I can tell you why the end will never come

I was chatting with Melvin yesterday... he begins with:

"I have a Melvin story for your blog!"

... ok...

"I was doin quests in Icecrown, and I landed on the wrong ship... and got killed!"


... ok... um... but you're a pally... why not jump off and bubble before you land?

"Oh, you can do that?"

I had to explain to him that that wasn't quite a Melvin story. My gentle readers are connoisseurs of silly, and that was about just gettin stupid. See... we all get stupid. We don't all get Melvin.

There's this little horde quest up in borean tundra. At bogglesworth point, horde side, fizzcrank airstrip alliance side. Theres this vertical cave system with a buncha snobolds and magnataur in there. So, my first time through... its like 5 in the morning, and I'm 4 quests from done with the borean side of things. I get the quest.

"Blah blah, X is missing, blah blah, hes being held captive, go do something."

So I jump into the pit, see the boss, torch the boss, go back to base.

No complete. Dammit. Read quest again... "Find X"

Jump back in, find X. Talk to X, who's dead and floating. Get new quest, "held here by power of Y"

Great, go kill boss, go back to base. No complete.

Read quest again. "Y != boss"

Dammit... jump back into pit, look around, find a named snobold... kill him. Get complete. Read quest again... report back to X. Go to X.

"Thank you, I'm free! Take my body back to A (the original quest giver)."

Go back to base. No complete. Reread quest. "Loot my body below where I'm floating, and take back to A."

At this point I'm cursin up a storm. I jump back in, loot the body, fight my way out of the pit for the umpteenth time, get to base... turn in quest and I'm done. And wondering why, Horde side, we dont have to kill the damn boss at the bottom of the pit...

But this isn't Melvin. This is just bein stupid, at the end of a 12 hour gamin session. I explain this to Melvin.

"Well, what are you gonna write about in the blog then?"

I was thinking about telling them about your views on that mage fire talent hot streak. You know the one, after two crits, get a insta cast pyroblast...

"Oh yeah, great for pvp, terrible for raiding."

Do tell...

"Well, in pvp, if you get the chance to shoot someone in the back... this talent will proc. It's like it knows."

Um... isnt that cuz you pop combustion, so you're pretty much assured 2 crits in a row?

"Oh, yeah. Never thought of that."

But what about for raiding?

"Oh, all those instant pyroblasts make you run outta mana too fast. Better to just keep casting scorch and ignore the procs."

@Charles. Thanks for the advice. I'd read about that before... but lets face it... "ride yo 72 ass through terrain filled with level 80 elites, then try to kill yourself in the right place" is kinda a pain. However, you kinda inspired me to try it. And miracle of miracles... I got it done. Can't quite believe it myself.

As for the pvp side. I got a tip on that from another friend. Hit the wondervolt in Dal, then go to wintergrasp. Don't matter what level you are if your inna tank!

"How can you do it? Shoot innocent gnomes and dwarves?"

"Easy! Just don't lead em as much!"

AND! I was told (have yet to check out) that if you die in Wintergrasp, you can release to Dal. And so get the wondervolt again, and portal back in... I might try this tomorrow, last day for holiday...

Came the last night of sadness

Weird Christmas season. Crazy Derrek is back... I was trying to avoid him, but he snuck into my apartment building...

He had been living with his mother, in her assisted living joint. But she passed out on the bus last month, and never woke up.

So Derek is living with his sisters. And he HATES his sisters. And he's stopped bathing. He wants to stay with me for a while...

A friend of mine was disgnosed with a lymphoma. Kinda like BRK's friend is raising money for. It's not one of the auto fatal ones... its treatable with chemo therapy. The only problem...

She just got pregnant after trying for a few years.

Chemo started last friday.

So, the guild is getting a little bigger. Got an uber prot pally, another coupla healers. Unbound got her 25man raid pants, and is pretty much finished with gearing. (Just needs some shoulders... and maybe trinkets...)

