic raids. It's no fun getting blasted in my crafted PvP gear by someone in full Season X PvP stuff. I'm a tourist, but I want to at least look good while I'm visiting the other parts of the game.

With the announcement today that Coquest and Honor points can be purchased using their PvE equivalents though, I just might be enticed to enter the LFD system again - at least until I get the PvP gear I want. Given the limits in how quickly you can accrue VPs, it might still take me a few weeks, but it's not like I need any more Valor Boots.

The problem here though is two fold. First, this exchange isn't limited to me queing solo, which is what you have to do in order to be eligible for the bonus loot from Call to Arms. Second, it's a very limited fix - especially since I get a large portion or my weekly cap in VPs from raiding. This certainly won't entice over players who are raiding 25s. Hmm - I wonder how this will work for weekly caps? If I exchange 1000 VPs to Conquest on Wed, can I earn another 1000 on Saturday?

I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to solo enter the LFD with this, but it does give a little more incintive if I'm after a few extra points for the week. Of course if I don't get into any PvP, it's not really worth it.

In the end

I think Kurn got a little closer to what really needs to happen to help with the issue in 5 mans. First, every normal encounter should require the same ratio of tanks/healers/DPS. I don't think that 'forcing' tanks and healers into the LFD by giving them a stacking buff is the right answer (I forget who had that idea), but if more tanks were required at the end game, you'd have to see more tanks on the way up.

The real issue though is the general asshattery that we see everywhere. It's not just DPS on Tanks - it's everyone. Unfortunately the only way I can see fixing that issue involves a lot of geocide - and I don't see Blizzard signing off on that any time soon.

LFD Call to Arms - I'm going to be rich

2011-04-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

One of the disadvantages about living in Alaska and postng when I do is that by the time I get my hands on a piece of 'news', I'm the 7313712 blogger to comment on it. Fortunately, I don't make a living on reporting breaking news in WoW - this is just my outlet to voice my opinons. So here we go.

No Sympathy

I've said it before, but I have zero sympathy for anyone who complains about the LFD system que times. None. In fact, I think you're a baby just for bringing it up. Forget the whole "in my day we had to buy our way into a run, and every Scholo was full on rogues" or that things were tougher or longer in Vanilla or BC. They were just different. The main difference being that back then you had to scour your guild, friends list, or the /genera/trade/LFG channels to find someone. You had to run to your instance after taking a taxi, and maybe you'd be lucky enough to have a warlock (though you still needed 3 people to make it work).

Now you just hit your LFD button and continue to do whatever it is you wanted to do. I loved it on my Retadin. I could continue to herb/mine/survey all across the land, and never worry that I wasn't going to get a group. The only questons were WHEN would I get it, and how bad would they be. If I really wanted a heroic I could hit up the guild I was in, or put forth the effort to get a group on my own.

But that's where the gear is!

Who gives a ratty-tat-tooy. If you're trying to gear up to raid, then you should either be in a guild or looking for a group of folks who are also looking to raid and run heroics together. Say more than 5 words when you get into your random. I don't know. Either way, it's not my problem.

Tanks have it the hardest

While this is partially true, I don't buy it completely. Not putting out competitive DPS? You'll find yourself LOLNOOBED right out of the dugeon. Tank decides that facepulling every pack without CC is the way he wants to play? See ya healer - you obviously suck (especially if you actually need to drink). Let's be honest with ourselves. The average LFD group could fit right into the Mos'Eisly cantina.

I love savings the money

So with the new Call to Arms, which only activates if it detects that there aren't enough of a specific type of players looking (i.e. tanks, heals, lolDPS), how many tanks are actually going to WAIT until the Call to Arms pops up? Why bother queing if it's down? You know it'll come back in a few minutes, might as well make some extra money. This also won't, in my estimation, draw the 359 guild tanks out of the woodwork and into the LFD. Instead we're going to get FailtankLOLDK number 55.

The only way I see the 'good' tanks stepping back up is if the bags are so full of money and flasks that they never have to farm again. That's the only possible way I think. Plus I think in a few months we'll see all the raid mounts added to the stable. After all, once I get my Deathcharger, why keep going? Personally, I'd rather just farm Strat instead of dealing with the LFD.

More tank pressure

I think this system is also going to further widen the gulf in the LFD between the trinity. Why should I worry about dispelling or CCing if I'm a DPS? You're being PAID to tank this for me. I expect more than I would get normally. Or the poor new tank, who really honestly wants to be a tank and isn't just a DPSer in tank clothing. That guy's life is about to become a living hell.

So, I think this is a terrible idea. I'm going to milk it on all four tits to be sure, but I don't think thisis going to fix anything in the LFD.

Hanging out with the Twisted folks

2011-04-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

This Saturday I'm going to be giving a guest appearance on the Twisted Nether blogcast. You can listen in at the TNB site and participate in a chatroom session.

It's not quite drunken raid leading, but it could be close.

Recruiting - One crazy DPS

2011-04-02T19:03:00.000-08:00

Real life has struck our merry band of mauraders, and we now find ourselves in the position of having to recruit a full time DPSer. I'll keep it short and sweet.

Who we are

as a core has been together since Vanilla. Now we're a 10m guild (literally 10 - no bench) and are currently 4/13 with Magmaw, Chim, Atramedes, and Halfus. Our roster currently is as follows.

Tanks
Paladin and DK(DPS OS)

Healers
Priest and Pally

Melee
Rogue and Pally

Ranged
Hunter, Spriest (Holy OS), Boomkin (Resto OS)

So our fourth ranged DPS spot is open. While a mage would be ideal, we're willing to look at any great DPSer.

What you get

All flasks, food, repairs, etc are paid for. BoEs are sold to fund the guild bank, and it's a profit sharing endeavor.

Raid times

W/Th/Sat - 6 to 9 PST.

Interested?

