Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Raid Bosses: Dumb as a Box of Rocks

Let me first start off by saying that this is in no way a QQ about raid bosses being too easy. This is a look at WTF the raid bosses are thinking in any given encounter. Despite them being able to hit very hard and having ridiculous health pools, they often times do stupid stuff.

First thing that comes to mind is the enrage timer.

Patchwerk: "I have been hitting you guys for six minutes and you arent dead. I guess I will just kill you now." If they are capable of this massive amount of damage, why do they wait to use it? If I were to get into a fight, I wouldnt try to slap someone for 5 minutes and then decide to hit them with some haymakers.

Next thing that comes to mind it dumb targeting. "Hmmmmm, I am beating on this guy wearing plate armor for the last 5 minutes and he still is not dead. I guess I will beat on him some more." A smart boss would say "Hey, I have been beating on this guy in plate for a while and those dumb little clothies keep healing them", /target healer, /pewpew. "Wow, that was much easier".

Next on our list of dumb things that bosses do is that they get into patterns that are easy to figure out. For example:

Heigan the Unclean: "Thats right little bitches, I am going to shoot up easily avoidable waves of nasty stuff in a pre-determined pattern that you can take advantage of." If Heigan the Unclean was not such a dumb ass he would probably say....."Eff this, Im just gonna fill the entire room with green stuff. See ya."

Kel'Thuzad: "Yes, I am a master of the undead. I will send easily controllable waves of undead at you. No more that a few at a time. How you like them apples......wait.....stop killing them.......1 Abom to the center......SHIT.......2 skeletons......SHIT.....OK, the banshee has to work......DOH". If he was an actual evil mastermind you would think he would just say "LULZ 25? Here are about 100 undead all streaming at you at once. Have fun with that....oh, and here are a couple of crypt guards for good measure. KK THX BAI".

The dumbest of the dumb for any raid boss. Using an ability that allow the members of a raid to survive, where if they didn't, everyone would be dead as a door nail.

Sapphiron: "Im tired of getting beat on.....guess I will take off into the air. Pew Pew....HAHA iceblocks bishes. Now her comes the big one.......nice job running behind that ice block.......damn you guys are smart. Guess I will just land and let you beat on me some more then". Instead, he should have learned from his mistake. " Crap, they ran behind that iceblock (lands, pew pews, flys again), HAHA NO MORE ICEBLOCKS LETS SEE YOU HIDE FROM THIS NOW!!!!"

Another funny one is just how lazy some bosses appear to be. The first one who comes to mind are Sartharion and his drakes.

Sarth with no drakes: "Hey, who is that up there beating on Tenebron.....hey you....shoo......oh bother. I guess I will just sit here and watch the door instead of defending the precious eggs that Deathwing tasked me with."

Sarth's Drakes: "Hmmmm, it looks like someone is trying to kill Sarth.....well, I can just finish this sodoku....shit...he is calling for someone......oh good, he just wants Tenebron to help defend the eggs. Maybe after breakfast I will go see what all the hub-bub is about."

I absolutely love WoW. It just makes me laugh sometimes when I think about bosses, and the dumb things they do to give us purple pixles.

Side Note: I got into a PuG Naxx last night on my Warrior. I was very excited about Patchwerk even though we ended up not downing him due to healers letting tanks die. Over our few tries, I pulled 2100 DPS, using 261 Heroic Strikes to just 7 white hits. I think I may have set my mouse wheel on fire. :)

Monday, March 30, 2009

First Phaelia, now BRK (farewell...sniffle)


Two Titans in the WoW blogging community have fallen to real life aggro. I wish the best in their real lives (and secretly hope BRKs is an early April Fools). There were no better sites for Hunters or Resto Druids on the entire intrawebs.


Hurry up with the next patch already...WE ARE LOSING ALL OF OUR BLOGGERS KK THXBAI.


Weekend Update

I had a very busy in WoW over the weekend. I had a case of attack of the alts. Ok, now lets get down to this WTFSpaghetti stlye.

WTF Spaghetti's 15 man Choir: ........... Shit I forgot to borrow his choir. Ummmm (shuffles feet). Look over there A SHINY!!!!!

Raids: There was not a ton of raiding going on over the weekend. I did exactly zero raids on my Warrior. I did get into a 25 man OS and a 25 man Archavon on my Druid however. OS 25 went down super easy. When the loot dropped, the caster trinket was in the loot. I roll an 82, which ties for the highest. Grats other guy! WTF? They looted the item to him with out a roll-off. It was picked up by a Boomkin who got hit by every single lava wave. Whatever, at least I got some emblems despite the fact I am still rocking a shitty green trinket. VoA went much better. I logged on, got an invite, go a summon, and we smashed Archavon to bits. To sweeten the deal, I nabbed my T 7.5 chest against two other resto druids. One of the resto druids only did 600 HPS for the fight. He was in pretty much 100 percent greens.

Also on the raiding front, I ended up leading my first Naxx 10. I more or less got thrown into leading it after the raid leader DCed and we lost some DPS. I refilled the spots and we got on our way. We ended up clearing both Spider and Plague wings without much trouble at all. Our biggest bane was AFKs. We probably spent half of the time AFK or waiting to replace someone who had to go.

Heroics: I ran a few Heroics over the weekend on my Druid. I ran VH twice, Utgarrde Keep, and Utgarrde Pinacle. Each run went pretty easy. I think we had one wipe the entire time, and it was on a trash pull where WAY too many mobs got pulled. I got some emblems (which are going towards a new trinket), epic wrists from VH, a ring, and a new helmet that has a meta gem slot and a regular gem slot. I am really enjoying running heroics. They are not incredibly difficult, and you can take them at a very nice pace. I may run some more tonight if I cant get into a Naxx 25 run of some sort.

Leveling: This seems to be what I did for a vast part of my weekend. I started off leveling the Paladin with my fiance on Friday night and Saturday morning. We quested in Howling Fjorde and gained a level and half (73 and half way through). I really love playing with her as she can find amusement in the little things. Unexpectedly, I picked up playing my DK again (GASP). I must say that I had an incredibly fun time with him and can do some awesome DPS for the level I am at. I specced him Unholy. I had not played him at all since 11/18/08, but yesterday I leveled him from 56 to half way through 60. I burned up all of his rested XP in the process, so he will likely get to sit for a while.

After that, I decided to give my Hunter a bit of love as well. I ran around Nagrand doing a bunch of the quests, and dinged 67 in about an hour. I considered pushing towards another level so I could take him to Northrend, but decided against it.

To top it off, my sister transfered her 75 pally to my server. It was me on my Paladin, her, a pally buddy healing, and two pugs headed into Old Kingdom. The run went very well with no wipes and only a few deaths. I destroyed the damage meter again to the tune of about 1350 DPS. I had people in my Raids and Heroics that were doing less damage at level 80.

Making Gold: I probably made about 2k gold over the weekend with very minimal effort at the Auction House. I sold a bunch of glyphs, some jewels, and a bunch of crytallized fire. One of my steals of the weekend was an epic tanking leg kit that someone put up for a 20 gold buyout. I snatched it up and reposted it for 220 gold. It sold this morning :) I made a bit of gold as well off of questing, doing the Oracle Dailies each day. The Oracle Dailies are boring, and I doubt I will ever do them again once I can get the egg (about two days worth of dailies away).

