Unpack Your Adjectives

Eight days...

2009-12-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

So... The guild has been a little weird lately. We went 2-3 weeks without doing more than the daily heroic as a guild because of poor attendance. Raid night would come and we'd have 3-7 people on so we'd bag it. Two weeks ago, we decided to switch raid night to Thursdays because there were fewer conflicts. I also made the decision to fill out with PuGs once if we had at least 6 people on.

So the first Thursday of the new schedule, we had 8 people show up for Naxx. It was a couple of alts and some people who hadn't been out in a while. So at 8:30, I grabbed the first two people who responded to:

"LF2M DPS Naxx 10. Must need gear."

Funny how it only took me 2 minutes to fill the slots. It turns out that the people we got knew what they were doing and didn't _really_ need gear. We started plowing through the instance. Along the way, our idiot tank and our even dumber death knight showed up... Oh. Sorry. We're full. Raid time is at 8 and I even gave you 30 minutes on top of that... But I digress...

We had some people doing new things. We had some alts. Our only mage (who gets played) was on his priest and healing. We had a healer DPSing. A DPS/PvP death knight who has a decent tanking set was doing the off tanking. We had a hunter who had never seen any fights other than Sapphiron and KT... And the two PuGs.

But we rolled the spider wing. So we decided to do the construct wing. And we wiped on Patchwerk but that was two failures of communication. After that, we stomped him. And we had some people leave poison clouds in the middle of the room on Grobbulus but we got through it. Our first timer hunter (my brother... If that matters) was the best candidate for kiting on Gluth and he didn't really get what had to be done the first try. But he clearly "got" it on the second attempt. Mind you, he was one of the first to bite it on Thaddeus.

We lost a DPS after Thaddeus and it was hard to avoid picking up the idiot tank... And we couldn't stop because I'd warned them that if we picked up any PuGs, we would be clearing more than just two wings and that we would go until we started making mistakes. So... We pressed on to the Plague Wing. Rolled Noth (why is he even a boss? There's no danger of screwing that one up... ever. I've even considered doing it with one tank). We only had one death on Heigan (a new guild record) and that was the first time hunter. Then we lost our main healer. So we had a priest and a paladin go to their healing specs to cover for her. But the idiot tank wanted us to fill out with his idiot friend dk. But people were getting twitchy so we decided to run the gauntlet to Loatheb without him. Unfortunately, the mage turned priest dropped a heal about half way through and died in a spot where we couldn't rez him. So we had to run back. People died... We ran back in... The dk showed up... Blech. But we got through the gauntlet and dropped Loatheb.

People were getting punchy... I already had them about 45 minutes later than they like to raid. So we decided to pick it up on Monday.

Over the weekend, the dumb as... Well... I can't think of anything that would be a fair comparison... The idiot dk had his account hacked. Had his gear vendored and large chunks of the guild bank were cleaned out. When I heard we'd been hacked, I could have guessed who got hacked in two... If pressed, I would have gotten it in one. Fortunately, there wasn't anything that we couldn't replace easily in the guild bank and now he didn't have the gear to raid for a while. I decided to call it a win.

On Monday, one of the two warriors was available so we grabbed them and 9 guildies. We had some confusion on Raz. The idiot warrior tank's Understudy just "disappeared". Funny... I've done that fight 20 times and that's never happened to _me_. And he's on at least his 5th time tanking and he _still_ hasn't figured out that he has to dismiss the understudy. He just waits for the channel to end and picks it up again... Which means that he can only be the second tank... But I digress.... Again...

We wiped on Four horsemen because I forgot to mention the void zones in the back to our druid healer and she stood in one. She got it the second time though. We had a flawless attempt on Sapphiron. One shot. Boom. KT was a little more... Exciting.

And then the next day, we had 10 on so we did Vault. It was the first time some of them had ever downed Koralon. And we did it with a tank with just 30k health. No problems. So on Thursday, we decided to try our hands at Ulduar. And we rolled Flame Leviathan... And XT... And Razorscale. So in eight days, we went from taking 3 weeks to clear the entry level raid in WotLK to clearing it in one lockout period and starting on the next one. The next week, we got those three and Kologarn and Ignis... The Ignis fight being very interesting... Both tanks died at less than 1%. We were riding high.

But then the next week, we only had 8 people on and could only do Flame Leviathan. And then people stopped showing up altogether. That was at about the time when 3.2 came out and so now we could get Tier 8 and 9 gear by running heroics. So I ran the daily heroic at least once per day on my druid and if anyone in the guild wanted to go, I had a backup tank. And that was OK. At least people were getting gear. Onyxia came out about a few weeks later so I PuGged that for a while... And now the guild has done that about 3 times on 10 man.

I, on the other hand, decided to take a shot at TotC on the druid while the guild stagnated. I watched videos of all of the fights. I read the strats... And I got myself into a run as a tank in a PuG... And we cleared it. So the next week, I did it on 10 and 25. Last week I actually found myself in a Trial of the Grand Crusader run... That's.. Wow. A lot of fun. Stressful, but fun. We only cleared the first 4 bosses but I learned a lot more about the encounters. And I started gearing my mage. Got lucky in a 25 man Vault run and got two pieces. I parlayed that gear into an Ony 25 run... And I won an iLevel 245 caster dagger. And then I did an Ony 10 and got the helm... One that is identical to the one I wore for about a year on my Alliance mage back in the day... And now my horde mage has cleared TotC 25 as well.

And now that I've seen TotC several times, I figured we could run the guild through it. It seems perfect for us: No trash. Only five fights to learn and you're done in under two hours... But on raid night, we only had one tank. We tried the first fight with an offspec dk tanking... It didn't work out. So we ran Ony again. And then our other two tanks logged on. It was bed time for everyone else but now they were suddenly gung ho to run TotC. Too late... We were done for the night. Raid time is raid time.

I believe that patch 3.3 is coming on Tuesday and hopefully with the changes to the emblems, the entire guild will be able to get gear by running chain heroics... Maybe then we can do the current content. As for me, I have every intention of PuGging Icecrown Citadel as soon as it comes out. I appear to have the gear for it.

Time to move the laundry...

It's that time again...

2009-09-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

It seems like the only time I update this blog is while I'm doing laundry. I started a few posts but never really thought they were going anywhere so I bagged it.

And there is news to report... The guild _finally_ cleared Naxxramas. I know, right!!! It took us a total of 6 nights across 3 raid lockout periods, but we got it done. The first two nights were pretty much clearing everything but four horsemen. We had the people to do 4 horsemen on the second night but three pulls from the boss(es) we had three people disconnect and they never came back. So it sat for another night. The next time in, we took down the 4 horsemen in one shot. Everyone did their jobs flawlessly.

So we moved on to Sapphiron... And wiped a good solid 4 times. So we called it... And came back another night... And we took him out in one shot. This was due in large part to a change in tactics... Namely, instead of letting our idiot warrior tank it, I tanked it on my dr00d. With 45k health (it's almost up to 50k with full raid buffs these days), it made things go a lot smoother. So we moved on to KT... And wiped a few times.

So we came back on a Monday and we had the "right" people and... Another one shot.

You'd think I'd be happy... And I am... Sort of. But the next night, we tried for OS 10 with one drake up... And we barely even got off the ground. We have people standing in void zones and getting tail swiped and hit by flame waves. After 3 or 4 attempts, I tried healing it... But our idiot warrior tank turned the boss the wrong way and basically the entire raid got tail swiped and stunned and killed by a flame wave. Ironically, when we finally threw in the towel because it was "too hard", he turned the boss the "right" way. I could scream.

And now that Naxx is clear, people are talking about moving on to Ulduar and they're getting pissy when I say "we're not ready". I say this because, we're not. No amount of gear is going to help if people do dumb things. On the Sapphiron wipes, the idiot warrior tank was told "turn the boss slightly to the right". He turned it about 100 degrees... At least he got "right" correct. So I showed him the line I wanted it tanked on... Same thing. We had one healer die three times on the successful Sapphiron kill - every time by not being close enough to an ice block. On KT, we have one paladin who Failbot saw as failing at Void Zones 6 times - 5 on the night of wipes and 1 on the successful kill. Just last night, we pulled 4 packs of mobs that we generally try to leave up. Someone (OK.. A death knight... One dk did it three times and another got the last group) wandered a little to close or backed into them. And, of course, the warrior tank couldn't figure out how to release his understudy on Rasuvious so we wiped on that a good solid 4-5 times before we got lucky and got him to 4% before he killed the other understudy and we were able to kite him around long enough to down him. Did I mention that the other tank has done this 3 or more times already. He spent most of his time not tanking staring at a wall while my bone shield was down. At one point, I took three rotations in a row. But I digress...

I could go on and on with specific examples of how we're not ready. Fortunately, less radical voices in the guild have been saying similar things. We're back to storming through Naxx. I'm back to cringing when they do something incomprehensible. I'm weaning them off the bear because... He just makes things too easy. It will force them to slow down and figure stuff out. I've started telling them that certain mobs have whirlwind abilities (I should mention that we can usually only field one or two ranged DPS out of 10 because the others are all rogues, warriors, dks or ret paladins) and suggesting that they try to interrupt the whirlwinds so they don't all get instagibbed. In Heroic TotC, I've been insisting that the warrior tank pick up ALL of the adds and not just the melee ones (that actually didn't go over well... He informed the party that he was the tank so we were going to do it _his_ way. I let him. It failed miserably. But we got it after about 6 tries. And then on the Black Knight, you're supposed to kite to _avoid_ the desecrations... Not kite for the sake of kiting and CERTAINLY not directly INTO them). I've been pointing out which mobs can be skipped and screaming into the ether when they pull them. I've been running failbot so they can see why they're dying. I've been actually paying attention to Recount and checking that against their specs. We have one death knight who put 66 points into the unholy tree but without a specific plan. He put 2/5 into important things, but 5/5 into something that is clearly a tanking talent. And when you compare that to the battle logs, he put a point into Scourge strike but only used it 48 times in two wings of Naxx... One third of his damage comes from melee and another 25% comes from Death and Decay (which led to a few early deaths when he popped it first... Still doesn't learn though... "causes a large amount of threat"... /sigh). Sometimes I think I may have to try to teach him a dps rotation of some kind... But other times I say "what's the point? He won't learn". I mean... The guy has 4 pieces of tanking gear, two rogue pieces and a spell power enchant on his melee DPS set.

But it's going to be a long road and I don't know that I'm patient enough to make them into better players. We've never been a guild who told people how to play... But if people want to progress, maybe I'll get some traction to let me set up a "raiding" spec for some of them. Take them to a target dummy and show them how their way isn't working... Like in Days of Thunder. Then again, I may just stop running with them and just PuG everything. It's actually a lot less stressful for me.

August Laundry Day Update

2009-08-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

Whoa... Been a while... What's happened since I posted last? Let me think:

I finished leveling my shaman. Got a dual spec. Went resto. Let me tell you... If you're a loot whore, roll a caster shaman. I did a couple of heroics and got enough gear to heal Naxx 10. Got enough gear doing that to heal Naxx 25 and Vault 25 the next week. In two runs through Naxx 25, I came away with 4/5 tier 7.5 and the tier 8.5 gloves... And then I got bored with him. I'll do vault every now and then but I pretty much shelved him.

I picked up my first character: an Alliance mage called Gifteye. Man... I've missed playing him. I did a LOT of Wintergrasp and pretty much leveled from 76 to 80 doing Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, Argent Tournament and Sons of Hodir daily quests. He'll be an exalted champion with all 5 factions in 8 more days, exalted with SoH and Ebon Blade tomorrow and Argent Crusade probably later in the week. He's starting to get to a point where he can two shot most level 80 mobs... But he's on a low pop server that uses the Trade channel to form groups... Which means I have to lurk in cities and do nothing to _maybe_ find a group for something. Not my style... So I don't do instances. I'm considering moving him to a higher population server... Maybe even my Horde server now that we can have toons of opposite factions on the same PvP server.

I've finished Naxx 25 on hiaHoTah... Still wearing a couple of blue pieces in my healing set. The changes to emblems from heroics should remedy that. I'm a couple of days of "doing a few heroics" away from a tier helm token.

Summer came and has pretty much stopped all guild activities. We're lucky if we can get 4 people for a heroic and PuG a fifth. The last two days, our _other_ druid tank and I did a heroic with three PuGs. It's nice to run with DPS that doesn't stand in fires but still... I'd rather run with our crew. Even the new 5 man instance isn't really bringing people back... And it drops epics like crazy - even on regular mode.

The last two times we've raided, we did OS-10 with 8 and we tried Vault 10. We got the Less is More achievement but... Oy. We had two death knights. One of them was _barely_ pulling 1k dps and each death knight got hit by the lava waves at least 14 times. If we go back in there, I'm setting failbot to announce to the guild. Maybe that will shame them into... Well... Being at least half awake. On the Vault run, we had to PuG two DPS and we wiped on Emalon for about an hour and a half. While I respect their grim determination... It was still frustrating. We were right on the edge with DPS so we couldn't bring in another healer but the healing couldn't quite keep up with the death knights getting hit by lightning nova. One slip would cause a wipe.

5 people moved at the end of June. Two of them still don't have internet access yet. One should get access Monday.

2 people have had children... In the last two weeks. This includes our second best healer. This means that I'll end up healing if we ever start raiding again... And our tanks will be someone who means well but... He plays a warrior... And we know how I feel about warriors... And the other can't see ground effects... Like fire. On the plus side, we'll be able to extend raid lockouts... Which means we may actually finish Naxx 10 now.

The 3 toons I play on the horde side now have healing specs and decent healing sets and I spend most of my time healing.

Say what you want... But I stand by my assertion that the horde are much bigger douchebags than the Alliance. I have been ganked (or at least had people try it... I'm pretty slippery) more times in the last week on my mage than happened on my horde druid, paladin and death knight from 70 to 80. There's one huntard who either camps the Sons of Hodir base or keeps the exact same hours I do. Total pussy about it to. Won't attack me if I target him first. Will only shoot me in the back... When I've engaged a mob... DESPITE the fact that I've never ONCE gotten him below half health. And that time I rezzed and mounted... He flew away.

But things are looking up. Summer is ending. My brother is making noise about starting up again. We're gettiong one of our leading voices back. He's excited to have new druid feral forms. The healer's new baby is "ez mode" compared to the twins he had two years ago. If that continues he might be back raiding in another 2-3 months. I'm hoping Patch 3.2 will be very good for us.

The Bear is Back!!!

2009-04-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about my life is that I have so much vacation time stored that if I don't take, on average, a half day a week off, I'll go over the limit of vacation days that you can accrue. So, I decided that rather than taking "on average" half a day off a week, I'd take exactly half a day off per week. I still have enough time of that if I decide I want to spend a month or two in Europe, I can but it also means that when it's 75 degrees outside and the first truly spectacular afternoon of the year, I'm sitting in the sun instead of sitting at work wishing I was outside.

Now mind you, the day star is so bright that I can really only make out black writing on a white background - meaning that I can't play WoW, but that's a cross I'm willing to bear.... So to speak...

But speaking of speaking about bears... I have REALLY enjoyed having Hiahotah as a bear again. I enjoy Wintergrasp more. I find the abilities far less constricting than death knight tanking. I've missed the feeling of nigh-invincibilty I used to have back in BC. But it's also nice to know that I have a powerhouse healer at the ready with just the click of a few buttons... And I won't have to reset all of my toolbars... That's the big perk for me.

I've also been enjoying being able to take my druid out in public without worrying I'll be ganked by two lowbie rogues working together. I had a plan a few months ago to heal for tanking loot and, for the most part, that plan has worked out. I've gotten any number of instance drops that fell to me because I was the only one who could equip them. I also picked up a TON of emblems of heroism to augment my tanking set.

I've also been enjoying questing in cat form. That's something I've missed. And Wintergrasp is fun again. I can actually participate a little more actively than I could just standing and healing "whoever was close by". The other day, I solo'd a ret paladin when he caught me at 75% health. It felt good (incidentally, they're harder to tank than warriors and rogues. You can still sort of do it but you have to be smart about when you use your stuns and frenzied regeneration).

The one complaint I have is with the improved Mark of the Wild. Two ranks and they not only improve MotW, but they also increase all of your stats by 1% each. Which means, I pretty much _had_ to take it for tanking. No choice really. You really have to take it. More stamina. More dodge. More attack power. More mana. Faster regeneration (even though only nominally). Yes, please.

The problem is that I had to give up either two points in Furor or two points in the feral tree. I opted to give up two in furor in favor of "potentially lowering melee speeds". But now I'm sometimes caught without rage. It's fine if we're stringing together fights, but last night trying to do a timed CoS run, we had to wait a full 2 minutes for Arthas to show up (which ultimately cost us the drake) and all of my rage decayed. So when I couldn't generate threat on the first three mobs in the Town Hall, one of them wtfpwned a consecration happy paladin.

Druids really only have swipe and demoralizing roar for AoE threat generation and they require rage. It's fine once the fight had gotten going, but at the start, it can result in dead dps. I've had to resort to using Enrage... Something I've never really done.

It's not a real problem and the benefits outweigh the costs... It's just something new to adjust to. And maybe I'm not even the one who has to adjust... Maybe I'll just let the dps figure out my rage generation problem on their own.

Shaking off the rust...

2009-04-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

It's Laundry day.. Again... So this is my first real chance to sit down with "nothing to do" since Patch 3.1 came out. Here are my early impressions:

1) I'm really disappointed with the Argent Tournament. It seems to be a combination of the worst parts of The Oculus (mounted combat) and "just making sure you have an epic flying mount". It really is just a lot of flying around. Fly to Crystalsong Forest. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong Forest and then fly to Howling Fjord and then... Wait for it.. Fly back. The early dailies aren't interesting or even challenging. At least when they came out with the Shattered Sun dailies you had a chance at getting a badge of justice every now and then. If nothing else, you got a lot of BoE greens that you could vendor, AH or disenchant. And while the Netherwing dailies seemed... "Grindy", there was a kickass reward at the end of the table. I suppose you could grind for a very long time and get a new flying mount but... Eh. I've got as many flying mounts as I need. I'm hoping it picks up in the future but so far, I'm not optimistic.

2) Mana regen and the lifebloom changes - I'm not loving the mana regen in 3.1. While _some_ people may have had so much regeneration they had seemingly endless mana pools, I did not. I find I run OOM a lot faster... And so does our other resto druid. When we went to Naxx with two resto druid healers who hadn't really done an instance yet, it took us a while to figure things out. It was pretty sloppy to start... And... Well... I'll get into that later. The cost of lifebloom doubling hurts but the number you have stacked on a target affecting the bloom is nice. I saw more than one three stack crit for over 14k. Sadly, you can't really time that when you need it. I found out about halfway through the run that the way to manage mana is to just let the lifebloom stacks bloom and put them up again. It helps but it's not quite enough. I guess next time we'll have to make sure that we have replenishment and a paladin for blessing of wisdom.

3) Dual specs - This is the game changer for me. I play a druid, a paladin and a death knight. I had one healer, one DPS and one tank. Now I have two of each and I can swap them around a little without having to leave the instance. It's not like I oculdn't afford to respec one toon for whatever was needed, but... I hate setting up the buttons all the time. This was 3k gold well spent. Now the druid is a tank and healer. The paladin is primarily a DPSer but can heal if needed. And the death knight can tank or DPS... Sort of...

4) I'm pretty sure they nerfed death knight DPS. Before the patch, I was doing about 1.7 dps with a tanking spec and dps gear. Post patch, I'm only getting up to 1.5k on the training dummies. Maybe that will go up on mobs but I'm not holding my breath.

5) I'm not a big fan of Savage Defense. That combined with the overall druid tanking nerfs has really hurt one of our main tanks. He used to run at about 29k health unbuffed but on Thursday it was around 26k. And he was a lot more fragile. He just didn't have the mitigation he used to. He would take huge spikes in damage... Not good when you have two druids rolling HoTs and not really watching for spikes. We will now...

With #5 in mind, I took Hiahotah out in his new bear spec (it's nice to be able to go out in public without worrying about being ganked by level 72 and 75 rogues working together while you're out fishing... Don't worry... The paladin made them pay for their transgressions...). Cat DPS is low but then again, nothing lssted long enough to really build up to anything. As for tanking, I use the level 81-82 elite Pustulent Horrors (I'll check the spelling later... Maybe) just inside Icecrown (there are 5 on the dam) to check migitation and damage. I went in and killed the first one witout taking more damage than Improved Leader of the Pack could return (so no more than 4% health every 4 second). I was pleased to find that I was on the quest to kill those guys so I did some more. The second and the third were the same story. So I pulled two at once. I took a little damage before the first one was down. But after I got down to just one, I got back to full health... OK... Time for something harder.

I'd planned to pull a pack of 8-10 melee, but I stumbled across the elites in the Bombardment. I pulled 3 level 80 elites. I got down to 15k health (from 29k to start) before the first two were down. I didn't use Berserk or Frenzied regeneration or anything, really. Just made sure I remembered where the swipe button was. So now I'm thinking that our other druids problems are gear related. Time will tell, I guess.

That was last night. This morning I tanked a heroic Violet Hold with a dk I know (from a previous PuG) who could sustain 3k dps. He was a challenge threat-wise because he has no patience and there's one spawn location where the mobs go different directions that is still problematic - particularly when I have no rage. But it worked out. Cleared the instance, nobody died. I'm calling it a win.

And it would seem that I have another 17 minutes before the first load comes out of the dryer... So...

On Thursday, we had 8 level 80's on, but only 1 person who had a tank and one person who had a healer who wouldn't be tanking. So we gathered up some of the newbies to do heroic Gundrak. About halfway there, two of our tanks logged on. OK... Impromptu Naxx... Which was fine because we hadn't gotten a chance to raid on Tuesday because the servers were down and then unstable. But I hadn't healed on my paladin yet, so I stuck with my druid. It was a little sloppy at first while people got used to new specs and subtle changes to old spells but we got rolling eventually. We one shot Razuvious, Anub'Rekhan, Faerline and Noth. Not bad with two first timers, a nerfed bear tank, no paladins, no voice chat (not sure what was wrong there... But we typed what we needed to. We did Karazhan that way towards the end... No biggie), and two nerfed resto druids. I didn't think we had the co-ordination for Maexxna so we opted for Patchwerk.

Patchwerk is both a gear check (even with that crew, we had the gear, thank you very much) and nightmare for resto druids. It goes against everything we're used to. We wiped twice because we couldn't keep the tanks up using "commone sense"... So we assigned tanks. That worked better but it was really, really tough and drained out mana. I think the other druid went OOM at the end because her tank dropped like a stone at 1% during the soft enrage. After the melee went down, our druid tank was eating the hateful strikes too so it was tough to keep him up. He hovered at 0% for what seemed like an eternity. But we downed him finally and had to call it a night. After Patchwerk, a lot of what's left is getting people to move at the right times. I think we can clear all of Naxx if we can just find the time. At least people are getting excited about it again.

Oh. Laundry's done. Gotta run.

Just Because You're Wearing a Shield...

2009-03-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

... That doesn't mean you're a tank.

There. I said it. Somebody had to. We were _all_ thinking it but why is it always me who has to be the one who actually says it. No wonder everyone hates me.

I ran heroic Nexus on my secret death knight alt last night and I should have seen the warning signs right away. The warrior tank couldn't hold aggro to save his life. Lost aggro twice on the first pull... Which consists of one mob. The second pull was... Peculiar. I took a lot of damage from "somewhere". I'm guessing the two dogs that were flanking the humanoid.

The first three pull, however, was the really telling on. He locked onto a mob and never looked at the others. So when they healer did his job, they went straight for him. I was trying to lock down a healing mob when I saw that there was a mob on the healer. When I taunted him, I had _two_ mobs on me. In DPS gear and in blood presence, I dropped pretty quickly. It was enough for us to get through that fight but we wiped on the first boss because of the same issues.

