Gnome Warrior is an oxymoron

A new post?!?! :-O

2011-05-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, I am ridiculously bored at work, and as much as I should be doing accounting homework, I find that my priorities havent much changed as a 31yo and I really don't want to. So I will go back to what I used to do at work when we were ridiculously slow, and I had nothing better to do: blogging.

I have mixed reviews on cataclysm. I think streamlined leveling is awesome and I love the changes that they have made with a lot of classes. There is a ton of new content and I enjoyed both of the new races (although Worgen much more so than Goblin). The 80-85 stuff is somewhat hit and miss but fun in general, I enjoy Hyjal, Uldum and some general questlines, but I prefer the Wrath model of AOE AOE AOE, things go faster and seem more fun (just being honest).

There are a few things I didnt care for (aside from having to CC in dungeons). No change to moonkin form. I think its awesome that trolls can be druids. Worgen, meh, I'd have prefered shammy for them. So these new troll druids can turn into a bat while flying, awesome. But keep the same ridiculous retarded owlkin thing form as any other druid. Couldn't healers have stayed as trees and DPS show off their ossum l00tz? Or maybe they could have an armed serpent caster form like the dude from zuldrak (or is it DTK, I get them confused, and no wow wiki here at work).

On the class note, some things are different, some are the same. Paladin seems mostly the same. I have zero desire to level a hunter. I rolled a Goblin rogue, and since doing so have gotten him to around level 20 while leveling 3 different warriors to 60, 80 (although he started at 72), and 74 (that one was from level 1). Needless to say, I just don't find rogue to be that fun. But warrior is ZOMFG AWESOME!!! Since switching to arms, I dunno if it is something blizz did recently or what, but I am loving warrior. Fury was fun when they had massive self healing, once that got nerfed, I thought not so much. Arms lately I just LOOOOVE. One thing I find interesting. I've been speccing into blood and thunder in my arms builds. It seems to me that it would A) be an AOE DPS increase that is useful for instances and soloing and B) be at least as good a use for those points as anything else.

Another thing I've planned on doing is soloing some instances. Now I know I could re-spec my paladin and do this pretty easily. But I am going to try it on my warrior. And maybe a bear druid. Its pretty easy to get health pools of over 100k in cataclysm. I regularly take down chillmaw solo on my paladin and its not hard at all. I've heard of people soloing wrath raids solo. I want to try a few wrath solo heroics. My warrior is a draenei so he has a built in self heal and I'll be sure to bring food and bandaids. I'll be using a build that includes Field Dressing, Blood Craze, and Impending Victory so I should be self healing a decent amount.

Mainly Cataclysm has brought me back to what I enjoy doing most: leveling alts. I am loving warrior and will probably push him straight to 85, after that, then what? I have a couple characters sitting at 82 (shammy and priest), I have a couple characters just sitting (warlock and druid), I have 85's I'm not motivated to do much with (paladin, mage, and DK), and the aforementioned Goblin Rogue who I'm considering deleting.

Well that's about enough rambling for one afternoon. Peace out.

First impressions of 4.01

2010-10-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a little on the jumbled up side. There are major mechanical changes that seemed to affect every class in the game, and although I don't have one of everything (ok, I've joked before about being the Noah of Wow, but I don't in reality have 2 of everything), I have a lot of impressions about the changes made to the game.

First of all, I think the change of giving every class signature abilities sooner is AWESOME. Being able to dual wield as an enhancement shammy before level 40 really makes you feel like a melee badass. Having to wait till 40 to really get an identity kind of sucked. I also like how classes have a lot of similar abilities. Fury warrior has some similarity with enhancement shammy (dual wield, flurry, etc), and talents seem to be a lot more fun.

OMFG HEIRLOOMS ARE EXPENSIVE!!! I really wish I would have bought some before the change. Had I known this would be the case live, I would have. I really only have 2 70+ level characters left I want to level to 80 (I have just lost the desire to level druid), but 2k+ Justice points?!?!? I believe that would be on the order of 80 frost emblems. So instead of just being able to downgrade 40 triumph badges which I could farm in 3-4 hours, it takes 2-3 weeks of raiding? WTF BLIZZARD!?!?!?

Speaking of the two characters I'm going to level to 80, Fury warrior and arcane mage look AMAZING. My mage was previously frost specced, and I basically wasnt using it to it's full potential for leveling. I did great DPS in instances, but leveling was basically frostbolt spam, fireball when it procc'd free, ice lance when fingers of frost procc'd. Slow being added to Arcane blast seems awesome, I was looking forward to trying out an arcane build and it just seems SO FUN! Speaking of something else that seems a ton of fun, FURY WARRIOR. My biggest propblem in playing the warrior was that health was a constant issue. I was taking a ton of damage and with no self heals besides herbalism, it just wasnt fun. Being a Draenei would have helped, but that wasnt an option. Enter new 4.01 awesomeness where most of the cool warrior abilities now heal you!

The main effect of this is I have lost the desire to instance and now want to level my guys. Maybe even some new guys!

OK, I know 2 posts in 3 months doesnt constitute "blogging again". . .

2010-09-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

But I've been spending most of my time lately actually playing the game. Well, not most. I've kept my promise to myself and continued with the gym and jujitsu (Although on a side note, I'm not gonna be a blue belt for a LONG time lol I realize now why they schooled me at grappling tourneys when I was younger).

However, this is a wow blog, so I have a few interesting items regarding that. Well, interesting to me, your milage may vary.

First of all, I came to a conclusion. I really don't like tanking. Its a lot of thankless responsibility. It is heavily gear based and getting that gear is not easy. Other players have expectations and everything is your fault if something goes wrong. Who complains about fail DPS? if someone doesnt look at a meter would they even notice? Yes, I have decided I hate tanking. I don't want to do it anymore. I might give another go at it on the DK, but gearing him to be "acceptable" in randoms has been a challenge.

Secondly, I have come to the conclusion I really like healing. My priest dinged 80 and is geared for ICC and I have been through there a couple of times. I have been healing as discipline and I really like it. My shammy is also just about ICC geared and I like healing with him too. The thing I like the most is healbot makes healing about finding the right tool for the job.

My last thought, boy is it easy getting gear. No more multiple runs through ToC, I can just chain run heroics queued as healer, get emblems and buy T9. I geared my priest up that way (with the addition of a few lucky drops and some random raid gear) in about 3 days from dinging 80.

I do have a random question for anyone still reading. Spirit for discipline priests, whats the point? I don't see one, hence I'm hit capped in my healing gear.

Not to get all religious on anyone, but happy rosh hashannah to any of my fellow jews!

yes I'm writing blogs again. . .

2010-07-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure how to get back into playing Wow, but it seems my blogging follows my playing pretty closely. I had a few things to get out there after my absence, so I guess the best thing to do is just have at it.

Firstly, I've had some problems researching this particular topic, but it is around hardware performance and Wow. Believe me when I say, I'm not looking for excuses for my poor performance. If my lack of DPS was due to me sucking in general, I'm comfortable with that. However, as I had mentioned in a previous post, that has been called into doubt. I've been running at 30-60 FPS which seems decent, and a latency of 150-400, which I've heard is not. Unfortunately, I've had a hard time researching benchmarks, what performance "should" be and what this means to my overall performance. I will be picking up a new computer in the not too distant future (probably saturday), so we'll see how that affects my performance.

Secondly, something I found a little curious. Wow was almost a 40 hr a week job for me while I was playing in my heaviest times. However, it's funny how quickly it goes away. When I reloaded the game, I forgot what addons to get, what did what, rotations, I even had problems remembering how to get my gear repaired. Most of it came back pretty quickly, but I thought it was interesting how quickly it went away. Well, I guess 7 months isnt exactly quick.

My latest "project" character is my shadow priest. I really haven't touched my shammy or my paladin since I've come back. I leveled my shadow priest to 70 and got him to northrend pretty quick, and I'm finding him pretty fun to play and generally useful. I've always wanted to try a pure caster. While I LOVE elemental shammy, a lot of their damage isn't instant, and whether its a lag issue or what, I find by the time I want to hit something, it's dead already. I am kind of liking the thought of dropping dots on everything, replenishing the group in the process. I find mobs die fairly quick and I can handle a few at a time.

I chose shadow priest over the other 2 cloth casters for a number of reasons. First, I love my mage. I love being able to handle multiple mobs and the general survivability of frost. However 11111111111111111 is about as boring as I can think of. I couldn't think of re-speccing Arcane, it just seems wrong. He's always been frost, he will always be frost. Then there is the warlock. Decent, has some utility, drain tanking is ok, I love the felguard, I've heard they can do some great damage. However, shadowform is just so cool looking! And the ability to heal myself if need be is pretty great. Would I like some sort of cool looking bolt spell? Absolutely, but thats just not how priests seem to work. But as far as clothy casters go, I think I made a solid choice.

10 levels to go till grindy progression interestingness. . .

Wait a second!?!?!?

2010-06-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

Since when have I been listed on Wow.com?

http://www.wow.com/resources/

Yeah, I'm in the short list of general wow information sites. Go figure.

Coming soon: witty insightful post about how I'm learning to play the game again (that is of course with the assumption that at one point I knew how to play in the first place)

Unfinished business. . .

2010-06-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Well, how's it going Wow community? It's been a while. I havent written anything in quite some time, but for quite a few reasons, I figured I would come back for an update. I should also preface this by saying my return is for a currently indefinite return to Wow.

Why am I coming back? Well first of all, I have achieved most, if not all of my goals in leaving the game. I lost 20 lbs, have a gym thats a lot easier to go to and have most everything in my personal life sorted out. I have a ton of free time that I think could use some occupying. I also have some unfinished business.

When I left Wow, I thought at the time it was due to a lack of skill. I did a ton of research and thought I knew pretty well how to do things, but the results just werent there. I couldn't explain why, I didn't know what I was doing wrong, I just plain sucked. I was ok with sucking at Wow. I mean, I've done plenty of things in life that I was unsuccessful at, I don't do them anymore.

My mindset all changed the other day when I was having lunch with Eus and Ruhtra. We were having a discussion about Wow that somehow turned to computers. Ruhtra was saying how it was always funny watching me raid because they'd all do something and see me do something 5 seconds later. I was puzzled, thats not what I was seeing. Then I thought "maybe there was a technical issue making me suck?"

The computer system I have had for quite some time has been mostly the same, a pentium 4 with windows XP. As far as I can tell/remember, it's about 6 years old. I have dropped some RAM in it and a new graphics card, but the processor is OLD. Could that have caused performance issues? Is it more noticable when raiding than soloing because at appropriate levels lag while soloing won't kill you? I don't know. But now that I have this question in my head, it's one that needs to be answered.

I decided a while ago that I would buy a new computer on which to play the old republic (I'm def getting that game, and I know it will be awesome, but I'm a star wars fan boy). I just decided that this would be a good excuse to maybe step up the timetable on that purchase a little bit. I've been looking around, read reviews and basically decided that I'm getting an intel i7 based machine with DDR3 ram (prolly 8 gigs or so) and hopefully a 1 gb video card.

If I still suck with that system, well it's me and I can take my ball and go home with the knowledge that Wow just isnt the game for me. If I don't suck, well I get to spend some more time with online friends and help out such that I'm able to. For 15 bucks a month, I'd say that's pretty win/win.

Dragon Age: Origins. . .

2009-12-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I have been pretty good about my Wow exile, have to say I'm not really missing it. I have been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Origins, and I have some thoughts on the game, a few which apply to the mmo genre.

First of all, one of the major selling points of the game are the 6 different "origins" you get when creating a character. Some of them are VERY good, some of them are meh. Having played through all of them, I have to say my absolute favorite is the City Elf, its amazing. Common Dwarf and Human Noble were also very good. Dhalish elf and Noble Dwarf had their high marks, but didn't give me the same general sense of purpose. The mage origin was a complete disappointment. It just wasnt fun and involved a lot of running around. I was expecting equal amounts of action in all of them damn it!

As far as classes go, Dragon Age Origins has a very interesting but fun system. There are only three classes in the game: Warrior, Rogue, and Mage. However, each class has access to various ability subsets. For example, both warriors and rogues have access to Archery and Dual wield trees. Mage is just a generic magic user, they can access both elemental and healing trees. Another interesting aspect of the classes are the unlockable "prestige classes" these unlock new special abilities. I really think this gives Dragon Age a high degree of customization and replay value. My main character is a tank warrior with the shield specialization abilities. Having played through the early parts of the game with other class/specs, things just seem to go smoother with me being the focus of enemy damage.

The stats in the game are also very simplistic and intuitive. Strength is your melee damage and ability to use heavy weapons and armor. Dexterity is your ability to dual wield, hit with missile weapons, and avoid being hit by enemies. Willpower determines the pool and regeneration of your resource bar. Magic is your ability to cast spells. Constitution (I think thats the name of it) determines health and regeneration. Lastly Cunning is a social stat, which impacts your interactions and also for rogues, your ability at picking locks and disarming traps. Its a straightforward system that works. I would have liked to see constitution as a little more impactful, but other than that, I have no complaints.

Presentation-wise, I have only a couple complaints. First of all, there is no way to skip certain cut-scenes. If you're making a new character, you have to sit through the opening cinematic. Its very well done, but the 8th time you see it, it loses some appeal. Also, the weapons seem elongated. One handed swords look to be two handed weapons size-wise, daggers are shortsword sized, and two handed weapons are just ridiculously long.

One feature I think is awesome, and one that has potential for mmo's is the ability to set tactics for your NPC's. Rather than just rely on AI to control them, you can specificy tasks for them to accomplish as well as cycle through and give them individual instructions. I will admit, I'm not very good at initiating a turn based type combat, I will have to look into doing that. Guild wars had something where you could hire mercenaries to do group content, and I think this is a feature mmo's should definately look into. I don't like groups or grouping, I would LOVE to hire NPC's to run group content. It could also be an effective gold sink if done correctly.

Hope everyone is enjoying 3.3 and is having a happy happy holiday season. Also, to any of my Jewish readers, Happy Hannukah!

done with Wow. . .

2009-12-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

I made a pretty significant decision on friday: I decided to quit World of Warcraft. Now, I have attempted to quit before, only to come back, my reasons are a little different now.

They say one of the signs of addiction is when it starts interfering with your life. Now, I'm not saying I'm necessarily addicted to Wow, but there are a lot of parallels. I work 10 hour shifts at my job, and have around a 45 minute commute. Normally my days consist of go to work, come home, play wow, go to bed. I don't necessarily have a problem including video games in the routine, but as we all know, there is no "sit down for 45 mins and play" with Wow. For me, it's more sit down, and next thing you know it's 12:30am and you have to leave the house at 7:10 to be at work on time. Another factor in the decision is my difficulty in juggling Wow and the gym. I will admit, I don't enjoy working out. I have alwats done it because either I had to, or it was a means to an end.

Do I believe it is possible to juggle Wow and still have a healthy well rounded life? Definately. I have just come to the conclusion that thats not something I can manage. I havent necessarily decided to completely flee the MMO genre, but for now, I need to cut Wow out of my life to focus on the rest of it.

I may still blog from time to time about other things, I think Dragon Age: Origins is an AMAZING game, but the Wow chapter in my life is closed.

Alts, gear grinding, and the use for Rawr. . .

2009-12-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

Gnomeageddon posted a really great post about Rawr, much better than anything I would write. Unfortunately, I can't link it. My work has blocked his blog *tear* I read it on my blackberry, not my preferred method of reading blogs, but occasionally necessary. Anyways, I had previously downloaded rawr because after a point, I had no idea what would actually constitute an upgrade, and what was the most bang for my buck.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about gearing lately. What is the best/fastest/cheapest/most efficient way to gear alts vs mains. Do I use emblems on BoA gear? Do I use emblems for main spec or off spec? I just wanted to shed some light on my decision making process, as someone with a ton of alts, who didnt previously run much, and tries to solo as much as possible.

First of all, crafted gear is your friend. Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and Tailoring can give you great starter gear at 80, most of which you will be keeping for some time. My shammy is still using ebonweave gloves with precision on them, even after getting almost all the drops I can use from heroic ToC, as well as the Revenant's Breastplate. Jewelcrafting has been another SERIOUS help because the crafted purples (rings especially) are really good and have a lot of value. My shammy is still wearing the spellshock ring (socketed with runed cardinal ruby) and pally is still wearing the crafted tanking ring and necklace. Druids can gear up for raid tanking pretty much with crafted gear alone.

What do you do with emblems, seals, runes, marks, shards, etc? Well, this is a big decision. First of all, this is a bigger decision for those characters who can fill multiple roles. Paladins, Death Knights, Priests, Warriors, Druids, and Shammies are probably going to have multiple sets of gear to fill. This is my take on it: fill the gear for the rarer role first. Tanking or healing will always be in demand and groups want the best geared characters they can find in that role. Tank have 25k health? Unacceptable. Also, if you are tanking or healing, most higher geared DPS won't need/want a lot of the gear that drops and have no problem with a tank or healer occasionally needing on some items that just aren't upgrades for them, but are huge upgrades for the tank/healer. Stonekeeper's shards I use entirely for BoA gear. I don't PvP, have no use for it, so I have no need for PvP gear. In general, I would say use emblems to upgrade your character, however, if you level a lot of alts, the chest pieces become good values. Stick to caster cloth and DPS leather. Why? Well, all caster and DPS classes can wear those pieces, and the armor difference from 1-2 pieces will have a negligable effect on mitigation. As an example, I had my shammy wearing the cloth caster chest. The difference vs a mail chest? Around 1% more damage taken. 10% more exp is more than worth it and my warlock, mage, and priest can all use that chest when leveling. I have already used the leather shoulders for warrior, DK, shammy and druid (I leveled shammy enhancement). Forty emblems is a lot, but one piece of gear that four alts can use is probably a worthwhile investment, provided you like leveling alts. As always, your mileage will vary.

One very interesting piece of currency is the Champion's seal. I find these to be mostly worthless. Why is that? Well first of all, what can you buy with them? Blue armor and a few purple weapons. Well, while the weapons are a good investment if you can use them (my pally is using the greatsword of the sindorei in my ret set), once you've bought that, they just sort of accumulate. I was working on the "crusader" title, but that takes FOREVER. Considering it takes what? 5-10 hours total to get 40 emblems vs WEEKS of dailies and jousting to get crusader, it just isn't worth it. Get your chestpiece with emblems, ignore the Champion's seals. If you love the jousting and are good at it, go ahead and grind. There will always be groups doing threat from above and foot of the citadel. I personally hate the jousting, I had to cheat to beat the valiant, the thought of doing that 2-3 more times just for a BoA chest is more than I can handle.

A few last thoughts on Rawr. I loaded up my pally in rawr, and the results were similar to my shammy in the DPS spec. The numbers it gave me for expected DPS were roughly half what I actually did, even on encounters where you just stand there and DPS (my pally does less than 2k DPS, yes I suck at doing damage, I think it's mostly horrible gearing). The thing that I find most useful about Rawr is that it shows what items might be upgrades for you from what you're wearing. For my pally that means more Savage Saronite gear, mix in some mail here and there, and fix my gemming. I will probably learn the Dragon eye cut for pure strength. Its a good tool, just not a be all, end all.

week(end) update. . .

2009-11-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

Well, I had a pretty interesting week(end). Have to put the end in parenthesis because I ended up working like 2 days last week. I did get a solid amount of Wow in though, so I was a lil anxious to get back to the blog and share.

First of all, I have come to really love shammy healing. I think I have a pretty firm grasp of my abilities, and I can keep most people up when things get really hairy. We ran Naxx 10 with 3 healers, cleared 3 wings with no wipes till Heigan (I hate him, I don't care what people say, that is NOT fun). I thought it kind of funny, there really aren't any upgrades for me in there. I mostly ran it for the experience. I LOOOOOVE healing stream totem. It took me a while to warm up to, but a semi permanent 300 health a tick is usually good enough to heal the DPS and it's super efficient. I ran recount on the run and while my overall heals were fairly close to the druid, my overhealing was about 1/3. I credit WTFspaghetti's guide which basically said "use these glyphs" lol.

Either I desperately suck at DPS, Rawr is completely wrong, or some combination of the 2. I had never had recount before, don't really care for meters or tracking, but I figured my DPS must be ok, I mean my lava burst crits for like 8-10k. Yeah, apparently not. Standing still, spamming the stock Lava burst, flameshock, lightning bolt or chain lightning till lava burst is off cooldown, repeat, I was able to hit 3500 DPS on pre-Onyxia trash. On Onyxia herself, it dropped to about 2300. Part of that is due to my computer not being able to handle that encounter. I was probably down to 3 frames per second. Rawr says I should be doing 4-5k with the gear I have currently equipped. I don't get it.

I don't like tanking. At all. It bothers me, is a pain in the ass, and is not, in general, fun for me. Even running things I massively overgear is more tedious and a chore. I ran H UP on both Shammy and Paladin yesterday. While on the shammy it was more pew pew (our DPS were 3 elemental shammies lol), on paladin it was fight like hell to keep aggro while the DPS AoE's everything under the sun. Hey blizz, you want to know why there are no tanks? IT SUCKS AND ISNT FUN. When I have problems with multi-target aggro on a paladin, I can only guess how druids must feel (I have tanked a lil on my druid, but never with a group that just AoE's everything).

I ran a couple alts through the thanksgiving day cooking stuff. I picked up the Turkinator achievement on both of them. My Shammy leveled cooking the old fashioned (painful, sucky, expensive) way, so I didn't feel like needlessly chasing turkeys for no reason on him. I shelled out some $$ and got my death knight cold weather flying and a basic flying mount. I figure I will level him. Having a dedicated gatherer and another titansteel cooldown will be useful. I probably won't do much with him, definately no dual spec or tanking, but DK's are pretty fun to level.

I ran a BUNCH of instances and a couple raids over the week as well, almost entirely on Shammy. I really like healing. Its decent, intuitive, and as long as the whole group doesnt wipe, I rez the straggler and we move on. DPS is ok, but it seems like 90% of people are more concerned with "where do I rank on the meters?" than why they're there in the first place. Case in point, got invited to run regular Nexus on my DK. A deathtard wiped the group by pulling half the frozen room going for the book in the middle, then was bragging about being top of the charts on DPS. Guess what, when you wipe the group by pulling a room, doesn't matter how much DPS you do.

I am looking forward to some more messing around this week, and another toon to level makes me happy. I hope everyone else's weekend went well as well!

Enjoying the whole game. . .

2009-11-24T05:27:00.000-08:00

Everwrath left a comment on my blog from yesterday, basically saying it sounds like I'm enjoying the game again. This got me to thinking. He's right. I am enjoying the game now, and I wasn't before. I think before the game was more of a chore to pass the time, now it is fun.

There are a lot of things that contributed to my previous situation. I think the first was my chosen role of tanking. Tanking is a stressful, difficult, thankless job. Lower level instances don't drop tanking gear, but you are required to run them to learn them, because you can't tank content you aren't at least familiar with. Every group needs a tank, but it is the most difficult, tedious role to gear up for, and unlike DPS, there is no running with insufficient gear. Basically, tanking sucks. Blizz has tried to do things to make it less of a pain, made tanks do more DPS, easier to level, made lots of craftable tank gear, but in the end, tanking is the roughest role to fill in the game. However, this is not a post about past experiences.

If your only experience of the "endgame" was lousy, your overall opinion of that content would be that it sucks and is not fun. In the real world, jobs that are more difficult and stressful get rewarded (they make more money). In Wow, rewards are generally random or equal no matter the role. Mr 800 DPS in heroics gets the same amount of emblems as the tank or healer. I will honestly say that my experiences as a tank colored my experience of the game. Going back to TBC, gearing for tanking was ridiculous and then you had to know every fight and have control of every situation. I was burnt out. I needed something else.

I turned to alts. My love of many of the classes in Wow is well documented. I've also written many posts about how leveling and instancing are completely different. Finally, it all fell into place for me. I got my Shaman to 80, picked up Elemental/Restoration and started getting geared. I will admit, I had a much easier go of it than I would have. I pretty much skipped the rep grind (I wanted exalted with Wyrmrest Accord and Ebon Blade for their mail items) by running trial of the Champion. However, unlike the Paladin whose DPS spec I didn't care for and felt somewhat unnatural, the shaman DPS spec is FUN. I can blast multiple mobs with chain lightning, I can hit lava burst crits for 9k.

I wrote yesterday that before I knew it, I was geared. They say time flies when you're having fun, they're right. I've been running a ton of stuff on my shammy, both as DPS and as heals, and it is a ton of fun. For example, last night, I healed a timed CoS run, we did the run, I won the drake. The run itself was a TON of fun (even though the cat druid and retardadin kept attacking whatever and taking tons of damage), the drake was just icing (I dont even have 300 riding yet to ride it, working on the gold to buy that, damn dual specs). For the first time in the game, I feel like consistantly at the end game, I'm pulling my own weight.

Another interesting facet of playing the shammy, when I log into the game, and I think about who I want to play, shammy wins. I log into my pally to do my jewelcrafting daily (sooo many patterns left to buy), but I don't really have the urge to play one of my alts. Even my warlock who needs one level to get to 65 (so he can learn northrend enchanting) and my priest (who is dual specced discipline and shadow) don't hold the appeal they did while I was leveling. I want to log into my shammy and do dailies while I wait in LFG. Really, if I could do CoS, VH, and maybe UP/UK every day, I would be fine with that and have a ton of badges. I passed on the heroic daily yesterday, I think it was Old Kingdom, I am not a fan of that instance. In a perfect world, the daily will be something like VH, that I want to run anyways, and just gives me some free triumph badges.

I also decided that with the addition of some enchants and gems, my DPS set is more than adequate. I have never wanted to top charts, as long as my DPS is "adequate" I'm happy. However, I was talking with my buddy Ruhtra yesterday and he brough up the fact that being the most effective healer I can will make me more likely to participate in raid content. This had never really been a consideration for me before because I can't/won't raid tank on my pally and I consider him scrub DPS. I don't even care if he gets DPS drops, he's just there to fill space. Not so with my shammy. So I've been taking a deeper look into how to use my badges to help my healing. I definately need the totem first of all. After last night, I have almost enough emblems for it. I think after that, I will buy the shield. I may head down to Venture bay and check and see if we hold it one of these days because I have more than enough coins for an Elemental totem from there that will be an upgrade (I'm using the level 60 one that increase SP by 33 for lightning spells, blech).

I think tommorow if I'm feeling adventurous I will link my shammy. I would love to get feedback on what gear I should be looking for as far as upgrades.

poof! I'm geared. . .

2009-11-23T05:29:00.000-08:00

I don't know how much of it was patch changes, I don't know how much ToC contributed (ok, a LOT), and cloth makes up a large part of my gear, but I am now pretty much what I would consider "geared". I have two things to replace, my shield (crafted epics blizz? seems like a waste downgrading conquest badges just to get an upgrade), and totem (which is my first priority, 19 badges each for resto and elemental). I also really want the mail shoulders you get with badges of triumph, but I really only get those from the daily heroic, so it will be a while.

What I think is kind of strange/funny is the speed and ease of gearing up my shammy as opposed to the pally. First of all, I figured I would have to rep grind and get purples that way. Not so much. I am just about revered with Ebon Blade and Wyrmrest Accord and the purples from exalted are no longer upgrades. I ran a BUNCH of ToC over the weekend as well as the dailies (cept CoS, get to that later), and the drops were good to me. I got the +Hit trinket from heroic violet hold, as well as the robe, which it turns out I no longer need. I got the Abyssal Rune from ToC to upgrade my other slot. I got the mail pants from the black knight on heroic, in addition to the cloth head and cloth boots. Basically the only gear I have left from dinging 80 (I made the titansteel guardian a lil later) is my totem, shield, Revenant's breastplate, shoulders and my 2 capes (I am using the Ebon Blade rep one for elemental, and a BoE spellpower one for resto).

I am not all enchanted up or gemmed completely (I wasn't quite prepared to get geared this fast), but with some easy gemming/enchanting I got some pretty ridiculous numbers. I downloaded Rawr a while ago because it seems like the best way to compare gear and see where I'd be at. Rawr does seem to heavily favor crit, which I guess I could see based on what I've read on Elitist Jerks, but I've been reading shadow priest stuff too, so it's easy to get paths crossed. Anyways, my gear on dinging 80 Rawr said would give me DPS of around 2500 (I think they use a patchwerk type boss for example). Now with my upgrades I will be hit capped, and Rawr showed my DPS to be around 5k. I still really don't know what "acceptable" DPS is, but I would think 5k would be acceptable for 10 man content. I also don't think that number takes Chain lightning or my ability to drink my unlimited mana potions (yay free mana!). Their rotation was Flame Shock, Lava Burst, 5x lightning bolt, repeat. Mine normally ends up being FS, LB, chain lightning, LBx2, repeat. While it does put a slight drain on mana, my pots are plenty without even factoring in replenishment to keep me up.

I am also really close to 450 alchemy on the shammy. I still cant do the master of transmute quest, I need to farm some primal airs for that. While extra pots is semi good, potentially getting 2 for 1 epic gems is just too good to pass up. I still keep doing the JC daily every day on pally because there are always more cuts I need. I am working on the skyflare one for crit (Rawr said its BIS for me, I don't really have a basis for comparison on that, but as crit triggers my water shields so I guess it will work for both). After that its the epic luminous cut and maybe the epic royal cut. I am trying to get as many double duty cuts as I can. Hit really is entirely a DPS stat. I have the epic yellow +hit, and I have a couple melee epic cuts, now it's time to work on caster cuts.

I almost forgot about my Culling of Stratholme "drama". Now, I have recently been pugging heroics, generally with no problems. I usually end up healing, which is fine, I have a full resto set and I think I now have a decent grasp of when to use my abilities (I also have had zero probs with threat, so I'm gonna switch some points around in my resto build into improved healing wave). I got through both daily heroics from the weekend with no wipes (although admittedly with hugely over-geared pally tanks). So I got into a group for H CoS, and they dropped me 2 mins in. I whispered the leader with a WTF? (I hearthed in the middle of dailies to switch gear) and he said "sorry, we're trying for drake". WTF!?!? In other instance difficulties, we had a pretty big problem with a guild run in H VH. There were other problems, but I had major issues keeping the tank up. He was really actually well geared, but I've never healed a DK tank before. I dunno if it was his dual wield build or generally lower health than I'm used to (he had 27k during the run) or just some weakness with DKs, but he seemed to be taking a lot of spiky damage. I don't know if its a lack of SP on my part, or my build, or something I can fix. I do need to get my emergency macro together so I can do instant healing wave. I want to have it hit my focus target and just focus on tank but apart from that, I dunno what else I could do.

I didn't really play on my alts at all this weekend. I can tell I'm really enjoying the shammy because I havent really had the desire to play my alts. I will def try to get my warlock up to 65 to level his enchanting, and I still want to try a shadow priest, but shammy is just so much fun! Hope everyone else's weekend went as well as mine. . .

finding what feels right. . .

2009-11-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

Wow is one of those games that gives players LOTS of choices. Although there are nine classes in the game, talent tree decisions can make that number seem much higher (I wouldn't quite say 27 because some classes play similarly regardless of spec). How can someone find the "right" class to play with so many choices? You just have to experiment and play what feels right.

Another thing that makes the whole thing murky is the concept of the endgame. Blizz has set the first 79 levels (soon to be 84) up as this time of continuous improvement and advancement, mostly done solo. You are more powerful than most of the mobs you'll fight one on one, and you can usually take down multiples at once, sometimes with a short time to rest and refresh afterwards. Then you get to the level cap and everything changes.