Hope you all had as good of a weekend as I did. May the loot be with you....always.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sunday Morning Screenshot

Doing some quests in Howling Fjorde, Gurrtrude and I took a flight. We launched at the exact same time, so you can actually see her sticking out my chest like Kuatto from Total Recall.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Honest Scrap Award


“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

It seems that this is the newest meme going around the blogosphere. I was tagged over at Casual Hardcore. BRILLIANT....I love those commericals.
The rules for accepting this award are as follows:
When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!
Well I guess I will do my first 10 honest things.
1. In High School, I blended in. I was an athlete (Football, Wresting) and a nerd (computer games, table top RPGs). I had friends that gravitated one way or the other, but not both. I ended up being friends with my fellow nerds longer.
2. I am engaged to get married. She is the number one most important thing in my life. And she plays WoW now....double win for me!
3. I was once accused of buying my toon on Ebay. This is one of the reasons I wanted to learn to be a better player and help others.
4. I was accused of buying my toon off of ebay for the following reasons: I did not know what a sunder was, what aggro was, and when my weapon broke part way thru they run, I equipped a vendor trash sword and had to level it from 1 skill on the mobs in the instance.
5. I hate most TV shows. My fiance loves to watch the ones I hate the most. If given the opportunity, the entire archive of Gilmore Girls, America's Next Top Model, and One Tree Hill would be burned to the ground. Include the Hills with that.
6. I do 80-90 percent of my blogging from work. DUH. When I am home, I have other things to do....like playing the game.
7. I hate drivers like I hate PvP. I find myself swearing my way to work every day. People who drive below the limit in the fast lane need to be run off the road. I would like to install a push bumper on my truck to help with that.
8. I use cutsie names with my fiance. I call her "Booboo" and she calls me "Bunny". Yeah, we are that kind of couple.
9. I look absolutely nothing like a Bunny. My friend even quipped "When I think of you, I certainly dont think Bunny".
10. I only recently told my fiance about my blog. I started the blog when she hated that game and told her about it when she no longer hated it. Of course I was accused of hiding it from her.....hidden on the front page of Google Chrome right next to her US Weekly.
Alrighty, well on with the tagging.
Megs is always good for a laugh.
Kadomi who tanks like a girl
Occeleta (thats two now buddy)

Friday, March 27, 2009

Trolls and You: Time to fight back

WARNING: HARSH LANGUAGE

There are pretty much trolls and Assholes anywhere that the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory is applicable. This can be on a forum, blog, and even in game. There is really no reason to just be a complete douchebag in game...ever. Afterall, this is something that you do for leisure (I would hope). If you do not have something contructive to say about something, keep your mouth shut.


This post come on the heals of a text message from my fiance yesterday. She decided that she was going to play some WSG to work towards her Black Battle Strider. While running around, someone made a generally rude comment in chat. "If you are under 75 GET OUT of this battleground. Some people here want to win and not just easy marks".


First thing is, how can you make a generalization on someone based on level. I could bring my level 70 Warlock in there and mob the floor with half of the battle ground in that bracket.


Second, if you don't want to play with lower level toons, the YOU GET OUT OF THE BATTLEGROUND AND LEVEL YOU FUCKING TOON. Get to 80 and you are home free. You can play with all of the people your level that you want.


I was very proud of her reply to the troll. Her response was "If you spent as much time playing as you do bitching about the game, maybe we would be winning." This whole incident happened when she was the only person healing the flag carrier in her group. She was greatly discouraged by this person's rudeness. It is one of the reasons that she only like to play with me. While playing on her own, she has run into far too many douchebags who think they are UBER leet.


I am not as well spoken when it comes to BG trolls. I was playing a bit later in the evening, working towards the Battlestrider when someone in BG chat says "Get out and go level an alt". Someone else replied "Who". Troll replies, "Anyone who is 72 or under".


Of course, my neatly thought out retort, so carefully planned, turned into "Eat a bowl of dick". Did not hear from the troll for the rest of the BG.


I think it is time to start fighting back the trolls. Report them for every little thing. The only thing that may make them think twice about being a twat is the possibility of getting their account banned. There is not reason that anyone should be alienating new players. If you want to be a dick, go play Darkfall.


Oh, and as you can see by the picture, we got the Black Battlestrider. WSG was the most painful as we went 4-18 to get those 30 marks. This morning, my fiance told me it was destiny that she get the black battlestrider due to the pointy ears matching her pointy ears.
Sorry if this is a bit ranty. Just sick of people being dicks when there is no fear of retribution from a RL punch in the face.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

PvP is three letters.....like STD


Helping out my fiance with PvP has made me more or less realize some of the problems I have with it. Apparently, there are 65 percent less people doing arena now. I am one of them. Arena is for the flavors of the week at this point, and I dont happen to be any of those flavors. Since I have not run any arenas, this post is about some of the old school BGs and general PvP.

Burst Damage: Out of control comes to mind. You go anywhere without completely getting your face bashed in by 3 DKS and 2 Rogues. Notably, my fiance's Druid is only level 72, but still has little chance against World of Meleecraft. I ended up doing BGs for her last night because she felt "picked on". It probably has to do with the fact that a 72 Boomkin has the survivability of a Tauntaun in below freezing temperatures. It also has to do with the fact that by the time you cast a spell, you are dead. Most BGs go something like this. Run in. Charge up star fire. SAPPED. Whack, whack, whack, dead. Run in. Charge up star fire. Deathgrip, Icy chain, whack dead. Run in. Root. Broken by trinket. Root...pushback...pushback.....dead.

Rogues, Ret Paladins, and DKs have ridiculous burst capability thanks to the multitude of instant attack available to them. I pretty much have to hop that I can Typhoon them off of a cliff or something. It has gotten to the point where even playing her Boomkin, I have to resort to more of a support class, throwing out some heals and CC. If this was at 80, it would be a bit more even on the playing field. As it stands now, it is terrible.

Time Limits: This mostly goes for WSG. The system with AV and AB means that it can not last forever. WSG can, and does last forever. Several times yesterday, I got into a WSG while waiting for AV's 45 minute plus queue. Every single time, AV would pop before WSG was over. Most of the time it would be like 1-1. They really need to change WSG. There are two very easy things they could do to fix it.

1) Make Warsong Gulch on a thirty minute timer.

2) You can cap even if your opponent has your flag. You get credit for a cap when you return your own flag as well. Move it up to 4 flag caps to win.

Both of these seem like incredibly easy fixes that would make for more fun and dynamic gameplay. Turtles would not work. You have a time limit, so go do your thing.

Alternating Sides: This is something that I think would help in the name of balance. Instead of always starting on the same side, it should be random. This would make less issues with maps being "stacked" against a side. Perhaps this way, we could get Horde to actually play AV and Alliance could win an AB more than one out of 5 times. I think that it would be nice to see something a bit different from time to time.

Anyways, those are some of my ideas to fix PvP a bit. At the moment it feels very broken. Certain classes dominate while other suffer greatly. Lets get some balance.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

My name is......

A bit late in reposting, but I was memed by Syrana to write about what my names mean. Being on an RP server, choosing a name is pretty much limited to something that is RPish. Anyways, here are mine. I will include my fiance's character as it actually has a funny story behind it.

Darraxus- I just thought this name sounded really cool. This was my first toon, and I did not want to regret my name. I had previously named some of my characters in other MMOs Darraxus. Someone once asked me if I was named after some paint ball company I had never heard of.....no. Most of the time, people in game call me Darr.

Theladon- My Warlock. My fiance is studying to be a nurse. She was talking about some kind of anatomy (Thelamus or some such, I think part of the brain), and I though that it would be a cool WoW name. Of course when I created the character, I could not remember the actual name of it and ended up with Theladon.

Zurlock - Just a random RP name that I came up with that I thought sounded decently cool.

Rootmender - Druids are hippy tree huggers. I wanted mine to be a healer. He heals the roots and the Planet. Kinda like Captain Planet minus the fruity tights.

Durothos - My second character. I thought Durothos sounded very epic and Three Musketeers like (the books, not the candy bar). I originally RPed him as Darraxus' estranged father and gave him a bald head and gray hair to match. He later adopted red hair like Darraxus and an impressive handlebar mustache.

Crispee - A cute little gnome with a giant pink mohawk and biker beard. He is inclined to scorch you to death with fire, being a fire mage....hence Crispee.

Deathgorger - Kinda named after one of my favorite NPCs, Tobias the Filthgorger. I loved the quest where we brought him rotten eggs that made everyone throw up. Vomit FTW.

Daedasar - My never used Rogue. His name was a generated by smacking the random button a few times, then editing the name. I havent touched him since I stopped leveling him with my Druid.

Gurrtrude - My fiance's Druid. Whenever she would call her mom at work, she would change her voice and say her name was Gertrude (spelling wasnt available). Now every time, she calls her mom she says (in a deep voice), "Hey this is Gertrude". That is how she got her WoW name. She also made a little Gnome Warrior named Yowzaa. I thought that name was awesome as well.

In turn I tag Hudson , Occeleta , and Larisa .

How to: Get your Significant Other to Play Part 2

I previously wrote on this topic here.

Obviously, this is a topic that is close to my heart as I was finally able to get my fiance to play with me and stop hating the game so much.

Just as this is a very positive experience, prepare for the rough parts. Your significant other may or may not have played another MMO previously. Mine never had. The extent of her gaming was Super Mario World and Goldeneye. Social interaction was a very new experience to her. It is your job to get her/him acclimated to their new environment.

Step 1, Don't force social interaction on them: If they have agreed to play with you, then they are doing it for you. They may or may not get the social aspect of the game. Don't force them to play in groups. They may feel like a 5th wheel, which can be discouraging. Have you ever been to dinner with a friend and his/her significant other.....it is kinda like that. They will get it in time. Playing the game with minimal knowledge with people that they don't know can be stressful. It can also be disheartening to be called a noob. Ask my fiance.