I finally started leveling Majeure. Did UK as 70, and pulled 1300 dps. Which makes me wonder exactly how people pull less at 80. I realize that there's a huge freaking crit nerf, but still... I wonder if undergeared mages are better off usin frost builds till they get the gear for end game... rather than FFB, which seems terribly dependent upon crit...

Respecced Mabd as BM. Turns out MM/Surv runs outta mana during the first aimed shot cooldown. Sigh... lost 1200 RAP in the switch. But a kill commanded gorilla is an amazing thing. And I can't wait to try out the berserk rabid t rex...

Burnt out a lot on the achievements. You need flying for one of em, horde side (guy is on one of the icce crown airships, and you can't summon to him). I think that one broke me.

And dreams that had never come true

I'm still a little boggled that someone rejected Megs assa healer. And she has a neat post up on pally healing talents...

I wish I could do something like that, but my access to WoW stuff at work is kinda limited. BTW, if you a fan of enhance shammydom, Windfury hassa neat little brief on the changes so far...

I'm beginning to love my holy pally brethren. They just complement resto shammies so nicely in raids. Between mana totems and wisdom blessings, single target and raid target healings... specially once the hated CoH and Wild Growth spells get the big ol' nerf hammer. Tho I'm not so sure how effective Wild Growth is, considering I've not run with a resto druid yet.

CoH is kinda just a rude little healing spell. If it was a class, it would be ret pally. Sure as hell makes Loatheb easy tho. Or does until the nerf comin...

As fer resto shammies.. apparently too many resto shammies saw what I saw... ignore healing wave, spam lesser healing wave, and chain heal/riptide as needed. So, blizz is gonna make lesser healing wave a bit less mana efficient, and make healing wave a bit more oomphy. (I might have to start using healing wave...)

But between Megs and Av, my guild holy pal (he's weird... he hates ret pallies as much as I do... and leveled to 80 as holy...) I'm getting a bit of a handle on the psychological differences between the specs...

I mean, resto shammies are a lot like druids... you DON'T want to get behind on your heals... if the tank drops below 35%, you gonna have problems getting him back up... OTOH, you have so much bonus healing flying around, group healing isn't a problem.

Holy pals tend to be a bit more confident... but my friend is quite a bit paranoid about his mana consumption. Like shammies, they depend on that mp5 crap in gearing, unlike the spirit hogging druids and priests... but unlike shammies, they don't have the mana regen bells and whistles...

Anyway, I highly recommend the Windfury post. Elemental is starting to look very viable with the upcoming changes. I was talking to Melvin, and he hated them, which is probably a good sign.

Fer god's sake... he chain casts scorch in raids. And keeps molten armor up during Loatheb. Sigh. Oh yeah... have a link... and tell me, is that not the most evil internet thing you've ever heard of?

From the halls of montezuma to the shores of Tripoli...

So anytime someone asks me what my plus healing is... I can just link em the drake. Ima now inna leet group. Tho Megs, dearest... if you can heal arena to a title, heroic strat is nuttin (you run, damage comes from every direction, you heal). CoT Strat is no real test of yuir uberness...

Love the Corps. Not to suggest that my l33tness is anyway shape or form like theirs... but it kinda felt like it for a sec after I won the mount. I think I mentioned a while back that my friend Bruce came to visit for thanksgiving. And I gotta coupla stories on that. But for this one, well, Bruce is ex-navy. And thus, has a low opinion of the Corps. Since he was stationed on a vehicle landing craft, he spent a ton of time around em...

"So, you got this big floating hotel. With fresh food, cable tv, and air conditioning. And you leave it to walk through mud and get shot at... how smart is that?"

"Well, Bruce, you got me there... OTOH, Air Force, you sleep in your own bed at night, and theres tons of bars next door when you get off shift."

"Im talking REAL MILITARY, GODDAMIT!"

Bruce was also quite talkative, since they declassified some of his commendations... I might tell those stories later. (BTW... I never question Bruce's stories. He is the most frighteningly competent human being I have ever met.)