I have found a couple things in my leveling of multiple characters in the game. In solo content melee characters generally have an easier time of it. Three to four mobs on a paladin, death knight or enhancement shammy are nothing. Three to four mobs get up to a priest and I'm freaking out, dotting them up, dispersing, and praying they die before I do. However, this has no bearing at how things will play at 80 apart from dailies.

I have found "the game" at 80 to be an application of fast AoE on trash, and sustained single target damage on "bosses". I prefer accomplishing this at range for easier targeting and safety. For me, caster DPS is the way to go with additional points given for utility. This is what feels right for me, your feel for the game may be completely different. Rogues, who lack utility and can only melee DPS are useless to me. Hunters who have solid ranged DPS but no other utility are equally so. Warlocks and mages have some measure of additional utility, but fall short of the druid, priest and shammy's abilities to heal. That is a HUGE benefit to me, in addition to any other buffs they provide groups.

The last thing to consider is how the class makes you feel. I have not leveled up a priest all the way to have an accurate comparison. However, in playing my shammy elemental, I just get a little giddy inside. 7.5k crits from lava burst, sometimes I literally say "BOOM!!! You're dead!" Shammy is just enjoyable. Priest might be just as enjoyable, I don't have a point of comparison yet.

What feels right to you? Try to step outside the box and give other classes a chance, you might find one you really like.

Can I haz grp plz!?!?!?

2009-11-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

So I have to say, I am really looking forward to cross server PuG's and the new dungeon finder. I am hoping it allows a better mix of what you're looking to queue for. As things stand right now, I've noticed two types of groups: those destined to fail, and none whatsoever.

Speaking of destined to failure, I have a new target of my wrath: ToC. I despise this instance for numerous reasons. First of all, jousting. I despise the jousting mechanic, don't like it, isn't fun, and has nothing to do with how my character plays at other times. Secondly, the instance itself plays nothing like other instances. Its short, just successive "challenges", and the bosses don't just focus on the tank. It also allows people to re-enter after dying (which is almost guaranteed to happen). This re-entry causes a lot of confusion in people who havent run the instance before. Lastly, because the rewards it gives out are over-powered in relation to similar level content, it attracts a lot of people looking for "easy gear" who arent necessarily up to the level of the instance. Case in point, the most recent time I ran this, the DPS, on dying, failed to come back to their bodies to keep fighting. I kept the tank up for around a minute with no DPS.

Besides my hatred of ToC, other instances don't seem to go much better. My shammy is geared almost entirely in blues/purples. I have both pieces of Revenants mail, the titansteel guardian, and titanium spellshock ring. In my elemental gear, while I'm not hit capped for raiding, I have around 10% spell hit which, with elemental precision, should be fine. While I havent run too many heroics, I know that I have the numbers to heal them or at the very least DPS. However, when I was on pally, couldn't seem to find heals. Its frustrating. CAN I HAZ GRP PLZ!?!?!?

I just want to farm some badges and get some rep with Wyrmrest Accord. Once I hit exalted with them, I will have purple gloves, and I will get purple pants (um kilt?) from Ebon Blade from dailies, so I will be almost entirely in purples. I would think that would be enough to farm heroics?

Oh well. In other Wow news, I am about 100k from hitting 65 on my Warlock so I can learn grandmaster Enchanting. That will give me every profession at Northrend level besides Engineering, which I've gone on record as saying I have no use for. My shammy hit 423 alchemy yesterday which is frustrating because everything is green except transmutes, which are on a cooldown. Oh well, another couple days then I can learn meta gem transmutes and then start making flasks.

Still trying to decide who to level next. Priest, Druid, Death Knight, Warrior? Anyone have any feedback?

I can't believe I'm saying this: I agree with the Goblin. . .

2009-11-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

I just read Tobold's blog and he had an especially interesting post today. I have to say this upfront, I am kind of a massive fan. His was one of the first blogs that I followed (along with Blessing of Kings). So, the long and short of it was Markco from Just my two coppers allegedly approached him about linking or bannering something about his gold guide. Apparently he's charging more than two coppers for it and was looking for some advertisement. Then he mentioned that Gevlon the Greedy Goblin similarly rebuffed Markco, in a post here.

I don't ordinarily agree with the Goblin. I almost never do. I rarely read his blog unless led to it for some particular reason. I think his brand of anti-social for it's own sake is tiresome and just a means to get attention. In this instance, I agree with him 100%.

I think bloggers are one of the things that make Wow so enjoyable. My main is a Prot Paladin, and I am an ok tank at best. I am middling geared, and have a good aggro rotation, but I just cant seem to remember 27 bajillion fights. However, most of what I do know about paladining (I don't think that's a word, but it should be), I learned online. Most of what I know about playing a shammy, priest, warlock, mage, and druid, I learned online. Death knight I pretty much just hit a bunch of buttons, thats how you're supposed to play them, right? lol I look at gold making as just another facet of the game. Could I make a ton of gold? Probably, but I prefer to grind things and do dailies because that's fun for me, making gold is more like work.

I guess when it comes down to it, I look at blogs as this awesome free resource for people who want information. Trying to use one as a scam to make real life money just seems wrong. As a result, I will no longer be supporting: Just my two coppers, and have removed it from my blogroll.

In a completely unrelated note, something I probably don't say enough. I really genuinely enjoy all the blogs on my blogroll and read them as regularly as I can. However, my job has filters on posting to certain things, so as such, I can't always comment. My job has also blocked some of the blogs in my blogroll (I miss reading Gnomeageddon), but we do what we can. Keep blogging people, its a great mental exercise and it gives me something to do while I should be working.

Ding 80 (again), more shammy thoughts. . .

2009-11-17T04:33:00.000-08:00

Well, normally I wouldn't be blogging at 7:30am, but I'm home sick. I don't think it's swine flu (I've heard when you get that, you're freaking miserable), but I have something, so I def want to to get to the dr (hopefully while they're doing maintenance, I'm not an addict, I can quit whenever I want to).

So, I've been working on my Shammy for quite some time, and last night, while doing my dailies, I dinged 80 (and got the 50 dailies achievement, and the achievement for cooking lol). I promptly went and learned all my talents and re-specced from enhancement to elemental, and changed around my resto build. My resto build is pretty cookie cutter 0/13/58 with healing grace instead of elemental weapons. I have been convinced by people who say the benefit from elemental weapons is marginal at best and doesn't scale. As I will probably be running heroics with some inexperienced tanks, threat reduction on heals is prolly more beneficial.

The resto change was pretty minor, I've had a resto dual spec for a while and done some instance healing with it. While I like resto, I really wanted a caster DPS, so the change I was most looking forward to was switching enhancement to elemental. Again, I am using a pretty cookie cutter 57/14/00 build, with my main PvE omission being reverberation. I just don't see that as being very beneficial for the points, and I think the anti-puchback and mana regen talents are more useful.

Another thing I've been doing to prepare for the change is collecting some gear. I got cloth belt and bracers from reg ToC with +hit as well as Revenant's boots and chest. I have some other assorted blues to fill in, and I've been working rep with dailies. I am going to start doing the Wyrmrest dailies every day in addition to the 5-6 Ebon Blade dailies (the intelligence docs one is frustrating, I have a ton of keys, but finding chests kind blows and 35 copper after killing a bunch of mobs kinda sucks). Tonight when my titansteel cooldown refreshes, I will be able to make a titansteel guardian. I also sent 2 jewelcrafting rings, the spellshock ring, and ring of northern tears. I'm socketing the spellshock ring with a runed cardinal ruby since I don't think I'll be replacing it ever, and it can do work in my ele and resto sets.

I took it out to icecrown to test out on some mobs and OMFG!!!! I thought I killed things quick as enhancement, this is a whole other level. Lightning bolt for 2k, flameshock, then a lava burst for 5-7k, dead.

I have to give major shoutouts to WTFspaghetti, plusheal, and drug. As I'm not really an expert on any class, the majority of ideas I have come from other sources. Wow wiki has great talent builds, but the blogs and discussion boards really go more in depth.

Now I have to decide who's next: Priest (Shadow/Disc), Druid (Feral/Resto) or other. . .

Weekend update. . .

2009-11-16T05:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I had one of the best weekends in a long time this weekend, for a variety of reasons. I got some good sports in, spent time with the gf, and made a lot of progress on the Wow front.

First of all, in non-wow related activities, my Cincinnati Bearcats beat West Virginia in a pretty good game on Friday night. I am a graduate of Cincinnati and I have to say the worst beat down I ever witnessed in person came at the hands of West Virginia. Good to see UC still undefeated. I also went out with my gf on saturday night. I have to say, I love the smaller non-chain mexican places. We had some food and we both had margaritas and boy were they strong! Sunday the Bengals beat the Steelers to take the lead in the AFC north.

With all that other stuff, I was actually able to get some Wow time in between. I think the coolest thing I did was download Rawr. It is a great app that lets you load up your talents and gear and give a rough idea of how it will perform and which items are more beneficial. I've been using it to see how my shammy will perform at 80, and I have to say it is encouraging. With the gear I've accumulated, some easy enchants, and a basic Elemental shammy rotation (flame shock, lava burst, lightning till lava burst is off cooldown), they say I will do around 2500 DPS. Now, that is roughly equivalent to what my pally does, but I am a firm believer it's not what you're doing, but how you're doing it, and I want to be doing it as a caster.

I wasn't able to quite get to 80 though. I ran through Culling of Stratholme, Utgarde Pinnacle, and with some major guildie help, managed to get through Trial of the Crusader on regular. In what seemed wrong, backwards and in all other ways ridiculous, we started with my buddy Ruhtra tanking and me healing. Unfortunately the priest chick with the dragon put an end to that, I just couldnt keep up with her smites. Eus stepped in to heal, I switched to enhancement and we downed her and the black knight, and I got some sweet gear for my Elemental set. I shouldn't have a problem reaching the hit cap, although I should be more than good to go for heroics out of the box.

I am about 400k XP from 80, so I should be able to hit that tonight with minimal effort. I think I made the right choice as far as caster DPS/heals goes. I really like shammy healing and looking at the numbers from Rawr, I think I'm gonna love elemental a lot too (8k crit on lava burst, YES PLEASE!). I somewhat worry about losing spirit wolves in doing dailies, but I know elemental has other tools, so I'm not too super concerned. I'm also looking forward to maybe doing some BGs and seeing how that goes. I know I don't like melee, maybe a caster will make things easier.

I hope everyone elses weekend was as enjoyable and productive as mine!

Some quality time with my shammy. . .

2009-11-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

Well, in my job I don't work on wednesdays. This gives me an opportunity to put in some quality time during the day when the kiddies (thats code for douchebags who look for lowbies to gank) aren't on, and I can do some leveling.

I started the day at 76 and figured if I made a pretty good go of it, I would be able to hit 78. I managed to do that JUST BARELY. It gave me a lot of time to think about things and strategize for 80 (which I now think I will hit this weekend, YAY!).

First of all, I wonder why I am skinning. I have a leatherworker, but he's not my shammy so I won't be learning new patterns, and I bought both the revenants pieces on the AH (about 155g between them, yes I am a jew IRL). I kind of wanted the spellshock belt for my resto set, but there's a cloth belt from Wyrmrest Accord rep that is just as good, albeit cloth. I actually have a pretty good starter set at 80 ready to go, might do a writeup on it later, the only real piece missing that I would want is the titansteel guardian. Six titansteel bars is a bear (36 titanium ore, blizz you're killin me!). I made the saronite mace you can use at 77, I will prolly try to run some heroic nexus to see if the mace from there drops.

I am definately switching to alchemy ASAP given skinning is next to useless to me. I have epic gem cuts, why not transmute some epic gems? I also need to start running dailies like ASAP. Most of the gear I want is a rep reward from someone (looks like I will wear the tabard for wyrmrest till revered, then switch to Kirin Tor, and get ebon blade rep from quests and dailies), and I also want to get cracking on the cooking dailies (worg tartar is a key part of my hit cap calculations, why not take a free 20 points?).

How do I feel about my Shammy's performance? Well I healed DTK last night, and although our group was overpowered for the instance OMFG! Healing with the shammy is everything I want in 5 mans. I earthshield the tank (making sure to refresh it when necessary) put riptide on him and either toss him a lesser healing wave every now and then or chain heal if the melee DPS are taking damage. I'm rocking about 1000 SP right now which should almost double at 80 (I will go from greens/blues to blues/purples) and I'm not having problems with mana. I think my casting efficientcy has improved although I'm still working on a few things.

Elemental I am a lil nervous about. Well, not nervous as much as not sure how often I'll use it. The major barriers to groups are not having a tank or healer. Obviously I won't be tanking on the shammy, and I'm just not excited about leveling another tank, so it's caster DPS or heals. I wonder: are groups even going to want/let me DPS? Really as much as shammy healing is cool, I wouldn't want to do it all the time. Sometimes, I just want to blast stuff.

Btw WTFspaghetti has an excellent guide for starting shammies here

Tanking Meme. . .

2009-11-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm not really a tank. I mean my "main" is a prot paladin in tank gear. I have around 30k HP self buffed. But as one of my guildies Nymeros pointed out, I spend more time goofing around on my alts then actually tanking anything. If someone needs something and I'm not in the midst of a leveling session, I will hop on, tank a heroic and let them collect their loots. Last time I did this, I ran some guildies and a PuG DPS warrior through H UP. I almost had a bout of nerd rage when the red sword dropped leaving our DK and the PuG warrior to roll for it (I had to win it tanking that thing 8 bazillion times. . .maybe not that many, but it was a lot!). Anyways, even though I'm not really a tank, I've done more of it than any other role, so I figured I would participate in the tanking meme posted by Chastity on Righteous Orbs.

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Five mans. I don't really have any desire to tank in a raid. Too much learning of fights, too much responsibility. I can tell I would not enjoy it.

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
Consecration. It is the mark of pally tanking. Everything else is nice and all, but it has been my most used spell since vanilla.

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Lay on hands. I used to not even have it on my action bar. I have been using it more frequently of late (as necessary of course, not because my healers have been sucking)

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
AoE. Either grinding or holding threat on multiple mobs, no other class has it like pallies.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
Dependance on mana. Any boss that has a silence is like a death blow. It's not even worth bringing a pally tank at that point.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
Leveling an alt on the outside. Seriously, don't bring me to a raid.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
Paladin. My main is a paladin, my first 70 was paladin, my first 80 was paladin. I wouldn't say I "enjoy" tanking. But I am only confident doing it on paladin.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Thats hard to say. Other classes are most definately NOT pallies. DK's have an ability like consecration but not the mitigation. Druids have awesome health but not the AoE threat. Warriors are the closest to pallies but rage is a pain to manage. All the other classes are about even, I wouldn't want to tank with any of them lol.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
I will call this a tie between trying to go too fast (sometimes resulting in over pulls, healer freak out, etc), and forgetting to turn on all my tank abilities (I have forgotten to use righteous fury, devotion aura, etc). I solo so much and rarely ever tank, its a mental exercise to remember to do everything.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Bad DPS. I don't just mean DPS who don't do much damage, they are annoying too. DPS who pull, they suck. I am the tank, I can take them beating on me, you can't, don't pull. DPS who don't watch aggro. I put out a pretty decent threat. I know my rotations for single target or multi mobs (I like the shield slam on single mobs). If you pull aggro, I'm letting you die. There was a warlock in a recent H UP run who kept constantly pulling aggro. Consequently, he had some repair bills, I'm sure. We had zero group wipes, he died about 4-5 times. If you pull aggro and you're not the healer, you might get a taunt, if you keep aggro, you're dead.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
I think so. There are a lot of factors blizz is trying to balance with very different tanking styles.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
I'm pretty compulsive about omen. I like to keep track of my threat generation to make sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
I think other paladins honestly have the biggest misconception about prot. I have leveled prot from about level 40 on. Prot is a mindset, not just a set of abilities. You can't level to 80 as retribution and then expect to be an effective tank (I think this is why most DK tanks suck).

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
See above. Also, I have come to the conclusion the biggest thing about tanking is knowing all the fights. Even though my pally is geared to tank about anything, what I can tank is severely limited because I don't know the majority of instances in the game.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
You can't really seperate the two, although with the new icecrown debuff, I think blizz is moving towards the Effective Health model. Avoidance is tricky because I think it leads to spike damage. Mitigating a little damage at a time is better because it keeps from excessive use of the "OH SHIT" buttons. Some avoidance is probably good, but I think moving towards more of a mitigation model is better. There is a reason why Rogues don't tank.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
DK's. I have a level 70 death knight that I don't play because he's not that interesting and I have never tanked on him. I know I don't care for melee DPS in instances, so why level another one?

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
Before we got a taunt, I had a macro for that. I use Omen and Deadly boss mods as well. Thats about it though.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Once I got to the defense cap, I just stacked as much stamina as I could. However, I don't really look for stats, and if something is an upgrade, I can work around it. My gear really isnt to the point there I'm turning down tanking gear (maybe blues).

In other news, got priest to 64 last night, Shammy ran VH and actually hit 76. Four more levels to go, then I switch to Ele/Resto and see about getting in on some raids.

Weekend update. . .

2009-11-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I didnt get any Wow time in until sunday for a few reasons. Friday night and sat was spent with my gf. Her son has an obsession with trains that defies explanation. Anyways, saturday night was Cincinnati vs UConn. My little brother is a student there (I'm an alum) so I got to sit in the student section. I am pretty sure I was on TV a few times, we were in the 2nd row, corner of the endzone. Also, being a 30yo dude in the student section is weird. Younger drunken girls in body paint, generally cute. Younger drunken girls in body paint puking and causing drama, not cute.

Sunday I actually got to sit down and have some quality time with Wow. I pretty much wanted to spend the whole day leveling, which I did. I got my shammy almost to 76. I tried to pug into Violet Hold, but the group broke up due to no tank. I thought DK's were supposed to fix the tank problem. Instead it just gave us another DPS class who refuses to tank. Ugh. I think of DK's even worse because THEY HAVE TO HAVE A MID LEVEL ALT TO MAKE ONE!!! The only comparable I can think of is a warrior, and honestly, if it's your first character, ok, tanking is prolly not a solid choice. But seriously, if you want to instance on your DK, you should at least be ABLE to tank. And yes, I practice what I preach, all of my characters capable of a dual role have dual specs (my mage and lock don't and my warrior probably isn't going to be leveled past 67 like ever).

Anyways, speaking of dual spec, thats the OTHER thing I did this weekend was buy dual spec for my priest. I was originally going to go Holy, I figured that's "the healing tree" for priests. Thanks to Miss Medecina for clarifying things. I read her beginner's guide to both Discipline and Holy, and decided to go discipline. I really like the thought of a powerful shield and penance, and then being able to throw renew around on the DPS. I havent really done any instance healing on my priest (I healed a ramps run once as shadow), so I'm interested to see how it works. I also discovered I can access Plusheal at work, so that will be some goodness.

I have been thinking about gearing my Shammy and when I am going to switch things around. I made some glyphs for my switch to Elemental (I just "discovered" Lava, which seems really good for elemental), and bid on some gear in the AH. I have been skinning with him, but my Druid is actually the leatherworker. I have gotten enough arctic fur to buy both the patterns for the Revenants gear, although I bid on the boots in the AH as a cheaper short term fix. I think I might be able to use the boots for Elemental and resto, I dunno if there is a straight spellpower boot enchant so icewalker shouldn't be a huge issue there. I'm thinking I will drop skinning for alchemy around 78-79 and drop Enhancement for Elemental at 80. As much as elemental seems awesome for instancing, I just can't see leveling without Spirit Wolves. It has become my favorite "OH SHIT" button in the game. I can't quite solo elites as well as on the pally, but in general things die much faster, so it's smooth leveling.

I would LOVE to hit 80 on the shammy before 3.3 drops, although I dunno how possible that is. Maybe 77 on weds, 79 by next sunday I will be a lil short. Then once Shammy hits 80, it's the gear grind. Oh how I love you. . .not.

FUNNIEST. . .THING. . .EVER!!!!

2009-11-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

So I was going to post something about DPS, then Darraxus posted a blog about e-peen, and all I could think of was the youtube video "My new haircut". For those of you who havent seen it, watch it here.

Well that got me to thinking "Is there a wow version?" There is. I laughed so hard I cried and couldnt breath.

Gearing for the necessary roles. . .

2009-11-05T05:37:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking around gearing a healer/DPS hybrid. Obviously the gear won't be completely the same due to the hit cap requirement on the caster DPS gear. Now, I've been trying to read all I can about healing and get some practice in instances, but as many have pointed out, the game at 80 is not the same as the game while leveling.

This brings about my question of the day: Why does Blizzard make it more difficult gearing for the "necessary" roles (tank and healer)?

Now both face challenges in gearing and they are similar but different. Tanks have to deal with the defense cap. Currently only druids are not required to collect gear with enough rating to make them un-crittable by bosses. A tank without the necessary defense rating just isnt a tank. The catch is that it is very difficult to amass enough defense gear to tank heroics without actually running heroics. Doesn't make much sense does it?

Healers have a similar but different problem. There is no standard spellpower rating, no hit cap, nothing that says "you must have X number". How does a healer know they're ready to heal heroics? I can't really figure out any way other than run heroics, and if you kept the group up, you obviously were ready.

One of my guildies Nymeros, has an alt who is a shammy and just hit 80 the other day. Apparently he has had a number of difficulties getting into PuGs as a healer. Now, I will be upfront in saying I respect "quality" DPS. However, most players in the game are not quality DPS. They want to be carried through content despite their performance and collect as many purples as possible. I think it sucks he got booted from groups looking for an easy ride from a geared healer.

My main is a tank, I'm not a great one, I'm ok. However, I understand holding aggro and how to gear a tank, and I crafted most of my tanking gear or got it as rep rewards. I'm not a great healer, I'm ok. For the three classes I heal with, I generally understand what to do at what time, and how to gear and talent them to keep people up. I'm learning, but with groups of approximately my skill level, I'd make it through level appropriate content. The problem is that most DPS don't want to go through level appropriate content. They want to do ToC heroic or Ulduar when they're geared for entry level heroics.

Unfortunately, there really isn't a cure for this. I PuG as little as possible. The reason for this is I just don't care for the majority of Wow players. As a consequence, my characters aren't that geared. I don't really care. I will never tank a raid, I have no interest in the stress, the responsibility or the requirement to know every fight. I am content with just running the occasional heroic with people I know, trust and like, and getting what drops my way.

End Rambling

On a leveling note, the rabbi (my shadow priest) is almost up to 63. I still can't quite afford dual spec for him (I have the gold, but it would just about bankupt me, so I'm gonna pass), but I figure it's not a big deal because I don't run instances in TBC. I definately want to get him dual spec and cold weather flying which will run me about 2k gold and bring my number of chars with that to 4 (Pally, Druid, Shammy, and Priest). My Shammy hit 74 yesterday, I am hoping to hit 75 sunday and keep a modest pace of 2 levels per week. I really can't do more than that because of general non-wow pursuits (gf, college football games with lil brother, etc), still Shammy should hit 80 before 3.3. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on instance groups.

Hope everyone has had a good week, GO BEARCATS!!! (I am a graduate of the University of Cincinnati)

Healing meme: I was tagged. . .

2009-11-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

First of all, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! I hope everyone had a good weekend. I had an interesting weekend to say the least. Earlier this year, I was engaged and my current gf and ex fiancee were at the party I was at. Yeah, luckily it ended up not as uncomfortable as it could have been. I also got a pic of my gf and her friend with guitar hero controllers rocking out. I might post it from home (just don't tell my gf I posted pics of her on teh inter-webz . . . or that I have a blog about World of Warcraft lol).

I got tagged by my buddy Ruhtra to join in a lil meme about healing. Now much like almost every other class/role in the game, I don't have an 80 healer, but I've played all the healing classes, and healed instances with all of them.

1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Well, this is hard to answer, I have 3 healers, 2 70+ and one on the way, none of them 80, so I havent made a decision yet about which one will be my "primary" healer. The leader in the clubhouse right now is Lefish my 73 Orc Shammy.

2. What is your primary group healing environment? (ie raids, 5 man, PVP)
Primary being only, I've only healed 5 mans, although I've done so with every healing class in the game (ok, you got me, no bandage spec rogue healing)

3. What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Each one is different, although I am horrible with names, I generally just know effects and icon. With Druid I love the AoE HoT. With Shammy I love Chain Heal. With the Priest, don't ask me why, but I love Renew.

4. What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Again, depends on class. With Priest I almost never use "big" heals. Its either Flash heal, renew, binding heal, or Prayer of Healing. With Druid I use most everything. With Shammy I use healing wave less, mostly because I'm chain healing a lot, and unless I pop nature's swiftness to get a big instant heal, there's not much reason to use it.

5. What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
With Druid, it's the HoTs, totally. With the priest it's the variety of healing tools, they can seriously do a little bit of everything. Shammy I would have a hard time nailing a "biggest" strength. Totems are awesome and something no other class has access to, but Chain Heal is a very unique ability (heals like a big heal with some AoE functionality) so I'm copping out and saying those two.

6. In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best healing assignment (in general) for you?
I doubt I will ever heal a 25 man raid, I really have no desire to go over 10.

7. What healing class do you enjoy healing with the most and why?
As I only run 5 mans (at the moment) I've never healed "with" anyone.

8. What healing class do you least enjoy (hate) healing with and why?
See above

9. What is your worst habit as a healer?
I cast too much with leaves me with low mana and major over heals. I got used to healing with a druid, which is constant "maintenance healing", and the mana regen is pretty sick. Shammies and Priests can't heal like that (at least to this point). I am trying to get better with it, but that is my struggle. It used to be not healing DPS, although I've gotten better about that.

10. What is your biggest peeve in a group environment when healing?
DPS who pull aggro and then want to know why I let them die. I didn't let you die, your dumb ass shouldn't be taking damage in the first place. My other biggest pet peeve is under geared/leveled tanks who try to tank things they're not prepared for and want to complain. My main is a tank, you get no sympathy here.

11. Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PVE healing?
I think of the healers that I play, they are balanced and it is player skill/gear that determines how good a player is. Obviously there are talent choices, but blizz has made the PvE healing spec pretty obvious

12. What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
I look at 2 things: Are we wiping and how often am I drinking? Wipes that are my fault (yeah, there have been a few), I try to figure out what I could have done differently. Sometimes I have gone into content under-geared and it showed. More often than not though, I go OOM and its because I cast too much.

13. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
I dont think anyone who doesnt play a healer really understands healing (this includes players of classes able to heal who choose not to). Healing is it's own classification for a reason, and it takes a lot of know-how to do effectively. Since getting into it, I think I like it more than tanking, it is both easier and harder at the same time.

14. What do you think is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
There is an easy thing for new healers to learn? Breaking into healing is to completely change the way that you think and function at other times in the game. You do no damage (generally) and your sole responsibility is to support the group. Your gear choices are different, your use of abilities is different. There is just a lot to learn about healing. As I alluded to previously, learning to heal is as hard or harder than learning to tank.

15. If someone were to evaluate your performance as a healer (via recount), what sort of pattern would they see (ie lots of overhealing, low healing output, ect)?
Generally I overheal a lot, but my healing output is pretty good. I dont think I will ever get away from over healing, but I do need to work on being more efficient with my heals.

16. Haste or Crit and why?
It depends. I used to go for crit with the mindset that a very small benefit all the time (haste) has less of an impact than very low potential for a major benefit (crit). However, in thinking about it, I have almost come back to haste because in thinking about it, crit seems like it would just lead to more over-healing. Now, the major exception to this is with HoTs because while they can crit, you generally arent using them to keep people from dying, more to keep their health at managable levels, so crit makes it easier. [edit - Yeah, I found out HoTs can't crit. WTF!?!?! Makes no sense since DoTs can crit. . .] Honestly, blizz has a tendency to pick what's what on gear and I've never been in a position to be overly choosy with drops, so I get what I get.

17. What add-ons or macros (if any) do you use to aid you in healing?
I use healbot.

18. Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats or do you stack some much higher than others?
Again, it depends. On the Druid and priest it is as much SP and Spirit as I can get and everything else just comes on gear. On shammy I have been shooting for SP and Int (shammy gear generally has a lot of MP5, and I have seen a lot of blue sockets which lead me to SP/MP5). SP seems to be the gold standard and stacking any other stats just seems pointless. Haste seems nice, but because you need so much of it to get any real bonus, it isn't worth stacking for (to me).

Another piece of BoA and healing as Shadow. . .

2009-10-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

Well, last night was another excercise in interestingness. I try to read all I can, and I have played as just about every class/role in the game at this point (besides hunters and rogues, but we've been down that road before). The last class that I have yet to heal anything with is a priest. I changed that last night.

I got home and didnt really feel like hopping on the shammy, and I had a full bank of rested XP, so I thought "why not run around hellfire and take the priest for a spin?" I learned a few things about shadow, namely, those DoTs are powerful! I somewhat multi-dot'd on my warlock, but with the felguard and rain of fire, it wasn't exactly just the dots dropping the mobs. With a shadow priest, thats about all you've got. It was a surprise to be running around and just see mobs dropping. I still don't like taking more than one at a time, but it's nice to know they're not as helpless as I'd thought (I'd still me more comfortable if you got mind sear at 65 instead of 75). However, I knew that shadow was a good DPS leveling build. What I had my doubts about was how well I would be able to heal.

Now, I will admit, I leveled my priest with free levels from recruit a friend, so his gear was lacking. I had picked up a couple outlands pieces, I had the BoA chest and I had a few pieces of green invoker gear saved up. My spellpower going into ramps was about 241. Not great, but not super horrible I guess. Anyways, I was able to heal the instance with a few wipes. Huntards, I am addressing this to you: A) the tank is the only one who should be pulling unless he specifically tells you otherwise. Any ability you have to tank on your main does not transfer to other charaters. B) If you absolutely cannot resist the urge to pull, don't do it when the healer is at less than 50% mana. Two of our wipes were a direct result of the hunter pulling when I was all but out of mana. I have to say, I like priest healing, prayer of healing is a great ability in spots and I absolutely love renew. I've read a lot of raid healers don't spec fully into improved renew, I guess that will be a choice at 80, but for 5 mans, I really like it. Prayer of healing seems a lil overkill when only 1-2 DPS are taking damage. Shield + Renew + greater heal were generally enough to keep the tank up, even on boss fights. I also figured out good times to use dispersion to get my mana back so I wasn't constantly drinking. Obviously I would prefer a holy dual spec, but after 3 dual specs and 3 northrend flying purchases, I'm a lil tapped for cash at the moment. I have around 1200 on my account. It will be a little while before the rabbi has a holy spec, which is ok because I normally don't instance in outlands except for ramps and BF.

I finally got my 200 stonekeeper shards, but I had to go to bed before wintergrasp was over so I couldn't buy my shoulders. I am buying the cloth PvP shoulders for easier leveling for my Priest, Mage, and Lock. I think my next BoA purchase might be a mail melee DPS chest, although I doubt I will level my warrior or DK so I might just buy the purple tanking belt I've been putting off for months (I don't NEED it, I just kind of want it, and I keep hoping Skadi's belt will drop in H UP, I've never even seen it. It will probably drop when I'm on my priest or shammy). We ran H ToC which I had never actually completed, a couple DPS pieces dropped both of which I lost rolls on (I was in my ret spec at the time. I'm not comfortable tanking things I've never run unless they're like straightforward tank and spank). It doesnt really bother me losing DPS rolls, I don't much care for melee DPS after leveling. I had even contemplated dropping Ret for a holy off spec, but I don't much care for paladin healing. No real Hot, no AoE heals, no thank you. Ruhtra is pretty darn good at it, but I think he would have been good at any healing class or even tanking if thats what he'd wanted to do.