Step 2, Don't go off and do your own thing: Not at first at least. When you first started playing the game, how lost were you? Did you know where to go next? Did you know where quest mobs were etc? If you are off doing dailies while your significant other is struggling questing, then you are not doing your part. They got into the game for you. Give them the time they need to develope, and be there each step of the way. Show them new thing, and if they like them, they may try to do them on their own eventually.

Step 3, Follow the into the Rabbit hole: Helping them reach their in game goals (no matter how boring or ridiculous) is a great way to get them to keep learning and playing. My fiance love achivements and has an odd fascination with Mechanostriders. We ground out the Gnomer rep that she needed for her "ridiculous", as she calls it. She loves that mount. I bought her some pets and she was instantly hooked. I showed her how to look up pets on the AH, which she does every time she logs on now. She is up to 47. She recently decided that she wants the Black Battlestrider despite the fact that she can already get all of the other Mechanostriders for far less effort. Keep helping them with their efforts, and you will be rewarded for yours. /loving a bunch of critters may seem pointless to you, but to someone new, it can be interesting and fun.

Step 4, Make agreements and stick to them: Most of the time, you are going to want to do two different things. Obviously, compromise is the best answer in this situation. For example, you want to quest and they want to PvP. Agree to do an hour of PvP if they do an hours of questing. You may hate PvP, but they will love you for helping and it will help your in game bonding.

Step 5, When the time is right, take a step back: Much like a mother hen, eventually you have to let them loose. They will find some kind of independence and run off doing their own thing. Let them do it. This makes them feel much more self sufficient and important in the game world. This could be anything, from going into a BG on their own or just running around the world picking flowers or exploring. These activities help bring up their in game self esteem and confidence. They don't need you every moment. They are able to stand on their own two feet. It can be liberating.

Just like real life, this is a relationship. If you treat mistreat them they will lose interest. Treat their in game avatar as special as you treat their RL avatar and you will be in for a double dose of fun.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man


Woot! Finally got the rep needed to get the schematic for my Chopper! That is Occeleta riding in the sidecar on his DK Deday. Note: Don't jump into the well in Dalaran if you have someone in your side car. You will make it, but they fall through the city to their death.....just ask Deday.
I finally got the mount I wanted. All it took was a bit of boredom. After doing my Oracle dailies, I looked around and could not find any raids. Then I said, "Self, you should work on that Alliance Vanguard rep for your Choppa". I figured I would run a few heroics despite not needing the emblems. I figured we would start with CoS since it is a pretty fun instance and I would like to pick of the Royal Crest of Lordaeron (being at 551 defense now). I gathered up Occeleta on his hunter, a new Boomkin recruit from guild, my former arena partned Muralyon on his resto shaman (Muralyon has a shot at getting three Frost Wyrm mounts this season 0_0), and former guildy and feral Druid Edoran.
We had planned on the timed run and were making decent time. Eventually, we wiped on the last few waves leading up to the extra boss when our healer ran dry on mana. We regrouped and cleared our way back through....wait.....where is Arthas? Oh yeah, we did not talk to him. So we cleared our way back thru respawns and then back again (nice for rep, not so much for time). Took down the boss, shield did not drop, /shrug.
At this point, I could practically smell my new Chopper. We decided to head to Heroic UK minus our Boomkin who had to go to bed and the feral Druid, who went back to leveling his Shaman. I picked up a Rogue recruit from guild as well as long time friend and former guildy Hoy on his DK. We gathered up and blasted thru UK in about 20 minutes without a death.
At this point I was about 800 rep from exalted! We decided to hit up Heroic
Violet Hold since it is an incredibly quick and easy instance. We got the Aarakkoa boss first and then Lavanthor the big ugly dog. I got Lavanthor's Talisman (which will make for a very nice trash piece). The only death was me. After we took down the big doggy, I had a fire dot on me. Apparently, this was a good time for the healer to alt tab. /facepalm.
After the run, I headed to Howing Fjorde to pick up the recipe (320 gold 0_0) then back up to K3 for the rest of the parts I needed. It was a nice night indeed.
The Quest for the Black Ridiculous: Is still going on. I did a bit more PvP with my fiance yesterday, bringing my Warlock this time around. It certainly helps having almost 500 resilience and over 13k HP when getting smacked around. I think I will make my Warlock a level 70 twink for the time being. At the end of the day, my fiance was sitting at 13 AV marks, 17 AB marks, and 10 or 11 Warsong marks. Warsong is going to be a pain in the ass since Alliance seemingly loses every single one. AV is gonna suck as well thanks to 40 minute waits. PVP makes my blood boil.

edit (sorry if it looks like a wall O text. I spaced it out and tried fixing it several times to no avail)


Monday, March 23, 2009

Weekend Update

( I googled PvP and I found this picture....go go HUNTARS)

Had another busy weekend in WoW. Hard to find time these days too get everything done that I want to do, but damn it I am trying :) . On with the WoW talk.



Raiding: I got in a bunch of raiding over the weekend, though not a whole lot on my warrior. Darraxus only managed to get into a VoA25, and nothing useful dropped....again. I did snag two more emblems which gave me enought to purchase the tanking ring. On my Druid, it was all about the Raids this weekend. I started out by getting into a Naxx 10 that only had KT left. It was for a guild that was going for its first ever full clear. It took us 4 tries. This is how it basically went the first three tries. Phase one starts.....stuff coming towards us. Tanks picking up baddies, ranged killing Banshees. Me healing. Me dead as a tank did not pick up an Abom and it one shotted me. I got one shotted by an Abom three times before I actually made it out of phase 1. The phrase "tank your shit" comes to mind.



The 4th try, they miraculously picked up what needed to be picked up and I made it to phase 2. Once I made it to phase two, it was easy mode from there. No problems at all. It was cool to be on a guild's first clear as they were very excited and cheering in vent after it went down.



Next up for me was Naxx 25. It was with a guild I had previously run with on my warrior. They had cleared everything but Construct and Frostwyrm. When I got there, we ended up two shotting Patchwerk. This was my first 25 man boss kill on my Druid. We then moved to Grobbulus and two shotted him once people figured out how to now be retarded. I picked up a super hot healing trinket with 111 spell power and a nice direct heal proc that puts a HoT on who you healed. Very nice. We move on the Gluth and two shotted him as well. Weird thing in this fight is that during our first try, decimate killed pretty much everyone. It hit most of the raid for exactly the amount of raid buffed HP they had. Seemed very odd.



After Gluth, they decided to call it a night. From there I went to a mostly uneventful VoA 10 where I got my two emblems and nothing else.



The next evening when I logged on, the same guild was looking for people to finish up Naxx so I hopped on my healer and we got to it. We went and three shotted Thaddius once people figured out how to not get killed by charges. From there, we went to Sapphiron and one shotted him. We gave KT two tries due to the time. We got him to 12 percent the first time, and I killed us the second time by chain ice blocking another healer. DOH.



Later in the evening, I also got into a PuG OS 25 on my healer. We mowed through it pretty easily and I got my 4 emblems and zero loot. There was almost some loot drama as the raid leader lost the roll on the T 7.5 gloves and asked to buy them from the winner of the roll. Of course the winner said "no". The raid leader then grumbled something about giving it to "shitty dps" and took forever before master looting it to the hunter.



A few odd observations for as far as raiding goes. I still have not even run a Heroic on my Druid. Not a single one. Despite this, I have been top two in healing for every raid I have been in. Also, I seem to have gotten dumber on my healer, doing things on my Druid that never happened on my Warrior. This included dieing on the Heigan dance, getting killed by the Frogger boss, and missing my first jump on Thaddius :)



Questing: I finally got around to finishing up Scholazar Basin on Darraxus for the achievement. This included soloing "A Heroes Burden" and choosing the Oracles as my faction. Im trying to get to revered ASAP so that I can pick up my egg and start hoping for fun stuff. Being a pet collector, the egg is a nice source of pets as well as a chance to pick up the green protodrake. Yay, another set of dailies. The only two zones I have left to finish questing in for achivements at this point are Zul Drak and Ice Crown, both of which are partially done.



PvP: GASP! Yes, I actually did a decent amount of PvP over the weekend. First, I did my first two Wintergrasp Raids. One on my Warrior and one on my Druid. These are incredibly fun and a great source of honor. We won both raids and I got several achivements along the way. The main reason I did so much PvP over the weekend is my fiance. She has decided that she wasnt the Black Battlestrider...or "Black Ridiculous" as she calls it. Despite the fact that we already ground out Gnomer rep so that she could get the other ones..../facepalm.



