Amava Knows Aggro

Is when she confirms her uberness

2009-08-04T08:20:00.005-04:00

I know I said I was retired, but this was too much fun to not share....

About three months ago, the uber gf says "keep friday 7/31 clear".

At that time, (A) I was still raiding and (B) my guild was not raiding on fridays, so sure honey, I'll keep the night clear. What's it you've got in mind?

Nuttin'. Just keep the night clear. Its a surprise.

Ok.

Then a few weeks later, an envelope from TicketMaster gets magneted (*) to the fridge.

What'cha got in the envelope?

Nuttin'. Don't look in there. Its a surprise.

So week after agonizing week, every time I loot her fridge (no innuendo implied) I see this envelope flappin in my face.

The anticipation builds up. Quite a bit. So I get to thinking, and say to her....

You know, I could probably look through the browser history or google around and figure out what your little surprise is.

Probably. Don't tho. It's a surprise.

Grrrr. FINE! But you're killing me!

Good. That's my job.

A little more anticipation-filled time goes by.

My guild starts to raid on fridays, so I post my planned absence on the guild forums. Nothing's gonna keep me from finding out what this surprise is.

So the date gets closer and closer.

Then I have my big raid retirement a week before the surprise day.

And then on the day of 7/31, I have the worst day ever. Well, not ever, but it was a pretty shtty day.

When evening time comes and the uber gf gives me the GPS coords for the surprise destination, I'm in the worst mood ever. Well, not ever, but it was a pretty shtty mood.

AND I STILL DONT KNOW WHAT THIS FREAKIN SURPRISE IS YET!

So I drive, following that awful annoying voice of the chick on the GPS navigator, and we...fight isnt the word, because none of my anger was with her, but she was cool and let me vent and grumble and yell at the world and whoever I was bent out of shape with (boss, family, landlord, in no particular order).

I kinda cool off, but not really, but she says cool the whole time....

BECAUSE SHE KNOWS WHAT'S COMING IN FIVE MINUTES ONCE WE GET TO THOSE CURSED GPS COORDS!

So I find a parking spot, ready to just rip the damn envelope open and look at the tickets.

And then we turn the corner and I see a giant tent with this on it....

Symphony orchestra playing the songs from key video games throughout the history of gaming with a giant visual display of clips from the games up above the stage.

And we're sitting 2nd row, center.

I can't even describe how cool it was.

If you like Warcraft, which you probably do since you're reading this site, you likely know (A) the three theatrical trailers for the different WoW releases, (B) the song from the loading screen in WotLK.

The philharmonic orchestra plays a selection of the music (with matching video playing on the screen above them) from the trailers and other Blizzard-supplied clips, and they whip out a choir from a local college to do the vocals.

Like a kid in a candy shop.

Even games I never played were fun to listen to, the power of the full orchestra sitting 5 feet away from us, watching the games up on the screen, listening to the crowd go wild.

Some Highlights:
1) Fat kid from audience that they then stuff into a "gamer sized" (bullsht) medium tshirt so he can become a live piece in a game of space invaders.

2) Songs from Zelda. Nuff said.

3) Scrawny 13 year old kid playing guitar hero aerosmith on expert setting, acting like he is a total badass up on stage.

4) This Guy. Live. Fastest piano fingers I've ever seen. Blindfolded. Playing Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy music.

5) Local jailbait dressed up as characters from Final Fantasy, Princess Peach, and some other random skimpily clad video game-inspired outfits. Oh, and some "dudes" dressed as Link from Zelda too.

6) There's a ton of other stuff, but since I'm retired from blogging (kinda) you'll just have to go read the website.

If Video Games Live comes through a city near you, I highly recommend you go, its a unique experience.

And if your gf can pull off a surprise as cool as this one, you might consider granting her a title like uber as well.

(*) Yes, I made it up. It means "temporarily affixed via magnet"

Amava.....out!

2009-07-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

EDIT: minutes after I wrote this post, I went to my rss reader and saw Daxenos Open Letter to Amava, and died a little inside. Thx for the post, you made me smile big time. Ok, so the dying inside thing was a bit of an exaggeration.

Here's the long awaited "farewell" post. And I'll try to do it with my favorite wall o' text style (jump to the mushy emo stuff if you don't want to hear the full story)...

Starting this week, I've retired from raiding and WoW blogging. The blogging retirement has been informal for a while, so lets make it offical with this post.

And too bad there isn't a 401k or pension to cash in on, but I suppose the payout is with the most valuable of resources: time.

Why the change?