If you're interested, leave a comment, email me, or find us on Stormscale during those times.

Blogspot is being a punk

2011-04-01T09:16:00.002-08:00

So blogspot is being a complete POS right now. For whatever reason when I use the compose window, it's not recognizing the carriage returns and putting the

brackets in the HTML code (watch, it'll pick up those brackets right now and bork this post too). This really sucks, because it means that I have to either a) type all my posts in HTML code (f that), b) switch to another hosting service that I can't access from work, or c) deal with my posts just being giant blocks of text. I'm not really keen on the wall of text, since it's difficult to read. I'm really not keen on switching to another host either. I suppose I could type in all the HTML tags, but that just gives me flashbacks to my intro to Web Design class - which I really hated. I suppose it could be my browser or something else (since it seems that bold works fine), but who knows. Now to think up something useful to write about today.

My least favorite day - April First

2011-03-31T14:31:00.002-08:00

Tomorrow is April First, and is quite possibly my least favorite day of the year. Yes, I'll even rank it above Valentine's Day and Christmas, both of which I really dispise (nothing like obligatory gift giving). No, the reason I hate April Fool's Day is everyone and their brother thinks that thier 'new' joke is somehow funny, or that lying has somehow become acceptable. It really gets out of hand when pranks turn personal. This is usually the time I set someone's car on fire, but not as a joke. I suppose that's really my problem. I generally escalate things far beyond where they may be percieved as funny. "Ha ha, logged into your account, took you to Desolace and destroyed your Hearthstone!". My response might be "Funny. I just deleted all your stuff, sent a series of nasty messages to the CM/GMs, got you forum banned, used your account to sell gold, and of course - set your car on fire". See, the last part just puts it over the top. So to everyone planning on writing a "I quit" post, or pulling some practical joke on the blogsphere, just remember - I may not know who you are or where you live, but if your car is on fire, you might want to give me a shout.

OT - Cleaning up my feed reader

2011-03-30T16:33:00.003-08:00

Not really WoW related, but it's certainly appropriate these days. Over the course of the year bloggers come and bloggers go. I certainly don't hold anythig against someone who chooses to step away from the game or writing - I've certainly taken my breaks in the past. Where I come to the challenge is when do I unsubscribe from them on the feed reader. Pulling them off my blog roll isn't really an issue, since they will eventually just fall to the bottom.

What I'm talking about is the reader I use to keep track of every blog I read. There's always this moment of hesitiation every time I prepare to unsubscribe from a blog I've found. Many bloggers go dark for a while and then come back, and I'm always worried that maybe they will return and I'll miss it. This is especially true if it's a blogger that I enjoyed reading because of thier style over thier substance. I don't really know why I worry about these things. My reader is now full of blogs that have either closed the doors, stopped blogging about WoW, or in some cases, have gone on to full WoW bashing. I don't really care what you want to write about, but unless you're just a good writer in general, I probably don't want to hang around.

The other group that I regularly unsubscribe from is bloggers that only give me a teaser in the reader. I don't want to be forced to visit your site just to check out your post for the day. So today I went through and ripped off the bandage. A whole list of blogs I unsubscribed to. It's alright. My organized side thanks me for getting rid of blogs that I just don't read and only hit "mark all as read" just in case there's something interesting. And it's now a lot easier to scroll through to the blogs I do want to read.

H-Atramedes down - 4/13

2011-03-29T09:22:00.005-08:00

Add another notch to the two healed encounters - H-Atramedes went down last week. I really love this fight - even though on normal it's a snoozefest - just becuase of the interesting mechanic. Having a sound bar really puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of the individual raider as well.

Some of the differences

The first difference between normal and heroic is the add (shocker - heroic mode = adds!) that shows up and jumps on your raiders (think snowbalds from ToC). They can be interrupted, have low HP, and need to be nuked quickly. You can't target them until they land on someone, but they need to be focused quickly. Besides doing a little damage, they add 10 sound per hit, so someone can get in trouble very quickly. The second difference is Nef will occasionally mess with your raid by nuking a gong before you can click it. It's good to have someone as a backup gong hitter, because this can really bite you in the butt. Just make sure you don't hit two gongs if you don't need to. Finally, the damage is just crazy high. Fire moves faster and lasts longer on the ground, there's more sound disks (they always launch at someone, never towards the wall), and the disks in Phase 2 explode faster.

It's pucker time

This fight has a lot of spike healing, but it didn't have the same pressure feel as Magmaw. There are some lulls during the fight where you can nab mana via Divine Plea, and I personally like to stand with the melee so I can heal them with LoD and HR. I also snag a few melee swings to get just a little more mana if I can. The big difference is that any moment that may lead to "must heal now!" generally means your target is already dead. Of course I say that now, but my WoL and HPS says I was really cooking. Maloriak is next on the 2 heal list. It's going to be a week before we get ay attempts on him though, due to us missing a raider this week. Working on new H-mode bosses with a PUG isn't my idea of a good time.

2-Healing H-Magmaw

2011-03-25T11:26:00.002-08:00

Our second kill of H-Magmaw occured this week, with us 'officially' 2 healing it. I say officially, becuase last week we 3 healed it for a few minutes, and then 2 healed it after our druid ate something nasty and fell over. Here's our WoL from the kill, it's definately easy to tell when his head was down.

Feeling Cataclysmic

I have to say that this is really the first fight where I felt like the healing was the way it was supposed to be in Cata. It felt like healing heroics in greens, being way undergeared, and just struggling - except, not.

The difference was, everything was working like it was supposed to. Cooldowns were used, mana was conserved and regened properly, and the raid flexed extremely well. One comment was made by our MT though that really made Monger and I /headshake. He asked if we shouldn't three heal it because everyone's HP was fluctuating so low - generally around 50-75%. Monger summed it up perfectly.

Welcome to Cataclsym healing.