It started off kinda easy.. me and my tank chillin...

J: "I'm bored."
Me: "yeah."
J: "Wanna do something?"
Me: "Yeah, but where am I gonna get a dead mime and 7 gallons of smooth peanut butter this time of day?"
J: "... how about running timed strat?"

So, since I still need my pants outta there, it was settled... J posted LFG, asking for more with the caveat that "delusions of dps need not apply..."

Um.. later on we went to Naxx. Now, at this point, the guild has two tanks (the DK is now ready for prime time... and managed to suck up patchwerk's hateful bolts like a pro. Plus, that death grip is awesome for "you got adds" duty. Tho I must admit I was a little freaked the first time I got "You haz Aggro" message, only to see a mob fly by my face to the waiting DK)

However... we short decent dps. How short? Well... melvin got an invite to come.

Now, see... there was a little bit of a brain fart involved with this. There's this guy named Jae. Who, like most of us, has sacrificed his soul and life to the game and thus knows how to play. (The tragedy of Melvin is that he sacrificed his soul and life, and doesn't know how to play. Kinda like selling your soul for a 15% off coupon on purchase of $30 or more at Bed Bath and Beyond...)

Jae knows Melvin. Actually... I got Melvin into the game, Melvin got Magebert (his brother), and Magebert got Jae. Jae and Melvin hang out every time Melvin goes to visit his brother.

Jae is running a ret pally these days. And we were short a healer for Naxx, so Jae offered to respec holy. Again, Jae knows how to play, and has a 70+ priest. So he can heal. However, our well geared holy pal logged on, and suddenly we didnt need a healer. So, instead of bumping Melvin, the group decided to bump Jae. Cuz, you know we didn't need another healer, even tho he was still ret. I'm sorry if this is confusing, but again, Brain Fart.

Melvin lagged behind both tanks in dps for the night. (Tho he did get the safety dance achievement!) However...

Well, in the Untouchables, Sean Connery's character has a great line...

"Just like a whop, bringing a knife to a gun fight!"

Never bring Melvin to a dps fight. Specifically Loatheb. That was where the guild stopped for the night. If you dont know Loatheb... during the fight, dps gets +50% crit, and no threat. Even with this, Melvin couldnt break 1400dps. He was below 1k the rest of the night. Um... he's still wearing level 70 glad gear... he has less than 950 spellpower and less than 12% crit. And no mana pool. And he's a fire mage.

Now, Ima bit of a bastard, so I thought maybe, if you question my Melvin stories, you might be interested in what Jae has to say...

jae: "THEY TOOK MELVIN! INSTEAD OF ME! AND HE SUCKS!

me: "yeah, and a ret pally really would have been useful... divine storm and replenishment really help with Loatheb..."

jae: "He SUCKS! I do THREE TIMES his damage!"

me: "yeah, it was one of those weird things, tons of plate dps and tanks, but no real cloth.."

jae: "WTF?"

Jae is quite a bit miffed. However, I doubt Melvin is getting another invite chance. Sunday we went for part two, and dropped Loatheb and Patchwerk. And no one, but no one, wants Melvin in the group for Patchwerk. Yay guild! 7 bosses down!

A life from which they'd love to flee

Bettie Page, RIP.

Not that many people change the world with their hotness. Damn it all to hell.

Here's a brain teaser. Knock yourselves out. And yeah... that was back when education meant something.

Melvin was running regular HoL last night. Um, no, that's not the way to start this one.

One of our guild locks did vault, and came in second in dps. With less than 1.4k. I got into a conversation with the Guild Head of DPS, something along the lines of...

"I really, really, really have to respec elemental and show these fools what real damage is."

"Isn't that my job?"

"You ain't been on lately. I'm reduced to tellin Kry stories, you know the ones, and then the lazer turkey started shooting thunder out his furry arse... anyway, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, all the time."

