ReNoobed

Sometimes goodbye's the only way...

2009-09-26T03:07:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I quit playing.

I've been posting quite a bit on my other blog... And I'm gonna stop this one. Was nice hangin with you all, spec ripper. And that mad orc, ratter.

Anyway, here's my big list of wow regrets.

1. Ever playing a PvE server.Compared to that, PvP servers are like sex without the condom. And with a partner. Admittedly, a sadistic 12 year old parter... maybe I should stop now.

2. My first char was a troll mage onna PvP server. I moved to be with a friend and started a rogue on his PvE server. Big mistake.... shoulda stuck with the mage. Rogues are for people who hate humanity a lot. Mages are for people who hate humanity intensely.

3. I missed the whole opening of AQ event. It happened during one of my burnout/server hopping periods. When you consider this was probably the only real global event in the six years of WoW history... yeah, still pisses me off.

4. Ever becoming an officer in a guild. The first rule of guilds and S&M gay pr0n. Never freaking volunteer!

5. Ever playing alliance. Goddamn Ironforge, anyway.

6. Getting my only real pvp title (Knight Commander) onna ally char. (59 nelf hunter) It hurts my soul not havin a decent pvp title on a hordie char.

7. Ever trying to level a paladin. Orra warrior. Plate is a waste of a freaking drop.

Anyway... I go now to my final reward... hopefully SC2 inna few months, and diablo 3 inna year and a half. Stay (blood) thirsty, my friends!

Stand your ground

2009-08-14T18:01:00.003-04:00

Bored, and have to spend another hour at work...

Downed HM Thorim this week, bangin head against HM General now. That life leech is killin us.

I suspect that the proc rate on 4 piece tier 8 might have gone up... or RNG is really, really messin with me.

Anyway, lets talk GI JOE.

A lot on the right are up in arms against an american icon getting "multinationalized." I'm sorry... suck it up. It been the way ever since they started givin John Wayne a little native boy as a comic relief/boytoy in war movies. American military movies have always made a point of including other nationalities in our struggles. FFS, we had french and germans fightin alongside us during the revolution.

The problem is that the movie doesnt really acknowledge america as the point nation. And it is idiotic to assume that american special forces would work independent of the american government.

Sigh. I mean, they don't even pick up the big insult... Cobra's big plot is to make the world fall into line behind america.

K, nough politics. Lets see... movie starts with a super secret weapons research plant in central asia. Later on, another one pops up in "east africa." I mean... yeah, that makes sense... weapons are weapons, and you'd make ultra sensitive micro weapons in areas with unreliable electricity, corrupt troops beating up your help, and the occasional explosion. Cuz you know... silicon valley would just be too simple.

Oh yeah.. big shock... the bad guys are the arms dealers. Cuz, you know... guns don't kill people.. people who sell guns to people who kill people kill people. Just think of the profit margin!

I mean... we're talking about the most heavily audited industry on earth. Really... if an evil corporation has to be behind crap, why cant it be microsoft or intel? Hell, they could build a massive secret base under the arctic outta spare change, and noone would notice.

But can you picture the sales pitch to NATO? We're gonna make the most advanced weapons the world has ever seen, and we're gonna make em in a lab directly between China and Russia!

Sigh.. don't even get me started on Marlon Wayans. If I'd known he was in the movie I simply wouldn't have gone. He's Jar Jar Binks given flesh. He's a black Pee Wee Herman, only without the cleverness.

And he gets more time on screen than anyone. BTW... hollywood... if yuir reading... not everyone in a movie needs to get laid. Just sayin.

Then there's the baroness... see, there's this trope. It's kinda seriously racist, but still exists in a bit more sanitized form. See... the baroness in the movie is doin bad things cuz she's brainwashed. But her love for Duke overrides her brainwashing, and she ends up being a hero...

Back in the day, a lotta b grade movies and stories had this semi porno plot... american guy gets captured by evil foreigner, evil foreigner's daughter falls under the spell of american... um... "mojo..." and then helps american escape, betraying her father and people...

How idiotic is this? Reference the greek story of Medea sometime to see what greeks thought of this behavior.

Anyway, old school flash gordon? Ming was too busy trying to rape a white woman to notice his daughter puttin out to flash.

I mean... really racist. Sigh. But along with this is the assumption of pure and innocent women... who can't possibly work with terrorist organizations.. they must be "brainwashed." And would willingly swap sides the minute Mr. Right showed up.

Is it too much to ask for a bellatrix? A white witch? A paris hilton? K.. maybe not that evil. But still... and maybe a more cohesive motivation?

Remember annikin skywalker's politics... "the strong must take charge to reduce chaos!"

Yep.. that's cobra's motive.

It really really didnt have to be this way. I can think up a dozen ways to spiff up both GI Joe and Cobra... and have the movie a crapload more interesting. You spend $175 million on a movie... drop a few hundred thou on writers, ffs.

Oh and snake eyes' mask was hideous.

Forever and ever!

2009-08-11T18:11:00.002-04:00

Took some time off. The guild is mad at me... well, not really, the guild leader apparently lost his job by failing a drug test...

Considering he's one of the most high strung people i've ever been in vent with, there's an awesome case to be made for medical marijuana.

Anyway, the week I took off ends up bein the week the patch hits... so I got two questions...

One, what the hell am i gonna replace power auras with? It aint working, and I havent seen a recent update. What do my fellow non gnome mages use to keep track of pyro (fire) and fireball (frost) instacast procs?

Two... went to see GI JOE with Melvin. It sucked. So you people wanna review?

Golden in your darkness

2009-07-23T21:48:00.003-04:00

And after that crit, maj became a well dressed smear across the floor of ulduar...

You get what you need...

2009-07-18T23:55:00.003-04:00

I haz 4 piece tier 8 bonus. :)

Damn 10 man pants! They make maj's butt look big.

It's better to burn out...

2009-07-12T14:31:00.002-04:00

Yeah... been doin crap.

The guild runs a naxx 25 pug that Melvin loves because it gets him tons of epics with no wipes. I mean, we're talking 3.5 hour full clear.

So we're doin loatheb, and the guild is betting on whether the holy pal will beat Melvin's lock in dps, usin just holy shock.

I dunno sometimes.

All the toys and the tools in the box couldn't get you off...

2009-06-29T01:16:00.003-04:00

OMW to stomp on some fires...

Damn peculiar activity fer a fire mage, but as the ratter puts it, you can tell who the good guys are as them the folks payin you.

Hard core raiding is kinda eating into my meditative post generation reflection time. Ah well.

So, here's some general crap. My quest for music has gone well, here are three albums that stood out...

Delirium, Best of Delirium
Bt, Movement in Still Life
Metric, Fantasies

Im still not sure why I like that last one so much.

You don't care if it is wrong or if it is right...

2009-06-17T10:27:00.002-04:00

So... I joined the most prestigious raiding guild on my server... (horde side, might be some argument overall...)

First night in, killed yog, maly 25 and sarth +3.

Killed X2 hard mode last night. And FL +3.

Damn, I need a break already. And I'm in the back of the pack on damage meters...

He said shut up!

2009-06-06T01:26:00.005-04:00

Time to change guilds... new one needs a UI screenshot.

Because lies sound so nice

2009-06-03T14:14:00.002-04:00

I've been havin problems sleeping again. So, I spent a few hours buyin stuff offa Amazon's digital download center.

I'm at a weird time right now. I'm still havin fun with the game. However, drama intrudes. I rather like the guild I'm with right now, but they ain't goin anywhere past uld 10 anytime soon, no matter how hard they recruit.

And I can accept that. Raids starting at 11:30 my time... more of a pain. However... I've been running a bit with one of the more sucessful raiding guilds on the server. And while their vent chat tends to freak me out a bit, they get crap done. And I play better with em. I finally got my mage over the 5k dps hump. (inna 25 with an ele shammy anda boomkin)

So, I've been considering a move... and then, outta the blue I getta invite to a different raiding guild, also in the top three on my server/faction.

Personally... I prefer the social dynamics of the guild I'm in. But from a l33tist asshole standpoint, I'd really like to do serious endgame crap at least once before I stop playing this game.

So... I learned a new trick with my mage. Which is probably old hat to most of you... but I'm just (finally?) getting my head around the potential of mirror image. I've been pretty good at surviving raid wipes, and avoiding death when I pull aggro, but that was due mostly to inspired use of ice block and invisibility. I really didnt know that mirror image pretty much wiped all your aggro off for 30 secs or so.... so now, when I pull aggro with the mage, I pop mirror image before ice block.

Course, this is mostly trash fights. Boss fights, I don't pull aggro unless the tank goes down. (Which is usually how I find out the tank is down... enemy number one, baby...)

Allright... so lets do some pop culture. Ripper reviewed the new WoW book. And I gotta say rip... let go of star wars. The first three were alright up until the empire got taken down by teddy bears. The second three were so horrific... and well, lets leave that.

There was a movie a while back that pretty much rocked hollywood. The Score, with Robert DeNiro and Ed Norton. And when I say rocked... i didn't mean in a good way. The most significant part of the movie was Ed Norton's character... who pretends to be mentally handicapped to rip off a place.

The reason this was controversial was that hollywood had just given a buncha oscars to people that played handicapped characters. And here was norton, mocking them, by playing a vicious bastard pretending to be handicapped for money. See the joke? After that... not so much interest in 'special' roles...

Anyway, I've been holding off recommending this fantasy series. People spout things about "character development." The First Law series is to epic fantasy what Full Metal Jacket is to John Wayne war movies. After you read it, you will feel violated... and curse every epic fantasy series you've ever read. The point of the series is to destroy every epic fantasy cliche, one at a time, in excruciating detail. "Lost Prince?" Yeah, right. Quest to recover an artifact of ultimate power? Are you insane? Ancient wizard who ISN'T a complete bastard? You probably believe in the easter bunny as well, eh?

The most sympathetic character is a torturer. And I mean that... at the end, I thought that the only character worth a damn as a human being was... well, the torturer.

Character development? Reminds me of the old animaniacs cartoon, that would end with the "Wheel of Morality."

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn
Show us the lesson that we should learn...

My favorite?

"Elvis lives on in our hearts, in his music and in a trailer park outside Milwaukee."

Let me hear you screaming just for me

2009-05-28T15:57:00.003-04:00

Its been a rough time in the old Noobed neighborhood. The old guild is kaput. The new guild is havin problems breakin the 25 man raiding roster limit.

And our good friend Ripper is having issues.

Seems he posed for a coupla.. ehm... provocative pictures back in the day, and they've recently been posted to the internets.

Of course only a completely vicious and tasteless bastard would link them or anything...

So anyway... he's been reacting badly, and I know a lotta his friends are planning an intervention. Here's a guide to surviving a trip up there. Well, ordering food up there...

A translation guide to Canadian Pork products

You say......................You get
Bacon ........................Ham
Pork Chops...............Ham
Pickled Pigs Feet......Ham
Sausage......................Ham
Ham............................Celine Dion

Note that this chart is a little unpredictable, as any results may also be influenced bye the time of day, the province, the lack of a french accent, the presence of a french accent, and what just turned green and needs to be sold.

Also... never order eggs poached. There is a superstition in Canada that any unfamiliar word that has two vowels back to back must be french. And um... they have curious ideas about what the french do with their eggs. And where white sauces come from.

Well now, everything dies, baby, thats a fact

2009-05-21T17:45:00.003-04:00

Two posts in a week? Maybe three... I'm plotting against ripper. Doan quite know how to keep it vicious yet tasteful...

Um. Well, there's this. I dunno how many of you would be interested in this. Tiananmen was a while ago, and China is changing so fast...

And I'm not even sure how much I sympathize with the protesters. I was in Tiananmen square a few years later (coincidently on the anniversary of the massacre) and I really had a hard time imagining what they could have accomplished even in a best case scenario.

However, the massacre was a horrific reaction. And Zhao Ziyang was one of the victims.

Why am I posting on this? Cuz of two people I respect greatly. Both of whom lived more than 2000 years ago.

Him.

And Him.

The important thing to remember about Socrates... he kinda detested democracy. But he believed in the law. His death in no short measure was the result of his standing up for people against lynch mobs. His death sentence was a hypocricy... it was assumed that he would leave Athens for exile.

He didn't. And, as the cliche goes... spoke truth to power, using his death to give a grim authority to his message. As a defender of Athenian law against those who would abuse it... he could not in his final hour ignore the same law as it came for his life.

Now, most of you probably know that... Sima Qian is less well known in the west. Sima Qian is to chinese (and by extension east asian) history what Socrates was to western philosophy.

Sima Quin was a well connected official in the early Han dynasty who decided to speak out against the unjust trial of a han army officer. For his honesty he was sentenced to... well... castration.

Now... this is china. There are ways around this. The first is a big bribe... but because of the political nature of Quin's "crime," he was unable to raise any money.

Like in socrates's case, this was just window dressing... the "criminal" was intended to kill himself rather than suffer such indignity. The wiki article has Quin's thoughts on the matter...

Anyway... he accepted the mutilation. And he spent the rest of his life writing the first modern chinese histories. Which were hidden until political circumstances changed.

There's a story that he sent his writings into the mountains... and wrote to the emperor that on the day of the emperor's death, the histories would return... and on that day, Quin, and truth, would have revenge.

Just a bit of context. This is the tradition followed by such Ziyang. The revenge of the honest man against the pitiless state.

So the next time Keith Olberman bitches about being repressed... well.

About a god we've never seen

2009-05-20T16:31:00.003-04:00

Meh... Alliance on my server reading my blog. Not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, thanks for the kind words Adamantite. OTOH...

If you are a member of Symphony of Blades or Smashbunny, Ima gonna off myself.

SoB (horde translation: Motherf$ck&rs) issa ganking guild. The other night they were camping the ghostfish daily fishing site. And one of their druids pulled an interesting trick.

He flew up to where I was sitting on my flying mount and dismounted me with typhoon.

I am dying to try this with blastwave... but honestly cant make room in my fire raiding build to take the talent.

So... went to see Star Trek with Kimmu-sempai.

And I came outta the movie with two sad realizations. First, that it was an excellent and enjoyable movie even tho the plot made absolutely no sense. At all. And second... I hate trekkies.

I pointed this out to Kimmu and she told me not to call them trekkies... it's rude.

So apparently I hate trekkers instead. Nice to be corrected. Wouldn't want to offend em, or anything. Just hate em.

Now I gotta lotta problems with star trek. Mostly... it makes no goddamn sense. I mean... don't these people have anything better to do? A space going battleship that can be crewed in battle by ONE man? What the hell is the rest of the crew for?

A star goin nova, so they send a bazillion year old vulcan, ALONE, to fix it?

And since when have romulans been this butch? I mean... I'm watchin one dangling Kirk by his neck, and I'm thinking... I know trekkies... sorry, trekkers... dont know crap about human anatomy... but the neck is not the human version of a coffee cup handle.

And second, is there a single race out there that humans can beat in wrestling? I mean... why the hell does everything have to be so much more physically capable than humans?

How exactly did he figure out where/when spock was gonna pop outta the time portal? Did he just hang around waiting for the lightning storm inna fixed region for 25 years and hope not to get noticed?

How does a captain promote someone who isn't even a part of their military at that point to second in command?

Why didn't the romulans just go to romulus and turn that ubership and all that uber tech over to their home planet?

Look. Its like this. Star Trek isn't science fiction. All we can hope for issa good story and some reasonable level of internal consistancy. JJ Abrams pushed the action at a pace that would keep us from noticing how nothing was making sense. So... itsa good movie.

I used to game a bit. And one of my fav gaming buddies had a theory on role playing games... that kinda applies here. If the game is gonna be worth a damn... people can't know what game they're playing. So you start them off thinking they're playing something like D&D, and then turn it into Call of Cthulhu.

See... if they know the rules... they know how to win and how to cheat.

Great movies are a bit like that. Either you can't really see whats coming till the end... or the ending is so obvious and brutal, you can't accept that that's where it's going.

Why the hell give the romulans a back story? I mean really.. what does it add to the movie to know that they're avenging the death of romulus if they're doing it in such an idiotic way? And more importantly...

TIME TRAVEL IS STUPID.

I don't know. It just seems that something that had that much effort put into it shoulda had a plot that an eight year old couldn't punch holes in. Personally, I blame the trekkies. Er... trekkers.

And I'm still not sure how I feel about Vulcans with perpetual 3 o'clock shadow...

Well, they blew up the chicken man in philly last night

2009-05-12T11:09:00.003-04:00

The in-game wedding was a lotta fun. Afterwards, we went skydiving from the dal sewers...

I have modest goals for this blog. More or less... post once a week. More if I have to vent or something. It's kinda busy at work right now, so I've been slacking

Majeure has become quite the achievement whore. Goddamn it. I needa new addiction like I need another hole in my privates. (Don't ask.)

So... despite the whole "this issa mage blog" thing, I really need to do a shammy post. Later.

Today... Ripper went to the fountain of stupid and got wet. And I gotta correct him.

Look, Ripper. Itsa freaking Keanu Reeves movie. I mean really. Didn't he get kicked outta the church of scientology for excessive crazy?

It's also a propaganda piece for the environmentalist movement. You know, that whole group of people that want folks to only use one sheet of toilet of paper per visit to the bathroom? Virgin forests? I assure you... those are slut trees and they had it coming.

The great Quentin Tarentino was once criticized that his movies had gratuitous violence. He replied that condemning his movies for excessive violence was like condemning pr0n for excessive sex.

Condemning a Keaun Reeves environmentalist movie for excessive stupidity is pretty much the same thing.

And here's my think about why science fiction these days is slowly turning into freaking garbage.

(WARNING! MAY CONTAIN CRITICISMS ABOUT STAR TREK AND STAR WARS! IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THAT, GO UPSTAIRS AND ASK YOUR MOTHER TO HUG YOU TILL THE SHAKING GOES AWAY)

I still can't write about the clusterf$ck that was Battlestar Galactica. I mean... that ending...

But there has been a trend in Sci Fi over the last few decades in which the Frankenstein's monster argument predominates. New technologies? Evil corporations and governments will use them to screw us all. Aliens? Cuddly hyper moral beings here to correct us.

What, they're shooting at us? That just shows how cuddly and hyper moral they are!

Sci Fi has moved on from the concept of evil. This is why Sci Fi is dying. This is why fantasy is beating the crap outta sci fi. This is why the blockbuster movies are things like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and various super hero movies. Cuz the first story ever told was about a guy who stood up, said "this ain't right," and went off to kick ass.

Sci Fi can't tell that story anymore. These days its all about trying to understand why the tentacle monster has such horrible sexual hang ups. And feeling its pain.

OK... maybe that wouldn't be such a bad movie idea...

But sometimes bug eyed monsters just need to be killed. Sometimes it really is just about US vs THEM. Independence Day anyone? Star trek lost it when... well, when they decided that William Shattner was the greatest martial artist in human history. That's why Matrix was so great, and Matrix 3 was crap.

Matrix... "we've been slaves all this time and didn't know it! TIME TO BREAK SHIT!"

Matrix 3... "actually... this whole slave crap is not so bad, as long as *we* get to live in Zion and crash the matrix fer babes and parties every so often..."

To quote Rorschach.. never compromise.. not even in the face of apocalypse!

BTW, heres an awesome Alan Moore link.

A friend of mine once spent 30 minutes bitching about how terrible the recent war of the worlds remake was. And the upshot of it was all about how much of a coward Tom Cruise was.

The original story was a fable of colonialism. About what would happen if aliens tried to colonize England like England was colonizing other lands. (Hence the part about alien farms "watered" by the blood of the natives... englishmen for once, instead of asians or africans) The response... mindless, ferocious resistance. No matter how superior the aliens' technology was. NO SURRENDER. Read the damn book.

Radical environmentalism is a sick joke. It is a response to the rapid pace of technological change... basically (as the old joke about conservatives goes) standing atop the turning world shouting "STOP!"

The word "terraforming" has been lost. For thousands of years, we've been moving rivers, leveling forests, growing forests, and radically changing local fauna and flora in order to make the world more habitable by ever increasing numbers of humans. As Heinlein one wrote... "every time the human race has been faced with the choice between becoming less promiscuous or more resourceful... they choose the latter."

I mean really... in a coupla hundred years... we'll be able to turn the sahara into green fields. We'll be able to make new island paradises like Hawaii and Bermuda. Replace the Amazon rainforest overnight.

Canada will probably stay frozen and boring tho. I don't expect miracles.

So... what exactly is the point of the modern environmentalist movement? As ripper points out... movies like TDTESS and The Day After Tomorrow are based on such flawed science that even science fiction fans won't buy it.

Yeah, that's Kirk's real hair. Whatever. But I'm not buying this whole "world freezing because of global warming" crap!

Anakin became Darth Vader because he missed his mommy? mmmkay... Dude stops wind up watches because that kind of technology threatens the environment? No way...

Why did we lose faith in progress? Why do we pay attention to nutjobs telling us the world is gonna end in.. oh, say, 50 years without thinking... "well, by that time, I'll be immortal, have a harem filled with sexy cylons, and the human race will have started building its third earth.. a paradise with no Canada."

So, to summarize Ripper... why are you complaining? You really expected the movie to make some kinda sense? Here's a project for you... netflix the original TDTESS and The Thing. Both came out the same year (1951.) Compare and contrast the attitude of each movie towards both the military, and scientists.

Note how in both movies scientists conspire with aliens against the human race, but in TDTESS, this is presented as a noble action, whereas in The Thing, it's seen as treason...

Oh yeah... here's a star trek link...

Would you choose the water over wine?

2009-05-07T18:37:00.002-04:00

Not sure anyone reads this anymore.

Anyway, one of my self promises is to put at least one post up every week. So... here it is.

Downed Hodir last night with the uld-10 group. Love the new guild, but they doin an ingame wedding tomorrow. And I've no idea what to get the couple. Or even if they a couple in RL. One of those healer/dps pairs. Cept she's the dps (and she beats the pants offa me on damage meters with her surv hunter.) And hes the pally healer.

Mabd is pretty much retired fer a while. Unbound is only gonna be running with the old crew, which is to say once inna blue moon.

So ima mage player, and this issa mage blog.

Is it just me, or how evil is it that fury warriors and rogues are much better at aoe adds duty than mages? I really cant spare the mana to blizzard without destroying my ability to dps the boss. Meanwhile, rogues never run outta freaking knives to fan, nor warriors rage to whirlwind with.

Speaking of which... I've become obsessed with master of elements... and its interaction with the spell named after the company that puts the game out..

Namely Blizzard.

Master of elements gives 30% of mana back with a crit. Blizzard issa channeled spell. How do these two work?