That is exactly what it was supposed to be like. None of the hits that killed anyone on previous attemts would have been avoided if we'd run 3 healers or 5. You take a 150k shot, and odds are, you're smoked. Also, unless you're the tank, what the hell are you doing taking that shot? All that damage should either be avoided or mitigated. You don't need to be at 100% HP all the time.

How we did it

Our healing team is typically Monger and myself - Priest and Paladin. I suppose this is why I laugh at those who say they need a healer channel, especially in 10m (25 I can kind of see it). If I need to make a change with Monger it's just a /w away. If we're three healing, I have vent. It doesn't hurt that this isn't our first time healing together either.

For healing, I focused on the MT, while Monger healed the raid. If you look at our healing done by actor, you can see that about 50% of my healing was on Vonkaiser, and Monger was very evenly spread over the raid. Almost as if our classes were designed to work that way!

We used a Pally tank on Magmaw, with a DK picking up the skele adds. Parasites were kited by the hunter and frost mage, and nuked by everyone. Skeles were burned down as needed, and we timed an impale for the phase change and Bloodlust.

Bring me more

This is what I've really been looking forward to in Cata fights. This was one of the first fights I've finished near empty, and really had to dig out all the tricks on. I'm hoping for more of the same on Atramedes and Maloriak.

How we handle BoEs

2011-03-24T13:57:00.002-08:00

I hate farming. Not real farming, because even though that's hard work there's something to be said about the pride of looking out on a field of whatever that you've grown. No, I mean farming in WoW. I don't care if it's farming herbs, cloth, honor, or what - it sucks. I don't get any satisfaction out of it, and I'd personally rather spend my time doing just about anything else.

Right now my current passion is arguing with Monger about what we can 2 heal and what we can't. Right now we're 2 healing H-Magmaw, 3 healing H-Chim, and 4 healing H-Halfus. I want to knock Chim down to 2...

Back to the BoEs

Fortunately, or not depending on your PoV, I'm not the only person in my guild who hates farming. We all do. Sure, some of us do it from time to time for various reasons, but none of us get excited about it. Personally, I think my hatred stems from back in Vanilla when I was working on my Thunderfury. I've never been a big AH player, I had no DPS gear, and I was a tank through and through. Heck, I didn't even have any real high level alts. So I ground out the gold I needed slowly but surely. Man that sucked.

While gold is exponentially easier to come by today, I still don't want to grind for it. Fortunately, there are those with really deep pockets, that ensure that we don't have to.

It started in Ulduar

Back when our 10m first got going in Ulduar, we recognized that we were extremely lazy as a group when it came to farming, and that there were plenty of folks out there dying to spend their hard earned gold on the epics and recipies we collected. Enchants were in high demand, patterns for epics, orbs, etc. We recognized early on that selling say, a tailoring enchant for 10k and then spending 1k to have it crafted for the single person that needed it, was way more efficient and profitable.

ICC threw a bit of a wrench into those plans, but there were still BoEs to sell, and it kept us from having to really work. GDKP runs at the end really loaded our pockets, but that doesn't have anything to do with BoEs.

What we pay for

Right now our guild funds every aspect of our raiding. Flasks, food, gems, enchants, repairs - you name it, we pay for it. BoEs are sold in guild (after one 'oops' at the start - sorry Thraxx) for 5k. If nobody wants to pay the 5k and use the item, we sell it on the AH. Once the gbank hits 60 or 90k, we knock it back down to 30k and split the rest. I think we've had 2 or 3 splits already since the launch of Cata. You don't get any interest on the money, so there's no use in having it sit there.

This type of thing really does wonders for all of us. It allows about 1/3 of the guild to raid on a second server with some older raid partners that aren't at the same level we are. Some of us take the time to level alts or just play less, and a couple of the guys are playing Rifts on the side. The biggest thing for me is there's no pressure to do anything but raid well. I'm not scrambling to get flask materials, fishing or herbing for my buff food, etc.

How far will the money stretch?

We've already seen a decline in prices for some of the items we get, heck the healing belt is probably better served as a Maelstrom crystal. But even if you figure each raider is spending 200g a night in repairs (sure, maybe more), and 100g a night in buff food/flasks/pots (heck say 300g), that's 5k a night we're spending. I don't think it's near that much, but say it is. One good BoE drop will net 20-25k, and a bad one will get 5k. While we do have dry runs (like last night in BoT), we generally get 2 or 3 BoEs a week. That's a lot of funds we're pulling in.

Who knows. By the time Firelands rolls around we may be dipping into our own pockets again. It's certainly possible. Firelands will bring a whole new round of BoEs and other profitable goods though, and I'm sure that we'll start to see some decent GDKP runs cropping up in the future.

It sure beats farming.

I could have 6 Holy Specs

2011-03-23T08:55:00.003-08:00

OK - I don't know if I could really have six, but I could easily support three. One of the recurring questions to Blizzard is when will you allow tri-specs? I can see the appeal of the question, after all I think the dual spec system has been a fantastic addition to the game, but where would you draw the line? Also, when did the cost go to 10g, I really want to know that one.

As a Paladin we have three distinct builds that we can play. Holy, Prot, and Ret. While I leveled with a Holy and a Prot set, now that I'm down and dirty with raiding, I run with two different Holy builds - much like our Prot pally has two different tank specs, and I think our Retadin even picked up a build without Eye for an Eye just for tanking Chimaeron.

Who owns your second spec?

With a second spec runing you a measly 10g now, the question comes up as to who controls your second spec? Is it reasonable for your guild to expect that you maintain two different builds for handling different encounters? Should hybrids be expected to maintain an offset just because they can? Those are questions each guild and player will have to answer for themselves.

The availability of large and diverse builds kind of went away with the new talent system. Requiring 31 points in your primary tree really limits your flexibility, but I don't think this is a bad thing. The talents are already confusing if you don't know what you're looking for, and doubly so if you haven't done a lot of research. Do you put points in Blessed Life? Is 2/2 Eternal Glory needed?