I decided I would bring my 72 Pally along to give her a hand in being slaughtered. We did a few of each battleground, and it made me realize why I have not PvPed much this expansion. It makes me see red. The burst damage is ridiculous, and being level 72 certainly did not help. Have I mentioned how much I hate me some DKs in PvP? I am glad the nerf bat is coming.



Overall, my fiance did not care too much for PvP because she always felt picked on (level 72 Doomchicken is very noticeable Doomchicken). Despite this, she is determined to get her Ridiculous. We are about a third of the way there at this point. During all of this PvP we both got a whole bunch of achivements. One of the more impressive ones we got was the Alterac Valley Perfection Achievement.



For the most part, she held her own. Despite not caring for it, she actually got into it and enjoyed the opportunities that she had to blast people with pew pew Owl lazers.



I will be so glad when she is done getting that mount so that I do not have to step back into another BG for a while. If we actually get some play time, she should have it by the end of the week, then we can actually start leveling again.



Misc: Apparently, Scarlet Crusade is the cool kids server. Two people from my server have had in-game things named for them. There is Breanni the pet dealer in Dalaran. Now there is a resto druid chest dedicated to Phaelia of Resto4Life and her budding seed. I knew there was a reason I rolled SC (because it was the recommended RP server 4 years ago 0_0).



Hope you all had a great and loot filled weekend!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Saturday Screenshot


The Brothers Bronzebeard and Darraxus.....the red headed step child. The greatest collection of Dwarves know to man ;)

Friday, March 20, 2009

Sometime, Alts can complicate things

It was not that long ago that my Warrior was my only 80. When I had free playtime, it was basically all spent on him. I would do raids, dailies, fish, farm, the works. Now I have a level 80 Druid, and I want to do the same things.....but in the same amount of time with two toons.

For the casual player, it can be very difficult to balance time. I want Raid with both toons, but once again it come down to time. If I do Naxx with both toons, that basically wipe out a big chunk of my play time. OH decisions.

On my warrior, I still want to do Naxx 25 for some upgrades and get a shot to do EoE, which I have not yet done. I also want to fish up a bunch of Dragonfin Angelfish to sell buff food to the masses. On top of that, I want to go mine saronite for my Druid to prospect. The gems that I get will give me plenty of greens for the dailies as well as some blues to sell. I think you can pretty much sell any blue quality gem for a nice profit besides maybe the forrest emeralds.

On my Druid, I want to do any raid or Heroic because pretty much anything that drops at this point will be an upgrade (in Raids at least). I am also producing a lot of Gyphs for profit and cutting gems for the same reason. Thankfully on my Druid, much as I predicted, I have not had any difficulty getting into raids as a healer. We are always in high demand it would seem.

Eventually I will be bringing my Paladin up to 80 as well. My Paladin is a miner/herber with Epic flying. He was my main farming toon in BC, and will be once again once he hits the level cap. The only problem is that I will want to do Heroics and Raids with him as well, further muddying the waters.

Damn you all these alts. I guess I will just pretty much do what falls into my lap over the weekend. Perhaps I will start out producing glyphs, then switch to my Warrior and go into LFG for Raids, asking what they are in need of. If they need a tank or a healer, I know who to bring. In the mean time, I will likely farm saronite ore for the JC bussiness which is not near as dead as I thought it was.

Anyways, happy friday to all you blogoholics, and I hope you have a great weekend!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Ways to Fight Burnout


Burnout is pretty common amongst MMO players. It seems to be even more apparent since WotLK since most all content has been conquered by many guild (and even some pugs). If you find yourself logging in, putting around Dalaran for a few minutes and logging off, dreading seeing the green chat when you log in, or seem to get irritated over any small thing that does not go right, you may be suffering from burnout. There are many ways to combat this.


1. Take a Break: This is a hobby. It is something that we do for fun and usually a sense of community. It should be something you look forward to. Sometimes, taking a break can breath a bit of new life into the game when you get back. Go hang out with your friends, take your lady to a movie, go to the bar. Whatever floats your boat. If you find that you hate baseball, do you keep watching it? No. Just move along and come back when you are ready.


2. Moderation is Huge: Playing the game too much is one of the leading causes of burnout. If you find that you are playing pretty much every day for extended periods of time, STOP IT (this applies to burnout only, if you are having fun keep at it if you want). Logging in to raid 5 days a week for several hours, plus farming time does not leave a lot of time for other things. Take it casual for a bit. Only play on specific days, or have some lazy days that you just do something fun like chasing after pets or achievements if you are into that sort of thing. I find that due to my playing schedule, I really look forward to the times I get to play for an extended time. I play Saturday, Sunday, and Mondays, with the rest of the days going to my fiance. I usually play about 10 or so minutes on off days, but it usually consists of JC daily and re-posting stuff on the Auction House. Playing less makes you actually enjoy the time you do get to play.


3. Roll an Alt: Rolling an alt can be very relaxing. You are low level, doing it on your own with little or no complications. I would advise not bringing this alt into your main guild. Either keep him unguilded, or put him in a friendly leveling type guild. In either case, it is low stress and lets you focus on the part of the game you enjoy....actually playing. WoW is not a job, and you should not feel like it is. Do you ever go to a movie and stress out about it? It is a form of enterainment and you should be entertained. Having an Alt outside of your guild gives you an opportunity to play minus the hassle.


4. Respec: When Dual Spec comes out, this will be easier than ever. It seems that the players who most often burnout are raiding tank and healers. If you find that you are sick of it, switch to your pew-pew lazer beams spec. It really can be amazing how much fun and how relaxing DPS can be. Watching those big numbers fly can make you enjoy the game again. I used to respec quite often in BC just to do something different.


5. Reroll: This one is more or less a different take on rolling an alt. In this case, you completly switch to the dark side. If you are Alliance, try out a Horde toon. If you are Horde, do the opposite. Doing this on another server helps as well. You get to see a side of the game you may not have seen and basically get to know an entire new community. This may restore your zest for the game and make you realize that you should have been Horde/Alliance all along.


6. Try Something Different: If you are tired of doing the same thing over and over, STOP DOING IT. Raid, Raid, Raid, Raid, Farm, Farm, Raid, Raid is not for everyone. Every once in a while try something that doesnt taste like a stale piece of bread. Hit Wintergrasp, do a battleground, chase some achievements, play the auctionhouse, roleplay. If you find that you do not like punching yourself in the face IRL, you just stop. Same thing with WoW. It is voluntary. The time is yours and YOU choose what to do with it.


7. Dont be afraid to say NO: There is nothing wrong with saying no. A lot of people feel obligated to help when somebody asks. If you do not want to do it, just don't do it. Saying no can be hard, but in the end it will make you feel better that you did not go on that 10 man Naxx which has nothing valuable for you to wipe continuously with the guild's green geared scrubby alts. This is a game. You do not have responsibillity or obligation. You should not feel like you do. If you want to help, then do it. If you do not want to help, just say NO. If you say yes to every request, you will find yourself not doing anything you like and everything that person X,Y, and Z like.


This game should not feel like a job, a boring grind, or something that stresses you out. It should be something you enjoy and look forward to. If you find youself in the first category, perhaps it is time to start following the above steps to fight burning out.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Get materials ready NOW for 3.1


With 3.1 arriving withing the next month or two, it is time to start stocking up on necessities. If you are a raider, this means picking up consumables while they are still cheap. If you are a gold making machine, you want to take advantage of your professions and farming.


You can still sell items now as people will need them. However, keep in mind some of the big changes coming with 3.1, most notably dual spec. There are a lot of people out there that have been picking up offsets in raid content. That said, there are many who havent had a need to use the set and have yet to enchant or gem them.


You can make some very nice money by stocking up on gems and enchanting materials. Find what sells good, and figure that it will be selling even better once the patch comes out. Everyone is going to need dusts, essences, and shards for their shiny new gear in their shiny dual spec.


For gems, think ahead to what people are going to be wanting. You will want to be cutting Scarlet Rubies into strength and spell power cuts. These already go extremly well, so they should potentially shoot up in price. For yellow gems, I think that defense and hit gems will be going up. New tanks will need to hit that defense cap and ALL DPS should be trying to the specials hit cap. The beauty of hit gems is that everyone needs them. We should probably see a decent jump up in pure stamina gems due to a new wave of tanks. With dual specs will also come a need for a new set of Glyphs. Find out what Glyphs are considered "mandatory" for major PvE build and stock up. They will be selling like hot cakes in that first week.


