Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Shall I tell you a story? Shall I tell you a dream? They think I'm crazy...

On the cat vs scorpid debate...

Paladins... druids... and shammies can remove viper sting.

Mabd is really only doing arena now with the 3v3 team. And on that team is a warlock.

If Mabd is gonna fight a druid... dammit, I need the cat, with it's speed over the scorpid. And abolish poison makes viper sting moot...

If Mabd is gonna fight a paladin... well, I'll leave the pally to my lock friend to CC.

Then it comes down to Mabd against a shammy. And imp viper sting would help more than what I got now... but in it's place...

I'm the physical and burst dps on the team. If it comes to a drain contest, my weakness will be made up by the lock's drain mana. I have to be able to kill priests as soon as possible, since they're the only real danger vis a vis a drain showdown. Cats help more with this. Efficiency and viper aspect go together in just too powerful a way. And Ima not giving up imp concussive shot.

I may change this if I switch teams or get into higher brackets... but for now, Ima hanging with the kitty.

K... now for the nightmare. Arms and Fury 's druid needed heroic seth for his elite flight form. Melvin'd druid needed the same thing. Great, right? Melvin would tank, Aerthson would heal, and I'd be doin dailies, preferably the hell away from both of em.

Well... it didn't work out that way. I was told in no uncertain terms that I HAD to help. And Melvin made a further point that I HAD to bring Mabd, since Majeure was... "unworthy." (That still stings!)

Now, I think i told you Melvin's first rule of tanking... if the dps pulls aggro, the dps dies. It is the job of the dps to avoid aggro, not the job of the tank to keep it.

To this, add Melvin's second rule... it doesn't matter how many times you wipe on trash mobs... the whole point is killing bosses. So it doesn't matter if he couldn't hold aggro on more than one mob... if we kill the boss, that makes Melvin a GREAT tank.

So we go in... cc two mobs, and melvin is growling at two others... I count. One heal, two heal, three heal... and the off mob comes offa Melvin straight for his healer...

/scattershot
/wingclip
/kite while dpsing main target...

We ended up getting A&F to tank, pulling magebert's tier 5 raid main healer to do the job, with Melvin playing his mage. And btw... A&F can tank. If only we could teach him grammar...

Magebert got Herk killed twice with slow heals... Herk, alas, has ready to enter kara gear... and isn't quite uncrushable... one fun time, we face two ravenguard... they can't be cc'ed but can be snared. They hit for about 2.5k on plate... so Herk goes down thanks to slow heals, then the healer goes down. Then Melvin panics and POM/Pyros, draws aggro and dies. Leaving the enhance shammy and me both mobs at +50%.

We kill the first, and the second downs me at about 5%. I kept aggro, and kited em both till I got caught with all my cooldowns blown... Ima still a little disappointed :( Sooo close. Still, it shut Melvin up for a bit. He'll start some line of bull, and I'll give him THE LOOK, and say... "he was at 5% when I died, mr. ICE BLOCK? WHAT THE HELL IS ICE BLOCK?"

But I really can't start screaming at Melvin in fustration. I'd never stop...

So.. melvin's utter failure as a tank. He doesn't have the druid talent that boosts threat by 15%. He has NO IDEA what feral charge is for. He can't tank multiple mobs worth a CRAP. He can't position mobs...

We fight Ikiss at the end. Two wipes, then he goes down. Both wipes were due to A&F's resto druid goin down... which led to a priceless moment, as Melvin started explaining the fight to A&F.

Melvin couldn't keep Ikiss pinned against the pillar in the right place.. so Ikiss played ring around the pillar like the best resto druid in the world... Melvin, after hiding behind a pillar to avoid the blast, didn't see fit to feral charge Ikiss, taking precious time to start beating on him again, giving the rest of us too much opportunity to pull him with a needed heal... I swear, melvin was hit by the aoe slow, and couldn't even swap forms to escape it... and one fight, each dps pulled aggro offa him.

We didn't kill Ikiss til Melvin went down early, and the shammy stepped up to tank.

I really, really don't drink enough.

Btw... katsup!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The world is on fire.

Does it make me the world's biggest geek that, as I saw this, I thought...
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. … Time to die."

Friday, April 25, 2008

I just found out there's no such thing as the real world...