Anyways, I have to say in handicapping my "who will be my preferred 80 DPS/heals?" race, the shammy is still definitively ahead. Having not healed as holy though, it really isnt a fair comparison as my shammy has a full resto build and gear set. However, I really like earth shield and chain heal, and having a big instant emergency heal is pretty awesome. I wonder if healbot can run macros?

Speaking of addons, in general, I love Dominos. I pretty much can't play with blizzard's stock UI. With that having been said, I got the weirdest error last night when playing my priest. Normally, I use bar 1 as my main bar so I can hit number keys to activate abilities. I have this on other characters whose bars can change: Warrior and Druid. What somehow happened was that my bar 6 icons showed up in bar 1, which went away and wouldnt show my shadowform icons whether I was in shadowform or not. I don't really know how to fix it or get it right, I just put a different number bar in place of bar 6 (I have about 4 bars I don't need, which is still 6 bars I'm using). Anyone else have this issue? I am gonna probably play around with it some more after work to see if I can find a better fix.

On a non-Wow related note, did anyone notice Dragula is available for Rock Band? Besides a lack of Living Dead Girl, can you think of a better halloween song? (seriously, how could they have missed that one, I'm not a big fan of superbeast or the other one in the pack and I bought more human than human when it came out earlier).

Fail-Tanking, un-retirement and my inability to avoid holiday content. . .

2009-10-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a semi eventful day off of work. My original intention was to hit level 73 on the shammy, that didn't happen. I got about 1/3 of the way through 72 though, so it wasnt a wasted day on that front. I did, however, get a lot accomplished so the day wasn't a loss (in Wow terms anyways).

My reason for the stall in shammy leveling was a direct result of a poor PuG decision. Now, I know solo questing can be the absolute fastest way to get experience. One of the utilities on Titan Panel (one of my favorite addons EVER btw, I can't live without it), tracks your XP per hour. While my buddy Ruhtra swears by instances/AV, for me, that was gaining about 200k/hr at level 70. Questing if I don't get ganked I can get between 350-400. I'm sure higher numbers are possible, I don't have epic flying and I am a bit sloppy with my questing. However, just running around questing is monotonous, and instances drop sexy blues, so when I saw a guy looking for a DPS for Nexus, I jumped on it. Now, I have already completed the quests for Nexus. I skipped them on pally because I thought the area would be crawling with alliance, but it ended up being not bad at all. However, having done them already (and I believe healed Nexus, although I may have been DPSing there too), I was just there to get a quick run in, and maybe some drops. Well, it was NOT a quick run. The tank was a level 70 warrior who could not hold aggro to save his life (literally). Now, I understand people need to learn unfamiliar roles in the lower level stuff, but this guy was struggling with the trash mobs, even the one at a time ones. I dunno if he was trying to tank in fury spec or what. Anyways, after we wiped in the area with the frozen people, I decided it wasnt worth the aggravation and left the group. I didnt even run back in, I just rezzed and hearthed, I will come back to shammy w/o rez sickness later.

This left me with a good amount of free time, which I spent picking various flowers and sewing on my priest (yeah, combined with the fact that he was a blood elf, it wasn't a very manly day off). Even trying to tell myself that he was sewing with the powers of darkness didn't help much. Oh well. If/when I level him, I want another tailor to crank out ebonweave and give me herbs.

In the evening, one of my guildies was asking for a tank for H UP. Now, in spite of my trials and tribulations getting the tanking sword, I actually don't mind running it. It's easy, I know it, I'm geared for it, and it doesnt take very long. We also were holding wintergrasp, and I need some shards (as a side note, thanks for the tip about the WG quests, I didn't have a chance to do them, but I will!). The group we had was a pally healer, 2 DKs, me, and a lock. That lock died soooo many times. I wanted to whisper him and say "Do you have omen? If you throw chaos bolt before my shield hits, you will have aggro, I won't be getting it back till you die, which you will, fairly quickly due to lack of armor." He also died on Skadi when he was DPSing while skadi was spinning around. My general principle on that is I generally stay away from the spinny boss, it normally hurts when they hit you, and strangely when they're done spinning, they come right back. Well, except when the lock pulls aggro, then they kill him and come back. Oh well, it's his repair bill. No group wipes at all, and I got a few shards (although not as many as I needed).

Later in the evening, some guildies were looking for a tank for headless horseman. I had never run it, and I usually avoid holiday content, but I do love helping guildies, so I tanked it. It wasn't all that hard keeping aggro on the horseman, it was easy and quick, and I know at least one of my guildies got an achievement out of it. I got some purple gear for my ret set, not that I use it that much, but I really just enjoy helping out.

I hope everyone had a good time as well, I am looking forward to halloween. More on that tommorow. . . and maybe monday. . .

Gathering vs crafting and more on altaholism. . .

2009-10-27T05:19:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of my in game and out of game time thinking about/planning crafting. While I would agree with those who say Wow's crafting system isn't that fun, I look at my characters as somewhat of a community in an of themselves and I love being able to support my various alts with minimal assistance. I grind all my own mats, very rarely purchasing things on the AH. I look at it this way: everything is a time sink one way or another, grinding my own mats gives me a feeling of accomplishment. The exception to this is fishing. Can't stand it in real life (too long and boring) and the Wow equivalent isn't any more fun. If it was like any other gathering profession (click the node, see what you got) I'd be fine with it, but it's not.

Anyways, with the exception of engineering (just can't do it, I was going to level it on hunter, but it doesn't make sense for any of my other alts), I have every profession covered, sometimes multiple times. My lock is at 340 enchanting, going to need to gain those last 2 levels to get him to 65 so I can get into northrend enchanting. His other profession is alchemy, which I decided would be more beneficial on Shammy. I am thinking of keeping it, and just having one of them transmute specc'd and the other elixir. My warrior is a blacksmith and he's either maxed out or close enough that it doesnt matter. He has become basically epic gear provider to my friends and alts. I like having blacksmithing on him, makes him invaluable because lets face it, I never want to level blacksmithing again. He is also a flower picker, which I kept for the HoT, although switching to alchemy to get the never-ending healing potion would be a solid option too. My pally is of course my most advanced trade skill character, 450 jewelcrafting and I have a few of the more choice epic gem cuts (can anyone say epic +hit gems for my casters?). I leveled Leatherworking on my druid, when I intended to get him to 80. I will be missing out on the big mining bag, although thats not a huge loss because if I recall correctly, they're not that expensive. Also, there really isn't any crafted leatherworking gear that is helpful to my shammy past mid 70's (dark nerubian/frostscale pants and thats it, sad). My shammy is a straight gatherer at the moment, skinning and herbalism. I am definately switching out skinning for alchemy once I'm past the point where northrend leather helps. My big question is elixir spec or transmute. I've heard there is a good amount of money in elixir, but transmute will be useful too. I also am going to need to be transmuting titanium as much as possible (saronite is all over the place, but I can't seem to find titanium after 6am). Darn you titansteel weapons! I def want the titansteel mace for my shammy. I can make up +hit in other ways so it will be great double duty for a healing set and a caster DPS set. I also just recently switched my priest to tailoring (with herbalism) so I can have 2 tailors (my mage is one too). Again, I want to be able to crank out ebonweave, although my mage will need some assistance to do so since it's a mid 70's zone where you make it and he's 65. Lastly, speaking of the mage, he is my scribe. I think I hit 400 inscription last night, I have a book waiting, he needs to hurry up and discover glyph of Shadow for my priest. I actually have a pretty good selection of glyphs, although I have no desire to try to enter the glyph market for massive wads of cash. I think blizz caused all this by making the vendor price of glyphs too cheap. That means they're ridiculously cheap to post/repost so it leads to massive inflation. I would rather go without and wait to be able to make a glyph myself than pay 30g for something that takes no effort to produce.

Overall, in terms of enjoyment, I have to say inscription is my favorite. Even low level herbs are useful (have to do your minor inscription research every day), and it provides a lot of varied benefits. I love being able to make scrolls so I'm not just wasting enchants. I used to keep random pieces of gear around and just overwrite enchants over and over. Jewelcrafting is a close second. I love being able to customize gear and being able to make useful amulets and rings is such a godsend for my characters (I will prolly do another JC daily tommorow to get the ring of northern tears recipe for my casters). I also cant see how I would have been able to tank anything without the tanking trinket and JC only gems. I think that profession single handedly boosted me to tanking able.

Anyways, I guess that just goes to show that professions are a major part of my in-game time expenditure. I really like being able to make usable items for all my alts and I love how every alt fits into the equation somehow. I also love that some of my alts may not have traditional layout of professions, but much like in real life, thats just how they ended up.

The depth of my altaholism. . . .

2009-10-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not asking for an intervention, this isnt a habit I'm looking to quit, but in looking at my character list last night, I realized something: I have a LOT of mid-level characters. The semi astounding thing, I only added 2 active ones from recruit a friend.

I am only including horde characters in this, I am considering my Alliance server dormant. It's not that I don't like it and have fun playing there, but I just have too many friends on good old Daggerspine. I have my 80 pally, 71 druid, almost 72 shammy (I'm like 90k away, just didnt have a chance to level yesterday), 70 DK (but who doesnt have one of those?), 67 warrior, 65 mage, 63 lock, and 60 priest. I also have a couple hunters, but one is a bank alt, and the other I got to level 20 before deciding hunters just don't interest me, I'd rather focus on one of my other characters.

I wonder if anyone else feels like this, but if I focus on any one character for too long, I start to look at the others and go "I really want to do _____, that would be really cool". It can be anything from get to 65 for northrend crafting to dual wielding crystalforged axes to learning seed of corruption. I really have a limitless amount of things I want to do on my alts. I think it's the potential that gets me the most. I know how my palladin is at 80. Its like vanilla ice cream. You never really get sick of vanilla, but sometimes you want to try other things. Vanilla is always a solid choice, but rarely someone's absolute favorite. I will always like my pally, I just don't have much of anything for him to do (cept JC dailies and make stuff).

I am still contemplating getting my priest to 80. My latest idea is getting him at least to 65 so he can pick up tailoring as well and I can pound out ebonweave. I didn't really have a problem with titansteel because I had some guild help, but now that I can pre-plan and produce well before I need it, I think that is the most prudent course. And ebonweave is not reliant on random spawns (I hate trying to find titanium, its only there at like 5am).

So yeah, working on the shammy, raising various crafting skills, thinking about my priest. Still 21 stonekeeper's shards from BoA cloth shoulders (we never seem to have WG when I run on pally).

Spell Hit and You: how to be capped on dinging 80. . .

2009-10-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have read a lot of posts and guides out there on how to reach the spell hit cap. They are written by a lot of people that are very knowledgable and I'm sure have more raiding experience than me. The problem is that a lot of them include heroic drops, tier gear, and things that are not generally obtainable on dinging 80. My goal here was to present a different option, something for players who just dinged 80, and want to be at the hit cap immediately. Now, I assumed a needed hit rating of 370, which is what my shammy will need (3% added hit rating from elemental precision). This also appears to be the lowest bonus number a dedicated DPS caster will have.

I am not going to go over spell hit, anything you could possibly need to know can be found here.

Now, a lot of web sites give options, thats great. However, I am just going to lay down a shopping list. This requires no epic gems, no heroic drops, and the only purple items are crafted. OK, onto the list:

So we are shooting for 370 hit rating. We're gonna start with the easy stuff.
Eat some Worg Tartar. 40 hit 330 to go
Enchant your boots with Icewalker. 12 hit 318 to go
Buy or make a Ring of the Northern Tears, socket with Lambent Forest Emerald 43 hit 275 to go
Buy or make Ebonweave gloves, enchant with Precision 71 hit 204 to go
Buy or make Ebonweave robe 68 hit 136 to go
Equip The Rune of Infinite Power (its a quest drop) 55 hit 81 to go
Buy or make a Hat of Wintry Doom, socket with a Veiled Monarch Topaz 52 hit 29 to go
Buy or make Titansteel Spellblade 30 hit, we're there!

Now, obviously, this isn't the only way to go and those of you with Draenei will have an easier go of it. I personally probably won't follow this list fully, but if you do, your freshly dinged 80 will be ready for raiding (ok, maybe not ready, but you won't miss lol)

Gearing interestingness and my "retired" character. . .

2009-10-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

I have been mostly running with my Shammy these days. I managed to get RIGHT UP to 71, but not quite ding, I'm off work tommorow, so setting a modest goal of 72. I've been looking at gear and figured it would make a pretty good topic for the blog: caster DPS gear vs Healer gear.

The main source of this came when looking into what all I can craft to help me "catch up" at 80. I also think it's funny that the crafted mace has almost as much spellpower as my character right now. Anyways, while there is an epic tanking shield, the last shield with spellpower is 73, and while the mace has impressive spellpower, it is obviously for healing due to lack of it. I did notice a purple dagger with slightly less spellpower and hit rating but between the titansteel bars and frozen orbs, that is a pretty major expenditure. Unfortunately, I know with the hit cap being what it is, you need every point you can get. The one saving grace I remember when gearing my pally was the availability of a few decent pieces of crafted gear to get to the defense cap (shield, gloves, belt, trinket, neck, and rings) most of which I'm still wearing. My options on the shammy aren't looking quite as good. Oh well, such is the way of a newly dinged 80 I guess, I have a few levels before it's an issue.

In other news, had a pretty interesting run through H CoS, although my buddy Rhutra tells the story so much better than me. I just don't tank that often and I made a few mistakes in the run, probably somewhat costing us the timed run, although I never run anything for achievements or loot anymore on that character (apart from the 21 stonekeeper's shards I need for some BoA shoulders). Now, Rhutra wrote about the FAIL of the run (the mage ditching after we were saved to it was puzzling), but I choose to look at it from the other side of the coin. We 4 manned a heroic. We did this with no wipes after our initial hiccup. Yes, CoS is one of the easier heroics, but still, we took it down with 4 and very minimal complications. I only had to use lay on hands once I believe (my pally oh shit button lol), and I think the run went pretty smooth and was decent practice. I am just so out of practice tanking from never doing it, but I will always pick up the sword and shield to help a friend.

I think what I do really enjoy about tanking is being really useful. I think thats what drew me to healing, the concept of being an necessary part in any group (that and the fact that we have multiple tanks, but very few healers). Yes, I want to stand back and blow stuff up (I <3 chain lightning), but I have always felt that if you play a class that CAN heal, you will be much more useful and able to find groups if you are prepared to heal. Then if the group already has a healer you can blow stuff up at will.

I don't really have too much else going on. I'm leveling gank free, its SOOOO nice to have the kiddies back in school. I'm also spending more time with my girlfriend and less on Wow (although if I do ever try to bring her over the the dark side, I will follow Darraxus' advice).

WORST PRIEST EVER and leveling the Shammy. . .

2009-10-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

I will be the first to say I am not an expert at playing every class. I know a little bit about each one, and I could probably do ok in any given role with any given class (cept rogues and hunters, no interest there). With that having been said, over the weekend, I witnessed the most pathetic display of ineptitude from a rather surprising source.

Now, I have a number of thoughts on shadow priest healing. I used to be very down on tanking for them in TBC. They don't generally have the tools of a pure healing build. However, having leveled a priest (both holy and shadow, thanks RAF), I have dispelled some misconceptions I had. First of all, while the holy tree makes priests better at their job, the main abilities it adds are increased spell power, efficiency and more AoE heals. Because there is no longer +healing, the spellpower stacking that a shadow priest will be doing already will give them sufficiently strong heals. All priests, regardless of spec, will have access to flash heal, greater heal, renew and holy nova. That should be enough tools to keep a group up in a normal instance setting. This is important to note because of the epic fail of the priest in our group.

I have been leveling my shammy with the intention of getting him to 80 and having a strong caster DPS/healer hybrid option. I also considered a shadow priest for this, and to a degree still do, but in all honesty, I like the shammy more. Not that I think the shammy will be any more or less effective, I just enjoy him more. Anyways, one of my guildies (Nymeros, my pally tanking big brother from Ours is the fury), wanted to knock out TBC heroics for the achievement, and thought bringing me along for gear would be helpful for me.

Now, I leveled up to 68 on friday which left me a couple hours till I needed to leave to go see the gf. I let Nym know that I hit the level and he asked if anyone else wanted to go to join in the fun. One of our hunters wanted to go, our GM wanted to bring one of his many alts, and the hunter wanted to bring one of his friends, the subject of this post. So initially, we set to tackle some heroics with a group consisting of my 68 shammy specced resto (I do have a resto set, its ok relative to my level/area), an 80 pally tank (raid geared, 32k HP), a 70 rogue, an 80 hunter, and an 80 shadow priest.

Now, druid healing has gotten me in some bad habits for shammy healing that I have to work on. Constantly spamming lesser healing wave runs me out of mana pretty quick. With my druid, I was constantly casting something on just about everyone, and I had the mana regen to do it. With my shammy, my heals are bigger, and riptide/earth shield is generally good till multi-pulls. With that having been said, TBC heroics were a monster in their time and the damage was just too much for me to keep up with.

Now, our DPS should have been enough to just burn through things with minimal damage. Two 80 DPS characters, both capable of AoE should have been burning things down left and right. Except the priest seemed to be just sitting there. We got her on a damage meter for one fight doing 741 DPS. I don't think I saw her mind sear once. So since I was being overwelmed trying to heal the group, we asked if she could throw out some heals. Her reply: "I don't heal, I am DPS". Not only did she refuse to heal, she was making the pally tank rez me when I was killed between pulls. Um, you are a PRIEST. The difference between you and a warlock or mage is they CAN'T heal, you are just worthless and don't want to. Long story short, Art brought his raid healing, skull pounding pally Ruhtra, we kicked her ass to the curb and powered through shattered halls, blood furnace, and ramps on heroic. I died a bunch, but that's what level 68's do in heroics.

Speaking of the shammy, I have to admit, they are a hell of a lot of fun. Spirit wolves are like the best leveling ability ever. I managed to hit 69 last night, and the combo of rested XP and two pieces of BoA gear make leveling not so bad. I did make a choice I semi regretted. In doing the intro quests in Borean Tundra I passed on a mace with int, MP5 and SP for the melee DPS mace. My thoughts were that I spend more time leveling than instancing, so the melee DPS one helps more. Turns out its the only quest reward mace with those stats. Not a huge deal I guess in the scheme of things. Once I get to level 70ish, I'd like to take a look at where my SP sits in my resto set and see how well I can do in UK. Maybe Nexus as well as I recall their being a good amount of quest rewards for there.

My current plan (which is always subject to change): level as enhancement with resto for instances (or if they're looking for DPS, stay enhancement). My current professions are skinning and herbalism. Now, my mage almost has enough mats to get into northrend levels of inscription and if I recall correctly, the useful crafted mail runs out around mid 70's. My intention is to switch my skinning to alchemy around mid 70's and level alchemy and potentially have two alchemists. I think the never ending health and mana potions are just too good a boon to pass up both for leveling and instances, not to mention trinkets, flasks and transmutes. From a class standpoint at 80 I am switching from enhancement to elemental. For a while, until I get +hit pieces, my resto and elemental gear will probably be almost the same. I have gone the melee DPS route and I honestly just don't like it. Let me qualify that statement: love it for leveling, hate it in instances. I so much prefer just standing in the back blasting away.

Anyways, I'm posting on sunday because I'm working on sunday which sucks, but I had a pretty good weekend, and hope everyone else did as well. . .

A guild is a relationship . . .

2009-10-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

My buddy Rhutra wrote a post about our guild. In short, we've been having people leave over the past few months. I havent yet figured out who the people actually were who left, I've been too busy leveling my shammy (level 66, woot!!!). However, his post got me to thinking. I think a guild really is like a relationship.

Follow me on this. There are many different types of relationships. You have casual relationships where you just go on dates and engage in various extra curricular activities. You have relationships where both parties are focused on marriage. You have the guy/girl who goes out with you a couple times and drops off the face of the planet, etc. I'm not here to categorize (ok, maybe my slight OCD tendencies make me do it a lil).

I think a guild is like a relationship in every functional way. Both require work. Maybe its work you enjoy (helping people out, doing the dishes, cutting gems for guildies, whatever), but its still work. Both require an expenditure of time (raid attendance, dates, watching America's next top model even though you'd rather be watching UFC unleashed). Even if you enjoy the expenditure of time, you're still putting forth effort. However, like relationships, ideally, you get out of it what you put into it.

I'm a lucky guy. My guildies understand that I don't like PvP and have a ton of alts, and I've never been pressured to hit level cap with any character. I know we could use healers, and I think I might enjoy caster DPS in a raid environment so I'm leveling one. They don't comment when I occasionally take PvE vacations on my alliance server. They make room for me in raids even though my 2500 DPS (on a good day) is near the bottom of the charts. Some of them are real life friends and some of them I've never met, but I love them for it. I would do anything for my guildies, but my abilities normally only extend to cutting gems and running alts through stuff, maybe tanking the occasional heroic.

An ideal guild is like the ideal relationship. You need them and they need you. Your goals are the same. It makes you feel good to be a part of it. Yes, it might have times where you are frustrated, but in general, you just feel like it's worth it. I feel like I am in a guild like this. I've looked around on other servers to try to find something similar without the PvP. I havent been able to. Its like in my real life. I'm dating a girl who lives in Indiana roughly two hours away from me. It sucks and is inconvenient, but shes so good for me in the ways that matter that it is worth a little inconvenience to be able to spend time with her. Does it piss me off when there is construction and I'm at a dead stop at 9pm waiting to get to her house? Yes. Does it piss me off when some punk ass bored little kid thinks it's funny to kill my character because he can? Yes. But much like in my personal life, sometimes you don't always appreciate that ideal relationship, but when it's there, there is no substitute. Hence my repeatedly coming back to a PvP server despite loathing PvP.

There are a lot of douchebags and mercenaries out there, and not everyone gets to find "the one". Don't stop looking and don't give up. Those of you who have: grats!

If you were a Wow character, what class would you be?

2009-10-13T11:09:00.001-07:00

I've always wondered this. If I was in Wow, which class would I be? Not which class would I like to be. Which class would I actually be?

Although I have an army of cats, they're more companions, and strangely, they don't listen to me when I ask them to attack people (go figure) although the little one will tear the hell out of some paper towels. Also, my marksmanship is suspect, I was one of the few in our ROTC class who did not get the marksmanship badge. At the renaissance festival, I actually managed to shoot an arrow backwards (don't ask). Bottom line: I would not be a hunter.

I'm just not very religious. I don't normally bring this up, because from a blogging standpoint it is completely irrelevant, but I am jewish. . .kind of. I am not very religious at all, and I find spending large amounts of time in synogogue kind of a pointless waste of time. I don't keep kosher, or even really go on high holidays (although, happy Rosh Hashannah to any of my jewish readers). This kind of rules out Priest and Paladin.

I'm not undead. Rules out Death knight.

I'm not very sneeky. I usually find a way to step on the creaky board. I don't know how to pick locks or really have any interest in it. Although I think the idea of being able to Solid Snake people is cool, I'm not really a throat slitter. No Rogue for me.

Although I think powers of inflicting cruelty could be interesting, and I like the idea of minions, if any demonic being could actually grant me powers, I would rather keep my soul intact. Also, siphoning the soul of others, slightly creepy. That pretty much rules out Warlock.

I am not a hippy. I don't think about nature, look at the trees, run around in a forest for no apparent reason or any other BS like that. I really have no interest in the "spirit world" or anything of the sort. Shaman and Druid are out.

I do wear armor on a semi regular basis, it's pretty heavy (I'm an ice hockey goalie). I know how to use a variety of weapons and I'm pretty proficient at a few martial arts. Blood doesnt especially bother me and I have a pretty high pain thresh-hold. I could be a warrior.

I also work in a job that is extremely technical and involves a good degree of "book knowledge". I like the idea of my mind being a dangerous weapon. I can memorize necessary stuff when I need to. I could potentially be a mage.

I'm not saying concretely either way I'd be a mage or a warrior, but its kind of fun to think about. Well, maybe just fun for me.

Leveling vs End game and general thoughts. . .

2009-10-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

So I have been doing a lot of thinking about endgame content, specifically my newfound desire to participate in it. This got me to thinking in general about the leveling process vs the end game. They are almost like two completely different games. My biggest problem, and one I think is rather prevalent in Wow is that your play style will be drastically different and what works while leveling doesnt tend to be the best way to go in endgame.

A personal example. I love leveling with melee damage dealers that can self heal. I loved my prot pally and I love my enhancement shammy. I can pull multiple mobs and bring major pain, leaving corpses at my feet and me with full health and mana. Then you get to end game. . . The elites hit hard, and one is enough to crush you. There's facing problems, bosses that cleave and cause instant death to anything around you, the hit cap, its just a mess. In short, for me, it's not fun. So while melee is the DPS of choice while leveling, for me caster is the only way to go at 80. With casters you just have to have something in an arc, and you can blast them. Also those pesky cleaves arent an issue because you're not in melee range. Yes there is still the hit cap, but that seems to be the DPS cross to bear.

It isn't just the best way to do things that seems to change either. Look at talent choices leveling vs end game. Paladins use almost a completely different spec tanking vs grinding (you want extra attacks to proc vs mobs, not bosses), the leveling staple of shadow priests (spirit tap) becomes just this side of worthless (I am contemplating a shadow priest as well, and spent a few days on shadowpriest.com reading discussion on whether or not it's worth including in an 8o spec), frost spec mage goes from awesome with a ton of tools to press the 1 key till dead. Why are things so drastically different once you reach the level cap?

I just like asking questions, obviously I don't have the answers.

I've also semi determined what I should already know: to me, the journey is more important than the end result. First, I wanted to learn about tanking. I have a couple prot pallies, I have a mid level warrior, a druid and a DK. I've tanked instances with all but the DK. I like comparing and constrasting the differences with each class. Now I'm starting to do it with healing. I pally healed about a year ago, hated it. I started recently healing on my druid, loved it, but with dual spec, I want a solid DPS spec in addition to healing ability. With that in mind I am leveling a shammy and have a priest in the wings. I have recently gotten really interested in healing mechanics, what to use when, how to talent, which stats are important. I have found a level of sophistication well beyond tanking and I like it. I don't know if I will make a great healer or even a passable one, but I like making the attempt. And even if he might not be technically as effective, my shammy looks way cooler than my druid.

I also finally got my second piece of heirloom gear this weekend. Although my shammy looks cool, he is definately rocking some interesting gear. I picked up the cloth PvE chest, I had a few reasons for doing that. I had already bought the leather melee DPS shoulders which I send to my druid, shammy, and warrior (yes, they lack a lil in armor, but the stats are good). I actually looked at the difference, and shammy loses like 1% damage mitigation by not having mail (thats on the cloth chest). I figured that will more than be made up for with other gear, and having something that most of my favorite leveling characters can use more than makes up for a little armor loss. My next purchase will be the cloth PvP shoulders because I'm sitting at 179 shards. Then I can level my lil priest as well and decide who I like best for caster DPS/healing. I can also get my lock to 65 so I can have a northrend enchanter.

I also decided I am basically done with recruit a friend. I liked it, it was fun, I don't need a level 60 hunter. No offense to any hunters out there, it's just not my thing. I also decided as much as I like the character models for alliance, and I would love to level without being molested, my friends (mostly) play horde, and playing with them outweighs the negatives. And I think my orc shammy looks really awesome, so there is that too. . .

Intro to Shamanism and loot drama. . .

2009-10-09T09:02:00.001-07:00

Well, first of all, the intro to shamanism I'm talking about is not "walk with the earth mother" . . .maybe thats druid. . .I get the tauren confused, damn hippies, all look the same anyways. Anyways, I am talking about a fresh 60, have a chance to have a tree mostly filled out, and how things play out.

Enhancement:
I hadnt planned on sticking with enhancement. I mean I like it, dual wielding is fun, but my goal was always dual spec Elemental/Resto at 80. I figured 60 was a good time to make the switch. And then I discovered the awesomeness that is spirit wolves. Now, my goal is still to stand back and hurl lightning in a raid setting, prolly heroics too, but for everything till then, I'm going enhancement all the way. I remember when leveling my warrior, I would get overwealmed very quickly. 2-3 mobs and it became a war of attrition I would lose. Now, I pop magma totem, earthbind totem (for those pesky runners), mana spring totem, and spirit wolves. I've taken down 7 mobs at once my level, and I don't think thats the upper limit. Hit shamanistic rage and it's like free mana and health all the time. In short, I just feel like enhancement has too many tools for leveling to give it up at this stage. That may change if I decide to try leveling by BG's as my friend Ruhtra suggested.

Restoration:
I am starting to think that the most complicated part of healing is learning the abilities and getting healbot set up how you want it. I will be honest, I'm not there yet. I think I got to the point with my druid that I knew what to do when, and it was just a question of gear. Shaman healing is. . .different. I don't even have a full set of resto gear yet (I'm 62, it will take some time), but I am pretty impressed so far. Earth shield and earthliving weapon are solid bonuses, and I seem to be able to do a decent job with riptide/lesser healing wave on the main tank. My biggest issue seems to be over casting (I'm too used to druids who cast lil HoTs constantly) and running out of mana. I think once I get used to it, I will love druid healing and my orc still looks like he could kick some ass in his resto gear, which is a bonus.

Loot drama:
Oh how I love loot drama. Wait, I don't. So my newly 60 shammy is running around hellfire, and I see someone in general looking for DPS for blood furnace. Now I despise that instance, but for clothies or shammies, its like required. ossum lewts in ther. Anyways, so our group consists of a warrior tank, a tauren deathtard, me, a shadow priest, and a resto druid healing. Now, I hate being in instances with tauren. They are too big, get in the way and I can't target around them. That having been said, we get to the first boss, and he drops the necklace. It has strength, stam, and agility on it. I'm still wearing a level 50 quest item, so I need on it, as does the deathtard. I win the roll, and proceed to equip the necklace. Then the warrior starts spouting off about how its a tanking necklace blah blah blah.

Begin rant: douchebag, they have not yet instituted the change where shammies do not benefit from strength for attack power. Furthermore, your deathtard buddy got a necklace from questing way better than what I was wearing. Also, while I don't get a huge benefit from strength, he gets about an equivalent benefit from agility. If it was a tanking necklace, it would have defense on it, and then I wouldn't have rolled. How about you try to know what the hell you're talking about before you say in party chat "learn how to gear your class". End Rant

I did pull somewhat of a n00b move in a different run. We were in ramps, and the hammer drops. Now I could have sworn that hammer was one handed so I needed on it. I'm sure it's been two handed the whole time so it is worthless to me, but no one else in our party could have used it, so I don't feel too bad. I did win a greed roll on the leather waist which got gemmed and will be my belt for my enhancement set :-)

So in summary, shammies are awesome, douchebags in pugs, and I'm semi oblivious.

The Wow Economy and You. . .

2009-10-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

Personally, I'm tired of articles about how to make gold in Wow. There are plenty of people who have sites dedicated to it, and plenty of people who see the gold on their account as their own personal mini-game. I look at gold in Wow like this: it is a resource to acquire things that you would want. If you have more gold than you need, you've wasted time. Now, far be it for me to tell people how to waste time in the game. I'm trying for 12-16 level 60+ characters, that might seem like an utter waste of time to some. Anyways, the point of this post is not to instruct you how to make money in the game, there are many people around who can do that way better than me. It is more to look at the Wow economy in comparison to the real world economy.

Now, the Wow economy is EXTREMELY basic. There are no loans, there is only one centralized currency, so it mostly gets rid of any Arbitrage. Arbitrage is a more advanced economic concept I don't really want to deal with but basically it is profitting due to a difference in two related markets. Doesn't exist in Wow, not an issue. Wow has boiled it's economy down to the most basic level, you make money by producing goods, providing a service, or engaging in commerce. Making money in Wow is so basic, it can be boiled down into two variables: risk and time.