We also have to keep in mind that the next patch is bringing us what most people have been eagerly awaiting......Ulduar. A new raid means that people will actually be required to bring consumables. Cooks and Alchemists rejoice! I fully expect the price of food to sky rocket as well as the cost of flasks. Flasks will likely be in higher demand than elixirs as people are going to want to have their buff for two hours due to wipes on new content. I could easily see these items going up by 50-100 percent for at least the first few weeks of the patch. I plan on fishing up a ton of food and storing it for the rainy day that is 3.1.


Store up items these items, and there is a good chance you could be swimming in gold within a week of the patch hitting.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

WoW Archetypes

This isnt just about the class. This is about the people who play. Everyone has probably experienced this person one time or another. These will be based off of my general experiences. Feel free to adds yours as well.

The Douchebag: This is pretty self explanatory. These are the players that are often times unguilded or in a PvP heavy guild. They boast about their accomplishments constantly, litter trade channel with leetspeak, and generally make an asshat out of themselves. Their natural habitat are battlegrounds, where you can hear their cries of "LOLZ", "KEK", and "ROFL NOOB U GOT PWNED" a mile away. These are the people who are card carrying members of the Greater Internet Dickwad Club. In BGs they will be telling everyone else how they are doing it wrong and should go kill themselves. In raids they tell anyone below then they need to reroll "LOL NUB, I DID MORE DEEPS IN MAH PVP SPEC, LRN TO PLY".

The Disgruntled Former Leader: This is the guy who used to be in a major raiding guild (possibly pre BC). After taking a long break at the begginning of the expansion (he/she was pissed at the gear reset and all the greens replacing their epix), they came back and joined your guild. They immediately butt heads with Guild Leadership and always think they know what is right. They are very good at healing/tanking/DPS, but always seem to have a holier than thou attitude. They respond harshly to any kind of criticism of themselves while dishing out more than enough. After a certain point of gear, they hold the guild hostage by refusing to not go to Raids if he can't gear up his Rogue alt. This person is always online, but never willing to help with anything.

The ZOMG GIRL: Some guilds have their fair share of female players who are very steady and competent. Then some have the ZOMG GIRL!!! She is usually a hunter and is pretty terrible. Most of her time spent in game is talking on vent with the boys who cater to ZOMG boy. They often times have "online" relationships with several of the members of the guild. When this comes to light, several of the boys will leave, or she will. Usually in a guild, she will either be beloved or hated. There is no real middle ground. She acts cutsie wootsie with all of the guys, and immediately gets into defensive mode if another female comes into her territory. May transfer servers often as the drama builds too high.

The Broke Ass: This is usually a person that everyone likes to play with. They attend all raids and spend a lot of time helping lowbies out in instances. Due to these two activities, they rarely have any gold. They are often seen flying around on their regular flying mount that they had to borrow 500 gold for (and paid back in weekly installments of 50 gold over 10 weeks). To them, 1000 gold is a ton, and they would not know what to do with it. They run around with all 16 sot bags because they can not afford to upgrade. While they are broke, they are usually too proud to beg. They are the opposite of......

The Lame Broke Ass: Often times 12 years old. They constantly ask people in guild to borrow gold, but rarely pay it back. They ask for money for everything including respecs, flying, epic flying, repairs. They refuse to do anything that can actually get them some money. Much like the douchebag, you can find him in battleground (yay no repair bills) or jumping around on the fountain and boxes in Stormwinds trade district. This person does not have any professions trained and won't pick them up because it costs money 0_0

The Mother/Father Figure: Generally, they are older than most of the other guildies. They like for everyone to get along and work hard to that end. They may not be the best player, but nobody really minds because they are nice to have around. They will be the first to try and mediate a problem, but are also the people most likely to get their feelings hurt by someone being rude. People who are rude to the Mother/Father Figure beware. They will be defended to the death by the rest of the guild.

The Ninja AFKer: These are the players who seem to be perpetually on. They are always eager to join a Heroic or Raid, but with one problem. They come with RL aggro and dont announce when it happens. Pulled the boss? AFK. Sent a summon? AFK. Asked a question? AFK. They try to hide it sometimes by putting their toon on follow. When not distracted, they are a nice compliment to groups, but can often turn 2 hour raids into 3 hour ones.

The Meter Linker: We all know this one (and probably have been guilty of it from time to time). They link any meter that shows them on top. This can be and kind of meter. It is used only for the purpose of showing off their awesome sauce. "Oh look, I dispelled 43 times and the next closest was 18", or "WOW 5K DPS OMG" after casting seed of corruption non stop on a pile of spiders in Naxx. They annoy you to no end, and never cease to pull up a meter even when they are asked to stop.

Feel free to post some more archetypes and I will add them to my post. They can be funny or serious. There are more kinds of players out there than I can write down on my own.

Obsidian Sanctum: Sartharion Plus Drakes


Last night, I logged on with the intent of perhaps getting in some raids and or Heroics with my Druid. I started off by trying to give my Glyph Business a big boost and created about 50-60 glyphs to put on the AH. After not finding much in LFG, I switched over to Dararxus to replenish some of my Druid's green jewel supply for the JC dailies.


While flying around Saronite Basin, I saw a group looking for more for Naxx 25. They were in middle of clearing a wing, but said they would most likely need another tank for the Abom wing. Sweet.


While flying around the basin looking for nodes, I am browsing the LFG channels and see an almost full Obsidian Sanctum run. I have not even been into OS in probably a couple of months. I whisper the Raid Leader and ask what he needs. He replies that he needs a tank. SWEET! He then tells me that they are trying to do Sarth plus 2. This is a mostly guild run with a few pugs. They just needed another tank for adds. I accept an invite and I am standing before Sarth in no time.


When I got there, they had apparently already been at it for a while. We buffed up and got to it. I must say, that this is possibly the most fun raiding I have had since the expansion. There is just so much Chaos going on. Drakes landing, add popping up, fire walls coming, void zones trying to get you. It was very exciting. We tried 3 times with 2 drakes up, before some people stated that they would need to go soon. They decided to just do the one drake, and went and took down one of the remaining drakes. We downed it on the first try with little problem.


Sarth plus drakes is just pure chaos. I did not get any loot, but I did get a shiny achievement. Right after the run, I got an invite to the Naxx run that I mentioned above.


The group I joined appeared to be a casual alt run of some of the server's top raiding guilds. Unfortunately, despite being full of good players, the run lacked focus. There were a lot of AFKs and people purposely getting killed by frogger. We downed Patchwerk, Grobbulus, and Gluth before two wipes on Thaddius and calling it because of the time. I got a nice new tanking chest out of the deal anyways to replace my T7 chest. I am now over 30k unbuffed HP.
Overall, it was a very pleasant night of raiding, considering that I didn't figure I would be able to get any raids in before the reset tonight. I am now sitting 2 emblems away from my tanking ring as well!

Monday, March 16, 2009

Weekend Update

First, I just wanted to say thanks to WoWInsider, I got a lot of viewers and some great comments. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by. Anyways, on the the weekend in WoW.

Leveling: I finally did it. My Druid is 80 and ready to go. It took a large chunk of my playtime to get there, but was worth it. I now have a healer and a tank to play at level 80 woohoo. I did this pretty much solo, and it started by finishing off Dragonblight for the Might of Dragonblight achievement. After that, I shifted over to Grizzly Hills, where I got through about 2/3 of the quests before dinging while turning in a quest at the Westfall Garrison. Next up will be my Pally assuming I can get my fiance to pay stay focused on leveling and not the other things in the game 0_0.

Raiding: I honestly did not get to do a TON of raiding over the weekend, but did get some done. On my Warrior, I only managed to get into a 25 man Vault for two quick emblems and zero good drops as per usual. The fun part was that I got to raid with my Druid without ever setting foot into a Heroic. First I got an invite to 10 man Archavon which was one shotted with no problem.

Then, I put myself in LFG and got an invite to do 10 man Naxx. I think they were a bit hesitant at first due to me having just under 1400 spell power in Tree Form, but I got the invite anyways. The other two healers were a pretty well geared Pally and a Holy Priest who was sporting the Torch from KT 25 and mostly il213 gear. We started with the Spider wing as per usual, and one shotted Anub with 9 men (did not do a ready check and come to find out the top DPS (a Hunter) was AFK for the entire fight. On Faerlina, we had a problem with our DK tank killing two of the Worshippers right after the first enrage. We just healed through the third enrage and took her down. Next up, we took down Maexxna on one shot despite the tank getting killed in an enraged web wrap. I got a shiny new necklace out of it!