Well, blizz has 8 tics. And if I crit ANY target in a given tic, I get 91 mana (30% of blizz cost/8?) back. I crit a target each tic, I get back the net 30%... making blizz damn near affordable.

I need to mess with flamestrike and arcane explosion to see how they work with MoE...

Also... something is weird with living bomb. Some people claim LB tics wont set off ignite... but dammit, I'm getting ignites on targets at the weirdest times. AND hot streak. A shame I'm usually too drunk to figure out how.

We better have a good explaination for all the fun that we had

2009-04-27T15:18:00.002-04:00

Braids is leavin us. Dammit, now I'll never get to see the much promised pictures of her in Wildheart... (you can still mail em to me!)

Keep checking the Ratter. You just know hes gonna post pics of Kinny in rabit ears.

Mabd is in hiding. After the eighth "wtb female orc" post in trade... damned server is overrun with pervos.

I jumped guilds. The old guild is heading for the cliffs... our best tank left in disgust, our second best tank (and guild officer) is goin through so much RL garbage that he couldn't even make the guild tank meeting that *he* called.

That leaves two tanks that I wouldnt trust in RFC, let alone ulduar. So... I moved Maj. They dont care at this point since they prefer I play my healer (Unbound). My new guild seems to like the dps. Ulduar is gonna kill the old guild. Two decent healers... me, and the guy who plays once a week, and is beta testing Bloodbowl.

You people might lose me when that goes live.

I don't have the time to play three toons anymore. Or barely to play one. Gearing Mabd is gonna take a backseat for a while.

The new guild has everything. Paladins to hate on, and a decent lock to despise.

"I hate you. 4k rain of fire ticks? WTH? The best I get with blizzard is 1.8..."

"But I thought blizzard could crit now?"

"THAT IS A CRIT YOU DEMON MOLESTING VERMIN!"

I loves the new fire build on single bosses... spec after molten fury procs. I'm having no mana problems, and finally got secure enough in the spell rotation to start doin what I was doin as arcane. The only problem... I suck at aoe on trash.

A lot.

Damn locks.

You know things change when the best aoe class issa... rogue.

Kinda like the way everything is grey...

2009-04-17T12:31:00.003-04:00

I apologize for not posting sooner.

I've been... ill.

There was a terrible accident. My spleen, whom I thought inured to almost any toxin, decided to rip itself out of my abdomen and flee for the hills.

Well, flee for somewhere. I have to admit I'm worried, itsa bad neigborhood, it doesnt have any money, and doesnt really know anyone around here.

I tried tracking him by the trail of blood, but was a bit too dizzy. I got to the corner hot dog stand and no further.

Mmmm... hot dog bodegas...

Anyway, 3.1 is here. And you will be as surprised to learn as I was that Melvin had been keeping up with the 3.1 news! The most important thing in 3.1 for him? Titansteel spellblades! His lock and mage finally get an upgrade! (Melvin doan know about the flame heart scalpel... and wouldn't really be able to grind Kirin Tor rep either way since he doan get invited twice to heroics...)

Also of interest to Melvin... them changing frostweave bags to 24 slots!

(don't ask... I mean... I didn't. Even tho Melvin confessed to having read articles "nonstop" regarding the upcoming patch.)

So, I was quietly discussing the changes with Melvin on tuesday.

"No, Melvin, the bags aren't gonna suddenly get more slots!"

"How do you know?"

"I read the patch notes."

"How do you know those aren't fake?"

"THEY'RE ON THE BLIZZARD SITE."

"But I read..."

Anyway. Melvin then asked me what the big deal in the patch was gonna be. I told him about the hunter ammo bag changes... thunder stomp fer all tenacity pets... shammies becoming the only healing class without insane mana problems... and mages getting both jack AND shit.

Oh yeah, and the whole dual spec thing.

"You mean my mage and lock will be able to use two titansteel spellblades? I'm gonna need more titansteel!"

I wasn't really able to correct him. I felt a brief sharp pain right next to my liver, and we spent the next hour looking for missing body parts.

Which, I have to admit, has long been my ideal way to end conversations with Melvin. Just... I never thought it would be MY body parts we were looking for.

Keep to the sunny side of life!

2009-04-13T01:33:00.001-04:00

Good... Bad... I'm the one with the monkey.

Mabd hit 80, BooYah!

Those people that smile a lot... watch the eyes

2009-04-07T15:01:00.003-04:00

So... after spending 9 hours in Naxx 10 with my shammy and the guild alt run (any of melvin's characters should be considered alts..)

I ran Naxx 10 with my mage for 9 hours with a guild that I was once (but no longer) considering joining.

If your healers can't handle KT's ice cubes... your guild aint goin nowhere.

Also ran the mage in a midnight to 6 am naxx 25 man run. Four resto shammies, none of whom knew how to FREAKING HEAL. Half the party was dead at the end of loatheb. We couldn't do Patchwerk. We couldn't do Rasuvious. One of the most disgusting females I've ever had the horror of being stuck in vent with played a shadow priest with a level of incompentence that would shock even Melvin.

I'm not kidding... I muted her in vent about 15 min in. All during the run she kept "recruiting" in general Naxx chat for a fictional ERP Guild named "The Brown Eye." AND she was last in dps (1100... and she's been 80 for months). AND she couldn't handle the adds in the Rasuvious fight... I mean, we really shoulda known when she started bragging about the guilds that would no longer pug her for their naxx 25 runs.

Last... a more or less unbelievable Melvin story. Magebert has decided to spec his druid fer tanking. And has problems understanding the role swipe plays... anyway, magebert and melvin decided to do H Gundrak. Melvin brought Fleabag (thats my pet name for his feral druid.)

So, I'm hanging in guild chat with a coupla friends, and the following flashes...

Fleabag has achieved Heroic Gundrak
Fleabag has achieved What the Eck!
Fleabag has achieved Share the Love

In case you don't know... that last achievement comes off the final boss in Gundrak... he has this horrific attack called impale... you get the achieve with everyone in the party getting impaled... A good run will down him with only one impale. A medicore run with 2.

How did they get the achieve? Magebert and Melvin pullin less than 1k dps each. I /w the healer and just got cursed at. (Holy pal... Melvin said "He never ran outta mana!") 7 impales if not more, Magebert is kinda not the best at keepin track of these things.

So I hop into vent with the guildies... and have to explain that Melvin really wasn't TRYING for that achievement. He just got it... naturally...

That's when I found out that Melvin came close to being kicked out of a previous guild after he used Fleabag to tank for some of that guild's officers...

Gonna be ok...

2009-04-03T15:44:00.002-04:00

Melvin's ret pally is more or less geared. So Melvin refuses to play him anymore. On raid night what should show up but Melvin's elemental shammy? Still decked out in level 70 gear!

I'm still kicking myself for not dropping the party immediately. To add to the drama, we had two other dps doin sub-1300 dps.

And I got talked into playing my resto shammy. And the raid leader is an idiot. He's playing a geared holy pal. We have my shammy, about as well geared as 10 man naxx will get you. And we have a disc priest... the wife of a tank, and not... um.... terribly skilled. Which is to say, when doin saph, we need someone to keep an eye on her, and keep her healed. Cuz she can't heal herself and someone else through the aoe damage.

(last wipe on saph, she dies from the cleave.)

So raid leader sets healing assignments... My resto shammy on main tank... his holy pal on offtank. And disc priest on raid healing.

/beats head

God, I wanna gank Melvin in RL. And then camp his sorry ass. Friggin 1100 dps. An hour in, I had to ask why he was using flametongue instead of totem of wrath. (he was using both... and of course casting wrath first)

We had the annoying mage (1300dps) who couldn't even be bothered to decurse himself through Saph, let alone the people on his side. (why is he annoying? He NEVER SHUTS UP in vent. Of course, he did warn us that the blizz in saph "always stays on the side the melee is on, so the melee probably should switch sides...")

So, I took Mabd, my much neglected hunter for a spin last weekend. Ended up running UK, OK, AN and VH. Top dps each run. End boss of AN, I just put monkey on aggressive, and he beat every one else in the raid (including myself) in damage. Damn, thats just too much fun. Ended up main tanking UK (mabd is 75, dk was 70 and had wrong rune to boot) with banana boy.

Every so often you need to strut the old stuff in pugs. We all need recognition...

And a haiku? Dammit all to hell. Things change, eh?

The mighty hunter
Awakens from raid winter to
Red headed flower.

Good luck Daniel. A word of warning... its much easier to stop playing than to stop blogging...

I don't need to be forgiven...

2009-03-25T17:15:00.005-04:00

My guild asked me to become an officer...

I declined. The position would have been DPS Nazi. And who needs that kinda stress... especially since I'm thinking about jumping my mage to a more active guild to follow a friend.

So... first interview with Melvin... the question..

"Would you please transcribe your recollection of the story following the commentary "Ret pallies are simply too easy." I would love to hear your methodology on this theory."

Melvin... "I click a couple of insta cast buttons, and something (someone) dies. There isn't a lot of thought involved."

The context was him killing a boomkin. Now... I never really ask him if he just goes out ganking or what. I suspect so. Melvin is also very impressed that when playing his ret pally, alliance tends to avoid him. Unlike the 4 other 80's he has, who tend to get murdered with minimal notice. He really hates his mage in this regard.

Anyway... finally saw the Watchmen movie. The ending didn't suck anywhere near as much as I thought it would. A coupla notes on important differences between the movie and the book...

Veidt. In the graphic novel, he comes off much much freaking worse. The scene BigBearButt had problems with, where Veidt tells off the captains of industry for failing humanity completely reverses the meaning of that same scene in the novel. See... Veidt was the sellout. He saw the Keene act coming, and went public well before hand, leveraging his fame into his millions. In the relevant scene, he is discussing ending the line of Minutemen action figures... a fallen hero making money offa children's toys. And instead of evil money grubbing capitalists getting gunned down by the assassin Veidt hired himself, it was his attractive assistant. At the end of the scene... he is supposed to look lost and pathetic. That he isn't, and that we find at the end that it was all an act, is part of his evil. HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK PRINCIPLED GODDAMNIT! His namesake, Ozymandius, built massive monuments to his own vanity at the cost of thousands of lives, and the suffering of slaves. That should be a BIG tip. And when he finds his plan go off... in the novel he cheers. He doesn't give a little speech about how "this hurt me more than all those people I just killed." He doesn't give a damn.

Comedian. The movie really rips on him. For good reason... Moore wrote him to be as obscene as possible. However, one of the strands of the story is the redemption of the comedian. And can we bitch about Gugino in old person makeup? They couldn't find an actress of an appropriate age? WTF? Anyway... one of the signs of Veidt's evil is his misinterpretation of the Comedian's breakdown. Veidt claimed that the comedian was broken by the knowledge that war would be ended forever. This was Veidt's twisted view. What really broke the comedian, as revealed in the scene with Moloch, was the knowledge that the sick joke of a humanity always at its own throat was being taken to its logical extreme. What broke the comedian was, for the first time, a realization of horror. At that point, he stopped being the comedian, and was simply human. And it was a human being that Veidt killed, dying (hint hint) in a bathrobe, not in battle armor.

The comedian is redeemed at the end by sally jupiter. Sally didn't forgive Eddy because he was the father of her daughter. That was complete nonsense. She forgave the brutal almost rape because she loved him. The graphic novel begins with a man being murdered, and ends with a woman weeping over his death.

Last was the corner. The heart of the graphic novel, in a way that the movie didn't capture, is a corner with a news/magazine stand. Where an annoying kid reads comics and doesnt pay for them. Where the stand owner doesn't mind because he likes the company. Where a bull dyke lesbian (sorry for the language, but she is... straight outta central casting) pushes everyone around, while physically abusing her girlfriend. Where everyone shows up... all colors, all types, all ugly, flawed, normal people. All given a panel or two to introduce them to the reader. And at the end, it's where Veidt's "bomb" shows up... killing everyone.

When Rorschach talks about the pile of bodies Veidt's new world is based upon... the reader of the graphic novel knows, because Moore took the trouble to show them.

Now one thing about Moore... sometimes, he really really isn't terribly subtle. One thing completely left out of the Movie... Veidt's ad campaign for the new future featuring beautiful blond people looking into the future... at the end Dan and Laurie more or less sell out to Veidt... and the last scene shows them visiting Sally... in the graphic novel both dyed their hair blond. Like Veidt. Like good little nazis. A beautiful future for beautiful people...

Sorry seems to be the saddest word...

2009-03-20T15:34:00.003-04:00

Sorry bout the non-postage.

First, IT is getting worse. Or better, depending on what side of the "waste my time at work" war you on. I would like to formally curse bigbearbutt for naming his blog something that would automatically trip any censor with half a non-brain.

I mean, what? Was Naked Chicks Want to Meet You! taken as a blog name?

That being said, I rather liked his post on Watchmen. I wish I could link to it, but IT...

sigh

And I gotta lotta work on my desk right now. My department decided to begin an experiment... can Noobed make a paper on ferrous scrap price movements funny enough for people to bother reading? Stay tuned!

THREE times this week, I have been kept from commenting on political crap floating around the office by people that care about me.

Then there's WoW. One of the bastards providing competition in the glyph market finally got smart at started copying one of my favorite marketing techniques. Dammit all to hell.

My guild is getting weird. But that happens. Some of em are a little peeved at me for not running with them last night. (Told em in advance... NCAA Basketball is on, you people on yuir own!)

Problem is... they started a new Naxx group, and wanted my mage to anchor the dps. Ran Wednesday... got 2 and change wings done. Mage topped charts by 30%. Melvin was 4th... behind the two tanks. (We got decent tanks this run).

Last night... without the 3.5k dps from my mage...

Well... Melvin was a lot closer to the top of the dps meters.

Anyway... Melvin is being resistant to the idea of a guest post. However... he will answer questions. So, plz leave any questions you have for him...

Red wine!

2009-03-11T15:51:00.003-04:00

K. We all have problems. Me, I got more than most.

I gotta tell you guys about Melvin's Naxx 10 run.

Problem is, I can't. I don't know how to. So, I'm trying to get Melvin to do it for me. He is, to put it mildly, reticent.

See... he didn't suck. Much. He was even above two of the other dps in the charts... (on trash, he was only above one of them on bosses...)

His preliminary statement... "Ret pallies are simply too easy."

Oh, and the bottom DPS was a mage posting about 800 dps through the run. Melvin was about 1900 overall, 1300 on bosses like grob, 2k on bosses like patch. He really shined on trash. So look... Ima gonna need you guys to leave a few comments to help me convince him to "guest post" as it were...

In the meantime... me and superheroes...

See, us geeks, otaku, nerds, whatever term of contempt you choose, get a little obsessed. And obsession is nothing without meticulous attention to both detail and classification.

A while back the now defunct Arms N Fury and I had a thing on superman vs batman.

All things considered... well, I'm a lot freaky. I've had several nervous breakdowns, etc etc. At one point in my life, I was writing a 12-20 page research paper every week for three years. That changes you. So, when I get goin on what makes a superhero... don't make the mistake of thinking I'm obessed with superheroes per se... I was listening to The Fame by Lady Gaga... (don't ask) and all I could think about was which paper I would write about it if I had to... "A Loaded Gun: S&M imagery in The Fame" or "What is wrong with this picture? Eurofetish costuming in Lady Gaga's Music Videos."

I'm obsessed with a lot of stuff.

Anyway, Watchmen is out, and Kimmu sempai and I will probably go see it soon. I dread the outcome. The graphic novel is so amazing, and hollywood has a history of misunderstanding the fundamental points of Alan Moore's work. Still, one thing is driving me crazy. Movie critics making the following observation, in one form or another....

"Dr. Manhattan, who is the only one of the Watchmen with real superpowers..."

Now see... there is this thread running through American literature... the self made man. This thread leads directly to superheroes. Normal heroes aren't enough for americans... we need freaks. It is therefore, highly ironic that the greatest superhero writer... Alan Moore, was british. And there is a wonderful explanation of this in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. (which, if you translate into american, well, you get the picture...)

The point of the superhero isn't the superpower. Manhattan is not greater than the rest of the Minutemen. He is simply more powerful. The other characters... one can predict the future, one can build amazing armor and weapons, one is the greatest warrior of the human race, and then there's the silk spectre, who really doesn't belong in the picture. (one of Moore's more subtle points, and one which gets him accused of misogyny from time to time.)

The point of the novel is that none of them are human, and yet, they are forced to cohabit with humans and human foibles. One of the more poignant plotlines was Nite Owl's decision and resultant failure to become, in effect, mortal.

So when critics start talking about superpowers... they reveal not only a misunderstanding of the work, but of the genre as a whole.

Batman is not less than Superman, for all his lack of powers. Superman is boring... not Aquaman boring, but boring none the less. As a friend (who was a big superman fan) put it... every episode, Lex Luthor steals Lois Lane and flies to the moon with her... and Superman has to fly there to get her back.

Batman is no more human or mortal than Superman. Just different. Crazy in a way that human psychology can't cover. (Hence the Rorshach going through therapy plot line.) God are not different from mortals because of power... they are different becuase of perspective. And Batman, eminently mortal in flesh, is the way he is because with his skewed vision, he could chose no other path. (Or as R put it... We do not choose this... we are compelled...)

Of course there are all kinda similarities that we could talk about with the hero archetype, the nietzchean overman, or the asian hidden master.

Maybe later...

Where were you?

2009-03-04T17:16:00.003-05:00

It's like this.

I'm gettin burnt out already. So... I started a druid. If I hurry, I can get her to 80 and geared before 3.1 hits.

The gold is still rollin in, and I'm facing a decreasing interest in running the 15min of operations required every night to keep it comin.

Heirloom gear is mad awesome. I mean... except for freaking druids. There is no heirloom feral druid weapon. However, the haste trinket gives me between 4 and 6% increased melee/casting speed...

Was chatting with Melvin about this. He has, among other things, an 80 druid. He hates the nickname I've given the poor brute... "fleabag."

Anyway, I told him what I've done to gear up my loverly new char, including dropping 1k gold on the alt.

Melvin thinks this is a bad idea because of pickpockets.

Seriously.

See, once in band camp... well, orgrimmar... Melvin saw the message...

X pickpockets you for Y gold.

X being a horde rogue, and Y being 3 digits. Or as Melvin put it... "When I saw how much he got, I was furious!"

Since then, Melvin keeps his gold on an out of the way alt. Bank alt, indeed.

My morals got me on my knees...

2009-02-26T13:27:00.002-05:00

Dunno... I hang out with people just as snarky and vicious as I am.

So anyway... I've been thinking about home ownership lately. I'm making bank, getting stuff set aside, and need to start planning so I'll have what I need over the next 18 months or so to move outta the closet I currently live in.

A friend/coworker of mine is goin through this process now. I was asking him for some tips, and here's his response...

On a similar note, while I have not yet discovered a way to qualify as a first-time homebuyer, I have discovered a way to get $3000 towards remodeling my future home. I'm already predisposed to get a tankless water system and a new boiler. Conveniently, the "stimulus" plan increases the rebate for these energy-efficient appliances.

Furthermore, I'm heartened to learn that whilst PMI now costs 1.1% of loan value, I easily qualify for an FHA loan. Since the effective annual cost of FHA Insurance is 0.65%, I will receive a government subsidy of $1107 from the federal government (on top of the $620 subsidy from the state for living in Baltimore). This amount is actually a bit higher, because the 0.65% I do pay is tax-deductible. (Thank you, Congress)

I understand these developments will not be soothing to your ears. Considering the insane borrowing proposed in the federal budget, we will all be paying much higher taxes in the years to come. Unfortunately, as a responsible renter, you don't actually benefit from any of the government's largesse, and so are doubly screwed.

You have my sympathies. If it makes you any happier, I'll ask the IRS if you can just pay your federal taxes to me instead, since cutting out the middleman is sure to improve efficiency.

I so need to egg whatever he ends up buying...

Please Mr. Postman...

2009-02-24T22:38:00.003-05:00

I had never seen this before... sent to my level 35 bank alt (warrior, natch, to carry all that gold...)

When did they start doin this?

Anyway. Im at work, and sick as a dog. Gotta head cold in that stage where yuir forebrain turns to snot and then dries up, and the vacuum created ends up sucking your eyes back behind that part of the brain where you remember all the clock faces you've ever stared at while waiting for school/work/paid sex to end.

You know how you feel the morning after getting royally pissed during a chili dog eating contest? I wish I felt that good.

So whats the shammy news? Enhance is getting the back of the hand they would give to ret pallies if they weren't terrified of arriving home only to find their families tied up and being forced to watch The Spirit for the fiftieth time.

Elemental is getting minor boosts.

Resto is getting big love, mostly via back door, glyph lovin. 20% more healing from earth shield? Plz stay!

So.. the same mental defectives that thought 3.0 ret pallies weren't insanely unbalanced now think they can juggle talent changes, skill changes, and glyph changes. Invest heavily in popcorn and tarp, this is gonna get messier than a Gallagher show.

Dunno if I linked this before. Let the right one in. A movie about a teenager that falls in love with a vampire, only it doesn't suck.

Also, if you've never seen this, you might really enjoy it.

I saw In Bruges over the weekend, and was vastly impressed. Not quite the Tarintinoesque semi-comedy. Lotta religious overtones. Really spooky-sad.

Also saw Jumper. Lets see... guy gets hunted by religious nuts that murder his estranged father, kidnap his girlfriend, and he ends the movie trying to convince them he's not a bad guy.

WTF is wrong with hollywood?

Maybe more on 3.1 later. I'm still trying to see where ret got nerfed. I guess I'm like that guy staring at that poster in Mallrats. Just can't see the sailboat.

don't think cause i'm easy, i'm naive

2009-02-20T10:29:00.003-05:00

Tried 10 man maly with the guild last night. Only had an hour, so 5 wipes, no loots. At the end, we were getting to the third phase, but outta time.

Thersa weird dynamic at work. The weekday group has two kinda weak dps. And they're hurting us. With a 3 healer 10 man set up, you really can't afford weak dps. Especially since they're both ranged dps. And both locks.

I could really use some advice on how to dps assa lock. Especially a decent dest build or two.

Anyway, three posts in a week... I promised to talk about the whole gold thing. But really... greedy goblin is pretty good on things. But I think he puts too much time in on things.

Um... I got two chars doin the cooking quest every day. This results in about 30 northern spices which I can sell for between 20-30g fer a block of 10.

I do the JC quest everyday... this gets us a dragon's eye, which goes for about 150 now, down from 400 a coupla months ago.