Producing goods:
Gathering and crafting are the two ways that you can produce goods in Wow. Picking flowers, mining for ore, prospecting ore into gems, making potions, etc, all are producing goods. Enchantment has switched from a service only to a profession that can produce goods with the introduction of scribe produced scrolls that can hold enchantments.

Gathering professions are going to be pure profit, but come as somewhat of a pain. Lets be honest, the resources that you are attempting to gather are finite. In some cases, it is impossible to predict exactly where the resources in question will spawn, and there is a high degree of competition (I'm looking at you Titanium). With gathering professions there is no risk (you can't lose money when something is free to you), but they can be quite time intensive.

Crafting is another means to producing goods. This can either be done in the form of crafting from gathered components, which is pure profit, but limits the crafter to that which they can gather themselves, or through purchasing components, in which the crafter assumes the risk that the crafted item will be less profitable than the sum of the parts. Crafting can be quite risky, and there is also a considerable amount of time in leveling and producing goods.

Providing a service:
When the old guy with the question mark over his head says "go kill 10 rats", and you accept, you are providing a service. When a lower level character says "I will pay you 10g to run me through the stockades", you are providing a service. Enchanters selling enchants are generally providing a service, unless they are putting the enchantments on scrolls, then it is a good. Services, as with gathering only present a time sink. However, unlike gathering, the rate at which one makes gold this way is fairly stable, unless blizzard makes changes.

Engaging in commerce:
Commerce is the act of buying low and selling high. There are a variety of tools useful for this in Wow, one of the most well known being Auctioneer. Now, engaging in commerce can be quite a time sink and involve a large amount of risk. I have a friend who does a fair amount of posting on the auction house and says it takes him hours to get everything properly listed. Obviously if things don't sell, you're out the auction house deposit (which is a concern with anything you're listing on the auction house, in general).

I'm not attempting to say which way is best for making gold. As I work in the financial services industry, I'm not particularly interested in playing the auction house. Gathering is a necessary evil and something I can do while questing. Leveling is my main way of both advancing my characters and generating income, which I supplement with some Jewelcrafting done by my pally. I'm also not rich by any means in game terms. Sure, it would be nice to have 40-50k to get epic flyers for some alts and be able to buy mats to craft whatever I want. However, to me, it just isnt worth the time expenditure to get there.

Me, the doctor & P in real life. . .

2009-10-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

So I promised I would post pics from my trip to St. Louis in the blog. Obviously, there were more than two pics taken, but after reviewing them, most of them probably shouldn't be shared in such a public forum. I had an awesome time, thedoctor & P were great hosts, and meeting them and their friends was the highlight of my trip.

One thing that I thought was hilarious, we texted before actually hanging out, and although we've left each other a lot of comments and have common interests, we didnt know too much about each other. If you were expecting a 50yo construction worker, sorry to disappoint. And no Ferraro issues here, its hard being really really really good looking, but we have learned to deal. . . lol

Anyways, here are the pics. . .

Thats the doctor and myself. He's pretty tall, and yes, I'm pretty short

There's P and the doctor. I promise the doctor was not the only one comsuming tasty adult beverages that night. . .

I have a lot more pics from that evening, anyone I met that night, feel free to contact me, I do have more pics up on one of the many social networking sites ;)

The grass is always greener & upcoming trip

2009-10-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

So first thing I wanted to tackle is based on a comment I got from annonymous on one of my previous blog posts (as a side note, that guy must have multiple personalities, because I could swear they're more than one person). Basically it said the grass is always greener on the other side. I assume this to mean on PvE vs PvP servers. I have my own opinions on this, and admittedly, I am more wishy washy on this than anything else in the game.

PvP:
My PvP server is Daggerspine. I started play there, I have the most time in there, I have the highest level characters there. My main, Leshif, is there. I am also a member of a guild there with a lot of people that I either know in real life, or have a good relationship with in the game. That is a major benefit for wanting to run things and in general having people to talk with in game. The downside of being on a PvP server is being killed/attacked. To be honest, it pisses me off. I don't like PvP, have no desire to participate in PvP, and it has led me to ask: "Why do I play on a PvP server?" The answer is "Because my friends do."

PvE:
The PvE server I play on is Azuremyst. I have a full stable (10) of alts on there, my highest being a 74 pally. I love leveling on the PvE server. No one kills me, I can level wherever I want. Its very soothing. Its also very boring. There are a few isolated people I could/have talked to, but its not like the guild I'm in on Daggerspine. I've looked, I just can't find a similar situation.

My ideal situation would be to find a guild like MAS, but on a PvE server. Any PvE server. That being said, I have to balance which option annoys me less: Dying/being harassed or solitary play. That is really the issue that I am back and forth on. Now, with summer having ended, I believe most of the douchebag players will have less time (I believe most gankers to be bored kids, I have no data to support this, its is just a belief), so it may ease up. However, with the "new" content having been out for some time, it may leave existing players with 80's bored and there is a long tradition of lowbie hunting on PvP servers. So, the question really is: do I think things will be bearable on Daggerspine, or do I think I can find a similar guild elsewhere? If I had the answer, I wouldn't have to ask the question.

On a lighter note, this weekend I am going to St Louis on my trip. I will hopefully be hanging out with thedoctor and P from WTFSpaghetti & Lincoln Freed the Slaves. Alchohol will be consumed, pictures will be taken, and if they agree, I will post some on the blog. I'm ok with having my face out there, but I wouldn't want to post anyone else without their approval.

All in all, I've had a good week, looking forward to a fun weekend!

+hit, and Style vs Substance. . .

2009-09-29T05:21:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks to everyone who left comments on my recent Shammy vs Druid post. Your comments and insights were extremely helpful and helped me reach a decision.

I have decided I really dislike the hit cap. I decided this when trying to gear my paladin for retribution, and thinking about having a caster DPS has re-inforced this even more. The hit cap seems like the defense cap for tanks: you must have this level to play. It wouldn't be that horrible except that there seems to be so few ways to accumulate it outside of raids and sporadic heroic drops. Can I use emblems to get +hit mail? Ok well surely there is some crafted gear that has it. . .oh, its cloth. No jewelcrafting necklaces (that I saw, I might be mistaken) or rings. Sure, I could socket a bunch of epic gems, but how many pieces have sockets anymore? Not many. I hate to say it, but the more I think about it, the more I am in favor of simplifying gear as blizz said they were going to do in Cataclysm. Hit, crit, haste, spellpower, DPS wants drastically different gear from healers, even if they're the same class. Its enough to give a guy a headache.

Now, having said all that, and firmly considered, I have come to a conclusion. Before I come out and say it, I have done a lot of considering about what is important to me in the game. I think most decisions (apart from faction) come down to a question of style vs substance. Sometimes, certain questions are answered for us (you want to be a druid, you are Tauren or Night Elf. . .for now). Sometimes it comes down to a choice (Horde side, you want a warrior, you can be any race except blood elf). How you make that choice determines what is important for you. Some people like the look of Tauren, I don't. That is why my highest level warrior is an Orc. I think orcs look bad ass. Likewise, my horde shaman is an orc. I like the look of them. I made a conscious decision of style over substance. Would my warrior benefit from extra health? Hell yes! But I have to spend hours looking at him and quite frankly, I want him to look cool. That is also why I prefer human paladins and pretty much humans in general.

Which brings me to my point. I have heard Druids can put up respectable numbers. Both healing and DPS, they are powerful. However, although I don't mind tree, I can't STAND moonkin. Can't do it. I can't look at an owlbeast's ass for hours at a time. What's the point of collecting cool looking gear if you never see it? Call me stupid, call me old fashioned, I am playing a video game because I want to see my avatar do cool stuff. The end effect is not as important to me as how you get there. Also, let's be honest. I am not super hardcore raider guy looking to top the DPS or healing charts on every run. When I heal, I want to do enough so the group doesnt wipe. If a few DPS die, well. . .it happens. As a DPS, I want to do enough damage so the tank doesn't get overwelmed and die. I want to achieve pulling my weight level, not elite level.

I will save the PvP vs PvE discussion for a later post, I have far too much to say to go on about that here. . .

Shammy vs Druid

2009-09-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

Well in talking to my friend/trusty GM Rhutra, be brought up a valid point. "What are you going to do when you get to 80?" I really dont enjoy raiding with my Paladin. I think the key words there are "with my paladin". I could see how raiding wouldnt be that bad if I was a caster DPS. Don't stand in the fire, don't pull aggro, goodness. I just hate having to run around, check facing, avoid things, its just not fun. And tanking a raid seems way too stressful, I can barely manage heroics.

So, in thinking about it, I see two viable options for "endgame": Druid and Shammy. The reason I say two viable options more comes down to utility than anything else. First of all, I want a class that can heal. That rules out most classes right there. Healing can be a great way to go through heroics and pick up DPS gear no one wants/needs. Secondly, I want a class capable of ranged DPS. Yes, I kind of just want to stand there and nuke. Now, that does leave one other option: Priest. However at this time I am not totally sold on Shadow Priest, obviously Holy priests are good healers (I'll leave best healer arguments for others). But I've always said feel and enjoyment is more important to me than raw numbers. As of right now, Shadow Priest isn't as fun. I might adjust that thought down the road (it has been known to happen), but as of right now, its Shammy vs Druid.

Healing:
This one seems like a no brainer to me. Although my buddies from WTFSpaghetti might disagree, Druid is the big daddy healer in Wow. I really enjoy druid healing mechanics and I rarely feel overwelmed healing normal content. I like "maintenance healing" throwing dots on everyone, trying to make sure everyone is in a nice middle zone. I have never healed on a shammy, so I don't really know how it works. I know most of the tools that are there, but most of my shammy research has been DPS related.

DPS:
On this side it's the Druid I have no idea about. Shammies are fun. I love chain lightning. I love throwing lightning bolts and shocks. I think Elemental is like an awesome armored mage. I don't much care for the totem mechanic, but they help more than get in the way, and they're good for groups, and don't require buffing individual people like pally buffs (ok, gift of the wild is even easier, but this wasn't a debate about best group buffs). I also think shammies LOOK really cool. Yes I can be bought with cool appearance. Now, I know the spells a druid gets, some of them are quite cool. My main issue with the druid is appearance related. Why does Moonkin have to look so dumb? Everytime I see one, I think back to azuremyst seeing the moonkin waddling around. I can almost be ok with the broccoli, but seriously?

This is where I ask for help from you my readers. Balance druid, how good are they? Right now I give a slight edge to the Shammy because they can heal and I just like them. Maybe thats enough. But having a druid at 71, its kind of a shame to waste him.

My new favoritest class: The Shaman

2009-09-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

I was reading something over at Righteous Orbs about the awesomeness of Shamans, and it got me to thinking: I really like Shamans, they're really cool.

Like most people who play Wow, it was not my first RPG. In addition to many table top games, I played a few of the final fantasies (I loved 7, 8 and tactics, hated 10), all of the elder scrolls games, diablo, etc. Normally I like melee fighters who can wear heavy armor and self heal. That made the Paladin a natural choice in Wow. I still like Paladins. My two highest level characters are both paladins. However, I have decided I just like the shaman more, for a variety of reasons.

Reason 1: The best hybrid
There are three hybrid classes in Wow (I don't count shadow priests): Paladin, Shaman, and Druid. When I say best I mean most able to use a variety of abilities. Paladins are incredibly durable, even in DPS spec and powerful in melee. I still prefer a prot paladin for AoE grinding over any other class for their durability. However, this durability comes at the expense of range, a paladin basically has to be on top of a mob to do anything. Druids have to choose between caster DPS or melee DPS by shapeshifting. Shamans can use their caster abilities even in their melee DPS spec, and can melee in their caster spec. While it is true that the Druid and Paladin can fill more group roles than a Shaman, Shamans have the best all around use of abilities regardless of spec.

Reason 2: Cures the caster problem
This could be said about balance druids as well, but lets be honest, moonkin form looks dumb. I love mages, and I like locks and shadow priests. They are fun. However, without some type of mitigation, they get chewed up pretty quickly. Shamans don't have to worry about that. They wear mail, and can pull out instant cast pain. Also, even caster Shamans can use windfury weapon. Shaman are far from soft squishy targets.

Reason 3: They look cool
Let's be honest, a large motivation in the game is looking cool. I love druids, but they miss this completely. Moonkins look ridiculous, Dire bear looks the same at 40 as it does at 80, and cat looks the same at 80 as it does at 20. Shaman gear looks cool, they can dual wield, and their abilities just have a lot of flair. Chain lightning is probably one of my favorite looking abilities in Wow.

Basically, I like casters, I like beating on things, I want to look cool and be able to heal myself a lil bit. I probably should have been playing a Shaman all along. . .

RAF 1-60 and notes from vacation. . .

2009-09-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

Well for the past week I've been on "vacation". I say vacation because I wasn't at work. I didn't go anywhere because well, I'm cheap and I have the st louis trip coming up that I'm saving up for. A couple things happened during the course of my vacation. A) I have given up on playing on a PvP server and B) I was pretty much able to go 1-60 all the way through with recruit a friend (I got to 50's, but I have ungoro and winterspring untouched, and most of felwood left).

I have been back and forth about leaving Daggerspine for a while now. If I didn't have a group of real life friends there, I would have left a long time ago. I don't have the mindset for PvP, I don't enjoy it, and dying just frustrates and pisses me off. I am delaying a permanent decision until my RAF time is done, but I am considering paying the $50 and making Leshif Human and moving him to Azuremyst.

On the Recruit a friend path, I have found what works best/most efficiently for me and thought I'd share. First of all, in general, instance power leveling is not the best way to go. The triple XP you get from mob kills and quest turn ins trumps power leveling in the traditional sense. There is one exception: dungeon quests. Certain dungeons have a ton of easily obtainable quests associated with them. Get them, do them, you will get a level or more out of them. Zul'Farak is a great example. Most of the quests you get directly from Gadgetzan and depending on when you run it, will get you a level to a level and a half. Another thing is to be careful with the gathering quests you take. Generally if you're looking for mob drops, I get the quest on my main account and not the buddy, since the buddy is getting dungeon quest XP, it evens out. I went through zones in this order:

Azuremyst/Bloodmyst 1-24 (yeah, I hit 24, didnt even do all the quests)
Wetlands/Duskwood 24-32 (you switch back and forth with these, they both have mid and higher level quests to do)
Thousand Needles* (Just the racetrack. I didn't go here, but it's a free level, and usually do it on horde)
Stranglethorn Vale 32-38 (Just the kill quests, green hills and basilisk collection)
Dustwallow Marsh 38-45 (both theramore and ratchet give a TON of XP)
Tanaris 45-50 (Do yourself a favor, don't collect pirate hats on the buddy)
Zul'Farak 49 (I ran this on buddy to pop him 49-50)
Feralas* (I didn't go here, but wish I would have in the 45 range, to get an additional ZF quest and some more XP)
Searing Gorge 50-52 (not here for long, just to kill a bunch of stuff and give you an advantage in Felwood)
Felwood 52* (Felwood is good for about 3-4 levels, depending on how much you do, I left after 1 to do Ungoro)
Ungoro 53-56 (Planned, I havent gotten this far)
Winterspring 56-58 (same as above)
Hellfire Peninsula 58-60 (this will be your fastest 2 levels since 20, the quests can get you 60k apiece with the RAF bonus)

Badlands and Uldaman would have fit in there between Dustwallow and Tanaris, but its a lil out of the way and to get the Platinum disks quest (the real XP bonus of Uldaman) you need 3 players, so you cant just power level through it.

I did that Shammy & Priest. My next time through will probably be Hunter/Druid. I might also try a Priest/lock combo.

When the digital world turns into the real world. . .

2009-09-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

I had a blog post all ready to go about how there are different types of bloggers, two who are of interest to me: "super stars" and "blog friends". Super stars are people who have a large following, almost star status in the blog world. Blog friends are those people that you just like. You seem to have common interests, leave comments on each others' blogs, but you don't know them in real life.

Well, it looks like some of my blog friends are about to transition into real friends. Apparently the people who bring you WTFspaghetti and yours truly are going to embark on a mission to consume our fair shair of the adult beverage surplus in the St Louis area. Funny thing is, that of all my frequent blog commenters, they are among the ones I would actually like to meet in the "real world". Who knows, maybe we'll post some pics of our exploits. Not Ferraro style, I assure you, in real life I am male, and about as average looking as they come.

I was already excited about my trip, now I am more so.

On an actual wow related note, I am blowing through content with recruit a friend. I did get PvP'd last night, and by the time I could get my druid to stranglethorn vale, the perpetrators were gone. I still managed to hit 40 on my buddy priest and 38 on my "main" priest. I am switching to priest following shammy in the next day or so. I'd like to get them to around 50 this way, boost the priest through some instance quests, and grant the last 10 levels to get my shammy to 60 and see where we're at. Then I'll just need 20ish levels for the priest and my optional hunter leveling which I may put on hold. Do I really need a hunter? No, but it might be nice to have while I'm at it.

RAF on my alliance server will be a lot easier. no PvP to slow me down, and I've gotten the technique down. However, numerically, it will be a bigger task as I think I'll need 3 60's to spread around enough levels to get all my toons to 60. However, with RAF you level up so fast, it really isnt a chore at all. To me, its just more excitement.

Fish is going to St Louis!

2009-09-08T05:50:00.000-07:00

This is more of a real life post, but it's Wow related, so if you lose interest midway through, you have my permission to bail, I won't think less of you (or know come to think of it).

I have been a table-top gamer for most of my life. I started with Dungeons and Dragons around age 11, and the interest sort of blossomed from there. Between the start of high school, and about middle of college, if it was out, I'd probably played it. Another thing I started doing earlier in my life was attending gaming conventions. My first was Marcon in Columbus where I met one of my closest friends who is a contributor to Hex games. I really only attend one convention with any regularity, that is Archon in St. Louis, and well, its that time of year.

The convention runs from October 2-4, you can find more info here.

I'm going to be running three different games at the convention using Hex's rpg rules called QUAGS (Quick Ass Gaming System). I'm running one game, probably saturday night called Wrasslin. Basically it is what it sounds like, smackdown the video game, just in tabletop RPG format. I'm running a game as a sequel to the southpark episode "make love not warcraft" involving some warcraft archetypes and characters from the commercials (Yes, Mr T will be there, and he is a night elf mohawk, who am I to argue if there is not traditionally a mohawk class?). The last game I'll be running is a survival horror game. Think Saw meets resident evil. There will be traps and zombies.

I'm getting pretty excited about it. They normally have multiple kegs at the convention and as there won't be room parties, it semi forces everyone to associate on the convention grounds. Or maybe we'll cab it and takeover a bar somewhere. Who knows?

MAS: The guild that blogs. . .

2009-09-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

I must preface this statement by saying I have been a little out of the loop on guild matters. I've mostly been playing in the mornings when people arent online (both to avoid other players, and because that time happens to be most convenient for me). I've been having great fun with recruit a friend of late, I have a buddy character at 34, leveled my priest up to 33 tagging along, I have a new orc hunter at 22 and another buddy at the same level. My goal is still 3 to 40, then get one buddy to 60, and grant all 3 level 60. Then I'm going to rinse and repeat on my alliance server (although it might require more than one 60, I have a ton of mid level toons there, but none capped and only a couple above 60). I like the old world, but I'd just like to get past it at a greater rate of speed than is usually required. It will leave me with only one class that I won't have at 60: Rogue. I have no desire to play a rogue, my druids can stealth, I prefer fighting like a warrior and they can neither cast spells, nor self heal, so a rogue really isnt the class for me.

Anyways, what I really wanted to post about was another entrant in the MAS blogging family. Abbaddon, our resident PvP Death Knight, has started up a blog. I have limited experience and knowledge with PvP, it's a realm of the game I have no interest in, but I can see that he is skilled at it, and knows his stuff.

As I've been out of touch with the guild given my recent re-discovery of interest in the 1-60 game, it's good to be able to read blogs and get some kind of interaction with my guildies. Everyone who has a blog brings something different to the table, and MAS is no exception. I will never forget a post that Larisa wrote about blogging in general, it is part of why I started this blog in the first place. The biggest thing any blogger can do is impart their personality in what they write. In real life, I am a little random and all over the place, I'm sure no one who reads my blog would ever guess that (that's what we call sarcasm boys and girls!). While Matt is not one of the guildies I have met in person, I have interacted with him enough in game to know that I will enjoy his blog, and I'll definately add it to my blogroll. I will make the not too subtle suggestion that anyone into either Death Knights or PvP do the same.

More recruit a friend goodness. . .

2009-09-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

I have more observations/unanticipated goodness regarding recruit a friend, after my long weekend of experimentation.

First of all, triple experience is off the charts awesome. My first full fledged buddy character left ghostlands around level 24 and didn't even complete all the quests. He is currently in the middle of a 2 priest team and I think I'm going to level them a bit the old fashioned way. My other priest is 27, so when they hit 30, I'll run through some 1000 needles and STV kill quests, then we"ll take them through scarlet monastery.

I have decided the sweet spot for leveling is around level 40. Two 60's on the buddy account can level 3 40's on the main account to 60. Conveniently on my horde account I have a priest, shaman and hunter awaiting leveling goodness. I wasn't going to bother with a hunter, but why not? Plus hunter makes an ideal main to have a buddy character in tow and I think 2 characters and a pet just might make people think twice about ganking him.

I have also figured out an unanticipated benefit for the RAF summoning. Want to get someplace and not worry about the hassle of a run or lengthy flight? I have a mage on my main account bound to shatt. He can get anywhere and summon a buddy character. Another alternative is to do that, and then have one of the buddy characters summon someone from the main account. Instant travel, no fuss. I have been using that method to bypass a lot of painful travel (i.e. thunder bluff, the coast of ashenvale, and I'm sure I'll use it to pick up the flight point in gadgetzan). I also used it to get my Orc hunter and Tauren druid into the blood elf territory for leveling.

This recruit a friend is so addictive, I pretty much havent even been playing my higher level characters. I am sure I will pick them back up, my pally needs a few shards, badges and some rep for me to get 2-3 pieces of BoA gear, but since I only have a 90 day window to get a bunch of 60's (I need them horde and alliance, just in case, no reason not to get both servers up to speed), I want to make the best use of time that I can. I actually think it will be more fun on alliance because I can do more questing and less instancing. Although I know running through instances is time efficient, it is hella boring, so questing breaks up the monotony.

update: RAF, dual boxing, and tanking gear. . .

2009-08-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

I'm going to tackle these a little out of order. On the subject of tanking gear, I finally got the red sword! Originally when I first saw it, I didn't think it was all that cool looking, but after all the work I went through to get it, that thing is probably my fav wow item to date. Hard work does increase the perceived value of things I guess.

I went out to buy a retail copy of Wow to upgrade my buddy account. It turns out, Gamestop lowered the price of their Wow Battlechest so instead of paying $20 for just vanilla, I got vanilla and TBC for $30. I'd highly encourage anyone interested in using RAF to it's full potential to do the same. Honestly, for the blood elf and draenei starting areas alone, it is worth the extra $10.

As far as the actual dual boxing, its going really well, and I'm almost tempted to try leveling in PvP areas as well as straight instance power leveling. You get a SICK amount of XP off mobs and quests (triple off both), questing probably levels me faster than instances (and safer on my buddy char).

I've pretty much macro'd everything. I am definately sticking to Priest as a solid RAF character. I have smite, heals, wand, and shield macro'd so far. I will probably add fade and maybe a few other things. I've been leveling with Shaman and Priest, which is good, but I think a few other combos might work better. That combo would work great on alliance, not so well on horde. I think I would like to try Hunter/Druid and Warrior or Pally/Priest as well. Another thing I will try, I have a level 26 priest that I didn't play very much, I might try questing with 2 priests, that could be interesting (1 shadow, 1 holy).

As far as what I think of it? Its been a lot of fun. Although I like the questing more than the powerleveling, both have worked decent and there are plenty of instances to keep me busy. We'll see how things go at the higher levels, but right now it looks like no sweat to get a 60 this way, then have him share the love with some easy levels. I feel like I got 5 characters (2 paladins, warrior, warlock, and mage) to 60 the hard way, its not like going through vanilla will benefit me too much at this point.

Dualboxing and recruit a friend, its like having a pet who's awesome!

2009-08-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

So I decided to try recruit a friend admittedly basically for power leveling purposes. I get 90 days of time to boost 5 characters to 60 so I can round out my stable of alts and pretty much have all my hordies and alliance characters at 60+ (On azuremyst apart from my pally and death knight, most of my characters are in the early to upper 40s).

Now, an obvious way to do this is run the same instance over and over again until you stop getting benefit from it. I tried that, its about as boring as playing a game can be. It is definately a viable tactic to use in your powerleveling arsenal, however for those of you who want to introduce a little variety, there is another multi boxing solution.

Now, it took me almost the entirety of the day yesterday browsing information, trying addons and such to get this to work. I am outlining what works for me, on my system, but it is by no means the only way to do it. I am also only ever running two characters together for ease and saving my own sanity.

So since powerleveling in instances is boring, what is the alternative? Buddy questing. Basically you set up two instances of Wow. You have to use some kind of software to send keystrokes to the second instance. I use HotKeyNet. Its simple and it works really well. You put your buddy on follow and set up macros. I created a team of Shammy on my main account and priest on the buddy. I used a priest because they can heal, do damage, and have utility spells. I will probably be taking this shammy elemental to make use of the priest's shield ability. The macros are the important part.

In the section where the numbers activate abilities (basic bar) I have macros like:
/target zerofish
/assist zerofish
/cast smite

This will cast smite at whatever target zerofish has targeted. HotKeyNet comes into play because you can actually send those commands to the other instance of wow without switching in between. Now, I know it is possible to have the same keystroke do both, but I wanted seperate hot keys for my slave. I've been using Q, W, and E. Basically Q uses the smite macro on the slave, W heals the master, E casts shield on the master. Its like having a really awesome hunter pet. Basically I get double DPS while questing and triple experience.

I'm definately not using this as my only method of leveling, but it is effective in between instance runs, and once my slave passes level 20ish, instances get more varied and less monotonous.

My thoughts on Cataclysm. . .

2009-08-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

Well, obviously I have some thoughts on the upcoming expansion, I wanted to wait a few days to post them because normally the first response to anything like this is emotional, not mental, and I wanted to have a clear head when thinking about this.

On removal of certain stats:
Attack power and spellpower: gone. They seem to be going back to vanilla where most things are there and just derived. It has a couple effects. It makes it easier to pick gear for your characters, but it also makes things a little more boring. What it looks like you'll end up with is strength and stam for tanks, Int and spirit for healers and casters, agility for other DPS. I think that makes it easier for them than what has basically become a crazy mix of what is best for who. I was pretty against this at the beginning because I like being able to customize characters, honestly I think it will help overall playability while leveling and at endgame gear varies widely anyways. I also think it's cool that they said they want to bring back proc abilities on gear. Lets be honest, Ret pallies are stacking strength anyways, it just looks like other classes will be moving to that model.

What I am interested to see is how that will impact say jewelcrafting. No more defense, are they getting rid of parry and dodge as specific ratings also? No more attack power and spell power, but they haven't mentioned crit. I could see this realistically eliminating about half my gem cuts, and I really don't think thats a bad thing. How much easier would it be if I could just gem my druid int and spirit? Now I have this crazy juggling act of mage who wants int, crit and spellpower, druid who wants spellpower, spirit and int, and warlock who wants stamina and spellpower. All that is just for my casters.

Worgen and Goblins:
They took the "easy" path on this one. Goblins for horde, worgen for alliance. Looks like we're gonna see an assload of goblin rogues. Personally I will probably roll a goblin warlock and a worgen druid (I'm intrigued by new feral forms for both worgen and trolls), with the caveat: if I buy the new expansion at all.

How I feel about the expansion:
Well, I feel like Wrath had a lot for me. TBC was basically when I started playing the game, so that wasn't new to me, it was just a part of the game (even though I spent most of my time in the vanilla world, I have always had blood elves and draenei around). The two things that I like the most are crafting and making alts of different classes. They added a new one of each in wrath, and although inscription is terribly exhausting on resources, I like it a lot. In Cataclysm they're adding Archaeology. Great, another secondary profession I won't use. Now, while I love all the primary professions (even the gathering ones), I barely ever level the secondary ones. Fishing is not fun at all. First aid I see as a waste of cloth (as most classes I play can heal themselves in some form or another, the exception is my warrior and DK who do have first aid). Cooking I want to level, but its just such a pain in the butt! I don't see myself leveling Archaeology. Worgen and Goblins are cool, but if they don't give me new character slots, it's going to be hard finding space for them.
Another thing that I've been fighting recently is the thought that eventually I'm just going to be done with the game. I might be motivated to give raiding a shot once I have a caster at the level cap. Healing seems pretty stressful as does tanking. I also don't really want something that requires a high degree of situational awareness. I kind of just want to feel badass and blow stuff up. I have no problems running heroics over and over again because I still get to blow stuff up and the easier it gets, the more fun it is. My primary goal is to level other characters. I guess thats my lifespan in wow. When I don't have any new characters to level, I'll be done with the game. Thats why the new expansion doesn't hold too much appeal to me. Yes worgen and goblins are semi cool. However, will a worgen druid play that much different than a tauren druid? Probably not. If they would have given us a new "hero class" I'd probably be a lot more excited. I understand it would be hard balancing another class in the game, and honestly, I don't really see a niche that needs filled (making heals OP is not going to make people want to heal, how many DK's actually tank?). I think blizz saw that the influx of DK's really created more melee DPS, not really more tanks, so coming out with a healing class that can be a caster DPS will really just be making more problems for mages, and locks.

The long and short of it is more raids don't appeal to me, more levels don't appeal to me, unless there are abilities coming out that just seem ridiculously awesome (ok, I can be bought with really cool new abilities), I think I will be finding a new game to play in 2010. . .like maybe Star Wars, the Old Republic (Somebody go get my lightsaber. It's the one that says Bad Motherfucker on it. )

My thoughtful yet witty response. . .

2009-08-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

Who'd have thought my most often commented on post would be one that I was really not all that decided on in the first place. My post was more feelings related, and having had some time to reflect on it, I have a more clarified view of the situation.

On my own skills in the game:
I probably blog about this more than anything. Admittedly, I fluctuate on this quite a bit. Different roles require different skill sets and there is a pretty big learning curve. With that having been said, I realize I post more negative than positive in my blogs. My reasoning for this is that in general, I consider the blog reading community as a whole to be pretty knowledgable and able to give solid constructive criticism. The flip side of that is that when things go well, there really isn't much in the way of constructive criticism I could receive. A perfect example: this weekend I healed regular Utgarde Keep on my druid. Nobody died, we did the run in reasonable time. Did some new gear help me? Probably. Did a more effective use of healbot contribute to being able to keep everyone up? Most likely.
Its hard to rate yourself objectively with respect to your own skills. Right now, with respect to Paladin tanking I'd say I'm about a B and my Druid healing is about C+. I can do a fairly decent job but there's room for improvement. Thats one of the reasons why I blog.