So... Melvin, who has been avoiding end game comment like it was a bill collector, ran HoL with a guild equip team. See... our current 10 man offtank issa DK. And tryin to get a DK to uncrittability is apparently quite the task, since they don't use shields. So we've been runnin him through tryin to get enough gear to make up the difference.

And here's another Blizzard droppin the ball thing. They never thought of this. See, bears, i.e. feral form druids, don't quite have the same uncrit problem because of talents. They don't really *need* the shield.

There is, OTOH, nuttin in the DK talent tree to help.

How bad is the problem? Blizz is introducin a rune fer the DK rune weapon thingamajiggy that has 25 defense skill on it.

Skill, not rating. Thats like 125 defense rating. (actually, I think closer to 123.) That's a whole hell of a lot, and would've been nice to have um, right now...

Anyway, Melvin's mage was with them. And he dueled THE ROCK!, our guild prot warrior tank. And lost. Badly. Over and over.

And then blamed it on the gear.

"He's all epic'd out!"

"Yeah, all the defense, which reduces spell damage by 0%. Oh, and the dodge, that reduces it another 0%. And then there's the block and parry! Oh the horror! I've run with him, on single targets he gets all the way up to 700dps. Man, rather run into a rabid pack of feral ret pallies that go toe to toe with that monster..."

It was a bad day for magedom when Melvin decided on that for his first class.

Meh.

I feel so untouched...

Yeah Ripper... water shield is definately insanely overpowered...

Once the elemental shammy fixes come in, I have serious concerns about shammy play balance.

Let's see... l33t dps, can heal themselves at will (and others) and never run outta mana when damage is flying around at random...

Sound like a good thing to have in raids?

Boomkin as well. Hrm, we'll see.

So, a little history. Back before patch 3.0 hit, things got a little dicey. The arena season was ending, and badly. (my fault.) I was running around setting up my chars for the expansion, and my mage for the great inscription run... and getting way too intense.

By which I mean, I told Dogs of War, I'm gettin really really obsessive about this inscription thing. I was posting screen shots of my herbage collection.

And well, one thing led to another, last nerves got jumped on, and I left Arms and Fury's casual guild. Which upset him a great deal, since he was counting on me to heal the rest of the crew through some end game stuff to help gear em out before the expansion. He kinda took it as a personal betrayal... and stopped talking to me for about a month and a half.

The other thing... my old guild got back together. The one I ran MC and Kara with for the first times. Melvin, Magebert, Jae, Dave and a buncha people I didn't know in real life, but spent a lotta time with online had come together again for the expansion. And I kinda wanted in.

Well, anyway.. one of the guild heads is an obsessive boomkin. Who posted on the guild forums about dps. See, we got nutjob warrior tank, who knows what the hell hes doin. We got 2 nutjob healers (me and a holy pal, poor bastard). And we got the boomkin. The rest are a bit more casual. So the boomkin laid out the law in the guild site. If you are dps... you are expected to reach about 2k dps. 1.6k at the start is the lowest acceptable. As he put it, and I couldn't agree more, it really isn't about gear. It's about knowing your class.

The next coupla weeks we're gonna be running the dps through heroics, helpin tune em for the raids. Why did I bring this up? Well, BRK had a post a bit back about uber dps. And the impending uber nerf to BM hunterdom. And I have to say... it aint just a broken class that gets you to 3k dps. It's knowing how to PLAY the broken class.

I'm just sayin.

So, rip, with the vicious amount of random wandering damage in nexx... hows frost (and ice barrier, and double ice block) lookin?

And last night, Unbound got the northrend heroic dungeon master achievement. But more on tricks of the trade, how to WTFPWN heroic old kingdom later.

The speed of sound

So... a groveling apology.

I did not mean to insult Arms and Fury. I meant to do a post on early quirks in tanking and theat for WotLK.

According to WoWInsider, quoting Ghostcrawler, most players (read casual) aint yet to 80.

Unbound is about at the end of the heroic grind. Tho I would like to thank GeeGolly for raining on my parade, and pointing out that the immense amount of time I'm gonna be spending in raids will be completely useless for gaining faction...