It was shortly after that when I said "screw it" and put on my tanking gear and frost presence. I'm not a tanking spec on that toon but my gear is good enough that I can fake it on trash. I can at least make sure that the healer is OK... But here's the thing:

I ended up tanking everything... ALL of the trash. Even the mob the warrior "tank" was on. I mean... Maybe, you lose a mob here or there. But to not notice that your target isn't attacking _you_? That's too much.

I died on the mage boss during the second split because I was in my DPS gear and had two of the three copies on me... At least two. We wiped on Anomalus because the warrior lost aggro (and I was in my DPS gear/blood presence) and mashed the squishies... Tanking gear back on for attempt two. I ended up tanking him about 40% of the time. But I couldn't do the damage to the rifts so... It was dicey. The rock boss was about the same as the second attempt on Anomalus: Dicey, I tanked about 40% of the fight, but we got through it... Come to think of it... That's how the last fight went... But with a twist. The shaman (who was geared and a good player) had started putting earth shield on me instead of the warrior. He knew what was what.

I was so frustrated that I actually remembered the warrior's name and looked him up this morning. He's fully Fury and Arms. Not a single point in prot. While it is irresponsible to tank a heroic in his gear without a tanking spec... There's more to tanking than just a spec and a shield.

Tanking is an indelicate balance between keeping aggro on all of the mobs while maintaining a lot more threat on the target mob. While a proper spec helps with this, so does reading your tooltips and looking for abilities that "generate additional threat" as opposed to your normal DPS rotation. Yes, damage does generate threat, but Sunder generates more. You should know where your defensive cooldowns are and which to use when. You should know which talents are good for mitigation and which are good for threat generation and you should choose those over talents that generate more damage. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your class.

Tanking means knowing the fights... And I'm not saying "all the fights"... But you should have played enough to know what mobs look like healers and which are ranged because most tanks are made the de facto party leaders for marking purposes. And you should pay attention because most trash mobs are repeated through an instance. Which is to say, you should know the game.

Tanking also requires situational awareness. This is a trap I've seen too many tanks fall into. They lock down one mob while 3 others are allowed to do whatever they want. Not only does this cause wipes, it fosters frustration within the group. You need to be aware of when CC breaks and doesn't get applied. You need to keep an eye out for mobs moving in odd ways. And you should also tab through the targets to make sure that every one of the mobs is looking at you. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your role.

No matter how good your gear is... No matter how cookie cutter your tanking spec is... If you fail in any of those areas, you're going to be a bad tank. And that may be fine if the people you're running with _know_ you're a bad tank because you told them. But if you sign up to tank a heroic with people you don't know, the expectation is that you'll have at least a passing familarity with the instance, with your abilities, with the role of a tank and that you've got at least _some_ points in tanking talents.

This guy from last night... Had none. But he did, however, have a shield.

Stop and smell the roses

2009-03-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

I was doing the Argent Crusade quest lines on my new Alliance death knight the other day. Now that I'm on my fourth trip through these quest lines and know where everything is and basically what the story line is, I have more time to look around at the stuff that's going on around me... Well that and my last go round is on a PvE server so I don't have to worry about that social misfit... I mean rogue that's lurking around because they can't find a party for anything... Last night, I got to the one where you get ported to moonglade from Icecrown to collect three acorns and then get ported back. With time to smell the roses, I had time to appreciate the portal...

That's exactly the kind of portal a druid would make. All green with ivy creeping up the sides. Then I started thinking (and yes... I know... This is where most of my trouble starts)... Druids have Teleport: Moonglade spell. And I've always been OK with it - until I really examined the portals that were part of that quest line. Now I want Teleport: Moonglade to leave one of those. It's like the first time I learned that you could deep fry a grilled cheese sammich. I'd never thought of it before... But now that I know it can be done... I want it. I want it like a rogue wants a girlfriend and to move out of his parents' basement.

Death Knights get the totally awful Death Gate spell that _they_ can use to port to their base of operations and they leave them EVERYWHERE. I'll be walking around Dalaran, turn a corner and... Blech. Death Gate. But imagine if you were out strolling around the wastes of Icecrown and you came across a portal to Moonglade... Maybe with some flowers around the base for flair. It would brighten your day...

Unless you were on a PvP server. That could just be a precautionary measure put in place by the druid who is about to thrash you. If it goes poorly... He's Moonglade-bound. Yesssss.... We wantss it. Gives it to us. Nasty little Hobbitses.

Naxxramas... At last!!! (Sort of)

2009-03-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a lot of college basketball lately and haven't felt motivated (read: I've been at my

computer but I've been playing and watching TV) to post. But today is Laundry Day so I'm... Bored.

The guild has finally crept up to 13 people at level 80 or higher. While this increases the likelyhood

that we'll have 10 people playing on raid night, it also means that they're not as geared as some of

the people who have been 80 for 4 months. But we've also been running the daily heroic almost every day

so people have been getting badges and gear and can reasonably expect that if they log on, we'll do

something. This has lead to a significant increase in the total number of people who are playing on any

given night which has lead to an increase in the amount of stuff we can do... It's a good cycle.

I've been tanking on my death knight frequently so she's gotten pretty well geared. With her gear and

my increasing familiarity with the class, she's become an effective tank. I still miss a few cooldowns,

get caught without runes up (and forget about the 5 minute reset) or caught without an AoE ability

available when there are adds but I'm getting better and I feel like I could tank every heroic and most

of Naxx on her.

Two weeks ago, we had 8 people on so we PuGged two people for Vault. A PuG rogue quit after 3 pulls. So

we 9 manned it. And given that there were two people who disconnected during the fight, we essentially

8 manned it. We thanked the PuG for joining us and he moved on. But that left us with 8. Too few to do

a raid and too many to do a heroic...

So we decided to "take a look" at one of the bosses in Naxxramas. We chose Anub'Rekhan because, well...

It's the first boss Crucify downed in Naxx40 back in the day. We wiped on it for about 12 hours before

we downed it... So I know the fight pretty well. Plus, since we weren't expecting to down anything, it

was a good one to look at the mechanics for next time.

Frankly, I didn't think we'd get past the trash. But with a poison cleansing totem, those trash pulls

are a lot easier than I remember - particularly because it's raid wide now. We tried the boss 4 or 5

times and we never made it past the first transition. We even tried bringing in a couple of different

alts for raid composition but we just didn't have the timing down... And by we, I mean me.

So we called it and talked about it during the week. People watched videos and had a better idea what

was going on in them because they'd seen it for themselves... So it wasn't a complete waste of time.

However, during that week... One of the guys who just pushes my buttons started popping off in the

forums. Normally it just pisses me off, but he's recently switched from his completely geared out prot

warrior to a rogue. He's offered to tank "anything" for us but hasn't tanked squat. And this rogue

doesn't have anywhere near the gear, doesn't bring any buffs, etc... So when he plays it, I can't bring

my paladin who does way more damage and has way more buffs to bring to the table.

The short version is, he started stroking his epeen in the forums about how he's the top DPSer in the

guild. Now... This guy wears on me and I hate... Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate damage meters

because they promote exactly that kind of e-preening. So I laid into him. I allowed that he has topped

a few heroics in total damage done because 1) I've been chain pulling instances and the mana users have

to stop and drink periodically so they have less total DPSing time 2) he has been ignoring all markings

so that he can get all his combo points in 3) he's been getting a huge buff from the death knight tank

that doesn't benefit the mage in the least and 5) he's started attacking almost before the tank does -

which leads to aggro problems down the road. I also pointed out that he just lead in total damage done.

The mage was about 300 dps higher than he was. In short, I accused him of being a self-involved epeen

stroking... Well... rogue. Probably not the most mature thing I've done but... He crossed about 6 lines

that day (that wasn't his only inflamatory post). I mean... He cut down one of the more helpful members

of the guild for missing a raid when he was sick when he missed the previous two weeks including the

previous week where he logged off 15 minutes before raid time, didn't log back on until 2 hours after

raid time (thereby insuring he wouldn't have to participate) and started trying to get people to run

him through heroic Gundrak. Really, really pisses me off.

I went on to say that while he tops the heroics in damage done by a small amount, my paladin (who I

can't play when he's on his rogue because we need _someone_ to tank) tops that same mage by about 25%

in total damage done and by about 100 in DPS - while providing buffs that help (*gasp*) others, spot

heals, in combat CC when necessary (like Heroic VH... That one 3 pull where two mobs go one way and one

goes the other), off tanking, AoE, cleansing and all of those other things that a paladin does. Also

not the most mature thing I've done but.. Of the 13 80's we have now, 3 a rogues and our next 80 will

probably also be a rogue. Fan-freakin' tastic. Plus... That guy pissed me off. I mean... So much that I rolled a new Alliance Death Knight on a PvE server (which I've found very relaxing... Not just the fact that there aren't rogues lurking around every corner to gank you but also because I'm playing Alliance and they're so much nicer than the horde generally are) to hide out from him and the guild.

Since then I've ignored him in the forums and have instructed people to tell me if he makes a post that

is in any way constructive... Or can even be considered non-negative if you took words out (but left

them in the same order). For the record, I had to go back 7 posts before I could find one and that one

pretty much blasted the whole guild for not being prepared. But I digress...

I guess what I'm saying is that we had a tumultuous week in the guild. But on Tuesday night, we had exactly 10 level 80's on-line at raid time... And the rogue wasn't one of them. We abandoned the Heroic Violet Hold run we were on and formed a raid. We decided to do Vault first even though with travel time, etc. it takes about 30 minutes. After vault, we decided to do a boss in Naxx. We had seen Anub'Rehkhan but now that we had 10, I thought Razuvious would be easier for us because we really only need one tank for it and I could bring in my druid to heal. Fortunately, one of our members had been fishing in the Dalaran fountains so he had a coin to flip. The coin chose Razuvious.

Which turned out to be a good choice. It took us 3 attempts but we did down him pretty easily. Now that we've seen that, I'm certain that we can do that in one shot, every time. Plus, people had fun and were feeling pretty optimistic and looking forward to next week.

I know it's not much and that PuGs routinely steamroll that place but... They're an extremely casual guild and this is a huge step for us.

Right in the Epeen

2009-02-08T15:01:00.000-08:00

They've already offered transfers off the new server because it's too crowded. We were considering moving but it looks like enough people have moved off to make it tenable (ironically, Garithos has been showing up as a medium population server for the last couple of days. The only time that ever happened was right after the 3.0 patch and Garithos was one of about 8 servers that was up).

However, I'm not sure I like the culture of Scilla. For one thing, on Bloodscalp people might ask for your stats but on Scilla, they ask for stats and they want you to link the achievement for the instance they are trying to run... Which is to say, you can't do it unless you've already done it. It's quite mad.

But beyond that, there's the ganking. And it's not the quanity... It's the quality. On Friday I was leveling my shadow priest and I was doing some furbolg quests in Winterspring. At level 56, I got ganked by a level 80 Shadow priest named Insaetia. Now I don't normally call people out for a ganking. Hell... I've certainly ganked more lowbies than I've been ganked. But this was different.

I rezzed and went about my business. Clearly this priest was grinding Timbermaw rep because he found me about a half hour later and ganked me again. A one shot. I'm so impressed. But then he stood on my corpse. He hit me with three emotes. Jumped up and down on my body. Then he started pulling mobs and fighting them on my body.

OK Jackass... You earned it. I logged off my shadow priest and logged on my paladin. I was in Everlook a few minutes later and was actually right behind Insaetia who was heading back to the furbolg camp... Perfect!!! I judged justice. It crit. So did Seal of Command. Hammer of wrath was up before he could even fear. Which he did but I bubbled and nuked him with HoW and boom. Dead. I followed with the same three emotes and started _my_ camp.

But he didn't rez... But I'm sufficiently pissed now. I'll wait. 5 minutes later and I'm still waiting when a mage - Devasteight (of the Shattered Sun... OMG!!! I am so impressed at your ability to do daily quests!!!) showed up and the two the them WTFPWNed me. /golfclap

So I rezzed, healed, etc. and went out looking for them. And they WTFPWNed me again. Completely thrashed me. And this time they started camping me. I mean campfires and beach umbrellas and the whole bit. But I'm not an idiot so I was able to rez and get away. Clearly I'd touched a nerve and he'd gotten a big brother to protect him. So I logged onto my priest with the intention of moving to another area. But as soon as I'd mounted, I was hit with Shadow Word:Death. Boom. Dead.

It was the shadow priest... Again. And the mage. And they'd set up shop again. But now they've been joined by a warrior - Vassilico. Take a look at his armory... I'll wait. Currently, he's Fury and dual wielding Ebon Blade rep rewards. He's got an agility gem in his boots. A +24 stamina gem to get a +4 strength bonus. And he's rocking the +72 attack power trinket (level 70) from the Brewfest event. Grats on your epic fail, n00b.

But I've been tired all week. So I take a nap. I wake up 25 minutes later and they're still there. I went to cook dinner. I ate dinner. Still there. I LOGGED OFF and played an alt for a half hour. STILL THERE. Three level 80's camping my level 56 clothie in crappy gear for at least 90 minutes and I've been asleep, afk or on a different character and they're still at it. At this point, it's gotten sad.

At some point the server rebooted... After which, I was able to log onto my shadow priest, finish the quest chain I was on and head over to Silithus. I get that I'd kicked that guy square in the epeen and that this assault on his manhood could not go unavenged. But... Seriously... I mean... REALLY??!?!? An hour and a half for one piece of payback for something YOU started?!?!? GROW UP!!! And the extent of it... A single level 60 of any class would have been sufficient to keep me locked down for hours. Did it _really_ warrant three level 80's - one of which was decked out from head to toe in epics?

And what about your two friends? How sad is it that you would actually waste an hour and a half of your lives doing NOTHING for an "offense" against someone else? It makes me sad for you... And your sad, pathetic, shriveled, little manhoods.

How is that better?

2009-02-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

So... The server move is complete. It was three days of scrambling, setting up interfaces and not having enough guild members on the new server to do anything but we've moved. And now that we're here? There's a longer queue earlier than there ever was on Bloodscalp.

So many people transferred to Scilla that it has gone from a low population server to a high population one. People are logging on at 8 and complaining about queues. Wintergrasp is so crowded it's unplayable. Dalaran is so crowded that I'm reluctant to check mail there.

Which is to say... We actually _did_ trade all of my friends for another bloodscalp with earlier queues but a faster ping time. Fan-tastic.

To Parts Unknown

2009-02-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

/sigh

So... The guild switched servers this weekend. I'm not happy about this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

When my Alliance guild broke up, I decided to play with people I knew. It took me several weeks of hardcore leveling to catch up to them because I'd already leveled my Alliance mage to 70. I also tried to keep a toon at about the same level as my main group... Which meant I leveled one character from 35 to 70 and at the same time, one from 1 to 35.

They were behind me progression-wise in vanilla WoW so it was no surprise that when I got to 68, they were still trying to get past the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. We developed a comfortable group of five people and learned all of the new instances and taught them to the rest of the guild. I even got them started on the Karazhan key quest lines. When others in the guild wanted keys, I tanked the instances for them. No questions asked. Nine months after Burning Crusade came out, we had 7 people with keys and decided to try to make a Karazhan run. We all got together for a party and I helped two people finish the last two legs of the key quest. We downed Attumen that night and everyone was ecstatic... After all, we're talking about a guild that had never even been into Upper Blackrock Spire as a group.

Over the next few months, we got further and further. Curator, a big stumbling block for a number of guilds, was a joke for us. The only times we ever wiped on him were when we tried to 8 man him... And even then it was close. We got all the way to Chess but never got any further. These people had jobs and children... So people got bored. They stopped coming out.

I was still interested, however. So I started PuGging for people who needed a tank. Some of them were terrible... But some of them were pretty good. I was the first person in our guild to down Prince... And Nightbane... And... Well... Pretty much everything after Maiden/Moroes. I took everything I learned back to our raids every time there was an uptick in Karazhan interest.

But something happened I hadn't expected: I made friends. I didn't talk to them every day but it pleased me to see them running around and to /wave at them. Maybe throw them a buff or two. If I ever saw them looking for people, I'd always sign up because I knew I'd have a good time.

Interest in WoW waned after the expansion was announced. It wasn't uncommon for there to be only one or two other people in the guild on-line at any one time... One of them even quit WoW for the summer. But I was still playing and "doing stuff". I even went so far as to download a mod that kept me in the Looking For Group channel all the time. Along the way, I earned the Champion of the Naaru title... Something of which I was really proud because, without guild support, it had taken a lot of work on my part.

When Wrath of the Lich King came out, I was the first person in our guild to hit 80... By about two days. Three more followed in the next couple of days but then no one. All this fabulous new content and I had no one to expore it with. One of the 80's pretty much only logged on to do Wintergrasp. So I turned to the LFG channel again.

After I had gotten to exalted with Sons of Hodir, I spec'd Hiahotah resto because there were more people looking for healers than tanks. I found that I could run pretty much any instance I wanted at pretty much any _time_ I wanted. One of the guilds I used to run with in Burning Crusade invited me to a Naxx run early on. I was undergeared but consider that at the time I hadn't even done a heroic, I think I held my own. I collected badges and got upgrades... We still only had 4 level 80's... In fact, the fifth 80 in the guild was my death knight. My paladin was the 8th.

Two weeks ago, I filled out a slot as a healer for a guild Naxxramas run. It was their first time in Naxx so many wipes were expected. I'd seen a number of the fights back in vanilla WoW or during that time I did it at 70 before the expansion or during that one run. I let them wipe a couple of times on each boss and then made suggestions as to how they could do it better and they would down the boss. It was fun learning the content and coaching a guild through the fights. They invited me back the next week and we got further faster. Learning had taken place. We actually cleared all four quarters and even took a few shots as Sapphiron. A couple of them would whisper me during the week to see if I was coming out on Friday. It was a young group but willing to try and learn. It was a satisfying experience. They filled out their healing roster so they didn't need me any more... Which was great. I can always find a group.

Then this week, we got our 10th person to 80. We did our first all guild heroic in weeks. It was an ugly run through Halls of Lightning but it was the Daily Double so we ground through it. And after about 4 wipes on Loken, we finished it. Great!!

Well... Not really... You see... One of our members (the one who quit for the summer) who has been hot to transfer off Bloodscalp noticed that there were free transfers to Scilla for horde. While all this exciting stuff was going on for the guild, people were talking about moving.

We've been through this before. The guy who quit wants vast fields of mobs all to himself for farming purposes. Some claim they get disconnects and lag. Others don't want to worry about mean old Alliance lurking around every corner waiting to gank them. I tried to argue that there were more horde on Bloodscalp than Alliance (by a 2:1 margin) so it's mostly the other way around for the gankings and that the disconnects were largely due to poor internet connections (the one with the most disconnects uses his neighbor's wireless connection) and the lag was due, in part, to inferior video cards (one guy can't see the statues in the pit in Halls of Lightning... If you've been there, you know what I mean... Basically it's about 20 feet away and he only sees gray mist). As for the vast fields of mobs... Does that really compare with my ability to find stuff to do when the rest of the guild isn't on line? Apparently it does.

The discussion went something along the lines of:

"We want to leave."

"I have friends here."

"We want to leave. There's lag."

"EVERY server had lag during Wintergrasp. It's been better since they made the orb instantly clickable."

"We want to leave. There's a queue."

"For, like, 5 minutes if you log on after 9:30 and, frankly, when you people log on after then, you don't really _do_ much, do you?"

"We want to leave."

"THere's enough of a population here to support PuGging. Something that _I_ enjoy when you're not around. I've played on a low population server before. It's painful watching someone begging for a tank in LFG for two hours. They don't allow transfers to high population servers."

"we want to leave."

I've checked the new server. There are about one quarter the number of the people in the LFG channel that there are on Bloodscalp. Have you checked to see if the lag and disconnects are any better on the new server?"

"We want to leave."

"Look... I'm being asked to give up something that is a large portion of my enjoyment of the game. If you can prove that your technical concerns are valid, then I'll drop my objections."

"Just move one of your characters then."

"I have a whole mini-economy going. I'd hate to leave one out in the cold."

"Just roll a new character and level it to 80."

"Screw you."

"This isn't a democracy. You don't have to move." (Read: We're leaving.)

"One of my friends just transferred from there to Bloodscalp. He says it sucks."

"We left."

So... To me it feels like I've lost a lot for a vague hope that any server would have to be "better". No one is able to define what that means or prove that things are less "unbearable"... And things that I just haven't had a problem with. I think it's safe to say that I play more than anyone else in the guild and I've not had a problem with any of the things they complain about. Maybe there are the odd, 2 to 3 second lag spikes but I think it's a small price to play for a LFG channel full of people who are also looking to "do stuff". So this move has limited benefits for me and a huge downside. For them... I don't know. I don't know what was wrong with Bloodscalp and what makes them think a new server would be better... I guess I'll find out.

Now my (horde) characters in a queue to move to server unknown and I'm locked out of being able to play them for 48 hours. I have no idea what will happen... But those asshats had damn well better be available for instances when we get to the new server or I'm going to be super-extra pissed.

The Joys of PuGging

2009-01-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

So... There I was minding my own business... I'd just gotten to a convenient stopping point in doing dailies on my paladin (who is 80 now... As is my death knight) when someone asked for a healer for Heroic Nexus in LFG. Hiahotah (who is resto now... Man... It's been a while. Whole other story...) was sitting on the daily from the day before so I logged onto him and said I'd go. I wish I'd thought that through...

The first warning sign was when they started calling each other by real life names. It turns out that three of them were from the same guild. Oh good. A guild that can field three players but can't find a healer. The second warning sign was when one of them asked how to get to the instance... Which was THE NEXUS!!! It's the first damn instance 80% of people do!!!

The group consisted of a prot paladin, ret paladin, boomkin (the guildies), a rogue and me. We managed to down the first mob with only the ret paladin dying. (Seriously?) The tank didn't consecrate or taunt so when the ret paladin body pulled and then fought back... It was over pretty quickly. Yes you're in plate but you're still not wearing a shield. We wiped on the second pulls. The paladin _still_ didn't consecrate on a 3 pull. Very, very bad sign. I thought about leaving but decided to give them another chance. I figured that with 2k spell power I could make up for a little nubitry.

I wish I'd thought that through. It turns out there were two skinners in the party but one of them didn't have a high enough skill level to skin the mob. Oy. You got to 80 and didn't level your skinning? Oh come on!!! At this point, one of them said he had turned his microphone on. I shudder to think that these guys were actually communicating with each other.

We got to the "optional" boss. And wiped because I couldn't keep the melee up... And because the tank backed up into me just as I was trying to heal him and just as the boss did his whirlwind. That's when I decided I wouldn't be using any more buff foods. I gently suggested that the melee needs to run away from the whirlwind. I should have said that they should run away as soon as they see it and stay out until it was over. My bad. In any event, they were nominally smarter and we got some lucky fears just before whirlwinds so melee was out of range for a couple of them. We downed him with only one death. The druid got the achievement for looting his first emblem of heroism. Another ominious sign. But now I was saved to this instance so I was in for the duration.

We had a couple of deaths before the mage boss... One of which was me. The paladins seem to have misplaced their resurrection buttons so I ran back. The mage boss can be very chaotic during the splits. Things happen. This time, the ret paladin - the one who was leading and seemed to have some reasonable gear and doing the most damage - died about half way through the fight. It happens... When you consecrate and the tank doesn't so you end up with two of the adds on you.... And people aren't focusing on one of them. So I battle rezzed him... He didn't take it until the boss had about 10% health left. There are TWO druids in your party. One of them knows what he is doing. You don't go AFK after you die. You just... Don't. Wait for the battle rez.

The clear to the next boss... And the next boss, for that matter, went mostly without incident. No... Wait. Scratch that. The tank ran in just before the second boss and pulled 6 mobs but didn't consecrate... But he needed heals so... I healed him. The 5 mobs he hadn't generated threat against me... Killled me dead. The boomkin and the ret pally managed to heal him through the fight. And one of the paladins found a rez button after about two minutes of me not releasing. We did down the rift boss without too much trouble. It was around this time that I started looking at their gear. Among other things:

1) The boomkin was rocking a staff that had +242 spell power, a pile of int and some spirit. A two hander with +242 spell power? There's a level 78 one hand rep reward with +314 spell power. Sure you have to be revered with the Kalu'ak but... Who isn't revered with the Kalu'ak? I mean... They look like Wilfred Brimley!!