On the guild and what I want out of it:
This is another tough subject. Everyone has lives and are on at varying times. Everyone has varying views of what "fun" is. I think my biggest problem is that I know what isnt fun, I'm trying to figure out what is fun. Being killed isn't fun. Being killed while trying to do grindy tasks is doubly not fun. Its kind of like mowing the lawn and out of nowhere someone comes and spears you like bobby boucher in the water boy. You're mowing the lawn because it needs doing, but its not exactly great fun. Now maybe my situation is closer to mowing the lawn on a practice field and it shouldnt surprise me if I get tackled. If it's that big a deal, what am I doing there?
This is something that I have continuously had issues with. If I hate PvP, what am I doing on a PvP server?
The obvious answer is "thats where my friends are". I prefer running with people I'm comfortable with. That works out great when everyone's goals are aligned. The problem is either people aren't on when I'm on, or are bored running heroics so they don't want to. Now, I'm apparently the last 80 in our guild who can tank and doesn't have the red sword. Its not for lack of trying. Our biggest problem currently is an abundance of tanks and lack of healers as well as generally people not being on as much. Me trying to get tank gear in content that others are bored with is an uphill battle. I can accept the fact that me wanting it serves no real purpose besides badges, which again, most everyone else seems to have plenty of. Its not even that I'm trying to get people to run me through, I'm not only geared enough for heroic UP, I can and have tanked it with pugs, I would just prefer doing it with a group I know. Unfortunately, as Ed pointed out, there's no reason for them to run it. Why do I run the same content over and over? Because I know it, I'm geared for it, and I know I can pull my weight in it.
So back to the matter at hand. On the positive side, I have g-chat, on the negative side, I get killed randomly. The former is nice and enjoyable, the latter has and probably will continue to infuriate and ruin the enjoyableness of the game for me. I still don't have a concrete cost/benefit of how that plays out.

On what I want ultimately:
What day is it? Sometimes, I want a solid tanking set to be proud of. Why? Who knows, I have no intention of ever tanking a raid. I just want it. Sometimes I think how awesome it would be to have multiple level capped alts. Sometimes I want a full set of heirloom gear for all of the aforementioned alts. Sometimes I want to max out all the crafting professions. Sometimes I just want to level in peace.
I agree with everyone who posted and said basically I have to figure out what I want. Sometimes it helps to switch up the routine and try something new.

On Recruit a friend powerleveling:
Its a lot of fun and not as hard as I thought it would be. Basically I set up a trial account with a key I emailed to myself. I create a level 1 character on my main account and a level 1 character on the buddy account. I have two wow clients running in windowed mode and I group them up and set one on follow. Voila, triple XP. I've been able to hit level 10 in about 2 hours, done that a couple times.
For the future, I see a couple things. First of all, upgrading the buddy account to full wow would only run me about $20. Since you can only use recruit a friend through 60, no reason to go any farther at the moment (more on that to come in a minute). If I pay for a month on the buddy account, I get a month free on my main account, so that basically pays for itself. The major benefit of recruit a friend is the granted levels. While I may not ever pay the $25 to xfer them to the main account (this is a temporary thing only at the moment). One thing I have been toying with is transferring my paladin to the buddy account (my 74 alliance one, not my main, Leshif as alliance is kind of wrong and not something I'd do lightly) to run some characters through outlands instances. It is a pretty easy path to XP and gear, although I haven't tried it yet.
So far, its been a lot of fun. Leveling is fast, and I do love the newbie quests. It shouldn't take me that long to get most of my alts to 60. I can do it on the horde side too, although I only really have two alts left who arent in outlands already.

Basically, the cliffnotes version is that I don't know what I want, so I'm hedging my bets. I'm not really making tangible progress doing what I'm doing currently (it seems forever and a day of dailies before I'll get to the crusader title, thats a LOT of work), so I'm hedging my bets. Im moody, I'm indecisive, I don't know what I want with the game, so to put it in dating terms, I'm seeing other people. I might go out every once in a while, but we're not in an exclusive relationship. I appreciate everyone's feedback on the issue.

Taking my ball and going home. . .

2009-08-23T10:22:00.001-07:00

This is a tough topic, but one I have gone over in the past. I seriously hate playing on a PvP server. Sometimes its not so bad. I have heirloom shoulders which speed up leveling, I have an 80 who can do dailies and give me a steady stream of income, I have a pretty good professional infrastructure in place. I can regularly talk to my friends in g-chat. Then some douchebag does something to piss me off so much, I'm considering leaving again.

First of all, I guess it is the normal stage of events on a PvP server, when people get bored with raiding, they look for "world PvP". That normally means running around ganking other players. I don't like it but normally it doesnt get in the way so bad. Last night I was doing the Argent Tournament quest that involves going and getting a sword. I went and got the flowers, flew to the complete other end of northrend, landed in the water, started the quest, and a gnome rogue ganked me right as I was about to complete it. Pardon my language but what a worthless piece of shit do you have to be to sit there and fuck with people just to piss them off? It succeeded. Unfortunately, I think there will only be more of this in the future.

Now, I will likely lose my heirloom shoulders in the transaction (which is a shame), but oh well. They don't have paid faction changes yet and I don't want to pay $50 to switch faction AND server. I've been thinking about a different solution.

I have a 74 pally on Azuremyst. I'm heavily considering "recruit a friend" to start up a new account, power level a couple characters, grant some levels to my existing characters, and get everyone to 60.

Its all hypothetical at this stage, and it's an awful lot of wasted time and effort, but its better than being pissed off all the time and/or quitting the game which is what happened last time. Having played enough endgame, I've come to a few conclusions. A) I have no desire to raid, it seems like a waste of time. B) If I have to PuG everything anyways, whats the difference? C) I really just prefer playing alliance, I prefer humans, draenei and night elves.

Anyone have any experience with recruit a friend power leveling? It seems like a pretty good deal, triple XP all the time, gear drops from instances, no hassle, levels granted for other characters on the account.

There be n00bs here. . .

2009-08-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

I don't like to throw the term noob around that often. It carries a good degree of social stigma in the world of warcraft. Obviously, not everyone reads blogs, has a level capped character, raids, and has been playing since vanilla. Heck, some people don't know what we mean when we say vanilla. Still, there are some people who make comments so drastic, that you can't help but wonder where their mind is.

The first example came with me DPSing a Blood Furnace run on my mage. We had a couple warriors in the group, a mid 60's one who was prot, and a lower 60's one who was DPSing as well. The prot warrior was having problems holding multi-target aggro. I can understand that, I struggle with that on my Druid. It came out that the warrior was dual specc'd and did not use his prot spec much, he was primarily Fury. The other warrior then asked why he wasnt using a two handed weapon with a shield because as fury he could have titan's grip. For some reason he thought dual spec meant two specs at once and we couldn't explain to him what dual spec actually was. . .

The next example was also as DPS with my mage. We were running Hellfire Ramparts with a Shammy healing. I was the highest level character in the group. Our other members were a blood DK who was tanking, a ret pally, and a rogue. First of all, the group was saying how hard ramps was. I know it can be difficult if you're under geared, but if ramps is a problem, you're REALLY gonna have problems later in the game. Anyways, thats not the noob moment. The mace drops from the demon guy, I congratulate the RESTO SHAMMY. Then the DK says it's more of a paladin weapon. WTF!?!? Maybe if you're holy. He then proceeds to say all shammies want fist weapons cuz his buddy is a shammy and he does good DPS with fist weapons. Wow! I mean I'm not an expert theorycrafter but a ret pally doesn't want a 2h mace, a prot pally would want the shadowrend longblade (which already dropped and we gave to the rogue). That mace is one of the better early weapons for resto or elemental shammies!

The last example is more failtanking than noobness. I saw someone in general ask for a healer for UK. I have been burned too many times by crappy tanks, so I asked "who's tanking for you?". They said 80 warrior. Well, level 80 on a 70 dungeon, that should be a cakewalk right? Yeah, cakewalk for everyone but me. I died about 4 times during the run, at least we had no group wipes. On the last one I said in group chat "no offense man, but you're not holding aggro very well." His reply "I'm 10". My reply "I don't care how old you are, just stop letting me die!"

In summary, I don't like to throw around the term n00b, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I normally try to keep my opionions to myself (thats what blogs are for). It just seems like I have two talents in game: avoiding any kind of tanking drops on my main and attracting bad pugs on my alts (strangely most of the pugs on my main have been really good. . .I know it's not my UBER SKILLZ).

Tanking while leveling: Who's best?

2009-08-15T06:03:00.001-07:00

So in my continuing journey to learn how to heal, I am pugging a lot of groups. And a trend that I am seeing is that the only tank class being leveled is the Death knight. Last night, while attempting to run Blood Furnace with my mage, I had a discussion about the best and worst tanks while leveling. As a benchmark, I consider leveling pre-78. After 78, you're running 80 instances and gearing up for heroics and gear starts resembling a lot more what you'll have in endgame. That being said, I believe death knights to be the worst tanks in the leveling phase of the game.

All things being equal (player ability, experience etc) tanking comes down to three things: Threat, Health, and mitigation. Threat because you want the mobs beating on your tough armored ass and not the puny guy with the creepy laugh standing in the back in his sissy robe (lol). You want health because once they start beating on you, even with heals, you need a buffer to stay up, more is better. Mitigation is important because even with a ton of health, you don't want every attack to hit you, you'll drive your healer nuts (TRUST ME!!)

This is how I feel the classes stack up (fairly subjective, although I have one of each, theyre not all the same level and not all geared/speccd for tanking)

Threat: Paladin, Warrior, Druid, DK. Paladins generate the most AoE threat the easiest in the game. They are threat machines. If you have a pally tank and he can't hold aggro, something is wrong. Warriors have a lot of tools for individual threat, and their AoE threat has improved a lot between end of TBC and wrath. Druid threat is based mostly on damage, but they do have Berserk to do massive threat to up to 3 targets or get a sizable jump on boss fights, still when I have tanked on my druid, threat has been an issue. Lastly, Mr DK. Their threat is based mostly on damage, they only really have one AoE threat generator: Death and decay(which they don't get till level 60), and don't get a taunt until 65. Death grip is not a taunt boys and girls. As they don't have a tanking spec they are more a hodge podge of abilities.

Health: Druid, Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight. My druid at level 70 in dire bear form has around 14k health. At the end up TBC, I struggled to get to 11k. My warrior has around 11k HP and he is neither prot nor even level 70 yet. Again, death knights lose out here. The major factor is most tanking shields have a good amount of stamina, and a lot of death knights focus on DPS gear. With a true "tanking set" they would probably only lag behind slightly just because shield + 1h weapon generally gives more stamina than a 2h weapon.

Mitigation: Paladin, Warrior, Death knight, Druid. Again, shield is the biggy. Paladin and warrior are probably interchangeable here. Paladins will have higher block, but block isn't as useful a mitigation stat as parry and dodge. Death knights have a higher parry and dodge, but no block at all while druids basically get dodge only.

Ghostcrawler has pretty much said they tune classes for 80. We have a death knight tank in our guild who tanks our raid runs. Obviously, there are DKs who are successful despite their lack of tools. My point is they do have a lack of tools. Another thing to consider is that a death knight is normally an alt. How many people who tank on their main roll up a tanking alt? How many people can learn to tank in 20 levels? My answer to both is probably not many.

While there is no clear answer who the best leveling tank is, it is clear that the worst leveling tank is definately the death knight.

Fail-tanking

2009-08-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Well, the theme of wednesday is something near (but not dear) to my heart: Fail-tanking. You know, looks like a tank, acts like a tank, but utterly fails in execution, normally leading to wipe? I have a couple instances of this from the weekend, both as the fail-tank, and as the healer unfortunately stuck with one.

First, I will admit my own tanking failure. With the changes in patch 3.2, I got a significant boost to my tanking abilities. Seal of corruption became even better for threat generation, and I'll soon re-spec to include vindication in my ret talents (any ounce of mitigation can help). Anyways, I can run through H UK and H UP in my sleep. I've run H UP repeatedly trying to get the sword and belt, some of the only drops which are really upgrades for me.

Well, that leads into my fail-tanking. You see, there is another item that is a clear upgrade for me: the shoulders from H Gundrak. I mentioned this, suggested we run it, we grouped up, got into the instance and I realized a problem: I've never run Gundrak. I had run another instance in Zul'Drak, never seen this one. So we plowed through the first boss, no biggie, got to the 2nd boss, the tough one. We wiped when it switched to goo form, I had no idea it was going to happen, was slow pulling it back, it tore through the group. The next time we tried, I made a total n00b mistake and didn't have my threat increaser up, so obviously I couldn't hold aggro at all, group wiped again and we called the run. Yeah I admit, not knowing the run = fail; Not using a basic ability = fail.

The 2nd instance of fail was with me trying to heal an instance on my druid. Basically, I just wanted to get some experience healing and using healbot in general. My druid is level 70, has a mix of lower Northrend, Kara gear, and misc stuff I've picked up along the way. I have decent SP (450ish), but I've mostly stacked spirit, so my regen is pretty good. I got my healbot set up basically to make Rejuvenation, the green one (whose name I never remember), swiftmend, wild growth, healing touch, and lifebloom easy and quick to cast. The statement I'm trying to make here is that I think I have the tools to be effective at the level I'm at.

So I went into LFG for two instances: Nexus and Utgarde Keep. I've run both repeatedly (I got most of the nexus quest drops on my alliance pally, I'm scared to run them on horde because of PvP). I got whispered for a group running nexus, I asked them to clarify that I'd be healing (I usually join as healing, DPS or tank, this one I joined just DPS or heals), which they said yes to. I flew to dalaran and switched out my gear and waited for the summons.

Our group was a 70 warrior tanking, me healing, I remember a 73 ret paladin, a 70 shammy, and I couldn't say who the 5th was. I am pretty sure he was 70 though. Well long story short, I died three times. There was only 1 group wipe. The tank was going too fast, losing aggro, and mobs were peeling off on me. I was having to bomb heals on pretty much everyone to keep them up, mobs would peel off and I couldn't even get off a heal. It's a bad thing when I'm having to use my instant healing touch macro on myself. I remember dying VERY soon on the mage boss.

It's frustrating basically just wanting to heal people worrying about being beaten on and basically having no defensive tools at all. I have barkskin, WOOOO! Resto druids kind of are what they are: healing machines. Even as a Holy paladin (which I played briefly believe it or not) I had bubble, stun, and plate armor so if the tank lost aggro I was ok for a lil bit.

Thats about all my progress. Didn't do much on alts, just tried to get druid a lil ways into Northrend. My guild is hurting for heals if we want to run more than 1 team through heroics, and I've decided I kinda like it. Also, I think it'd be fun having multiple level capped toons for a change.

My weekend. . .

2009-08-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a little delayed in my usual monday posts because I was out sick yesterday. I went to the gym on saturday, struggled to get through my workout and pretty much went downhill from there. However, Wow isn't exactly the most strenuous thing to do, so I got plenty accomplished in that area.

First, I the thing I am most proud about, I tanked through heroic UP and UK with no group wipes. It wasn't a slow run and we didn't have overpowering DPS, I really felt like I was pulling my weight and things went mostly like they should. I did have one issue in the trophy room in UP, we killed one of the middle bosses too fast, so when the next one came up, my shield was on cooldown, that kinda sucked for the guy who started DPSing immediately and died before I could say anything. I didn't get any loot (the only reason why I'm repeatedly running UP is Skadi's belt and the red sword, neither of which I have ever even seen drop and everyone in my guild who wants it has the sword already :-( ). I seem to have really bad luck with tanking weapons. Please blizz, let my blacksmith make one, I don't care how many titansteel bars it takes, I just want a cool looking tanking sword that is garaunteed.

I also started working towards the Crusader title so I can pick up a BoA chest with champion's seals. I have actually gotten into a routine of doing threat from above, foot of the citadel, and the kill quests every day. I am semi slacking on the Ebon Blade dailies because since I hit exalted with them, the only thing I get out of it is gold (easy gold, but still). I reached exalted with Silvermoon city, finished the Oggrimar valiant chain, and failed miserably at the trial. Have I mentioned how much I despise 1 on 1 jousting? And I don't know if they changed it with the patch, but when my friend tried helping me, the challenger was vanishing and making me re-start. SOOOOOO frustrating! I just want to finish them out so I can get Crusader and get the stupid BoA chest to speed up my leveling, blech.

Obviously there are other paths to BoA gear, and I'm working on them as well. I could care less about the weapons, what I want is +20% XP on all my alts. There are three sources for this, Champions seals (which I'm working on), shards, tokens, whatever they're called (when you run instances and hold wintergrasp), and emblems. Now, I currently have 100 something of the PvP ones (200 for gear), 16 or so emblems, and 20 something seals. Hopefully I should have enough to buy 3 pieces of BoA gear within about 2 weeks. My problem is what to buy? Currently my alts are as follows (not counting 80 pally): 70 DK, 70 Druid, 67 Warrior, 62 Warlock, 62 Mage, 34 Shammy and a priest and hunter who I don't really see leveling. I've been swapping the leather shoulders off between Warrior, Druid, and Shammy, thats not an issue. Chest complicates things a little bit. My druid and warrior are both wearing GREAT leveling gear. Warrior has the adamantite chest with blue quality northrend gems, druid has the drop from BF, also with blue quality gems. I will probably be able to afford 3 pieces of gear. I know I want cloth shoulders. The mail chest is caster mail not DPS so it won't help warrior or DK. The leather probably loses too much for the warrior to wear it, but it does help druid and shammy. Shammy could also probably wear cloth chest, but that screws druid. Maybe leather and cloth chest? I dunno, as I said, I'm conflicted. It's all stats vs +10% XP.

Speaking of leveling, I powerleveled tailoring on my Mage, 1-350. Took him to Northrend and found out they raised the level requirements for Northrend crafting. Totally makes sense, but darn. Now I have to level my Warlock and Mage (I did a lil, both hit 62, 3 more levels to go!). In the course of leveling, I realized something about the lock: I really like the Felguard, he's hilarious. "Too pathetic to fight your own battles?" Yes felguard, thats why I summoned you and you're my bitch, now go kill them while I spread some DoTs and look like I'm paying attention. I have tried every tree they have access to, and demonology feels the most warlocky. I did like affliction and all the dots are nice, but Felguard > Blueberry. As for my mage, I like him, I really do, but I'm starting to get tired of 111111111111111. Portals are great, teleports are great, I am planning on making some spellfire gear for him, I'm just tired of frostbolting everything to death. Instances are a ton of fun if the tank can get enough mobs for me to blizzard. That time in ZF was the most fun I have ever had with any character.

My Druid hit 70 and I bought the tome of coldweather flight for him. Man that is nice. Getting from place to place is easier and not having to worry about pesky mobs or being ganked is great. I am planning on healing a couple UK runs, but I want to pick up the FP in Dalaran first so I can more easily go get the healing gear. I am a little apprehensive about it for one reason: Dark Smash. I know I had plenty of problems with it when I was leveling Pally and say what you will about DKs in endgame, they're scaled for 80, not lower levels. Having gone through the TBC instances as a healer, I prefer pally tanks because they have enough mitigation and no problems holding threat on multiple mobs.

All in all, great weekend and I got a lot done.

Add-ons. . .

2009-08-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

Add-ons have become more a stock part of most player's UI than the blizzard default. Why is that? Well, frankly, blizz's version is pretty basic and not as helpful as it could be with a lot of things. I use the add-on's below to help with that.

Advanced Trade Skill Window: This is my newest add-on and one I wish I'd discovered previously. Want to see only the glyphs you can make for paladins? How about only leather items that will get you a skill point? No more scrolling through seemingly endless lists of recipes to get to the one I want. I also like the ability to queue up items to create later. Although I haven't used it, I could see this being very handy.

Auctioneer: This seems to be a standard for just about anyone serious about the AH. I am not what you would call serious, but I do like to recognize a good bargain. Obviously, it has some weaknesses, and isn't easy to use to it's full potential (like anything else, it's a tool, only as good as it's user). Yes, on patch day I bout some level 70 epic gems because it said they were a good deal, and I bought them out before realizing they were essentially useless. oh well.

Cartographer: This add-on shows the whole map. I semi-understand why blizz doesn't do this (all the way back to the first warcraft, if you havent been there, you don't get to see it), but come on! In the age of instant info, statgey guides and complete maps on blizzard's own website, the least they could do is make this a standard feature.

Deadly Boss Mods: I picked up this add-on for one reason: Dark Smash. I was tired of getting crushed in UK. It has become very handy knowing when bosses are about to unleash the nasty. Not that it has kept me from dying, I just know ahead of time, lol.

Dominos: I love this mod more than life itself with one exception, but I'll get to that. One bar of icons just isn't enough, especially past say level 30 when you have a tendency to use 8-10 abilities constantly and many more you use conditionally. I normally have about 4-5 bars on my screen at once, and put temporary quest items there too, just to make it easier to use them, its great. My only complaint is with warriors and druids. The forms you're not using are on bars that you can switch out, but they have to be someplace, even if you can't see them. This can sometimes get in the way and is pretty annoying. I've also unknowingly removed icons. I know you can lock the bars, but I like being able to switch things around if necessary.

Gatherer: This addon marks resource nodes on your mini map that you've gathered from. Its convenient for me for when I'm trying to decide to take a direct route, or a more roundabout one which includes some nice gathering.

Healbot: This is another one that is new to me. I had originally thought it was just quick mouseover healing, I was wrong. It also includes unit frames which makes healing a lot easier. Now I can more easily see who's taking damage and quickly apply whichever heals are necessary.

Omen: Who wiped the group? This addon tells you where you're at with aggro, and it works with pets too. You get a nice flash of red and sound telling you that you pulled aggro. When tanking, it lets me know where everyone is with the caveat it is mob specific, so if they're DPSing outside kill order, you'd have no way of knowing (gee, if only there was a way you could mark mobs to tell players which to focus on in what order).

Pally Power: (amidst my protests) I don't like this addon, and it gets in my way 95% of the time. I mostly solo things, and the last thing I need is more useless crap on my screen. However, our guild has a ton of pallys (we can have up to 6 in a 10 man group, 2 prot, 2 ret, 2 holy, more normally we'll have half that), and managing all the buffs and auras can be a pain, so this is "required" when raiding.

Quest Helper: This mod has become so widespread, blizz has included many of it's elements into their default UI. Love the quest tracking, love the routing, pretty much love everything about it.

Titan Panel: This is one of the first addons I got, and still one of my favorites. It gives you a little bar at the top of the screen customizable with all kinds of useful information. I currently have coordinates, bagspace(used/total), gold (which if you hover will give you total on that server not in the mail), and I'm sure a few things I'm drawing a blank on at present. Again, super customizable and convenient, I REALLY miss this when it's not around.

Which one is my favorite? Well, if I could only use one, it would be dominos, I absolutely can't play without it now. All the others do what addons are supposed to, make life just a lil easier in game.

Happy Patch day!!!!

2009-08-04T05:30:00.000-07:00

Well, it is a happy patch day, with some changes I'm eagerly anticipating, some changes that are meh, and some WTF?

The good:

Shaman totem bar: Yes, I'm still gonna have a ton of bars with random stuff on them, but a button to drop my 4 fav totems all at once, goodness. Now I just need to decide on Mana Spring or Healing Stream.

Cheaper/Faster mounts: This is big time. While not existing in a state of perpetual poverty, I consider myself in Wow's lower middle class. I have an 80, and I have decent gold savings, but I have to carefully manage resources to make sure I don't run out. Not counting my Death Knight or Paladin, I have 4 characters level 60+ with another hopefully on the way. Pre-3.2, to get speedy land mounts for all of them, it would have cost over 3000g. Now its a much more managable 300. I am also super excited about the scroll of cold weather flight and basic flying mount speed increase to 150%. Now my druid can fly around Northrend and life will be easier in general. To this day, I think cold weather flying was the best 1000g I ever spent.

Epic gems: I probably don't have as much titanium saved up as a lot of people, but I can almost garauntee the market will exceed the availability, so prices for the next week or so will be through the roof. I've also saved up all my JC tokens so I can get a few cuts. I will probably focus on Stam and Int as those seem to be the big money makers for me (I almost always sold all my blue quality + int gems immediately). I'm hoping for 2k gold in the next couple of days.

Improvements to seal of command and vengeance: I really like these. I don't like seal of blood/martyr at all. I am considering not putting the talent point into seal of command though because it seems like a waste of a point. I'll have to play with the talent calculators when I get home.

The meh:
Other changes to most classes: it just seems like so much BLAH BLAH BLAH. I didn't think there were problems pre 3.2 with most classes. There is one notable exception, you can see that in WTF.

The WTF:
Frost mages: The major problems with frost seem to be that they are slightly over-powered in PvP, and underpowered in PvE. So what did blizz do? Gave them a PvP buff, and did nothing to really improve them in PvE (making frost bolt .2 seconds faster to cast at the expense of some crit barely counts). Oh, and mana efficiency (never really a problem for frost) was improved. 1111111111111111111111111111111111111 FTW (not really)

On a personal note, when I get home from work, I'll be prospecting some titanium, dropping herbalism on my mage and powerleveling tailoring. My warrior is more than capable of handling herbing duties (I wanted to give him some kind of self heal besides bandaids), and getting him a faster wolf makes it a lil easier on me. I might even consider getting him a flyer to make it easier still (150% speed is tempting for a gatherer).

Oh the goodness, I can hardly wait!

Woweekend in review and other miscellany. . .

2009-08-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a pretty good weekend all things considered. I gained a level on the Shaman, burned up his rested XP, getting him ever closer to 40 (I havent gotten to the point where I'm running him non-rested yet). Druid hit level 70 and had some interesting experiences (more on that to follow). Pally barely made it on to do dailies, and I think I missed a couple days worth (I'm about a day from exalted with Ebon Blade, and I've never set foot in an instance with their tabard on).

The druid took up the bulk of my time this weekend. I know at level 68 I could go into northrend and crank out some quests to level, however, I wanted to wait till 70 for a few reasons. First, I like finishing areas. I may not do every quest in an area, but I do the majority. I wasn't "done" with Terrokar Forest till 68, and I had yet to really do much in Nagrand (besides ring of blood). Maybe it's just me being set in my ways, but I always go Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar, Nagrand. Normally thats enough to pop me to 70. Whats killing me currently is getting enough Fel scales to get my leatherworking to 350. I remember Mercurial Adamantite was a problem with JC and I don't really recall having an issue with BS after thorium or with tailoring ever. I have no idea how many hours its gonna take me to farm enough, but its gonna be a pain.

I did put in a few instance runs which didn't get my much in the way of experience but taught me a little bit and got me some useful gear. We went into Kara on sat to get one of our members some enchants, she got mongoose, surefooted, and a couple spellpower ones, which were nice. I died a lot, but I did get a couple nice DPS rings and a caster belt. I almost got some awesome boots, but I didn't speak up quickly enough that I'd like them (people don't seem to associate me with a tree). I also got invited to some Northrend instances (one of our 80's was running through lowbies), but due to some personal issues, I couldn't make the UK run. I did find out something interesting. I had completely misunderstood Wild Growth, and wasnt using it correctly. I figured it out and was able to heal us through one of the bug instances (I get them confused). Not bad in outlands greens, although we did have an 80 tanking.

Now, if only I could avoid douchebag ganking I'd be happy.

Anyways, didn't have time for too much else. UFC 101 is sat, but more on that on the other blog. I have been practicing guitar again and was just thinking if I put as much time into that as I did into wow, I'd have been a pro by now. Oh well. Wow is $15 a month, guitar equipment (new amp, pedals, etc) would prolly run more than that, so I've been sticking to the budget alternative. I'm still on track for my new years resolution though (I'm playing some Rage by New Years Eve!!!), modest goals I know, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Rock Band DLC and Woweekend. . .

2009-07-31T07:31:00.000-07:00

This post is all about the goodness. First, I did a little happy dance and jumped up and down when I saw the latest batch of Rock Band DLC. Another Weezer pack? Pork and Beans, My name is Jonas and Sweater Song!?!?!? OMFG!!! So obviously I had to buy it and play immediately. Now they only need to make one more three pack - Beverly Hills, Perfect Situation, and Hashpipe. . .although I don't think they would release hashpipe as a DLC, it's not kid friendly.

Speaking of DLC, although I LOOOOVE some of what they've released lately ( Social D's Ring of Fire and Rancid Ruby Soho), there are still a couple that I want. First, where is Countdown to Extinction? Best metal album ever. . .period. Second, I would love to see a Bush pack. Everything Zen, Machinehead, and Chemicals Between Us. OK, maybe one more pack: RAGE!!! Yes, we have Testify, but come on: Guerilla Radio, Killing in the name, and Sleep now in the Fire!

On a Wow related note, I am anxiously awaiting my Woweekend. The facility I play hockey at is hosting a tournament, so I don't have hockey, I pretty much have no responsibilities at all this weekend which means one thing: WOWEEKEND!!! Leveling with shammy, maybe take druid to northrend, might level one of the clothies (I have mage and warlock both at 61). Nothing to do for 2 days is lotsa goodness. I dunno how fast I can get the druid to 80, I'd bet faster than the pally though.

Shaman totem bar and more PuG healer abuse. . .

2009-07-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

This is going to be another one of those posts that is 50% excitement and goodness and 50% rant and rave. Excitement first.

I was reading on Wow insider this morning (can't link from work, doh!) about the planned shammy bar and a new ability that will let you drop 4 totems at once. Pure win. For the record, I am using dominos (I love that thing, its awesome), and for most characters it works really well. I do have some issues with my druid because even though the bars are transparent, they're still there (you have to put each "form" on a seperate bar, warrior works that way too for stances). Anyways, in my normal configuration, I use about 3.5 bars for abilities and quest items I have to click on to use, and a bar on the side for hearthstone and craft skills. Normally that is more than enough real estate, but my level 30 shammy has almost filled them up. Shields, weapon buffs, totems, I love all the options, but damn thats a lot of buttons! I also don't want to remove anything because the minute I do, I will need what was removed.

The change I've read about allows you to set 1 totem of each type on a bar (same type of thing druids, pallys and warriors have) and then abilities which will drop 4 set totems at a time. Currently, I've only been using totems when it's more than one mob. I drop Magma, stoneskin, and either mana spring or healing stream (I am back and forth on which is better). I really think this is a great change as it will free up space and allow you to drop your fav totems all at once (as a side note, the totem mechanic was why it took me a while to level a shammy. Now that I am, I realize its not a big deal and I was missing out).

Now for the badness. I got randomly whispered yesterday to heal mana tombs. Now I don't like mana tombs at all (I'll get to why in a minute), but it was either that or quest for 150k XP, so I figured I'd run it and maybe get some gear (prolly not, but who knows). So I group up, get together, there is a druid there in cat form, a Tauren warrior, a hunter and a warlock. Well, I will give the tank credit for one thing. He was pretty tough and didn't take a lot of big burst damage. Unfortunately, thats the only thing I can give him credit for. First, he was body pulling everything. I don't think I saw him use any kind of range or charge or anything. Second, he didn't seem to be able to hold aggro on more than one mob at a time. I know thats difficult to do, but thats why we mark, and he wasn't (It's making me appreciate my pally tank who's never really had aggro issues). Lastly, and most annoyingly, he was pulling the mobs into the group getting me mana burnt, drained and silenced.

Got all that? So the run went something like this: Druid was taking a ton of damage because he would run ahead, dps mobs, pull aggro from the tank and consequently die. I tried to heal him through this once, but the tank started taking burst damage, so I switched back, burned my instant heal and kept him from dying. After that, I basically restricted my non-tank healing to rejuvination when they took damage. As a result, a lot of the group died a few times. I died a few times. After we wiped towards the end, I asked the lock to reapply soul stone. He said he was "saving it for the next run". So next wipe, I quit the group rather than run back for my corpse.

I received a few whispers of what a horrible healer I am, etc etc. I really did want to finish the run, but it wasnt worth the hassle and I'd already completed Mana Tombs so I had no quests or anything to get out of it. I actually reccomended the druid use bear form as it would have A) given an offtank and B) kept him from getting destroyed by the mobs if/when he pulled aggro. What do I know about tanking though?