My builds

For everyday healing, I run with a 31/5/5 build. 1/2 in Last Word, and 1/2 in Enlightened Judgements. Last Word is a talent that is just filler for most situations. A crit is nice, but odds are good that if your target is sub 35%, you're going to be rocking a lot of other stuff in their direction. Enlightened Judgements is unneccasry after 1 point - you'll have more than enough hit if you aren't gimping your Spirit. If you are gimping your Spirit, well that's another post.

For H-Chimaeron I run this build. This is more like a Shockadin setup, but without Blessed Life and Eternal Glory. In my logs I've found that over an average Chimaeron fight I'll get about 12 HP from BL and EG each. While that's 24 free HP, I need the DPS output in P3, and AM buys a few extra seconds for everyone else. This also lets me pump out some DPS on H-Halfus.

Those are my two 'standard' builds, but I'd certainly play with more. Builds that had cleanse and don't, some with Blessed Life, others with PoJ. I'd go crazy!

My point

I could fill up every available spec with some variant of a Holy build I'm sure. If we had unlimited specs, well then sure, I'd suddenly have 15 different combinations of PvE/PvP Ret/Holy/Prot builds, probably just because I could. There's certainly nothing wrong with just using a basic cookie cutter build either. I haven't found a fight yet that I 'had' to spec out of that for, it's just convenient.

Japan, Blizzard, and charitable giving

2011-03-23T01:53:00.000-08:00

Spend two minutes on a blue tracker or the WoW forums and you'll find a dozen posts where players cry out for Blizzard to donate to a disaster relief fund, Red Cross, or some other organization to assist with the recovery in Japan. The sense of outrage expressed by some of these posters is mind-boggling.

Blizzard/Activision is a profit making company. Their job, through the making and sellign of video games, is to generate revenue. Period. Asking them to use some of their profits to help out Japan is like asking GE to donate a portion of each lightbulb sale. Yeah, it's great, and I think it would generate a lot of relief, but that isn't what they do.

Companies like this operate with huge budgets, and amazing expences. Blizzard announced in a blue post that they were matching company donations - an amazing feat. They are certainly under no obligation (and as a stockholder I want them to make the right choices) to do so, and this comes right off their bottom line. I'm guessing there may be some kind of tax incentive to do so, but they don't OWE anyone.

I think what they did with the Panderan is great, and I"m sure that the profits for every pet and mount in the Blizzard store far outpace the development costs. I'm also certain that this is true for pretty much every other profitable company out there. If you aren't making more than you're spending, you'll be outta business pretty fast.

So do I think it'd be great to see a pet or mount split the proceeds with the Red Cross? You bet. Unfortunately there are millions of people in need, not just the ones we see on television. Would the world be a better place if all of these organizations had the money they needed? Possibly. But that's starting to drift a little to close to the wrong kind of government for me (where everyone has the same things). There's a reason why Animal Farm didn't work.

Calling wipes, brezes, and other sundry stuff

2011-03-22T12:55:00.002-08:00

I was catching up on my World of Matticus podcasts the other day, and decided to swipe one of their topics - when do you call a wipe or use a battle rez? When do you call for Bloodlust?

Calling a wipe

This is one of the more challenging calls to make as a raid leader. In a 10m raid losing a single healer generally means 50% of our heal team is gone, or the third healer that we've convinced ourselves we need is dead. If a tank dies, the odds of someone picking up his boss/adds is slim to none. If a DPS dies, we lost 15-20% of our DPS. That's pretty significant. We also only have one BRez until 4.1, and then it will be one of our tanks doing the rezzing - right into melee range (nom nom cleave).

While there are obviously going to be a lot of variables, here's a few basic guidelines.

Two or more people dead - in a 10m guild this is crippling in most cases. Some exceptions would be the final phase of a fight, particularly if it's a burn phase (i.e. sub 30%).

Death in the first 10% - generally the fight is better off being wiped if this happens. While we've made some really good attempts where we stray from this, they are rare.

Pre-phase 3 on H-Chim - We've tried all kinds of combos with this, and 99% of the time doing a rez before P3 just results in a whipe. Especially if it's one of the tanks (and it generally is).

How to respond to a wipe call

Now while I've been guilty myself of occasionally dragging out a fight for a few moments, here's a few basic guidelines to keep your raid leader from using your name as a test vehicle for some really colorful metaphors.

Stop healing - Not after the next one, not after you blow a CD to see if you can get a massive heal - immediately. Stop doing anything that will keep you alive.
Stand in the fire - This is one of the rare times you want to stand in the fire/Giant Big immediately. The faster you die, the faster another pull can occur.
Taunt the boss - Odds are they'll one shot you.
Turn your back - I remember putting my head in my desk last week when our DK tank announced that he lived for 45 seconds after a wipe was called and no heals on H-Chim. Where's that survival during a fued double strike? Hmmm?
Don't run - this just drags it out, and your odds of escaping are almost zero. Hell, I get irritated at our hunter who FDs in Nef's pit. A-hole. Of course I also mock him when he misses the elevator. Dumb goblin.
Die, get back, rebuff - look at the logs while everyone is getting food buffed or when you're flying back to the instance. Unless it's your assigned job, don't lie there waiting on a rez. Lazy.

How to call a BRez

This is something we really have to work on, as a BRez call needs to happen quickly, and without hesitation. Five people asking "BRez?" to the raid leader is probably going to get someone else killed. It's helpful to have a set of guidelines up before the pull. Some examples would be, first DPS in P3 of H-Chim, or don't rez pre 50%.

The last thing you want is questions around your BRez, or worse, someone walking away from their keyboard when a BRez goes out. Stay focused, and listen to the raid leader. Remember, it's better for them to be wrong than for you to be wrong.