2) It wasn't enchanted. Throw in an off-hand that has a modest +25 spell power and you're looking at another 147 spell power. Things will die faster. As it was... I was running out of mana and having to use innervate in what is generally considered an "easy" heroic.

3) The tank had 22k health... Buffed. I've got a death knight who has that much unbuffed and I wouldn't even _think_ about tanking a heroic like that. So I inpected his gear. Helm. Tempered Titansteel helm. Good. But... Two gem slots... Both empty. Throw in a +32 stamina meta gem and a +24 stamina gem and with blessing of kings, we're looking at over 600 extra health. Or maybe throw in a +21 defense +5% shield block value meta gem in there. Either one will make things a little easier on your healer. One will provide a little extra cushion, the other will improve your mitigation. Can't go wrong with either one.

4) The helm didn't have an enchant on it. If you're going to be remotely serious about tanking... You get to revered with Argent Crusade so you can buy the head enchant. Even if you aren't serious about it... Do it anyway.

5) The tank had attack power trinkets equipped.

6) The boomkin had level 65-66 healing idol equipped. I know idols are hard to come by... But... Still...

7) The tank was wearing his Blood Knight tabard. Maybe he wants something from Horde Expedition but... Damn man... Slap on an Argent Crusade tabard. Get to revered. Get to revered with Wyrmrest for the two sweet tanking pieces.

On the way to the rock giant boss, the rogue bailed. We joined LFG for about 2 seconds and resumed clearing. Just before we got to the boss I asked if we were looking for someone. They said yes and I said that "a hunter in my guild was willing to go but we'll have to summon him". The hunter was actually my brother but I wasn't going to tell them that. They invited him and kept clearing to the boss... And, yes, it was in the hallway respawning plants... So we had to fight all the way back to a safe spot. And we'd taken the long way around, so we had to run all the way back through the instance to summon and then once again to get back to where we were... And then we had to clear the hallway... A third time. We did, however, down the boss with no deaths. It was hard as hell to keep that paladin up through the enrage though. Cripes. I'm guessing he isn't defense capped.

We wiped on the end boss. The ret paladin body pulled, got insta-gibbed and the prot paladin never did pick her up. The second time went a _litte_ better. There was still one death but that's mostly because it took so damn long. I had to make a choice between healing myself or healing some DPS with healing spells of their own. I didn't really need any of the loot but the boomkin rolled need on everything (it was cloth and leather so... Whatever) including the Frozen Orb. Now I had 4 on me but that was a PuG and 3 were guildies. He had a 60% chance of getting it. The orb is one of those little niceties that you give PuGs a chance to roll on... Particularly when you've been carried by one of them through the entire instance.

So... The short version is... I won't be doing any (heroic) runs with that guild any time soon and if I do, I'll check for gems and enchants first. Don't get me wrong... Things like that make me a better player but... It really stressed me out. My chest was actually tight for about a half hour after it ended. I don't need that.

Back to the Grind

2008-12-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted. That's mostly because I've been playing the game at night and actually having to concentrate at work. Since I last posted, Hiahotah got to 80. I had started fourth thursday of november just into level 78 with the intention of grinding it out to 80 that day... I mean... Why the hell not? I've got nothing better to do that day... Man do I hate fourth thursday of november. But I digress...

I was making good progress towards 80 but at around 8pm after about 11 hours, I started getting a little punchy. I was working my way through Sholazar Basin and I was having a very hard time making decisions about gear, so I was just letting it accumulate in my bag. I was also having a hard time with a number of the "vehicle" quests. By 10 pm, I was a third of a level away. I could have made it but... I was completely asleep at the switch and I wasn't enjoying myself... So I shut it down early. Just turned off the computer and went to bed. I just can't understand those people who plow through to max level in just a couple of days.

Since then, I've been making the rounds of dailies: Seven in Icecrown (I'm over half way to exalted with Ebon Blade and about a third of the way with Argent Crusade), 3 in Sholazar (I got to revered with the Oracles just this afternoon and I'm not that interested in the trinket, so I'll probably stop doing those (on Hiahotah...)), one in Borean Tundra (for Wyrmrest Accord rep), another Wrymrest quest in Dragonblight, the Troll Patrol quests in Zul'Drak for Argent Crusade rep and now 5 in Storm Peaks for Sons of Hodir rep... Oh... And the cooking daily if it's not the one that takes 12 chilled meat.

I have to say... I do NOT like the Wrath dailies at all. There are no major quest hubs... Well... That's not entirely true... But a number of the quests just grant gold. No rep. No possibility of a badge... Just... Gold. That seems cynical to me. There _are_ 6 Ebon Blade quests in Icecrown... At two different locations. All told, it takes me about 3 hours to do those 24 daily quests... About a half hour of which is just traveling.

But that's not all... I really actively dislike some of the quests. I find them very frustrating. For example, he quest where you free prisoners from the mine in Icecrown where one of three things can happen - you can free them, they turn on you or... THEY JUST RUN THE WRONG WAY... IDIOTS!!! Very frustrating. Also in Icecrown is the one where you have to shoot down 20 drakes and riders. If you're not in a group, that one just sucks. Out loud. I did OK this morning when I was by myself but things didn't pick up until I joined forces with someone and we got credit for each other's kills. When you're not in a group, you only get credit for the ones you tag. If you're very unlucky, you could down 40 of them, but 20 would be credited to someone else. The patch notes on the PTR say that they are changing that quest so that you only have to kill 15 and it is reducing the energy cost of firing the cannon by half. It should make that quest better. I'm not sure how it got out of Beta that way. It's excruciating... Like the quest to control the super awesome looking cat to kill 50 wolvars in Sholazar... The cat that doesn't kill things any faster than I can kill them just by going into bear form and swiping 5-15 mobs at a time. And then there's the Apothecary quest in Zul'Drak... I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to adding the last ingredient and he's listed something that I've never seen before and there's only one of and, oh yeah, it's only found on the other side.

But the granddaddy, worst Wrath of the Lich King daily quest that I've found so far? It's the one for the Sons of Hodir where you have to harpoon a Wild Wrym and kill it while you're clinging to it's belly. You have to keep mashing the button (on a GCD) that tightens your grip while spamming a quick, small attack while the big attack is on cooldown and trying to dodge when he swipes at you but... Be careful... The big attack prevents you from dodging for about 5 seconds. Then at about 20-25% health, he switches over and you have to pry his jaw open and use a fatal strike that misses repeatedly. And... Yes... It does appear to be on a bit of a timer so don't take too long or you'll be unceremoniously dumped... Same if you lose your grip. I don't know if you would die from the fall because I'm on a druid and just pop into flying form on the way down. But I'm usually two minutes from the starting point and at low health after every attempt. It's never taken me less than 6 attempts and I've actually died from the quest at least 4 times.

That said... The quest line to open up the Sons of Hodir dailies is among the most fun quest lines I've ever done... Particularly one of the last quests... Where you're riding the drake with a harpoon in your hands and... Well... I won't spoil it for you. Trust me... It's fun. Do that quest line.

In other news, my death knight is almost 75 (About 3% away) and I did the For the Horde achievement series in a PuG last night. There were some coordination issues and people who didn't get credit for various kills started bailing. By the time we got to Ironforge, we were down to about 30 people and the Alliance started defending the boss there. But we ground him down with about 15 people still standing, rezzed the dead and hopped a portal to Dalaran... And in the mailbox... A Black war bear. I've been meaning to buy one of those but... Free is good too. I'll have to take it to Undercity at some point to see if I can fit onto the elevator while mounted...

Lost Weekend

2008-11-24T10:09:00.001-08:00

I've been playing both my druid and my death knight still. Right now I've got the third highest level character in the guild at 76 (or more appropriately, the third closest to 80). I actually did all of the started quests in Howling Fjord and in Borean Tundra. I wanted to do the D.H.E.T.A quest line but couldn't find their camp (plus I was exploring new areas and doing new quests... I couldn't help myself... New content!!!). By the time I did find it, I was close to completing enough quests to get the achievement for quests for Borean Tundra. So now I'm working Dragonblight and the mobs are level 71-72. They die really fast. Particularly with the new rank of Ravage I got critting for 4k and the new rank of Mangle I got at level 75. There are a lot of new quest types, believe it or not. I'm pleased with the variation in the quests (and the lack of collect X of item Y quests with crazy low drop rates). It can still be tough with people spawn camping but I've been able to get through everything. The next pass will be faster because I know where things are now.

As for the Death Knight... Well... She's a problem. My druid would be at 80 by now (although there's still a chance I can overtake the others on the 4th Thursday of November - I boycott the event so I have the whole day free) if not for her. She's been a lot of fun. I plowed through Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terokkar and Nagrand. It's a lot easier because I know where everything is. I hit level 68 after a few quests in Blade's Edge and went straight to Northrend. While I'm not getting any major upgrades (I've upgraded my boots, bracers and trinkets and have some shoulders that will be good when I decide to break my PvP 4 piece for my DPS set and some balance upgrandes... No tanking upgrades though) on my druid, pretty much everything piece of plate is an upgrade for my death knight.

Along the way, I did a couple of quests that gave me pretty nice one handers and I tried dual wielding them. I don't like it. It seems to reduce my DPS AND reduces my spell damage - which in turn reduces the amount of healing I get from death strike. Since runes are a limited resource, I want the most bang for my buck that I can get out of them. So after a level of playing with dual wielding (to make sure it wasn't just the low sword skills that were hurting me) I switched back to my axe of killing everything dead (I got a BoE green axe "of the beast" that I could equip at 67 that does 110 dps - it's 70's heroic drop quality) and have been much happier. I hit 70 on Sunday morning and promptly forgot to get her flying mount training. So I went back to Ebon Hold to buy the special death knight flying mount that scales with riding skill. It cost 950 gold PLUS the 800 gold for flying mount training but it's TOTALLY worth it. It's arguably the best mount in the game. And in seven more levels... I'm really going to enjoy it.

Week One of Wrath of the Lich King

2008-11-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

Big week up here at the lodge...

It's now been a full week (and 8 hours and one minute) since I got Wrath of the Lich King installed and I haven't been posting because I've been busy. Here are some of my early observations:

- Wow. Wow to the scenery. Wow to the details. Wow to Ember Clutch. Wow to the Death Knight quest line. Wow to death knights in general. So far I've only explored Howling Fjord and most of Dragonblight but what I've seen has been amazing - particularly Howling Fjord. Don't go there if you get vertigo. Between the mountains and the outright chasms... I've felt a little nausea a couple of times when I was riding near a cliff or down a mountain. The terrain is incredible. And some of the details... Like the pots of stew in some buildings (and at least one cave) that look like they are actually boiling and the vegetables are moving up and down... And the troughs in Utgarde keep that look like there's water dripping into them. And did I mention Ember Clutch? That just blew me away.

- The are vendors on the turtle boats. Getting around isn't cheap. I've seen flights as high as 2 gold 50 silver so far. So I've been making a point of using the turtle boats where practical and doing the daily quests at each end of their routes. In between, you can vendor and repair. That's a handy little time saver.

- March of the Giants. This quest brings out the worst in people. For this quest, you have to mine the corpses of 4 level 70-71 elites. They're easy enough to kill (OK... If you realize they have a stacking debuff and are smart enough to stay away from them) but the corpses aren't tagged for the person or party who killed them. Any jackass on the quest can just wait for you to kill it and mine the rune - meaning you don't get to do it. This happened to me three times. All three were ninja'd be members of the same faction. When questioned, two of them thought that "everyone got a whack". God... I hate people.

- Potential server transfer. Bloodscalp is one of about 20 servers that can take free transfers to a new server. The guild is discussing moving. I'm mostly against it. Yes... There have been some unfortunate crashes over the last couple of months. Yes, the server is down more often than Garithos. Yes, there have been queues lately. But it also has a vibrant population and I have friends there. I don't necessarily talk to them but I've spent many hours in Karazhan with them and it pleases me to see them running around. We buff each other, wave and move on. I also like that there are enough people in LFG that you can get a group together for just about anything. On my Alliance server, I once watched someone begging for a tank for the daily heroic for 3 hours. It made me sad. On Bloodscalp, I can get a group for just about anything - even if I'm on a DPS character. Plus, you can find just about anything on the AH at any point in time. I'll allow that the performance issues are a concern. But I already feel that some of the guild members are xenophobic and deliberately moving to a low population server would just reinforce that. I've done high pop and low pop and let me tell you... High pop is better. It's a social game. And I believe the queues will die down as soon as some of the excitement about the expansion wears off and people are done leveling and get back to normal usage patterns... And if some people transfer away...

- The first two instances - I've done Utgarde Keep twice and The Nexus three times. So far, I'm impressed. I had another "wow" moment as soon as I climbed the first set of stairs in Utgarde Keep. And the Nexus... It's like... Some weird combination of Botanica, Exodar and a Rubick's Cube. We've pretty much been facerolling those.

- Death knights. The starter quest line is amazing. Just great story telling. My friends with consciences have some problems with the early quests and some others have problems with their reception in the capitol city but on the whole I'd give a 12 out of 13 on that quest line. As for the death knights themselves... I've really enjoyed playing mine. Maybe it's because I'm more familiar with the content so I don't feel like I'm fumbling around as much. Maybe I really enjoy the playstyle. I don't know but I've really been enjoying myself. At first I was just button mashing and things were dying but I had to stop and eat frequently and my UI had hidden the rune bar so I had no idea when or why some abilities were unavailable. It did, however, force me to read my tooltips and I've developed a rotation that allows me to handle 3-5 mobs (although I prefer 1 on 1 fights... Always have... Except on the bear. Particularly now that swipe hits infinite targets. I took out 15 mobs (stood in the wrong place) the other day. But I digress... Death knight. Having a lot of fun with her. She's up to level 65 already and is at 376+ herbalism and 325 inscription. Hooray for the AH.

- Hiahotah is up to level 73. I'm struggling to play him but I suspect that most of that is me not liking that I don't know where everything is. I'll do a quest and then run back to turn it in and find that I had two other quests in the same area... And then there are some chains that just seem to send you marching back and forth between quest hub and the same quest area. Well... That and it takes 60 quests at 25k per to get the 1.5 million XP it takes to get a level these days. It takes me 3 days to get one level but only one on the Death Knight. We'll see. Tanking has been really fun so far and I've been putting up some really massive crits in bear form.

- Last night after we did Utgarde Keep, our mage (who is now 75) ported us to Dalaraan. So I spent about an hour looking around, picking up flight points, doing a daily cooking quest, talking to vendors... You know... Touristy stuff. I set my hearth there and got kicked out of the Alliance section... I wasn't going to cause any trouble... Honest. Why does no one ever believe me? To be fair, those huntards who ganked my death knight (shot me in the back with a mob on me... It is their way) had that thrashing coming... OK... Thrashings... But I didn't start that one and I certainly didn't hover around a the corpse of someone I'd just shot in the back and had outnumbered two to one. It's not _my_ fault that my level 70 paladin happened to be nearby. Where was I? Right... Dalaran. Nice place. I'm not paying 750 gold for a bear mount. I might pay 600... But only if I thought I could get around in Undercity while riding it.

So far... I'm enjoying the new content. I could do without some of the running around and the quest hubs in the middle of nowhere that have 3 quests and that's it but I'm sure that will bother me less the second or third time around.

Position in the queue: 538

2008-11-13T18:31:00.001-08:00

I've got a few minutes to kill tonight. There's a queue. Bloodscalp has always been a busy server, but there hasn't been a queue to speak of since the first couple of weeks I played the game. It does, however, give me a chance to talk about that last 24 hours...

I got to the mall at a little after 10 pm and they were being very efficient. They were having people pay for the game early and then at midnight, we would exchange our receipts for a copy of the game. I was about 35th in line so once they started handing them out, I'd be getting it quickly.

The guy running this event takes his gaming very seriously and he was really earnest. Every 15 minutes he came out and threw gifts to the crowd. For really exciting items, he had people do a dance from the game. Some people were into it, but I'd brought a folding chair. I wasn't going to get up for some t-shirt. I already have too many of those.

I talked to a couple of people for a few minutes... Including someone who, apparently, writes for Azeroth Advisor. The woman behind me in line was clearly there picking it up for a child. Kind of disappointing because she was exactly the kind of person I'd expect wouldn't play WoW.

I had my copy and was in my car by 12:06. It was 1:06 before I got logged in. I started a Death Knight and... That quest line is incredible. Lots of new quest types. Great story line. Lots going on. Everyone should roll a Death Knight even if they never play it past that opening line. I played until 2 in the morning before I called it a night.

The next morning, I started right up and finished that quest line. 3 hours. Blues at every slot that are equal to anything I've gotten in Outland so far. 14 slot bags... And an epic mount. Nice. I still don't really have any strategy. I specced her frost and I pretty much just mash 3-4-5-6. Still... I could see how that class could be a lot of fun.

In the afternoon, some of my guild members started logging on and we started doing some of the first quests in Howling Fjord. There's one quest where you have to kill 3 named mobs. Talk about your spawn camping. About 15 people were just spamming AoE trying to tap the mobs. But it was the precursors to a quest for Utgarde Keep, so we stuck with it.

After that, we ran Utgarde Keep. I'm still not entirely sure how to get there. I ended up circling around through what looks like the Alliance starting area. We pretty much facerolled the instance but it was spectacular. That first room... Wow... Just... Wow.

After that people started logging on and it became harder and harder to do quests. My death knight was in Outland and it was pretty much the same thing... But with a bunch of level 70's who didn't have the game yet who were just griefing lowbies.

On the whole, I'm really excited and impressed with what I've seen. And now I'm 7th in the queue so... Back to the grind...

A little pre-wrath downtime

2008-11-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

The servers are down so I've got a few minutes to kill. There's a lot of excitement in the guild about the release of Wrath of the Lich King. We're planning which continent we're going to start with and already starting to look ahead at replacing gear.

For my part, I've been thinking about the last expansion. When Burning Crusade came out, I was still in Crucify and the first signs of the impending breakup were in the air. We'd recently gone through a shakeup in our raiding style. We cut down on our number raiders instead of making a second Blackwing Lair run. It was decided that we'd be more successful with a smaller number of more serious raiders. It was the right decision but it caused a little strife and some people left. We hadn't raided in a few weeks because people were busy PvPing (they'd just switched to the new honor for gear system) and just taking time off before the expansion. Our guild leader, a young man I knew as Crazyirish, had gotten a new job so he was unavailable. He was very well liked. He could be a little drunk during our first forays into Naxxramas and we'd be setting up pulls on new trash mobs, someone would ask "what does that mob do?" and Crazy would announce "Let's find out..." launch a frostbolt at it and iceblock. But people loved him so it was OK. When he stopped coming around, people stopped coming out and we couldn't really browbeat people into raiding.

Hiahotah was still a level 38 druid that I never, ever played... Like... Never. So when it came time to go to the midnight release, I didn't have the current local guild to go there with... So I went alone. I got there pretty early so I was near the start of the line. There was a group of college students who obviously played together right behind me. She talked at length about her mage. From the sounds of things, she hadn't done anywhere _near_ the things that I'd done but she loved that mage just the same. But I didn't talk to anyone because I was the oldest person there who wasn't obviously buying it for their kids by about 5 years. I was a little embarassed to be in my mid-30's and waiting in line for a video game.

So... Here I am... Almost two years later. I've pretty much switched factions (although I've been playing my Alliance characters almost exclusively since the release date was announced). I now have 6 max level characters instead of just two. I have a fairly godly tank and a group of people to run the new instances with. I play with a group of local people... People I know in real life.

And yet... Because of real lives and the Gamestop where most people ordered their copies of the expansion, I'll be attending the midnight release alone again. I think this time, I'll try to make more of it. Maybe I'll go through the line and ask people which server they play on. Maybe I'll run into someone I've given a complex over the years. Or maybe I'll just run into someone else who plays a druid and we can just talk about theorycrafting... Like, maybe, the funniest thing you can do to a huntard (there's never a time when it isn't funny to sleep a huntard's pet).

As for what I do after I get the game installed... I just don't know. I don't want to get too far ahead of everyone else because some people I play with regularly won't be getting the game until the weekend. I still haven't decided which one of my characters I'll level first. I could roll a death knight but... So will everyone and their uncle. People will be spawn camping again. I'm not looking forward to those first two nights because there just won't be any mobs to fight. Of course... This year, I've got a group to do instances with... And new bosses with new abilities.

"What does this boss do?"

"Let's find out..."

360 Degree Threat Generation for Druids

2008-11-06T10:49:00.001-08:00

A number of people have been complaining in various forums about the lack of 360 degree threat generation for bear tanks... Which is to say: Swipe only hits targets in front of you. Paladins have 360 degrees of threat generation with consecrate and warritards have... I'm going to say... Thunderclap but bears only get 180 degrees with swipe. I've given this some thought and come to the following conclusion:

I'm OK with that.

And here's why: I've never played a warrior but I have tanked on a paladin - and this was before swipe and thunderclap hit more than 3 targets so if you wanted an AoE tank, you wanted a paladin - and even then, I positioned the mobs so that they all faced me. Why? One reason: You can't parry attacks from behind.

A tank has two dual roles: Threat generation and damage mitigation. If you're going to choose one, it's safer to err on the side of mitigation. If you're low on threat generation but high on survivability then the DPS can just learn to count to three but a tank that can't stay alive for three seconds is of no use to anyone. So while you _can_ tank with your back to mobs on a paladin or a warrior, you're going to want to have them all in front of you so you can parry.

Druids can't parry (or block) but they will want to keep all mobs in front of them to be in swipe range. In my opinion, all tanks should be positioning themselves so that all mobs they are fighting are in front of them: Paladins, warriors and death knights for the chance to parry and druids for the threat generation of swipe.

But if you REALLY want 360 degree threat generation on a druid... Pop into caster form, hit yourself with Barkskin and drop a Hurricaine right on top of yourself.

Laundry Day

2008-10-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

I don't have a washer and dryer in my appartment so I tend to wait as long as I can before making one big trip to the laundrymat - generally 4 weeks. I've got it down to a point where I'm in and out in under two hours. The problem is... I was planning on doing laundry last Sunday but I ended up being so sick I could barely get out of my chair and I felt exactly the same way on Monday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I still had remnants of whatever was affecting me so I just went straight home after work. By Thursday I was feeling better but, eh... I'd made it that far. Why not just wait for the weekend, right?

So here I sit at the laundrymat in (what passes for) the bad part of town (in Vermont). The tiles are cracked. The washers are old and dented. The regulars have some opinions about which dryers to use and which ones to avoid. The ceiling tiles are stained and there's fly walking on the cover of the flourescent light above me. On the other hand, it's relatively cheap and, at the moment, it's empty except for me.

What surprises me, however, is the number of wireless signals I'm getting in this part of town. I'm getting no fewer than 10 signals right now. What surprised me even more is how many of them are secured. Only two aren't and of those, one has too weak a signal to connect to and the other one is only connecting at 1-2 mbps. I can't play WoW, but I _can_ make a blog entry.

My latest WoW projects have been getting Hiahotah the "Guardin of Cenarius" title - not because he needs another title but it seems like a very druidy thing to do and because of the amount of work I've already done - and getting Hoban a "the Hallowed" title.

Hiahotah is already exalted with the Cenarion Expedition because I wanted to get the Earthwarden. I did that by getting in every Steam Vault run our guild ever did for a number of months. When that wasn't enough, I single pulled the slaves in the hallway before the bridge to the second boss in Steam Vault for hours... About 8 of them, I'd say. At 12 rep per mob and with an average of around one Coilfang Armament per reset... It was excruciating. (Hold on... Time to move the laundry...)