And I sell glyphs. I'm kinda proud of this one. I get Icethorn or Adder's Tongue, and mill them. The herbs cost me about 40-42 a stack. I usually get a snowfall ink outta them, which I can sell for 45. And then I also get 5-7 ink of the sea outta them, which I can make glyphs from. My glyphs go from 12-35 g each, depending on competition. Maj can now make every glyph in the game. I sell between 5-20 glyphs a day. Armor and weapon vellums also sell well...

BTW... theres also a lot of money to be made on the JC side of things. uncommon gems turn to enchanting materials quite easily, and saronite ore is quite cheap. However... these are getting burned in house to level my chanting skills.

And gets crazy like Prozac

2009-02-19T12:50:00.002-05:00

So the latest tempest in a teacup for WoW is the impending healing nerfs...

I hate to say it, but healing is easy. It can be difficult sometimes, but for the most part, the better geared and trained the group is, the more retarded the healer can be.

Lets face it. Which of the three roles are least likely to be crippling if done by an idiot? Tank, dps or healing? I mean, healing... just target the tank and hit the slow heal button over and over. The rest of the party can compensate. Trust me... I know. I've been on both sides. I loves my Unbound. But healing tests in WoW are few and far between. Loken in Heroic HoL is mostly a gear check. Saphiron and Kel in Naxx... yeah.

Saph... conserve mana and keep moving while healing your assignments...

Kel... you gonna have to drop an emergency heal on someone within 3 secs of them becoming the ice block bitch.

Otherwise...

Lotheb is so retarded I can't even mention it as a check.

Patchwerk... whats harder to get, a better healer or a better dps? Spam heals till the mana runs dry, and if the dps cant get the job done by that time, it's their fault. Fer christ's sake... three times Unbound had her healing buddy DC during the fight, and had to keep the offtank up (Naxx 10) by herself... and did with no problems. Minimal skill required.

But when I get into a conversation with the guild master prot pally, and he tries to explain the 696 tank rotation to me... or the surv hunter shot rot...

Crap... I got three moves... riptide, chain heal, and lesser healing wave. There are times I should break out healing wave, and these are usually personal fail times. My arcane mage has a dozen more dimensions than my resto shammy. And is thus much more challenging to play...

Which is why I have mixed feelings about the nerf. Deadly megs explains it best... once you've done extensive pvp asa healer... with that big damn bullseye all over your butt, its kinda hard to go back to the 8 bit theatre that is PvE. So... mana nerfing is gonna be part of how Blizz tunes Ulduar to be a tougher encounter. So be it. Bring it on. I'll strap some more mp5 panels to the old cow, maybe regem, and I'll be just fine.

I'm warning the rest of you tho. Your healers... are not prepared.

Love me tender...

2009-02-18T01:07:00.002-05:00

You just gotta wonder what's in those Love Tokens some times...

Not too much to talk about. Unbound is now fully geared, and has the mace offa Kel in 10 man. Rocking 2200 sp without raidbuffs or totems...

Maj has 3/5 her tier 7, and is rocking the charts wherever she goes...

Which just leaves the horror of Melvin. A coupla weeks ago, I talked Melvin's brother into doin VoA... and the free epix kinda convinced Melvin to try it out.

One problem... Melvin is disappointed that the ten minute fight only results in four epic drops. It should, he told me after careful consideration, be more rewarding.

So, one of my main peeps in the guild of guilds is the Palminator. Who I mock incessantly, cuz, you know, his main is a ret pally. Anyway, his roommate just leveled a DK to 80 assa tank, and we've been running together to get em geared. Now, Palmy, Dave the DK (who used to be the world's worst warrior, but got better) Melvin and his brother (magebert) are all RL friends.

So when Dave da DK and Magebert asked me to do the CoS daily with em, I agreed...

Only to find Melvin's ret pally waiting in the group.

Now... it has been proven beyond any doubt that Melvin doesn't know how to play a mage. Or gear one. But ret pallies are a faceroll class, right? Right?

Not so much... Magebert healin, Dave tankin, and we pug another ret pally... and all during the run, the pug pally and I keep up a running commentary on Melvin's sub 1100dps efforts. AND HES GEARED. All the best gear BS can make a ret pally.

Two main comments... pug pally "I didnt know a level 80 pally could do so little damage!"

Magebert: "I don't think he knows how to play any of his 4 80's..."

And at the end, band of guild drops... int, sta, haste, and spellpower ring. And Melvin rolls need, cuz it's the perfect ret pally ring. Ima go back to drinking for another week.

Hate me today

2009-02-10T17:50:00.002-05:00

Every so often, I gotta be me. The absolute bastard.

And the thing is... Absolute Bastard likes his jokes.

KK... one thing to know on background. I've been makin mad stacks of gold messin with the AH.

I'm not spending much time... so I'm not makin real money, like this guy is... but about 15-30 min a day, and I'm takin home about 4k gold a week. Not counting whatever I make in quests...

This lets me play what I want to play. Grinding gold with farming and dailys is NOT FUN. Some people get off on it. I don't.

I make money the old fashioned way... finding people that put serious work in, and then swooping by to claim the lion's share of profits. What can I say? Ima total bastard.

I managed to pick up Je'Tze's Bell the other day for 5.5k gold. Unbound is now seriously geared.

K... thats part one on background.

Second... I've been running with a core group in the guild of guilds. J, the tank, Av, the holy pal. We've been trying to gear/train another warrior tank (K) in the game... so J respecced fury, so he could dps and keep an eye on K during a coupla runs.

This rather upset Av. On general principle. If we gotta heal, by damn god, tanks dont get to have fun either.

So... when I whispered Av, offering to pay him to let J die the next time his fury ass pulled aggro offa the weak tank, Av agreed.

More background. I've been picking on J lately with the gold thing, since we're both inscriptionists... and J complains about always bein poor.

Whereas I complain about the carpal tunnel I'm developing from clicking all that gold in my mailbox. (yeah, yeah, theres an addon that will loot it for me, I'm sure)

So... Av lets J die, and whispers me back. "You owe me 1000 gold!"

He was joking.

I wasn't. And Av was seriously shocked when I dumped 1k gold on him. So was J. Who's a little upset that Av and I are talking about making this...

A Daily.

Or in the words of Av... "THE BEST DAILY EVER!"

When it's all mixed up...

2009-02-04T14:53:00.004-05:00

How bad is the economy? Even Klingons are turning to crime!

And two more serious (read grotesque) links.

This and that.

Melvin got excluded from the Naxx run last week. I was chatting with him about it, and he's feeling quite hurt... well, not so much about that, but about his inability to get into heroics. Anytime he gets asked about his spellpower, he ends up putting the person on his ignore list.

Now note... he has authorized me to pass on his theory of WoW class justice. And when I say class... I mean have vs have not, not, er... well, class.

According to Melvin... other players had the advantage of people carrying them through dungeons. So... he doesn't see why he should be penalized for being badly geared or specced... other players should feel obliged to support him in heroic runs. Like, presumably, they were when they first hit 80.

And the whole spec thing? Not a problem... its all gear. Get him the gear, and he'll be as good as he needs to be... chain casting scorch.

Melvin is now leveling a hunter, rather than gearing any of his 3 level 80 characters...

What is this, forgot?

2009-01-28T17:59:00.002-05:00

Weird guild drama, busy at work, and playing way too much...

I did every heroic on my mage Saturday save three.

My mage is now as geared as she's gonna get outside Naxx...

And then they stealth nerf my build. AND TO MAKE IT WORSE, my ret pally friend has been /w me with "QQ" the last 24 hours. Over and over.

Maybe I shouldn't have held that guild pally nerf dance off when 3.08 hit.

My guild has hit a weird point. We have way too many tanks. Enough healers, but half of em are never around, so Unbound keeps gettin drafted. (Got my t7 Helm monday, so no biggie...)

And we are crucially short decent dps. Melvin might end up getting drafted. (me: "He's only 800dps!" Them:"He's all we got!")

If it comes down to Arcane vs FFB... I'm sticking arcane. Much better survivability and dps when I gotta move. Im gonna miss my 5k arcane missile crits tho...

Anyway... the guild has asked me anchor two different Naxx groups. Which is a bit more raiding than I'd planned on. At this point we have 5 tanks, 7 healers, and an assorted cast of overly casual dps.

This last week kinda proved the point. We'd been running one Naxx-10. Wed was more or less the better players (including a drafted and protesting Unbound, who skilled or not, at least has gear) And we had the habit of takin out 2 wings in the run. (One night we killed 11 bosses in 4 hours.) Then Sat hits, the scrubs come out, and they spend 4 hours trying and failing on Maexxna. Then Sunday, "A" team, rest of wings cleared.

Monday night, we do Seph and Kel.

The problem is... the groupings are by who can play on what night. And the better players have hooked up with Naxx-25 groups, so have little interest in helping with Naxx-10. Tonight, we start the new raids with Naxx-10, group A, which seems to have all the better players and tanks. Weekends will have... Melvin. And Magebert.

I have a sense of doom... maybe this weekend I'll just work on achievements.

They make no mention of the beauty of decay

2009-01-20T15:48:00.008-05:00

Extended maintenance tuesday... and I have the day off. Curses!

Some screenshots... here's a quest line horde NPC from Conquest Hold in grizzly hills. And what does the dominant orc female choose as accessories? Two pretty belf boy toys. About all they good for, I suppose...

It didn't end well, btw. "When I'm through with you, not even the worgs will touch your corpse..." I gotta figure out a way to work that into a conversation sometime...

Chistmas is when Santa Majeure rides the skies on her undead mount, bringing pwn to all the little noobs out there...

Maj is 80 now, Frostfire build, pushin between 1.6 and 2k dps (depending on heroic...) I'd forgotten how much fun fire could be. And how squishy the squishiest of builds was... and then she wakes to find herself no longer hit capped :(

Quotes from an early npc. You summon a goddess and she has this to say... of all the quest lines, the whole Gundrak thing is the saddest... "if our gods can die... then so can we..."
The trolls murdered their gods to save themselves from the scourge.. thats just hard core, there. As Wallace Stevens put it... "The death of one god is the death of all gods."

Um... so sometimes theres just a conversation in general chat that you just have to stay the hell away from. "Ima girl. Oh wait, Ima woman.. cuz I'm legal now."

/shudder

I really don't have to explain why I took this screenshot, now do I?

Gravity...

2009-01-13T12:49:00.002-05:00

So, crazy Derek is staying with me.

He broke down and wept three times last night.

He's losing the ability to take care of himself.

You really shouldn't be unable to remember the last time you took a shower. Especially since he's been with me for 2 weeks now.

I'm not sure what to do about this. He has a minimum wage job. He has two sisters that are helping him. He has a friend (me) putting him up so he doesn't have to live with the sisters (whom he hates.)

And he still can't cope. Would he be better off in an institution?

Anyway... Maj is 78, and beginning the gear process. I'll have everything but my chest replaced when I turn 80. WoW Insider had a very nice mage gearing article...

I still don't know about a build for running heroics. Considering how miserable my crit will be, I'm leaning towards frost.

So... in the meantime, here's some lit stuff.

Here's a thread on military sic-fi.

A while back a recommended the adventures of Gotrek and Felix to the blogger formally known as Arms&Fury. If you're into fanboy/gaming type fantasy, this is pretty neat. It's about a dark elf renegade... like drizzt, only not.. um... a whiny little do-gooder. Personally, I'd recommend Gaunt's Ghosts by the same author, as Gaunt's Ghosts is perilously close to well written. Malus Darkblade is a bit more fun to read about tho...

I'm currently reading this. It's very evil and very non-PC. If you don't know who Oriana Fallaci was, or why someone would dedicate a book to her, you might not want to read this.

Alan Moore's Watchmen as Shakespeare. I am so terrified that the movie will do for the graphic novel what Phantom Menace did for Star Wars.

And then this...

Are you, or have you ever been, a Literature Abuser?

Literature Abuse:How many of these apply to you?

1. I have read fiction when I was depressed or to cheer myself up.
2. I have gone on reading binges of an entire book or more in a day.
3. I read rapidly, often "gulping" chapters.
4. I have sometimes read early in the morning or before work.
5. I have hidden books in different places to sneak a chapter without being seen.
6. Sometimes I avoid friends or family obligations in order to read novels.
7. Sometimes I rewrite film or television dialog as the characters speak.
8. I am unable to enjoy myself with others unless there is a book nearby.
9. At a party, I will often slip off unnoticed to read.
10. Reading has made me seek haunts and companions that I would otherwise avoid.
11. I have neglected personal hygiene or household chores until I have finished a novel.
12. I have spent money meant for necessities on books instead.
13. I have attempted to check out more library books than permitted.
14. Most of my friends are heavy fiction readers.
15. I have sometimes passed out from a night of heavy reading.
16. I have suffered blackouts or memory loss from a bout of reading.
17. I have wept or become angry or irrational because of something I read.
18. I have sometimes wished I did not read so much.
19. Sometimes I think my reading is out of control.

If you answered yes to three or more of these questions, you may be a literature addict. An affirmative response to five or more indicates a serious problem. Once a relatively rare disorder, Literature Abuse, or LA, has risen to new levels due to the accessibility of higher education and increased college enrollment since the end of the Second World War. The number of literature abusers is currently at record levels.

Shamelessly stolen, of course.

Who's watching me?

2009-01-06T14:32:00.003-05:00

There's a line by Will Ferrel's character in Zoolander...

"I feel like I'm on crazy pills!"

I've been getting that lately... in the first place, my dreams are getting even more bizzare...

One of the few I can mention without sounding even more psychotic than usual, I came back to a world I'd destroyed. With a swarm of poison snakes.

The worst part... I have absolutely no damn idea where this comes from. However, it's either this or insomnia. And I hate insomnia.

Crazy Derek is now living with me... and I have no idea how long. He's so deep in denial, it's almost impossible to get coherent information about his situation.

I'm really not capable of living with other people. Derek is testing my ability to pretend to be normal. And not be annoyed by the silliest things. Like his tendency to just pace back and forth while flipping a pen and muttering to himself for hours on end while I watch television.

I need to start changing my life. But who has that kind of time?

BRK is making QQ noises about hunter mana problems. I absolutely agree with him. I think hunter mana is gonna be a big deal movin forward. Mabd is still more or less on the shelf, doin JC dailies and makin me 300g a day.

My beautiful Majeure is now 75. I was looking at frostfire... but then decided to stay frost till 80. How badly did blizz screw up mage gearing?

We get three crafting sets. BC crafting sets were amazing... and if you were cloth, and not a tailor, you were seriously behind the curve, gearwise.

For blacksmiths... the titansteel gear is extremely useful, and more than capable of putting you on a naxx level.

What does cloth get in Wrath?

The priest set... int, spirit, spellpower and mp5.
The lock set... int, sta, spellpower and spell hit.
The mage set... int, spirit, spellpower and HASTE.

What vital stat is missing here? WHERE THE HELL IS MY CRIT?

Why bother getting spellweave for my mage when my first task is gonna be grabbing ANY FREAKING OTHER EPIC CLOTH to replace it? SPIRIT? FREAKING SPIRIT?

/cry

So, my loverly mage will have two epic rings and an epic neck waiting for her at 80. If I can find someone to make the deathchill cloak, I'll have that as well. As for the rest of the gear... Ima pretty screwed.

On an entirely unrelated note... I always wondered about this guy.

Then I heard the Steve Miller Band's song The Joker recently.

Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me maurice
Cause I speak of the pompitous of love

Im a joker
Im a smoker
Im a midnight toker
I get my lovin on the run
Wooo wooooo

Did I get it right, Rats?

I can tell you why the end will never come

2008-12-31T07:22:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-29T15:39:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-16T17:59:00.003-05:00

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...

2008-12-14T15:08:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-12T14:49:00.002-05:00

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...

2008-12-10T17:30:00.003-05:00

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

2008-12-09T15:28:00.002-05:00

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...

2008-12-08T17:12:00.003-05:00

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...

2008-12-03T12:29:00.005-05:00

*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?

2008-12-02T12:30:00.002-05:00

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...

Cuz I never hesitate to put a fool on his back...

2008-11-29T18:59:00.003-05:00

So hit 80. Went resto.

There is an appalling lack of healers on my server. My services are in much demand.

And I demanded a lot.

You know its sad when you score Greed for yuir enhance offspec.

Some thoughts...

I've been asked for a level 80 elemental spec. This should explain my feelings. In short, elemental shammies are gettin 4 talent points back and a new penultimate talent. It's about freaking time. When that happens... I'll talk turkey.

That dual spec thing needs to hit soon. If blizzard thinks I can quest as resto, they on better drugs than Melvin is.

K. If you aren't level 80 yet... or if you are... here's the noobed friendly warning.

If you are not an inscriptionist, you will want shoulder enchants. They come from The Sons of Hodir. With one small caveat... it takes 27 days of rep grind to get exalted. They doan have a tabard. (Unbound is about exalted with Violet Eye right now :) )

That caveat... theres a spawn much like the infamous netherwing eggs that will give you rep. They very hard to find tho.

And the quest area is much smaller than netherwing ledge... which means, onna pvp server... the sooner you start, the less grief you go through. Cuz everyone, eventually, will need this faction. (Again minus the inscription people)

I never wondered where you went, I only wondered why...

2008-11-17T22:39:00.002-05:00

4 bars from 77. And, for sake of my health, mental and otherwise, I tore myself from the game to go to work.

Here's Unbound chillin with her peeps. (I know, that one is gonna leave marks...)

One of my guildies hit 80 sunday. And was in Naxx last night. You can tell the crazies by how high they have their chars....

Oh, I'm second. Right ahead of the guy who uninstalled WoW twice to break the addiction. Even Melvin thinks I've lost my damn mind. (He hit 75 last night.) And this while wtfpwning the AH over Death Knight glyphs. I'm over 22k gold now, even after buyin my chars gigantique bags. And all the fundage blown buyin professions... and respeccs...

Not to mitigate my madness, but I did the Ampitheater of Anguish series... got a tell outta the blue from a warrior I'd done some stuff with... he asked me to heal as elemental for their group. (See, level fast enough, nice things happen...) Went great, and I got my new weapon... cept for one thing. There were *two* level 75 DK's in the party. Now really... that's hard core freaking crazy right there...

Here's the plan... hit 77 tonight, then level Mabd fer a bit while Unbound flies all over the map doin mining. Before the competition hits, and while prices are still high.

Why is Mabd back to MM/Surv? Big number addiction. The pet aint there to tank (unless I'm doin viper aspect...) The pet is there to snare. (Hyena) Gimma a snare... and I will murder the mob. 2k aimed shot crits...

Not sure about my ability to solo some of the elites when Mabd finally gets to leveling. But for damn sure Unbound can solo. First, she doesn't run out of mana. At all. Even chaincasting chain lighting... it doesn't happen. Once you get lava burst... flame shock, lava burst, heal, heal, heal, lava burst, etc... water shield gives 420ish mana every four seconds now (it seems they lengthened the cooldown) as well as +100 mp5.

Have respecced Unbound 5 times since start of expansion. Once to go resto and heal for some guildies, once to spec back, then a buncha times to move points...

If you play elemental... lava burst will rock your world. First, do yourself a favor and pick up the flame shock glyph. Flame shock now has a 40 yard range... and issa nice little pull mechanism. Throw down a earth bind, flame shock a mob, pullin three or so, then chain light/lava burst while kitin. Helps to have instant ghost wolf, btw...

A few notes on use and abuse of flame shock abuse. With the glyph, flame shock lasts 15 secs, and isn't consumed by Lava burst. Lava burst will auto crit on something with the flame shock debuff. And when I say, auto crit... I mean 4500ish, offa 1.5 sec cast spell with an 8 sec cooldown.

Strange things happen when shammies crit. Elemental shammies get a group buff that adds 5% crit for 15 secs, and their next two spells are at 40% less mana cost. With other talents, (notably on the third tier of enhance) this means shock spells cost about 30 mana. (No, that isn't a typo.)

So spell rotation... flame shock, lava burst, lightning, earth shock, lightning, lava burst, lightning, lighting, flame shock...

I like my DPS in instances now. Two pugs as elemental, led both, but circumstances were not quite random. (See... when you level fast enough, it really isnt a problem getting a pug as dps. Who are people looking for dps gonna pick for AN? The 72 hunter or the 76 shammy?)

Anyway, the flame shock debuff is about 100dps (with talents). With the glyph, it's 15 seconds... I leave the rest for my not so gentle readers.

So the question... I now have auto crit, and rely more heavily on a dot. Should I regear for +spell power, instead of all the damn crit I'm packing now? I'm gonna autocrit every 8 seconds.. so one lava burst, one shock, two lightning bolts (or just three light bolts)... I dunno. Will work on it.

The next voice you hear will be your own...

2008-11-14T23:42:00.002-05:00

Sorry again fer not postin... I've been, um, indisposed.

Runnin Unbound through northrend first. Doin this post durin a 50 min queue. Unbound is 72, and doin quite well as elemental.

I respecced Mabd as BM. That lasted all of 5 mins, now I'm back to a Surv/MM hybrid. The end plan is to go MM til Master Marksman, and Surv till Lightning Reflexes. Might just only go 4/5 in Master MM to pick up wyvern's sting in surv.

I mean... the buffs are just amazing with this. It picks up every +crit and +rap talent, as well as Aimed shot, scatter shot, wyvern, readiness... so yuir all ready fer pvp lovin.

Makin tons of goldage offa DK glyphs. Still know better than to blow it on a mammoth tho...

Fer those zombie fans... heresa Simon Pegg interview on what makes a zombie scary, and why they should never run. And if you doan know who Simon Pegg is, shame on you!

And I wont turn around...

2008-11-09T13:43:00.004-05:00

So... Maj kicked it old skool, ran all three CE instances saturday, and got her new flyin mount.

Ain't he pretty? I think I'll name him Chicken Biggie Little. Much better than a stinking gorilla or devilsaur...

Had about 1400-1500 sustained dps across all three instances as frost. Most of that was due to spamming blizzard on fights. But on boss and single targets... frostbolt spam was doin 1200ish. I blew away a surv hunter that the group had been bragging on. Nuttin better than spanking people who think they can hang. At the end of the run, our enhance shammy was reduced to joking... "Second in healing! Let's see yuir mage top that!"

Fingers of Frost is a SICK SICK dps boost. Between blizzard and frostbolt, I hada about a 50% crit rate (my base crit was about 23%, running with molten armor). Im surprised that blizzard wasn't critting more... I think that the last patch had a unannounced nerf on how fingers of frost affects targets in blizzard... my crit rate was quite a bit higher before the last patch.