“Only part of us is sane. Only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our 90s and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set life back to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”

– from Black Lamb and Gray Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West.

Let's dance!

You gotta be kidding me!

Scare Beast: The range on this spell has been increased to 30 yards and it is now instant cast. (via Mania)

Oh man. Now... first, they gotta figure out why this damn spell gets resisted all the freaking time by druids. I mean... really... I think I bat 50% with it. But after that... druid. It's what's for dinner!

Oh yeah. Went back to the cat in arena. First of all... respecced 11/41/9 so I have bestial swiftness again. That and dash make the pet more than just an annoyance. I also specced outta imp stings (and into efficiency) so the scorpid had less utility to offer. As well... one thing not mentioned in the cat vs scorpid arguments I've seen... claw will give pushback on spells. Scorpid venom wont. For annoying casters... cats are just better.

Time to name the damn fish guzzling monster now, tho...

(a subject for a future post? damage/gallon o' fish?)

Considering how egalitarian I am... Ima thinking...

Guillotine.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

And if I could, I'd make a deal with God...

It's insane how fast trolls proliferate on the web...

Case in point... I mean, come on, can't people leave the ass hat behind for just a little while? There really aren't enough of us gamers to be this cruel and insensitive...

Which reminds me of a sad bit.

Melvin is a bit liberal. (O.K., he's a lot liberal...) He really hates the Iraq war. Part of this is personal. One of his childhood friends... a guy he grew up playing D&D and Axis and Allies with... died in Iraq last year. Patrick Wade, a naval explosives expert, killed while attempting to disarm a roadside bomb.. prob one of those Iranian models that started showing up in late '05.

Thersa reason Melvin and I hang out, despite my crappy attitude, and his rampant.. er... melvinism. We're all in this together, so, ya know, cut each other some slack, eh?

Um.. so work decided to block blogspot... or rather, the private company that does security decided to block blogspot... we raised a fuss, and it's back for now... no idea how long tho...

And a response to Sonvar... yeah, last post was kinda brutal. I keep hoping Arms & Fury would do a post on doin arena with Melvin, but it aint in him, I guess. He was getting pretty peeved at Pog, the world's worst warrior, tho.

Problem with RL friends getting up to speed with things like arena... our friend Sugars has a new 70 lock. (well, not too new at this point...) But he's never really done the whole... what does this talent do? (respec) what does this talent do? (respec) thing. He probably should, and has been makin noises about goin destro.

Leavin Melvin and co out of the scene for a bit.. cuz they really are incorrigible. I mean, really... a priest in arena that doesn't see the point of mana burn?

But Sugars came to 70 under Arms & Fury's wings. Now... my current predicament.... Ima control freak. I've run pretty much every character class up to at least 30. Have the three 70's (Mage, Hunter, Shammy)... and two 60's (Priest, Rogue) that I quit playin well before B.C. I look at talent trees for classes I'm never gonna play, and try to figure out how to beat em. I listen/read what these classes bitch about, etc...

Sugars doesn't quite have this background... and that leaves a lotta training required to brink him up to speed. The first rule of fight club... doan talk about fight club. Er... the first rule of arena... fight like you would in a BG and you will lose.

The problem in this case... Arms & Fury is still a bit down the learning curve himself. So his druid and sugars the lock were doin 2v2... and I expected Arms&Fury to learn a bit more about druid in arena, and to teach Sugars about lock in arena.

A month after the 3v3 starts, I find out that Sugars didn't have an arena frames unit add-on, and Arms & Fury knew this...

Its like goin raiding without mana pots or buffs. Not completely lethal, but your gonna be a burden for others. Specially a lock. I think this is part of Arms & Fury's myopia with the druid, one I've been trying to break. We've been using him on the team as a utility player... cc and healing when needed, dps otherwise. However... he's a warrior at heart, and warriors get tunnel vision, as Braids would put it. One target til its dead or apparent that itsa waste of time... the multi targeting of an arena addon is less vital to this world perspective...

However... an SL/SL lock has to dot the crap outta everything, including enemy pets. The more Siphon lifes she has up, the better her chances of not getting gibbed. Sugars NEEDS this addon, lika hunter needs pet chow.