OK... I'm back. Sorry about that. While it's totally awesome that I can still fit in clothes I wore 15 years ago and with the changes in my body, a lot of the more cavernous articles now look less clownish... 5 weeks worth of laundry... There's a _lot_ of it. But I digress... Where was I? Oh yeah... Guardian of Cenarius.

However, when I looked at his Cenarion Circle rep, Hiahotah wasn't even half way through Friendly. It makes for a long haul. I know because I've done that grind before. Back in the day, we were running AQ20 a lot and I really wanted the sword you could get 1) if you got the drop and 2) you were exalted with Cenarion Circle. So for weeks, I ran silithyst dust. If the Alliance controlled Silithus, it was because I had made the run about 190 times that day. I ground Twilight Cultists by the hundreds. I collected hundreds of texts. And I _got_ to exalted... And the drop came. It was between me and a druid. When he found out that I'd gotten to exalted with CC, he let me have it. A pretty mature attitude for a 13 year old.

So I got my sword... And I got it enchanted and I went out and even leveled my sword skills for a bit - I was that excited... Until it got replaced about 3 weeks later with a staff from later in AQ20. Typical.

So I thought about the grind a little and decided to see how I liked it at 70. I did a few quests. I tried the combat quests and those just weren't worth the time. So I went back to just grinding cultists. While they doubled the rep gained per mob from 1 to 2, the big improvement to the rep grind is that you now get 500 rep per encrypted text turn-in - up from 100. If you happen across the Twilight prophet (who is a lot easier to solo as a level 70 feral druid than with a level 60 fire mage), that's 7 to 10 texts right there. The cultists die in a couple of mangles. And with feline Feral charge, closing the gaps between them is faster. In just a few hours, I've gotten to 4k/21k to exalted. I might be able to do that by the end of the weekend.

As for Hoban the Hallowed... That was a quirk of the RNG. I won a roll on the helm and got the squashling as a drop from trick or treating. I'd already downed the Headless Horseman so from there it was mostly a question of flying to every inn in Azeroth and getting people to hit me with the wands. I hit up all the candy buckets and just with the people who were on last night, I got all but the ninja wand. When they remove the objective to collect one of each mask as a requirement for the title, I'll just have one wand left for the title. Someone in the guild will have it.

And now my laundry is "dry" (or at least what passes for dry here) so it's time to fold it and go home... Maybe I'll try to get into a Kara raid this afternoon. We'll see.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2008-10-23T11:09:00.001-07:00

Wow... Just... Wow.

I was so worried that the game would change radically and I be lost of fall behind or something. Boy was I wrong... And right. The 3.0.2 patch was just what I needed. I'd been just marking time until Wrath of the Lich King and... Boom!!! All kinds of fun goodness dropped right in my lap. I've been playing almost non-stop since. There's all kinds of new, fun things to do - including but not limited to:

1) Playing a paladin: For years people have made fun of me because I had two paladins and how boring they are. Who's laughing maniacally now, bitches!!! Retribution got so many buffs that paladins are the "it" class right now. I did a WSG and someone said "Oh good. We've got 3 paladins. We're going to tear shit up" (his words, not mine) and that we did. Ret has become such luscious burst damagey fun that I can't play my paladins enough (nor can other people. I've seen 5 on a side in WSG and 12 in AV). I just want to go and smash things. I like watching rogues run away (or even help me quest just so I don't turn on them and squash them like the bugs that they are). I like seeing a warlock and thinking I can kill him. I like destroying warriors... And huntards... They're the best. Making them go splat while they flail away with their clumsy little toy weapons.

But seriously... The first day, my Alliance server came up first so I took that paladin on a tour of Stormwind harbor (that place is magnificent by the way... those dwarves have been busy... And there's now a way to get from Stormwind to Darnassus that _doesn't_ involve a run through level 20-27 contested territory. /cry) and tried out ret. I did the two Skettis dailies and later told my horde guild: If you see a ret paladin, you do what we do... You run. I was still clumsy at it but... Damn... Things just die so quickly and I don't lose mana because of replenishment and judgement of wisdom. If something _does_ live long enough (and between Crusader Strike, Judgement, Divine Storm and Hammer of Wrath, very few things do) to do damage, I get an instant cast flash of light often enough to keep me at full health. It's obscene...

So I've been PvPing up a (divine) storm. It's just too fun. I know the nerf bat is coming so I'm enjoying it while I can... On both of my paladins. Words elude me for how fun it is. I can walk up to another character and do 12k of damage before they are really even aware that something is hitting them. Each has earned enough honor to pick up a couple of pieces of Merciless Gladiator's gear and I soloed a mob in Botanica on my Alliance paladin(and on my Alliance mage) so I could fill out the rest with the blue gear.

2) Karazhan: After the patch, people were on and interested in trying out their fancy new 51 point talents - myself among them. I was also worried about how much my armor was being nerfed. It turns out that the armor on PvP gear was not lowered and since I used 4 pieces of PvP gear to tank in, I was almost completely unaffected. I lost about 5.5k armor but it's a lot less than I thought it would be. With swipe affecting more than 3 mobs, Hiahotah is a tank tank tank tank tanking machine. The 8 pulls of mage killers in the ballroom? Didn't lose a single one of them. So we breezed through Opera with 8 people on one night. The next night we got all the way through to Chess and even took a look at Prince - with 9. We had 10 on Sunday night but the server crashed and was down for over an hour. Everyone left. Monday we had 10 again and we downed Prince for the first time... On our first attempt. And then we did the same with Illhoof, Netherspite and Nightbane - all guild firsts. We've cleared Karazhan - sure the mobs have 30% less health but that's never been the problem for us. It's about finding a time when 10 people are on. But those times are few and far between because people have jobs and wives and husbands and kids and... Well... You don't want to miss summer by staying inside and playing video games. There hasn't been a time in the last 5-6 months when we couldn't have done it if we'd had the time. But now that's done. And about 9 people got the "Karazhan" Achievement. Which brings me to:

3) Achievements: An interesting wrinkle. It gives you something to work towards. I've spent time just wandering around zones and getting to the one or two nooks or crannies I didn't get to and getting an Achievement out of it. I did a couple of the fishing items. I've done a few of the PvP Achievements (including the 300k damage one that I got last night during a long WSG turtle). In some ways, Achievements are ruining battlegrounds because people are selfishly doing things that, under normal circumstances, help the team but if the other team is doing the same thing, their selfish individual goals prevent us from winning - specifically trying for the "Not in My House" achievement - where you have to kill 10 flag bearers before they leave your flag room. I hated WSG before and I hate it more now. But I got my marks for the Alliance paladin's new bracers so I'm done for a while.

4) Hallow's End: As of yesterday, the Sinister Squashling and the helm can drop from trick or treating and not just from the Headless Horseman event. My horde paladin now has both of them so... I'm feeling like I should go for the "The Hallowed" title - which as of 3.0.3 will no longer require the "collect 20 masks" quest. We've also done the Headless Horseman event a few times. We all have the rings from last year but it's still a way to get the Squashling. And we _do_ have some new alts that don't have the rings and haven't got the achievement to kill him. I got to do him on my horde paladin last night and we thrashed him. He didn't even throw out pumpkins on phase 3. And then I two hand tanked him. I put on all my +dodge/parry/defense tanking gear but kept my giant epeen and beat the crap out of him to hold aggro. It worked pretty well, but I took a lot more damage than I would have if I'd worn a shield... But where's the pleasure in that.

5) Inscription: With the assistance of our resident packrat, I got my horde inscriber to 350 (the effective max level right now) but the Alliance side has required a certain amount of gathering. She's only up to 215 or so. But they can both make armor vellums so I've FINALLY been able to enchant my alts' gear. FINALLY. It's been so frustrated to have a max level enchanter all decked out in epics and alts that don't even have the most basic enchants on their gear. No more. All I need now is a spin around the Hinterlands with an herbalist and I'm good to go. I've also been trying to recoup some of my expenses so I've spent a little time at the AH.

6) Titles: Some of my characters already have titles. Hiahotah has three: Champion of the Naaru, Ambassador and Grunt. Gifteye has Lt. Commander (and is closing in on Ambassador). Kaylee has Ambassador. Touchofgrey is a Sergeant Major. But Hoban doesn't have a title. He's a few costumes and a few trips to the candy buckets of Kalimdor away from "the Hallowed". Hiahotah is exalted with CE and I could grind out the Cenarion Circle rep pretty easily. I've certainly done it before... But on a level 60 mage. As a level 70 tank, I have other options - namely completing group quests solo, summoning mini bosses and jumping that level 60 elite that drops 7-10 encrypted texts every time I see her - not to mention popping my head into AQ20 to try to solo some of the early trash pulls. I'm proud of the Champion of the Naaru title, but the Guardian of Cenarius also seems fitting.

There's just so much to do, I get distracted. My Alliance characters need the most love in the way of grinding and gathering, but the horde guild is considerably more active so I have been hanging out there a fair amount (including 5 trips to Karazhan in 8 days). I should really pick one goal and stick to it because as soon as the expansion comes, it's a race to 80 (with 5 70's now, not 2), rolling a death knight and then it's all the new instances... And heroics... And then Naxx-10. It will be 6-8 months before I even think about doing any of these things again.

Slow... Deep... Breaths (patch day)

2008-10-14T11:32:00.001-07:00

It's patch day... But not just _any_ patch day... It's a major upgrade patch day. As in going from 2.4.3 to 3.0.2. There's so much going on. 51 point talents. In game calendars. A new profession. Major changes to some mechanics that I've gotten very accustomed to. Breathe, big fella... Breathe.

This is my second major version change since I started playing WoW. The first one wasn't that big a deal because I'd only been playing for about 9-10 months and because there weren't any major changes in the class that I played. Now I've been playing for almost three years. I have two max level mages, two paladins and a druid (and now a level 64 rogue and a level 60 druid... And a level 52 priest... And that's just the characters I play). I'm set in my ways and there are major, major changes happening:

1) Spell damage and healing are all being rolled up into spell power. This will change some of my tanking gear on my paladins.
2) Spell hit and melee hit are just becoming hit. This can only help my paladins...
3) Druid armor is being reduced considerably. The multiplier is going from 400% to 370% and a lot of gear is being re-itemized to reduce armor and increase stats like stamina and agility. I've read in one place that PvP gear is not having the armor lowered. I use at least 2 pieces of PvP gear already and have lots more I could switch in so I may be good there. But it's still a big change. I may more than make up for that in damage reduction from the Protector of the Pack talent. Time will tell.
4) Druids will be uncrittable with talents. That means I don't need any more +defense gear... Nor do I need +defense gems. I can replace those with agility now I guess. Or +hit I guess.
5) Inscription. I'm going to need to spend some time leveling that... I've got two toons pegged for that and some herbs stored up. It will take a few more runs around lowbie areas to get to respectable levels but at least I should be able to send enchants to alts... Which means I can put +spell power enchants on my paladins' weapons. FINALLY!!!
6) The health of raid mobs is going to drop by 30% or so. That means we're going back into Kara. And the night people are free is... Tonight.
7) 51 point talents. Berserk is looking like a lot of fun (so is Rocket Kitteh...). But I haven't even looked at the 51 point talents for paladins or mages... Or rogues or priests... Gah...
8) Swipe hits an unlimited number of targets. That should be great for holding threat on big pulls... Hello non-elite 8 pulls in Karazhan that kill the mage every time (... that I don't bring my paladin).
9) MASSIVE changes to the paladin seal/judgement/blessing system. I haven't even thought about that one.

There are many, many more changes. Too many to list here. I'm getting a headache just thinking about it. Plus I'm having a little angst. What if Hiahotah suddenly becomes... Less overpowered as a tank. People are counting on me to start tanking things again. What if I start letting them down? What if I stumble with the new talents for the next few days?

And I'm trapped here at work... Not that I could log on yet but... I'm trying to concentrate on remapping user printers to the new print cluster when my head is swimming with new information. I'm nervous and excited at the same time...

At least the patch is installed and ready to go. 2.5 hours to go...

Know your enemy: rogue II

2008-10-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

Ugh... Just... Ugh.

I went through all the trouble of posting how to shred a rogue as a feral druid and... Ugh. Now I certainly don't expect _anyone_ to read this... But... COME ON!!! I mean... REALLY!!!

Which is to say... So there I was - just minding my own business doing the "Now that we're friends" quest in Zangarmarsh on a level 62 Alliance rogue. I was at half health and had a level 64 melee naga on me when I got jumped by a level 65 horde druid. It happens, right? It's what they do.

Anyway... Back to the story. He did the pounce, shred stuff that you should do to open and got me down to just a few hundred health before the pounce wore off. I'm a goner... But I have to play it out, right?

So... Just as the stun is wearing off, he pops out of cat form and moonfires me.... Moonfire? Seriously? Of all the tools in your arsenal, that's the one you choose? Great googly moogly that was stupid. I managed to gouge him (I appeared to have finished off the mob AND looted it) and sprint off.

Now it's possible that this is my fault for not mentioning this, but rogues get tons of health potions from pickpocketing. They pop them like candy. So that's what I did. Now I've got enough health to ride out the moonfire and as soon as it ended, I stealthed... Not even vanish... Stealth. I was out of combat, after all... And I took a hard right and watch that rimnod run right on by.

SHAME!!! SHAME SHAME SHAME!!! You have embarassed everyone who ever played a druid. The single most important thing you can do to a rogue - particularly before 66 when they get cloak of skill - is hit them with FAERIE FIRE!!! God damn it... Do I have to tell you EVERYTHING???!?!?!? TWICE??!?!?!?

Faerie Fire, feral or normal (and he went to caster form to moonfire me so... that was an option), lowers armor AND PREVENTS THE VICTIM FROM STEALTHING. So here's how that _should_ have gone:

1) You pounce and shred. Good. Excellent. Maybe throw in a rake for the extra DoT, but on the whole, a solid opener.
2) You hit me with faerie fire.
3) I gouge you and sprint away.
4) Gouge wears off and you dash after me. After dash wears off, you go into cheetah form and close the remaining distance - particularly if I stop to mount up.
5) Win.

But no... Moonfire. /cry

Sweet Dreams

2008-10-10T05:55:00.001-07:00

So... Here's the thing... I was playing my Alliance paladin the other day and he got a lockbox as a drop. Normally, that's not a problem, but this one required 325 lockpicking to open. So I had a choice. I could either start spamming trade chat with "LF rogue with at least 325 lockpicking. Will tip!!" or open it myself. I'd hate to pay some rogue to give me access to something "of the whale" so I opted for opening it myself.

Just one small problem: My rogue was only level 51 and to get 325 lockpicking, you have to be at least level 65... But it's the pre-exansion doldrums so I figured "What the hell?". So I started plowing through the levels. With a 1.5 level rested bonus, decreased level sizes and increased quest XP (and work and sleep), I didn't hit the end of my rested bonus until well into level 60. Somewhere along the line, I picked up the daily battleground quest for AV.

So I tried that a few times at level 59 and 60. It turns out that the Alliance is as bad at level 51-60 AV as they are good at 61-70. Most of it is a lack of participation. So I sat on the quest... And as soon as I got to 61, I was at the battlemaster in Shattrath and joining the queue.

Alterac Valley at level 61 isn't all that much fun - even as a rogue. You're not fooling anyone. They see you coming a mile away even when you're stealthed. Unless...

They're distracted by something else. So after one of my frequent deaths (if I can get off a cheap shot, before I'm killed, it was a good run), I rezzed back at the Stormpike Aid Station. Deadly Boss Mods indicated that the South Bunker would cap in about 2 minutes. So I went there and stealthed. Tabbing around, I targeted a level 70 rogue at 37% health. He was targeting a level 70 warrior so I walked to the upper level and looked for him. I got him with a Cheap Shot and then a backstab. He died shortly thereafter (I assume the warrior caught up to him) and we re-took the bunker.

Afterward, the warrior said (something along the lines of): "rogues are such bullshit." and then "no offence" (yes... with a c). I whispered back: "None taken. I hate rogues. I only play mine ironically". It turns out that the rogue had been sapping, stunning, sapping, gouging, blinging, sapping and otherwise stunning the warrior for almost the entire time the south bunker had been "contested".

My point? None really. But last night I had a dream (it's rare that I have WoW dreams. That's why this stuck out) that I came across a rogue who was obviously AFK and thought he was safe because he was stealthed and I ganked him. It was a happy, joyful dream. One I hope to realize (again) some day.

Disjointed

2008-09-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

With the expansion fast approaching, there isn't really much to do progression-wise so I've been taking care of some things I've been working on for a while - most of it on the Alliance side.

I've decided that I want to get one of the Dranei mounts for Gifteye. I don't know why. It just seems fitting. So that means getting to exalted with Exodar. Even with the human 10% bonus, that's proven time consuming - but it was a blast running around the Dranei starting area at level 70. You don't get much for gold for the lowbie quests, but they still give full rep. Next will come a couple thousand turn-ins in AV to make up the remaining 5k or so.

I've gotten both of my Alliance 70's to exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive. Gifteye is exalted with the Scryers. I've been doing some quests that have been in the Alliance toons' logs for well over a year. I've also collected enough gold between them to get one of them an epic flying mount. It would bankrupt me... But I'm thinking about it.

The Brewfest boss has been a pleasant distraction. I've run it 11 times now and it's a good way to kill an hour or two. It's something the guild can do with small numbers and minimal time commitments... Plus it's guaranteed gear that is equivalent to the 41 badge trinkets. I've already picked up a couple of them.

The one thing that I've been doing to help prepare for the expansion, however, is to try to get some legitimate weapons for my paladins. They have decent one handers but the best two hander they have is the axe you can get at revered with SSO. They _can_ kill things... It just takes a while. So I've been PvPing to get the Meciless Gladiator's Greatsword for both of them. That means a lot of time in Alterac Valley...

And maybe it isn't this way on EVERY server but it's like the difference between night and day. On my horde server, the horde wins occasionally but when they do, it's a somewhat protracted affair. They do the same thing every time and they lose and lose and lose. Every rushes to kill Balinda. Someone will tap Stonehearth Bunker and Icewing Bunker and then abandon it to fight for Stormpike Graveyard. Every time they see someone on the road, they stop and fight them. They pull the NPC's by the Aid Station flag EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think someone might have won once with that "strategy" and then told everyone about it so often they horde thinks it's the only way to win. Needless to say, the horde honor grind can be quite frustrating.

The Alliance, on the other hand, is methodical. Brutally efficient. Half the squad goes to kill Galv. A bunch goes ahead and taps towers while a token force stays back to slow the horde down because that's all it takes. When they tap a tower, 3 to 5 people will stay there until it caps. They go back and recap towers the horde has tapped. They skip horde along the way and go straight for the game objectives - usually the Frostwolf Relief Hut. And you can tell that they've thought it through... You want to know how I know that? Because if you cap Frostwolf Graveyard before the Relief Hut, you are called all kinds of names... I mean... Really bad names. It isn't done.

The logic is simple. There are 4 major objectives in the horde base: two towers, a graveyard and Drek. If you cap FWGY before the RH, any horde you kill will respawn back in the base. This means that they can throw themselves at the Alliance in waves. But if you cap the RH first, they spawn... Elsewhere and they have the base to themselves. They thought it through.

Plus there's a whole different attitude. Everyone is pleasant. They say please. They say thank you. No one is yelling at anyone (who doesn't cap FWGY before FWRH, of course). They don't really even give directions or discuss strategy. Everyone knows what the plan is.

And it works... Today I went 18-1. Most of the games were 10-12 minutes and we only got less than 400 bonus honor points twice (a 399 point win and 357 in a loss). The one loss was a protracted affair where they had a lot of people respawning at FWGY and they repeatedly wiped us on Drek. And I think I only had one loss on Saturday - and that was to a premade. We still came up with 252 points and still almost pulled it out.

Not only has it been a fun experience ("I love winning. It's, like, better than losing." - Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh) but I think I've gotten a little better at tanking as a paladin. My Alliance paladin doesn't have anywhere near the gear that my horde paladin does so I have to really push my abilities to generate threat and to stay alive.

When I tank for my horde guild, I generally open with Seal of the Crusader and built additional threat that way. But in the battlegrounds, people don't necessarily wait. They just open with their biggest nuke so I have to have a big threat lead to maintain aggro. That means loading up Seal of Righteousness, popping my wings, throw Avenging Shield and then judge Righteousness on my way in and then drop a consecrate at the back. That usually allows me to keep the boss on me for the duration of the fight. But I have to keep an eye on my holy shield to compensate for my gear... But I have to keep consecrate up and keep judging righteousness to keep threat... It's a lot of work.

At about 500 honor points per game, I'm just 8 or 9 games away from a new toy. Here's hoping the horde doesn't think it through in the next 18 hours... What am I saying? Of course they won't... Sometimes I'm not sure if they can.

The Obligatory "The Expansion is Coming" Post

2008-09-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

Blizzard recently announced that the Wrath of the Lich King will be released on 11/13/2008. There's a lot to look forward to including but not limited to: Death Knights and a new profession, Inscription.

Inscription will allow you to modify certain spells and abilities through the use of Glyphs. One of the first ones that was announced was the Glyph of the White Bear. This glyph changes your bear form to that of a polar bear.

Whoopie.

Yes. I've been staring at the unpleasant end of a bear for the better part of the last year and a half... With some off and on time before that. But one of the big complaints about druids is that... There's no variation between forms. Some of us have worked very hard to improve our gear or to grind rep and there's no way of showing that. Every single bear looks like every other bear. Alliance. horde. Doesn't matter. My level 58 female night elf druid in blues in greens looks just like my level 70 tauren druid in Arena and badge reward epics.

But now we have the option to get Glyph of the White Bear....

Whoopie.

Now there will be exactly two types of bears running around. Granted, it's a 100% increase over the previous two and a half years that I've been playing but... There are millions of druids out there.

I'm not (necessarily) advocating that Blizzard find a way of displaying gear when druids are in forms. That would be a tremendously difficult task... But I remember back in the day when my Alliance mage was walking around in 7/8 Tier 2. You KNEW where he'd been. You KNEW how much work he'd done. And, if you were a warrior, you KNEW you should start running now (or should have... Some of them _still_ got out their epeens and gave it a shot).

Not so with my druid. He's a fierce tank. He's done some crazy, crazy, impossible things. But he's also done some really, really tedious things. I single pulled mobs in Steam Vault for about 6 hours to get to exalted with Cenarion Expedition to get my Earthwarden. I wear their tabard with pride. It says: "Yeah... I've done the work. If you have me as your tank, you know I'll have one of the top mitigation/threat generation weapons in the game."

But you don't know that most of the time. All you see is bear. And maybe you don't remember that when things go wrong. Maybe you forget that I've got the gear and that you should just take a deep breath because as long as I've got a healer (and sometimes if I don't) we'll get through this.

And to top it all off? They're also introducing barbershops... So that every other character can change their appearance. Sure... I've got a female rogue who has a nose ring I'd like to lose. But I never play her. I only rolled her because I was having such a hard time with them on my mage so I wanted to see what rogues could do. Well, that and open lockboxes... But I'm going to be doing instances again and I'm the tank. I'll be back to the same form I've had for years... Or maybe a polar bear.

Whoopie.

So here's what _I_ would like to see. That mark on the shoulder of bear form... How about that changes to whatever is on the tabard you had equipped when you went into bear form. So... When I'm tanking, maybe you'd see something like this:

It's a simple thing and it would allow druids some more choices for customization beyond brown or white. I'm just sayin'.