Damn.

Anyway. I've done all the Heroics at this point. And most of that has been with PUGs. And, considering that the first people to reach 80 should be slightly above the curve... it's been a mixed bag.

Look. Tanks and healers have better gear than anyone else. Cuz tanks and healers have less grief finding groups than anyone else. We haven't quite reached the point where dps is outgearing anyone. And... tanks are havin a little bit of a problem.

90% of it is that we got lazy and stupid after 3.0 hit. The tank could easily hold aggro as, in the words of A&F, every class found their AoE button.

Then we ran through normal dungeons in Wrath in gear that wouldn't be replaced until level 80. Is it any wonder the first dungeons were cake?

But then the wall. No one is running level 80's in normal mode. The jump to heroic was made with both feet, and no one is looking back. And, quite frankly... some people aren't ready.

PUG after PUG... no cc, no caution, dps jumps in even before the mobs get pulled. We're having to relearn game skills.

As an aside... here is why you should not depend upon your resto shammy to Hex... I have *zero* plus hit gear. My chance to fail is usually around 10-12 percent. It has a range of 20... you do NOT want me that close to a mob pull. That being said, I will try.

But while doin HoL, I got tasked with a hex, and while waiting for the hex target to get into range, one of the other mobs charged me and punted me back 20'. It was a long run.

Anyway... back to the post. I did not mean to insult Arms and Fury. I merely wished to point out how a tank of some reputation is struggling with the new world order. And wishing he could run 80's level dungeons in normal mode to get some of the gear he needs to excel in heroic 80's.

After Burning Crusade hit, the first people in end instances found something very disturbing. Healer aggro was out of freaking control. Tanks could not, for the life of them, keep stuff offa healers in early Kara. It took a coupla patches for Blizzard to return equilibrium.

This should be obvious... healer threat, tank threat, and dps threat scale differently. It is irrational to expect perfect balance even with as extensive testing as Blizzard did in the beta. We all know Wrath shipped with issues placed on the back burner. (Dual specs, trap mastery... etc, etc...)

I'm worried about tanks. My pally tanks are takin weird spikes in damage. Warriors seem, again, to be heads and shoulders above the rest. My one feral experience was a nightmare. And DK's... well, it seems they're really awesome offtanks, but can't mitigate damage long enough to main tank. Blizz has said they're looking into this.

And even with a warrior tank... I got dps pullin theat by attackin the wrong mob, I got tanks not marking clearly enough, and no one seems to understand what the word "back" in the sentence "pull them the hell back" means.

Sigh. Anyway, back to the original point of the post. I meant no offense to Arms and Fury, and am sorry he took it as such.

Heaven aint close in a place like this...

So... Melvin and Magebert just got their second chars to 80. Both ret pallies. Neither have really bothered with anything vaguely like end game. I think both are expecting to gear their chars by accumulating points via sub 1400 arena teams.

Melvin refuses to believe that Unbound can kill ret pallies. Unbound refuses to believe anyone with any sort of self respect would play a ret pally, and therefore euthenasia is the proper treatment for the poor dears. If only it didn't take 5 minutes. Note to Blizzard... for god's sake, make those bastards run outta mana already.

Resto siliness. I got three glyphs. Lesser healing wave (must have). Water mastery. And healing totem.

Now a quick rundown on why...

Lesser healing wave glyph increases effects of the spell on a target with earthshield by 20%. This makes my LHW as effective as HW, with a much faster cast time. I'm sorry... at this point, after having run all the heroics, a 2.5 cast time general heal is insanely slow. Dont even bother putting HW on your toolbar. True, after putting 13 points in various talents, HW will give you better Healz Per Seconds... but only after the third cast on the same target.

Healing totem glyph. +20%. Hmm... right now, thats about 270 every 2 seconds. I was doin end boss of heroic Old Kingdom... and well, you know the locusts? They do about 700 every tic. See the math. Love the math. Also awesome for Loken :)

And water mastery... +30% water shield mana regen. Thats, um... 30 mp5. How many gems would that require? 5, 6? Yeah, sign me up.