From there, we moved on to the Plague Quarter. We started by easily one shotting the first boss. The tanks did a very nice job on this fight and there were rarely any stray adds. After that was the infamous Heigan. I had never died on this fight previously unless it was a wipe. I died 3 times :( The first time was a wipe as the timer was off and most of us healers got wiped out by the plague followed by a wall of nasty. We downed him on the second attempt, but towards the end I died while I was trying to heal during the actual dance phase. I popped my SS only to die immediately O.o. From there, we went and one shotted Loatheb and I got my t7 shoulders!

After that we decided on Abom wing. We went in and one shotted Patchwerk despite him getting close to his enrage timer. We ended up calling it after a 5 percent wipe on Grobbulus due to the fact that it was late and people had to get going. The group I was in probably could have cleared all 4 quarters in the time it took to clear 2 plus, but there were a lot of AFKs and a lot of long winded explanations.

One of the coolest things was that I ended up first on the healing meters by a large margin. The well geared priest was actually third on the meter somehow. I think it may have had something to do with casting 80 percent flash heals. I got some emblems and some loot and some nice experience as a healer in Naxx.

Farming/Misc: I did not do any of my normal farming over the weekend. I did not farm any saronite or herbs etc. for profit. What I did farm was some pets. I mostly did this for my fiance so that she could get a bit closer to the 50 pet achievement. This all started when I got hitched a ride to BRD with my buddy t get some Dark Iron Ale to get Jub Jub. We went to the faire and completed the quest for the egg and the rest is History. After tha, she bought a Golden Dragonhawk (only faction pet she did not have yet) and three Holliday pets including the Red Winter Helper (which she thought was hideous lol), the Snowman, and the Reindeer Bell. As a bargain for me finishing up leveling my Druid, I then took her into Black Rock Spire to get her the Worg Pup and the Spider Hatchling. From there we went and continued the quest chain to get her sprite darter by stopping off in Feralas. While she was picking a random flower, I decided to smash a nearby Ogre.

From the Ogre, I got the Distress Beacon for the area to escort the robot chicken to safety. After we got the next step of the Sprite Darter quest, we escorted the chicken to safety and flew to Gadgetzan since the next step of the Sprite Darter quest was in the Shimmering Flats. We decided that while we were here, we might as well try to get the other distress beacon. Long story short, about 1.5 hours later and hundreds of dead pirates, we got it. I had already done the first part of the quest years ago, and actually still had the explanation point on the chicken. I never completed it at the appropriate level as taking on 4 mobs as a lower level warrior pre BC was just not really feasible.

After finally completing that quest, we made our way out to the Hinterlands for the next part of the Sprite Darter quest. Conveniently enough, the third distress beacon also drops on this zone. We go into the wilderness to get some meat for the Sprite Darter and find the Distress Beacon. Another 1.5 hours later and the death of many wolves, owlkin, and trolls, it finally dropped. We escorted the chicken to safety and went back to Aerie Peak to get my fiance her new Sprite Darter!

That of course was followed by us flying down to Booty Bay where we both obtained the Robot Chicken! She is now only about 6-7 pets away from getting the 50 pet achievement.

Overall, I had a great weekend and a lot of fun both raiding and playing with my fiance (despite the lack of actual leveling with her).

I hope you all had a wonderful and loot filled weekend like I did!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

DING 80!


Finally hit 80 on my Druid woot. Time for some Heroics and perhaps even raids tonight!

Only completed Borean, Fjorde, Dragonblight, and part of Grizzly Hills.


Saturday, March 14, 2009

Saturday Screenshot





Pulling Everything in SM is LOL. I dont think my mage buddy survived.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Wanted



A meme from Megan who is never out of mana.


Fill in the blanks and make your own.

On the road of X, there is(are) Y and Z.INSERTWITTYHERE Wanted. (Stolen from Megs).

I tag the following luck SoBs.

Occeleta
Miss Elf
Syrana (or Sideshow)
Yakra
Fish

Go go gadget creativity.

Get that Gold like Scrouge McDuck


As I have previously written, I have have basically powerleveled JC and Inscription on my Druid. While JC has more or less turned out to be a dud for money making, I could still make a bit of cash on it if I tried. On the other hand, Inscription is an incredibly easy profession to make money hand over fist.


Step 1: Level Inscription


It would be difficut to make money off of inscription without leveling it :) If you have an herbalist, go farm the area outside of exodar for the lowest level herbs. There are tons of herbs and little competition. Once you are done with thouse, you will want to head off to Westfall for a bit or even Duskwood where there is a lot more variety. From there, a stop in Stranglethorn Vale, followed by Dustwallow Marsh. I bought all of the next stage of herbs off of the AH (Dreaming Glory etc.) Once you get thru that stage, obviously it is Outland, followed by Northrend.


Step 2: Do your research every day


For the lower level research you will need one moonglow ink. I saved all of my inks leveling so that I could sell items later for a nice tidy profit. Make sure that you do this research every single day. This is where you get you minor Glyphs and most of them sell very well. I have been selling about 5 Glyphs of Battle every day for around 10-12 gold each. These are made with Midnight Ink, which is not very expensive. Even if you just buy the ink, you are basically making at least 8-10 gold profit per glyph. Once you can get the Northrend Discoveries, you will want to do that one every day. This is how you are going to learn new Major Glyphs. My first discovery was the Glyph of Preparation.


Step 3: Sell Glyphs made with lower expense materials


There are a number of very nice glyphs that sell extremly well for the price of cheap materials. Look on you server and find out what is going for a decent price. I have been selling Glyphs of Plaguestrike for close to 20 gold each where I can buy a stack of Outlands Herbs for less than 10 and make several of the Glyphs out of it. PROFIT. Minor Glyphs always make a bit of money as well. I have also been making very nice money with Glyph of Flash of Light and Glyph of Judgement. I am selling bout for about 20 gold each and the production cost is maybe 4 gold. The Glyph of Judgement is made from Lion's Ink which is milled from stuff like Goldthorn.


Step 4: DO NOT FLOOD THE MARKET


This is very important. Do not put up 20 of the same glyph at one time. Someone will come in and undercut you, then it becomes a vicious cycle of undercutting. I usually put up between 3-5 of a Glyph at any given time. This makes sure that the market is not bursting with them. Keep the extra glyphs on your bank alt to sell once the others sell.


Step 5: Be patient


As they say, patience is a virtue. If your stuff doesnt sell, WHO CARES!!! Post it back up again. Do not keep lowering the price. If you have to, wait until the market is empty. I have made a nice chunk of gold with patience. Look at a certain Glyph, there are 10 of them for 1 gold each. I dont post my glyphs. A day later, there are none up. I put them up for 10 gold each, and what do you know? They sell!


Step 6: Don't stop at the top


Just because you have maxed out the profession does not mean you should ignore it. You can grab lower level herbs off the AH when they are cheap and turn them around for a quick and easy profit. For less than 30 minutes of work a day, you can possibly make several hundred to a thousand gold.


Follow these easy steps and have your Travelers Tundra Mammoth or Mechano-Hog in no time!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Puggin' it up: A guide to not pull your hair out

THOU SHALT NOT PUG
Around the WoW community, there is a general disdain of pugging. Everyone has had that terrible experience with a bad pug that just could not get it together. This guide (tongue in cheek) is mostly for level 80 pugs, but can apply to pugs of all shapes and sizes.


Commandment 1, Thou shalt not be afraid to leave unannounced:


It is not your "responsibility" to stay with a crappy group and rack up the repair bills. If they are your friends then that is another matter altogether. A true Pug is a bunch of people you generally dont know. You can usually tell when a pug will be bad right from the beggining. You are looking for a tank and all of a sudden, the group is full....and the tank is a fury warrior with 17k health....tanking in fury gear. Another good sign that this group may be a fail pug is over use of leet speak. Most people in the game use some leet speak now and then, but when all you see is "Lolz, I ned the hawt purplez off teh last boss plz K thx", there is a good possibility you are headed for a train wreck....especially if this is the tank or healer.