You _can_ go back again... But not for long

2008-09-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

In 1999, I made a trip to Detroit to see Tiger Stadium before it was gone. I've never been a Tigers fan, nor have I ever really liked the pictures of the stadium but it had been around since 1912 and was a big part of baseball history. So I dragged two friends through Canada (the fastest way to get to Detroit from Vermont) and in 42 hours, we drove to Detroit, had some car trouble in Toronto rush hour traffic, stopped by Niagara Falls, caught a ball game from the right field porch and returned home.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not equating a World of Warcraft instance that, admittedly, few people ever saw, but the feelings I have about Naxxramas are similar. I only went there maybe 8 times pre-BC and we only ever downed 2 bosses but I have vivid memories of it. I remember grinding Argent Dawn rep for hours... There are a handful of mobs in the Eastern Plaguelands that give rep even at honored. I killed them by the hundreds. I bought my arcane crystals as soon as I learned that we were going to go to Naxxramas because I knew that 40-50 people trying to buy them at once would really drive up the price. When we finally got 40 people attuned, we went in and we wiped on Anub'Rekhan for hours. Three of them on a Sunday afternoon. We never got him past 55%.

But we kept plugging and plugging. We got the locust swarm transition down. We downed the adds faster. We learned the range of the spikes (it turns out that a fire mage can just stand there and not worry about the spikes... Max range is one yard outside their range). When someone died, we dropped everything to down the little scarabs. And then one week, we downed him. It probably took us 8 hours over 4 nights for our first kill. Then we moved on to the Instructor.

He was easier... We downed him in about our 9th attempt. He was easy mode. But I do remember a lot of talk beforehand about getting the priests to the spell hit cap so their mind control wouldn't be resisted. I remember running back and forth around that bannister to get out of line of sight of his shout. That's when things got complicated.

We never downed another boss in Naxxramas. We tried the other two bosses in the Spider wing but we couldn't keep the tank up through the stun on Maexxna and the adds always gave us trouble on Grand Widow Faerlina. So Naxx nights became two sets of trash clears to do the same two bosses over and over followed by repeated wipes on trash and two bosses that had our number and punctuated with a hefty repair bill - and this was before daily quests. If you were in epics, you had to spend a lot of time farming just to raid... And with 3 official and two unofficial raid nights a week, that didn't leave much time. We actually had one person get kicked out of the raid because he couldn't pay the repair bot.

So... On Naxx nights, people stopped showing up. Sure they were on for Blackwing Lair. We had that place on farm. We cleared it in 3 hours every week. They showed up for AQ40 because you were guaranteed a shot at a drop from at least 5 bosses... Then 6. Then 7. People even showed up for Molten Core. Sure it was a lot of alts and people were usually pretty drunk and there were only 33 of us, but we still killed Ragnaros every week. At one point, we had two full MC raids going a week... But Naxx? That died for Crucify.

And that made me sad. The four boss fights I'd seen were the most interesting, most challenging I'd seen save for Twin Emperors and C'thun. I'd always wanted to go back.

But now they're tearing it down....

Well... Not literally... They're repurposing it as the first level 80 raid in Wrath of the Lich King. They're making a 10 man version and a 25 man version and removing the 40 man, level 60 instance. I hear it has the same dimensions but it feels empty with just 10 people there. A lot of the mechanics are similar but it's lost it's epic feel.

That's why I was so pleased when I heard that a horde guild on my server was running Naxxramas every Saturday night... Of course, I wasn't attuned. Hell, none of my characters were even honored. So I took a Friday night and started doing the quests. I got my Barov Peasant Caller. I got my Argent Dawn trinket. I got the key to the city. I got to honored. Then I started running Strat Undead. I found that with some careful stealthing, minimal clearing and a LOT of really good gear, I could solo 45 minute Baron runs. With fragment turn-ins and with me getting all the scourgestones, I got to revered with Argent Dawn by 11 pm that night.... WAY faster than I thought I would. I bought a nexus crystal on the AH and bummed an arcane crystal (I already had one) from a friend I've done some favors for and waited. When the time came, the raid didn't happen. Another guild had poached a few raid members and they didn't have the numbers... That ended up being a really good night because I got my Champion of the Naaru title so it all worked out. That was two weeks ago.

On Friday, WoWinsider.com posted a rundown of the beta version of Naxx-10 and I started thinking about the old 40 man instance again. I went to the realm forums and the same people were hosting another Naxx run. On Saturday, It took me a few whispers but I got an invite. I was still resto from Arenas on Friday night so I went as a healer. We ended up with about 28 people, 4 of whom were at or around level 60.

I'll admit, it's a little less challenging with 24 level 70's but the some of the fights are still very interesting. We were a little light on DPS but we still overpowered the spider wing. We stomped Patchwerk and Grobbulus. We wiped a couple of times on Gluth but we finally figured it out. We didn't have the DPS for Thaddius but it was interesting to see where the mechanic for the first boss in Heroic Mech came from. We downed Razuvius pretty easily - with a player tanking him instead of MC'd adds. But we didn't have enough melee and tanks/healers for Gothik because people had left or gone to bed so we just cleared some trash in the plague wing to complete the first quest and we called it a night at about 1 am.

All told, we killed the two bosses who stopped Crucify cold and three I'd never seen before and I got to see two encouters I'd never seen before. The fights were so much fun. Very different from your typical tank and spank. I'm glad I went and I think I'll be going again... I may even try to recruit a friend.

Know your enemy: rogue

2008-09-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

Alterac Valley weekend just ended and I'm pretty much burnt out. I spent the majority of the day yesterday on my Alliance mage grinding honor (It's crazy how fast the Alliance can get honor in AV) but I did do a few battlegrounds on my druid.

Alterac Valley is a big enough map that even with 40 people on each side, there are still significant opportunities for one on one combat. At one point, I did a few with a guild mate and he came to tower point to find me dueling a warrior and both of us under 1000 health. It was funny really. He was on _his_ druid so he topped me off and I said "I woulda had him".

What he _didn't_ see was the druid I found in cat form at 60% health and the rogue who caught _me_ in cat form before I could finish the other druid off. Both were long dead and the tower had still burned but the warrior and I were still going at it. My friend's druid is getting to be pretty well geared but he still seems to marvel at how easily I handle some classes. He shouldn't. There are some classes that a feral druid can absolutely school. Take, for example, rogues...

Rogues are leather wearing, sneaking around, stabbing you in the back, stun locking, running away if things don't go their way, good for nothing wastes of oxygen who can't heal themselves. I mean that. That said, they also seem to be intended to be chew toys for feral druids...

There are three basic ways an encounter with a rogue will start:

1) They are stealthed and get the jump on you.
2) You are stealthed and get the jump on them.
3) Neither of you are stealthed.

If you get the jump on a rogue, you want to open with a pounce. Not only does this give you a chance to front-load some damage, it puts a bleed on the rogue and bleeds will, eventually, pull a vanished rogue out of stealth and cannot be removed by Cloak of Skill. Furthermore, bleeds still do damage during Evasion. Then I like to follow with a rake and a rip (even if it's only a 2 combo point rip) and then drop into bear form before Pounce wears off. 'Tis better to leave combo points on a rogue than to be stunlocked in cat form.

For scenarios 1 and 3, you want to get into bear form as soon as possible... OK. Maybe you don't... But I do. You see... rogues are a crit happy, melee damage class. Bears are designed to soak up crits and melee damage with insanely high armor.

If you get caught in cat or caster form, you want to hit Barkskin. You can cast it while stunned or feared and it will help you ride out the initial stun and mash your "Rawr bear!!" button repeatedly.

Once I'm in bear form, I like to open with Feral Faerie Fire. Not only does it reduce their armor, but prevents them from going into stealth - and that's a major objective because rogues have a number of very annoying abilities while stealth. Vanishing during a fight is a large portion of a really good stunlock. As an added bonus, FFF will frequently get a rogue to burn cloak of skill.

After FFF, I like to use Mangle to do a mess of damage and to increase bleed damage and then Demoralizing Roar. Not because it does much but because it's annoying... And if I'm at half health or more and the rogue doesn't have any friends, I'm going to win... It's just going to take some time. I'm going to use this time to annoy the rogue.

At this point, you're just tanking the mob... I mean rogue... So next come the lacerates. I like to do two or three and then mangle again and hit FFF every now and then just to make sure it doesn't run out. If there's an enemy healer nearby who might help the rogue out... Pull the mob... I mean rogue... Around a corner or a long way away from the healer. You're going to want privacy for this...

If the rogue tries to run away, I'll Feral Charge them to catch up to them and root them. Maybe bash them if it's up and cyclone them during the bash. That should eat up most of the duration of the sprint. Or... If I know dash is up, I'll go cat form and use that - if we're outside, I'll catch up to him eventually... Or... If they're low on health, I'll moonfire spam the runners.

If things aren't going my way... There's Frenzied Regeneration. If I know I'm going to be using that soon, I'll stop using special attacks to to build up some rage and make sure I get the full benefit. I've got macros that allow me to cancel form, pop a health potion and a charged crystal focus and then drop back into bear form. It's instant cast - you just have to make sure that your global cooldown is up or you'll get caught in caster form. And then there's the classic bash and heal. You might, say, Bash and hit rejuvenation, Lifebloom and then drop into bear form. For extra style points, move away from the rogue while you're doing this. It will take them a couple of seconds to catch back up, giving your HoTs a chance to kick in.

Why does this work? Well... Feral Faerie Fire removes a lot of a rogues most damaging abilities and bleeds draw them out of stealth if they get out of FFF. Bear form increases your armor by 400% (~440% for a properly specced tanking druid) and PvP armor has insanely high amounts of armor (I use at least 3 pieces for every day tanking because it's so awesome) and the Merciless Gladiator's gear is available to everyone through battleground honor points. In all Merciless gear (with season 3 and 4 PvP gear thrown in), you should be pushing 20k armor - which would absorb 60-65% of melee damage coming in. PvP gear also has crazy amounts of agility which increases your chance to dodge (probably upwards of 25%) and increases your chance to crit... And when you crit, you get 4% of your health back (effect not happening more than once every 6 seconds)... And in bear form, your max health goes up by... My estimates put it at around 63% with the right talents. Which means you're healing for 4% of... A lot. It adds up.

I've used these techniques to solo a cheat death rogue with dual warglaives who got the drop on me _before_ the cheat death nerf. It was close but I think we both knew that he'd need some lucky procs to win... He didn't get them.

So... The next time you "encounter" a rogue, don't panic. Just tank them.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

2008-08-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

I know I talk about PvP a lot, but I'd rather do PvE any day. I've seen all the PvE maps. There are only so many flags you can capture (by my estimates, I've capped the flag over 300 times in WSG on various characters). I've been working on the tier 4 title line. As of last night, I still had down Magtheridon and to run Heroic Slave Pens to turn in the quest to kill Nightbane and Gruul.

I'd spent a large portion of Friday night trying to get to revered with Argent Dawn (it turns out that I can solo a 45 minute Baron run because I can stealth large portions of it) so I could get a cheaper attunement for Naxxramas because I'd seen a PuG run advertised on the forums. The raid starting time came and went and none of the three toons who were the post said to contact were on at the time. So I decided to do my own thing. And... Wonder of wonders... Slave Pens was the daily heroic.

There were two groups looking for a tank and one of them had already downed the first boss. I looked up the person who was asking in the armory. He was a holy priest with 1900 healing. With my tanking stats, his healing and the relative easiness of the instance AND the fact that they'd already done one of the bosses promised a really quick run. So I whispered the priest and away we went.

I nubbed up one pull and I tried to pick up the sheep target (although some might argue that a good mage would never let a sheep break in the first place - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep) when it got loose and hit it again after the mage had resheeped it. It was a MCing mob and I ended up killing the mage. We also had another wipe near the end but they were pretty easy going about it because their previous tank was really, really bad. But I did get to turn in my quest. Not only did I complete the quest but I picked up 4 quick badges and got two bag slots back. On the whole, it was a good night.

About 10 minutes after that instance was over, I got a tell from one of the leaders of Band of the Hawks asking me if I wanted to tank Mag. It's like he'd been watching over my shoulder. Hell yeah I did!!!

I've done one other Magtheridon PuG and it fell apart after about 3 attempts. I'll never understand who people can give up on a PuG raid after one attempt. It's a PuG people!!! Most of these people will never have seen the fights before. We're going to wipe a time or two... And these petulent people don't have the decency to leave the raid. Instead, they mysteriously disconnect immediately after the first wipe while everyone else is running back. I'll never understand that... But I digress... My point was that I'd never completed Magtheridon's Lair and now I was being asked to main tank it.

I also convinced his holiness, Pater, to join us as one of the five healers. He ended up dying on the first two trash pulls. Whoops... Good thing there are only 4 pulls total.

The first attempt was a pretty quick wipe while the clickers got things figured out. Then we had a good attempt. Then a huntard pulled early on the third attempt... That one ended pretty quickly... Although we did down the adds and get Mag to about 80%. We were having a little trouble timing the clicking of the cubes because Deadly Boss Mods seems to be a little off so a decision was made to pretty much eat the first blast wave to make sure we interrupt the majority of them.

By now it's getting close to midnight. Two people (which was strangely low... weird... No one was bailing on a PuG...) had to leave - including the person who formed the raid originally... An off tank who didn't have vent. We replaced them and made another attempt. By now we had 6 paladins... 3 tanks and 3 healers... I'm serious. We had EVERY pally buff.

I was tanking the third add and the boss. On the fourth attempt, a hunter died during the first two adds. After my add went down, I had a couple of seconds between my add going down and Magtheridon releasing so I battle rezzed the hunter. Normally, I wouldn't rez a non-tank/non-healer but I was the only druid and I was the main tank so I wouldn't have a chance to use it later.

This time felt different. The clicking was going well. Yeah... We took one blast wave but _only_ one. It was going well... But at 60% one of the clickers - a paladin healer - went down. But we communicated it and someone else took over their cube. We got to the cave-ins at 30%. The raid was weakened. A couple of people died. We lost Pater and another clicker. But we adjusted...

At about 8% everyone was OOM. There were no heals to be had and our casters weren't doing any damage any more. I got down to 4k health... It was looking bad. I've used my frenzied regeneration and my potion macro - so I had about 20 seconds left before I could use it again.

And then... Miracle! I got hit with a 15056 heal. A paladin hit me with a clutch lay on hands... Probably a tank from the size of it. We're back in it!!! Then another lay on hands... And another!!! We had 6 paladins in the raid and 5 were still up and they were chaining their one hour cooldown, instant cast, drains all their mana heals to get this done... 3%... Healers are regenerating a little mana. Heals are trickling in. 1%... Come on... Come on...

And... Finally... He was down. At the end, only about 14 people were still standing. I was below 30% health (that's still 6k with raid buffs though). All of the healers were under 500 mana. It was an absolutely epic fight. I'm sure that it was a first kill for 20 people in the raid so to have _that_ fight being your first... That's a fun memory. People were very excited.

We rezzed the dead (including Pater twice... Who managed to stand in a fire after he was rezzed). Loot was given out. Pater even got the 20 slot bag. He seemed happy. But not happy as I was...

I first went into Karazhan in October of last year... And that was on my paladin. Hiahotah didn't go into Karazhan until Arena season 3 started (because our then main tank repecced Boomkin) so I had to take over tanking... Which, incidentally, was when we really started having success in Karazhan...

But to get into Karazhan, we had to run Shadow Lab, Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Black Morass. It took us months to get to a point where we could down Shade of Aran and loot his book so we could move on in the quest line to get the urn to summon Nightbane. We did a heroic Shattered Halls without a paladin tank, without any CC and a paladin who had 27 point in prot healing because that was who was on. Then we did heroic Sethekk for someone's epic flight form quest. I'd already done mine, but I tanked it so I could do this quest and be able to summon Nightbane.

Then came the PuGs... Somewhere along the line - maybe in August of last year, I'd done the Cipher of Damnation quest line - including the 5 man group quest at the end - which unlocked the heroic dungeon "Trial of the Naaru" quest lines. We'd done Shattered Halls as a guild but that still left Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth.

We tried heroic Steam Vault one day but couldn't finish because we had two healers and couldn't down the tanks on the last boss fast enough. I ended up helping a PuG once for that one. They skipped a lot of mobs by going along the right wall of the first area... But that led to a few wipes because you had to be careful about where you fought and where you got feared.

I did a PuG heroic Arcatraz. I remember that one going pretty well. For Shadow Lab, there was one day when a group was looking for a tank for one of the heroic Tempest Keep instances. But I only had Shadow Lab left for the Trial of the Naaru lines... They wanted to do a heroic and there were no other tanks on so they agreed to do Shadow Labyrinth. We wiped quite a bit to start. People went AFK for 5-10 minutes at a time. But... People stuck around and we found a rhythm. The priest didn't quite get that he had to be in the circle for the Murmur fight on heroic. So we wiped a couple of times. We actually got lucky and downed him on the second attempt - even though the priest hadn't learned.

All of this... Plus countless hours to get gear (including about 8 hours single pulling Mobs in Steam Vault to get my Earthwarden)... Numerous runs through Karazhan for badges... Culminated in this:

Hiahotah, Champion of the Naaru... I haven't been this excited about a title since Gifteye got to Lt. Commander. I've been pecking away at this for a year now. I've endured horrible, horrible PuGs (I've also met a few people who aren't horrible). Yeah... They nerfed Magtheridon... But I'm still ecstatic. Hell... I'm writing about it on a Sunday morning instead of doing dailies.

Plus... Now I don't feel like I should go for the "exalted with all battleground factions" title... At least... Not with Hiahotah...

Tarren Mill

2008-08-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'd played almost exclusively Alliance until my guild broke up 2 months into Burning Crusade. I'd gotten a taste for doing instances and raiding so I wasn't going to go back to just doing the solo content and PvP by myself (I was as surprised as anyone to find out how social a game World of Warcraft is. It's not nearly as sad as I thought it would be) but I didn't want to start over with a new guild or PuG instances. I decided to pick up my horde character and level him to 70 so I could play with people I knew.

That was a year and a half ago. From time to time, people in my horde guild complained about the mean old Alliance who ganked them once or twice. I suggested in no uncertain terms that they level an Alliance toon to max level on a PvP server and get back to me. Oh man... Did that ever start a flame war... And the lynchpin of their argument was ALWAYS Tarren Mill. Tarren Mill this. Tarren Mill that. I would tell them that if they didn't like it, they could go somewhere else. Hell... There were still active quest I could pick up in the Barrens (horde territory) when I ran through there at 29. There were level 28 mobs there. If you didn't want to be ganked, you could go all the way to 30-31 without leaving a safe zone or going into an instance. It might take a little longer because you'd be grinding mobs instead of questing but it could be done.

It's not quite that simple on the Alliance side. The highest level mob I can think of in an Alliance territory is at most a level 18 or 19. There might be the odd level 20 or 21 out there but, for the most part, once you hit your 20's, you're out in contested territory. The first time I was ganked was at level 19 in Redridge Mountains. A level 20 rogue was patroling the road out of town to the south... Just camping lowbies and getting his jollies out. He was there for hours until a bunch of people banded together and started camping him.

That, at least, was plausible. However, it was not uncommon to see a raid of 6 or 7 level 60's one shotting lowbies from the roof of the inn there. And then there were the near daily raids on Darkshire - also frequently with people ganking lowbies from a roof. And the roving gank squads in Stranglethorn Vale (which I came to call Ganklethorn). Raids on Southshore. About 2 out of every 5 horde I saw jumped me all the way up to 60. The Netherwind Regalia was, at the time, the WoW equivalent of red markings on a snake... But even then, I still got jumped from time to time. Mostly I blinked or sheeped and ran away (a skill that came in very handy in Warsong Gulch) but after I started getting crazy gear I got a little bolder.

Don't get me wrong, the Alliance was guilty of this to a certain extent (hell... I have over 21k HKs on my Alliance mage and a good solid 300-500 of those came outside of battlegrounds (what can I say... Crucify would sometimes delay raids if there were horde between Cenarion Hold and Ahn'Qiraj)) but it never seemed like it was as mean or as organized. It _seems_ (and this may not be the case, but that's certainly how it appears) that the horde attracts a certain type who identifies with the evil/darker side and they take it seriously. When I started making my first passes through Ganklethorn on the horde side, you'd see it in general chat: "Let's kill/rape/murder these fuckers/assholes/pussies" (Hell... People in my guild have said as much in guild chat) or "Let's form a raid on Darkshire" were things you'd see almost daily. People frequently come into a zone and ask in general "Any Alliance around?".... OK... Not 'Alliance'. They call them 'allies'. It seems derogative when they say it. These were things I've never seen once on the Alliance side. Maybe it's the culture of the servers I'm on and a sample size of two isn't large enough but the general rule is: That nice Alliance character is going to leave you alone or even help you if you get in trouble. That horde is going to kill you as soon as you pull more than one mob or you let your health or mana drop below 50%. Count on it.

I've actually bailed a horde who made an ugly three pull out and gotten myself in trouble and had them kill me because I was vulnerable.

Over the last year and a half, I've leveled 3 toons to 70 and one to 50. The level 50 has been ganked a total of maybe 5 times. These four characters (including a mage) have been attacked fewer times total than my Alliance mage was ganked sucessfully in just over a year. They've never been camped and they've only run into 4 or 5 raids on horde outposts - most of which were easily broken up by a single feral druid.

With the coming of WotLK, there's no real point on working on my horde 70's. At best, they'll get incremental upgrades for several hours of work. So I've been working on my Alliance mage a little. Mostly grinding his SSO rep to exalted for the neck piece. In three days on Isle of Quel'Danas, I've been ganked 5 or 6 times and people have made another 10 or so attempts. I've been ganked by a warlock, a shadow priest, a rogue and a hunter. I've been camped by a shadow priest and a hunter... Which is one thing... But...

The hunter was a total asshat about it. I mean... You can usually tell from the names. Anyone with blood, death, kill or the like (also anyone with a name that replaces and 'er' with 'a' like 'playa' or 'killa') is going to be an asshat. In this case, the huntard's name was Hulkamania. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that this guy was looking for a fight... But one he already knew the outcome of. So let's run through the sequence:

1) I pull a warlock and his imp right next to the "second" quest hut in IoQD. Huntard shoots me in the back (as is their way) and kills me.
2) I run back to my corpse and wait for the huntard to get bored, mount up and ride away far enough away that I could rez and get back to "relative" safety.
3) I rez. Run to safety. Huntard shoots me and continues doing so as I run around the building.
4) Huntard gets killed by guards.
5) I pick a slightly different location and start to pull again. Huntard comes back and shoots me in the back... Again.
6) But this time I get away... And get back to the guards again.
7) I sit down in the doorway to the second quest hut and eat and drink while surrounded by about 8 guards.
8) Huntard finds me and sits outside the doorway on his mount waiting for me to come out.
9) I sit there.
10) Huntard starts saying something in /say. I assume it's insulting. I assume it's something along the lines of "come out and fight" when he really means "come out and let me shoot you in the back again because you're an undergeared mage and I haven't gotten enough jollies off of you yet".
11) I sit there.
12) Huntard does a /spit
13) I sit there.
14) Huntard says a bunch more things.
15) I sit there.
16) Huntard rides off.
17) Huntard rides back 12 seconds later like, somehow, I was fooled by him riding off.
18) I sit there.

After about 3 more minutes he finally runs off. Time out of my day... Eh... I had left work at 10:30 because I wasn't feeling well, so this was bonus time and there was good stuff on the TV so nothing really. But it was 10 minutes when I wasn't plowing through dailies. So I did the two bombing quests because I'd be safe for a few minutes and he'd have found a new victim.

But it does make me wonder what is wrong with his medula oblongata that he'd spend 10 minutes trying to grief me and then act all mad at _me_ when I wouldn't grant him the satisfaction. Is he a bully? Was he bullied in school so he gets his ya-yas out by picking on people in a digital world? Does he just have a small epeen in real life?

Don't get me wrong... I ganked people before. Those who really deserved it by griefing me (or others) multiple times were camped. There was one time when a hunter ganked my mage a couple of times and when I couldn't find him again, I killed everything that moved in the Arathi Highlands - I'm talking players and, well, pretty much all of Refuge Point (I was pissed... He must have /spit on my corpse. I have no patience for that kind of behavior) in an effort to call him out. But I have never, ever once in my life gotten pissed at someone who had done nothing to me other than deny me a chance to gank them a second time.