I do really like druid healing. Rolling lifebloom is pretty painless (well, other than the mana cost) and making sure I have rejuvination on as well as the other HoT so I can swiftmend if necessary. I know that I need to get used to using group heals (I started healing as a holy paladin and I am sure it shows), but I like having plenty of tools at my disposal. I even kinda like tree form. Yeah, I'm slow and kinda funny lookin, but when you pop tree, everyone knows who the heals are.

Leveling is going well. Picked up flight form on the druid, it is cool but man is it slow! I can't wait till 3.2 where they increase it to 150%. Shammy hit 30, is officially done with Ashenvale and ready to pick up his last totem. Crafting professions are going well, I am now into Outlands with all of them (or higher in the case of blacksmithing and jewelcrafting). I am still back and forth about whether or not to level my mage. I was super in a rush to hit 58 to get to outlands, but with moonkin looking like a possibility for the druid at 80 and now leveling the shammy, I'm thinking I might want a more durable caster. I am going to switch him to tailoring either way, I should be able to power level him up into northrend tailoring with a minimum time expenditure.

Alts, the Argent Tournament and Fish on Fighting. . .

2009-07-28T07:11:00.001-07:00

Well, in addition to thinking about the future awesomeness of my shammy (I dinged 29 and have my talents planned out to level 80 lol, yeah tragic I know). Actually, his currently awesomeness is pretty apparent. Although level 28 at the time, I got swarmed by 3 29-30 murlocs, killed them all and survived. I really like the AoE totem, and although they take up a ton of space on my bar, if I get swarmed, they are well worth the mana expenditure. In a more immediate sense, I cant wait till level 40 to pick up Storm strike and dual wielding.

In playing the Shammy and Druid, I have figured out something about myself, and I'm thinking both may be better fits for me in instance content than my Paladin. First, for solo/leveling, I like quick DPS damage and self heals. Although ret seems decent at 80, I feel like my Cat form and Enhancement shammy are doing more damage faster. Yes, paladin is the king of the AoE, but it's not like druid and shammy can't do that too. However, in instances, I hate having to melee things. There is just too much going on, I seem to get faced the wrong way, be out of range, etc. Being able to just blast things from distance, preferrably instant cast, helps a ton. Also, I have found it beneficial to have a healing off-spec and while my pally's specs are spoken for (I'm not going through everything to get a healing set, I have enough gear sets as it is), it should be fairly easy to gear healing sets for Shammy and Druid.

Anyways, another thing I have been thinking about is the Argent Tournament. At first, I was super excited about the BoA chest pieces. Now, after realizing A) they require an ASSLOAD of seals (which I don't seem to be acquiring quickly), and B) you need to have the crusader title to get them (I think I'm barely revered with most of the factions), they are starting to seem like a ton of work. I do 2 Argent dailies pretty religiously: Kill 10 scourge and 15 scourge. I do that along with the Ebon Blade dailies pretty much every day. On the good side, it's easy, quick and painless. On the bad side, it took me almost a month to get 25 valiant seals, and it will be 2 months to even get enough seals to buy the chest. And thats the leather chest only, which doesnt help my warrior and death knight (both of whom I am back and forth on leveling). I am assuming bloggers I've read about who are rolling in seals are doing threat from above and jousting every day? I hate the jousting, although if I can find a partner, foot of the citadel ones are pretty easy. Its just the commanders that I have to gang up on. Oh well, I guess I will do what I can until I get bored with it, thats the name of the game anyways, right?

Also, I did start a new blog, specifically for MMA related stuff. I have named it Fish on Fighting. My first post is about the over-ratedness of Bobby Lashley (I'm not approving of all former WWE wrestlers transitioning to MMA).

Here is the link. I am still going to be writing this blog for Wow, that blog will be MMA related.

Shamen (Shamans?) and the ultimate fighter. . .

2009-07-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

I still wonder, what is the plural of Shaman? Do you add an s, or is it like man and turn it to men? I have no idea. That is not the point of this blog however. I was messing around with talent calculators, plotting where to take my little shammy and through the course of it, got really excited. Enhancement looks really cool and I am looking forward to bringing the pain 2 handed. There also looks to be a good amount of mana replenishment abilities, so I can switch from water shield back to shock shield. I'm leaning heavily towards including 3 points of static shock in the build, which seems like pure win for me, however in looking around, I hadn't seen any builds with it. Elemental def also looks like fun, caster in mail who can throw big damage and AoE? Yes please! Resto. . .eh, its heals. I have my druid already, I'll prolly dual spec at 58 just to get some free instance runs, but its more of a luxury than a necessity if I have an extra 1000g laying around. All in all, very excited about how things are working out, pretty super excited to level him and put him through his paces (as I usually am with alts).

My referrence to the ultimate fighter is more an idea than the reality show on spike. If you could combine aspects from different fighters into one "ultimate fighter", who would it be? I've thought about it and here is my list.

First part of a fighter is their physical tools, strength, speed, agility, overall athletic ability. I want my fighter to be the incredible hulk. I want Brock Lesnar. A 300lb man who many have said is the strongest man they have seen who can also do a shooting star press? Hell yes. The next thing a fighter has to have is a warrior mentality. Forest Griffin will fight anyone and he keeps coming and refuses to quit. If you have seen any of his fights with Stephan Bonnar, they weren't battles of skill, they were battles of will. Fighters also have to have an ability to take a hit and for my money, no one can take hits better than Dan Henderson. He routinely eats shots that would rock lesser fighters. Yes, it is good to have good defense, but everyone gets tagged once a while, you need to be able to take the hit and keep coming.

Those are the physical and mental attributes I want in my fighter, what about skills? I want my fighter to have knockout ability. I want the punches of Chuck Liddell and the kicks of Mirco Cro Cop. Yes, there might be better technical punchers and kickers in MMA, but those two have one shot knockout power consistantly. In addition to punching and kicking, I want my fighter to have vicious Muay Thai strikes. No one in MMA has a better thai clinch than Anderson Silva. If you saw any of his fights with Rich Franklin, Silva dominated him with knees from the clinch. A good fighter has to be able to takedown his opponent. The best ones can do it from anywhere at any time and end up in a dominant position once on the ground. The best at this is Karo Parysian. (Yes, I have to take the Judo guy here). Lastly, once on the ground, a good fighter has to have strong Jujitsu to either transition to a strong offensive position, or defend against his opponent doing so. Again, I want the skills of a man who is head an shoulders above everyone else in MMA: Demian Maia. I have heard other people have strong Jujitsu, BJ Penn has great skills, but Maia is on another level. He transitions at will and finishes elite fighters with little effort.

That's my ultimate fighter, anyone think I missed something?

Time is money, friend!

2009-07-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

The goblin NPC's say it all the time, I'm sure the Greedy Goblin would agree. However, I was thinking about it in a very specific context this weekend. One the things I enjoy most in Wow is leveling up crafting professions to support my army of alts. I've pretty much capped jewelcrafting and blacksmithing, leaving me to level leatherworking, alchemy, inscription, enchanting, and tailoring. The issue I'm considering: buy mats on the AH or grind them myself?

First of all, to get things out of the way, I am aware of the many power-leveling guides out there. Google warcraft xxx powerleveling guide 450 and you will probably find one. I'm not really concerned with how to get there. What I am concerned with is how to get there with the best use of resources. I say best and not cheapest because although grinding everything myself (and I def could, with the exception of northrend herbs, but as I'm not a level to use most of what would be made with northrend herbs, it's a moot point), time is a resource too, and that is obviously not the optimal use of it.

Enchanting is what got me to thinking about this in the first place. I was looking to make a runed arcanite rod for my warlock. I have plenty of enchanting mats saved up from my two other times leveling enchanting (had it on lock and dropped it, had it on pally and dropped it). The one thing that was killing me was the golden pearl. Now, they are in short supply in the AH, and the only one listed this weekend was 150g. Now, on certain things, I might spend 150g. I dropped 100g on a scroll of greater savagery for my pally's Greatsword of the Sindorei. But on something I'm gonna be using maybe a day? Fuck that! So I ground on turtles, first in Tanaris, then right next to Revantusk village (the higher level turtles take an extra hit to go down, but there's a ton of them). I believe it took me about 45 mins and 30 clams to get my pearl. Its not just the fact that I didn't want to drop 150g, I also refuse to support anyone who tries to auction things at ridiculous prices. I prefer to purchase a lesser item, go without, or grind it myself. (As a side note, I did pay around 130g for a 20 stack of small radiant shards, but as my enchanter is level 61, those would have been a pain to grind and thats a hair above market for a ton of them, so I felt ok with that purchase.)

Another market I feel is ridiculously overpriced is herbs. I have 3 flower pickers (herbalists, but come on, they're flower pickers), soon to be 2 once I drop herbalism on my mage for tailoring (which I've been considering doing sooner rather than later, I'd planned to wait till 3.2, but since I've been leveling my warrior again and spending a decent amount of time in Zangarmarsh, I have a decent amount of herbs). I know this has to do with inscription and how A) its horribly resource intensive and B) every level of herbs are useful, even for level capped characters due to minor inscriptions. While I support this on the sell side (yes, buy my over-priced herbs), again, I refuse to buy them. I have plenty of characters leveling who can just pick the herbs while they're questing and have plenty of materials (usually) for leveling. That is definately true of Alchemy, inscription seems to go through the herbs a little fast, so I've needed to make a few dedicated herbing runs for it. Hence my waiting for 3.2 so my herbers can have epic land mounts (I'm not going to buy 600g mounts for 4 characters when in less than a month they'll be less than 50).

Leather and cloth, while overpriced in the AH, I put into the "grind for" category. Generally, in the course of leveling, you will get TONS of cloth, and if you are a skinner, probably tons of that as well. Now I refuse to level first aid on any character except my warrior and death knight (who are the only two characters I'm leveling who can't heal themselves somehow and even they have minor abilities to do that). I just see first aid as a huge waste. So I've saved up more than enough linen, silk, runecloth, etc to powerlevel, probably up to the 450 level which again, I cant use things of that level anyways. Leather is similar, I've gotten plenty of leather while leveling to raise my leatherworking, and as skinning adds crit rating, I have found it quite handy to have on my shammy and druid. I did hit a bit of a snag once I hit outlands, but I expect to clear that up once I get into Nagrand (it seems like all you do in Nagrand is kill things, beasts, demons, elementals, Ogres; they're bloodthirsty out there).

So in short, I prefer to grind in general. Its not that I'm against the AH, I think it's a great resource. I love to use it to sell junk I can't use or stuff I've crafted for a decent profit (it did cost me an arm and a leg leveling up those professions, I should be allowed to make some of it back). I just think that the rate at which people are selling raw mats is just shy of ridiculous and personally, I won't pay it. Now, obviously everyone's situation is different. I, with 5 alts I'm leveling, 1 at cap and 3k gold on the account, am in a different circumstance than a lot of people. I also don't mind grinding. It makes me feel self sufficient which is my goal overall.

ZOMG!!!! Sam Raimi is directing the Wow movie!!!!!

2009-07-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

I now have 2 expectations for the upcoming Wow movie: First it will be good. Second Bruce Campbell will be in it. I'm pretty excited about both of these, as I am a fan of Bruce Campbell (you would be too if you've ever seen Army of Darkness which by the way, is my favorite Sam Raimi film. . .yes, more so than any of the spidermen), and good movies.

*EDIT - Perusing IMDB, I found out I have a couple other beloved Sam Raimi movies - For the love of the game - yes, another Kevin Costner baseball movie, but its amazing. One of the greatest sports movies ever; and The Quick and the Dead - one of my favorite "modern" westerns. It's the perfect Leonardo DiCrappio (yes, it's DiCrappio on purpose) movies: He's in it, he's funny, he dies. It also has to be good, it has russell crowe in it.*

Things I wonder if they will include:

Tremendous over the top shoulder armor
"Lower level" characters being ganked for no apparent reason
Loot drama (Can you see it "No, seriously, I rolled need cuz they're an upgrade, come on, I'm the main character!"
Obnoxious zone chat "I hear voices mentioning Chuck Norris?"
Dual Spec "No seriously, I can tank or heal"
Duel Spamming "No, I'm not going to waste 15 mins to fight you for no reason, quit asking!"
Class imbalance "Yes, I'm OP, I'm kind of the protagonist"
L70ETC. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, I want to see them in the movie and on the soundtrack!

A big thank you to my readers. . .

2009-07-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

A heartfelt thanks to the many comments I got on my last blog post about my trials and tribulations in underbog. One thing I have always appreciated when blogging are the constructive comments from people who read my blog, it is one of the most rewarding parts about writing a blog in the first place.

I appreciate all of you who read my blog, especially those of you who leave comments.

On a side note, I have been contemplating starting a seperate blog specifically on MMA. I've been mulling it over and although I spend a lot more time during the week playing Wow, I've been involved in martial arts in some form or another since I was 16 or roughly the last 13 years (yes, I am turning the big 3-0 this year in december). My involvement lately has been watching more than actual participation (for a variety of reasons), and I think I would enjoy writing an MMA related blog.

I have and will continue actively playing wow, although my time today will be interrupted by some necessary sleep. I had to tell our GM today that I wouldn't be able to run Naxx tonight because I intend to pass out promptly after work (I took my friend to the airport this morning to catch a 6am flight, I had to leave the house around 3:45am). On the upside, I got all my dailies done around 6am and mined a TON of titanium. I was starting to wonder if I would ever see any again, I think between late last night and this morning I got about 30 ore, 3 eternal fires along with all the other random stuff you get from the nodes. Obviously I'm saving the ore and my Dalaran jewelcrafter's tokens for patch day and some easy disposable income.

I'm off tommorow and apart from some brief errands, I should be able to get some nice solid leveling in. Druid should have some nice rested XP, I'm not even done with terrokar, then it will be time to head to Nagrand around 67 (I know I could grind in northrend later, I don't really want to at the moment). My mage has a full level and a half of rested XP, as does my death knight (just kind of sitting at level 70). I also have the shammy I've been leveling, and now that I understand their play mechanics a little better, he's a decent amount of fun. All intriguing options and plenty to keep me occupied through the summer. . .

my healing is /fail. . .allegedly. . .

2009-07-20T09:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I have another treasure trove of experience in my path of learning the druid. This one comes in the form of a brutally failed Underbog run. I am leaving it open to consideration/contemplation whose "fault" it was.

Now, I have already run this multiple times on my paladin "old school" (i.e. when it was current content. I also tried to run it heroic as I heard it was the easiest TBC heroic but I wasn't geared for the task at the time). I have also run it as a tank in a group with my druid. Admittedly, I am not used to druid tanking, so although my main target aggro was great, my group aggro was, well, pretty lousy. I know I can spam swipe, and if I'm using berserk, it generates AMAZING aggro on up to 3 targets, and I have growl, I guess coming from a pally with consecration, I feel like its a lot harder to keep the mobs focused. I guess I could try swapping between them stacking lacerate? Anyways, we cleared the instance, so I must not have done too badly. Alas, I did not get the leather pants I was after (assless tanking chaps FTW!!! Thats a guild inside joke, don't ask), so I wanted to try again.

As is usually the case, I got asked to heal the run, fine by me. I went to Shattrath, got my gear, switched to resto, all good. I had trained lifebloom and this was my first chance to use it. Our group consisted of me (66 druid), a 68 DPS warrior, a 63 warlock, a 65 pally, and a 64 DK who was tanking (allegedly). Now, the warlock kept sacrificing himself down to 1/4 life for mana and wouldn't you know it, asked if anyone had water at the very beginning of the run. He ended up dying repeatedly, but I'll get to that. The "tank" although his aggro was good was just getting crushed by everything. My normal healing pattern is straight HoT, then the green one once they've taken a lil damage, then swiftmend to pop them to full if necessary. That normally works on trash. Big pulls, I can roll the lifebloom, and if they're bad, just let it bloom for big massive heals. DPS I normally don't heal because they shouldn't be taking damage. Can any experienced druid healers tell me if that sounds unreasonable? I have a macro for instant cast healing touch if necessary which I use as an "emergency button". Anyways, 3 wipes in with no bosses down, I quit the group. Tank couldn't stay up (which I believe was a function of his level/gear. 64 in underbog in almost entirely the initial DK gear, no upgrades at all).

So yes, I let DPS die, the warlock died frequently (I thought he should have come with water and been more careful sacrificing health, I have a 61 warlock and been every spec, its not like I don't understand them), and I couldn't keep the tank from wiping. I've never had a problem before healing with the druid and I can't blame gear as I'm all in outlands gear and with 351 SP in tree form. I'm all gemmed (in things that can get gems), and I've trained everything and followed the most prevalent spec (can't link cuz I'm at work).

I'm open to suggestions. I genuinely like healing, probably more than tanking in all honesty, I just want to learn it better. I guess over and under powered groups aren't the best ways to learn.

Cho'gall: a test of strength or PvP hell?

2009-07-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

I need more alts like the pope needs more weird looking hats. With that being said, my GM and his wife have taken somewhat of a hiatus from our server to roll up alliance alts on Cho'gall. Here is the kicker: Cho'gall is a PvP server where the horde outnumbers alliance roughly 7 to 1. I can't confirm those numbers as that's what I was told.

Personally, I don't really need any more experience of things on the Alliance side. I have 10 alts on Azuremyst, the highest being a 74 paladin. I also have 9 alts on the PvP server Dentarg, none of them being exceptionally high. (Reasons for this being a college friend convinced me to switch to alliance, which is actually my preferrence. . .I prefer leveling in forests and fields to barren wasteland, sue me. . .Anyways, she moved to a different server, then quit wow, so I went back to daggerspine. That was the first time I left and came back). Azuremyst was great, I prefer Alliance, I prefer PvE, but other than a few people, I didn't really get a group of people I had fun running things with. So, after fully experiencing what alliance had to offer, I came back to Daggerspine, leveled to 80, on my way to more 80's and here I am.

Why would I roll up a character on a PvP server when I hate PvP? Well, a few reasons. First, I'm rolling a death knight, so I'm not exactly investing a huge amount of time in the character. Second, I love the death knight starter quests, they're a ton of run and worth repeating. Third, I went back to Daggerspine because thats where my friends are, I have a couple who are rolling alliance, so I can at least run them through some instances and be useful. Lastly, worst case scenario, it sucks and I hate it. I put a few hours into doing enjoyable starting quests, I don't ever have to play there again.

I think death knights are the perfect "feeler" characters for a new server. Don't know what it will be like? Wonder about how players are? Want to see if barrens chat is full of ridiculous comments? Roll up a DK and see. Free epic ground mount, armor garaunteed to blow through outlands, able to solo old world instances (well, most of them) with ease.

No real update on my daggerspine characters, leveled shammy a little bit, picked up some champion's seals on pally. Been running around ret and it's pretty decent. Decided not to waste the champion's seals on the belt, I would lose a ton of crit for some expertise and I don't like that trade off. I will just try to get the next few champion's seals ASAP so I can get the uber cool looking greatsword of the sindorei, although the Ebon Blade greatsword is kind of growing on me.

Win if you can, lose if you must, but always always cheat. . .

2009-07-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

My dad has a lot of little nuggets of wisdom, that one is one of my favorites: "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always always cheat". I was tired of losing in the stupid joisting, and people telling me its easy, so I just found a way to cheat, many thanks to Darraxus for providing the method. I mounted up and had one of our guild tanks come with me. When the champion would go into attack mode, he would just taunt the champion off me. I pretty much shield broke and charged him to death with ease. Now I am an Argent Champion and have access to more dailies and a pretty slick looking two handed sword (and I've been debating buying the belt).

I still really don't like joisting and have yet to do the dailies which involve it. I made valiant purely by killing Icecrown scourge (as a side note, the Vrykul you have to kill and plant banners on for the Ebon Blade dailies count as scourge, so it's 2 for 1, and if you're a champion already and re-doing the valiant quests, it's 3 for 1). I may have to get on the jousting dailies (the killing the scourge ones, not grand melee) because I need 25 more marks for the gear I want(the 2h sword and plate DPS belt, my ret set belt is a quest green), then maybe another 60 if the BoA chest goes live.

I had another strange thing happen to me last night. Normally when I run an instance, if there is something I want, it will never drop. I ran hellfire ramparts easily a dozen times on my warrior, no hellreaver, it dropped for every single one of my other characters. I havent seen the Suneater, Skadi's belt, or the Red Sword, despite multiple runs through those instances. Last night, almost made up for that. We had a guild run through Heroic Violet Hold. Our druid was tanking (I believe he's the only 80 druid in the guild, a situation I'm trying to remedy), he asked me if I wanted to, but I am uncomfortable with the boss that needs to be kited around the room, so I DPS'd. Long story short, we ended up plowing through it (did wipe on the boss who needed the kiting, go figure), and besides the first boss, I got every single drop (mostly because I was the only one in the group who could use them). I got the tanking pants, some plate gloves, and a DPS necklace, all upgrades. The pants especially are a big boost because they have more defense and more stamina than the standard issue legplates I was wearing (blue vs purple, go figure lol). The 20 extra points of defense will let me re-gem for more stam. While I don't really want to raid tank, I am starting to have a pretty decent tanking set for heroics.

My druid is coming along quite well, minus a complete douchebag move from a pug group on tuesday night. I was in LFG for underbog. My druid is level 65, I wanted the pants that drop off the last boss. I got a whisper asking if I could tank. I said sure, group ended up being a druid healer, me and 3 ret pallies. I got to the instance, switched to bear form, went about trying to mark and realized I wasn't lead. Asked the druid, who was lead to make me leader so I could mark. He refused to make me lead so I switched into cat form and let the 3 ret pallies fight each other for aggro. He promptly booted me from the group mid instance, I re-iterate, what a douchebag. Well, I am mid level 65, and if I don't ever get the pants, it's no big deal, there are a few others that are passable, I'm considering the heavy clefthoof.

My personal philosophy on leveling gear is that socketable Outlands gear will normally last till at least mid 70's. I believe the reason for this is that Outlands gear was designed with Outlands gems in mind, which generally give relatively small benefit. When you take something like the cheat that drops in Blood Furnace, and socket it with 3 blue-quality Northrend gems, you get a considerable benefit (I am using two of the opals with AGI and Stam, and I believe a perfect jagged dark jade, so 16 agi, 7 crit rating, 35 stam, thats on top of what the chest has). It is further magnified in the higher level items: Necklace of the deep, for very modest mats, when socketed with the above listed opals ends up around +30 agi, +40 stam. That is considerable and should last close to 10 levels or more depending on instance drops. Hence, my gearing strategy is normally to find the socketable outlands gear, and get as much of it as possible.

Hope everyone has a lot of goodness, and in honor of one of my favorite infrequently updated blogs, I'm WTFOUT!

Murphy's law, absent mindedness, and shopping. . .

2009-07-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a pretty even mix of good and bad for me. I played in a charity tournament for hockey on saturday. I ended up actually playing goalie for two teams because one team's goalie didn't show. Having not played goalie in six months, it was pretty rough. Also, in a stunning display of Murphy's Law (Anything that can happen, will, usually at the worst possible time), I took a puck right off the top of my knee. Normally, I would have thigh boards on my goalie pads, but these pads hadn't been used since I had them modded, and I thought "I never get hit there anyways". Yeah, I was wrong. There's still some bruising, the swelling is down, I skipped my game skating out on sunday just to be safe, but it doesnt feel like anything is structurally damaged. From playing so many games, I ended up getting pretty dehydrated, drank about 64 oz of gatorade and felt generally crappy for the remainder of saturday. However, sitting around resting means time with Wow!

I got a LOT done this weekend from a Wow perspective. From the alt standpoint, I hit level 61 with my mage, the gloves and robe dropped in Blood furnace (which I was pugging), I lost the roll on the robe (which was the one I really wanted, oh well). We had a level 70 druid tank who was pretty lowsy with aggro management. I might be way off base here, but I would think Enrage, Berserk, then spam mangle would generate plenty of aggro and you should be able to keep any number of mobs. I'm not exactly a druid tanking expert, thats just my impression. I died a bunch of times from random mobs peeling off. Oh well, I got XP and some loot.

My druid didn't do any instancing this weekend, I quested a bunch, moved into Zangarmarsh and have almost cleared it. I'm into 64, ready to head to terrokar, but I want to do everything in Zangarmarsh I can (I want to work Cenarion rep for the LW patterns. I love socketable gear for leveling, since I have a high level JC, it ends up better than the intro WotLK gear normally). I will probably try to Pug a couple of the instances there for some gear and XP.

My paladin had both good and bad this weekend. Remember how I said I hate jousting? I still do. I can't beat the Champion to become a champion with Argent Tournament. With the rewards soon to be released for that (BoA chest!!), I really would like to get that knocked out, but I really dislike the jousting and just can't seem to get the hang of it. I did read a guide somewhere that said if you have a buddy DPS the Champion while you break shields, you can burn him down quick. I will hopefully try that method, yes I know it's technically cheating, oh well, he won't get off his stupid horse and fight me man to elf anways.

On the good side, I finally got 40 emblems and was presented with a real tough decision. I've ALWAYS loved the BoA gear. I have a Druid I want to get to 80, and a shammy that I've started leveling. I love Hybrid classes, and I envision my shammy being a dual wielding orcish maelstrom of destruction. I've always been impressed with shammies I've seen at upper levels. I want one. However, on going to turn in my badges, I saw myself staring squarely at the Belt of Living Iron (not sure if thats the exact name, can't access wowhead at work). Extra stam, has a socket, plenty of defense (I also hit revered with Argent Crusade, so I can get the head enchat with them to give me a little more latitude while staying at the magic 540). I ended up buying the shoulders, but it was a REALLY tough decision. I figured, I KNOW I will get a ton of use from the shoulders, I had nowhere near enough stones to get the PvP ones (I have 104, you need like 200 I think), and I can always run more heroics (either prot or ret) to get more emblems. Since I hit revered with Argent Crusade, they don't have anything else I want, so I will probably switch my tabard to Ebon Blade or Wyrmrest Accord. EB gives my some nice ret boots, WA gives me access to a breastplate which is a small upgrade (I'm still wearing the quest one from UP). Another wrinkle is that when motivated, I get 750 rep a day with EB just through dailies, so I'll get the boots eventually anyways. Decisions, decisions.

By the way, good to see most of the fights turn out as I expected (read Bonnar lost, oh well). Brock went all "BROCK SMASH!!!" on Mir, I just wasn't confident he'd be able to assert himself that dominantly on Mir. Oh well. Now I get to wait around for the next Demian Maia fight. My dream match, Demian Maia vs Karo "the Heat" Parisyan. I have always rooted for Parisyan. I started in Judo when I was 17, it really changed my life, so I always root for any Judo players. However, I have come to respect the technical aspects of pure brazillian jujitsu (not from people like Matt Serra who although they have a black belt, never use it in their fights). Demian Maia is the best jujitsu technician I have ever seen in mixed martial arts. OK, enough gushing about a fight that will probably never happen. . .

UFC 100 preview and predictions

2009-07-09T07:10:00.000-07:00

I am a pretty big UFC fan, and this one looks like the best in a long time. UFC 98 was the last one that I watched and although Evans/Machida was a strong match, the rest of the card was lackluster. There are three big matches on the card I am looking forward to and one of the undercard matches.

On the undercard, they may not show it, but I would love to see Mark Coleman vs Stephan Bonnar. Coleman is a UFC vet with strong wrestling from here in Ohio. Bonnar is a TUF veteran who has had memorable battles with Forest Griffin. Bonnar has strong striking but also decent jujitsu, but when he fights, he usually goes toe to toe standing up. I'd expect Bonnar to beat down the older Coleman, but this is a fight I'd love to see, both for the contrasting styles and the fact that neither of these fighters show much love of defense.

Next we have the battle of last season's TUF coaches Dan Henderson and Michael Bisping. Bisping's flying knee on one of the fights in TUF was just sick. He has excellent kickboxing with decent takedown defense. Henderson is an Olympic caliber wrestler with good boxing, powerful hands, and a strong chin. I expect Henderson to win because the only times Bisping has been pressed, it has been by strong wrestlers (decision loss to Rashad Evans and decision win against Matt Hamill which in my opinion should have been a loss).

Next we have a welterweight championship match between GSP - George St. Pierre and Thiago Alves. GSP is probably, along with Anderson Silva, one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world. Admittedly I used to not care for him, but it is hard not to respect his skills. He is quick, with great striking, strong wrestling and good defense. Thiago Alves is HUGE for a welterweight and has a strong Muay Thai background. I just don't see his power being able to defeat a more polished well rounded fighter. I expect to see him taken down and see GSP use the ground and pound to win.

Last, the match everyone has been waiting for: a rematch between Frank Mir and Brock Lesnar to determine the true heavyweight champion in UFC. Mir literally beat down Antonio Nogueira to win his version of the title, Lesnar beat ex-champ Randy Couture to win his. In the last fight, Lesnar was dominating until Mir caught his leg and locked in a leg lock for the submission victory. I honestly don't know how to lean on this fight. The Mir I saw vs Nogueira can beat anyone. His standup was dominant and he has the best jujitsu of any heavyweight (not quite the level of BJ Penn or Demian Maia, but near that level). Lesnar on the other hand is a total freak of nature. Anyone who dismisses him as a pro wrestler would be forgetting about his NCAA championship in wrestling. Lesnar has amazing power and he can take down anyone in the UFC. His weaknesses are standup striking (his boxing isn't very good) and submissions (as we saw in the fight with Mir). I am taking an easy out on this one: I can't predict a winner. Lesnar could get tapped out, but he also has the power to exert his will on Mir.

I am really looking forward to this PPV, it looks like the best all around card I have seen out of UFC definately this year if not ever.

Server. . . .DOWN!!!!

2009-07-08T05:40:00.000-07:00

The server I play on is down currently, for maintenance and "hardware upgrades". Well, poop. Call me crazy, I was looking forward to playing a lil wow in the morning hours before the kiddies wake up, get bored and decide to go ganking. My mage and druid are sitting on some hardcore rested XP that I am itching to burn off.

Our raid last night went ok, we got three bosses into construct quarter. No wipes on patchwerk, 1 wipe on the next boss, a buncha wipes on the doggy. I got some plate DPS pants which are pretty cool. I also broke the 1500 DPS that was my goal. I got to 1700 through patchwerk, which was still lowest besides tanks and healers, oh well, I'm not really a Ret pally at heart.

Raiding has tought me a good amount about myself as a player. First of all, I don't really care for "difficult" content. I want it to be easy, tank and spank, see it, blow through it, maybe farm some gear. I don't really care if every encounter is mechanically the same as long as they look different and have different story elements. I don't have patience for wiping. 2-3, ok. More than that, I start thinking "I have alts calling my name". There is way too much to learn, remember, and do, for me to want to tank these fights. Heroics, yes, I'd like to tank those. Raids, no way in hell. I have serious doubts I will ever get a "good" tanking sword to drop in an instance. I don't really want them cuz they make me a better tank, I want them cuz they're awesome looking. Even though I don't enjoy the raids, I feel compelled to go and make the attempt. Its weird hearing people on vent that you've never heard before. I don't have a mic, don't need one, prolly won't get one. No one needs to hear "Fuck! I died again!"

In spite of all that, I am still looking to bring my druid to the party. I'll probably be healing, and I'm ok with that. It will let people with better DPS function. Then I can run around like a happy stalk of broccoli dropping HoTs on everyone. LOL, that thought is just funny to me.

When the familiar is unfamiliar. . .