Here's my take on glyphs. The glyphs you use should at least be worth a talent point. As in... I would spend at least a talent point to get that. If it's worth two... grab it. Must have.

Glyphs I'm not quite ready to try...

Chain heal. Your chain heal heals one more target. Inna 5 man setting... not so useful. The odds of 4 of your party being close enough to get hit by chain healz is not good... later on, raid wise, maybe.

Healing wave. You get healed for 20% of whatever your healing wave healz for. um... some fights, this would be freaking awesome. Problem is... if I cast this, the tank will bloody die... Not sure I wanna take this risk, especially since as thing currently stand, the member of my party with the lowest health gets a 40% heal every time my LHW crits. And I have a talent that adds 60% to my healing crit for a limited time. (which I need to use more...)

Earthliving glyph. +5% chance to apply earthliving effect (normally 20%.) I have to admit, I was EXTREMELY suspicious of earthliving when I saw it. It's a relatively puny little hot... however... with talents, it has a 100% chance to apply to someone who's health is below 35%. AND it gets a spell coefficient. Currently, mine is about 3500 over 12 secs. Um... thats freaking sweet. Chain heal loves this... three diff chances to proc. It's always up on my tank, usually. And any druid will tell you... lottsa hots on tanks prevent... "accidents." Only prob... that 5% aint enough to justify the glyph slot. Unless I get the chain heal glyph... then maybe... 4 chances to proc?

So, at this point, I'm missing ONE FREAKING H Old Kingdom boss for the every heroic achievement. And there's gear I need outta Old Strat. Aside from that, I'm pretty much done with heroics. I got enough emblems... and Naxx runs will get me whatever else rep or emblems I need. I'm 15 from my tier 7 chest... but got the season 5 chest outta Vault, so that gear upgrade is less pressing. I could use that healing trinket... but truely, it isn't that much an upgrade.

So... can I preen? At this point, shammy healerz seem to be head and shoulders above all others... single person healz we can hang. And that's our weakest point. Group healing, even CoH priests can't come close. Poison/Disease cleansing? We haz it. A priest will get you dead on the venomancers during the last boss of Heroic AN. Druids? I can haz bloodlust, plz? And windfury? KK, thx, bai. Paladins? Holy pals are so useless now, blizzard refuses to put any of their gear in the end game.

It's weird. I'm mental enough to check the chief raiding guilds on my server to see how badly I outgear their resto shammies. And then there's the tank issue...

Is it just me, or have warriors achieved significant separation? All the druids seem to have gone boomkin. All the pallys ret. DK's havent been around long enough to tank, so it's hard to judge them. But I've been mostly seein prot warriors tanking, with a few prot pallies hangin on. My one run with feral was a disaster.

Then there's the threat issue. My favorite tank blogger has gone from "you can't pull aggro offa me if you try!" to "well, they just have to be more careful with threat..." and "you know, you generate a lot of threat asa healer!"

Of course this was during a fight where I blew by 2k heals per second. You should see what I do during Loken. Even if certain foul smelling dwarves think its ALL ABOUT THE DPS. I did the Loken fight with a hunter that got too far away from the chain healz, and died at the first AoE. With 2 dps, we killed that bastard. So, you deviant kitty sniffer... may I politely suggest Loken issa healing check? With decent dps, I've downed him in 45secs. Without decent healing, you don't make it past the first smash of the hammer... do Heroic AN with a priest, then get back to me. When you do, don't forget stone form.

Anyway, part of this is that Herk is still a bit undergeared. An undergeared tank is problematic... he needs better dps and healz to compensate, but has problems keeping aggro with them. Tanks should usually outgear everyone else... its kinda an imperative. My guild tank is very well geared... and a riot. In vent he won't shut up while tanking.

"I AM A ROCK! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

"MESS WITH MY HEALER AND I GET MEAN!"