But my point... My point... There _was_ a point, right? Oh yeah. Yes. Tarren Mill can be bad. Boo. Hoo. At least the horde can avoid Tarren Mill (or... Just go there on weekend mornings or early in the evening before it gets bad. The Alliance can't avoid... Umm... Pretty much everything. You just have to know that there's an undead rogue, a hunter or a warlock out there somewhere just waiting for you to pull three mobs at half health. So... Stop whining about Tarren Mill until you've seen how the other half lives and can honestly say it's not ten times worse. Seriously... I'll wait.

Level 1 N00b

2008-08-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

The first... The absolute very first character I ever rolled on the day I installed the game over two and a half years ago was a troll hunter. I don't remember what server it was on or what his name was but I have a distinct recollection of shooting stuff with a bow. I had no idea about mob levels were. I had no idea that the mob text color was significant. I had no idea about being PvP flagged. I was a level 1 n00b.

I did a few quests with him and started poking around and I could kill pretty much everything. I still wasn't quite sure what was going on. Sometimes I could shoot stuff with my bow and sometimes I couldn't. But I was getting along.

One of the quests sent me to the southern end of starting troll/orc zone. I found something called "The Hidden Path". Which took me out over a bay... With a boat. I don't know if I fell in or climbed down but I found myself swimming along the bottom and investigating a sunken boat. And then there was a dock. There was some stuff that I could shoot so I shot it and boy howdy did it kill me. Again and again. I finally couldn't even move out of the water. I got so frustrated I just deleted the character (that and I didn't really like the play style and I didn't like the starting area one bit. It was sandy and boring).

Last night I had to turn in a quest in the second quest hub and I thought about that character. I explored a little and found the Hidden Path and looked out over the ocean on the other side. It turns out that area I had found was Booty Bay. I'd probably been shooting the neutral dock guards.

I've done a lot of things in this game: I've leveled 5 characters to 70, raided Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, Naxx, Karazhan, Gruul's Lair and dipped my foot into Zul'Aman, I got to rank 10 in the old PvP ranking system AND held down a full time job AND trained for triathlon. I've tanked. I've healed. I've done ranged damage. There hasn't been a calendar day in the last 2.5 years that I haven't logged on for at least 5 minutes... But I almost packed it away on that first day because it was too confusing.

But here's the thing... That wasn't the last time I felt like a complete and total noob. I didn't use fireblast until I was about level 37 because it did less damage than other fire spells I had. Then I was questing with another mage and he was walloping the mobs with "something" but I couldn't see him casting it. That was the day I learned about instant cast spells. Then there was the time I fell for a hunter's feign death. It wasn't the last time but none of the times since have been even close to how noobish I felt when I thought I'd killed him and he shot me in the back when I engaged another mob. And then one day, I found the auction house... This list of noobish things I've done goes on and on and on.

Fast forward to... This morning and I was going to cook some fish on the bonfire by the Consortium guys who give out the daily dungeon quests. I have been holding onto a heroic quest so I went to check what the daily quest was... The daily quest was for Arcatraz to kill some of the Sentinels... Now I pass those guys a few times a day and I had never noticed that not only do the images in the projectors next to the quest givers change - but they change to the quest mobs they want you to go after.

N00b.

The Axis of Asshattery

2008-08-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

In WoW, there are certain classes (and one spec) that seem to lend themselves to asshattery and/or their abilities and playstyles attract asshats - particularly on PvP servers. I call it the Axis of Asshattery. Now don't get me wrong... I can be an asshat myself (it takes one to know one) but I'm usually not mean about it. I'll give you a little "How do you do" gank if I see someone whose name, guild name, race or class bothers me but I'll leave you alone if you don't seem like you're likely to bother someone when you get to 70. Classes near the top of the Axis, however, tend to take things to the extreme. Take our A number 1 asshats of all time...

1) rogues: The granddaddies of all that is asshat. With the ability to stealth and talents/abilities like Cheap Shot, Backstab, Malice, Remorseless Attacks, Dirty Tricks, Ambush, Dirty Deeds, etc. and the 45 abilities they have to allow them to attack you but you can't fight back (not to mention the various abilities to slink away when a fight isn't going their way - Evasion, Blind, Sprint, Vanish, Cheat Death) the rogue class seems to have been designed to appeal to the maladjusted and built for griefing. To this day, I still cringe when I hear the stealthing noise. After my mage started getting PvE epics, he started killing every single horde rogue he saw - no matter what level they were and what they were doing. They ate a pyroblast. And back then, it seemed like 95% of rogues were undead - so a LOT of undead ate it because they were guilty by association. I even rolled a rogue and ran her up to 51 just to see what rogues had in their arsenal and what I could do to combat them.

On the Asshat scale, they score a perfect 13 out of 13. The only good rogue is a dead rogue. I loathe them so much I can't bring myself to type the word with an uppercase R... Even if it starts a sentence. When I speak the word, you can feel the distaste. It is my firm belief that every single person who has played a rogue to max level was beaten as a child... And they probably had it coming.

2) Warlocks: Between the 17 fears they have and DoTs and pets and the dark, evil gear... Warlocks seem to bring out the asshats as well. While they don't have the myriad evasive abilities of rogue, they do have capability to fight you when you are not able to fight back... Or they can hit you with DoTs and run away - killing you without you being able to do anything about it. I have a twink warlock and I have a macro that cycles through three different DoTs with each push. Target someone. Push the button three times. Target someone else. Repeat. (The difference being that I only do that in the battlegrounds where people _know_ they're about to PvP.) Plus they have a pet to augment their damage or keep you from getting out of combat while they attack someone else.

Asshat Scale rating: 10 out of 13.

3) Shadow Priests: Feel the power of the dark side. I don't know that there's anything in particular about the abilities of a shadow priest that promotes asshattery, but... I've seen a lot of asshat shadow priests. Maybe it's the ability to silence and fear. Maybe it's word 'shadow' that denotes evil.

Asshat scale rating: 9 of 13

4) Huntards: Shoot you in the back and run away. Drag you though those annoying slowing traps while they plunk away... And those godawful flips that the night elves do. Apparently you can't fire a gun or a bow without jumping. And then when they get in trouble, they feign death so you have to stop and retarget them. Not to mention their pets (I may talk about this at length later but there is never a time when it isn't funny to sheep or hibernate a hunter's pet) - a second source of DPS and all around nuisance.

Asshat scale rating: 8.5 of 13

5) Warritards: Maybe it's just me, but the warrior class seems to attract unthinking brutes. I'm not saying they all are... But of the unthinking brutes that I know who play the game, their main is a warriror. Let me put it another way... My female blood elf mage once taunted a warrior in Shadowmoon Valley (who was being camped by a gnome mage at the time) by saying "I am a warrior. I will smash you with my giant epeen. Do you see how large my epeen is? Look at my glorious epeen!!!". I guess I'm implying that maybe some of them have inadequecy issues. I've been lucky in that my three favorite classes can handle most warriors pretty easily. Doesn't stop them from trying though... Like the time when my aforementioned mage sheep-kited a level 70 warrior a third of the way across Hellfire Peninsula to the safety of Thrallmar. He kept coming... And was killed by the guards.

Asshat scale rating: 8 of 13

6) Shaman: Mostly harmless now... But back in the day I used to get really excited when I killed a shaman in a battleground. They were mean. Most of their score is from Pre-BC. But they can still do a lot of damage while still being mobile... And those grounding and earthbind totems... Grrr.

Asshat scale rating: 6 of 13

7) Mages: Don't get me wrong, I love mages. I have two level 70 mages and raided up to Naxx on one but... They're cloth wearing wimps who have to stand still to really hurt you. You have to pick and choose your fights. But a well timed pyroblast to a rogue who's fighting three mobs? Good stuff. Or sheeping a hunter's pet when the pet is tanking an elite. That's just good clean fun. But on the whole, mages have to be careful - even with warriors now.

Asshat scale rating: 4 of 13

8) Druids: Druids are earth mother loving sweethearts. Seriously. We are. Just ask us. We'll tell you. But they can stealth and a feral druid with good gear can hurt you. As can a boomkin. Resto druids can... Umm.. Heal themselves until you die of boredom. But on the whole, they (we) aren't going to start anything with you... Plus, we're likely to run away.

Asshat scale rating: 3 of 13

9) Non-shadow Priests: Squishy, meek healers... They tend to be polite and not start anything unless they have a rogue or warrior with them. Hell... They'd probably hold the door open if you had your hands full. But they do have a fear...

Asshat scale rating: 1.5 of 13

10) Paladins: Defenders of the light. Many of them take that seriously. Even I behave differently when I'm on my paladin. I help old ladies across streets. I get kittens down from trees. I heal mages who made a bad pull and send them on their way with a friendly blessing of wisdom. Two of the three paladin specs aren't ever going to kill anything (except rogues and warriors). And so even if you do start to fight them, they'll probably just bubble and hearth... And get their druid... I'm just sayin'...

Asshat scale rating: 0.5 of 13

Which brings me back to yesterday... So there I was just minding my own business and questing on my (shadow) priest in Tanaris. I was working on the four quests in the pirate cove when some shouts went up in general chat about an Alliance rogue and warlock ganking people there and had been doing so for an hour. "Maybe the won't bother me" I thought. "Live and let live. Not my problem." I said... Until the warlock hit me with two DoTs while I was riding away from him and killed me.

Oh... It is ON!!!

I logged out immediately (OK... Not immediately... That 20 seconds is agonizing when I need to improve someone's socialization skills) and logged onto Hiahotah. Checked in at the bank to pick up my PvP set and went off to the World's End Tavern... Man... That teleport to the Caverns of Time sure is handy.

When I got there, the rogue and warlock were dispatching a level 70 rogue who showed up to help. I got a pounce, rake, mangle and a 5 point Rip off on the warlock before he realized what was happening and feared me. Didn't matter... He was dead already. Then I moved onto the rogue... Who I fought in cat form until he realized what was killing him. Then I just switched to bear form and tanked him. Rawr. Dead. It was over in less than 20 seconds.

Now normally, I don't corpse camp people. But not only were these guys ganking people AND being mean about it... They were also representing spots 1 and 2 in the Axis of Asshattery. So the 70 horde rogue and I camped them... And killed them 4 more times each. In the interim, all of the lowbies finished up their quests and left the area... As did the 70 horde rogue. But I wasn't _quite_ finished with them. I hadn't gotten my chance to quest and I wanted to show them that they didn't want to be there any more.

So I stealthed on top of that hill just to the left of the entrance to the shipyard. You know the one... Which, coincidentally (or not... Maybe they could see me while they were dead), was where they rezzed. The rogue stunned me before I got him and the warlock got off a fear. It was not my finest moment. But I'm a _good_ druid. You see... I always know where the water is.

I left them with some wounds to worry about and made for the ocean. Dropped a couple of HoTs on myself and removed Curse of Agony on my way in. I dropped below 500 health at one point before the HoTs kicked in. Once I hit the water, I hit Aquatic form and went for deep water on the other side of the boats. Every time rejuvenation wore off, I'd refresh it and hit swim form again... And the warlock kept coming. After I got to 5k health I hit one more rejuvenation and a lifebloom, dropped into cat form and stealthed. CRAZY IVAN!!!

The warlock started swimming away backward... Which is about the same speed I swam forward while stealthed. He clearly hadn't bandaged or eaten so he was still low on health from rezzing and the earlier portion of this round. It wasn't until he stopped to summon a pet that I caught up to him. Splat. Of course, his rogue buddy was lurking around and he started beating on me. His stun broke and I got into bear form... Game over.

I swam back to shore. Topped myself off stealthed near my priest's body and went to make dinner. I'd proved my point (Which was twofold: 1) no matter how well geared you are, there's always someone who can kick your ass and 2) don't mess with the alts of people who have mains who can stealth) and all the lowbies had left. I figured they'd look for me for a couple of minutes and leave because their fun was over. And sure enough... When I came back a half hour later, I had the place to myself. Plus I had 12 more HK's, 200+ honor points and a smug smile on my face because the Axis of Asshattery had been taken down a notch.

Double Take

2008-08-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

So... There I was just minding my own business (Seriously... I wonder how many of my stories start that way) reading some of my favorite blogs when I should have been working when I got around to Resto 4 Life. Now I'm not in love with being a tree druid... Don't get me wrong, it can be awesome to go into a battleground and keep 20 people alive for what seems like days but is more likely just long enough to take Stormpike Graveyard or to pump out so many HoTs in Karazhan that the other healers aren't left with much to do - and still have mana left over... But... Give me fur any day. That doesn't stop me from enjoying her blog. It helps me keep in touch with my leafy side.

So I was stunned when the phrase "Unpack Your Adjectives" caught my eye... Under the Recent Additions. I know from following her blog that the Recent Additions have been recently added to her blogroll. I don't know exactly how she found my ramblings (but as a systems adminstrator/programmer... I have a good guess. I've also been using this space as a bookmark to the blogs I want to make sure I don't miss a day of) but find them she did... And here's the kicker...

She described my writing style as "wry".

/blush

I should... Umm... You know... Get back to work.

Summer Doldrums

2008-08-12T08:27:00.001-07:00

I've been a little quiet lately - and with reason. There hasn't really been much going on. People in my guild have been on vacation or just haven't been logging on because, what's the point? We're going to have a gear reset in 3 months anyway. I liken it to inflation in that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people believe there will be inflation in the future, they will buy things now. An increase in demand without an increase in supply will drive prices up. Tada!!! Inflation!!! Same thing here. If people don't feel like there will be people signing on, they won't sign on. Which, in turn, leads to other people not signing on and the next thing you know, no one is signing on.

So more often than not lately, I'm the only person in the guild who is logged on. It will be like that for hours. Maybe someone who doesn't generally do instances will log on to play a couple of rounds of Alterac Valley or something but, for the most part, no one. We didn't even have anyone on for Arena night (which I was disappointed about because I just need 50 more points on Kaylee to get that last pice of season 3 gear and she never has to do arenas again).

I haven't felt like doing an instance with other people much lately. The ones I'm interested in require a lot of communication (Karazhan and heroics, for the most part) and... I haven't felt particularly social. I did a couple of Black Morass runs last week to grind some Keepers of Time rep so I can get the teleport on my mage (I gots to be mobile). I did a Karazhan run on my paladin a couple of weeks ago and we cleared everything but Nightbane because nobody could summon him. I brought Hiahotah in because he has the urn. We wiped a couple of times and decided to take a dinner break. A bunch of people didn't come back, so we ended up filling out with three people from my guild who'd never seen Nightbane before. The warrior who was leading the raid had tanked everything else so I let him tank Nightbane. The other three people from my guild died pretty early. I battle rezzed the priest (Pater) so we had 8 people up - 3 healers, 4 DPS (one of them being Hiahotah in his tanking gear... just in case) and a tank. The tank went down just after the last flying phase and took out two more DPSers before I could pick him up. We did the last 24% with two holy priest, a holy paladin, a hunter and a druid tank. The whole thing took 17 minutes. It did, however, demonstrate how incredible a tank Hiahotah is. The healers couldn't keep the warrior up but their mana was actually going up after Hiahotah took over.

But other than that and some 2 manning of Mana Tombs for the +12 stamina to boots enchant... I've been playing solo. But I'm also feeling the malaise that's affecting the rest of the guild. I mean... What's the point of collecting hundreds of badges of justice when I'm going to be replacing all that gear in a few levels anyway. Plus... The rumor is that the gear reset won't be as steep so I may be wearing some of my current gear well into the late 70's - possibly even 80. Well that's no fun. A lot of the thrill of leveling and questing is getting new gear. Gifteye had a lot of that with his tier two gear but still replaced everything by 66. So I'm not overly excited about gearing up for the next few months.

So what does that leave? I mean... There hasn't been a day in the last two and a half years that I haven't found a few minutes to log in - even if it was only to check my mail or the AH. Here are some things I've been working on and some other possible ways to burn three months:

1) I've decided that I want to use the name of one of my bank alts (Zoealleyne) as my Death Knight. So I started liquidating her inventory. It turns out that most of what she was holding was enchanting mats... Mats that were going to have no value in three months so... Why hold them? The first round of auctions netted me 2200 gold... And I don't _need_ gold.

So I decided to give the warlock I've been leveling some better gear. She'd been rocking about 34 spell damage and while I could kill things, it seemed like it should be easier. So I bought her a Staff of Jordan (apparently the official weapon of warlock twinks everywhere) and... Oh!! It's level 35 and I've got some shards lying around. So I put a +40 spell damage enchant on it. Once you start down that path and you still have 1700 bonus gold lying around... Well... I decided to twink her and do some battlegrounds. I still haven't enchanted most of her gear but... Yow. She's fun. She's sitting at 178 shadow damage and consistently tops the damage and healing done meters. Plus, having a single twink can really shift the tide of a fight... Particularly one who can DPS 5 people while she's dead.

2) I'm leveling a shadow priest. The original intent was to level the warlock to catch up to a fried who is at 49 so we can quest together, but the twinking process put a stop to that. So I'm working on my priest. He'd been at level 13 for a while. Last night he got to 30 which means he gets Vampiric Embrace and a mount.

3) Get a Justicar or Conqueror title. This is really tough without being able to turn in marks for rep any more. Gifteye (who already has a rank 10 title) is already exalted with AV and WSG (the tough one by all accounts) so he'd just have to do Arathi Basin... But he's only 1700/12000 to revered with them, so I'd have to grind out over 31k rep on a character I don't play much any more. The alternative would be Hiahotah who is over half way to revered with AB but only 3k/12 to revered with WSG. That would be a lot of WSG. Plus...

4) Hiahotah is very close to the Champion of the Naaru title. He just needs to get into a Magtheridon's Lair raid and he'd be pretty much done - just a quick trip into heroic Slave Pens to turn in another quest and he'd be finished.

So... That's how I'll spend a lot of _my_ time over the next couple of months. Maybe people will start logging on again after school starts up again.

Nostalgia

2008-07-31T19:56:00.001-07:00

I downloaded a mod that lets me cruise the LFG channel without actually being in a queue for a group and I saw something... Interesting. There was someone who was looking for a tank for Ony. Whowhat? Seriously... He was looking for a tank for Onyxia's Lair.

Onyxia's Lair... Man... Takes me back. When I first joined Crucify, one of the conditions was that you had to be attuned for Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Onyxia's Lair. The MC and BWL attunements were pretty simple and the guys I was hanging out with at the time were stumbling through the attunements and I'd actually done those. But Onyxia... Well now... That was something else entirely.

We'd actually done most of the questline but I hadn't done the precursors... In fact, we did the absolutely godawful Jail Break! quest twice (three times if you count the wipe) before I even knew what it was for. So I had to do it again. And soloing those elites in the Burning Steppes was brutal in my PvP blues. It took a few lucky crits to get the black drake down.

Then I did Jail Break! a third time with one of Crucify's officers tanking it on his rogue... I was pretty sick of BRD by the time we were done... Plus that tunnel in Winterspring... Oy. Plus the three runs through UBRS to get the blood. But I got the attunement and in my first real week in the guild, I got an invite to an Onyxia raid. I'd just gotten to rank 10 and got my PvP helm just two days earlier. And in my first Onyxia raid, two of the mage helms dropped... And only two mages didn't have it. So I replaced the helm I had spent 5 hours a day trying to get within two days... Not to mention the only other epic I had was also a head piece. But I wore my Tier 2 helm with pride right up until Burning Crusade. It's still in my bank and I put it on every now and then.

Over the months, we got pretty blase about Onyxia. If we took her out, it was on an off raid night (possibly a ZG or AQ20 night) and we'd do it with alts and newbies and one time we did it with 22 people. But I'll always have fond memories of that place. Like how our guild leader would put all the mages except himself in the even groups and then draw aggro and get himself killed so I'd always whisper the other mages that I was going on the odd side. Or the time when all the mages got themselves killed but me during phase three and we got some whelps.... On the other side. So I blinked through Onyxia and started kiting them. A paladin whispered me that he had me so I just went to town and downed them. I basically saved the raid and got a number of tells along those lines after the fight was over.

We've tried to 4 and 5 man her a few times in my horde guild at level 70 but we didn't have enough ranged DPS to get through phase two. So when I saw the call for a tank for Onyxia... I couldn't resist. On the first attempt, we were wiped out by a deap breath. The second one was a combination of deep breath and whelps. But the third attempt we had the mage lay off on phase one and blow all his cooldowns on phase two and we managed to get through it. On phase three, the warritard two hand tanked her until I finally had to tell him to stop attacking. We finally straightened it out and got her down.

I know she's been soloed but still... It was nice trip down memory lane.

A Little Redemption

2008-07-24T07:22:00.001-07:00

Hiahotah has a few raid quests outstanding (Kill Gruul, run Heroic Arcatraz and Heroic Shadow Labyrinth) so I put myself into LFG for those three instances and did a few rounds of Alterac Valley (man... The horde is hapless sometimes... They have no hap). About half way through the third straight game where the horde didn't even bother slowing the Alliance rush down, I got a tell asking me if I wanted to do Gruul's Lair. Strangely, my +healing was judged to be satisfactory so I was invited.

After about a half hour of trying to get a raid together, they only needed a couple of tanks. I'd rather do new content as ranged DPS or as a healer - it gives me a better idea what is going on. But the last time I tried this, the group wiped because the tanks couldn't take the beating dished out and I kind of wanted this over. I have a longstanding grudge against this instance: It broke up my Alliance guild. We were falling apart and it was thought that if we could pull off a 25 man raid, we'd save the guild. The High King schooled us and within a couple of weeks, the guild was no more. So I whispered the raid leader that I could respec feral if he wanted. When I told him what my bear stats were, he asked me to respec. Everybody loves a tank.

It took another few minutes to get the raid going and I thought it was going to fall apart (and I'd be out the 25 gold for the respec) but they managed to pull it together. While I was waiting, I started putting my feral talents back where they belong... You're home fellas. Hello Feral Faerie Fire, my old friend. Ah... Mangle... I've missed you so. Then I went out and tanked a few mobs because it had been a while. Then I went back and read my tooltips and put the right mangle in my bear form bar.

The first trash pulls were uneventful (and by "uneventful" I mean "a mage got tired of waiting, pulled the first mob, left the raid and logged out just before I zoned in and I was in bear form so I just picked it up"). I was assigned to tank Olm the Summoner with a paladin OT. I could have done without the fears... But I kept him on me most of the time. The group was pretty balanced (and the warrior main tank was, in a word, godly. His healers were complaining because they didn't leave him anything to do and he had more health than I did - only by a couple hundred but it still counts. He and I were a good 3k above everyone else. It was obvious who the main and off tanks were) and we downed him. Take that "boss who broke up Crucify"!!!

There were some issues with the trash pulls on the way to Gruul (namely, a three pull when we weren't expecting any mobs at all) so we had to rebuff before Gruul. I was assigned to OT to eat something they called the Hateful (actually Hurtful) Strikes. Those tickle (I missed being indestructible). We lost a few people early and I saw an angel of failure in there at one point. I found that the middle was a good place to hang out for the shadows so I mashed flying bear when we got knocked in the air and was only close to the main tank. He got to 15 grows and there were only about 13 people still standing and we had him to 7%. We threw everything we had at him. Calls went out to blow all cooldowns (I didn't pop Bearvasion because I didn't think it would help much) and we managed to get him down. I don't think I embarassed myself - I was second on Omen for the majority of the fight (in fact, the raid leader was telling the ranged they could pass me in threat... I don't think he checked to see how much PvP gear I was wearing. I generate a LOT of threat). He dropped a resto druid helm and no one wanted it, so... I took it. I mean... When I _started_ the raid I was resto. It's a minor upgrade for PvE healing so... What the hell, right?

I also got the last item in the attunement quest for SSC - I just have to get back to the questgiver in Heroic Slave Pens to turn it in. LF4M just need heals and 3 DPS and gtg.