Blizzard drops me a clue

2011-03-21T12:48:00.001-08:00

So a few weeks/months ago I rolled a little Retadin on a server with a few RL buddies and the guy who was the best man at my wedding. He quit playing WoW (the primary reason I rolled there), so I've just been tooling along doing Archeology and enjoying the fact that as Ret it doesn't take six days and seven nights to kill something. I did some PvP, did a few random heroics, etc, but then Blizzard sent me a message.

They want me to heal

Every single heroic I run, I get more Holy upgrades than Ret. It's not that I can't use upgrades to my ret gear, or that they've dropped and I just lost the roll. It's just a straight up increase in Holy drops. So this weekend I finally bit the bullet, dropped the 10g for dual spec (when did that happen?), and glyphed myself up. It wasn't a bad experiment per se, because while I'm very familiar with the Paladin mechanics now, there's certainly a huge difference between Pistonhondo and Adgamorix. Piston has enough spirit to almost gain mana while casting Holy Lights - Adgamorix is struggling to get heals off in time. I'm amazed that .1 sec of cast time feels like it's really that long, but I can definately feel the difference.

So here I am, on the ragged edge

So now I've got a pair of Paladins, one Holy/Ret and one Holy/Prot spread out on two different servers, both factions, and PvP and PvE. It's certainly interesting to see the difference when I play. I don't know if it's the PvP server or what, but for some reason I have a different feeling when I'm on Adgamorix. He doesn't have the gear, heroics are a challenge, but I actually want to do the heroics. I suppose this is because there's actually something worth getting from his heroics, insteaed of just running a heroic for the sake of running it.

Of course there are a few things that I hadn't planned on when I decided to make a Holy build. First, no mana pots, and no water(!) in my bags at all. Now while I don't normally use mana pots anyway, at least not on anything short of a heroic raid boss, at the lower gear levels it's always good to have a few of these kicking around. I'm also enchantless, have no helm or shoulder buffs, and don't even have a meta socket. I certainly don't have the gold to buy another Tsunami deck. Since I'm not raiding though, it's not really a big deal.

A sense of purpose

I think one of the reasons I don't enjoy running heroics on Piston is that there's nothing left for me to buy. Sure, I could buy vendor mats or more heirloom items, but there's no real incentive to run them. We don't do runs as a guild to increase our guild level, because really the perks aren't that great. While having the bigger cauldrons would be nice, our BoE sales more than cover repairs, consumables, and enchants. Because of this, there's no real pressure to do any kind of farming or collection of mats. We're a small guild, and with folks playing Rifts, Dragon Age 2, and just enjoying the spring time, there's not a lot of folks on after a raid ends.

Of course this doesn't really matter, because it's not like I'm socially active on Medivh, and with RealID I can still chat it up with the <Team Intensity> folks. So that's not a big difference between the servers/play. I'm obviously not bored with the game, or bored with healing. My UI is identical, keybinds, etc. Who knows why I 'feel' different on the other toon? The only thing that I can figure is that I'm not in full 359 gear, and have something to work towards. Though I'm still not doing dailies (hello tabards!), and I'll be damned if I"m going to level fishing or cooking on this toon (unless I can do it with the harvest fest).

One thing that this little excercise has told me for sure though is that a DPS class just isn't for me. My hunter sits at 58 or 60, my rogue is still on Malygos (I think I took him to Northrend when the servers were down one day), and hell my Warlock (that I wanted to play as my main in Cata) is still about 5 bars away from 85. I suppose it's just time to embrass the fact that I am a healer, and that Blizzard wants me to play that. Maybe I'll roll a priest up and see what the fuss is about there. I've heard Disc is pretty good for leveling.

H-Halfus down - Not the way I wanted it

2011-03-14T09:22:00.003-08:00

One of the big challenges around leading a raid is coming up with a strategy that works, and hopefully one that is repeatable. I don't like strategies that depend on luck or some sort of gimmick solution, though what constitutes a gimmick can certainly be argued. For example, is using a Retadin to 'tank' Chimaeron a gimmick - or using the mechanics of the fight to your advantage? What about chaining HoPs and Divine Protections on your tanks for Halfus? Both strategies are repeatable, though not by every group.

Not what we wanted

Monger and I were really torn on the Halfus strategy. First and foremost, we want the boss down. There's no bonus loot for making the fight extra difficult, or doing it your own way. There's just normal mode and heroic. One thing that we shoot for though, is to not follow a set 'strategy'. We've noticed time and time again that the strategy that works for one guild may not be the best method for us. We've defeated a lot of bosses using non-traditional methods (single tanking, low healers, etc).

Our goal for Halfus was to do a 2 healer, 2 tank, 6 DPS strat. The theory here was that with the extra DPS we would be out of the danger zone faster, meaning less healing needed in the long haul. We didn't get to spend a lot of attempts trying this (due to scheduling), and wound up using the safer (and more boring) 4 healer method instead. While I will admit that there were still plenty of pucker moments, the 4 healer strategy is certainly more stable. On the downside, we did hit the enrage timer once - but we're pretty sure that's because we lost a DPS on the first pulse in P2. Having 2 Lightwells was pretty awesome though, since you can click on them even during the knockdowns.

I will probably go with a modified Shockadin spec, similar to what I am using for Chimaeron, for our next Halfus kill. This will let me dish out some DPS without punching holes in my mana bar, once we get to P2. This was bringing back memories of some old raids where you'd call for every DoT you could get - even Holy SW:P.

What's next

Now we move on to Atramedes and Maloriak. We spent a good bit of time on Cho'gall, and it doesn't seem that bad. I suspect we'll probably get H-Cho'gall before we get the Double Dragons. We'll see.

Testing out a new healer

2011-03-11T11:56:00.001-09:00

Last week we made a switch to our healing team, and fired our Spriest from healing duties. Our Boomkin stepped up and strapped on the tree (that sounds oddly phallic), and performed admirably. Our introduction to healing was a little rough on her though - so let me explain.