Brain Freeze, as far as I'm concerned, is now nerfed to oblivion. It no longer procs on Blizzard... and I suspect it won't on Cone of Cold, either. It would seem to proc only onna frost bolt hit... and let's face it, the dps boost from an instant cast fireball vs another frostbolt (considering GCD) seems dubious at best. Time to move those three points somewhere else.

What was Unbound the Stalwart doin? Shoppin fer haberdashery in Old Hillsbrad. I also managed to heal heroic MgT with a very... strange... PUG. Two ret pals anda rogue from one of the server's better raiding guild. A pugged healer (Unbound), anda pugged tank, some poor pally they talked into respeccing prot for the run.

Very skilled tank, even if she only had 11k life. And very upset at the end of the run, since she had been promised any plate drops since "everyone else is in tier 6..." Only to find the retadins rollin against her.... and one of those bastards kept pullin aggro... and MOVING THE MOB OUTTA RANGE OF CHAIN HEALS.

Are ret pallies the new huntards? I thought locks would take this slot, but they've disappeared since the big patch....

Sorry about only havin one post last week. I've been ill. *pitieous cough* Still feel like crap. Still... release is next week, and I have tuesday off, while im taking a half day thursday, and all day friday off.

And Melvin? He's leveling a warrior.

I am the ballot in your box, the bullet in the gun...

2008-11-04T08:39:00.003-05:00

Dearest Megs...

Ima sorry to disappoint you. But this is, and shall remain, a family site. Besides, Halloween is a time of reflection on our mortality. Why else dress children as monsters? For a holiday that exemplifies the hormone driven sexual excesses you seem interested in, wait for Thanksgiving.

Weird weekend... finally finished all the netherstorm quests on my shammy... so Unbound could go back to resto.

However, a strange thing happened on the way to the talent trainer...

A prot pally friend of mine asked me to help heal kara. His guild has *one* decent healer. (A holy pal that spams 1.5 sec heals...) So I, ah... healed Kara as enhance.

KK. Things to note so far about shammies. First, every GODDAMN shaman blogger I used to read gave up. So... anyone has links, I'd love to see whats up. Since Ripper does mages better than I ever could, and BRK (pronounced "dorf") AKA Big Red Monkeybutt, does hunters... I'm pretty much stuck with shammies. Not that I doan love shammies. Shammies are cool, and get to hang with all the awesome tanks. Still... things to note...

Enhance.

Spirit puppies are probably one of the best pvp talents in the game. They add crap to dps, but those healz are broken, and I expect them to be nerfed. That bein said, enhance in pvp is like playin a rogue without a stun, or a ret pally without a bubble. Orra warrior without charge or intercept. You gonna do nice damage, but the ranged classes will destroy you. And the melee classes will hurt a lot as well...

However... the enhance shammy has the best talent tree of all three builds. Doan get me wrong... I loves me some resto. But if you go resto or elemental, you HAVE to put points in enhance. Mostly cuz the first two tiers of elemental and resto suck donkey balls. Cept for elemental devastation, which only enhance shammies would take...

But there are two talents in the upper enhance tiers that murder anything even loosely associated with game balance. First, a 3 point talent that gives you 100% of INT as AP. Not to bad... similar to a really nice hunter talent in the marksman tree. HOWEVER... later on you get a 3 point talent that gives you 30% of AP as Spell Power.

So... 30% of int becomes spell/healing power. Arcane Intellect... 25ish spell power buff. Battle shout... 100. Totem of earth... 54. Bless of might.. 125.

Then you put earthliving on both dual wielded weapons... +300.

I got unbound's +healz up to +1700. AS ENHANCE. As resto... she's at +1100. All I did was spam lesser heal and chain. And I was gettin higher numbers than I do as resto spec. When I got healer aggro, I'd throw the puppies at something and heal back up. Saved a wipe that way once. Got low on mana, I'd shammy rage my mana back up. When things got tight, I'd wade in, storm strike, lava lash, and spam insta cast maelstrom chain healz.

I still went back to resto. First.. earth shield got much lovin. My es is now proccing for 1200, 1800 on crits. (Theresa bug here, but i gotta look into it more... my ES doan crit when its on other targets...)

Riptide is precious... its like bein a resto druid, only still bein able to like girls. But... the gap between resto healin and enhance healin is less than I'm comfortable with. And I keep havin dreams of a crazy enhance/elemental build that would scale like a motherlovin bastich. Unbound can get to +1500 spell power easily... in my spell gear, with the proper talents, I might be able to hit +1700.

Still... resto in BG's is like bein a god. I laugh at ret pally damage. No purge, no dispel, no HK.

Other news... looks like the inscription market is slowin down. So, here at the end... Im at about 17k gold, up from 6k before the patch of infinite wealth. Melvin says he wont be impressed till I'm over 30k.

Brown sugar!

2008-10-29T21:10:00.003-04:00

We interrupt this blog for an announcement.

Guess what dropped?

You may now go back to yuir headless horseman mountless lives.

For some reason I can't explain...

2008-10-28T08:12:00.003-04:00

State of team Noobed.

Woke up at 4 this morning to get at some scourge invasion. Managed to get into a group in Wintersping, and score my shadow of doom kills fer Maj and Unbound, as well as tons of runes fer each.

Need to do this with Mabd...

Maj got her sinister squashling last night. Now, only Unbound is without holiday achievement goodness.

Maj blizzarding over a prot pally at the scourge sites was a thing of beauty. God I loves my frost.

Maj and Unbound still need one wand zap each.

Havin gearing issues with Unbound/Enhance. Her enhance set is mostly kara level junk, with two blues. Now the crap that drops offa scourge in the invasion isn't half bad... but it stacks haste at the expense of crit. And.. well... crit is now one of the most important stats fer enhance. Moar crit = moar spell crit = moar elemental devastation = moar white damage.

Meh. Man, that zombie event was awesome. Ima sad to see it go. Is it sick of me to wish that all the orphans in shat weren't considered critters? So the zombies could chew on em?

Yeah, probably. Didn't keep me from takin a screen of a swarm of orphans runnin from a wall of zombies.

Things I don't understand. People who think that Blizz ended the zombie event cuz of people complaining. Like melvin.

"No, the zombie plague ends today. They found a cure."

"Oh, enough people must have complained!"

I'm just fallin from grace...

2008-10-26T21:28:00.003-04:00

Majeure reconsiders her plans to become Warbabe of the Horde.

Um.. the zombie event has been a great deal of fun. If you've enjoyed as much as I... here's another book recommendation. Everyone I know who's read it has loved it. With the exception of Melvin, who has no taste.

Let's see... over 15k gold now. I should be set fer expansion.

Mage thoughts...

Fingers of frost was not what I thought it would be... its so much more... exploitable. You can get that double tap in quite easily, so you get three hits with bonus crit. And that damn insta cast fireball procs like a madman. I tend to miss most of em.

Shammy thoughts...

Yeah, I ran recount, and beat up onna dummy. Lava Lash with a flametongue offhand increases damage over double windfury by a noticable amount. Now I'm gettin into cooldown issues... between stormstrike, lava lash, shock and maelstrom lightning bolts, ima getting abilities pop before I can press the keys. Maybe a shot rotation macro would help...

Also... I found out why my white damage seemed so high... elemental devastation, the elemental tree talent that gives +9% melee crit with for 7 seconds following a spell crit, does not apply to windfury hits, stormstrike or lava lash. Just to regular melee hits. My regular melee crit rate after testing is about 33%. My special attacks are around 24%. That should tell you how often elemental devastation is up... 3 points well spent.

Hunter thoughts.

Never disengage when yuir fightin a frost mage on top of a mountain peak.

You should be dancing, yeah!

2008-10-24T15:47:00.002-04:00

First... Amazon.com has a sale on select albums every weekend. Last week they had the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. Um... be prepared for bizzare blog post titles ahead.

Second... can anyone give me a link to something that explains how to set up a RSS feed for a blogspot site? I've looked before, and couldn't find a damn thing. :(

Third. I respecced ice. Ripper, you little bastard, you never told me they made blizzard able to crit. OMFG. I aint goin back. Frozen heart forever! (I had a run where I got over 88% sustained crit rate on Blizzard...)

Fourth. Mabd got herself a gorilla. And NOW I understand what kill command is for...

Fifth. I really resent enhancement shammydom. Ima gonna finish up all my Outland quests this weekend, respec resto, and not look back.

Sixth... flametongue buff stacks with dual wield. Flametongue glyph stacks with dual wield. Considering how crappy the top of elemental is... this might mean something if blizz ever puts offhand spell weapons in the game.

Seventh. Thundering strikes now affect spell as well as melee crit chances. Itsa tier 2 enhance shammy talent. 5 points = +5% crit. I was able to get unbound's spell crit to 28% with double stacked flametongue. And her spell power over 900 with her crappy enhance gear... I really doan know what to make of this. But whatever build... you really wanna put some points in the first coupla tiers of enhance now.

Eighth. Melvin loves his fire mage, but is muttering about goin frost. Magebert went back to the POM/Pyro build. I doan know what to do about these two. Anyway... melvin claims that the chance for hot streak to proc is greatly enhanced when you get a chance to shoot an ally in the back. Take it for what it's worth.

Ninth. Melvin is deeply dissatisfied with his elemental shammy. Melvin doesn't bother with flametongue. And he put all 61 points into that crappy tree...

Tenth. "Melvin, have I told you how damn much gold Ima makin offa inscription?"
"YES. Every freaking time you talk to me!"

Over 12k gold now, my peeps. Now if i can just enroll all these zombies into my pyramid scheme.

Lookin fer my hot stuff...

2008-10-20T20:53:00.003-04:00

I told Dammy that I was runnin enhance shammy figures, and he asked me fer a post. Plz note... my gear is pretty terrible. I really need to reenchant moongoose.... And two of the blue pvp set... the shame...

First... if you've been playin a shammy fer a while...

Take a good, damn long look at all yuir totems now.

Strength of earth now gives agil as well as str. While, with the recent nerf to str (now str = 1AP, instead of 2), you get exactly the same amount of +ap... you also get about 2-2.5% melee crit offa the agil (depending on if you specced the imp totem talent.)

Windfury totem now helps us. A LOT. +16% attack speed, +20% if you have imp totems. Normally, my melee damage is a lot closer to my windfury damage. Note, this screen shot is one of a few dozen I took after messing with diff totems, etc...

Flametongue totem... etc. Almost 200 +spell power.

Anyway... dammy, that 16.5% of damage offa lightning bolt... thats all maelstrom weapon. Note the count. On different iterations, I was throwin 4 bolts fer every 5 earth shocks I threw... so we're lookin at a maelstrom proc (5 stack) about every 7-9 seconds. This can be a light bolt... or it can be a healing wave. Either way... its all good. You aint goin down til you run outta mana.

Which comes to that other talent... static shields... other people have noted that this talent only seems to proc offa regular melee attacks.. not windfury or spells. And this... just isnt worth it. Not when you can pop up a water shield and be throwin a 3k heal at yourself every 9 secs. (Note that the RNG loves messin with Maelstrom... I had weird results pop up) You can see from the screenshot... about 5% (this test was without the LS glyph) damage isnt worth givin up the mana of water shield. And if your gettin beat on... keepin mana up for heals or light bolts would seem a better deal...

Spirit wolves... about 175 dps fer my char base. I don't know if they scale with AP or SP. However... they DO get totem benefits. Str of Earth and Windfury will boost DPS to about 225. I need to find a way to test their healing function.

Lava lash? I should play with it... but I really don't like the look. Plus, anything that makes an offhand attack will screw up windfury procs.

Imp stormstrike? While I like the decreased SS time (and note that the screen doesnt show WF procs offa SS... when doin rotation, try to time SS to land right after a melee attack that DIDNT proc WF... this will do wonders for damage...) the additional nature charges are now useless. You really can't apply more then 4 sources of nature damage to the target over 8 seconds unless they're beating on you and you have light shield up.

Static shields... if you need the dps boost, use the regular shield. You'll have to refresh it more often, but if you need the dps that badly, you aint worrying about mana. Otherwise, stick with water shield. Inna raid, static shields seems counter productive. The minor DPS increase interferes with effective mana regeneration. And in Pvp... well, assa enhance shammy, I really don't like yuir odds either way, so lets leave it at that.

Things I left outta this build... the group buff talent... I'll respec and take it, 10% more AP really boosts about 65% of my damage. Meh... moar messin around to do...

Now take it back...

2008-10-20T20:33:00.010-04:00

Just a few screen shots...

What do I need to do to make revered with SMC? Storm the gates of hell? Check.

Yeah, allies... try to get this. Just you try...

First mammoth sighting!

K, yeah, I DID love a squirrel... but I was drunk, and looking for a ram.

Biggest change to the game so far... damn I love bein able to wolf on water...

What the path to the Headless Horseman looks like for alliance on a pvp server. And yeah, suckit. I died enough times just tryin to fish in Stormwind, you evil bastards.

Otherwise, you wouldn't believe me.

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

2008-10-16T12:55:00.002-04:00

So, I went a little nuts. OK... a lot nuts. But I DID WARN PEOPLE. And no one listened, cuz no one ever listens.

One of the sadder jokes from my job at the store... every so often we'd have to close for some reason or another. And then we'd put a sign up on the locked doors... "CLOSED TIL"

I always made fun of whoever wrote the sign, sayin "Why make the sign? You'll just have to teach the bastards how to read..."

Anyway, the signs were there for insane herbage action following the introduction of glyphs. And, oh boy... first of all, glyphs are unlike any other crafting talent. The best glyphs aren't necessarily the glpyhs made with the highest level mats. Every damn ret paladin needs Glyph of Crusader Strike, and Glyph of Seal of Command. The first uses blindweed/sungrass level herbs, only the second uses outlands level herbage. Of the two, crusader strike is sellin much, much better. (30g each, and I could get more.. why 30g? Cuz there were none at the AH, and people started beggin to buy em at that price)

Blindweed and sungrass are sellin fer 50g a stack. So is kingsblood. I bought a lot of that fer 5g a stack just last week...

To this point, I've made 2k offa herbs and glyphs. And yes, glyphs are actually selling for more than the herbs required to make them. AND I have about 1k in auctions still up. As well asa ton of mats left to set up friends.

There are few things as addicting as checkin yuir auctions. Even when its only virtual money... its still pretty damn nice.

I was too weak to give in, too strong too lose...

2008-10-15T09:33:00.003-04:00

Inscription at 250.

Downloaded the patch last night... was unable to get on the server.

Woke up, bright and early... got on, started leveling inscription.

World crashes...

Get back on, level some more...

World crashes...

Get back on....

Server goin down message...

Take a shower, get back on, start leveling again...

World crashes...

Get back on, put up 70 auctions of herbs and glyphs, world crashes, go to work...

Still doan know about mage... frost would seem the smart choice, but glyph of arcane missiles extends range another 5'

This would make them have a range of 41. And Arcane missiles witha range of 41 are just pure goodness.

If words could make wishes come true

2008-10-14T15:07:00.003-04:00

So, ah, have you read Harry Potter?

One thing I tend to dislike about book lists is that they pretty much tell me what I already know. I mean, yeah, I've read all these. The trick issa book list of books people would enjoy that not everyone has read. And, since Ima who I am, it can't just be a book list. So, here, in honor of patch day... stuff gamers would like.

BOOKS

The Compleat Traveller in Black.

Um... the finest of existential fantasty. If you like this, check out Shockwave Rider as well, Brunner's response to the 60's pop psychology hit Future Shock. Oh, a teaser? The main character has to grant the first wish you make in his presence. He has a choice as to whether to grant the second...

The Vampire Genevieve

Set in the warhammer universe. If ya like angsty vampires, this is the best thing yuil ever read. Recently rereleased... I lent my copy to Melvin, and he couldn't understand what was goin on. Higher praise I cannot give. The author is a pretty interesting figure in his own right, I've mentioned him before...

Ima not gonna mention C. S. Freidman or Guy Gavriel Kay. They get mentioned enough. But if you haven't ready anything by them, it would be worth doin so...

The Book of Jhereg

James Bond inna fantasy setting? I realized how sneaky good the author was on the third book, when the main character mentions how important the number 17 is. I check the book. 17 chapters. I check the first two... each of them has 17 chapters...

He wrote a book where the chapters each had three parts. A one line introduction, the lines together telling the story of the main character casting a spell. A few paragraphs about the main character's childhood. And then the story itself, which begins and ends with the casting of a spell, and the blood of a god.

Then there was the one where every chapter started with a line from a laundry list... the latest book is out in hardback... gonna be a long wait.

Illegal Aliens

They rereleased it! The funniest sci fi satire of all time! Um... Phil Foglio and Nick Pollatta. How to describe? Aliens make first contact with Earth.. AND ARE NOT PREPARED!

The Damned (series)

Allen Dean Foster... the flip side of illegal aliens. The universe is in the middle of a massive war between a race of psychers that can mind control, who want to bring all sentient life together in a effort to transcend sentience, and everyone else, who don't want to lose free will. The problem? No true sentient can bear the thought of violence. Only a handful can actually take up arms, even in the face of an ultimate threat.

Then they find humanity.

MOVIES

Night Watch

A russian vampire movie. And remember kiddies... russians doan really believe in happy endings.

Gruz 200

No link on this, its not out in the states yet. I've only managed to watch about 2/3 of it via other sources... um... it's another russian movie by a director that got pissed off at Putin's infatuation with the soviet past. The title refers to the material (zinc) that the russian army made coffins outta to ship home their dead. And its about a serial killer who is tormenting a girl in an attempt to prove to her that there is no god... just as socialism tells us... (and when I say torment... I mean... well, again, no happy endings...)

Three O'Clock High

Kinda a cult classic now. Bombed when it came out in the 80's due to the unintentional drug reference. (It's actually a reference to High Noon, with whom it share a plot...) Kid has to meet a bully fer a fight at the end of the school day. Funny funny funny.

My Man Godfrey

My favorite screwball comedy. Of all time. Produced at the height of the depression, a ditzy rich socialite goes on a scavenger hunt for "a forgotten man." Which, indeed, she ends up finding.

ANIME

Please Save My Earth

Its dated, it really has no ending.. but its one of the saddest things I've ever seen. About obsessive love and redemption.

We won, we won, then we shot that BB gun!

2008-10-13T14:10:00.003-04:00

Ripper has a mage talent post up, with his usual introspection, thoughtfulness, and complete lack of poetic sense.

(How can a fire mage NOT take world in flames! Cmon, even if it did nothing, the name alone...)

I think 61 frost. I like arcane, but until I can get mage armor that makes a mage all but immune to locks (at level 71 it reduces magic effect duration by 50%...) Ima stayin frost and gankin warriors... especially with shattered barrier, which gives a free frost nova when yuir shield breaks. Both fire and frost look to make aoe grinding ecstasy again!

Hunters... BRK hassa nice brief on the talent trees up on wowinsider. My only issues... he really needed a short bit on the massive change to kill command, and what this means in the greater scheme of things. Blizz is tryin ferra synergy with kill command and certain hunter talents.

Kill Command

3% of base mana	45 yd range

Instant cast	1 min cooldown

Give the command to kill, increasing your pet's damage done from special attacks by 60%. Each special attack done by the pet reduces the damage bonus by 20%.

K... its no longer a free damn attack. This is bad fer the steady shot spammin macro thingy. However, special attacks, such as bite, claw, monstrous bite, or the gorilla thunder stomp, all become that much moar evil. 1 min cooldown. Ouch. If yuir not bm, you will NEVER use this. If you are, read on...

Focused Fire	Rank 2

All damage caused by you is increased by 2% while your pet is active and the critical strike chance of your pet's special abilities is increased by 20% while Kill Command is active.

K.. pet does 60% moar damage. Pet gets 20% moar crit.

Cobra Strikes	Rank 3

You have a 60% chance when you critically hit with Arcane Shot, Steady Shot or Kill Shot to cause your pet's next 2 special attacks to critically hit.

Hmm... see, this just doesnt work too well with that 1 min cooldown. If it was less, maybe. However, if ya lookin fer burst damage, get the devilsaur to stack 3 of these...

Monstrous Bite	Rank 6

25 Focus	Melee Range

Instant	10 sec cooldown

Your devilsaur ferociously bites the enemy, causing 91 to 123 damage, and boosts its own damage by 3% for 12 seconds. This effect stacks 3 times.

Then get cobra strikes to proc, hit bestial wrath, kill command, and watch sparky go to town.

But, thats a ton of effort for a coupla quick crits. So, overall, the combo looks like failz. At least til that damn cooldown is removed. So, a thing to keep an eye on.

Which is why ima goin survival. First.. one of the most changed talents in the game is this one...

Master Marksman	Rank 5

Increases your critical strike chance by 5%, and reduces the Mana cost of your Steady Shot by 25%.

It went from a flat +10% to rap to a thing of the gods. A shame its in the MM tree and I'll never see it.

But ima gonna have something in MM... a 18MM/43Surv build to start. I was playin with the numbers... Careful Aim and Hunter vs Wild will both raise my rap by about 250. Lightning Reflexes will give another 80 rap, and 2% of crit. So... about 2k rap, and 40% crit. Master Tactician should proc often enough for another 10%. No Escape and Survival Instincts give another 10% in the right situation. Thats 60%. Did I mention Lock and Load for two free arcane shots at a 60% crit onna frost trapped toon? What about one point in Expose Weakness to boost my RAP by about 150 when I start the crit pain train? Or Improved Arcane Shot for +15% damage?

Just remember a coupla points in Improved Stings to boost that already uber buffed Wyvern Sting damage. (only 1k damage at 70, but 2500 damage at 80!)

Screw that, I need a few moar of these... !!!!!. AND MAYBE CAPS. Remember, Lock and Load will proc offa serpent sting.

So yeah, survival. Gonna have to train uppa Hyena. And maybe finda mage with Torment the Weak to pair with.

So.. on to shammiedom. Enhance fer fun, and itsa fairly straitforward. Some notes on changes. Enhance Shammies can now crit spells. And hate strength and want agility. (And int!)

But probably the biggest thing for shammies is the general utility of the first three tiers of enhance.

First tier...

Ancestral Knowledge	Rank 5

Increases your intellect by 10%.

Used to just be +5% mana. Now it boosts spell crit and AP (if ya got the talent later). 5 points well spent.

Next...

Improved Shields	Rank 3

Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Water Shield orbs by 15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 15%.

This really... looks nice. The lightning shield talentsmakes it a lot more useful for purposes of enhance dps. Any boost to ES healing issa must ferra resto build. And Elemental can make a lotta use outta this.

Also in this tier... Imp ghost wolf. And yeah, I know its silly, but its still uberfun fer all build...

Third tier...