"TRY THAT ONE SHOT MY DPS CRAP WITH *THIS* TAUREN!"

Which leads to interesting questions about the scaling of tank threat... as dps gets its feet under it... will tanks be able to keep up? I'm beginning to see dps threat cap itself, even with great tanks. Considering how blizzard sprinkled raid buffs all over the classes... that proc in battle... tanking has become even more complicated. BANG! +15% melee haste, +10% ap, +15% crit... all hitting when dps is burning cooldowns... and suddenly threat can double, or so. And I think tanks are having problems keeping up with these spikes. Or will when the dps catches up gear wise.

And last.. really, no one liked the Twilight link last post? Damn... must haz feedbacks...

To kick the last nail in...

*Edit* Here's something to read....

Who's this? Why, it's Benjamin Disraeli! The father of modern conservatism, at least the political side of it. What's he doin in our neck of the woods?

Well, back at the Congress of Berlin, circa 1878, Bismark said of Disraeli... "The old jew, ah, THAT is the man!"

In like vein... Ripper, that old troll... ah, THAT is the mage!

Anyway, Ripper has a neat little post up on some very sensible changes to mage talents to make spirit a useful stat for mages. Cuz, let's face it, when they made evoke a flat mana pool regen ability, rather than an enhanced (spirit based) mana regen ability, mages pretty much lost interest in it.

Here's my take... BURN WORLD, BURN!

Screw it. What the world needs now, is hate sweet hate.

Let us not forget the ultimate mage poem by Robert Frost...

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Or, in the other interests of anarchy... what we need are more esoteric drops that allow for off the wall *functional* specs.

Look... Ima fire mage. I want crit, sweet crit. Gots to have it.

Ima frost mage. Screw crit, give me spell power and haste.

Ima arcane mage. I wanna be kidnapped and beat bloody by a dozen mimes wielding nerf bats...

No one set of items will satisfy all mages. Or all priests. Or all locks. But that's pretty much what we've been getting. A dozen freaking epic cloth bracers with the same damn stats, just a different name. Gemming to spec really doesn't help enough. Nor do enchants. I think blizz really dropped the ball on some of this. I mean, theres no reason for a faction to only have ONE freaking epic mail reward, and that be enhance. Or even one caster mail reward... I know blizz wants both dps and healers to use the same gear... but theres no reason not to offer three different caster mail items, with different stats emphasized. What does it cost them?

All I'm saying... is that first, blizzard is trying to do too many damn things as far as itemization, and failing miserably. I mean.... Unbound has almost as many epics in her enhance off set as she does for her resto set. Caster mail? None to be found...

Remember the original class sets? Remember mages all rollin on lock items cuz locks got sexy sta and int, and mage gear had all this crappy agil and spirit?

It hasn't gotten better. Blizzard gives us what they think we should want, even if, in the case of mages, not even an ice troll mage would want spirit.

We should have drops heavy on crit, on spell power... even a few hard core spirit. Instead of a managerie of stats on every item... let people specialize...
Myself, I'd like to take cause against Ripper's favorite punching bag, mana shield...

If you got enough spirit on an arcane mage... I'd love to see what mana shield could do with a 600mp5 mage build. Just freaking weird enough to be fun to play... like all those survival hunters runnin around back in the day with 80% dodge...

All I'm saying here is that the problem isn't that spirit is useless for mages. So is strength, and no one would call for talent changes to make strength a useful mage stat...

The problem is that the bulk of caster gear has spirit on it, whether you want it or not. And this is all blizzard's freaking fault. So.. two responses... first, the when blizzard gives you lemons, make lemonade. That would be ripper. Me, Ima more a "when blizzard gives you lemons, show up at their office with a chainsaw and a dead squirrel, screaming.. 'WHERE'S MY PIE!'" type of guy.

Anyway, Unbound broke 2k +healing/spell damage last night with shammy cast buffs. Ima really, really, really well geared right now.