Commandment 2, Thou Shalt Inspect each member before commencing PUG:


Do not feel bad about inspecting people. Especially once you hit heroics. Every person should have the common decency of at least gemming their gear in Northrend green gems. If they are rocking a bunch of quest greens, they have not really been trying to gear up. Having gear not enchanted can be acceptable in this situation as it is very likely there will be an upgrade very soon. People who go on runs without gemming their gear are lazy and doing the group a disservice. These people deserve to be kicked. Would you show up to work without your pants? If the answer is yes, then go seek help. Ret Pally in spellpower plate is bad, Tank in anything but plate is bad, Hunter wearing spellpower gear for mend pet is bad MMMMKAYYYYY.


Just as you inspect their gear, take a gander at their build as well. If they have every point in a single tree, it is highly likely that they have no clue what they are doing. "LULZ, I am a beastmaster huntr, thats y i haz alll of the pointz in der". If you are reading this blog, you likely do research on the game outside of the game and have a grasp of what decent specs should look like.


Commandment 3, Thou Shalt run a damage meter:


There are a lot of people who say that meters do not matter. This is what bad players say to make up for the fact they are bad. Healing meters dont always matter....damage meters almost always DO matter. If there are two people doing 2-3 K DPS and not pulling off of the tank, and one doing 1k, the last one is dead weight. Do not be afraid to link the meters and question people. Some classes will have it hard as fresh 80s. Warlocks and Rogues come to mind. There should still be no reason for them not to break 1500 DPS. The people that do 800 dps in a heroic are just on for the ride and taking advantage of a good group. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN. This is how we get well geared bads.


Commandment 4, Thou Shalt make your own PUG:


This one seems obvious, but it is not always so. If you are the group leader, you can determine who comes into the group and who does not. This is when armory is our friend. You can ask educated questions ahead of time to figure out if this person should be going. "It shows you as Arms spec in Armory....are you prot now?", "I see you have no gems in your legs in armory....have you fixed that". And if the answer is ever "I dont have the money to respec/gem/repair", then they should certainly not be invited. It is incredibly easy to make some money in this game. Being completly balls out broke is just lazy. If you make your own pug, then YOU have to control. This includes kicking people for any of the above, and not having to leave the group yourself.


Commandment 5, Thou Shalt let thy community be aware:


I am not saying that you have to go blast the bads on the realm forums (you can if you want and it may make you feel better). At the very least, you should help add to the guild blacklist. This can include either an individual player or an entire guild.


Example: On my server, there is one player I will not run with (a DK and formerly a Fury Warrior, and former guildy who is one of the biggest douches I have ever heard) and one Guild (The Danger Rangers...yes, that is the name of their guild).


It may be odd, but I also hesitant to run with three kinds of players based on their guilds if they are not really established. They are:


1) Guildless: Why is this person guidless? Are they bad? Are they douchebags? What is the deal?


2) Guild that spell their guild names in all lower case letters: This usually signifies that it is run by a 12 year old. The guild message often reads "Recruit more ppl pls x thx bai".


3) Guilds who can not spell their guild name correctly: See number 2 for explanation.
Commandment 6, Be Helpful: (from Occeleta)
Not saying all the time. You see a players gear and it's got AP gems where there should be Strength. Maybe thst player is putting out slightly below average dps but with his gear could be doing better. Make the gem suggestion or ask what his rotation. At this point you can find out if he just doesn't know any better and whether that player is willing to learn. Or if he's just lazy or doesn't care to improve. If you find a player that is willing to learn take a few minutes, point them at the various sites that fan help. Or even give a few tips yourself if you know his class well enough. If you can turn him into a good player then that's one less bad player.


Follow these commandments and you are golden. If you have any good commandments out there, feel free to leave a comments, and I may adds it to the list :)

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Jewel Crafting Daily Quick Tips, and other Misc.

I have been doing the JC daily pretty much every day since it has become available. These are incredibly easy and just take a bit of flight time. Being that my Resto Druid is a JC, I prefer a lower level mob to kill so that it doesnt take as long and there is less risk of aggroing additional baddies.

Kill a Vrykul for their stuff: One of the dailies has you go and kill a vrykul for an item. This works on any Vrykul at all. I prefer to fly over to Valgarde keep in Howling Fjorde and just fly across the little river and blast the guys chopping at the trees. These guys are level 68-70 and go down very quickly. The hardest part of this quest is the length of the flight.

Kill a Scourge for their stuff: This daily has you kill some scourge for their curio. I have found that the easiest place for me to go is the Keep in Dragonblight. From there, you just run outside the gates and kill one of the little dudes with the gimp mask on. Zeds dead baby, Zeds dead.

Kill a Proto Drake for their stuff: This quest asks you to kill a Protodrake for its bone.....no, not that bone. I have found that the easiest place to do this, is by flying out to Westguard Keep in Howling Fjorde. You then fly out to the burning area right outside of town and smash one of the baby proto drakes like you are the Hulk. Once again, the hardest part is the flight.

Kill a Remnant for their Stuff: For me, the easiest place to fly to is Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. Slightly easy of the temple is a small frozen lake with remnants on it. If you are still doing Hodir dailies, and happen to pick this one up, I would recommend just getting it from the Remnants that you need to kill for Hot and Cold.

All of these dailies are incredibly easy and just take a bit of flying time.

News on the Incription front (aka the other Misc. from the title, DUH): I worked on my incription a bit more last night and got it up to about 330. I bought all of the mats and I am still at least breaking even selling the glyphs I make (would be ahead if more were selling). Right now I am working on outlands herbs which are thankfully pretty cheap coming in usually under 10 gold per stack of herbs. I will just buy the herbs until I get to 400 inscription and can get my shoulder enchants.

Looking at inscription, I can see where in about an hour, you could make a lot of money. Look at the glyphs you can make, find out what sells well and isnt already flooding the auction house. Make a few and sell them for a nice profit. I can also see where you could make a nice chunk of money by milling your herbs and just selling the ink you make from it.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Leveling as a Resto Druid

Let me just start that this is not really a guide. It is some insight into leveling the class as well as some of my personal experiences while leveling. You will not see fancy math and such.

I have leveled my Druid as Resto since day 1. I was going to say level 1, but you dont get to choose talent points until level 10 which means you are just a jack of all trades, master of none. For most Druids, the first few levels are extremly difficult compared to other classes. You basically have a nuke and a dot and a few heals. It seems to take forever to kill things. Most Druids agree that at the very least, you will die a whole lot less once you get Bear Form. Most Druids I know have leveled up as Feral and kitty critty killed things.

The first 10-12 levels on my Druid were solo. Then I decided to do RaF and rolled a Rogue to run around with my little tree in training. They leveled together all the way to 60, with the Druid throwing HoTs on the Rogue and the Rogue sinister striking everything in sight. Once I hit Outlands, I basically instanced from 60-70 with a few quests thrown in here and there (most notably the dungeon quests).

While leveling as a Resto Druid, I think it is important to do about and even amount of dungeon leveling and quest leveling. Dungeons get you better gear so that you can kill things faster (but still pathetically slow). You get a ton of XP from these dungeons and you get to learn you role as a healer. This is where you learn what heals work best in each situation. I like to level in dungeons when I have rested XP. Quests are important as well because even in you do not have rested XP coming to you, you can make a lot of progress very fast.

While out questing, entangling roots are you best friend. You root your target in place, Starfire, Starfire, root, Starfire, Starfire, rinse and repeat until you have killed all of the nasties you need for your quest. Always make sure you are buffing yourself with Mark of the Wild and Thorns. Thorns are mostly valuable to you when you are questing and you end up fighting more that one mob. If the mob is immune to be rooted in place, and they are going to be beating on your face, throw a hot or two on yourself and moonfire/wrath your way to victory. In this situation, Wrath is a better choice as it has a shorter cast time and will not get knocked back as many times.

While you are out questing, put yourself in LFG. You will often times get into PuGs, which really is the best place to hone your skills. This will also let you keep an eye on the LFG channel for any interesting opportunities.

I would also recommend at least a little bit of PvP. Specifically battlegrounds. Since the expansion I have become a PvE player predominantly, but the skills that you learn in PvP can help you greatly when you are out getting your quest on. It teaches you how to CC, how to heal on the run, and when to fight and when to run.

Last night I actually got a bit over half a level on my Druid. I logged on, and immediately put myself into LFG. About 5 seconds later I got a blind invite from Over Eager Mage to do UP. Apparently Mr. Eager does not bother asking spec or looking at the notes in LFG as he more or less just hoped I was resto. To fill out the group, he grabs a Warrior to allegedly tank. Once again, he did not pay attention and I called them on the Warrior's 17k HP and Arms spec. They wanted to give it a try with him tanking despite the fact that we had an 80 DK with 19k HP in his DPS gear. I died on the very first pull and immediately let them know that this was not going to work out.