Elemental Weapons	Rank 3

Increases the damage caused by your Windfury Weapon effect by 40% increases the spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by 30% and increases the bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon by 30%.

30% moar spell power. At level 80, thats 62 or so, not too shabby. (Remember, wrath of air totem is GONE!) The windfury bonus is pure gold, dps wise. And earthliving.. thats just a free damn heal. Nuttin wrong with that.

And the piece de resistance!

Shamanistic Focus
Reduces the mana cost of your Shock spells by 45%.

Um... another subtle change that completely changes the talent.
It USED to be, a 60% reduction in the cost of yuir next shock after a melee crit. No more... so... elemental shammies speccing this far into enhance can really do worse than to take this. Resto shammies as well... no more downgrading frost or earth shocks fer control at no mana cost. Ifn yuir gonna pvp build, yuil be at least 11 in enhance by the end...

Time to drink till the patch comes up...

I was a liar, you were a cheat

2008-10-10T15:19:00.002-04:00

Plans...

Moar herbage! Must haz moar herbz fer the patch!

Pick arcane or frost for the mage. Ripper could help a lot with a short guide to the new arcane tree... (hint hint)

Pick BM or Surv fer the hunter to plays with. Then level my new devilsaur after I pick BM.

Tells Arms&Fury Ima happy he's my friend. Then figure a way to fit my new insult in... (Was that yuir ass, or are they sellin rogaine to yetis now?)

Dread Thanksgivin. Bruce offered to pay for the hookers if I'd set it up (but to keep it under $500 each). I haven't the heart to explain the whole WotLK to him... leveling to 80 > hookers. I doan know if this says good things or bad things about my priorities...

Ignore Melvin. He and his bro are levelin new chars. Yep... Melvin's got himself a Pally! And his bro a rogue. This'll be the 5th 70 fer Melvin, and 6th 70 fer the Magebert.

Bitch moar about shammy changes. A 10/51 elemental/enhance build fer shammies is very doable... my current worries... unlike resto, I have no problems paring enhance down to 51 points.

Start gatherin moar +crit gear for my resto set. It's gonna be important.

I really need to get my shammy revered with both shatar and thrallmar. This might have to wait till Arms&Fury goes protect. Will he change his name? Probably not, hesa lazy. "The warrior formally know as Arms&Fury."

BTW... like Blizzard is really gonna solve itemization by making shammies rogues in mail. Yeah, yeah, agil gives us AP now, but +crit applies to our spells... +crit > agil... leading to "It's got +crit on it, that's a SHAMMY item!"

I will talk to anyone...

2008-10-08T09:39:00.003-04:00

Posts two days inna row! Aint you people lucky.

Damn I wish I could access wowhead or wowwiki at work :(

Anyway... Dammerung has brought his shammy to our server, and posted the glyphs hesa interested in.

So... I already did a bit about how the lesser healing wave glyph makes the healing wave spell obsolete.

BTW... this is the healing wave glyph. What does it do? Why... it turns healing wave into a gimped chain heal! JOY! Yep, doan even bother training this POS spell.

So... one weird thing about the glyphs is how useless they are for most classes. Mages... meh. The evocation glyph actually has me pretty excited. Its purely pvp, but a 60% heal for a non healing class is still a 60% heal.

And the armor glyphs are also nice. Well, molten armor and mage armor. Ice armor is still pretty useless. Unless you deep frost and you pvpin.

But the mage armor glyph can allow a properly specced mage 80% mana regen while casting.

Um... anyone else see this as broken?

K... screw mages. I'll let ripper talk about them. And the world doan need another hunter blog. Tho the hunter glyphs are kinda disappointing.

No, lets talk about the new shammy weapon buffs. We gettin three buffs fer the future. Old favorite, windfury. Flametongue, buffed to add +spellpower as well as fire damage onna melee hit. And earthliving weapon, a +healing (ima assuming this is also spellpower) as well assa 20% chance to proc a 450 or so smart heal on the party upon healing spell cast.

First... earthliving. I can haz moar random healz floatin around? I mean really.. the next talent change fer resto shammies will give 50% health regeneration to anyone standing in their shadows...

When the patch hits, ima have a ton of testin to do. But really... I wont be surprised if I getta random heal effect just by /lol.

Remember... thesa smart healz. So, if you gotta single target to healz... cahnce to proc extra healz on em is just sick. As well... thassa flat 20% chance to proc. So, spamming lesser healing wave instead of (inferior) healing wave gives ya a double chance to get that extra 450 (at level 70). Plz... can I haz moar bonuses to the monkey bot spam healz?

What could be better than that? Hows about the new flametongue? Gives 96 spell damage... and then there's this. 2% moar crit? Um... so Dammy. Looks like blizz is really pushin enhance shammies to go dual with windfury on main, and flametongue on offhand. 96 +spell and 2% moar spell crit aint too damn bad.. plus the +fire damage part of spell.

I know Unbound is gonna be tryin this.

Not to mention fer resto. 2% spell crit is huge. I mean... thats 2 talent points, right there. Not too damn many glyphs are worth 2 talent points. And witha new emphasis on crits via resto (remember, earthshield can and will crit...)

So... will I be usin earthlivin or flametongue? If I got the glyph... I'll have to go flametongue, cept in pve healin situations. And even then... I shouldn't be challenged.

My main problem right now is lookin atta level 70 resto pvp build come the patch. Gotta take elemental shields. (gives 15% moar es healin, and 15% moar water shield mana regen.)

That means prob 10 in enhance. (WTB insta ghost wolf!) Which means only 51 in resto... which means... no mana tide totem.

My mind is stilla boggled.

Into the ocean, end it all

2008-10-07T14:04:00.003-04:00

So anyway.. fer my 'hoof homies. Go here, and check out what glyphs you want, come the patch.

Remember to look at the trainer part. If it say's "Northrend Only..." itsa expansion glyph.

You can equip 2 major glyphs. The minor glyphs are all discoveries, so I won't be able to make them for a while. Once you've picked them out, in game mail the request to Majeure.

*Edit... pick out as many as you want... I'll try to send a stack of 5 each so you can swap in and out. I'll need to make a ton to level, and I'd rather not waste the leveling on stuff that can't be used. Just be aware... yuir limited to equipping 2 majors till you hit level 80.

How bad was arena last week? I respecced Unbound to enhance for a bit. I still gotta read Herk the riot omnibus. (We far beyond mere acts at this point.)

And moar news on resto shammies come patch. I respecced back to resto, and moved a few points around. To the point, I ditched all my healing wave talents for other ones.

Here's why I have healing wave. First... in my resto gear, with +1900 healz... I crit for 7.5k ish. Reg heal is around 4.5-5k.

Lesser healing wave is 2.5k regular, 4k crit.

Mana wise, healing wave is moar efficient. But if I need a mana efficient heal, chain heal, even on one target, gets moar heal per buck. If other party members are takin damage, its not even close. Chain hits normal for about 3.5-4k on first target, and costs about 30% less mana.

Why? Cuz offa talent that increases chain heal by 20%. Everyone at this point should understand healing coefficents. Thats right... chain heal gets 71.43% vs healing wave's 85.71%. What happens with +20% to the heal? Chain heals coefficient goes to... 85.72%.

And that's just the first jump. Its not even funny if you start healin moar than one target.

Mana cost? Chain heal, 540 mana. Healing wave, 740 mana. Chain heal costs 72% of the mana. (talents change the mana cost, but not the ratio.)

So... when the bulk of the heal amount comes from the spell itself... healing wave is more efficient. Healing wave is about 2300, chain heal is about 900 (1100 with two points in talent). But the mechanic of the game changed completely with blizzard opening the gates to +healz lands, come burning crusade. Now... barely more than half of healing wave's healz come from the base amount. And as +healz power increases... chain heal becomes more and more efficient. As it stands, with +1900 healz, I get 69% the primary target healing for 72% of the mana. AND I get the chance to heal two moar targets.... and this isnt even counting raid buffs. Raid buffed, with another +300 healz or so... ima gettin moar than 72% of the healin of healin wave for 72% of the mana.

Blizz's answer? A 3 point talent, healing way, that applies a buff to a target gettin healing waved. It stacks 3 times, and each instance adds +6% healing from healing wave... The buff lasts 15 seconds. So... in order to be useful, I have to be spamming my most powerful healing spell every 15 seconds or less on the same target. And the other members of the party have to not be takin damage. And the constant damage has to require more than 3 heals.

You know any fights like this? Pure tank and spank?

K... so its useful once inna blue moon... I can see this. Which is why I had this talent until last night. True... only a tank is gonna be able to use healz that powerful... but thats the heart of instance runnin, right? Not to mention the most important part of this... given all 8 talent points, this provides a shammies best healz per second. (HPS)

The problem is... at +1900... I don't see fights where I have to worry about hps.

Then comes WotLK. And the mechanics change again. Earth shield becomes more powerful. And by extension, massively mana efficient. Crits add even moar in the way of smart healz. And Ima sorry... if I crit a healing wave onna tank... and 7.5k aint enough... itsa fubar. So... I can cast lesser healing wave... get the 4k crit... and the 40% bonus can go to the tank... ferra 5.5k heal. None of which will be wasted.

The only problem is that lesser healz have half the healing of a full healing wave. They have exactly half the healing coefficient. And they cost 61% of the mana. Fer almost exactly half the heal.

So ifn Ima blizzard... I'd do everything in my power to avoid makin lesser healing wave a more efficient way to heal a tank, right? Right?

Not so much.

New figures? 60% of the healz fer 61% of the mana. Itsa faster, a lot less likely to overheal, and much better for group healing. EXACTLY the same hps of healing wave with 5 points in reduced cast time. (But not with healing way, which costs another 3 talent points)

Not only will I not be speccing for healing wave... I won't even put it on my spell bar.

BTW... anyone with shammy experience in WotLK... do chain heal crits and earth shield crits effect that new ghost heal effect? Ima thinking yes to first and no to second...

Please allow me to introduce myself....

2008-10-04T16:43:00.003-04:00

Beo and dammy came to live with us on the hoof! Woof!

Also... I maybe went a little nuts with the whole "preparing for inscription" thing.

Maybe. Just a little.

Through the storm we reach the shore

2008-10-03T15:33:00.002-04:00

Shout out to Dammy, who stopped by the 'hoof last night. Sadly, I was the only one on, but we chatted while Unbound was knee deep in allies at WSG. (and put his char in the guild... now to lure beo here as well!)

"Damn, they got the flag back."

"Hold on... healin now"

"K, we won."

Says dammy, "that was fast!"

"Ima just that good."

8 min win. I hadda prot warrior with 17k life runnin flag. Unbound has 1900 +healz. We pretty much ran through 5 allies three times in short succession, while rest of team cept em from gettin our flag.

It work the same damn way... I'd keep prot warrior up, earthbind, then the snared allies would give up on catchin the flag, and just gank me. I'd rez just in time to catch the warrior comin outta silverwing keep with the flag again.

I'm just sayin... in BG's... you do as much damage to the enemies' minds as to their health. And they really, really, really can't resist a helpless target, no matter how long it takes to kill.

So... ripper went mental. We gotta get this boy into the expansion before he completely loses it. And dammy... ripper has had a lotta stuff on mages.

The decay of the mage class has been a sore point for us fer quite some time. The expansion holds a great deal of promise... and heartbreak. So, since I've been asked... my take on what pain we can expect with "ECHOES OF DOOM!"

/ominous music

Look. Class balance is wow is a tricky damn thing. I remember the original Magic the card game. The idea with old school magic was... common cards. useful. Uncommon cards... more powerful, but moar a niche thing. Rare cards... uberpowerful.

Noone ever saw the possibility of people buyin so damn many cards that they would be able to make decks of nothing but rare cards. And.. well, itsa game. You gotta make it so skill counts SOMETHING. Not just who can afford the most best stuff.

Wow suffers the same blindspots. Like elemental shammies. Yeah, let me put 7 points into fire totem talents, then give me an top tier talent that makes it all useless. Which is why I HATE elemental shammies.

(Kinda like the lock demonology thing. Yeah, 25 points makin yuir pet better... now get rid of it for yuir 51st point talent.)

Pet classes... yeah, end content is fun, but you'll never see it cuz yuir pet dies 1.73 seconds into the raid. How long did it take them to fix this?

K.. when judging a new talent tree... you gotta look fer synergy. Do the talents hang together? Or do they contradict each other? Like herk's complaint about the current idea for arms... in order to use everything... you need to be in battle stance to take advantage of execute. Which completely screws pvp arms, since all the anti fear crap and burst is in fury.

Cept for the new bladestorm, which is so dysfunctional it aughta be a Lohan.

Which is why I like what's happening with Mages. True... they completely and utterly screwed arcane blast. Arcane got gutted lika Bantha in harshest winter. But well... fire is gonna be great fun in BG's. And... not half bad fer arena. At least until people start stackin 450 resil again. And frost got more of what makes frost fun. Control and damage. And even arcane might not be so bad...

What is a mage after all but ranged version of a rogue? Stick and move... stick and move. Moar instacast spells... moar control... can only help mages in pvp whatever spec. Even arcane is justa unnerf to arcane blast from bein an awesome raidin spec.

As fer hunters... I REALLY like the top BM talent. Look, people. There are those that play the game for reasons other than pvp or pve. Anda lotta of these play hunters. Finally... a talent for them. "Exotic" pets issa great idea. The worst thing blizz ever did was standardize all pets... I remember huntin uniques for their extra abilities... shadow damage, extra resists, uber attack speed, etc. It doesn't hurt the game to have people who live for the easter eggs. Since blizzard wont go back to unique pets... this issa nice bone to throw us.

Now if only critters were their own exotic family, and we could wtfpwn n00bs with squirrels and rabbits.

For 70 level talent builds... I kinda wanna see what I can do with a devilsaur 51/10 build. Orcs get 5% moar pet damage. I think I could really... abuse this with the right ferocity pet.

Survival looks interesting as well. There is simply so damn much +crit talents in that tree that a 0/11/50 build would really rock. Instant aimed shot on something inna frost trap? Oh lord.

However... I have to agree with those that think explosive shot and chimera shots are in the wrong damn trees. Explosive shot adds nothing to the talents already in survival. How can you have imp volley and explosive shots mutually exclusive? I mean, really... is the idea of an aoe hunter that unbalanced? Meanwhile both imp stings and chimera should both be moved to surv.

And then there's the scatter shot factor. Without that...MM is dead in pvp. Period. No moar hunters on drain teams. You wont be able to keep them alive. Readiness? You gotta be kiddin me. All the damn trap skills are in the other damn tree...

Again, my theme. Talents that reinforce each other should be available to a single build. What are we gonna see? BRK hit the nail on the head. 50/21 BM builds with double bestial wrath. (which will get nerfed the same way prep/ar rogue builds got nerfed... BLIZZARD NEVER LEARNS). This build will dominate Hunter dps builds fer quite some time.

And survival builds with MM at least to readiness. Double wyvern sting, scatter shot, traps... harder to kill than freddy kruger, and so damn much crit frost mages will look upon our works and despair...

And witha nerf to aspect of the viper... Surv will work very very well with certain healing builds. So.. two decent pvp/pve builds... and MM becomes to hunters what arcane has been to mages all this time. Spare freaking parts.

Last.. shammies.

Enhance got... doggies. Maelstrom weapon keeps gettin nerfed cuz... well lets face it. The only thing you can do to enhance enhance (as it were) is integrate physical damage more evenly with spell damage. The problem... enhance shammies already have burst damage that makes mages green with envy. Give them auto crit insta cast lava bursts... and you gotta nother ret pally sized balance problem.

So what does enhance get? Freaking toys. Puppies. A change to earthbind totem that acts like a band-aid to shammy mobility issues. Kinda like givin a fool a helmet and sendin them up against someone wieldin .45 colt.

"Pray for the head shot!"

What does elemental get? Not a goddamn thing. A get outta rogue stunlock free card (only usable if you aint stunned.) Less damage. Early reports of elemental dps in raids are... discouraging at best.

This leave resto. And it looks, to me, like resto won the anti-nerf lottery. And insta cast heal witha hot element? C'mon. A buff to earth shield? No.. doan lead me on... an AI heal effect offa heal crit?

I mean... look. Healing in wow is disfunctional. The mechanics make no godddam sense. A healing crit is either useless over healing, orra sign that the tank is overgeared. Improved healing way is one of the most idiotic talents in the game... if it lasted like, 30 seconds, it might be worthwhile. As it is... well, this would take a longer discussion. It simply is useful so few times...

Now blizzard is gettin orginal. Remember... due to imp chain heal... past a certain +heal level, its actually more mana efficient to use chain heal on a tank than to use healing wave. And if there's more than one target... well, massive no brainer. And past a certain +heal... you an idiot to use healing wave instead of lesser healing wave onna non tank.

So what do we have now? A talent that makes lesser healing wave and chain heal even moar useful, and healing wave even moar useless. A heal crit gives a 40% heal to the person in raid who most needs it. I mean really.. I crit my healing wave for 7.5k. This would make it a 10.5 heal. Absolutely wasted.

What does this benefit? Rapid cast heals (moar crits, moar even bonus healin distributed...) Chain healz (three shots atta crit).. and remember the bonus riptide gives to chain heal.

What gets left out? Healing wave.

Heal spell rotation? Keep earth shield up. Riptide for the hot. Lesser heal, lesser heal... chain heal as riptide's hot expires for the bonus. Rinse, wash, repeat. Should keep up a main tank, and splash enough bonus healz around (as well as chain heals) to keep everyone up. Even if they stand on the goddamn burning earth like absolute idiots.

And for pvp? Cmon. An insta cast heal/hot. Earth shield with 20% moar healin and extra charges. "Ghost heals" when you crit, so you get 40% moar healz on the rapid healz that doan get interrupted. Resto shammies are the new resto druids. Cept we can do *real* damage. I expect a biker gang with nerf bats to pull up outside any moment.

Fer pvp... stack crit lika fool, and rely on totems and water shield to keep your mana up.

Fer pve... you still gonna need crit lika pally... but moar +mp5. Possibly swap out +spell power to balance crit and mp5.

Anyway... that's my thoughts so far... Ima still stackin herbage fer the great inscription run. (At this point, ima just gonna sell a ton of it. Runnin outta space now tho...) Still grindin honor on Unbound. (I'll start playin the mage again after the xpansion hits...)

Still tormentin Melvin. He still thinks hunters are gonna get to have two pets out. I've been doin the double devilsaur thing on him. (That so sounds like the ultimate in kink. "Double devilsaur.") Told him that his enchanter will finally be able to enchant his alt's gear (via new inscription scrolls...)

His question... "Will my enchanter have to have the inscription skill as well?"

I mean... its not a bad question. Except... who the hell thinks like this?

Just watching you without me.

2008-10-01T13:08:00.002-04:00

So, the response to megs...

Why did it take so long? Well... I was kinda tryin to figure out what flower megs would be, if megs was a flower.

The the answer hit me... itsa so simple.

Nightshade. Intoxicating, produces madness, deadly. A far more capable and lethal cousin of Solanum lycopersicum.

So... here's why we disagree on flag strategy in EotS.

Plz realize... she does premades. I don't. So when she says things like "winning WSG is about controlling the middle of the field." She thinks puttin people in the middle of the field will control it. I think of 6 people seein a prot warrior and thinking, "Hey, this guy can't hurt me, free kill! A lot less fustratin than chasin that damn druid..."

The problem is one of strategic initiative. If you have the flag, you got the initiative. Both is EotS and WSG. THEY have to respond to YOU. This is mitigated if the other side is ahead by enough. Then they can just turtle up in two bases and wait it out. Or sometimes just one.

But if you got the flag, and the score is close... you determine the path of the game. Hold on to the flag, ignore middle, and go for that third base. They outta mid? Coordinate the team to rush mid as you cap. You don't need the mid if you have the flag. THEY, on the other hand, have to keep an eye on it to avoid you gettin cheap points.

And if you get within 40 points of lead? You can just turtle up with the flag, and cap it at last minute for the win. The only organization you need to worry about is makin sure you got enough to defend their inevitable zerg.

Now... this is not to say that an early zerg of the other side's towers issa bad idea. If you can keep them from cappin one of them for a minute or two, you get a nice little point advantage, flag be damned.

But in the grand scheme of things... you have to keep it simple. The average PUG player couldn't spell zerg if you spotted him the z and the "ERG!" They'll hang back, waitin for someone else to go first. They'll watch a flag get picked up, rather than do a suicide to win a few more seconds.

And here's why I wrote the original post. I saw a group of horde in EotS run PAST the flag, at mid, to fight on the middle of the road on the other side. Why were they fightin on the road? Cuz the alliance attacked them there... and you can't just run past an alliance to get to a tower, oh no... and why did they ignore the flag? Cuz people like meg, who otherwise know what they're doin, tend to tell them to ignore the flag. Every goddamn game... I would swear to god that it was alliance propaganda designed to make horde throw the game, cept I see it too many times on alliance side.

The trick is not in winning the game with a good team, megs, dearest.

The trick is winning the game with the complete and utter idiots blizzard stuck you with. And tellin em the flag is useless, just go for the towers... doesn't help. Specially when you have to tell them, again... "the towers... not the road... no, not that road either... no, not the graveyard, the towers. THE TOWERS! WTF IS UP WITH YOU NOOBS FER THE LVOE OF GOG$%#%"

Renoobed has left the game.

Oh, latest Melvin news. I told melvin that honor is bein reset. I haven't told him that this was reversed. And I won't. But I will tell him that arena season is ending in two weeks. And let him make whatever conclusions about arena points that he can.

He's been braggin about his lock too much for my comfort.

Every man's conscience is vile and depraved

2008-09-29T16:23:00.003-04:00

It's embarassing to admit how long it took me to learn the right way how to peel garlic.

Arms&Fury lost his damn mind over the weekend. Ima just tellin you. He claims itsa illness.

Thankfully, Ima few hundred miles away.

So... reason #2,2219 I hate warriors.

We was doin ring of blood fer teh ozmah. Herk tanks, I healz, everyone else dps.

Cept Herk weren't tankin. Herk was 2handed, berserk stance, deathwish poppin, warrior dpsin. Now... some clarification fer yaz.... a tank is not a tank cuz of the big gun. A tank issa tank cuz of the thick armor. With zerk stance and deathwish... well, I'd rather heal a damn lock, or rogue. Easier job fer me. Fer him... it doan matter. HERK SMASH! HERK CAN HAZ RAGE!

I've main healed gruul and seen tanks take less damage. See... this is why I ask fer pallies first fer my tankin jobs. They have a more exact understanding of the task. Warriors have always resented having to use a shield. And when they get a good healer, they toss it into the bag and go into painz mode.