BTW... a coupla of ya might not know what ima talking about. Theresa coupla addons... Arena Frame Units is what i use, and I've heard Proximo is even better. The addon puts a nice little window on yuir UI, like the party screen... cept populated with the enemy. You can click on the window, and target an enemy, even if they're outta LOS. It keeps (kinda) current with the life/mana of each, so you can switch targets and focus easily... plus it gives you immediate info on what you face... showing buffs, etc, so you can figure out if the missing stealth enemy isa druid (by the marks of wild on the other team) ora rogue. Or, what kinda lock yuir facing by the diff lock buffs... or what kinda hunter... (death to spirit bond BM builds!)

Fer a lock, spamming on Dots while keeping a healer feared, this add-on is vital.

So last week, I kinda got mad at both of them. I felt that they weren't making enough of an effort to get good at arena, and thus pretty much wasting my time. We were doin the 3v3 games, Arms & Fury would get killed, and rather than stay and watch, and learn and help critique, he'd bug outta the match. The second we got out, he'd requeue, rather than sit for a second and talk about what went wrong vs what went right.

I mean... I really got upset. Arms & Fury and Sugars aint Melvin. I have higher expectations from them.

Its getting better now tho. Arms & Fury finally broke out his warrior and is trying to show Sugars how to survive against the anti-warlock class. Hopefully this will help A&F learn how to help keep Sugars alive in the arena as well. A&F had been playing with Sug for months, and never got around to explaining the ins and outs of how warriors get around fear... so poor Sugars had been having a rough time of it.

The other big thing has been A&F and Sugar's complete terror of rogues. Now, a lock is more or less rogue bait. But I fail to see how a class build that has 18k armor AND innate nature resistance should give a crap about rogues. Last weekend, A&F finally beatdown his first rogue. I expect more of this notable behaviour in the future...

Which leads to THE POST. Again... I've been hoping for a post by A&F on team melvin. Nope. Or on learning to stop being afraid and love teh rogue. Nope. But midway through our 30 games last weekend, I was checking out A&F's char. Now... it's not that his gem choices are just bizzare. (they are) It's not that he has the fashion sense of a cuban drug dealer... (he does) but still... his spellcaster druid had a +melee crit gem... and it took me a minute to decide whether or not this was on purpose, or an accident.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

They got me always on the run

Arms and Fury owes you guys a post. The title should be either "renoobed is always right" or "renoobed is a total bastard." Ima just saying.

3v3 is goin a little better. Unfortunately, certain assumptions were made earlier... (one of our team has not been playing with an arena add-on...) We're doin a slight bit better now, and some critical gearing errors have been corrected. (see above)

Did 5v5 over the weekend with melvin's crew. Went 8-2. Considering the scrub alts went 2-1... and we almost back up to 1500. I'm happy.

Some background. Melvin and his brother Magebert have three 70 each. (As do I) Now... Melvin and Magebert's "mains" are both POM/Pyro mages. They consider these their pvp characters... *sigh*

There is a crew of RL friends that come into the mix. Pogar, the "world's worst warrior" (fury, and he doesn't use intercept...) Pogar's rogue new main. Palmy, the uber shadow priest, and his pally alt. Arm, the not quite so sucky warrior. Then theres me...

If you counting, thats 14 chars. Add in Arms & Fury, who play with us sometimes, and we got 16 chars...

Melvin did not understand why it would take more than one 5v5 team to get all these toons arena points.

So I tried this pitch... why not put all the geared alts into one 5v5, and the ungeared ones into another... that way, you can play for titles, etc, without compromising the team rating with alt suckitude!

So Melvin and crew set up a winning team and a losing team. Melvin's mage, Magebert's mage, Arm, Palmy's paladin and pogar's rogue are in the good team.

Side note... Melvin wants my mage in the good team. And wants my mage to go back to PoM/Pyro. That's the limit of Melvin's strategy...

So.. good team. 2 pom/pyro mages, an inept rogue, a decent holy pal, and a decent arms warrior. Not much to write home about...

Now for the scrubs... which is where I play...

Holy priest, Elemental Shammy, Ice mage, Arms warrior (arms and fury), and usually Pogar's crappy fury warrior...