2009-07-07T05:12:00.000-07:00

I am faced with an interesting position. How many of us get comfortable and chosen with a role and then switch, then after a prolonged absense, return to our original role?

I am faced with this situation not in Wow but in real life. Probably anyone who reads the blog knows I play hockey fairly regularly. At one point I was playing for four different teams. That was entirely too much for my schedule so I cut back and have been playing in only my sunday league. The issue that has left me with is that my chosen position, the one that I have the most experience at and am best at is goalie. However, in my sunday league, I skate out, playing mostly defense, but sometimes center. I enjoy it, and I'm ok at it, but its not goalie. This weekend, our rink is having a tournament for charity and I've been recruited to play goalie on one of the tournament teams. Although I've played goalie for years, I haven't played the position in 6 months, and I got new pads that I havent really gotten adjusted to. I'm nervous at how I will perform under pressure with a group of people I have probably played with individually (everyone knows everyone else in our league), but never together.

On a completely seperate note, our guild is going to continue our tuesday tradition of fail. . .er Naxx-10 attempts. Actually, we run the spider wing pretty easily, its the other ones that give us problems. I think our GM wants to try construct wing. I don't think it will go well, but apart from leveling alts, I have not much else going on.

Speaking of alts, I have noticed a trend in my playing. I love leveling through vanilla. Even though I've done it a million times (I think I have 20-25 characters at level 30+ yes, alt creation is a problem of mine), but I still enjoy it (minus the ganking). I will soon be starting work on my shammy, then I've told myself I'm done. Sorry rabbi (because that's what you call a jewish priest), you're not going past level 26. . .

If the healer dies, its the tank's fault. . .

2009-07-06T05:42:00.000-07:00

I would say for about 80% of the instance runs I've done where it hasn't been an OP group running me through content, I've been tanking. I consider myself mediocre in the tanking department, but I'm improving. I look into different spec options, read blogs, think about threat generation, try to sync up with my healer to make sure we are on the same page pacing wise. I look at these things as "basic" tanking skills. I guess basically tanking comes down to being able to keep mobs beating on you and being able to take the beating they dish out. Everything else is just a tool to accomplish this. This weekend, I got a chance to see things from the OTHER side of the equation: as a healer.

I've been leveling up a druid, and I have to say I love them. I am using a slightly different feral build for leveling than I will use at 80, mostly because I have points in King of the Jungle to get a burst of energy to finish off mobs. I spent most of my time leveling in cat form, and re-specs are pretty cheap, so I can juggle the points back at 70+. I have yet to do any tanking on him, mostly because since I've hit Outlands, there are a ton of deathknights running around, although I think that may be part of the problem.

The story starts out like this: someone in general chat was looking for a healer for ramps. I've healed it already, got the achievement, we blew through it, I think it took like 40 mins. Obviously as this is my 6th character through outlands (7th if you count my alliance pally), its not like I need a ramps tutorial. However, it is easy to forget a few things. First, without outlands caliber gear, this instance can be a challenge. Second, just because its old hat to me doesn't mean thats true for everyone. Third, having a high enough level character to roll a death knight in no way means you're qualified to tank (sad but true as we will see).

Well, the first group, DK tank is marking like 3 levels into DPS, marking for sheep and sap like it's a heroic. Now everyone in the group was 60+ we really shouldn't have had a problem. However, with all the marking, the tank was taking forever, and when it came to actually holding aggro, he wasn't quite up to snuff. Warlock's felguard ended up as "tank", everyone started taking damage and long story short, group wiped.

Well, the other people elected to boot the slow, ineffective tank to try to find a new one. So we replaced the DK with another DK (and after the lock left, he was replaced with. . .ANOTHER DK!). Well, the first one who attempted to tank lost aggro, someone died, but it wasn't a group wipe, so they decided the 2nd DK should tank. we made it through 2 groups of mobs, then the 2nd DK over-pulled and wiped the group. WTF!?!?!?

I understand tanking is one of the tougher skill sets in the game, really I do. I hate to assume that people with death knights have no skill and were able to make one purely by being power-leveled through content, however things like this make it hard. Yes, I also have a death knight myself (currently level 70, just kind of sitting in northrend doing nothing), I've actually rolled a ton of them (because the starter quests are super fun), but I will confess, I've never tried to tank on one. It can't be that hard, can it? Frost presence, death and decay, drop some diseases, pestilence them around to the surrounding mobs. You're basically wearing outlands plate to start with and have all your rings and trinkets. It can't be that hard, can it?

I even thought about my own healing, but I've come to realize a few things. Druid healing, although easy and very useful, is not far and beyond other healing. Too many mobs beating on the tank will kill them, no matter what. Clothies pulling aggro will probably die, no matter what. Once the tank and the offending clothies have died, the mobs are going after the broccoli (thats what my tree reminds me of, a walking stalk of broccoli). I've pretty much got the healing to 2 hots, swiftmend if necessary (I do have the glyph), then if the tank takes big hits, I have a macro for nature's swiftness then healing touch. I've gemmed for spirit (which I've read is the best "bang for the buck" for resto druids), then spellpower. If/when I get yellow sockets, I have gems for SP and haste. Although I don't have a full set of healing gear, I think it's fairly respectable at the moment. A few points here and there shouldn't make a huge difference, at least I'd think.

Well, anyways, that was my /fail for the weekend. Although I had a lot of success, those two runs stood out. Over an hour wasted and we didn't even make it to the first boss.

I <3 Dr00ds

2009-07-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

I think the title says it best, I seriously love druids. I can't really speak for Balance (I have a mage, I have another druid that I don't use that I speccd balance, just didn't feel right). With that having been said, both Feral and Resto are AWESOME and so much fun!

I've mostly leveled feral which is Cat for the most part and Bear if there's more than 2 mobs. Cat form does impressive damage, even against higher level mobs. Combined with stealth, I have been able to make the transition to outlands pretty smoothly. I am pretty excited to try multiple mobs in bear form with berserk (mangle 3 targets, YES PLEASE!). If the feral tree was the extent of my powers, I would be a happy man (I mean who wouldn't want a Roguedin?), however, I bought dual spec and so I've had a chance to play with the Resto tree too.

Let me tell you, healing resto, SO EASY!!! I am used to paladin healing (well, semi used to it, that was the extent of my healing activities before this exercise), which isn't much fun and you're normally waiting for things to cast, hoping your target doesnt die in the mean time. Druid healing is so much better an fun. Put a couple HoTs on the tank, swiftmend if necessary and if that doesn't work, nature's swiftness then healing touch. Once I get itemized (I still only have 1/2 set of healing gear), it will be awesomeness. I wasn't sure how I'd like healing, and I really really do.

I <3 my druid so much I'm doing something completely outside the norm for me: questing w/o rested XP. Yes, I normally like to quest just on rested, maked the leveling faster, but I like my druid so much, I barely even notice. One of these days I will get the BoA shoulders and really have some fun, but that requires a couple more heroic runs/raids so who knows when that will happen.

upcoming vacation and random thoughts. . .

2009-06-30T06:37:00.001-07:00

Vacation from work means more wow, which for me is a good thing. I've been recently consumed with leveling my mage and druid, mage is safe and sound (relatively) in outlands, druid is level 54 and should get there within the next couple of days. My only remaining character that I have any desire to level is my Shammy, who is currently level 20. Not counting the Shammy, that will bring my tally of horde characters at outlands or beyond to 6 (paladin, warrior, warlock, deathknight, mage, druid). I am reasonably sure the druid will consume my time while he's rested, although dailies and heroics on paladin will still more than likely be at least a part of my time.

I'm seriously considering dropping mining on my paladin for blacksmithing. The horrible pain that is leveling blacksmithing is keeping me from doing it. Also, the only other miner I have is my level 70 deathknight. And although death knights are easy to level, the appeal just isn't there. I also don't think 2 sockets and some BS only ret gear is currently worth it. Also, it would make my warrior obsolete (not that I play him much anyways).

I've dropped tailoring completely (for now). Probably until mage is mid-upper 60's, I'll pick it back up, but until that time, having him an herbalist seems more prudent. I did it so I could have an enchanter again, and with my lock at 60, he can max out, and I have TONS of mats sitting around (both my warlock and paladin were at times enchanters). And a ton of worthless northrend gear waiting to be disenchanted (who really buys items of the boar or of the gorilla or wolf?)

I am making my spiked titansteel helm tonight, putting the ebon blade head enchant on it, slapping an attackpower meta gem in it, and breaking some faces (or spider parts, as it were). I was looking at the boots from exalted ebon blade thinking "why is there a blue gem slot in these?" Green gems and purple gems seem to all have stam or Mp5 as their secondary stat. Stam is great. . .when I'm tanking. I really think I have enough on my ret set as is. Orange gems, well I'm probably going to be using etched (STR and Hit), I only have huge citrine, hopefully I get a few perfects. That should be enough to hit cap me, or nearly hit cap me.

Lastly, I am going to desecrate all the fires I can on my pally. If my numbers are right, its an easy 300 gold or thereabouts. Not too bad for some random flying around.

Random thoughts:
Inscription is really mat intensive and never knowing which minor inscriptions I'm going to get really sucks!

I hate jousting in the argent tournament. So much so, I've gotten valiant marks ONLY by killing icrecrown scourge.

I never get tired of the Ebon Blade daily where you shoot down the dragons. Best quest ever.

I really have no use for achievements, at least they don't incovenience me in any way.

I hate pvp. Even with the new video card, I despise it.

I hate most gnomes. . .unless they blog. It seems like I get constantly ganked by gnome mages and death knights.

I don't see the point of allowing people to transfer factions. My human pally is never coming over to my horde server. Leveling a horde pally 70-80, why would I want to do it again? Plus, I still prefer the look of human pallies (now if they let me make leshif human, but keep him horde. . .best not think about that).

Why is there blue tanking gear, and blue healing gear, but no blue DPS gear made by blacksmithing at upper levels?

Lesson learned. . .

2009-06-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about my role in our guild, and the game in general. At times I have been a little moody, maybe a little whiny, sometimes even slightly negative. Yesterday night, was the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. Reports of the demise of Leshif, paladin tank, may have been slightly premature.

I learned a few valuable lessons, but before I get to that, the achievement. I tanked Heroic Nexus. The full run, all bosses! Of course, the tanking helm and cape dropped, neither were upgrades for me. I had the exact same gear as our failed H UK run, and same healer (I did change my spec from a 10/51/10 to 0/54/17, more threat oriented). Speaking of heals, big shout outs to Eus, my paladin partner in crime for keeping me up the whole run. Anyways, the difference between the two runs was our DPS. Our UK run was a rogue (who was good), a ret paladin (I think our GM in his off-spec), and a hunter (who managed 700 DPS on the run). On our Nexus run we had a warlock (raid level), Shaman (also raid level), and a ret paladin (yes, also raid level, see the trend?). I only had to use my emergency button ONCE, on the final boss, and I'm not even convinced it was necessary as Eusy was doing a great job keeping me up. I did have a few issues holding aggro, but I held it pretty well and was able to taunt the mobs back to me without any group wipes.

I learned two valuable lessons as a result of this. Heroics are a group activity. It is not just the healer, tank, and any 3 DPS you can throw together. With an amazingly overgeared group, maybe you can carry 3 sub-standard DPS. I hate referring to other players that way, but it is what it is. That leads me to my next lesson. DPS is not "easy" and you don't just ding 80 and have the ability to move directly into heroics. It took me almost a month after dinging 80 to be "ready" to tank heroics. Maybe there is a little more gear out there for DPS, but there are more DPS characters too. DPS, like any other role, requires effort, research, and a lot of trial and error to get things right.

I meant what I said about focusing on ret. I need a LOT more work before I'm ready to off-tank a raid, but I will do whatever our guild needs. I also need a lot of work on my ret set making it more suited to raiding ret. I'm not hit capped yet, I will be fixing that with some gems. I need a lil less stamina and more strength (yay attack power). It's a work in progress, but I'm actually looking forward to tuesday night. Not because I'll get some emblems or gear (which I prolly will and might respectively. . .I want the sword from naxx-10. . .badly), but because I've set a goal, 1500 DPS, not unreachable as I was between 1000 and 1200 before. Between now and then, I'm making myself a trinket (the emerald boar, yay c/d and attack power), the spiked titansteel helm (besides looking awesome, it should last for a while and shows I'm serious about my ret set), and getting some leg armor and enchants. Before any of this, I'm around 1800 AP, I am looking to get hit capped and raise that number to around 2200-2300.

Self-improvement is a really tricky subject. First of all, its hard to be realistic with yourself, most people will either be too harsh, or overstate their abilities (I've been guilty of both). Secondly, improvement, by definition, requires that you admit that you are weak in some area. Be as frank with yourself as you can, put the work in, and you'll be better for it in the long run, not just in gaming, but at everything in life.

Once upon a time: the end is the beginning?

2009-06-28T06:05:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a guy named Fish. His coworkers played this game called "world of warcraft" and were encouraging him to play too. He bought the game, installed it on his system, but was undecided as to what to play. His friend Ruhtra stepped in and said "retribution paladins are awesome, you should play one", so he did. He named his paladin Leshif and set off to conquer Azeroth. Fish eventually became dissatisfied with Leshif and sent him off to the corner while he played with new characters of different classes, specs, and even affiliations (while Fish would make many alts, and re-uses many of the same names on Horde and Alliance servers, Leshif, as the first is special to him and will never be re-used).

After much experience in the game, Fish decided to change Leshif to a Holy paladin, a change Leshif did not entirely embrace. This was clearly not a path to power. One day, whilest browsing the internet, Fish stumbled on a concept called AoE grinding where one character could take on swarms of enemies at a time. This seemed like a grand idea so Leshif was called to action yet again, his talents changed for the third time.

Leshif finally felt powerful! Not against other players, who were strangely immune and unphased by his new powers, but that weakness only fueled his desire to kill more and more mobs. This seemed to be what he was meant for, fighting 3-8 mobs at a time, leaving trails of corpses in his wake, his health and mana barely taxed at all. Before he knew it, Leshif had reached the level cap, and killing mobs no longer served to increase his power.

Fish was at a loss. He didn't know what to do. He tried using Leshif as a tank in instances. Leshif did not care for this activity at all. Mobs in heroic instances hit much harder than outside (good thing they're stuck there, otherwise players might have some real problems on their hands!) and 5 of them at a time made quick work of the poor paladin. Fish's friend Ruhtra proposed a solution yet again. "Try retribution" he said.

So Fish re-trained Leshif back to his old path to find a new source of power and found it not the retribution he remembered at all. It also was nothing like protection, his trained reactions were useless, it required much more thought and consideration and all the time spent on acquiring sturdy tanking gear was for nought.

Fish was tempted to send Leshif back to the corner, retired except for his skills as a jewelcrafter. A provider for his other characters. However, in consideration, this was not a worthy end for Leshif, his first character, on whom he had spent hundreds of hours. Leshif deserved a second chance to prove that he could become powerful and bring Fish a joy like he had when he had first embraced the art of protection. That day, Fish dedicated Leshif fully to the discipline of Retribution, his Protection duties and abilities would be put on hold until Leshif was able to fulfill his new role: Bringer of Pain. Not just regular amounts of non-elite mob pain. Serious, prolonged, extended, crit fueled, chest pumping, Boss slaying PAIN.

As is often the case, the end turned out to be the beginning.

My first raid. . .

2009-06-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

I guess technically Onyxia was my first raid, but 6 man-ing vanilla 40 man content doesn't count. Our guild ran the Spider wing of Naxx-10 on tuesday, which we actually completed and it was a full guild run. It was an eye opening experience for a lot of reasons.

Loot drama - We'll get this one out of the way right off the bat. I am not a retribution paladin. I have not leveled retribution since I believe the mid 40's which was over a year ago. My knowledge of retribution is crusader strike, divine storm, and fill in the time in between with whatever. However, that being said, I bought dual spec and went retribution because I figured if I wasn't tanking, I would be able to do something and it was a way to get gear. However, I have very minimal interest in ret gear. I want tank gear. Well, I figured as I leveled prot, run most instances prot, am defense capped prot, prot is my "main" spec. So when I rolled on the prot ring, one of the tanks complained. If I can't get gear, there are easier faster ways to get emblems.

Vent - Never previously used it, wasn't even really sure what it was except a way for people to talk to each other. It was odd hearing peoples' voices that I hadn't heard before. And I guess talking is easier than typing, but apart from raiding, I have no use for it, but I'll leave it installed.

General Impressions - I don't like melee DPS. I LOOOOVE playing my mage, and I love everything about my Dr00d (post about the awesomeness of mangle forthcoming), but I had always seen my paladin as an AoE grinding machine. And maybe thats the problem. I don't feel responsive having to run over to mobs rather than just shift targets. Weapon swings feel slow. I died a few times (not my healers fault, I ascribe to the "If DPS dies, it's their own damn fault" rule). I didn't have a bad time per se, it just wasnt as fun as a lot of other in game activities. I guess I was expecting it to be more grand, not just a harder version of an instance that took more people.

Outlook - I'm severely doubting my paladin is a character to raid with. I am going to give it a few more tries before abandoning it completely, but thats where I'm at now. I honestly don't see the appeal. I think it would be more fun for me on my mage or druid, and I think gearing would be easier on mage or druid. I also think elemental shammy might be fun. I guess I have come to the conclusion I am not a tank, I am an AoE grinder that's level capped in better gear. That still leaves DPS and/or healing and who knows, I might really take to Druid tanking.

the AAAA player. . .

2009-06-23T05:46:00.000-07:00

For those of you not familiar with the way baseball works, before a player is deemed "ready" for the majors, they go through a progression of minor leagues. These are graded in quality from A being the lowest level to AAA, the highest level of the minors. However, there are sometimes players who, while being successful in AAA, are not successful at the major league level. These players are often referred to as AAAA (quadruple A) players. I am starting to get the impression I am a quadruple A player in Wow.

I have no problems leveling, farming, running instances at lower levels, all the way up to heroic. Not just as a paladin, deathknight, mage, druid, I've run with them all, and in level appropriate groups, no problems. Once things go heroic, I wilt like a featherweight in the ring with 80's Tyson.

I think part of it may be my mindset. I don't want to kite. I want an instance version of AoE grinding. The boss should be beating on me, the healer healing me, with me generating aggro and DPS burning him down. That might get boring to some others, I like it just fine.

My guild is running Naxx 10 tonight. I am going to participate in the fail. . .er. . .attempt. I say fail because we tried a different 10 man (one of the "easy" ones) and were just crushed. We have some players in the guild who are really good and know their class. We just don't have 10 of them who can run at once and fill every role that needs filled.

This leads me to a curious question. What do I do? My current combination of skills and gear will not carry me. If I can barely get through the first boss of H UK (with 2 wipes on "trash") heroic tanking is not presently a job I can handle. A naxx 10 drop might help, the AC head enchant will help, but these are small improvements. Do I focus on the Druid, get through outlands as fast as I can, and start the process over again? Wow itself is still fun for me. The "progression" game is not.

My weekend. . .

2009-06-22T05:55:00.001-07:00

First of all, Happy Father's Day to any and all that it applies to (One of my kitties coughed up a hairball for me, not the Father's Day gift I was expecting, but as I have no human children, I guess thats what I get). I had dinner with my Dad, stepmom and little brother last night, it was a fun time, but I ate way too much and consequently didn't feel that well last night.

Had a hockey game sunday where we absolutely destroyed the other team. It felt particularly good since them not being able to play last week is what screwed us into a double header back to back (the guy who runs the league plays goalie for them). I moved up from defense and played center the 3rd period and most of our better players said I really seemed to click there. When playing defense, I'm a little more tentative because if a guy gets by me, he's alone with the goalie. When I play on offense, I can chase down their defensemen, harass them in the corners and really make them work to bring it up. If they get by me, oh well, there are at least 2 defensemen behind me. I pretty much single-handedly tied up 2 of the other team's better players behind the net a few minutes apiece.

In wow, my weekend was productive and yet not. I did run a few things on my mage. Ran blackrock depths a few times (got shoulders and staff) and sunken temple which was horribly frustrating. I had pretty much all the quests for ST and the group that I was in COMPLETELY BIPASSED THE AREA WITH THE QUESTS!!! Yeah, I got the pants off the prophet and the quest for his head, but I would have been better off grinding on furbolgs. Still, I am right up on level 55, so outlands is just a hop, skip and a jump away. My druid hit level 50, so I picked up mangle and due to a slight miscalculation with the talent tree, I won't get tree form till 51 (yay feral/resto dual spec). I love my druid, I havent gotten a chance to use mangle yet (I pretty much dinged, then had other things to do), but that should be fun. I tried to re-spec w/o thick hide, but I couldn't really make the numbers work, and since I intend this guy to be mostly a bear tank/tree at 80 anyways, figured I may as well keep it.

I say not productive because my paladin did almost nothing over the weekend. I went to bed super early on friday (I guess I was worn out) so I missed my dailies. I didn't do any instances either as DPS or tanking. I basically did my dailies and leveled alts. Not a bad weekend, just not very productive. I am wondering what to do with my jewelcrafting tokens. I have already bought the tanking ring, tanking neck, stam dragon eye, green tanking gem (stam & +def), and a gem for my druid (AGI and stam). There are a few diff caster gems, but my mage won't really benefit from them for some time (I refuse to use blue gems on a non 80, waste of $$), so I'm a little stuck.

Not a very action packed weekend (not necessarily a bad thing), hope everyone else had a nice one as well!

on 5 man teams

2009-06-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

I was talking to our GM last night about a post he wrote here. I suggest you read it because it's highly informative and echoes a sentiment a lot of people have had recently. There are just too many people being carried through content, getting cheap easy gear, and then using that gear as a crutch to carry them further. It is almost a self perpetuating cycle.

It got me to thinking about hockey again. I think Wow and hockey have a lot in common. They are both team based activities (I'm talking 5 mans here, I guess the analogy holds true to raiding, its just a bigger team), where the team functioning together as a whole is more important than the individual parts and weaknesses in key positions cause defeat to the team. If an instance run can't do enough damage before the tank dies, that group loses. If a team doesn't score enough to support their goalie, they lose. In hockey, I know what level I can play up to. When I play at this level, the games are challenging, but I make the saves more often than not and my team still has a good chance to win. When I skate out, I play in a lower division because frankly, I'm just not as good skating out as I am in goal, I don't shoot very well, so I am weak in a key area that can be exposed at higher difficulty levels. Imagine if one day, for participating in a game, I was rewarded with an amazing stick that was better than most everyone else's on my team and allowed me to shoot on par with the better players in the division.

Suddenly I can shoot (even though it's the stick, and not me learning proper technique), and since I got this awesome stick, maybe I'll play up a division and try for some skates that make me skate faster. Now, I've just gotten the ability to skate and shoot purely from new gear, why would I bother practicing technique? I can play well above the level I would normally be able to play at with these items alone.

Obviously, that example is preposterous. I play at the level that my skills allow me to. Occasionally I will play in a level I consider "easy" either because I enjoy hockey or a team needs a fill in. I practice to get better, but even with the best gear out there, I would never be able to keep up with a pro player in crappy 2nd hand gear. In Wow, this is not the case. Put me in Ulduar purples and an elite tank in white gear, and I will completely outclass them. Why does Wow encourage gear hoarding over skill developement?

Part of me says "don't worry about it, it doesn't really affect you. People who want to play that way pay their $15 the same as you do." I guess they're not really hurting me, but it bugs me. I felt the anguish in TBC when I hit the level cap and realized it was like being level 1 again. I ground reputation to get keyed for the heroics and even with a well geared group, upper level instances were HARD, there were wipes and CC was mandatory. I feel like I've developed skill an experience and people who get carried through a couple naxx runs for some gear and then think their l33t because of it just feels wrong. I guess I want to respect people who are more "progressed" than me, but more often than not, I just can't.

On a more positive note, I am doing some skills work myself this weekend. I'm going to be tanking some guild runs through the easier heroics, not so much for gear (for me at least, the only instance that has much of anything for me is heroic Utgarde Pinnacle), more to get experience running heroics with our team. I'm looking forward to it. Even if we wipe and things don't go that smoothly, I know why I play. I enjoy spending time with my guildies and contributing to the group.

The level cap: Beginning of the game or Retirement?

2009-06-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

This is my first extended experience with the Wow "endgame". Although I was level 70 before WotLK hit, it was only by a few months, and I didn't even really have enough time to get geared to tank heroics. This time is different as I'm at the defense cap and have reasonable beginning levels of HP and Armor, tanking heroics is actually an option. What I have been considering is whether or not its an option worth pursuing?

My normal routine goes something like this: Go to JC trainer, get JC daily; Fly to Argent Tournament, mine anything along the way, get lumberjack and kill scourge dailies; Fly to Shadow Hold, get 3 Ebon Blade dailies (the one where you shoot down the dragons is about my fav daily EVER!!); complete dailies; turn in; log into an alt. I do 6 dailies which take about a half hour and go level my alts. I just dont have any desire to run heroics, I've been trying to consider why.

A guildie last night was looking for a tank to run heroic Violet Hold (which I despise, but I'll get into that in a minute). I decided "hey, there are pants for me potentially in there, I can at least get some badges and help out a guildie." I'd run it before on reg, just seemed like a lot of running around between portals a la black morass, no biggie. But two things remove my desire to ever run it again: A) if you die, you have to re-do everything up to that point, and B) there is a boss in there that requires pulling around the room. I don't want to run anyone around the room. Turn him away from the group, fine. Dodge out of the way of the knockout blow that deadly boss tells me is coming, fine. Hit space bar repeatedly while tanking, annoying but acceptable. Run him around the room? Nuh uh. I've heard there's a raid boss that requires a wow equivalent of the thriller dance, I don't want to do that either. Since I'm unwilling to jump through blizz's hoops, should I be doing endgame content in the first place?

I was super motivated to get to 80, I thought it would open all these doors for me. Really I'm finding it is more like retirement. Sure my pally comes out to do some consulting, does some jewelcrafting for himself and others, but really he flies around, collects his social security and sits around, mostly unused. Its kind of sad, me original character is in retirement and doesn't even know it.

Best PUG ever and other weekend errata. . .

2009-06-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I had some vacation from work last week and after getting over my rather serious virus issue, I could think of nothing better to do than spend the majority of the week playing Wow (yes, thats a vacation for me, no work, and a lot less expensive than the beach vacation I'd origingally planned). The time was well spent and even a fun random gankings in the Hinterlands couldn't spoil my fun (Mage getting hit with a Titansteel destroyer, I couldn't even catch the name of the guy who killed me, bang, I'm dead).

First of all, I can't recall the day (they kind of merged together) but I was a part of the best PuG possibly in the history of Wow. OK, I'm embellishing a little bit there, but this was so much fun I can't remember enjoying playing my mage this much (and I enjoy my mage quite a bit). It started with me leveling my druid in the Swamp of Sorrows. I got a whisper from someone asking if I wanted to DPS for Zul'Farrak. Although I know how to kitty DPS, I really see my druid as tank (and heals once I dual spec) for instances, kitty for leveling. However, I am leveling my mage specifically to run instances (all that AoE goodness shouldn't go to waste). I asked if theyd be ok taking my mage instead (who granted was a lil high to run ZF, but I wanted the staff from there pretty badly). They added me and it was awesome!!! The group averaged about level 50, heals were good, tank was good, and they basically gathered up mobs for me to AoE. It was such a good run, it went faster than I can solo it on my pally. The highlight of the run was when the tank decided to see if he could run to the bottom of the stairs with all the mobs and we could kill them all there. He gathered, I blizzarded, lots of numbers, mobs dead. I also got the mask and staff from the runs (we did it over a couple times because it was fast and fun).

In other non-Wow related news, I was happy to see the Lakers win the NBA championship (I became a Lakers fan living in San Diego in the late 80's), and not-Detroit win the Stanley Cup. I'm not really a Penguins fan, but I HATE Detroit so given a choice between Detroit and virtually anyone else (Detroit vs NJ would be tough, I have hatred for both).

One other wow note, whomever thought it would be cute to roll a pink pigtailed gnome warrior on the server I play alliance on with the same name as my main, its not. I can't really claim identity theft as wow characters don't have social security numbers, and most of my other alts' names are duplicated repeatedly. That's all there is to say about that.

Gear: the means or the end?

2009-06-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

We lost another 80 in the guild yesterday, and I cant say Im sorry to see him go. His comment on leaving (Im paraphrasing) "I met some dude in barrens, he said his guild could one shot all the bosses in naxx and theyd farm it for me, I want to get my t8 set, peace". Ive read a lot about "charity purples" but this is taking it to a whole new level, and it bothered me.

It has nothing to do with a dead-weight douchebag leaving the guild. He was a mage, and not that good of one, we have 2-3 others who are better, and I would say could take his place, but really, they are what he would be aspiring to anyways. I view our guild as a group of mostly friends who get together for a common goal. The overwelming majority, I think of as friends, and I help out in any way that I can. Lately, I have been crafting gear for people as I have a high level jewelcrafter and blacksmith. Sure, I want to upgrade my gear, but lets be honest, its not like there is a ton of new content coming out soon and Im not exactly a hardcore progression player.

I see gear as something that happens, yeah there are a few pieces I want, but if I wasnt trying to get geared up to tank heroics and raids, it would be irrelevant. I would never try to tell someone how to play their class, and admittedly, DPS is something Im not super knowledgable about, but Im not aware of any "gear checks" for DPS. There isnt the equivalent of the defense cap (maybe hit cap for casters, but it doesnt seem super hard to get there). How much new content is going to be released in the near future? How many times do you really want to run through ulduar? And if a guild is good enough to one shot the bosses in naxx, what do they need a random mage for?

To me, gear is a means, it is a tool. Obviously, Im not naked tanking any dungeons in the near future. I wonder how many people really see it that way. . .

My vacation in Azeroth. . .

2009-06-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

Well, this is going to be a decidedly HAPPY fishy blog post. First of all, I talked to my dad last night, the last of the virus has been cleansed from my system (no pun intended). I am picking it up after work today. As an added bonus, as I had already installed the new video card before this mess, I will be rocking my new 512mb NVIDIA card when I log in! (I know that is far from top of the line, but playing a 4yo game on a 5yo computer, it should be more than sufficient and way better than onboard graphics). I'm back and forth on whether to drop another 2mb of Ram into my system. I'm running XP so with the new video card 2mb should be fine, but there is a little voice in my head screaming "MORE POWER!!!" so we'll see. If that wasn't enough to make me positively giddy, today is my last day of work till monday. Thats right boys and girls, its time for a vacation. . .IN AZEROTH!!!

Ever gone a while without eating (either accidently or on purpose) and you eventually get so hungry you feel like you could eat the entire store? Thats where I'm at with Wow. Sure, there will be breaks for sleeping, eating, going to the gym, tasty adult beverages with friends, but my vacation will be spent mostly in Azeroth (and Outlands). As usual, I have a list of goals for my characters:

Leshif - Run heroics, get l00tz! Become more epic! I believe I am one JC token from the epic necklace, already have the ring, could use the sword and belt from H UP and shield from H CoS (although I'm tempted to make the titansteel shield because it looks cooler and has more defense).

Bullfish - My new fav alt. I have been reading everything druid I can get my hands on(thanks druid wiki, big bear butt, unbearably HoT, and thinktank), and I will admit, even thought I think a bear with horns is kind of dumb looking (and don't get me started on a cat with horns), the ability to Tank, Heal, and DPS with the same character is mighty appealing. I'm hoping to hit 50+ get my LW to 300, and pick up dual spec. Feral/Resto anyone?