Elue has been part of our group (off and on) since Vanilla (I think, I drank a lot back then). She didn't really start raiding with us hard core until Ulduar I think (maybe Naxx), but since she's sleeping with our Ret pally, she gets to tag along. Don't get me wrong though, she's not a "Oh, you're so and so's wife, here's a raid spot", Elue pulls her weight and then some, and is always good for a laugh. She was a boomkin back before boomkins existed, and she is actually the only person I know who might actually have boomkin feet in those shoes she wears. I've never looked, but she's got some big feet.

Anyway

Anne's healing experience before last Sunday was limited to a couple of pulls in Kara. Back when we were first working on the place, we single tanked it from the start. This made pulling the ushers a challenge, so she'd heal while Wombcrusher would pop his wings and run in screaming - hoping to hold agro long enough to get killed and let the DPS burn one of them down. <3 to you Toby.

Given this, you can imagine the excitement and joy that Elue felt when she was told that we needed her to step up and heal. She got a few tips from our resident man of 810348103 alts, found a spec, and eased into the healing scene.

By eased in, I mean we went straight to H-Chim. WELCOME TO THE PARTY RICHTER. We didn't kill H-Chim, but we got further than we had in the past. Some changes need to be made still, but she handeld well. At least on Vent. From what I hear, she was cussing up a storm at the house. We're definately a NC-17 raid group. After a few hours of listening to our heads go squish there, we decided to knock Nef over and call it a night. Having seen the fight many times, but having never healed it, managed to keep her whole platform alive and we one shot Nef. Needless to say, I was impressed.

The evaluation

The real evaluation of a new healer takes time. While you can always run heroics with someone, or even just bring them into a raid, you really need to put them to the fire to see how they respond. Zerging through content you over gear certainly isn't a good test, and neither is taking them to a farm kill. Of course by the same token, trying to evaluate a healer when you're first learning a new boss is also tough - so what do you do?

Try something different

Taking someone out of their comfort zone and tossing them into a new environment is a good way to see how they'll react to changing situations. While you can't really gauge someone's ability to raid heal by sticking them in an arena match, you can get a feel for how they react uder pressure or to a fluid situation. Another option is to give them a healing assignment that they may not be used to - say raid healing instead of tank healing. While this may not give you an idea of their capabilities for their normal role, it again lets you see how they react to something new.

Try it short handed

This is another way to artificially incease difficulty. Strat says you must three heal? Try it with two. Of course your whole group/raid has to be on board with this, becuase you might wipe more than a few times.

Check the logs

This is the more conventional way to check out how a new healer is performing. Did their assigned targets die? Did they use CDs effectively and at the right time? For example, blowing tranquility on H-Chim during a non fued phase is pretty dumb (that thump you heard was me running over Elue). Are they running out of mana too quickly? Barely outhealing the DK tank? All these things are worth looking at.

Know your candidate

Right here where I ran over Elue, I don't mention that she's a brand new healer (not just for us, but in general), so holding her to the same standards I would say - Monger - is really urealistic. People make mistakes, it's how you recover from them that really matters. Are you evaluating someone who claims to be a top healer? They better be wired tight.

At the end of the day, remember the most important thing is does the player mesh with your group. I'd rather have someone who's not in the top percentage if I can get along with them, instead of someone who doesn't think Old Greg is funny.

A look under the hood of Team Intensity

2011-03-04T10:34:00.002-09:00

T11 buffed - just in time for T12

2011-03-01T13:16:00.002-09:00

Well kiss my grits. Not one day after defending the T11 4pc as being at least decent (it's still not the worst set bonus I've seen), Blizzard goes and updates the patch notes to show a change in the T11 4pc.

Now grants 540 Spirit for 6 sec after casting Holy Shock.

Now that's a buff that I'm sure even Chase could get behind. If you manage to cast HS on every CD (which you should be anyway), that is a flat 540 buff to your spirit for the entire fight. Doing some quick napkin math, this works out to about 333.33 (repeating of course) mana returned per cast.

So let's see here...1873 mana per cast of Holy Shock, with 333 returned, means you're getting about 20% of the mana back on your cast. Assuming you're casting it on CD, you'll get 5 of these casts off every 30 seconds, giving you about 1665 mana back.

Stop the presses!

Oh my goodness, it looks like the mana returned from this is actually LESS than the mana returned before. The biggest difference (and I will admit, it is big enough to be the deal breaker here) is that we WANT to be casting HS every CD. Holy Radience isn't something we necessarially want to be casting unless we need to. So overall, we might see a slightly higher mana return from this change than we did with having our buff be attached to HR. I know for example that I cast a lot more HS than I do HR, so we'll see.

In the end though, it's going to be pretty much of a wash. It'll be enough of a change to help tide you over until you start picking up T12 (I assume we'll see T12 with this content patch), and I'll definately pick up a set of Cho'gall's shoulders now, just so I have one more piece to mess with.

The most common lie in a guild app

2011-03-01T11:09:00.002-09:00

Over the years I've spent a lot of time dealing with guild applications. Designing them, reading them, critiqueing them, filling them out, etc. I've written a couple posts on how to properly apply for a raiding guild, and I still poke my head into recruitment forums just to see what other folks are producing.

Most guild application are fairly straight forward affairs, though some are certainly more developed than others. Like a job application, this is a guild's opportunity to get to know you before they take the time to actually speak with you. Because of this, it's generally your first (and often only) chance to tell them what they want to hear about you.

Typical questions are about your spec, role, playtimes (or playstyle), former raid experience, former guilds (and why you left) etc. They want to make sure they aren't getting a habitual guild hopper, or someone who just opened WoW for the first time ever. These questions are generally fair and easy enough to answer (if you put 30 sec worth of effort into it), but then we come to the big one.

The big lie

The one question that sets you up for failure faster than anything else, at least if you're being expected to tell the truth on everything.