Do you see how evil I am? Melvin has no idea that I've tricked him into putting all the power on the scrub team... if I could only get Arm over to the scrubs and Pog on the other team full time... jeez... it would be murder.

Meanwhile Mabd is working up her 3v3 team with A&F's druid, and Sugars the lock. Itsa strong lineup, the druid and lock are still a little shaky on the whole arena thing. (again, see above...) Still have high hopes of us getting 1800 or so good, but its gonna take a bit more work than I realized at the start...

Oh yeah... is it just me, or are the drop rates of green gems offa fel iron and adaman now completely nerfed? I havent seen one since the patch... got over 10 rare gems, but no uncommons... weird...

And whats with the really low drop rate of arcane tomes? Anyone else noticed how much more expensive they are now in AH? I've seen 2 in all the orgy of sunfury slaughter the SSO quests have unleashed... 2 tomes to about 400 signets... thats not the right ratio...

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Cuz London is burning... and I live by the river!

Justa general note... I needa new system. Ima even looking at macs now...

You know those microsoft vermin blew the whole vista thing when yuir pricing gaming rigs, and systems with XP are more expensive than systems that come with Vista...

Can we murder Bill Gates yet?

And any suggestions for a system? Ima not happy with the stuff ima seeing at about $1500... but the step up starts at about $2800... I doan need flash, I do need power...

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Money... itsa gas.

Not much WoW this week. Burning out big time on SSO dailies. Almost to exalted on Mabd and STILL ONLY ONE BADGE.

Melvin claims to have gotten 5 so far.

Anyway, I thought I'd bitch some more about incompentent business models. Ima strange one... my latest mania is collecting pepsi caps for their music giveaway.

You get five caps... you can download one song.

How many caps do you think would be required to download an album?

Sixty.

So one album is equal to 12 hit songs. Does this make sense?

It's like the record companies don't even want to sell albums anymore... it used to be that they would push singles to promote the album... but now with remixes... you don't even get the best version of the song you like the most with the album.

Theresa story outta the economist that a record label asked a buncha teenagers to come to a Q&A on the state of industry. The label execs asked the kids questions about music usage, listening habits, etc... afterwards, they thanked the kids and showed them a table filled with new CD's, telling the kids to take what they wanted.

According to the story, the table was left untouched, and the execs were filled with a sense of doom...

But really... albums need to come down in price. 4-5$ for a download, and volume would more than make up for lower prices. Same way they price DVD's...

Bah...

Anyway, a friend of mine had a runin with the mortgage company countrywide... if ya dont know why I hate the american media, this story will let ya in on some truly horrific practices that the media are too stupid to cover. And a funny letter written back to the root of all evil in financial firms.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

In the back of my mind...

Mabd is revered with SSO. Woot! And phase three just hit my server.

That ore retrieval quest is too annoying. And I STILL only have one badger of justice offa a box.

However, Melvin has gotten into the act of grinding SSO rep. I told him sometime ago about the new philosopher's stones... he just realized he needed exalted to make em. So hesa questin.

He was tellin me about his first day in the trenches as it were... and was complaining about the Quel'Thelas bombing run.

"I died twice trying that!"

Er... how the hell do you die doing a bombing quest?

"Well... I didn't know it was a bombing quest the first time I did it... so I ran down to the dead scar and killed them the old fashioned way..."

!

!!

How the hell did you kill those pit fiends?

"Oh, they're always taking damage, so they don't aggro that often, just wait till they're near death and POM em..."

Have I underestimated Melvin? Cuz this would be a great joke... he HAS to be kidding, right?

Please... he has to. My sanity depends on this...

Monday, April 7, 2008

Ready, steady, go!

So anyway, Mabd joined a new guild about a month ago.

Sunday was the trial by Kara... ina group with 2 of the guild officers.

We cleared it in 3.5 hours. One wipe (on prince, cuz they got too used to EZ mode, and the 2.4 patch kinda... hurt...)

My first kill of Prince, Illhoof and Netherspite.

Ya know ya have too much DPS in Kara when...

Ya get curator down to 22% by the end of the first evoke.

The raid leader yells "Only five minutes to enrage!' when Netherspite is at 10%...

Tank pulls with both healers AFK and ya doan wipe.