Zefish - Outlands or bust man! I think when I left him I was pretty darn close to 50, that means 8 levels to Outlands. If only he weren't so squishy! I <3 mages, frost especially. I love leveling with him, and when I hit outlands I'm switching out his herbalism for tailoring and I can switch my lock's tailoring for enchanting (he used to be an enchanter, and currently I don't have an enchanter).

Dreadfish - Northrend bound! He has been level 69 for literally months. I have used him to skin, or hunt down people who gank my alts and thats about it. Plus with him running around Northrend, I can start stocking up on leather prepping for my druid. And deathknights are kind of fun.

Warfish - I have a love/hate relationship with my warrior. I love love love Titan's Grip. Its awesome. I would love to get ahold of a couple crystal forged war axes mmmmmmm goodness. The hate side - NO STAYING POWER!! I'm used to my paladin who kills slowly but can outlast anything. No self heals? (which isn't completely true, warrior is herbalist, but thats a c/d and not super powerful). Every other class I play (except the mage) has self heals. I'm just not digging not having them. With that being said, would be awefully nice to hit 66-67 to get to wear the adamantite set.

I am looking forward to the most enjoyable, cost-effective vacation I've taken so far. I won't come back to worth with a tan, but thats not exactly a bad thing.

If college was like Wow. . .

2009-06-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

Krizzlybear got me to thinking with his most recent post. He graduated from college (which is an awesome accomplishment, grats again!) and made some Wow analogies, which got me to thinking: What if college was like Wow? And then, What if Wow was like college?

If college was like Wow. . .
You would be able to spec into a certain major and EVERY employer would want you.
Needing on all the loots (use your imagination here) would get you swiftly G-kicked.
You could /ignore anyone blatantly being an ass and enjoy the soothing silence.
It would be completely acceptable for higher level friends to run you through difficult things.
Anyone who needed an answer on anything could swiftly be directed to any one of multiple thorough online sources.
Whenever a professor used a curve, 10% of the class would complain it turned into "easy mode" and the other 90% of the class didn't deserve to be taking it in the first place.
Anytime a major became too valuable, there would be an outrage that it was over-powered, and the deans would be forced to nerf it "to preserve balance".

If Wow was like college. . .
Attendance would be mandatory, but DKP points would be given out at a later indeterminate period at the RL's discretion.
Almost everyone would have multiple "alts" and even after choosing a "main" would flip flop between.

Anyone else have any more? I got a chuckle coming up with a few of these. . .

Are you mtherfckers ready, for the new sh*t?

2009-06-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

I swear, I am not a Bioware employee. It just seems like recently every time I see a game I'm excited about, it happens to be one of theirs. I'm currently playing Mass Effect while my computer is being repaired, and I'm quite happy with it. However, that is not what this post is about. I've also recently written a few posts about how geeked out I am over a Star Wars mmo. Also, not what this blog is about.

This blog is about yet ANOTHER amazing looking offering from Bioware: Dragon Age. Bioware doing medieval fantasy RPG with swords and magic? And it has sex too? And the trailer has the best Marilyn F-ing Manson song to date!?!?!? Well, the title of the blog says it best. . .

Why Star Wars: the Old Republic will succeed

2009-06-05T06:56:00.000-07:00

I believe Star Wars: the Old Republic will be the greatest MMO yet produced. I have this belief based on both my experiences with Bioware games and the similarities to Blizzard and disimilarities to both Mythic and Funcom.

Biowares resume:
You may be familiar with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a couple games which in my opinion are not only the best Star Wars games to date, but tell a better story than Episodes I-III. Bioware came out with another title Jade Empire, which although overlooked is an AMAZING game. I thoroughly enjoyed it and played it through a couple times. The last title in their resume is Mass Effect, a game which I have not yet played, but heard excellent things about.
Thats three franchises which are completely disimilar to each other, none of which are mmos. The similarities are rich, character driven storylines, and fairly customizable character growth. All three were fairly critically acclaimed (8/10 or better by most media outlets), with two out of the three arguably being the best in their areas (I will admit, although I LOVED Jade Empire, it was somewhat of a niche game and was not as popular as the other two).

Mythics Resume:
They have produced one game prior to Warhammer, that being Dark Age of Camelot, a game which from what I can tell, looks like a prequel to Warhammer. System looks very similar, it seems to be basically what I've heard about warhammer in a different setting.

Funcoms Resume:
Funcom has two franchises released prior to the release of Age of Conan: Dreamfall, a more traditional platform RPG, and Anarchy online, an MMO. Both games received reviews generally between 7-8/10 although Anarchy online was plagued with problems on launch, one review said it was "promising with big technical flaws".

Blizzards Resume:
Blizzard released a number of smaller games in the early to mid 90's, they are most well known for three franchises: Warcraft and Starcraft (real time strategy), and Diablo (adventure RPG). All three were critically acclaimed and spawned sequels (Starcraft 2 has yet to be released).

What I take away from this: First of all, Blizzard and Bioware are more similar to each other than the other two companies for two reasons. First, before relweasing their MMO's, neither company had ventured into that market. The other similarity they have with each other is a larger body of work with higher acclaim. The way I see it is this: good companies produce good games, period. It doesn't matter if those companies are producing MMO's, real time strategy, Adventure RPG, or first person shooters. Mythic and Funcom seemed to have followed their "model" exactly when it comes to their MMO offerings. It could be argued Blizzard did the same. Looking at past trends, I believe the Old Republic will follow Bioware's model of other games. It will be story based and more than likely offer a large number of cutscenes/cinematics.

Dr00ds. . . .

2009-06-04T08:10:00.001-07:00

I had hoped to have my computer back up and running last night, but my dad was tired after work and as he's the one helping me out, I told him it would be fine to do it tonight. My hope is that I will be able to recover some data before re-loading windows and starting over. At this point I am pessimistic about the ability to repair the damage.

Onto brighter thoughts. I have been doing a lot of thinking about druids of late. Druid is probably my second favorite class in the game (Paladin is #1, every fantasy game I always go for plate wearing melee fighting self-healers). My biggest problem with playing them on a Horde server (I have 3 alliance druids) was the animal forms. Why do all the tauren versions have horns stapled to their heads for no reason? Enter new druid form art.

I am conflicted about the new druid form art. On one hand, I think it looks fairly cool. More detail, and the forms actually look like a tauren shapeshifted into something rather than just stapling horns on an existing animal. However, I still don't like horns on my cat form! (I'm ok with it on bear form, even though the broker in me sees a Bull/Bear as the ULTIMATE oxymoron).

I have always liked druids for their versitility, I personally believe (that US americans. . .jk inside joke, look here if you don't recall that one for a cheap laugh) that dual spec makes druids hands down the most powerful class in the game. By dual speccing druids can be endgame tanks, healers, and DPS. The kicker is that their DPS and Tank specs share talent tree AND gear. Since feral druids can be uncrushable with talents and get a massive armor buff in dire bear, their armor is mostly stamina, agility and crit stacking. If it sounds like the same thing a melee DPS character would wear, thats because it is. Since druids can wear leather OR cloth and their is no lack of caster cloth in the game, it makes assembling passable endgame sets easy to acquire.

Right now (ok, not RIGHT now, I have to get my comp up and running first), I'm leveling a mage and a druid. Both mid-upper 40's. I will probably have the mage to outlands first, but it wouldn't surprise me if the druid is my next 80.

To be the man, you have to beat the man. . .WOOOOO!

2009-06-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ric Flair was an insightful individual. For quite some time, people have been predicting a "Wow Killer". But, as the quote says, to be the man, you have to beat the man. Age of Conan tried and failed. Warhammer tried and failed. Star Wars will succeed.

It is not in doubt that Star Wars is a mega-franchise and slapping that name on anything will bring in revenue. It is also not in doubt that Knights of the Old Republic was one of the greatest RPG franchises in recent history. Having just seen the trailer (which I've linked below). I have no doubt this is the game many have been waiting for.

5k views and day 5 of my Wow exile. . .

2009-06-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

I reached a milestone of sorts recently. My views counter ticked over 5000. I know thats not a very large number compared to some of the more established blogs, but it still made me feel a sense of accomplishment. I have a friend who is a professional writer who kept a blog for some time for a community newspaper. I think he said he had less than 100 views total. I guess it's an example of consistancy and sticking with it.

On a not so happy note, computer is still unresponsive. I ran a full disk scan (approx 4 hours) revealed no problems with my hard-disk, no memory issues. I attempted to repair my windows and was unable to really do so (it reloaded some but not all the files and the issues remain). I still can't even manage to run MSCONFIG in safe mode. I am starting to think my only solution might be to re-load windows and accept the loss of all my data as a casualty of war. My last ditch effort will be to see if my dad can do anything with it (he does IT for the university here).

Honestly, although I have desperately missed Wow (voluntarily quitting was tough and I couldn't stick with it, this involuntary stuff SUCKS!), I have been able to occupy my time with a few other things. Been playing the UFC game, I <3 head kicks. There is something satisfying about kicking the computer in the head, seeing the eyes roll into the head, mouthguard go flying, and opponent hit the mat. Game over man. I have gotten some more time in with my guitar. I am beginning to play things which almost sound like the songs they're supposed to. Currently my two favs I can play are Killing in the name and Bad Girlfriend (well the part that doesnt need a slide, I don't have one of those).

Anyways, to those of you enjoying wow, I'm jealous and I will be back hopefully sooner rather than later. . .

Computer probs. . .WTF!?!?!?

2009-05-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

So my main computer is almost completely inoperable. It won't even stay up without freezing for long enough to back up my data. The ironic thing is I JUST found a reasonably priced graphics card which should allow me to run wow at a reasonable stable rate without it locking up the system or dying. (Nvidia geforce 9500GT if you're curious. Microcenter has them on sale for $35 after $20 mail in rebate).

I had every intention of getting some gear and potentially even being able to tank the big boy instances. Apparently my computer has other ideas and I remain Jr Pally tank. . .

What it means to be level capped. . .

2009-05-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

I've never spent an extended period of time at the level cap. I did reach level 70 before wrath hit, but due to the difficulties of gearing, I wasn't anywhere near able to even tank heroics, it was frustrating, and probably contributed to my taking a break from wow. That is not the case currently.

Things in Wotlk are different, and much more convenient for the casual player (as a side note, even though I probably spend as much time in game as many "hardcore" players, I consider myself casual because my goal has never been to tackle difficult content). Obviously a "fresh" 80 is not going to be able to immediately tank worthwhile heroics (I consider the worthwhile heroics as Utgarde Pinnacle and Culling of Stratholme, you know, the ones with multiple pieces of gear I actually want).

Upon reaching the level cap, I noticed I had a few options (I bought dual spec when it came out, so I have a retribution spec and set of retribution gear). First, I could continue questing, both the dailies and my uncompleted world quests for some easy gold. I could try to get into heroic instances as DPS and potentially get some tanking gear enabling me to later tank heroics. Lastly, I could level one of my many alts. Sadly, my options currently are about the same.

I'm not saying that I dislike "the game at 80". I finally got an epic flying mount (I can't believe I've spent seven THOUSAND gold since wrath on three items, how people justify those retarded motorcycles are beyond me). Usually my game time consists of "Hey, anyone feel like running a heroic? OK, guess I'll do my dailies, then go level an alt."

On the good note, I am about one heroic instance run away from honored with Wyrmrest Accord (yay easy tanking loot), I already have the pattern for the craften necklace and I have the crafted ring, boots and helm made already. I really am just a few pieces of gear away from being able to actually tank heroics (I'm looking at you sword and belt from UP and shield from CoS).

Also, spending more time with my alts has made me appreciate one of my lesser played alts. I have come to the conclusion that I really extremely enjoy my druid. My mage will probably hit outlands first, but it wouldn't surprise me if my druid beats him to 70(my deathknight will beat them both, but he started with a 23 level head start. He's been 69 for about as long as I can remember lol). While I had originally intended my pally to be a tank/healer combo, druids just seem better equipped for it (and I hear our GM complain about how handicapped pally healing is). Also, with blizzard's announcement of new druid skins, here's hoping they get rid of the ridiculous horns on the tauren cat form (how come night elf cat form looks so cool, and tauren cat form looks like a lion with some horns glued to his head like a cheap halloween costume - a Bull-lion).

Tanking gear dilemma

2009-05-21T05:14:00.000-07:00

So, I am having a little bit of a dilemma gearing wise. I will preface this statement by saying Wotlk is a TON better about gearing up for heroics/raids than TBC. Looking at my list of things I want/need for heroic/raid tanking, 4 of the pieces are craftable by me (JC or BS) and they are all not that far removed from best in slot pre-25 man raid gear. As a side note, HUGE shout out to Honorshammer for his excellent spreadsheet which can be found on the maintankadin forums.

This is my current dilemma. To put things into perspective, my guild has two tanks who can run heroics and are active. We have a third who has a tank, but took the tank out of the guild and caused some bad feelings. We have a druid who should be able to tank heroics, but is more used to ranged DPS so is not as effective in the role. I had been hoping to run through a couple heroics in my retribution build (my ENTIRE reason for dual speccing to begin with), pick up enough gear that I would be viable for other heroics, then tank when needed and DPS when not. However, recently, our geared tanks havent been on much. This brings me to my dilemma. I am currently wearing the tanking belt from Kara. I added an eternal belt buckle, and I have it socketed with +18 stam gems. As a jewelcrafter, I could replace the +18's with +41's, giving me an extra 46 stam. The more efficient alternative is to wait, hopefully get enough runs through heroic UP that I get the belt from there (and hopefully the sword), which I could also buckle and socket and would be a huge improvement.

The reason this is a tough decision is that both the tanking ring and necklace both require both jewelcrafters marks (6 each) and dragon eyes (4 each I believe). Cutting dragon eyes will mean it takes me longer to make the other tanking pieces, slowing my gearing up more. I bought the ring pattern last night, I'm wearing either a Kara or ZA ring so I could use the upgrade.

In other news, still accumulating funds for my epic flyer. Its slow and tedious. I have been selling ore and Brilliant Autumn's glows and isolated crafted or dropped gear for a few hundred gold a week. I'll get there eventually. I also FINALLY completed the aspirants challenge, so I'm now a valiant with the Argent Tournament, giving me a few more easy dailies for $. Also, started leveling my mage again with an eye on outlands. Currently level 46 in Tanaris.

Anyways, thought I would get everyone's opinion. . .

UFC 2009 Undisputed: Fish's review

2009-05-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

So I went down to gamestop last night and purchased my copy of UFC 2009 Undisputed. I got a chance to play before work and I have a few impressions, mostly good, about the game.

First of all, the character models look great. Some games make their characters a little too ripped and chiseled and some make theirs overly thin, some look cartoony. UFC did a great job at making the characters look realistic (with the exception of Dana White, who looks nothing at all like himself). Sweat, cuts, and body hair are also done really well in the game. Visually it is the best fighting game I have played to date.

From a game mechanic standpoint, I have a few observations. First of all, there are no sliders that I can find in the game to adjust various difficulties. Every other sports type game has them and this is a glaring omission. The reason this is such a glaring omission is submissions are almost impossible to pull off in the game. I thought it was a function of the characters I was using, but Demian Maia should be able to submit almost any middleweight from most any position. Hopefully they will address this in next year's edition. I had a few other complaints about the submission system besides the difficulty but they may have been left out for balance purposes. In real life, Brazilian Jujitsu fighters will attempt to pull a fighter close to their body when they have them in guard and from that position will frequently execute a triangle choke. I was either unable to execute that maneuver, or it's not in the game.

On the good side, striking is easy and fun, and responds pretty well. Punches and kicks to the legs, body, and head are all available (although boxers will not be able to execute head kicks, as it should be), and look about as they should. Also, the tuning between offense and defense is about where it should be, as compared to the real thing. It is a very viable tactic to just throw punches and kicks where your opponent is not defending. The "specialty attacks" (i.e. superman punch, thai clinch knees, spinning backfist, etc) are all extremely satisfying. I have yet to try to recreate the sick flying knee thrust Michael Bisping used to win one of his fights in The Ultimate Fighter.

Career mode is a little bland, but is a good first attempt. To use a food analogy its a really well cooked meatloaf with mashed potatoes. Maybe a little bland and not for everyone, but solid and enough to keep you going. You create your fighter and then train him up in hopes of competing for a title shot in your weight class. I created myself in the lightweight division (in Judo, I competed at 132lbs, but that was at 18-19, I have put on a bit of muscle since then), and made a Kickboxing and Judo fighter. So far I have been able to basically run through my competition with stiff head kicks.

Overall, great game, I would give it 8.5/10. With a few minor improvements, next years' version could easily be 10/10.

In memory of One among many. . .

2009-05-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

I know there are a lot of bloggers out there closing up shop, it only takes one to hit home. Big Red Kitty? Heard of it, not a regular reader. Big Bear Butt? Again, read it on occasion, not on my regular list. Then I read that One among many is retiring (I prefer that word to quitting, it implies distinguished time put in) from Wow. A blogger from Ohio who plays a lot of alts? Hit home because of the similarities and the fact I regularly read her blog.

Warcraft is like any other hobby, there is a time to quit for everyone. Sometimes, the decision is not ours. I had to retire from Judo competition after a bad concussion. Sometimes we just know its time to hang it up (Unless you're Brett Favre, Wow has seen plenty of those, yours truly included).

So, from your neighbor in cincy, I will miss reading your blog, but I'm sure you've thought long and hard and are at peace with your decision. Perhaps with the release of the upcoming Star Wars MMO you'll be moved to blog again.

Fare thee well. . .

Ding 80, a look back. . .

2009-05-17T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not one of those people who blows through content. I've always had multiple characters that I've leveled at once, multiple goals that I was attempting to accomplish in the game, and playing on a PvP server frequently employed the "One gank and I switch characters" mentality. Sometimes the ganking even caused me to play PvE for extended periods. However, after a long, laborious, drawn out process, I finally hit the level cap on my main character.

I don't know what everyone else's experiences were. Mine was rather unexpected. I am coming off a stretch of four days off in a row with really nothing planned. I was level 77 at the beginning of that stretch, but levels take a while when it's 1.6 million XP a piece. At first, I figured I would hit 78, maybe 79 and have to come back to work today leaving the last level unfinished. Luckily for me, that was not the case. One thing I think Blizz has done really well (at least from a tanking perspective) was space the gear out so I always had an easy goal in mind. Level 74 was shield and sword, 75 breastplate, 76 pants etc. I was super excited to hit 78 and get the last pieces of the blue BoE tanking set. At 78, my guildies ran with me through culling of stratholme (they may not have realized this as many of them have limited alliance experience, but stratholme felt to me like a kind of copy of stormwind). I got the tanking boots from that run (yay!) and I think I may have hit 79 on that run. The next day a group PM'd me asking if I was tank or DPS. I responded both (although I rarely use my ret dual spec, I think I'd have been better off not buying it, but oh well). The guy said they were running CoS and looking for a tank. I ran with them, it was pretty awesome, no wipes, easy run. Then everyone pretty much decided they wanted to run Utgarde Pinnacle as well which I'd never ran. After a small embarassment involving going to the wrong side of the continent (Having played both factions in northrend, I get utgarde keep and Nexus confused in my mind, yeah one too many concussions for fishy), we grouped up and ran UP. I will admit, not as smooth, we did wipe once on Ymirion (his guards feared me right into his lap, I was like "hey man how ya doin, oh come on, dont aggro on me bro!"). Again, I received more tanking goodness (bracers dropped and got the quest breastplate). This put me so close to 80, I pretty much dinged in the middle of running my argent tournament dailies (which I hadn't been doing that long given that I just hit 77 the other day). A slightly anti-climactic way to hit 80, but I felt accomplishment none the less.

So looking back(from 1-80):
Favorite piece of gear - This is cheating a little bit, but Tempered Saronite helm. Made it myself with a cooldown donated from a guildie (thanks to ed from the blog Code Red). Looks sweet, is just all around awesome and I crafted it and cut the gems for it myself. The dragon wings on the helm even protect my delicate blood elf ears lol.

Least favorite piece of gear - the SUNEATER. Its like having a class with an amazingly hot girl that won't go out with you. Maybe you ask her out and she declines or it never works out, but you think "man, if I just had a shot, it'd be awesome". Oh how I hate you heroic mechanar.

Favorite moment - This may shock my guildies. Its a PvP moment. Ever see Universal Soldier where Dolph Lundgren's character snaps and starts killing everyone? Ya, I did a wow version of that. Someone ganked me in hellsbrad (yes Hellsbrad, although its not as bad as it used to be). Something inside me snapped, I kindly asked for assistance in guild chat (ok, I was a little frustrated and pissed). Grabbed my paladin and I think the entire guild came along. We completely took over south shore, killed every allie there and I ran around killing all the quest givers. Then, because it was close, we went to the town in Wetlands, and I killed all the quest givers there too. It made me feel better lol.

Least favorite moment - Most of the rest of the time spent in Hellsbrad or gankthorn vale. At one point in TBC, level 70s were so bored they would just troll around looking for 30's to 1 hit. It was so bad, I didn't even know how good a place to level it was until I went PvE. I leveled in Desolace instead. . .without a mount. . .back when you had to be level 40 to get a mount.

Best crafting decision - Picking up Jewelcrafting. Only one time (mercurial adamantite, BLECH!) was it especially painful and the benefits have been awesome. I always have plenty of upgrades for my alts and I would argue based on the trinket and JC only gems (yay +41 stam), that it is a better option for tanks than blacksmithing (if you're only going to have one or the other, need mining for titanium and to smelt my titansteel).

Worst crafting decision - Picking up enchanting on my Paladin and dropping it on my Warlock. I have a level 61 warlock. Now, thats not super high, but it is high enough level to master any crafting skill. Warlocks used to be my favorite caster (a title now held by mages, AoE and teleport FTW!). At the time, I thought soloing instances for drops to DE was a great way to level enchanting. It is to a point however, the sheer amount of resources I wasted doing it, damn. I have since dropped enchanting on my pally for mining meaning I'm left without an enchanter, till my mage hits outland when I will drop my warlock's tailoring for enchanting (He's currently Tailoring and Alchemy, yeah, I know it doesn't exactly go together).

So its been a great run, and I'm looking forward to everything to come!

Almost there, almost there!!

2009-05-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

And not in an "I'm in the death star trench about to be vaporized by Darth vader" kinda way. . .I hope. The almost there I'm referring to is level 80 (which I'd be at long past if I hadn't taken the journey into alliance territory, which I don't really regret, but yeah). I hit 77 last after being carried. . .er helped through the ring of blood or whatever they call the northrend version in Zuldrak.

We're running DTK tonight and I have 4 days off in a row so apart from some gym time and guitar time (as a side note, I am looking forward to playing LIT my own worst enemy, it looks super easy. . .yes, thats the level I'm at with real guitar :-P), I'm free and clear. I told our GM (who I work with and see frequently IRL), I should be able to hit 79 in that time.

I've also noticed a few other things in addition to levels. First of all, money (which used to be a complete lack thereof) is in ready supply with me concentrating on one main character. I dunno if it is just the quests giving more $$ or what but I have around 3k on my account (thats a lot for me!). I am sure the crafted items actually selling helps and the fact that I'm not buying to level any crafting skills at the moment. The next thing I noticed, my mining is around 440 and I have yet to touch any saronite. It should be a very brief time before I hit 450 and can start cranking out titansteel bars.

My plans for 80 (since I'm close enough to make them). I want to do argent tournament dailies for money and marks, badges, tokens, whatever they're called. I want to make enough titansteel for the helm, the legs, the boots, the necklace, and the ring. I want to do the JC dailies so that A) I can get the solid dragoneye cut, and B) I can get some dragoneyes to socket (go go gadget stamina!). As soon as I get 5k gold I am picking up epic flying and doing the netherwing dailies to get a drake (I don't care what color it is, I want a dragon damnit!). I want to run enough heroics to get the BoA shoulders (cloth and leather).

Thats not too much to ask right? And I should beat my old level cap record, I don't think Blizz is releasing a new expansion in the next couple months :P

Which profession to choose? (cost vs benefit)

2009-05-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

Something I've been thinking about recently is juggling around crafting skills on my alts on my horde server. On my alliance server, I had better knowledge of the game, so I was able to plan which alts would take which skills in what order so that I could get the best benefit. On my horde server, I have picked them, dropped them, juggled them around, and in the process wasted a LOT of time and resources. For example, my main (a prot paladin) has been a miner, blacksmith, jewelcrafter, enchanter, and miner again.

I hopes of sparing people those problems, I have decided to give a short overview of the professions from a cost benefit perspective with which classes gain most from the profession.

Alchemy - Alchemy takes herbs and turns them into various potions and elixirs. It also has the ability at higher level to transmute materials. It is most effective paired with it's gathering skill Herbalism or Inscription, another crafting profession that also makes use of herbs. Any class can benefit from alchemy.
Cost - 3: herbs have become slightly inflated recently, but it doesnt take many per item
Benefit - 4: anyone can use the potions and many have uses in other crafted items

Blacksmithing - Blacksmithing takes materials gained from mining and turns them into weapons, armor, other useful items. It can be extremely painful to level through vanilla content with expensive materials and a lot of them required. However, this pain eases in TBC and Wrath, making blacksmithing a lot more useful. It is most effective paired with mining (it's gathering skill) or jewelcrafting. Plate wearing tanking classes gain the most from blacksmithing (paladins, warriors, and death knights).
Cost - 4: Thorium is the most expensive/rare crafting material and BS' need a lot of it
Benefit - 2/4: If you wear plate, its pretty darn useful, if not, don't bother

Enchanting - Enchanting is a unique profession. It has no gathering profession associated with it, it gathers it's own materials by breaking down green or better items. It is therefor VERY expensive from a cost perspective, but the benefits it grants are permanent. It is most often paired with tailoring another profession without an associated gathering profession. Any class can benefit from enchanting, it is easiest for classes that can solo instances to gather low level materials.
Cost - 5: Most expensive profession in the game at any given level
Benefit - 3: small boost to stats, can be used on most item types and permanent

Engineering - Engineering creates ammunition and random gizmos. It can give an increased utility to most any class (lockpicking, resurrection, invisibility and teleportation) that mimics abilities from other classes. It is most often paired with mining (it's gathering profession). Hunters gain the biggest benefit from engineering as they can make use of all of the gadgets and great benefit from scopes.
Cost - 4: see blacksmithing
Benefit - 2: lots of gizmos anyone can use, but marginal actual utility

Inscription - Inscription gives the ability to make glyphs scrolls and a small selection of items. The glyphs benefit all classes as do the lower level shoulders from card decks. They can also create off-hand items for casters. It is most effective paired with it's gathering skill Herbalism or Alchemy, another crafting profession that also makes use of herbs. As most items from inscription are BoE, most classes will benefit from it equally.
Cost - 4: Uses LOTS of herbs, but not quite as expensive as enchanting
Benefit - 3: glyphs improve performance of abilities, sometimes greatly

Jewelcrafting - Jewelcrafting gives the ability to make rings, necklaces and at higher level cut gems for use in sockets. The gems are a great way to customize socketable gear and the jewelry is a great boost for leveling in older content. It is most effective paired with mining (it's gathering skill) or blacksmithing. As most items from inscription are BoE, most classes will benefit from it equally.
Cost - 4: Uses less metal than blacksmithing or engineering, but gems can be pricey
Benefit - 3: Not all equipment is socketable, but great benefit when applicable.

Leatherworking - Leatherworking gives the ability to make leather/mail armor and specialty bags. It is of unparralleled benefit to classes that can wear the armor it can create. In a lot of cases, the crafted armor is the best at a given level. It is most effective paired with skinning (it's gathering skill). Shamen, druids, hunters, and rogues benefit most from leatherworking.
Cost - 2: most leather and hides are terribly deflated and this assumes
Benefit - 1/4: very minimal if you can't use the armor, one of the best if you can.

Tailoring - What is one thing everyone in the game needs? Bags. Tailors make bags and an assortment of cloth armor useful for casters. It is most often paired with enchanting another profession without an associated gathering profession. Casters benefit most from tailoring.
Cost - 2: most leather and hides are terribly deflated and this assumes
Benefit - 3/5: Everyone needs bags and for casters this is hands down the best profession.

The winners? Leatherworking and tailoring for sure if you can make use of the crafted gear for sure. Alchemy also has a clear cost benefit. Blacksmithing brings up the rear if you are a plate wearer, but I can definately understand if you want to skip out on the painful leveling process. I personally wish I had never dropped it on my paladin (although jewelcrafting has been useful).

The losers? Enchanting and engineering. One provides a small benefit but will kill you in the wallet, the other provides questionable benefit and is only slightly less painful cost-wise.

Wolverine: A review (with spoilers). . .

2009-05-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to get this out of the way from the start. I am probably one of the biggest Deadpool fans out there. I probably would have waited for some time to see the movie had I not heard Deadpool would be in it. I will address the many issues with that particular aspect of the movie later

Wolverine was pretty entertaining. Sadly, I thought the credits (beginning, not end) were some of the most visually appealing, inspiring parts of the whole movie. Now, I really like Wolverine as a character. He's gruff, he's a bad ass, he doesn't take shit from anyone. I really liked how they showed what made him. Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson made me get all hyper and almost jump up and down in the seat. I can't imagine anyone more suited to play Deadpool.

Ok, things I didn't like. First of all, Cyclops was in the movie. Him being disintegrated was the low point of x-men 3, his appearance in Wolverine was entirely a waste. Um, like most people, Deadpool as Weapon XI with swords in his arms, teleportation, and laser vision? WTF!?!? BTW, a fight between wolverine and deadpool would be cool to watch for about 5 mins, but after they cut the crap out of each other and regenerated the bits, it would get a little boring. I didn't like the multiple "secret" endings. I have heard two so far: Wolverine in a bar in japan saying he drinks to remember, and Deadpool's decapitated head saying shhhhhhhhh. There may be others, I think they should save extras for the DVD and give everyone in the theatre the same ending.

OK, so most fans of Deadpool seem to think the way he was portrayed in Wolverine would ruin the possibility of a Deadpool movie. I disagree. You have to look at the origin of the deadpool character. He had wolverine's healing factor grafted into him to fight his terminal cancer. It initially failed. It was only after he was sent to the facility for failed experiments and experimented on that his healing factor activated.

How I would start a deadpool movie.

A figure is seen carrying the body of deadpool off from 3 mile island. He is taken to a lab where he is tortured and experimented on which drives him slightly insane. His "death" seems to have stripped him of the powers that stryker gave him (and removed the swords from his arms, you don't want a captive having implanted blades, do you?). However, the experimentation activates his healing factor and he breaks out. Although some things have been changed, thats pretty close to the deadpool origin from the comics. Close enough for a movie at least.

After a short break. . .

2009-05-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

I havent had too much to really blog about recently. I was trying to push hard for 80, but with ulduar dropping, most peoples' energy has been re-focused to raiding, and the monotony of questing has been a little much. Its not so much questing itself, but 5 hours + per level.

I have more fully moved back to the PvP server, and I've noticed it's not as bad as it used to be. I did have a druid one-shot my warrior in hellfire, and an 80 rogue ganked my mage in STV, but those were more isolated occurances. It seems with the new content, people are actually doing the new content rather than hunting for lowbies to pick on. This was my biggest problem with PvP in the first place.

So, I'm back on the "path to 80", which will be followed shortly by the "path to gearing for raiding". Thankfully we have quite a few miners in the guild and I have a BS so I can blow through titansteel cooldowns to get some respectable tanking gear made. I'm super thankful that this is a viable route for tanks as opposed to the TBC method (i.e. grind rep and then run heroics and die a lot, earn those epics with BLOOD!!!).

I'm still on pace to hit 80 before the next expansion!! (my guildies will get the joke there)