Druids Dance with So Little Provocation

2008-07-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago, there was a call out for all druids to come to the Scryer bank and dance. And, as a druid, I can't resist a good bear dance party (It's true. Try it yourself. If you don't have a druid of your own, roll one, get to level 10 and do the bear form quest line. Then go to Stormwind or Orgrimmar, walk up to the first druid you see and /dance. You don't even have to target them... Odds are they'll start dancing with you). I actually had to log off my mage and log onto my druid. I rushed over to to the Scryer bank, dropped into bear form, got in formation and started dancing.

Of course, with any druid activity, there will be a certain number of rogues, warlocks and hunters (who have nothing else to do. They certainly can't get into instance groups... Oh!!! Did I say that?!?!? Yep. Sure did) who ruin the screenshots:

Then some of the trees went to the front to add a little sparkle...

The bank started to get a little crowded with onlookers, so we rolled over to hang out with Alar:

Cheating Death

2008-07-16T12:21:00.001-07:00

Man-oh-mangoberry has there been an uproar about the nerf to Cheat Death yesterday. Most of the people complaining about it acknowledge that it was overpowered but that the nerf went too far. Here's what my Cheat Death experiences were like:

Kaylee (frost mage with Shatter) catches a rogue (at about 1/3 health) in a frost nova and gets off a shatter combo. The frostbolt is completely absorbed. Experience tells me that my frostbolts crit for about 3200 in battlegrounds. Rogue _still_ has 1/3 health. Then my ice lance hits for 200 and frost nova breaks. Then comes a fireblast for 100. Ice lance for 30. Now the rogue is in melee range, pops Cloak of Skill and... Oh... Some healer has noticed that the rogue is low on health. Dead mage. Or...

Same frost nova shatter combo gets the rogue down to 1500 hit points or so but there are no healers so the rogue runs (grrr... Pussies). I follow the rogue spamming ice lance because as soon as Cheat Death wears off, he'll drop. 100 here. 30 there... Then rogue pops sprint and Cloak of Skill. Resist, resist, resist, Out of range. Meanwhile, I've stumbled into the main Alliance force. Dead mage.

And with cheat death, it didn't matter if you had any resilience. Hell, the bigger the crit that would have killed you, the more invulnerable you became. Might as well wear your all DPS all the time PvE gear.

But that has been changed. Now a blow that would kill that rogue drops them to 10% health. Subsequent attacks have their damage reduced by an amount that is dependent on their resilience but not to exceed 90%. To get to 90% it would take (from what I've seen) 442-443 resilience. That's pretty much getting every piece of PvP gear and having it enchanted/gemmed for resilience.

Last night in the one AV I did with Kaylee, I got my shatter combo set up on a low health rogue. Frostbolt takes the rogue down to 10% health (yay. A spell actually did something to a rogue) and the followup ice lance did about 800 damage. The fireblast that followed hit for about 600. Dead rogue!!! I'm guessing that rogue had enough resilience to reduce the amount of incoming damage by about 60%. But with the initial blow not being resisted completely and that extra 30% damage, I had a fighting chance.

Yesterday was a very good day to die... For rogues.

My rant on PvP gear.

2008-07-15T07:11:00.001-07:00

One of my blogging heroes - the Big Bear Butt - had a rant about PvP gear a couple of weeks ago and while I don't completely disagree with him, I don't completely agree with him either.

Back in the day, I had an Alliance mage (Gifteye) who I got to Rank 10 for the blue PvP gear so that I wouldn't embarass myself when I went on raids with my new guild. Two days (not kidding, two days) after I got Rank 10, I got a Tier 2 helm from Onyxia. After a while, he started getting more and more and more PvE gear... To the point where I didn't even have any of the PvP gear any more. I'd go into a battleground with 7/8 Tier 2 and blast the horde to hell. One time, I got jumped by a Grand Marshall hunter in the Eastern Plaguelands and completely handed him his hat. Whenever I got jumped by a warrior, I'd school them. Get them down to about 5% health and sheep them until they healed to full (back when sheep didn't break after 10 seconds in PvP) and then polish them off... Just because I could. I'd pick a fight with anyone. I killed every undead of every level I saw. I killed each and every rogue I saw out in the wild. Why? Because I could. My gear was just that good and unless you were raiding, you couldn't compete. To get gear that good, you had to PvP 20 hours a day for months on end and get the High Warlord gear and even then there were probably only 60 or 70 horde with that kind of gear on the server... Hell, even the Grand Marshals in our guild ditched their PvP gear for raiding drops.

I'll say it... It was imbalanced. If I could polymorph you or hit you with a pyroblast-fireblast combo when you weren't expecting it, there was really nothing you could do. On a PvP server, things had to change.

And they did. It started with the release of the GM/HWL gear for honor points just before Burning Crusade. Then with BC came Gladiator gear. The first set was OK (but I missed most of that, I was leveling my horde druid during most of season one) but the second set... That was nice. I had saved some points from the first season (I started playing the last few weeks) and I was just starting to main tank for my guild for 5 mans. When I joined they were stuck on the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. I got a smattering of instance drop blues and some quest rewards and had an OK tanking set. But I'd been using a set of green shoulders that +57 stamina and no other stats for... Ever, basically.

So I spent my first 1400 or so arena points on the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders. After gems, I lost a little stamina, but I gained about 1000 armor (after the dire bear form multiplier), some dodge, crit, threat generation and crit immunity. Plus, I could justify getting one of the good shoulder enchants from the Scryers so I gained a little more crit immunity and even more dodge. Suddenly, I went from being a solid tank to a crit immune, hard to hit, damage mitigating, threat generating machine. Over the last few months, I've replaced every piece of gear two or three times... But not those. I still wear them and they're still awesome.

I ground out arena points for 5-6 weeks to get those. Now you can get them in 3 days of battlegrounds... Two if you happen to catch a couple of rainy days on an Alterac Valley weekend. And that gear is a LOT better than anything you can get out of Karazhan AND it's a lot more predictable. We have someone who has been waiting for the Shard of the Virtuous for months. He could PvP for two weeks and get something even better now. _I_ would prefer to do Karazhan because even though I have a nearly full set of PvP epics for all three of my horde toons, after a while, PvP gets boring. The Alliance zergs the horde base in AV and steamrolls the two mages who stayed back to defend for an instant win time after time after time. The horde taps the farm and then runs to wherever the fighting is and doesn't defend what they've captured in AB. The horde rushes to the middle to grab the flag (and all too frequently fail) while the Alliance sends 6 people to the Fel Reaver Ruins in EotS. Warriors (R 4 fite) running the flag in Warsong run headlong into the Alliance zerg (or run out the tunnel to find them waiting for us or just fight in the middle and don't try to grab their flag or return ours). I'm sick of the battlegrounds.

Here's _my_ problem with the PvP gear being so easily available: I can't get my guild to Karazhan because it's too hard. It's a committment of 3 hours to maybe down 5 bosses in Karazhan and maybe get to roll on something that isn't exactly an upgrade to something they "earned" through PvP or arenas. I have to find a night where 10 people are willing and available. PvP is something they can do on their own time and even 20 minutes a day will get you a noticeable return.

So... I don't have a problem with PvP gear being availble for non-raiders. PvP wouldn't be fun for everyone otherwise. I don't mind the demise of the old honor system with decaying points (I _did_ mind the first day when they opened the Officer's quarters up to everyone and some 12 year old kid playing a druid sat on the one vendor I wanted to buy something from and refused to move until someone asked him to move and said please. I swore at him for 20 minutes. Not kidding) because that was just insane. I'm surprised no one died of malnutrition or exhaustion trying to get to rank 14. What I do mind is that there's no incentive to raid. Hell... Even I really have no incentive to raid on my druid or my mage. They're both geared to the teeth. In fact, the druid has a great tanking set AND a great healing set. There aren't upgrades for either one of them until about Tier 6 and even those are nominal upgrades.

What's REALLY frustrating is that with all of these awesome PvP epics floating around the guild, we could steamroll Karazhan if we could just get people there.

2v2 Cherry

2008-07-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

Well... I finally did some 2v2 on my druid with his resto kit. I couldn't find a warritard but one of our rogues respecced to shadowstep and we tried it out. Without having played before and without using Teamspeak, we went 5-6. The last game was against a warrior/resto druid and it took 25 minutes for them to beat us - and the warrior had season 3 shoulders. The rogue I played with still uses a lot of PvE gear and season one gladiator gear so it wasn't a bad performance.

I'd still like to try it with a warritard though.

Ritual of Refreshment

2008-07-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been playing my mage a lot - mostly PvP but I've also been doing a few daily quests and on Thursday I even got in a PuG Karazhan with her (which, incidentally, isn't _quite_ as easy as it is with my druid or my paladin... Amazing how quickly "1800+ healing unbuffed" gets you an invite to pretty much anything...). And I really love playing mages. I really do. Before burning crusade, the first character I rolled that I actually liked was my Alliance mage: Gifteye. Gifteye was this badass, bald black human with enough wrinkles around his eyes to make him look wise but just enough of a scowl to make you think he was pissed off at something... OK... Everything.

I took Gifteye everywhere. While my friends were languishing in the 20's, Gifteye was up around 45. At 54 he ran into a paladin in the Western Plaguelands who was grinding Argent Dawn rep. The paladin would pull 9-12 mobs and start to consecrate while I would flamestrike and blizzard them down. That led to a sunken temple run where I recognized the rogue as someone who had a talent for returning the flag in WSG. That became 4 hours in Blackrock Depths. They asked me to join their guild, so I did. I mostly PvP'd with them which worked out well because I was trying to get to rank 10 for the phat blue PvP gear... I know, right?

They decided to form their own guild and we tried Zul'Gurub once and after one night of spectacular wipes, the guild fell apart. The guild leader negotiated a merger with an the number three PvE guild (and probably number one PvP. They had about four rank 14 toons that I can think of... Possibly more) on the Alliance side. I got to rank 10 and suddenly found myself doing attunement quests that I'd never knew existed. Suddenly, I'm in Onyxia's Lair and one of two mages who didn't have the tier two helm when two of them dropped. We raided Blackwing Lair. We used to have drunken Molten Core night where we'd get 32-36 people and we'd still clear the place. We got all the way to C'Thun in AQ40. We even downed a few bosses in Naxx.

And I loved it. All I had to do was keep everyone buffed, launch fireballs at things, maybe decurse a little and sometimes keep something sheeped. I did this for about eight months. And I did things on my own to improve my character. I got to exalted with Cenarion Circle by running Silithyst dust in Silithus. Revered with AD to get the "cheaper" attunement for Naxx. It was all great fun. One of the things I always prided myself on was always having stacks upon stacks upon stacks of conjured food and water before every raid. Middle of a trash fight and you realize you don't have any water? Just open a trade with Gifteye. Pow! 40 water right there... And there was more where that came from. I had 200 on me at any time during the raids. If I ran low, I'd just make some more while they were handing out loot. I was happy to do it. Until...

... Burning Crusade that is... My Alliance guild broke up and I power levelled my highest level horde toon to 70 so I could play with people I actually knew. I liked the anonimity of the 40 man raid and if I was going to be relegated to the more intimate 5 man instances, I was going to do it with people I knew. Gifteye was semi-abandoned (I still log in every now and then... Maybe look at all the gear he had from BWL and the like). And I levelled two characters to catch up with my friends on the Alliance side. I got Kaylee to 35 so she could disenchant some of the greens and blues I was getting from Outland. Then I needed to get her to 50 to start doing some of the Outland enchants. From there, it was a quick trip to 70. I never really get to do instances with her because I either had to heal or tank whatever we were doing, but when I do, I love it. Except...

... For the food and water situation (sorry about that... Had to move my laundry to the dryer...). Back in the day, it took a long time to conjure enough food and water for 40 people and most people respected that (with notable exceptions of course... Like the guy who felt it was my obligation to provide random Tom, Dickhead and Huntard with food and water to make his levelling easier... Had the nerve to put in an order for 60 water and 40 food... Man did he get an eyeful. I'm sure he tried to respond but I had ignored him long before I finished ranting at him) and if they were in a battleground and wanted a stack of water or food, they'd ask politely. But with Burning Crusade, their was this new spell: Ritual of Refreshment. For the scant price of two arcane powders, I could conjure 40 stacks of 20 manna biscuits - and those restore health AND mana. Oh joy. It certainly saves a lot of conjuring time. But...

... Now that people know about it... They want one every time I enter a battleground. And... Since it's so easy, they expect it. Doesn't matter if I'm just doing one WSG for the daily or I'm farming AV for honor and this is my 10th one of the day. Each and every time I enter a battleground, someone types "table plz" or if they're exceptionally sharp "mage table pls" (like there's a rogue table... Grrr..). It wouldn't matter if I'd dropped one in the last 5 battlegrounds, there'd be that one newcomer who didn't have his free (to him) food who would expect it. Doesn't matter if it's 11:30 at night or 4 in the afternoon. There's some one who wants their free (to them) food so they don't have to incur the expense of eating or drinking in a battleground. I should bear that for them. I can count on three fingers the number of times that I've dropped a "mage table" in a battleground. The first was when someone from my server handed me two arcane powder (See... THAT guy got it... Why can't everyone else?) and the other two were on nights when the guild was doing battlegrounds. The rest of the time, I pretend I didn't see their request, hope that someone isn't as stubborn as I am or just flat out lie and say I don't have the spell yet (harder to sell now that I have so much season 3/4 arena gear) (sorry again. Laundry came out of the dryers... I had to fold and go home. I hate the laundrymat). Hell, yesterday, someone asked "table kay?" (ugh... So many things wrong with that) and I said "No thanks. I'm good.".

It's less bad now that you're limited to 4 stacks per person. You could (and this is all theoretical because I don't drop them) drop one and one person could grab 300 or more units and then leave for their guild raid (Of course, in my experience, the rogues and warriors won't _use_ the manna bisquits during raids because one of the healers will top them off before the next fight... You know... When they're done drinking and before they drink again).

It's not that I can't afford the reagents. It's only 20 silver for each one (16 if I go to a vendor where I'm exalted) and Kaylee has over 4300 gold. Hell... I'm usually doing the daily quest and that gets me 12 gold. But it is also getting everyone else 12 gold. It would MORE than cover their food and water costs for a night in the battlegrounds. But no. That's too hard. That requires spending their own money and wasting their time going to a vendor. Instead, I'm expected to keep stacks and stacks of reagents on me and to go back to a vendor when I run low.

And I would do it. I really would... If people would only ask politely. But no. It's "wheres the mage table" or "TABLE" or "TABLE PLZ". And if I don't make one right away it gets worse. People get positively abusive... Like that will sway me. I won't go into details but I've been called all kinds of names and accused of not being a team player. It's not like I'm not contributing. I'm busy buffing everyone with arcane intellect - even the rogues and warriors as debuff fodder. And when they their biscuits, what do they do? Play smart? No. Warriors R 4 fite so if they end up with the flag, they run straight into the enemy zerg. They fight in the middle of EotS while the Blood Elf Tower is being capped by three Alliance. They tap the farm and run for the stables before it caps. And no one plays defense in AV even though that's a proven winning strategy. If I thought you were going to play the game correctly I'd consider making the effort.

I'm on this subject in the first place because I ended up in an AV with a guild member who whispered me pretty much demanding a "table". I didn't drop a table but I did conjure him some food and water. We had a brief discussion about why I wouldn't. He said he drops a soul well in every battleground. That's nice for you. People almost never ask for them and the "reagent" can be farmed in large quantities IN the battleground. I briefly ran down my rules for conjuring a table for him. I've had some time to think about them (I hate the laundrymat) and codify them. Here they are (and they would apply to other mages):

1) Don't say "plz". I know it's accepted shorthand but it wasn't accepted by me. I type in full sentences. I punctuate. I use apostophes. If you expect me to go out of my way for you, you can type out the word "please"... Particularly in the two minutes before the battleground starts. You've got time.

2) Don't say "pls". See #1.

3) It's a "Ritual of Refreshment" not a "table", "mage table" or "TABEL".

4) Use complete sentences.

5) Use a question mark. I know it's part of a complete sentence but no one uses them.

6) Be polite. It's my choice to conjure a table not an obligation just because I rolled a mage.

Special rule in case you actually run into Kayleefrye on the Cyclone battlegroup) If you're a Firefly fan, just message me with: <-- (insert name of what us Firefly fans call ourselves here). Use (insert name of what us Firefly fans call ourselves here)s have to stick together.

The Great Resto Experiement Continues - Karazhan edition

2008-06-27T10:19:00.001-07:00

So... Last night... There I was just minding my own business and the guy who leads my sometimes Friday night Kara run came on and I asked if he was planning on running it again. He wasn't they were running it as a guild that night. I forget how it came about exactly but he ended up asking me if I could join them as a healer. Could I EVER!!! I've been itching to try out all the resto PvP gear and the tree of life form. I swapped in my healing trinkets and ended up with 1813 healing unbuffed (over 1900 with elixirs and food buff). While they were forming up, they were looking for a priest for shackles. They were looking for a shadow priest but couldn't find one... So I asked if we could bring a holy priest from our guild - Pater. Man... Did they hit the jackpot.

Moroes and Attumen went down pretty easily... And by "easily" I mean that a warlock tanked Attumen for about a minute and effectively mana drained me. There were also some dicey moments on Moroes where we had split DPS on some of the adds and the undergeared paladin OT had 2 mobs and Moroes on him. Any time Moroes switched targets, the current target would take a big hit before I could get the HoTs rolling. But when they did... A single lifebloom was ticking for 230. A stack of three? 657/second. Rejuvenation was ticking for over 800. My regrowths were critting for over 3.1k and they almost always crit. It was insane how much healing I could sustain.

We had a little trouble on Maiden because a paladin healer accidentally pulled Maiden early and died. Then a warlock LoS'd Pater and took a holy fire and died within the first 30 seconds of the fight. With all that, we were still able to get her to about 4%. On the second attempt, that same warlock got the first holy fire and... Oh!! Died again. Got her to about 10% when she crushed the tank for 4k twice and then a ranged pulled aggro making the main tank a viable target for her AoE chain damage effect... Dead tank. Dead raid.

After that, things went pretty well (except for the main tank dying on the last 5% of Curator). Someone moved during the flame wreath at 10% on Shade of Aran (they're still learning... Last night they learned that "don't anyone move during Flame Wreath" means that even if you don't have the flame around you, it's safer not to move) causing a wipe at 7%. This was at about 12:50 AM my time. But Pater was willing to clear to Chess so I went along and we finally finished at about 1:20. For my trouble, I picked up 13 Badges of Justice so I can now get the super awesome tanking pants. I'll probably do that tonight. Pater also got enough badges to get some nice healing pants so that will really help us if our guild ever does see Prince.

Just after Curator, a rogue sent me the healing stats for the night. I'd done 1.6 million healing, Pater had done 960k healing and the one healer from their guild had done 700k. Like I said, they hit the jackpot with us. Not only that but Pater nailed his shackles (doesn't mean the paladin didn't break them) and was his usual self about cleansing the holy fire off of people. He'd cleanse and I'd hit them with a couple of instant cast HoTs that healed them for about 6k. Ridiculous. I even managed to get off a cyclone when I had a couple of mobs on me to give the tanks a chance to pick them up and when that failed, I heal tanked one of the spell shades until the first two were down.

All in all, a great learning experience for me PLUS a huge confidence booster. I've healed regular Steam Vault before, but with a shadow priest and a full feral spec. With a resto spec AND the gear... Holy moly. Nerf resto dr00ds.

Season 4... Finally...

2008-06-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty much AFK for the last week or so because I was helping my brother move back home from Baltimore. I don't feel like I've missed much because I Hiahotah had saved up about 4000 arena points, 74997 honor points and had saved up at least 81 marks from every battleground. I also had over 3600 arena points, 50k honor points and 50 marks per battleground on my mage and a smattering of points and marks (and 4.5k arena points) on my paladin (who, frankly, is just about as well geared as he is going to be). I was ready.

Season 4 started yesterday and I happened to be off (taking a few days off after helping my brother move... It had been 13 days of work, driving and/or physical labor for me... I needed a few days to myself) for the day. I did some errands in the morning and starting at about 1:30, I started watching the realm status bar. As soon as Bloodscalp came up, I logged onto Hihahotah and started shopping. I got:

Brutal Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves
Brutal Gladiator's Reprieve
Vengeful Gladiator's Kodohide Tunic
Merciless Gladiator's Kodohide Spaulders
Merciless Gladiator's Salvation
Guardian's Kodohide Belt

When combined with the gear I already had, that brought my +healing to 1564 (with a +81 healing to weapon enchant still to go) and my resilience to 421. I immediately respecced resto to test it out in the daily BG and... I got insta-gibbed... By about 8 people in an AV that had been running for about 3 minutes - roughly the amount of time it takes for the Alliance charge to get to the horde base. An inauspicious beginning. It took a couple of rounds - some were laggy and it took me a couple of minutes to get into the swing of healing again, but I did manage to lead a couple of rounds in healing. In one, I kept a warrior and myself alive for about 5 minutes against 6 Alliance attackers. It was ridiculous. I can definitely see where a warrior and a resto druid could be problematic in 2v2.

I also picked up the season 4 gloves on my paladin and mage, Season 4 offhand and wand and the season 2 shoulders and helm for my mage (bringing her to 971 frost damage in her regular kit and 858 in her PvP set) and season 3 helm and season 2 shoulders for my paladin for tanking. It took me a full 3 hours to buy, enchant and gem everything but I find myself really looking forward to playing.

We tried the Midsummer fire festival boss, Ahune (we tried on Monday night with no success... six really frustrating wipes) last night and downed him twice in 5 attempts. We couldn't do it with Hiahotah, but when we used Hoban (the paladin) it went a lot smoother. I think with some refining of techinques, we could probably down him every time. He dropped a really sweet tanking cloak but I passed on it so our up and coming feral druid tank could take it.

All told, I'm excited to have new gear to play with. It's frustrating to solo as resto but I'm looking forward to making things go boom on my mage and tanking

A Little Change of Pace... That's All I Ask...

2008-06-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that if our guild is going to do anything challenging, I'm going to have to tank it - no matter how much I love playing my mage, I'm the tank. And, yes... I love playing my druid... But sometimes tanking stuff for the 100th time can get tedious - not to mention the fact that my mangle, lacerate and swipe fingers can cramp up during a long run. Yeah... I know the stuff is new and exciting for some of the newer members and there are others who get to experience it a different way (usually by going from healing to DPS or from melee DPS to ranged DPS... No one ever says "You know what? I want a new challenge. I want to be stressed out beyond belief". Funny that...

The point is... I've done the first 5 bosses in Kara so many times I can do the pulls in my sleep... It's time for me to experience the game differently. I have two other level 70 characters who really only ever get to PvP and do the loathesome arenas. But how? I still have to tank because no one else really wants to - at least not for Kara or heroics. I use Hiahotah for... Everything because he makes things sooo much easier. The newbies can get their quests done and get their gear. But now the newbies are learning the fights and have got good enough gear to compensate for a less godly tank. The solution is something I've been thinking about for some time now... Take my powerhouse healer of a paladin and make a tank out of him. Over the last few months, he's assembled a fairly decent tanking set. I can get him to uncrittable and uncrushable. Plus... I've been reading about how a paladin makes some pulls trivial because of the AoE tanking ability and it sounds like a blast... And when I took my level 70 Alliance paladin into BRD to clear the Jailbreak! quest, that pretty much sealed it. I was going to start using Hoban to tank guild stuff.

I was a little nervous about making my first real tanking run be Karazhan so I was a little relieved when it fell through. We did heroic Ramparts on Hiahotah because he had the daily quest and was 21 badges from the super awesome tanking pants. Karazhan didn't happen last night either so we decided to do a heroic Ramparts again tonight but this time with a pally tank.

It took a while for us to get going. I was still working out how to generate threat while maintaining mana and remembering to keep holy shield up and how to taunt and how long it takes to cast avenger's shield at that pat walking away from us and which buffs were best for which classes given the tank. The healer (who had also been on the Tuesday run) commented that she had to change her healing style a little because there was actual damage coming in so rolling Lifeblooms just weren't getting it done. The rogues had to learn to wait for aggro because Hoban <> Hiahotah.