Mabd was second on the damage meters, behind the fury warrior with an enhance shammy in his pocket.

AND... when we killed Prince on the second attempt... Mabd and a lock were the only ones left standing. Mabd is revered with Violet Eye now! Uber ammo for everybody!

I was happy... got to know the officers, they got to know me, and Ima assured of reinvites. And got 22 loverly loverly badgers.

Some fool surv hunter tried to gank Mabd while she was sitting ona Rich Adamantite node. Itsa shame when ya get the aimed shot off twice and still die a horrible death. L2 Rekognize Season 3 arena gear, nub.

Ima 3k rep from revered with SSO. Still haven't run MrT. Opened a bazillion friggin SS packages, and only one badge.

Oh... and I had a dream... My brother was a 5 foot tall stoner boomkin in hock to the local dealers... who got in my grill... so I turned into a big ass worgen and tore em apart.

I doan know whether to be relieved that my weird dreams now feature WoW crap, or worried.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

There's a new game we like to play, you see...

Bleh... I gotta load some screenshots up tomorrow... I gotta few that might be interesting.

Meanwhile, some bitching and general observations...

Sometimes blizz gets the weirdest damn ideas about what classes want. Melvin refuses to use season three gloves for his mage because...

Well... see, set gloves usually come with some sorta nice class ability. From HWL to season 2, mages got 5 more yards with their fireblast ability... a wonderful help for pvp dps.

Season 3, the was changed to 50% resist of pushback for polymorph.

This was a downgrade. True, Melvin is so inept his arena group forbids him the use of the polymorph spell until least three other team members are down, (and I'd tell you THAT story, but I'd much rather drink myself into oblivion than relive the nightmare again...) but he hasa point. Mages doan get pushback. If you gettin shelled, you gotta get the hell outta dodge, not try to cast crap. And 5 more yards on fire blast is HUGE. Big old nerf. Thanks again for nothing, blizzard.

Why am I yapping about this? The shammy gloves. The new season gives us access to old high warlord blues for rep. What goodie do enhance shammies get with their gloves?

8% more lightning shield damage.

Thankfully this got changed to 5 more yards for shock spells by season three... still... its kinda annoying to even have this crap. Great! The MS warrior just took 8% more damage from the 350 point lightning shield... that 1800 point execute hurt him more than it hurt me!

/cry

K... how about this guys? Stupid arena tricks for n00bs. Stuff to try.

Vrs hunters and locks. Some fools put their pets on defense, then try to hide behind pillars. Its a cute idea to smack the pet... and if its on d, it'll charge out to get killed. A lotta hunters bringing cats into the arena make this mistake... and with dash, thatsa dead damn pet if they doan catch it fast enough.

I pulled this trick last weekend in front of Sug and Aerth. The pet came, then the hunter came after it, then the other two, right into our buzz saw. Ima patting myself on the back for this trick, and trying to explain how cool it was... and Aerth and Sug blew it off. Ima still mad at them. Petty, yes, but I doan beat people with reflexes, so when I get a major tactical pwn like that down, I really wanna "good boy!'

And my fav frost mage technique. The elemental's frost nova is not on cooldown... so you can start the frost bolt, and while it's casting, hit the range frost nova, then hit ice lance right as the FB goes off. Before they know it, you get that double crit off... no time to trinket, no time to heal.

Its not a sure kill, but if you get a target that's taken damage already, it might as well be.

Ima gonna respec mabd and maj this weekend. Mabd is gonna go 11/41/9. Ill lose surefooted, but I should add another 2-4% to my damage, while makin the pet meaner. Plus the thick hide and imp rez pet. With all my epics (purplz!) my armor is pretty damn sick. 10% more would put my anti melee damage mitigation into serious range. Plus, I tend to run with aspect of monkey in melee heavy fights... 24% dodge, 45% melee damage mitigation... even that lazy ass boomkin should be able to keep me alive through that.

AND... Ima seriously thinking about respeccing maj elemental build. Pyroblast/Shatter? F3ar teh Cut3 1nz! And I *BET* I could get it off in arena. (specially running with a shammy... Bloodlust FTW!) What's worse than an autocrit pyro? Eating the crit from the icelance immediately after. Insult, meet injury. Injury, this is insult...