If only I could get some damn rings and necklaces that didn't have freaking spirit on em...

What's so civil about a civil war?

Time to level a second toon. I had been thinking about running Mabd, but to be honest... Mabd really needs to finish all her netherstorm quests (another 50 or so) back in Outland. And I really don't want to mess with outland right now.

Mabd has a 440 JC. And does her JC and cooking dailies each and every day. She's almost 71...

No... after Unbound healed for a frostfire mage inna heroic, I now know what I want Majeure to be when she's all growded up! Sick sick damage. I have to admit, I was a bit peeved at BRK for showin offa combined pet/hunter dps around 2400...

But then I saw my lovely lovely Lightninghoof Horde FROSTFIRE mage doin about 2100. And was happy again.

For the most part... healin has been easy. I've had two bad tankin experiences... both with a poor prot pally that was way undergeared for heroics. OTOH, I'm geared enough for anything. Theresa really interesting fight at the end of heroic halls of lightning that becomes insanely easy with a simple gear check. If eveyone has at least 14k life... and the healer has mad skillz... you can just sit tight, take the 12k hits from Loken, and down that fool in 45 seconds.

Moar on dps... ima seeing way too damn many dps in heroics that can't break 1200. And my problem with this prot pally... he's only got 21k health. No evasion (all defense gear). And he doesn't use retaliation aura, so he keeps losin aggro to dps. I'm not sayin that the ret aura is needed. I'm just sayin... when someone doin 1400dps is takin aggro from you... you aint tankin right.

Plus crap would come free and smack me. Bad tank = more healing =more healer threat. Ah, the hell with it.

So... s priests have been trashin the dps meters in my runs. Aside from frostfire boy (who had pretty crappy gear) the only dps I've seen over 2k has been 2 s priests anda really awesome death knight.

Shammies have been representing.. even while undergeared. I have to say... when the new elemental changes come, ele shammies might be a force to be reconned with. And, btw, ripper? Could ya be moar a whining little beatch? Yeah, blizzard has no damn clue how the "spirit on everything cloth" fetish screws mages. Still, takin a cheap shot at elemental shammies? For shame! I hope ret pallies think you have a "real purty smile."

Not only do elemental (and resto) shammies get jack sh*t from spirit... elemental shammies main mana regen depends on int. All this +mp5 gear is killing us. I think hunters too... I doan see BRK sporting much mp5 these days. As for Blizzard... I mean... really... if your gonna make a million different epic cloth wrist drops, do they all have to be the freaking same?

What does that mean for poor unbound? Well... the appeal of cloth and leather gear is very limited. And my rings and cloaks tend to have crappy spirit as well. I mean... I don't run outta mana. I do, but not in a way that spirit will help. If the group is takin massive damage, water shield will keep me full. If the group is taking limited damage, chain heal keeps it all good. And I can spam chain heal non stop for a bit more than a minute without water shield up.

One target healing? Between earth shield and lesser healing wave... I really dont have have problems. Did heroic stone halls.. fought the stone giant... you know, baby gruul? The first shatter killed all three dps, leavin just the prot pally and me. 8 min later... hes at full health, I'm at full mana, and the boss is dead. (The pally was killin me... how the hell can anyone do that little damage?)

Resto shammies are sick sick healz now. I think properly specced holy priests can keep up... but its close.

As for damage... the second the elemental changes go live, Ima respec elemental, and see what 27% crit and 1700 spell power will get me. If the lava burst changes are accurate, I'm expecting 8-10k auto crits.

Meanwhile, I'll run beloved Majeure up to 80... and Mabd gets shelved fer a small bit. Even tho end game, I think the MM/Surv hunter build will scale the best.

Oh yeah, ripper... didya see Meg's little tantrum?

"Oh, and Mages might be getting 50% reduction from DOTs with Mage Armor.. screw Mages."

Moar like 75% when you count 140 resist all, Megs my love. Gonna be weird when mages start running towards yuir lock in the BG, aint it?

Heh heh heh...