Or maybe I could use a bear. Melvin is probably free.

Well, probably not. Melvin issa huge packers fan. So not only did I get to ask him how the packers did sunday (I already knew... its just more fun listening to him tell me...) I also got to point out to him that Brett Farve threw 6 touchdown passes this week! Something he never did for his old team...

I so enjoy melvin's suffering. Even if my "light banter" puts him into a catatonic state, sucking his thumb in a closet instead of bein at my beck and call.

So, Arms&Fury and I need to put in three moar games in arena this week. Did some early sunday, then had to bail. Then did one later... lasted 40 minutes.

At the end, Arms logged, claiming he was shaking from the tension. (We won, btw). I doan know why he was so freaked out... between the druid cyclone, roots, and hunter traps... Herk was cc'ed long enough to take a bio break, maka sammich, and watch a movie.

But you know itsa rough match when you have to run a daily to get enough gold to repair, anda bg to get enough honor to replace the stacks of tears you drank.

And yeah, megs... I aint forgotten you. I'll hava response up later this week.

You have to kill me... I am an open book.

2008-09-25T13:29:00.003-04:00

The sad thing is that this post's lyrics are from one of the songs on my current playlist.

Ima little ambivalent about Kirk's challenge. On the one hand, Ima big follower of the culture of books. I grew up inna household like this. "They will breathe with gills that make the sounds of fluttering pages."

And Ima no stranger to banned books. I was readin Henry Miller before I was in high school. Which kinda freaked out my high school librarian.

Which is why she recruited me to go through stacks of donated paperbacks and cull out the ones that might cause trouble. These mostly came in two categories. Tom Robbins, and christian horror. Cuz apparently some people can't write a christian horror novel without scenes of children being anally raped. (you might think I'm joking. I'm not.)

I've been hangin out with librarians all my life. My best friend in elementary school (we were both held back in handwriting class) was the daughter of the man who owned the town book store.

I met Kim, my movie partner, about the same time her mother noticed me. Kim's mom was the librarian at my undergraduate college. (People... I still have stories... really. I just need to get depressed enough to tell them)

One picture they put in my senior yearbook was of me in a chair, reading, with the caption "[Noobed] engrossed in yet another fascinating book."

That bein said... I really have little interest in the whole banned book controversy. Novels are no longer pertinent in the grand scheme of things. We've moved on to arguing about censoring tv, songs, video games, and talk radio. The fight over books are more outta habit. Of Kirk's whole list, there are maybe what, 10 that I would recommend...

Not to mention some of these are the most published books in human history... like the ban hammer seems to have crippled J. K. Rowling's career... The only reason I read The Handmaiden's Tale was because of the controversy, and I instantly regretted it.

(Side note... I once got into an serious argument with a good (extremely christian) friend over whether the Harry Potter series was suitable for children.)

Anyway... here's what I've read.

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (a truly great book)
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna (I didn't really... *read* this one)
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel (also pr0n)
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (a childhood favorite)
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (bleh)
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (good book, better movie)
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice) (moar pr0n)
55. Cujo by Stephen King (I outgrew S. King at age 13.)
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (click here for moar fun)
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
77. Carrie by Stephen King
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

And next week I'll pick up

71. Native Son by Richard Wright

I always meant to read that one.

And instead of passing this along to 5 others... I will leave you with this message from Samuel Clemens... some books were meant to die.

Just an old fashioned love song...

2008-09-22T11:28:00.002-04:00

Man, this game has its claws im me.

I lost internet saturday, and almost lost my mind. I was so looking forward to farming more herbage fer the upcoming Inscription run.

I will not play a death knight.

I will not play a death knight.

I have three characters already... I swear to god, I will not play a death knight.

(Who the hell am I kidding?)

Best lovers? Priests. Given the choice between makin out and leveling a priest... smoochies!

Can't say that about my hunter or shammy. My poor mage has become dusty tho... :(

Latest word on the Beta. They gave resto shammies a new top tier talent.

It used to be spirit link... but that was just too weird. And either they nerfed it into oblivion, or it would be the most awesome arena talent ever made.

So what are shammies gettin now? Only the best heal in arena. Insta cast regrowth, baby! Only a 6 sec cooldown? Oh man, there's no damn way they gonna let this in. Especially with the other buffs shammies got. Must haz moar critz, plz. I might even start wearing +crit trinkets...

My breakdown... pallies and druids got aoe healz. Yawn. Priests got... well, nothing great. Shammies got stuff to make them better single target healers. Lifebloom met a pack of bikers in a bar, and well... I havent seen a nerf bat used that ruthlessly since the great pre BC nerf of fury warriors.

Majeure, at this point, is ignored. I'm waiting on 3.0 to make mages worth playin again. I've been in av's lately where there wasn't a single mage on the horde team. Sigh. OTOH, I amuse myself by trying to predict spell rotations for the new frost builds. Will ice lance trigger fingers of frost? Cuz if it does...

Did Kara with the new soon to be doomed guild.

I'm gettin better with over healz (20-25%). And mana conservation. I finally got not one, but two healz cloaks. A nice mana regen cloak offa Illhoof fer pve, and the badgers cloak fer arena. I gots 1930 healz with one of my gear sets...

So, the kara run. We pugged an awesome warrior tank. One that knew all the los tricks fer aoe pulls. And we had a old acquaintance off tanking, Taz, a pally arms and fury and I know.

Taz is a bit of an idiot. The warrior would pull a group and then try to LOS em into a tight pack. And Taz would peel em offa him before the warrior could get them into position.

Had an undergeared druid off healing for us. Who dint bother rolling for the healing cloak that dropped because it didnt have any +healz on it. Just a ton of spirit and +mp5. The druid's current cloak was that feather cloak outta sethek halls.

Had a frost mage that didnt know that ice block broke both moroes garrote and maiden's holy fire.

Had an elemental shammy that didnt know grounding totem ate holy fire. And who was slow shocking juliet's healz.

Had a demo lock, first time in Kara on any toon. I took her under my wing fer Illhoof... earth shield and a lock work wonders in that fight. Still, she was rollin on healing gear. And won some +fire damage items. Last among dps, even after illhoof.

Had a rogue. Didn't have wound poison fer Illhoof. (It helps a lot with groups that are slow to kill chains.) Died a lot.

Had a hunter. 41 BM/20 Surv. Could trap well, crap gear. Rolled on gorehowl at end of night. (against the warrior)

Had a holy pal. 60% overhealing. Got caught by Prince's aoe 4 times... and had to be battle rezzed twice during that fight.

Only two wipes. One on trash during a bad pull, one on prince.

A great tank and great healer can forgive a lotta mistakes.

Hello, hello!

2008-09-21T14:39:00.002-04:00

So I popped into a losin AB the other night. And guess who I met?

That's my baby brother there... I dint even know he was in the same battlegroup. I guess the number of lazer chickens I hang out with just went up by one.

Suprised the hell outta him when someone in the BG whispered him by name. Heh heh heh.

See the fool on the hill...

2008-09-21T14:37:00.002-04:00

I know my last post might have been confusing... but here's a case in point.

Look at the horde positions. All over the place. Like a lovely flower. A lovely, harmless, winless, flower. Pansie maybe.

You can't fix stupid.

All we have to do now is take these lies and make them true somehow

2008-09-19T14:51:00.002-04:00

Happy fun weekend. Got a lot done at work, almost caught up.

Had a stupid question to answer at work... and yes, there might not be any stupid questions, but there are tons of inquisitive idiots...

And I have to take exception to Out of Mana. Even if it gets me killed. Painfully.

EotS is a kinda weird BG. There are 5 spots that you need to control. The four bases, and where ever the flag is.

Possess three of these through most of the game and you win.

If you have three bases for half the game, and the other side has one base and the flag the entire game, plus another base through half the game... you will lose.

The flag is worth more than any base. A side that holds two bases and the flag will score twice as many points as a side that holds only 2 bases.

Flag = almost 2 bases.

The flag must be controlled, or you must control three bases. And while you try for three bases... you gotta make sure the flag is contested. If you let the other side run the flag, and you take too long to catch that third base... you will lose.

Here's my problem. I get into EotS games, and people try for the three bases, hit a base with enough d to hold, and fall behind by 3-4oo points while the other side runs the flag while holding on to two bases by their teeth.

And if we get down to one base, and everyone goes into emergency "get another base" mode... while letting the other side cap one or two flags... autofailz.

Now, here's my problem. If you have only one base... you can last a while without getting hopelessly behind, if and only if you can keep the flag out of the hands of the other side. Just don't panic. It takes time for the other side to build a lead, especially if yuir able to run the flag a coupla times instead of just hold it.

The problem is that most peeps in BGs are undergeared idiots. You'll get too many trying to fight for control of the middle instead of for another base. You can't afford this.

But megs, love... you can't afford to let the flag fall into the other side's hands if they have 3 bases either. Two caps, and yuir dead. Yuir makin a mistake blaming the fight in the middle for failz. It just the same stupidity that leads people to sit and "defend" yuir one base, or split up and attack all three other bases instead of concentratin on one.

Here's the problem with strategy and BG's... I doan trust most of these pve fools to do more than get killed in short order. There comes a point where you realize... even if I get 10 of them to that base with only 5 defenders... we'll still lose. My team just sucks that much.

If you can't trust them to keep out of the middle when there's no point to it... you can't trust them to take another base in the face of a real defense. Yuir just screwed. And lets face it... they doan wanna attack. They wanna sit at their one base and gank that prot pally or warrior that keeps single handedly trying to take your base. Which leads us to the Code of the BGtard:

"Heh... guy must be a real idiot, huh. Imagine his repair bill after gettin killed that much! I never die in BG's, that's how I know Ima winner. It's just the rest of the team that lets me down..."

So, my problem with yuir argument. Ima mid flag guy. I'll d bases, but I obsess about the flag. And I play in BG's sometime where people would rather run past the flag to fight on the road than stop, grab it, and run it back.

Anyway Ima goin through a weird time in AV... I stopped playing D so I could follow the attackers and make sure there's at least one freaking defender in bunkers... It's almost painful sometimes. I'd love to be able to put together a recapture tower squad in these games... but can't find enough people with the balls.

Read a coupla really neat fantasy books lately.

This, which is just beautifully written. A bit slow, but stayed up all night reading it last week. I doan have higher praise. OTOH, I might be goin insane. So be warned.

And this, by one of my favorite authors. Really dark tho. Every male character, with the exception of two, is either a soul eating monster or a child rapist. Ima not sure what the hell she's tryin to get at here... oh and the two that aren't.. one is a very minor char (which will change) and the other comes to a horrible end.

BTW, ifn yuir wonderin... I like my souls with ranch dressing. Yum!

Just nod if you can hear me.

2008-09-17T13:36:00.002-04:00

K... so Melvin's lock is now his favorite character.

And he plays it like a tard.

And not in a good way. Why do I bitch about life tap? Well... if there's one damn thing I've picked up from arena, besides the fact that you're LUCKY if your warrior partner uses something as sophisticated as a reptile forebrain to make decisions...

Yeah, aside from that, I've learned how important mana management is. Now, playin a mage and a hunter, both mana classes, you know a little bit about mana management. The difference between l33t and epikfailz is timing the mana regen during boss fights.

But fer healerz, its a whole other level. DPS can afford to sit back and regen, while wanding or autoshotting. Healers... we run outta mana, and its game over, man. One problem I've been havin in Arena is the question of burning through my mana for the gib, or sittin on it (or drinking) while the Lizard King burns through rage. I get criticized for both.

Locks kinda have this problem too. On the one hand, they're dps... so they're allowed to run outta mana. On the otherhand, their spells are so mana intensive that they really,
really,
really,
really need to have their next life tap planned out before refreshing all dots and debuffs. Which means you can't let yourself get caught without mana and at half health while the raid healerz are too busy keepin everyone up to get you back on yuir dps.

PvP, this kinda works the same way. If you get life tap up on two or three targets... and you AIN'T gettin trained... even if your at 60-70% mana, life tap. Thats free healz, not to mention normal health regen. There's no excuse for lettin that stream of stolen life goodness go to waste.

Why am I bitching about this again? Shouldn't this be obvious to everyone playin a lock? Well... you already know this answer.

Now normally, I avoid BG's with Melvin like the plague. He's not a bad player, strategy wise... he just can't play his toon. Its not bad if he has his full season 3 toon out. But if he's spottin gear as well... its gonna be ugly.

Unfortunately, the gods of daily questin gave us AB last night. And when I got into one... Melvin was there with his lock as well. And when we got into a dust up... he steadfastly refused to life tap, even as I was healin him.

He was tryin to mana back up with drain mana.

I told him to life tap after the battle so we could rush to next stop.

Melvin: "I don't need to, it'll come back fast enough..."
Renoob: "You really are too stupid for words..."
Melvin: "Hey, don't tell me how to play a lock til you get one to 70 yourself..."

What makes me especially bitter... I played a few AB's... and won em all. (Cept the one I came in with the score ally 1800, horde 1200)
And the next two games... I hooked up with a lock that knew how to play his toon. UA lock... never let his mana drop below 30%, confident that I would keep him up. He was top dps in both games, I was top healz, allies never had a chance.

The synergy between lock and healer... is like the synergy between me and Summer Glau. It's magic baby... a precious and special thing unspeakably violated by the corrution that is Melvin. His mere existence turns dark night into bad indoor lighting. Turn locks, masters of hell, into DMV workers.

Not threatening... annoying.

So here is my manifesto, my lock cousins... TAKE BACK THE NIGHT! PURGE YUIR RANKS OF LOCKTARDS!

You doan WANNA be the huntards of WotLK.

I need this to make me whole...

2008-09-16T15:05:00.003-04:00

The problem with having a warrior as a partner in arena...

Every so often, he has the irresistable urge to pull out his penis, scream his defiance to the uncaring universe, and do something completely stupid.

I'm not particularly talking about a single match... but, well... it gets ugly sometimes. Ima thinking about gelding him... it might make him less aggressive, but Ima tired of cleaning up the little puddles he leaves behind, and anyway, he'll live longer. (Or so the vet tells me.)

Anyway, we made it past the 1575 hump, finally. My shammy will get her bracers, and finally be more or less completely epiked out.

Because of my undying hatred of Arms and Fury, I played a particularly rude trick on him. Ozmah, who has graced our realm with her presence, needed her elite lock mount. Sugars, having already done the quest, had the expensive items required... so agreed to come and help.

Unbeknownst to the rubes, Melvin had a 70 lock without his elite lock mount. So... I invited Melvin into their group. (Sith mind tricks > Jedi mind tricks)

Sony, she of the dangerous cleavage, had several funny comments...

"What the hell is wrong with this guy?"
"We may have to kill him..."

Finally, she could take no more Melvintude, and fled in fear and disgust.

Leavin my shammy, A&F's lazer turkey and sugar da lock to shepherd Oz and Melvin through the quest.

Easy enough... but the Melvin moment of the night...

There we are... full health... watching enslaved demons kill non enslaved demons... (NO, BAD MELVIN! ENSLAVE THE ELITE!) And Melvin is castin drain life asa dps spell... with less than 10% mana but a full health bar....

You may be a locktard if...

WTF? Why are you runnin around with no mana and full health? No combat, you regen health as fast as you regen mana, freaking life tap....

Not knowin when to life tap is like a hunter not knowin how to trap... or put pet on passive.

To many times in BG's, I have to whisper locks to lifetap, I got the heal ready... I've never had a lock ask me to heal while they lifetapped...

K... so Mabd switched to herbalism... and went from 10 to 350 saturday... gettin ready fer inscription. I need another ass load of herbs to rush my mage through to 375 (and that's a A&F ass load... he's got a lot more room in there than you'd suspect, considering all the crap he pulls outta it...)

But I gotta good start. An hour or so in Swamp of Sorrows, and another in teh Plaguelands... and just do the gather quest every day, and I should be good.

Did kara with the new guild... and it looks doomed. No tanks. The guild leader is a lock with 750 spell damage, 20 affliction/41 destruction build.

But Unbound just needs 15 more badgers fer her cloak! And maybe a few more for some totems... And she healed like a messiah during the friday run. Top in healz, best in overhealing (less than 20%, Ima happy cow!)

And here's my problem. The other two healers had similar +healing, about 1650 or so unbuffed. And all they cast (priest and pally) were the 1.5 sec healz. Priest also cast renews...

Wow has become overrun with noobs. Its all gear now, not skill. Top guild raiding... maybe. But in PUG's and baby kara guilds... I've been seein the worst goddamn gameplay in my life.

BLAH.

That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could

2008-09-11T09:28:00.004-04:00

Meh. Not much to say. After reading the tease for Mirror Image on wowinsider, I realized something.

WotLK is NOT comin out anytime soon. Any spell that damn broken... well...

Ima pretty sure Blizz is pushin 3.0 to hit as freaking soon as possible, in an effort to interrupt Warhammer.

My take... EA sucks donkey balls. I love the world of warhammer, and will probably play the game... but I doubt EA has the ability, and know for goddamn sure it lacks the integrity to sucessfully run this game. Blizzard has a hard earned reputation for quality. EA has a well deserved reputation for... something else.

Still.. lookin at whats goin on beta side, November is lookin less and less likely. 3.0 this month... less and less likely. Yeah, I saw the same WotLK crap downloaded to my browser last night... Ima not buyin it.

Anyway... A&F... you gotta homework assignment... read this guy.

"The first serious 2's team I ever ran on my resto druid was Warrior/Druid and mid Season3, we hit 1850 over the course of a few weeks, in small managable chunks. The reason for the low number of games here and there was due to the amount of rage that I would generate watching my warrior tunnel vision himself or myself to death. I don't know what it is with warriors, but your average warrior has the field vision of a toilet paper tube monocle."

Chu, I should probably warn you.. I hate people that are wittier than I am. And yeah... I spend a lotta time hatin a lotta people.

Fer the rest of you... this guy came up in discussion the other day. A quick poll of my rather well educated workers... and almost no one knew the name. Which is a shame.

Why is this relevant? Cuz I'm reading this. Really good book... but a lotta back story you gotta know to fully grasp. Powers is one of the more.. ah... literate writers I know. Considering his best is probably still The Stress of her Regard, a novel about vampires and romantic poets that DOESN'T make you feel like a poofster after reading it... And yes, the book came out well before Corpse Bride, with which it shares a plot device.

K, lastly.. a story. I've been talkin to my Baton Rouge peeps. And yeah, that's Baton Rouge, not Baton Rogue! Kissit wowsters! Anyway, this tale was just too strange...

My friend Dave V lives ina bad part of town. Now, parts of BR are still under curfew since the storm. Dave told me that the Tennessee national guard arrested two people the other day for violating curfew...

D: "And prostitution charges. They propositioned some guardsmen."

"This surprises you?"

"THEY WAS DUDES!"

"Again, this surprises you?"

"Not really... but them Tennessee boys doan know what to make of Plank Road..."

Hand grenade pins in every line...

2008-09-09T16:24:00.003-04:00

Regular readers of this blog know that every so often I hafta get into a flame war with Arms and Fury.

Dogs gotta bark, birds gotta sing... and I gotta yell FLAME ON!

Let me begin by pointing out that he is singlehandedly responsible for the worst Kara pugs I've ever been in.

Last week was a shining example. The old guild broke. Unbound is in a new guild, and Mabd and Maj are guildless.

The new guild tried to do Gruul's... and failed. A waste of 2 hours of my time.

Then A&F calls and asks if I'll heal Kara. Sure... I needs me some badgers fer a healing cloak.

Fight attumen. A&F decides to beat on midnight, instead of waiting fer attumen like a good little main tank. So when At spawns, down goes the other healer and Unbound gets to heal the entire fight.

We hada good paid of tanks... but the dps was miserable. 2 mages that couldn't dps their way outta paper bag, a hunter that couldn't trap, a priest that couldn't shackle....

3 wipes on Moroes later, the group breaks. A&F makes a snarky comment about one of the mages bein as bad as Melvin.

A&F does not understand the perversion of the natural order that is Melvin. The mage in question had barely 7k life, raid buffed. Ima sure her build was crap, and her gear was mispicked. Cmon... this is par for the course. Anyone can suck with bad gear and total ignorance.

Melvin's genius is that he can COMPLZFAILZ with GM level gear and 2 years of playing experience.

The difference was rammed home to A&F when he was asked to DPS fer Melvin and Company in Heroic MgT. Fer the last fight.

See... I gotta message from Melvin's bro... asking if I knew how to beat the second boss. They lost a dps due to excessive wipes. I said sure, logged out, looked up the fight, logged back in, and was told they found another dps, not to bother.

The new dps evidently bailed on them after a few wipes on last boss. So they asked A&F. Then booted him after four wipes because, in the words of Melvin, they needed ranged, not melee, dps.

A&F was quite perturbed, especially since he felt they needed someone who could kill the g*damned bird. Since Melvin's mage wasnt up to the task.

Anyway... thats Melvin. 12-15 wipes and still tryin the instance.

And thats A&F... still groupin with Melvin after all this time.

So now... the story A&F doan want me to tell.

We STILL havin problems in arena. My problem... A&F needs my shammy to keep herself alive, keep him alive, earth shock incoming heals, and help him DPS.

What does A&F have to do in these matches? Well, kinda just beat things with his mace.

I'm havin problems with the multitasking. The problem is... we're winning these damn long games. A&F wants them to be shorter. I kinda feel that shorter just means me dying faster.

We're havin problems with pets. Kill the huinter pet, game over for other side. Even if the hunter summons again... it comes back at half life and at reduced damage. And the hunter blows a massive chuck of mana while I getta chance to drink. A&F can't figure out how to catch the pet outta LOS of the healer, mostly because I'm always movin.

Vent would help a lot. I don't know why we're not usin it.

A&F accuses me, probably correctly, of kite vision. Vent would help coordinate a burn... but then he'll say something like.. I got two crits in a row! Why didnt you turn around and help me finish him?

Against lock/healer teams... yeah... me keepin an ES on healer would help. But we win these games naturally. It just takes time. The only thing that could really go wrong is for me to get chain feared/stunned and someone dying.

Then he compains about not being at full health when I die. My fault for not keepin Lifebloom and Renew on my action bar, I suppose. Or my choosin to try and fail to heal myself, rather than him, when *I'm* the one bein focused.

Mage/rogue is still bad. We ran into a BM Hunter/Rogue team that played the same, and they killed me in 7 seconds. I keep tellin A&F that it's suicide for me to stand in the open against a hunter... and hence I really cant help him dps them. He really seems morally opposed to playing the out of mana game strat. Its killing me.