Are you willing to sit out for another raid member?

Uh - what is no? Look, you're recruiting for my role here. Your board specifically says you have a high need for a Holy Paladin, hence my application. So why would I sit out for someone else? Maybe if it's an extreme case where we really need that one extra DPS, but then I want to know why you're not sitting that guy who you have 2 or 3 of his class in.

In all honesty though, I play to raid. I also think it's pretty poor form to expect someone to be on and available, but not actually raid. Requireing you to be on vent or (worse) sitting outside the instance logged in - on the CHANCE you'll be called in. Bugger that. I can make an exception if you're in a guild that is racing for world (maybe, and I mean MAYBE server) firsts. In guilds like Paragon and Vodka you do whatever it takes for those kills. Then you resume normal play again, and ratchet down.

Unfortunately, this attitude doesn't seem to be the popular one, because larger guilds need a bench to operate. You want your bench players to have some idea of the fights, and it doesn't hurt them to get gear. My only response to that is...

I don't care - I want a white one

Honestly, I could care less about Jimmy the 3rd Pally getting in to heal or what not. I don't play the game for Jimmy, I play for me. If I make the scheduling requirements to raid, I expect to be in there - every single raid.

There's probably at least one

I'm sure that of my few readers (and the thousands of raiders) at least one or two are honestly ok with sitting out for the good of the raid. Personally, I want to throw up and tell the applicant to grow a pair every time I read something like "I'm completely ok with sitting, because it's for the good of the raid that everyone gets a chance to experience the content and get some gear". /vomit

In which I defend the T11

2011-02-28T11:59:00.002-09:00

Stats. The number one thing we look for on our gear. Is it an upgrade in these key areas? Unfortunately, we don't have a secondary stat that screams "pick me!", since we have effective caps on everything.

Got enough mana? Stop picking up spirit. Conviction up 100%? Your crit is probably fine. You can't reach the GCD haste cap at the moment (3489 or 27%), so don't stack beyond what you're comfortable with. Mastery is still kind of a big question mark, and most of us reforge it to something else.

Set Bonuses

Generally the saving grace of Tier gear, and the reason we all want those tokens, is the set bonuses. Sometimes they're amazing, other times they're lackluster. Either way, they are what we have to work with, so we better get used to them.

I disagree with Chase

This won't be the first time I've completely disagreed with WoW Insider's Paladin blogger (Holy anyway), and I'm sure it won't be the last. Here's my executive summary of why he doesn't like T11.

No Haste - none of the pieces have any haste at all, putting you 700 haste behind the non set pieces. Haste is great for throughput, and for extra HR ticks.
5% crit to Holy Light - Since it's only about 10% of his total healing (20% for me on Nef, but that's a specific fight), adding 5% crit to that spell isn't a huge bump. I think it's the same bonus for every class though.
1620 Spirit whenever Holy Radience is up - this comes out to about 2000 mana returned, or about 20% of the spell cost.

Now these points are solid, don't get me wrong. I just disagree (and I'll take the math with me) that the pieces, haste, and set bonuses are really that bad.

Haste and Holy Radience - how much do you need?

Right now, any time we cast Holy Radience (as Holy) we're automatically getting 12 ticks instead of 10 - assuming we're fully raid buffed, spec'd properly, have Judgements up, etc. Adding 773 Haste will gain us one additional tick. The next break point is 1859, then 2954. That's a lot of haste.

Now I hate trying to do the Haste math, but the short version is 100% haste will cut your cast time in 1/2. So if you had a 3 sec cast, you'd be at 1.5 sec if you had 100% haste. So 6% haste will give you .15 sec off your 2.5 sec cast, 14% will give you .35, and you'd need 20% haste (2562) haste to cut .5 sec off your 2.5 sec cast.

So while haste is great, you have to be careful. I lose about 393 haste (counting socket bonuses) when I switch from my non-set gear to my 4/5 T11 (I have the Chim shoulders). I also pick up 70 int (sockets), and 5 spirit. Now, that 393 haste rating comes out to about 3% haste, or a whopping .075 sec off my Holy Light/Divine Light casts. This would have 'saved' me about 8.85 sec of casting on my last Nef fight (DL+HL casts), and for argument's sake I'll assume it pushed me over the threashold for the next HR tick.

Since I had 10 HR casts in that fight, that would have been about an extra 1500 healing done (assuming every tick was a crit and in very close range), which is 15,000 healing over the course of the fight to one person - about what I get from a Holy Light crit. With the spirit buff, I would have regained about 20k mana, or about 20% of my total bar - about what we get from Divine Plea.

Conclusion

At the end of the day I don't disagree that our tier pieces aren't perfectly itemized, but I do disagree that the T11 is really that horrible. Unless you're really rocking the haste for that next tick of HR, or your raid is wiping because you're a tenth of a second off on a heal, I wouldn't spend a lot of time stressing over which gear setup is better. Personally as long as my main heals are sub 2 second casts, I feel like I'm doing alright. I'll take any free mana I can get, especially if it means I don't have to hit Divine Plea. I would even go so far as to say it's worth taking a tier token from someone else if you can get that 4th piece (if you're using HR regularly).

I don't believe in RNG

2011-02-21T11:46:00.002-09:00

This last week we started working on H-Halfus and H-Chimaeron (10s), which opened up a whole new world of hurt on the raid, and ultimately resulted in a bunch of repair bills and some good learning moments. I'm still not convinced that we've got our strategies worked out (since we never actually killed them), but the progress was measurable.

Also measurable was my Blood Pressure increase every time I heard this phrase. "It was just bad RNG".

Come again?

I have a real tough time swallowing that excuse, execpt in a very few circumstances. For DPS it can be an issue, say with Ret HP generation or maybe a mage's crit streaks - but for tanking and healing, it's generally unacceptable.