Fortunately people were patient with me. They knew I was still working this out (if they'd only been there when I was learning to tank on Hiahotah... Man... Talk about wipefests...). We still used saps (2 of them) for most pulls because I'm still not comfortable with 4+ level 70 elite mobs on me. We figured out the buffs (Salvation for everyone but me and I took kings for the extra health and mana). The rogues learned to count to two (seriously... With Hiahotah, people just jump in as soon as they can because they know they can't out-aggro him). The healer dropped a few healing touches now and then. The other druid threw some heals at the start of really big pulls so I didn't just die immediately and gave the HoTs a chance to start rolling. We wiped about 5 times before the first boss... But after that, there were no more wipes on trash. We really hit our stride.

We learned that after the skull went down, it didn't really matter what mob people picked next. The consecrate would hold aggro. When the saps broke, all the healer had to do was stand on the other side of the consecrate. The 5 pull at the top of the spiral ramp after the first boss? Sap-Sap-Avenger's shield-Duck around the corner-Consecrate. We did a 5 pull after that without CC. It was really quite amazing. The only real problem we had was the second boss (Omor?). We had 4 melee characters and so the Treacherous Aura just wiped us every time. Finally we just skipped him. So I only ended up with two badges (5 more to the breastplate) and no loot... But I did end up with a newfound confidence in my ability to pally tank. I'm actually looking forward to tanking Karazhan on my paladin... At least for Alts and Newbs night. If we get past Curator, I may change my mind...

Olde World Fun

2008-06-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

I have a group of 5 guys that I play video games with about once a month. We all used to work together at an Internet service provider and have stayed close ever since. We used to play things like Battlefield 1942 and Ghost Recon but one of the guys had been playing this new game... World of Warcraft. We resisted it for a few months because of the monthly fee but we finally gave in and decided to get trial accounts. That was almost 2 and a half years ago...

Now our game nights have become exclusively WoW nights. Thursday was a game night and we decided to poke around some old world content... It's stuff I've missed because I levelled all of my characters solo so it's nice to have a built in party to explore some of the old stuff... Particularly now that I have a better idea what's going on. I've been to through most of the instance before but I was just following some guys who had been there before and we were generally overgeared for the instances.

We did the Jailbreak! quest (for the third time... We wiped the first time and one guy ran out before the quest completed so he failed the quest) and then we went through all the content around the bar with our mid-50's level toons. We nubbed up a few things but for the most part it went well. And it was nice to rediscover our WoW roots... But if I NEVER do the Jailbreak! quest again it will be too soon. All the horde who whined about how hard their Onyxia attunement quest was clearly never did that quest.

Remember your failure at the cave

2008-06-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

One of my guild's core members (our "other" tank for hard stuff) is letting his account lapse in a few days, so we have been doing some reminiscing... In the form of doing stuff as a group. Mostly that has consisted of a LOT of PvP but last night we decided to go back to Zul'Aman. We've only been there twice. The first time we went was on New Year's Eve. At the time, we had just gotten to the point where we could down Moroes (and Attumen and Maiden). It would be two more weeks before we cleared Opera and Curator for the first time. But Zul'Aman was new and we wanted to take a look, so we downed three bosses in Karazhan and dashed off to the Ghostlands.

When we got there, we tried the bear boss. The trash thrashed us pretty soundly. We wiped a couple of times on the mounted mobs. And Nalorakk... We had 4 healers (we took what we could get in those days, plus with the gear our tanks had at the time, we needed the extra healing) but only 4 DPS. That meant we kept running into the enrage timer.

The second time we got there, one of our main healers hearthed during the first pull. We wiped without downing a single mob and the raid broke up. It was a sad day. And we didn't raid for two weeks after that because people were so pissed.

But this time was different... We were saying goodbye to someone (it's not like he's leaving, we still work with the guy but he won't be playing), we have better gear, a better choice of who to bring. This time... Only 3 healers: a priest, resto druid and a slightly undergeared, slightly offspec holy paladin (34/27 - it's his only toon so I wanted to give him a spec that he could still use to solo until his gear gets to the point where he can just overpower everything even if he's fully holy).

This time we only wiped on the last trash pull before Nalorakk because the hunter's trap broke early and the other tank missed when the bear and rider split. We did it a lot cleaner the second time through.

The first two attempts on Nalorakk ended at around 50% after a transition between tanks. It's like they didn't see the switch and the main tank dropped like a stone. I had a quick conversation with the priest and resto druid and we decided to have the powerhouse healers (them) focus on the tanks and have the paladin watch the rest of the raid. I'm guessing that the tank transition coincided with some raid splash damage and they were raid healing and the tanks went down.

We made just that one little switch and suddenly... The tanks are staying up and topped off. The raid is topped off. The healers have oodles of mana. The tanks have tons of threat so the DPS can go nuts. We downed him in about 6 minutes. After our first two trips there, I thought we'd never down anything in that zone. I think this was very cathartic for the whole guild. Of course, it will be a long time before we have a second tank ready to go back but now we know that we can do it and we know the strat for that one boss... Now if we could just get Prince down....

No... I'm going to be happy about this. We downed a boss in Zul'Aman!! We pulled together as a team. We worked it out without pointing fingers or calling names. Yay us!! (Damn it... I still want to down Prince.)

The Great Resto Experiment: Phase 1

2008-06-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

One of the famously feral druids in my guild went resto last week and I decided I have enough gear (got the season 3 arena helm last week) to test out resto for a couple of days... So on Sunday, I went 8/11/42 for some PvP and arenas on Monday. I've come to the following conclusions:

1) In a battleground like AV, resto druids can be godly. Between stacking HoTs on 3-4 different players, insane mana regen and innervate (not to mention the ability to get out of combat so I could drink) I could outheal an entire battleground even with all the blues I have - sometimes on the order of 180k to 130k for the second place healer.
2) People hate resto druids more than they hate priests.
3) I'm not ready for 5v5 arenas. I could still heal them, but there's too much going on for me to CC anything - which is a big part of the effectiveness of the resto druid in 2v2 and 3v3.
4) I could totally see where a geared resto druid who had experience playing that way could REALLY be a problem in 2v2. I could even see a scenario where _I_ would be a problem in 2v2. There were times when I slipped away from 6 Alliance attackers, got behind our lines and just started healing again.
5) I love playing as a feral druid.

I switched back to feral last night (tonight being raid night) but I'll probably do the Sunday-Monday resto thing until season 4 starts. I moved a couple of points out of Savage Fury (20% increase to some cat form attacks) and put them into maxing out Natural Shapeshifter. Which should be good for shedding snares while our paladin who doesn't learn runs away from mobs instead of at the tank (or at least cleansing chill effects).

Dr00d with a plan

2008-05-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't live in Vermont and never met Fred Tuttle, you might want to rent Man with a Plan some day... But that's another story. Today I'm here to talk about PvP... Specifically, the Arena requirements that will be on the PvP honor rewards in Season 4.

I don't know that there's anyone who hates the arenas more than I do. I mean... Maybe there are people but... Gah... It's awful. We play our 10 games on Monday nights to get our 300-350 points and that's it. The problem is, our guild is starting to have pretty long roster (relatively speaking) of level 70's. We have 17 different people with 70's, plus there are some people who mooch off of us and think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do because they work with some of the key guild members and... Really... A guild is just a chat channel, right? Where was I? Oh yeah... So... We used to have one team. I'd play 3 games and be done. Then I levelled my paladin to 70 and well... Paladins had kicked their asses for years, so... We made a second team of our best players to play with the paladin. Then we got a bunch of alts hitting 70 and then 4 more level 70 mains and... There's now a third team. And because I have 3 level 70's, I'm on all three teams... And the ALL play Monday nights.

Even with the short queues, we're talking about 3-4 hours of arenas. And we're not very good. Our best finish for a week ever is in the 1530's range (the team the paladin is on). Our warriors are... You know... Warriors so they just run in and smash stuff with no real plan and... Anyway... It's frustrating. And we lose a lot. And my paladin has to play all 10 games for his team. And Hiahotah... His gear is so insane that he has to be on one of the bad teams to make them competitive... There's 10 more games. And then by the time we get to the last team... All but one or two people have their points for the week, so they've long since logged off... And to get that last person their points... I sometimes have to play all 10 games on my mage too. And even if I don't... I still have to hang out and not do anything complicated because I might be getting the call for my 3-7 games (on that character). I hate it.

That said, three pieces of the season 4 PVP set will have Arena ratings requirements of up to 1700 so... If we don't get better, I'm going to be denied the opportunity to purchase them. I was OK with the arena gear having arena ratings requirements... But this has taken things too far. This will not stand!!!

Seriously... I won't have this. Now... Hiahotah is feral. I love playing a feral druid. In fact, my level 55 Alliance druid is also feral. But I am so annoyed by this that I have decided that as of season 4, I will whore myself out as a resto druid and do even MORE arenas with one of the umpteen PvP warritards in our guild (Oh... Come on... Seriously? None of you can strap on a shield and tank so I don't have to? I hate you all).

To that end, I have been collecting the season 3 resto PvP gear. I have everything that is currently available... Including the +88 healing trinket. I even picked up the new Medallion of the Horde for the extra 25 resilience. This week, I got to 4700 arena points saved up and I would have gone over next week, so I burned a bunch on the season three resto helm. I gemmed it. I got the +35 healing enchant from Thrallmar... I'm going all out. And I'll PvP until I have just under 75k honor and 100 marks from each faction (I'm running 79-97 right now) saved up.

As soon as Season 4 comes out, I'll buy the season 2 shoulders and weapon with honor points and get them enchanted. I'll get the season 4 resto and feral arena gloves (the only armor that doesn't have a ratings requirement) and the season 4 offhand resto weapon. I'll fill out the rest with season 2 gear and I'll be off to Moonglade to unlearn my talents... And I'll be spending the 50 gold to respec every time I need to tank something and again every time I go to the arenas.

I can't believe it's come to this.

Picking up steam

2008-05-28T11:58:00.001-07:00

Last night was Alts and Newbs night... Again. We went through a few weeks where I just threw the idea out there in case people showed up... But last night... We actually had 11. One person wanted to level their paladin so that made the decision pretty easy. Our "other" paladin (we have 2 level 70 paladins and I have the first) got 4 drops last time out so he's becoming a passable healer, so for healing we just brought him and our godly resto druid.... Man.... What a difference that one extra DPS makes. Normally we bring 3 healers and we get to Opera at around 10:30 pm (starting some time after 7:30) - ending at around 11. Last night we plowed through Curator and downed him at around 10:30pm.

I'll admit that I felt the loss of the healer because it seemed like they were playing fast and loose with my health... But I only died when I was trying to stealth to open the back door and another druid pulled aggro and dragged them right past me so I can't really complain. I think the extra DPS shortened the fights to a point where extending mana wasn't a problem. In fact, I looked for someone to innervate during a vanish and neither healer needed one so I gave it to the shadow priest. We set new guild records for Moroes (4 minutes, 40 seconds) and Curator (4:20 - 2 evocates)... And that was with at least one person in quest reward greens.

Speaking of the shadow priest (Mustela)... He's played by a guy with one year old twin boys. Playing WoW is pretty much his only social/recreational outlet. In fact, he's the reason why I started the Alts and Newbs run - so we could get him into Karazhan, get him acclimated to out play style and maybe get him some loot. He's been kind of shortchanged on the loot lately. But last night he picked up three healing items and the Staff of Infinite Mysteries - which we have taken to calling the Staff of Infinite Drop Percentages because that thing drops just about every time. We've downed Curator maybe 10 times and we've had about 7 of those drop. People have started taking them for offspec PvP. It was good to see that go to someone who could actually use it and who, quite frankly, really deserves it.

Friday Karathon

2008-05-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

I know... It's not Frday... But I've been busy (read: the servers weren't down for maintenance and I wasn't awake about a half hour early). The group I've been PuGging Karazhan with lately got a group going at about 9:30 pm my time. I was already saved for the week on Hiahotah, so I offered to respec my paladin (Hoban) prot but when they found out his +healing, they decided to look for a main tank and just run with two healers.

The group they found was decked out in mostly epics, so we plowed through the place. We downed Curator in 2 minutes, 20 seconds. The rest of the run went a lot like that... Until Prince. We wiped about 4 times. I'm not sure what went wrong. People felt that the tank was "an idiot" but I just don't think he had the gear to survive phase two. He would lose 8k health in a couple of seconds. I couldn't keep up... Or if I kept up with him, other people would die.

They decided to ditch the warrior and have the ret paladin (who used to tank for them) go prot. We got a priest in there (with me and a resto druid) to heal and we downed him easily. Then we circled back for Netherspite and Nigthbane. If we wiped at all it would have been on Netherspite. I don't really remember because it was 3 AM here when we finished and I was getting pretty punchy. And if you've done the math, we did a full clear of every boss in 5 adn a half hours.

For my troubles, I got the ribbon of sacrifice from Opera and 22 badges of justice. I also learned that it's WAY less stressful for me to stand in the back and heal than it is to tank it. Plus... I got even MORE frustrated that my guild STILL hasn't cleared Kara... Some day... Some day...

Addition by Subtraction

2008-05-22T11:27:00.001-07:00

Our guild used to have a this guy... You know... That one guy who is just a little off. He is a RL friend of one of the core members so... We let him in. And he was _always_ on... I mean... I play a LOT but this guy was on every time I was plus I heard that he was on most of the time I was working too. In a way, you want to feel sorry for him because he clearly has no other social outlet but then again... The things he would say in guild chat... Disturbing. If he turns out to be a school shooter I won't be the least bit surprised. Saddened but not surprised. You could tell he wanted to be accepted by his reactions every time he realized that someone had him on ignore. And I tried... As the de facto raid leader and the most visible "person of authority" in the guild, I tried to include him... But he just went too far too often.

The point is... There were a number of people who wouldn't raid with him and didn't want to start a fuss by having me not invite this guy to the raids... So they just stopped showing up... Or played alts who weren't keyed (and after the requirement was removed, who weren't 70 yet). But a few weeks ago, he packed up and transferred to another server. A happy, glorious day (for us). People started coming out to do instances again... Or just to hang out because they knew guild chat wasn't going to be bombarded with his insanity.

And on Tuesday, we actually got enough people on where I could justify getting a few PuGs for Karazhan to fill out the raid. But then more and more people started showing up, so we just ran with the 9 we had... And a 10th showed up... And it was good. We didn't clear the place. In fact, we only did the first four bosses - the same four bosses we've been farming for months now. But it was fun. We had some alts in there so people got to do some new things. One of our main healers brought his druid and he off tanked. And we had some newbies in there who are still learning the fights and who still need the loot. And it was relaxed. And everyone wanted to be there... And...

Hell... Even the wipes were kind of fun. We had a bad pat during a pull of 8 non-elites... He walked right through the casters: "Oh... Hi guys!! What are you shooting? Mind if I join you?". I saw it coming but there was nothing I could do about it but we got the elite pat down and all but two of the casters. A pretty good scramble all things considered. The other wipe was during Opera - Romulo and Julianne. It was only the second time we've done it as a guild. Hell... There were people in there who thought Opera was the Big Bad Wolf because that's what it's been all four times they've been there. That included the rogue who wasn't getting the heal interrupt concept so Julianne healed herself repeatedly. By Act three, the rogue was clearly starting to pick up when he was supposed to be kicking so we killed her but he was at 12%. It took us 13 seconds to kill him so he rezzed her and then she rezzed him after he died. Wipe city. But it was pretty clear what had gone wrong and we just had to make a few adjustments and we were there. Round two was flawless. No deaths. She only got off two heals (one in act one and one in act three) and when she died, he was at 2%. We killed him almost instantly. It was gratifying to see everyone pull together and adjust so quickly.

Then we got 8 people back together last night to "clear to Curator and hope someone else comes on". We've downed him with 9 before but never even tried 8. We made a couple of attempts but we just didn't have enough sustained DPS to get the flares down (the third round was tough when the casters were out of mana). So the other feral druid got his healer and one of the healers got a DPS warrior and we were about to try it again when a paladin signed on... And since we were already _at_ the stone to summon the warrior... The additional heals and DPS made the fight ridiculously easy. And the paladin, who had been on line for 9 minutes, picked up a tier 4 token - his 4th piece of loot so far this week.

At that point three people decided that they had to leave. The six that were left decided to see if we could get to the Chess event for the free loot. We actually made it a lot further than I thought we would. We cleared the 6 pull outside of Illhoof's room without a death. We were handling the 4 pulls of spell shades pretty easily. The sorcerous shades were kind of chewing us up but we got them down. But it started getting late so we decided to try to skip a 4 pull of shades and a room where you have to single pull about 10 elites by running through behind the tank and having a druid stealth through and rez us on the other side... It almost worked. We actually got the paladin through to the other side, but when he tried to rez me, he aggro'd a mob who stomped them royally. Oh well...

But the bottom line is... We're having fun again. And we're raiding again... And a LOT of it is because we lost a member.

Whoops!!!

2008-05-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

Since my guild has been somewhat apathetic about doing Karazhan lately... And because a well geared tank can _always_ find a group for something... I jumped in LFG yesterday. It wasn't long before a paladin who seems to have lost his shift key and some verbs - not to mention the words that lost a few letters - wanted me to join his two man group (actually, he sent the invite before asking - a major faux pas in my world) for Kara. For whatever reason, I felt kind of iffy about him so I held out.

A few minutes later (while the paladin with bad spelling, english and manners was still sending me tells every couple of minutes) a shaman asked me to join his group starting at Curator. A chance to skip the 4 bosses I've done too many times. To skip the skeletal ushers before Opera and a chance to skip Moroes... Now we're talking. It turns out it was mostly a guild run for Solstice - a name I've seen around a few times. It took a while to get things going because they didn't have healers.

I was supposed to be main tanking but since I can throw out more DPS in cat gear, I convniced them to have the other tank grab Curator. That was fun because I never get to just do damage in cat form. I tanked for the rest of the run though... Well... Except for Shade when I did some DPS and threw some heals during a flame wreath.

We had a little trouble during Netherspite because some DPS ran through the red beam during the first portal phase and moved him away from the center of the room so while I was dancing in and out of the beam it moved Netherspite around so the green beam moved and healed him. Even still... We got him down to 10% before he enraged.

But the Whoops moment(s) for me came during Prince. I'd been tinkering with a macro that cancels my current form, pops a charged crystal focus to restore 2k health and then casts bear form. As long as you're not in a global cooldown, you're fine... Usually. I hadn't had a reason/chance to use it yet however but I was still thinking about it.

I was tanking Prince back up against a wall so I couldn't see anything. I could see his feet and that's about it. We got to the second phase where he just STOMPS on the tank and I was getting low on health... Scary low... To the point where I didn't think I could wait for the GCD before I hit my macro. And I hit it... It restored 2k health which gave the healer a chance to throw a couple of heals on me.

But I was still in the GCD when I hit it, so I didn't go back into bear form. I knew there was a possibility that this would happen so I started checking my buffs and... CRAP!!! No bear form buff. I hit my "Shape of... A bear" button but I tanked Prince during phase two for about 4 seconds in caster form just swinging a big hammer at him.

This was not lost on the healers... One of whom called out "Bear Form" over Vent at about the same time I was hitting the button. The worst part is... The absolute worst part is... I got in trouble a little later and tried to hit one of my panic buttons and misclicked... I ended up popping a mana potion... Which took me back to caster form.

WHOOPS!!!!

Fortunately the healers were on top of it and I was a little quicker on the trigger this time so we were still able to down him. The second time I've ever tanked Prince and I nubbed it up. Nice.

You can't open the book of my life and jump in the middle

2008-05-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

A little background: The Guild I'm in (CNN HEADLINE NEWBS) is an EXTREMELY casaul guild made up of people who, for the most part, work in the various IT departments at the University of Vermont. We have about 16 people who have level 70 characters at this point. Really the only thing we do as a group on a regular basis is the Arenas... And that's every Monday night. Most of the time we'll just PvP on our own or if a bunch of people are on, we'll do an instance. I've become the de facto raid leader for our Karazhan runs and really the ONLY tank for anything else but ever since the sun started coming out again (a novelty in Vermont) we've been having fewer and fewer people on. I still offer to organize a Karazhan run if people are on and interested but the response lately has been lukewarm at best.

Last night was one of our "Alts and Newbs" Karazhan nights, but only 6 people were actually on. While it's disappointing that we couldn't get a Karazhan run going for the third straight week, the people who _were_ on wanted to do something. So we decided to do a heroic... And the daily was Steam Vaults. The problem was that of the people who wanted to go, we had two characters with the gear for something like that (Me on my feral druid and our totally awesome resto druid) and three were not (a holy paladin, another feral druid and a shadow priest - the guy playing the druid has a priest who has the gear but that would have given us 3 healers... We needs something that could do some damage). So we ran with two healers, no CC and limited DPS.

Nights like that can be very frustrating. We struggled with any of the naga pulls that had a healer in them. We just couldn't get them down fast enough and we'd run out of stuns. But you can also take it as a learning experience. Instead of having the other feral druid off tank an add, I took all 4 and he concentrated on saving energy to use maim to interrupt every heal. We still wiped a couple of times when the sirens feared at the wrong time but we got better. We also learned that if you draw aggro you should run at the tank instead of backing away from the mob on you and into a mob that we skipped because it was so mean or... If you're a superfluous healer and you're _going_ to back away from the tank, you should do so along the path we've already cleared - because while that strategy will get _you_ killed, it won't wipe the party.

Having a sub-optimal group composition also forces us to consider alternate strategies. We had the newly minted 70 holy paladin strap on "tanking" gear and consecrate the gnomes before the second boss. On the second boss, the strategy is usually to burn down the adds as they come out. We tried that the first attempt but we hit an enrage timer because we didn't do enough damage to the boss. Plus the paladin went out of mana from spamming Consecrate. So. We had the paladin just spam rank one consecrate to keep the gnomes in combat and not healing (or repairing in this case) the boss. The other feral druid ran around in bear form and tried to swipe as many of the gnomes as he could while the shadow priest and I stayed mostly on the boss. When we got about 10 gnomes out, the resto druid topped everyone off, dropped a hurricaine. That burned down almost all of the gnomes and we got a nice breather. We downed the boss and then took out the adds. Improvisation... Learning to use all of your skills in different situations... It made all the wipes worth it (well... That and the resto druid picked up the stamina enchant for bracers... That's always a good thing). We'll be a stronger group if we ever do get a Karazhan run together.

Ultimately, we didn't have enough DPS to burn down the tanks on the end boss and we were all getting tired so we called it after 3 attempts (two of the people in the party had never even done the instance in regular mode so the first wipe was inevitable). Man... That guy hits hard when he enrages on heroic. I can survive one enrage but not the second.

On an unrelated note, I was pleased to find out that the hunter spell Scare Beast is not instant cast in the latest patch. That would really have messed with me in the battlegrounds.

He Was a Scary Bear

2008-05-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

I can totally explain... The first thing you need to know for the title of this blog to make ANY sense at all is that I my main is a Tauren druid and he is the main tank for the casual raiding guild I'm in... Which means I spend a LOT of time in bear form. A LOT... And it's not a pretty view. But I digress... I'll do that a lot.

Where was I? Oh yeah... So one day I was tanking Sethekk Halls for a group of guildies and the healer was a character named Pater. I've been real life friends with the man behind Pater for years and so we spend a lot of time in instances joking around. There are mobs in Sethekk that MC people and you either have to wait 30 seconds (or so) or get the person down to half health before it wears off. And since Hiahotah has such insanely high health and armor, it was easier to take out the mobs and then wait out the MC. After this MC wore off, Pater used the phrase "Scary bear biting my face!!!".

Which brought to mind the old Grammar Rock song called Unpack Your Adjectives... He was a hairy bear. He was a scary bear...