Anyway... the story. We're fighting a mage/s priest. And I kite like a god. I keep em from catching me, locking me, and killing me for about 4 minutes. (I used trinket and NS twice.) But finally... I get frost nova'd... silenced, counterspelled, and killed.

Right after this, A&F finally kills the mage. The S Priest, outta mana, mounts up and flees to drink. A&F is at 40%.

Me: "Bandage!"
Him: "Shut up!"

He stands behind a pillar... I watch the priest's mana bar fill. I have no idea what A&F is doin. Then... after a pause... a casting bar...

"Crafting: Heavy Netherweave Bandage"
...
"First Aid"
...
Then the priest comes back and kills him.

Hello, I am the lie...

2008-09-05T13:04:00.004-04:00

Again.. burnin out... hard to post...

I think Arms and Fury got eaten by mutant zombies that the hurricane woke up. So, if you have a moment, when you pray... plz remember the poor zombies.

Derek came to visit over the weekend. You remember him... the psycho homeless guy that drinks all my orange juice... he came by to pick up his mail. See... even though I told him not to, he's been applying for aid and usin my address.... dammit...

So he shows up, wearing slacks... and they're pulled almost to his chest. Like real life urkel. Except...

"Derek, why can I see your underwear?"

"Oh, that's because I tuck my shirt in underneath them..."

"Derek, why can I see your underwear, PEEKING OVER YOUR PANTS?"

"I have to wear them this way! Otherwise, people can see a crease!"

Its like he gave himself a wedgie. His underwear was almost to his neck. I really don't freaking drink enough...

So what does one do to forget the horror? Thats right, I did a little healing for Melvin's brother.

Now.. Melvin's brother, Magebert, recently leveled his 5th char to 70. He now has a mage, priest, pally, hunter... and now a druid.

Its partly a response to how useless Melvin's druid is. Magebert is goin nuts knowin how OP resto druids are... and Melvin refuses to play a healer. Part of this is that Melvin refuses to be useful. Or pay attention to what other people do... which healers have to do.

Anyway, Magebert hasa feral druid grinding honor to buy resto gear. And he asked me to heal a group for the Karyeku quest... (the last in the chain to unlock netherwing... killin Zuluhed the Whacked...)

So... Magebert was gonna tank. In bear form... he has 12k life... barely more than my shammy. We got Arm, the world's worst warrior. At least now. He used to be the world's second worst warrior, but Pogar, the holder of first place, deleted his chars and dropped the account.

So... we do the first time with a proficient lock, an idiot rogue, arm (who has 14k life and all glad gear), Magebert's feral druid tanking, and unbound healing.

Kick ass, take names. Cept that the idiot rogue never picked up the quest, and we have to do again. The lock, who gotta complete, immediately drops the party.

K... 4 man.. we can do this. Rogue starts it... and arm grabs zulu and fights in the courtyard, takin tons of damage from the npc archers. Stays there till he dies. I made the mistake of healing him through the fight... so I was outta mana in short order.

Now... what the hell is it with people that cannot even monkey? I mean... you see how it is done the first time, and you can't even ape it the next time? Magebert explains the fight... AGAIN... to arm. We do a third time, rogue gets the done.

One nice thing... when the adds spawned... they ignored me, cuz of my netherwing rep. No healerz aggro FTW! But still... I can't help thinking that this level of stupidity might somehow be contagious. Should I be worried?

I wanna be famous!

2008-08-29T18:00:00.002-04:00

"I lived, I loved, I saw boobies... what more can a man ask for?" -Harold

So I've gotten addicted to a show on cartoon network named Total Drama Island. It's just... evil. Itsa cartoon about a reality show...

"Sign these..."

"We already signed the insurance release forms...."

"No, these are organ donor forms... I wanna pitch the producers onna cannibalism challenge, and it would help if I could cut down costs by arranging for props before hand..."

And you sorry bastards owe me for the Melvin thing. AB tokens! Cough em up! These stories aint free!

I haven't seen this linked anywhere... but the people at Sluggy Freelance, who have been playin the game fer a while, are doin a big "A fellowship of my own damn self" wow satire...

My fave joke so far.. the original game race... "rose elves." The expansion race... "nude elves."

So anyway, my friend Andy, the math grad student algebra teacher.

College was pretty damn weird for me. I didn't do it till a little later in life, and hadta work full time while takin courses. This kinda left me out all the typical diversions... and dumped me into the circle of grad students. Who are all a buncha bitter bastards, for the most part.

Since I worked at a store near the cheaper apartments, I got to know a lotta em. Which helped me a lot, since they had tons of extremely useful advice on dealing with school. And they would introduce me to professors.

Now... one thing to keep in mind about college. It never freaking hurts to have the professor and the TA know yuir face.

Anyway... I had just decided to pick up a math minor... and found out that I needed credit for algebra to qualify. So, the summer before I started advanced calculus, I was stuck in an algebra class witha buncha 17 year olds. One problem... LSU had just toughened up their entrance requirements, so people who wouldnt qualify witha 2.5 gpa had to enroll in class the summer before the new reqs went into effect. That's right. All the people who would be technically too incompetent to get into college were gonna be takin the same class at the same time...

The preferred class was algebra. Ima still surprised none of the TA's offed themselves. And Andy.. well, Andy was losin it.

"Is this gonna be on the test?"

"It is now!"

So one fine day I strolled into the cages they laughingly called TA offices, and saw the quiz that Andy and company were puttin together. Now note... all the TA's found my situation hilarious. Cuz if anyone hated these kids more than them.. well, it was me. THEY just had to deal with em in the classroom. *I* had to deal with them after they had been binge drinking. Add to the fact that the garbage they put grads through makes my havin to take a BS entry level course pale into insignificance.

So... Andy was puttin together an algebra quiz on his board. I was lookin at it... and saw the bonus question.

"What was the cause of the trojan war?"

I asked Andy what the hell that had to do witha Algebra test... and I cherish his response as one of the wisest things I've ever heard...

"Well... if they know the math, they don't need the bonus. If they don't know the math... THEY'RE IN COLLEGE! THEY HAVE TO KNOW SOMETHING!"

This time when kindness falls like rain

2008-08-28T12:47:00.003-04:00

See! I posted a chest too! I can haz traffic and comments now?

This was the tipping point. (See... itsa post on tipping, and I... uh... oh hell, never mind)

Anyway, I saw that picture and my first thought was... "I'd like to reboot THAT."

My second thought was... jesus, please tell me Megan didn't hear that thought... she's like that you know... too much arena, and you can see into the future and read minds...

And if she takes offense... /shudder.

I'd rather take my chances locked in a room with Jesse Jackson anda pair of scissors than face teh killah. Especially since the British Governement confiscated my "protection."

(Asa note.. I sent that link around the office... my team leader, who used to fence, noted that trying to hurt someone with that would be like trying to beat someone to death with a sheet of aluminum foil. Melvin, OTOH, didn't see the joke. "A dangerous weapon is a dangerous weapon...")

So, Ima sorry it's takin me so long to post this week. Been havin problems with the damn firewall here... I'll have another post tomorrow, onna my friend Andy the algebra teacher...

And now for what you've been waitin on. Yep... I did arena 3's with Melvin and his brother Ron. Sometime in the middle... I heard a voice screaming...

And then I realized it was me.

I haven't played much since. I kinda slammed my mouse hand inna car door... over and over again... just cuz it seemed like a good idea, you know. Itsa feelin better, leaving me with the problem of what to do now...

Highlights...

Apparently, when you POM macro something thats outta LOS, the POM procs, the arcane power starts, the trinket goes off, but the Pyroblast doesnt launch. "See," said Melvin, "thats why that macro is a bad idea!"

Melvin runs behind a pillar after the other side at the start... without checking to see if anyone was following him. He died a horrible death. When told he probably should make sure his brother was with him, he replied... "It's his job to keep up with ME!"

We face a 2 mage, warrior team. Melvin and bro had been gankin warriors all day long... so they go after the warrior, who leads em around while onna mount. The two mages corner me and crush me. Melvin and Bro PASS the two mages TWICE while chasin the warrior... no sheep, no cs, no nuttin. Afterwards... "You need more resilience!"

And last... the final straw. Locks have resist. Melvin and brother have discovered this. They decided that it was pointless to focus fire the lock until last... this lead to a wonderful encounter witha Lock/Druid/Rogue team.

Lock walks up to us... dots each of us... and Melvin and Bro do NOTHING. "Whats the point, he's just gonna resist... just wait for something else to pop..."

What goes around...

2008-08-22T14:46:00.002-04:00

You have to admit that the Beta news is keepin interest in WoW to a fever pitch durin what should be a slow period...

They changed Living Bomb recently... it used to be a self buff. The lucky fire mage would do aoe damage fer a period, then expode, doin a mass aoe attack with knockback.

Now, ya cast it onna mob. Like Seed of Corruption. Only since mages can't regen mana like locks... well.. whats the frikkin point?

My suggestion. Make it a castable buff. On any friendly target. Hunter pet? Check! Prot warrior? Check! Feral druid? Check!

Fire mages would soon become a tank's best friend. And this would be useful and unique... the aoe version of a hunter's misdirect... something that would help with pve, and be great fun in pvp... (cast in on the disc priest bein trained... and watch the bodies fly...)

The latest warrior adds... /shudder.

Oh, so Ima still doin prep work with Melvin for arena this weekend. I tried explaining the global cooldown to him. He asked me why this was important.

I really should just date a stripper instead. I'd hate myself less.

OTOH, every so often he takes me to Outback. I'll forgive a lot fera steak dinner. The only problem... it costs too much. Not money, mind you... hes got plenty of that. No, when I ask, he says... "Do you know how much gold I could farm in that time?"

Fun link of the week...

"Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears. "

The plastic face forced to portray

2008-08-20T09:05:00.002-04:00

Yep. Itsa Melvin post.

I did a crap load of arena last week. Over 60 games, which for me isa lot. Most of em were with Arms and Fury, but I also pugged Majeure into a rogue/mage 2's.

And I have to say... I was not prepared. I really suck with my mage at 2's. Didn't help that half the teams we played were Pally/Warrior.

Did a few games with Arm's boomkin and mabd. And those went pretty well. Itsa nice combo, plenty of cc, plenty of resistance to cc, and we slaughter mage/rogue teams. Went like 9-2, lost to a lock/druid team due to bad teamwork... (I swear to god there's something wrong with his head... he was usin tranquility more than lifebloom...)

And we lost to a elemental shammy/pom mage team.

Now, I've been tryin to come up with a team from all the various toons hanging around my friends group. I do this rather than drink heavily. I may yet reconsider...

One idea... take Melvin and his brother's uber geared POM mages, add my resto shammy, and see what we can do in threes. The problem... they're both idiots. And by that I mean... they don't even use a POM macro.

"It always hangs up!"

I spent yesterday doin the proposal to Melvin. And I told him... he has to have a POM macro. This is non negotiable. It takes him too damn long to trigger POM, Arcane Power and then hit pyro... My shammy has dueled him and purged both offa him before...

And then there was that time in arena when he POM'ed a water conjure.

And well... he has a tendency to POM/Pyro pets.

Why am I doin this to myself?

Um... postscript. Long postscript. For some weird damn reason, I can't post comments to BRK's blog. This usually isn't a problem, since I don't usually have anything original to contribute :(

However, I had something happen yesterday that reminded me offa BRK thing from sometime ago.

I havea coworker named David. Now, David is interesting. But he is also old.. and lonely. I mentioned too much disposable income asa problem that Melvin has, right? Well... that's a lot of us here. We get paid a lot... and tend to be anti-social. So we have weird hobbies. Mine is hidin from cleavage... and BTW Sony... loved the post title :)

David collects movies. Old movies. OLD OLD movies. And yesterday I was trapped with him while he recounted his latest additions, including some old serial films.

For those too young to know... before TV, people would go to the movies and watch episodes of action "serials." They would be about 15-20 minutes each, and would be shown before the movie proper. If you ever wonder why old time movies tended to be about one and a half hours long or less... its cuz there was usually about 45 minutes of newsreels, cartoons, and serials shown before hand. Which is why longer movies like Citizen Kane tended to do poorly...

K... I know, long long story... anyway... the typical 12 episode serial hadda formula. Episode 10, the good guys find the bad guys' hideout. Episode 11, the big showdown at the end of which the good guy would stand over the defeated bad guy and maka speech about how evil will never triumph. Episode 12, the happy ending and comedy bits. Guy gets girl, monkey gets banana, whatever...

A while back, BRK stumbled over the meaning of the word penultimate. He was usin it as "second best." It actually means "second to last." And here's why penultimate is a word in the english language...

A LOT of western literature follows a certain pattern. Whether poetry or prose... the penultimate, or second to last chapter or verse... or in the case of a movie serial, the penultimate episode... is the part that has the resolution of the plot, or poem. The LAST episode... or verse... tends to be an epilogue... "and they all lived happily ever after."

This has been goin away. We dont usually have happy endings anymore. Shakespeare would end his plays with a wedding (or in case of drama, funeral) scene. We cut these scenes out now. One example was Burgess' A Clockwork Orange in which the final chapter (in which Alex grows up) was excised from the american edition until recently.

So, anyway... that's penultimate for you.

Seven for a secret, never to be told...

2008-08-15T14:52:00.002-04:00

I'm reading a pretty good book right now. Basically a redo of Bladerunner, except in a darker universe. I don't exactly agree with the author's politics but... he's a good writer. I'll put up with a lot for quality of prose.

I borrowed it from Kim. I really need to spend more time with her... but I lack motivation. And she's not terribly mobile right now. I think I'll see if she wants to make a night of Anime/Movies around labor day... I should have the monday off to recover. The writer of one of my non-wow blogs commented the other day that he got dumped because he wasn't "emotionally supportive" enough of his GF's dog. Um... dibs? Keep up the good work, buddy! (If I lose Kim, I gotta go back to watching movies with Melvin)

Speaking of books and companionship... among Melvin's many vices... he has way too much disposable income. He lives alone, owns his own condo, has minimal responsibilities... and wouldn't be caught dead at anything approaching a fun place. All he does is play WoW and read really crappy fantasy. Well... its not like he can tell... So, remember, Ima grade A opportunistic asshole? Here's how I've been exploiting the situation. I hava current issue with mail. As in, I can't get packages... I still need to firebomb someone over the USPS's failure to deliver me my BC collector's edition. Never got it... still had to pay for it. So anyway... melvin has quite kindly allowed me to ship stuff to his condo, which has a concierge (someone on premise at all times to receive things like packages...) The problem? Well Melvin bein Melvin, he goes through my packages to see if there's anything he'd be interested in. Since its all books and dvds... I sometimes get them a bit late. HOWEVER... I have begun using this to my advantage...
Melvin: "This was pretty good!"
Noobed:" Well, its the first in a 7 book series, and there are 4 more already out..."
Melvin:"I'll have to rush out and get them!"
Melvin has been quite generous lending me his books, you see...

Melvin is beginning to despair about arena. He still has only topped 1550 in one team... that Arms and I put together. So he sidled up to me the other day...
Melvin:"So that frost build you've been using does well in arena, you say?"
Noobed:"Uh huh... you know, you can go to Gankbang.com and lookup what the top arena mages are usin, spec wise..."
Melvin:"No that's too much trouble... but my brother and I have been talking, and we were thinking we might need to change our spec.. would you come up with one for us?"

Not just Melvin drivin me nuts. My brother has decided to go back to college. At age 37. He has, I think, 9 credit hours already. And my parents will be footing the bill. And, by the way... he has two kids (via a female he never bothered marrying) to support. And he won't be working. A shame his career as a poker player never really worked out... he plays a boomkin in arena, and gets his 8 year old son to grind/farm for him...

The old grind at work is startin to get to me. Ever since the downstairs cafeteria stopped selling bottled frappuccino I've been draggin. One of those anda donut... and something is getting the hell done. Otherwise... bleh. So I managed to get one today... and one of my supervisors asked me what the hell I was doin... the report I had just finished wasn't due for another week! Ima gettin a weird reputation at work... one of my friends told me she was shocked that I hadn't gotten fired for an inappropriate comment yet. I gotta get more supportive friends... Maybe blaming rising commodity prices on the impending rapture wasn't the best of ideas... OTOH, I'm the one that gets the weird damn questions. Cuz I know what I'm doin, and take my time to get it right.

So... a while back, Arms and Fury dared me to tell the 15 second story... so it's like this. I was in town for a wedding, and we'd planned on me crashing at his place for a night to hang out and chat. It was, by the way, an awesome wedding. I really shouldn't have gotten that drunk before the sabre dance tho. Anyway.. I pop up at Arms place, he drops Troy in the DVD player... and then he gets a phone call. See... he'd just started datin the woman who has since become his wife, Sony, who musta just gotten back from Mag's lair, cuz that chest is EPICZ! (Itsa inside joke) And so... a coupla minutes later, Sony shows up, and she and Arms go back into his room and... well...
I've been more uncomfortable in my life, but that mostly involved getting weapons pointed at me. So I watch Troy alone, with the volume turned up. And after it's over, I put in some Cowboy Bebop. And watch a few episodes of that. With the volume turned up. Which was probably a bad idea... considering how patently thin the walls were. Four hours later... he and sony emerge... sony looks happy while arms looks a little sheepish. I glared at both of them and hissed... "Fifteen Seconds!"
Arms looks at me and asks me what the hell I'm talking about.
"It only takes dolphins fifteen seconds, and they spend all their time naked on a beach!"

Give me back my bullets!

2008-08-12T15:04:00.003-04:00

Meh.

That's all I gotta say. Meh.

Finally cracked 1550 with Arms and Fury. My shammy has her brutal pants, which are hidden by her damn dress. I think I've compained about that before...

In the run up to Wrath of teh Lolking... Ima trying to think about what character Ima gonna level first. And last.

At this point I like playing the mage least. (poor Majeure). OTOH, the new mage talents excite me the most. Mabd is probably gonna be leveled solo, cuz thats what hunters do. That just leaves the shammy...

I can probably hitchhike with some friends, and stay resto for a bit while we group quest. Since itsa pvp server... well... don't go alone, as the saying goes. Still, the burnout factor is getting to me. I can't bother to run my mage through the daily BG's... a bad sign.

I really gotta stop doin arena on monday nights. I get too keyed up to get back to sleep. Last night, after Arms and I finished, I ran unbound through the BG daily, EotS.

And here's yuir resto shammy tip of the day. If your not worried about mana, or even if you are... healing stream totem is *very* useful. A lotta times, you'll want to use poison cleanse totem... but sometimes, that's not really gonna help.

At my current gearing... healing stream totem gives 240 health per 2 seconds. Pop that and earth shield... and we get what happened last night... where I slaughtered two undergeared rogues who weren't usin wound poison... just me, and my fire elemental, inside the mage tower. Even with both of em beatin on me, my life bar wasnt budging (stoneskin totem had something to do with it...)

So anyway... arena...

We hada breakthrough of sorts last night. Unbound adds her damage (and purges) to Arms against pallies. And the pallies will go down. Unbound will stay up a lot longer than a pally bein focus fired... and bloodlust makes my heals 1.1 seconds... so pop earth shield, drop healing totem, and go to town on bubble boy. A grounding totem will stop the pally stun, and the occasional war stomp, or nature's swiftness emergency heal will keep me up, even witha MS applied.

Mage/Rogue is still a nightmare. Sigh... any advice?

Oh yeah... t.v. recommendation. This show is gettin a lotta buzz.. and since it falls into one of my science geek interests (evolutionary biology).. I thought I'd pass it along.

I've got another confession, my friend...

2008-08-07T08:38:00.002-04:00

There are different types of friends.

I've been blessed, I guess... I didn't have many as a child, and I have several now. Including people I consider close friends.

What do I mean by a close friend? Well... if I had a body to get rid of, I would call one of these people to help. And would be confident that they would show up with the garbage bags and shovels.

Arms and Fury is one of these people. Of course, he'd be my last choice... cuz he'd bust my chops the entire time...

"Nother dead hooker, huh noobed?"

Anyway... one of these friends, Bruce, gave me a call tuesday.

Bruce is getting divorced. And since I was best man at his wedding... well, this depresses the hell out of me.

And Bruce is BITTER. He's already calculated how much money he would have saved if, instead of getting married, he had hired a "professional" for $500 a night, three nights a week, over the last 7 years in which he'd been married.

He's 39. His entire life, he's gone to sleep at 8:30, woken up at 4:30, and worked his ass off. And he's just found out, as he told me, that this is not what adults do. Adults enjoy life. Listening to him made me want to cry.

He's gonna come visit me for a coupla weeks in november. I don't know what he's really looking for. He has a tendency to visit me when he gets lost. Besides his sister, I'm the only person he really has any history with (we met in high school). He was so estranged from his family/birthplace that when his mother died, his people had no idea how to get in touch with him. Eventually they told my father, who told me... and I'm the one who had to tell Bruce.

If this visit coincides with the WotLK release, Ima gonna be PISSED.

I like the touch and the smell of all the pretty dresses you wear

2008-08-01T15:21:00.002-04:00

Who's up fer some cross dressing?

Well... looks like shammies, doan it?

Smoky and Raynmaker left some terrifying comments on my last post.

Um... shammies agil/crit is gettin changed to match that of hunters cuz shammy agil/ap is ALSO gettin changed to match that of hunters.

/gulp

So my main question... will our hard earned epic gear be converted as well, or will all that +str (which will now give only +1 ap per point) gear be beat senseless by the uncaring blizz nerf bat?

There has been a question raised on many a blog in the last few weeks... why bother with WotLK? Why not ignore it until a few weeks before it pops?

Here's a big answer... cuz its entirely possible all that epic gear you've been gathering will be rendered obsolete... we have at most... 5 months? And all the enhance shammies out there are loadin up on +str pvp mail MIGHT be better served by pickin out hunter gear for the big switch?

Oh god, I so hate hunters now, and I AM ONE. /cry

So... here's the deal.
1. Those offset drops are gonna be kinda important. And they gonna include hunter gear now. Be warned, hunters!
2. Keep in mind that that season 4 pvp gear might not be worth keepin for WotLK... at least fer enhance. So be careful spendin points towards october. You might wanna pick up a coupla diff pieces when WotLK comes out, especially since we've been told that high end gear will last us a lot longer in WotLK than it did in BC.
3. Blizz is promising yet another shammy overhaul... make no plans. Shammies are kinda screwed, much as druids and pallies are, since we have no clue what we're gonna need, gear wise, when we start leveling again. The whole "healz and tank builds will be viable" aint gonna cut it... spec since blizz is ALSO tellin us we're might get two diff builds to switch in and outta at will... which we wouldnt really need if tank/heal builds were viable.