Shouldering responsibility

Here's a specific instance where it wasn't "Bad RNG", but a case of folks not doing their jobs properly. While it may be tough to narrow it down to the start of a chain of events, it's pretty evident when you start examining the situation.

During one of our many wipes on Nef, our Nef tank in P3 died to a shadowflame breath. Now while this was the killing blow, a look at the death log shows him going for six seconds (or more) without recieving a single heal. Not one. Normally I'd say that's impossible, but it was right there in black and white.

Now since I am generally responsible for healing the tank, this death falls on my shoulders. Since he didn't even get a BoL heal, I was obviously doing something else for that time (sleeping?), instead of keeping him healed up. Now, maybe he didn't have my BoL on him yet (my fault), or maybe I was using DP without calling for backup heals or using a CD to mitigate it (again my fault). Who knows what was really going on during that time. Maybe I was busy healing up the raid because we got a bad crackle, or I was OOM because of a bad P2.

It really doesn't matter. My job is to keep the tank alive first, raid second. Any deviation from this is on my shoulders. The same goes for keeping your platform alive in P2. If a Shadow Nova gets off due to a missed kick, that's not bad RNG - that's your kicker not having enough hit. Something that can be fixed.

RNG Gibs

This is another area where I have a hard time with RNG being blamed. Yes, it is entirely possible that you eat some back to back attacks that gib you down. Blizzard's design though is that you won't be folded in a GCD (or maybe 2). Even if you are though, maybe there are some cool-downs or abilities that aren't getting used. Basically if you die, and have a single CD that isn't used - that isn't RNG, it's you (or your team). Here's an example.

Back when I was in High School I played baseball (and every other sport, but this story is about baseball). In our last year of being in the B-11 division (we were a small school in a farming community) we made it to the state championships. This was the big time for us, and we loaded up to seek fame and fortune.

The tourney was a multiple day affair, with several games each day, and was single elimination for the first two rounds (lose once and go home). Once you'd won two games it went to double elimination, but you had to get there first. Our coach, in his infinite wisdom, left our star pitcher on the bench - with the mentality that we'd want him for game 3 to secure a spot in the winner's bracket. Unfortunately we lost game 2 with our 2nd baseman, 1st baseman, hell anyone who had ever pitched (ever) taking a turn on the mound. Our ace went home having never thrown a single pitch.

This holds true for your CDs

I am terrible at this. I hold onto LoH like it's gold, and that I'll never get to use it again. For example on H-Chim I save it for when we go into P3. I can usually use it to push our tank over 10k, so he can take 2 killing blows. Unfortunately we're losing tanks during the fued phase, where a LoH may have allowed us to continue. In this case, that LoH is my star heal that never gets off the bench. No point in saving it for P3, if we can't get there.

Conclusion

I think it's too easy to blame bad luck, or some other metric when we fail. It's difficult to say "this was my fault" when it's questionable to begin with. It takes in-depth analysis and a lot of guts to admit that you could have done better. It's certainly easier to blame someone else for what happened.

So go away RNG - get out of my raid. You might exist for loot tables, but I often doubt that as well. Seeing as our hunter has 5 pairs of T-11 shoulders, I think you're just broken.

A plug for Mr Robot

2011-02-17T13:48:00.003-09:00

So listening to the Matticast podcast this morning, I heard about an optimizer tool that would help with your reforging and stat selections. While there are tools like Rawr to help figure your best DPS, and Reforger to help you in game, I was looking for something that was a little bit of both, but that was easy to use.

Enter Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot (MR) is a site that will allow you to upload your current character from the armor, make optimization choices based on a couple of preset stat weights (i.e. healer longevity vs. throughput), allow you to edit stat weights, and allow you to find BIS gear for each slot. Pretty handy. You can even change your professions so you can evaluate the difference between being a JC/BS and an ENG/ALCH.

What really sold me though was that the site was extremely easy to use. A few clicks and I could see what items I should be reforging, some enchants I could change, and get a quick comparison of what BiS items I'm missing. I can even look at my final stats after optimizing, though there's no real way to tell what kind of throughput or longevity you'd get.

All in all it's a pretty nice tool, and I give it the old two thumbs up for ease of use and desired information. Check it out at http://askmrrobot.com

Dungeon Finder Changes

2011-02-17T10:36:00.002-09:00

So Blizzard has made a couple of changes to the LFD system recently, but it seems they're still not happy with the way players are interacting in random dungeons. Recently it was announced that a few changes were coming down the pipe to hopefully curtail some of the more bothersome behaviors.

Here are the highlights.

If you que with a tank or healer, and that tank/healer drops soon after entering the dungeon, the playsers queing with the tank/healer are kicked as well.

Holy *#&@ is this great. First, it should kill the WTS/WTB instant que nosense that we're seeing now. While it's fine and dandy that you're next in line for a tank if someone pulls this on you, it's still gaming the system and shouldn't be allowed. I'm looking forward to this change.

Players outside the instance for more than 3 minutes are now immediately able to be kicked.

Just another quality of life issue resolved. I'm sure someone will do the 2:45 jump in/out, but I'm guessing there will be another underlying mechanic to help negate this.

Groups queing together will be watched more closely. Groups of 3 will require a 4th vote to kick someone, groups of 4 will incur more severe penalties for kicking someone.

I don't know how this will really work, but it's a good thought to prevent a group queing with a non-tank as a tank, kicking the 5th player, and then requeing to get a new tank.

Overall I think these changes will help with some good quality of life changes. There may be some issues where legitimate players/groups get stuck with a poor tank/DPS, but you can see what they're trying to fix. We should see a little less of the annoying behaviors, though there will still be general idiocy in your standard 5 stranger PUG. These changes don't do anything to help out in that regard, they just try and fix the things that are actually manageable at this stage.

Personally, I'm more excited about the change to Guild Rep for killing raid bosses. The fewer randoms I have to do the better.