The DK switched into his tanking gear, and we only had one death the rest of the run (Mr. Eager ran ahead into a room where a patrol completly owned him).

After the run, I put myself back into LFG and Mr. Eager asked me if I wanted to do CoS. I said sure and got an invite. Of course he just starts randomly inviting anyone he can. We got a level 80 tank, who despite being completly new to tanking actually did a pretty good job during the run. We also got a DPS DK and a Holy Paladin. Yes....a Holy Paladin. Mr. Eager did not see it as a problem to have two healers. This run seemed to take forever. From AFKs, to the fact that we were basically short a DPS and everything in between. Overall, there were only a few deaths here and there, and one wipe on the first boss. The Paladin was only doing about 200 DPS, so I told him that I could do some DPS if he would heal.

Well, his healing was not exactly stellar. Basically, for the rest of the run, we ran one and a half healers. I was the one, and he was the half. After a while, I checked the meters and noticed that I was doing about 970 heals per second.....he was doing in the 300s. I decided to keep an eye on him. Basically, he only casted flash heals like he was playing in BC. He also did not spam the heal. He would heal.....then sit around a bit....then heal. I must also note that he never bothered healing himself or anyone but the tank.

Despite this crutch, we got through the run, albeit very slowly. At the end of the run, the Paladin was rocking 400 HPS. I feel sorry for the group that he main heals down the road. After that, I did a good chunk of questing in Dragonblight and got about 10 more points in inscription.

Another reason that I am so keen on leveling partly in dungeons is that you end up with more quests for cash at the level cap. I will most likely hit 80 by the time I finish with Dragonblight and have only completed Borean Tundra and Howling Fjorde to this point. Once Dual Specs come out, I will be very happy to knock out zone after zone for the proverbial phat cash.

Anyways, it turned out to be a bit long, but I hope it was at least somewhat helpful!

Monday, March 9, 2009

Weekend Update


The weekend in WoW was quite busy as per usual. Now for a look at the Weekends happenings, we send it over to Darraxus.

Raiding: I got Heroic and 10 man Vault out of the way pretty much immediately at the beggining of the weekend. Of course more crap dropped, but I got a few easy Emblems out of it at least. I have honestly not seen a Warrior drop (besides some PvP gloves that I already have) drop in a few months it seems.

I also got into a Heroic Naxx run over the weekend with a very nice and casual guild. They had already cleared Plague and Spider when I got there. We started on the Millitary quarter and had some problems. We wiped about twice on Razuvious before the Priests got the MCs down. I died on all three attempts as I would taunt him when both priests lost their MCs. Giant repair bills FTL. The biggest hurdle we had in the wing was surprisingly on the second boss. For some reason one side or another kept dying towards the end of the waves. I think we wiped about 6 or 7 times before we finally got it down. I passed on a Helm upgrade off of this boss (I was hoping when we got to Patch, I would win the shield if it dropped since I was the only tank with an actual Need roll left). We then went to the Horsemen and took it down in about 3 tries. Broken Promise dropped, but I once again passed as I wanted to save that need roll for the shield (and I am not a huge fan of slow tanking weapons).

We headed over to Patchwerk, and 2-3 wipes later that called it. DOH!!! The problem we were having on Patch was the healing. Somehow the healers basically let the Main Tank get gibbed right as he pulled Patch, which leads to a very slippery slope where melee dps are getting smacked left and right. The moral of the story is take what you can get. Of course, the first time my fiance wants to watch a raid, we wipe a bunch of times 0.o

Questing/Leveling: As per usual over the weekend I got some time to level with my fiance. We only did about 5 bubbles worth of questing, but that was OK. I also spent a decent amount of time on my Druid. I dinged 77 and 78 and now have my flight form again. As it stands now, I am about half through Dragonblight. I will have a ton of quests for gold when I hit 80 as I will still have a majority of the zones left (dual spec can't come fast enough, I hate doing weak DPS while questing). I am hoping to get at least another half of a level tonight. I finished the Wrathgate questline on my Druid and it is still a lot of fun. During the Battle of Undercity, I think I was doing like 6k DPS.

Professions/Farming: This is where the rest of in game time with my fiance was spent. She ran around leveling her herbalism and gave me the herbs to level my inscription. I also ran around gathering tons of herbs with my Pally. All said and done, I ended up at about 235 inscription by the end of the night. I have made several glyphs to put on the AH and even made my first Inscription discovery! I can see where Gevlon would be making tons of money with this profession. Some of the Glyphs sell very well, and the Ink actually sells for more that a stack of flowers does. Unfortunately, a lot of them are basically garbage but need to be made to give you points. People apparently just want to get rid of Glyphs and have no intention of making a profit. My fiance is now above 150 Herbing.

Miscellaneous: One thing of interest over the weekend was that my fiance ran into her first in game douchebag. She was running around Westfall gathering herbs when some Shaman says "Cleared the area for you, GTFO Noob". She was actually upset by this level 14 Shaman named Drkschocolate. I then taught her what the ignore list was for, followed by a friendly RP server name reporting :). She then decided on her own for of vengenance which consisted of picking every flower in Westfall so the aforementioned Douche would not get any.

Overall, it was a fun weekend as per usual. I will be glad once I get my Druid to 80 and start running Heroics. I already have 4 epics and blue BoE ilvl200 shoulder in my bank waiting for me to get there. Only thing I am having trouble deciding is if I should have a friend craft me the Titansteel Guardian, or I should just wait and try to get the War Mace of Unrequited Love from Heroic Nexus.

Hope you all had a fun and loot filled weekend.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Recent Warrior Updates from the PTR

Arms
  • Battle Stance now increase the armor penetration of all your attacks by 10%.
  • Shattering Throw *New Skill* - Throws your weapon at the enemy causing [ 50% of AP + 12 ] damage (based on attack power), reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec, and removing any invulnerabilities. 25 Rage, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast, 5 min cooldown

Both of these changes look pretty nice. This gives a nice boost to Arms warriors with the armor pen, and Shattering Throw will be pretty nice for PVP I would imagine. I wonder if all of that will stack with the sunders.

Fury


The first changes will be very nice for TG warriors in PVP. Less damage taken is always a good thing. Ther second change is kinda meh. Arenas usually dont last that long anyways.

Protection

  • Defensive Stance now reduces damage caused by 5%. (Down from 10%)
  • Disarm now disarm the enemy's main hand and ranged weapons.

The first change is very nice for both PVE and PVP. This could help level the playing field as far a competing on the meters against other tanks of other classes. The second one is a beast for PvP. Hunters are going to QQ themselves to sleep at night when the Prot Pain Train comes to town.

So far these are all some nice buffs and moving in the right direction. The next thing I would like to see changed for prot warriors is the way we have to spam Heroic Strike. A toggle on/off for HS would be ideal IMO. That way in high rage situations we arent having to do 10 key presses per second. 

What do you think of these changes so far? Obviously these arent final, but looks like a nice step in the right direction.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Friday, March 6, 2009

Crushing blows for tanks back in 3.1?

I was taking a look over at MMO champion this morning before coming to work and noticed a little blurb on crushing blows. It spoke of a "new" kind of crushing blow. Obviously they can't make it completly random like they did before if they do decide to bring crushing blows back. The shield wall ability has been changed since then, and Warrior tanks would be at a severe disadvantage considering all of the cooldowns other tanking classes have to combat these (as well as higher health pools for Druid and DK tanks).

The way it sounds is that it would be more of announced type event (possibly thru raid warning) that would have you use one of your defensive cooldowns. I really do not understand this line of thinking at all. The reason crushing blows were deadly in BC is that they were not announced. If you are going to announce the crushing blow, what is the point of it? It becomes just another boss ability that you have to plan for.

The last paragraph may have sounded like I want crushing blows back. I don't. It was annoying having to spam shield block every single time it was up. It was also irritating that Paladins were able to do the same thing but with a lot more charges on it and basically 100 percent uptime.

I really do not see any reason to bring crushing blows back. If they do in fact come back, we may very well see the hard encounter that everyone was whining about. Only instead of tanking skill, they will take gear. Gear because a higer health pool means less likely to get insta-gibbed by a boss with back to back crushing blows after an unlucky parry. Remeber Prince in Karazhan when you got there in blues and a few epics? Those phase two crushing blows were lethal. Once you geared past it, it was not nearly so bad.

If they really want people to bring the player, they should not bring back crushing blows. It is a mechanic of days past and needs to stay in the days in the days of no thunderclap in defensive stance. Leave crushing blows in the graveyard where they belong.