/sigh

Ima go see teh movie this weekend. Even if my movie partner is makin noises about Mamma Mia. Which scares me about as much as the threat of bein locked in a room with Jesse Jackson anda pair of scissors.

P.S. Fer Sony

P.P.S. Fer the rest of you pervos.

Feel it, breathe it, believe it...

2008-07-31T12:10:00.002-04:00

Zereissen had an interesting point on how WotLK will change hybrid classes. Now that crit on items applies to both melee and spell attacks... well...

Feral druids with 20% crit on starfire? Boomkin with 25% crit in cat form? Ret pallies crittin those emergency heals? And them damn judgements?

And more importantly... shammies... who are really the only class that need to deal both magic and physical damage. Specifically enhance shammies. When I run recount on unbound in enhance spec, she's dealin about 20% of damage shock wise.

Then there's elemental devastation, a talent so friggin useless I'd take wand spec over it. Its in the elemental tree... and it gives ya a minor hike to melee crit when you crit with a spell.

Since enhance shammies crit on shocks about every horde EotS win, well... thats not real useful. But if enhance shammies start getting +crit to spells as well as start stacking int for the new int=ap talent... things will get interesting. Also there's a new shammy spell that can auto crit.

This also radically screws itemization. Before, given a choice between +crit and +agil, I'd go +agil. It now takes 22 points of +crit to gain 1% melee crit fer a shammy. And 25 points of agil, which also give armor and dodge...

However, come Wrath of the Lolking, this changes. +crit will affect spells and melee... and shammy agility based crit is gettin nerfed into line with hunters... i.e. 40 points of agil for 1% melee crit.

Shammies are gonna start avoiding agil like mages avoid spirit, and dwarves avoid baths.

I can't help but think that this is all to make deathknights viable. Since they have to be able to crit with magic and physical attacks in pretty much the same way enhance shammies do. God forbid the flagship class of the new expansion be unviable... and if that means givin shammies a break... well, we'll just nerf the hell outta them some other way! like, um makin shamanistic rage so useless we'll go back to speccing nature's swiftness again. Oh, hey... they did!

Give me steam!

2008-07-24T16:16:00.002-04:00

Get a life with this dreamer's dream...

Um... geekmeter, 10/10.

Click on link at yuir own peril.

Steampunk meets Star Wars and Justice League.

And, ah... why the hell is my Shammy wearin a mail dress? I doan spend enough time hatin Blizzard fer gratuitous insults...

My head is giving me life or death but I can't choose

2008-07-23T15:13:00.002-04:00

Still gonna be weekend after this before I can see Batman.

In the meantime, a friend of mine recommends this book.

Umm... Arena is really beginning to be as drama filled as the world of raiding, and who the hell needs that?

And, uh, OMG, what have I done?

See... Melvin can't be troubled to look up stuff online. He'll pester me about it, but won't actually do anything himself. he has since resigned himself to a world of suck in arena, stuck with chars that aren't goin anywhere.

His lastest brilliant scheme? Loading up on +15 sta gems... "it's like having to kill me twice!"

His latest uber arena team? Prot pally and sl/sl lock. "They spend so much time trying to kill the pally, they ignore me!"

But... where I went wrong... I kinda got too excited about the fake talents BRK linked a while back.

And I kinda showed them to Melvin. Who, you might have guessed, can't understand how such things must be taken with a grain of salt...

And who is now leveling a hunter.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

You're my experimental game..

2008-07-17T17:15:00.002-04:00

So i gotta steal a pally and fly to Blade's Edge fer some experimentin. Arena theory and all...

The question... do auras and totems obey LOS? Or can I place a totem under the bridge and windfury that worthless warrior?

Other questions that I'd like answered...

When I respecced Mabd to BM... my cast time on SS and AS went down to 1.1 and 2.2 secs, respectively. How come I've never noticed this before? BRK... do freaking hunter attack speed talents/gear (i.e. quivers) affect shot casting speed or cooldowns?

And second... how the hell does a SL/SL lock dps? I gotta friend who's gettin horrible results in arena and instance running. He can't even beat a pally tank. Whats the strategy via Arena and PvE? Any tips, Braids?

You can never go back to the scene of a perfect crime

2008-07-14T09:59:00.001-04:00

Ima not above stealin stuff. Like this. Enjoy.

I believe that in order to walk through grief, fear, loneliness, despair, confusion and anger without recourse to drugs, alcohol, over-eating, over-sexing, or the endless mind-numbing distractions provided by Western culture, one must become a spiritual warrior. I further believe that the pay-off for enduring suffering, for soberly embracing the inevitable bouts of emotional pain that life brings, is wisdom and serenity in the face of calamity. But make no mistake here, the path of the warrior is treacherous and cannot be walked alone. To survive, he must have brothers and sisters-in-arms to carry him when he buckles. When we lived and died in small tribes, this principle of mutually supporting one another through the trials of life was deeply woven into the fabric of the group mind. With the advent of towns and cities we were forced to live with the daily dilemma of being desperately alone and yet desperately needing one another. Which is why we are, by design, always seeking new tribes. With that in mind, I humbly offer a simple guideline to evaluate the efficacy of any tribe you might encounter on your path to becoming a spiritual warrior: if they ask for your money or access to your crotch, run away. If they ask for your money, smile unceasingly, never blink, and guarantee to make you a demi-god, running away will not suffice. Change your mailing address and briefly reconsider drugs, alcohol, food, sex and TV.

I'll just sit tight, through the shadows of the night, And let it ring for evermore

2008-07-11T11:16:00.003-04:00

So... Iva been puttin off updatin my email with Blizzard. Not a good thing. My old email has been obsolete (and unaccessable to me) for 2 years.

So I called Blizz customer service 4 times over past coupla months. And each time I gotta "all circuits are busy" message. Nice to see where the monthly fee aint goin...

So I got on today... 20 min wait.

So, I'd figure I'd do a blog entry while waiting.

First... the music... first tune was the arena one theme from Diablo 2. Hit me like a stack of bricks... damn I loved that game.

Second... we gotta new Cafeteria where I work. People who actually know what the hell they're doin, AND who want to make money, took over the cafeteria from the incompetent idiots running it when I first got here.

Like... who the hell puts pigs feet asa entree item inna government building? And they used cheap paper plates, instead of the styrofoam takeout trays everyone else on planet earth uses for takeout food.

So the new system... cafe, charge by weight, and at 2pm, prices drop 30%.

They sell outta everything. And the food quality is excellent. They makin money hand over fist. Another sayin whose origin I've no clue about. I'da ask BRK, but ima kinda scared what he'd say...

And they respond... when they first got here, they priced their 20oz drinks at 1.79. The vending machine outside the cafeteria sell soft drinks for... 1.35. Within a week, the cost of soft drinks in the cafeteria was down to 1.39, and their fountain drinks had dropped in price to match.

It's been amazin watchin the new cafeteria in operation.. like watchin a shark dropped into a new aqarium... lethal, efficient, and suckin my money right outta my wallet. It's even cheaper than the tourist trap area across the street. /sigh

Fresh german chocolate cake? Ima doomed.

Still on hold after 30 min, and I ran outta things to say...

Oh yeah, the nutcase is back, crashing at my pad. He doan know how to use my television remote and leaves the tv on all the time. And he doan know how to lock a door.

But what's worse...he applied for public assistance. Guess who's address he used?

Yep. Ima doomed.

Hey man, nice shot!

2008-07-09T17:32:00.003-04:00

Ouch.

This is why leaving comments on strange blogs is sometimes a bad idea.

A few things. Xian is to Christian as Xmas is to Christmas.

He gets to use House, but I doan get to use Star Trek?

And the point of Job is that bad things happen to good people because God's plan is beyond both our understanding and our idea of morality. Job is my fav book of the bible... he really shouldn't have gone there. Job is the Judaic answer to the problem of theodicy.

Oh, and... Mabd is now BM. Now to just get a pally to bubble the kitty. People aint stupid... they see the pet chewin stuff up, they know who to go for.

Still, bein able to weave them steady shots inna 2.17 auto shot set up leads to... interesting... results. And when I pop rapid fire and IAotH pops...

Rawr!

Still miss my MS crits tho. And imma convinced that my time in the desert that is the MM build helped my kiting a great deal :)

With the lights out, it's less dangerous

2008-07-08T14:40:00.004-04:00

Umm... 200th post.

State of the blizz.

First... seriously... multiqueuing may have been a good idea once. And it probably saved AV during the alliance QQ fest. But right now it's killing us.

I went 3-15 in AB over the weekend. I was in teams that started with more than 10 toons only 4 times.

Why? Cuz everyone horde side is queuing fer AV at the same time.

What the hell is the point of the deserter debuff if people can just opt outta BG for another?

I was in kara with another mage. Boots of the Dark Coven dropped.

Nice boots... ton of sta, int, and +spell damage.

And spirit.

So the other mage asked me if that was worth rollin on. I said something disparaging about spirit.

He then asked that, if spirit is so bad, why is it on pve set gear (like tier 4).

I started thinking about it. Back when tier 4 was put into the game... spirit was for a crappy arcane talent, mage armor, and evoke.

Now its for mage armor anda marginally less crappy arcane talent. Spec considering how int works with spirit to scale mana regen.

Ima usin Mage Armor on most boss fights with mage. Even with frost channeling and clearcasting... she needs the extra mana regen.

But ima wondering howa deep arcane build would fare in the mana regen game...

And lastly... you people are lettin me down. I said Mabd is goin back BM.

TALK ME OUTTA IT. FER TEH DARK LADY'S SAKE!

These seconds when Im shaking leave me shuddering for days

2008-07-07T15:29:00.002-04:00

Next post will be my 200th. Ima thinking...

Deathmatch! A play in one act!

K... did an insane amount of arena this weekend. 2v2 with my frost mage and a ret pally.

3v3 with my resto shammy, arms warrior and ret pally.

Anda 5v5, mm hunter, arms warrior, demon lock and 2 holy palys.

First... the ret pally was a bit too heavy on the ret and too light on the dps.

Second... the 5v5 was a freaking blast. We made it to 1574 before dropping 4 to teams with gladiators in em. The gnome rogue with the twin blades of azinoth was ADORABLE tho.

(You knows yuir in trouble when you see 5 peeps on bears charging ya.)

Some lessons learned this week. Including one INCREDIBLE THING that I never knew before. The pvp trinket does not blow the GCD, nor does it count as a spell.

So you can use it while in ghost wolf or kitty cat form. You can use it while mounted. And you can use it in a variety of ways...

Warriors can macro the trinket and bloodrage together.
Mages can macro the trinket and AE.
BM hunters can macro the trinket and BW.

Along these lines, Ima working on an macro to remove ice block and blink at the same time.

Some news... found a new arena partner fer Mabd. She'sa goin BACK TO BM! And itsa about freaking time. BM is just easier. Still...ima gonna miss the 2k MS crits. And scatter shot. And silence. /cry

And Ima gonna miss the 200 kills per AB.

Oh, and I found someone else for Herk to hate.

Herk... buddy... I got some bad news, some worse news, and some terrible news.

I found us a threes partner.
Hesa noob ret pally tryin to get arena goin fer his char. He's (by his own admission) tryin to master ret dom, and still has some learnin to do.

Thassa bad news.

He does... however... have two other chars, both floatin around 1700 arena right now...

Thassa worse news

One of the alts is an arms warrior that got his season 3 weapon last season ona arms warrior/ ret pally/ resto shammy team.

Thassa terrible news.

You up for bein the taz onna arena team?

In related news... Unbound finally got to heal her first instance.

Kara run.

With only one other healer. (A tier 5 coh priest)

One wipe. On illhoof. Cuz the priest got sacced three freaking times. And I ran outta mana keepin her alive. I swear... awesome dps, but it couldn't focus fire fer shit. Curators flares and demon chains lasted way too damn long.

Also, weak lock. That ran outta mana halfway through the fight.

We got him on second try, tho that time it was Unbound he hadda boner fer. When you only runnin 2 healerz in Kara, you can get hosed by illhoof's choices. Unbound had to reincarnate to keep the fight goin.

I think I did well... keepin up the party when the priests shackle broke and she got one shotted during moroes. Kept things goin till she could get the battle rez and inervate.

Still... itsa hella stressful.

Which leads to the last idea. We have reached the point where once fearsome content like kara and gruul can be conquered by.. well.. the Melvins of the world. Welfare epics can keep em alive through mistakes, and they can play but doin no more than spamming two to three buttons.

Maj was inna kara that wiped on prince... by that point, Maj anda ele shammy guildy were responsible fer over half the parties total damage. The prot pally tank was third. Skipped Illy and netherspite, killed nightbane.

With only two real dps.

The prot pally anda holy priest were very good. But really... that crap level dps... no way we shoulda been able to make it that far.

Isn't she pretty in pink!

2008-06-29T22:31:00.001-04:00

Yeppers... thassa Maj in her season 3 finery.

She's ina 2v2 with a ret pal right now, and I can use any help/suggestions ya got.

She now has a distinct pvp set, anda pve set. Ima happy. I can raid and pvp! She has 112 spell hit with the pve set, and managed to hang with the guild rogue class leader ina kara run, damage wise.

Sadly, Melvin's fleabag druid was along with that group.

Ima not sure... but I suspect itsa sign of bad play when a bear or warrior never drops below 85 rage while tanking.

Oh and Melvin still doan know what feral charge is for. He got killed by the arcane blast gainst shade. Cuz he doan know how to shift to escape snares.

I went +spell haste with the gems. I think after I get a coupla more pieces... the spell haste pvp cloak, the spell haste pvp ring... Ill be doin better.

It's still pretty nice to see spell haste work with portals and food creation tho :)

And burn my shadow away!

2008-06-29T22:30:00.003-04:00

She'sa resto!

Too damn much druid gear tho. And the chants costa fortune. Still, ima shocked at what I managed to get.

Blew all my arena points fer season 3 chest. Ran EotS till my eyes bled for the tokens fer season 2 weapon and shield.

Rest are kara drops. Cept for the pvp melee cloak, which ima keepin, since I only got 130 resil. Final count.

250/82 mp5 (miserable... but thats without water shield. anyone got a good resto mp5 goal to shoot for?)

1616 +healing (still freaked I got it that high. damn....)

10k life

9k mana

Ima little light fer a tier 5 raid or so. And big problem with the coupla druid pieces I got (bleh spirit)

Still... resto shammies rock. In BGS I was soloing rogues. It was humiliating. And there was a classic battle where I killed an arms warrior at the flag... healed up in time to kill another one.

In arena... Ima only in trouble if I get a MS warrior and rogue teamin me. Which seems to be all the time. Tons of WRD teams out there.

On the bright side, I met a decked out arms warrior in BGS from my server that asked me to join his pvp guild and asked if I hada 3v3 team :)

Um... so I founda really sweet healing macro. Heals, in order... mouseover, target, target's target, then self. Self heal on right click. I pwn the battle ground. And the target target feature rules in tight fights.

I think I mentioned before about magebert's priest. (Magebert is Melvin's brother. Hesa lawyer, and is moderately less incompent than Melvin.) His priest is, of course, elaborately geared, and tended to be main healer in the old old guild. Less so in the new one.

So I was tryin to talk shop with magebert bout healin.

-"Which spells do you downrank?"
"er.. whats that?"

-"um... what macros do you use then?"
"Oh, I have healing macros that heal myself!"
-"ah... you doan turn on self target on right click?"
"whats that?"

So... gonna be grinding honor for quite some time for better arena gear fer the shammy. And avoiding conversations with Magebert and Melvin.

Oh yeah... week before last, Melvin's kara group wiped twice on chess. Ima still not sure what to make of that.

This wounded heart will rise

2008-06-27T13:35:00.003-04:00

Euripedes suggests all +sta gems for my mage chest.

I really doan like this. It makes too much sense... but Ima pushin 10k health. And have ice barrier and ice block. I really really want damage.

Ima currently leaning towards either 1 spell damage and 2 mix damage/haste gems... and pick up the +4 crit socket bonus... or just three +damage gems. Ima woefully under spellpowered on the toon now... 840 without buffs. And I have too much +crit. I should start shifting to the warlock boots, belt and bracers... but ima still ambivalent on losing too much crit. When I get goin, that near 40% frost crit gets truly lethal. Ima still not sure how haste will work in arena. Healz, hell yeah. But for a frost mage, who has nuttin but time anyway?

So... the MAC AND CHEESE POST.

Ima big fan of mac and cheese. It was brought to this country by Thomas Jefferson, who spent time in France and Italy as america's ambassador to france.

So anyway.. instead of grinding honor for my new gear, I ended up watching a pair of food network shows on mac and cheese. The first was Good Eats. And ifn you a foodie, this is the most addictive show ever! The thing about mac and cheese... itsa real easy to make from scratch. And itsa infinitely versatile. Good eats showed the basics and theory.

Then came food network's challenge show. 5 restaurant chefs competing for a $10k prize... makin mac and cheese.

Why am I talkin about this? Cuz itsa lesson on life. The first round... traditional mac and cheese. Must included elbow macaroni and cheddar cheese.

Only one chef made anything like a traditional mac and cheese. She won the round. (It was a 10 cheese mac and cheese dish...)

The rest.. well... two others did well, but the people that got too fancy ended up losing.

Second round, signature dish. Must include a form of pasta and a form of cheese.

I saw everything. Cheesecake with ravioli crust. One dude used a frozen gnocci (think italian dumpling) and was ripped by the judges...

"Why didn't you just make the gnocci yourself? It only takes 15 minutes, and its the heart of your dish..."

Then they did an interview with the guy where he was fuming... "I know damn well that B*tch doesn't grow her own food! I'd like to see her try to make and serve gnocci in 15 minutes!"

See.. and this goes to the general rule of asshattery... those that can't do, asshat. And Asshats never listen to constructive criticism. The criticism was that he din't make the pasta himself. I *KNOW* you can make gnocci with the right gear in less than 15 minutes. I've seen it done (and eaten the results! yum!) Frozen gnocci is not worth the bother. He wasn't tasked to make and serve it. (After you make it, you need to boil it for 4-5 min...)

It would have made his dish better, and him a better cook. Did he listen? Hell no.

Then there was the really cute chef chick who kept saying she wanted to deck the judges...

Who won? The laidback guy who made lobster mac and cheese. John Besh, my home boy and one of the judges, made the point... if ya take a handful of simple ingredients... mac, cheese, lobster... and doan screw em up... you can do wonders... everyone else went overboard.

What does this have to do with life?

When someone is telling you yuir doin something wrong... and they have their own show (or top rated arena team), freaking listen. Don't distort what they say so you can feel unfairly picked on.

Keep it freaking simple. Doan go overboard. (Ima trying to talk myself into +spell damage)

And mac and cheese totally freaking RULZ!

And you judged me once for falling

2008-06-26T12:36:00.002-04:00

Quick coupla links for Arms&Fury...

Chicks who read sci fi...

And comic on having kids... Mouse over the comic for the comment...

Comin up... mac and cheese post! And Maj models her new gear!

I was ambushed by a lie...

2008-06-25T14:59:00.003-04:00

Hm... Maj went ona shopping spree last night... got the season 3 helm, chest and pants. Shes now 4/5 season 3. She also got the season 2 staff and is 1.5 k honor from the season 4 neck.

She'sa all gemmed and enchanted with the exception of the chest. (And the neck when I get it).

My idea... chest has 1 red and 2 yellow. The epic gem vendor has still to pop on my server... (97%). Soa runed crimson spinel.. I got the badgers fer that.

But I freaking hate all the damn yellow gems. Moar resil and sta with steady talasite? Moar crit and spell damage with that noble topaz cut?

I dunno. Frost mages doan need crit that much... I already have too much, and can really use more straight damage. Ima pushin 325 resil... I doan really wanna go much further. 10k health is fine with ice barrier...

Sigh...

And I doan have the badgers to spam haste/damage gems in the slots, which would probably be best... well, I do, but I really want that pvp caster cloak. OTOH... I can probably spare em offa the hunter and shammy... hm... +15 spell haste and +21 spell damage offa all three gems...

Not to mention the nightmare of trying to gear my shammy for pvp resto. good lord.

Anyway.. melvin story. Melvin is, like me, an economist. He researches for a living. (His field is milk... no, really). So we did some 5v5 with his useless feral druid. And after three matches, the druid had racked up 3% of the group damage. WTF? "I tried something different... I just stayed in caster form and cycloned things..."

I checked.. he had zero healing as well.

One time, in band camp... no wait, heroic arc. We wipe three times on the first boss... and he says... "We need more dots!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You know, dots! Damage On Target! Maybe we can get a fire mage!"

Ima goin back to cutting myself while drinking alone...

Fate's my destroyer

2008-06-23T01:02:00.003-04:00

Everyone seems to be doin BG posts this week....

And so I had two really awesome WSG's over the weekend.

What's that you say? What's goin on with Melvin? Er... well Melvin and his brother lose at WSG all the time. I told him that I tend to win WSG about as much as I win AV... (75% or so). So he talked me into getting the three of us together for WSG.

I did 7 games that day, and the only one I lost was when I was with those two. Melvin usually aint bad at BG's... but he really doan get the point of WSG. Keep in a group, distract/slow rather than kill, and nerf druids!

Bloodlust (the attitude, not the spell) isa terrible thing in BG's.

Have to hand it to Braids. She made a pretty serious, and subtle AB point. A lotta the time, people defending flags tend to be AFK. If they doan move when you approach the flag... try for the quick cap. Also, try to approach from outside the normal field of vision... a lotta pve welfare epic grinders doan "check six" as it were...

But back to WSG... I tooka screenshot of my finest game. Three times I had to storm the ally keep and singlehandedly recover the flag. Once, the rogue holding it was unable to jump down to the flag room cuz of three tard horde milling around. The rest of the time... me alone. Frost shock means they aint gettin away. Blessing of freedom can be dispelled little pally...

The stat Ima most proud of... deaths. In WSG... gettin them to kill ya can be a big strategic advantage. I like to hit em before they make the ramp at the start... sometimes, you can rez and hit them again before they make it to the flag room. If ya slow em enough, your flag carrier and entourage can catch them as they emerge from the tunnel....

Plus its always easier to die than drink in WSG.

The other weird game... 45 min, we won 3-2. Only after a hunter on our team did something brilliant... he started lurking near the ally GY. And everytime their resto druid popped and started running to our base, our hunter would intercept. We, OTOH, had only rogues to run the flag back. Between cheat death and cloak of shadows, rogues are pretty good flag carriers... but not as good as prot warriors, druids or pallies...