The change stems from three big factors, in no particular order:

1) The Hunter is just no longer fun in raids. None of the raid specs has a rotation that feels natural or intuititive. Ulduar is very pet unfriendly. The end result is a need to continuously stare at cooldowns for whatever priority shot is available next, and continuously micromanage my pet and hope my fellow raiders dont blow up any Mimiron mines and one-shot the little furry guy.

On relatively stationary fights (think Iron Council), my DPS output is excellent, so you know the potential for the class, my gear, and my skill level is there. However, on high mobility fights like Hodir or XT hardmode, its as if I didn't even bring my bow to the raid, autoshots barely ever fire and you can kiss your 4 piece tier 8 bonus goodbye because you're never going to stand still long enough to cast a steady shot. I tell ya, the second you find a cosy fire, the ceiling caves in and you have to cancel your steady shot mid-cast.

And then I wont even get into people who analyze DPS performance on Freya. In your raid, do you ever see DPS nuking her while she's still got massive HoT's rolling because there's still 4 waves of her minions left to go? Yeah, that data goes straight into the damage done reports, but gets instantly healed the moment the spell strikes. And lol at anybody who says "i'm activating my trinket". Sure, I believe you. I do. No really, we all believe you. But I digress, that's not a Hunter thing, but rather relates to #3 below.

Bottom line, none of the Hunters I raid with say they're having very much fun with the class lately.

2) The summer schedule is interfering with family time. Prior to the summer, my daughter would be in bed before raid invites, so I'd be able to properly tuck her in and have quality bedtime rituals that will hopefully give memories that will last her lifetime. With the summer's arrival, her schedule changed and she's awake later now, so I've had to miss some of this.

Prior to this schedule change, the biggest family impact was to my time with the uber gf. Amazingly, she's got the patience and caring to support me through 3 or now 4 nights of raiding per week for the last year and a half, which I'm truly thankful for. Hell, shes so awesome she even helps me farm saronite for the endless supply of arrows 4 raids per week burns through.

But now raiding is taking me away from all the people closest to me, and that is unacceptable.

3) My guild and I have diverged in our views of what makes a high performing team. What kind of communication, what kind of feedback, what kind of leadership, what kind of command presence during combat, what kind of coaching fixes under-performance, what kind of individuals should make up that team.

It'd be fun to write a scathing post chock full of drama. When I go back through my volumes of unpublished material, I find I often went that route, and its likely at the heart of why I stopped posting because I don't want to bad mouth anybody. Whether we agree or not is irrelevant, but how we conduct ourselves is.

I did my best to share my ideas on how a team should work via conversations on vent, text chat, guild forums, even one visit in-person with my guildmaster (Coincidentally had to make a business trip to the city where he lives. We had prime rib and beer and talked about So You Think You Can Dance. It was fun). Not everyone, but enough of the vocal players of the guild have views that are dramatically different from my own, enough so that we are no longer compatible on the same team.

So the best course of action is to remove myself from the situation before things become toxic for all the people involved.

How does it feel?

When you take the three items above, it is a pretty obvious decision to make: stop raiding.

You ever read or see Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring? You remember when Bilbo has to give THE ring over to Gandalf? And he has that moment of hesitation, where he knows what he needs to do, but there's something inside him trying to make him stop? And then he does it and drops the ring on the floor and walks away?

The feeling he expresses at that moment is the only way I can describe the sense of relief at sending the email to the GM saying I'm done raiding.

I'm sorry if it puts the team in a temporary bind as they look for players, since they've actually had to cancel a raid recently, and had to cut one back to just a few easy-mode optional bosses to finish a raid week that should have ended with General V, Yogg, and Hard Mode IC. But again, I digress.

The guild deservedly has a fantastic reputation on our server, and has a strong track record of success. Plus, the GM has a very public spot in the WoW community, so attracting players is not quite the challenge that a run-of-the-mill guild is faced with.

I hope to read at WoM about continuing success through the few remaining Ulduar hardmodes, the new Coliseum (soon), and what ever lies beyond. It remains a great team, so I expect nothing less.

So what now?

Stopping raiding and blogging is in no way a slow-down to my WoW action.

Still love the game, and quite frankly, removing the social constraints of locking in 3-4 nights per week actually makes me want to play the game more.

However, I'll be playing it in 100% casual mode.

EDIT: Funny that Daxenos wrote his Open Letter to me today, because I've actually been holding onto his ideal for enjoying the game at a casual pace and not letting that sense of urgency dominate the play time as it seems to always do. When it feels like I'm in a rush to get something done, I'll put it down and do something else, just on principle. Go go Tango lessons!

Gotta go AFK, no problem.

Want to go see an outdoor play at the little park across the street from my house that only runs on raid nights, no problem.

Uber gf wants a quick piece, no problem.

Want to watch So You Think You Can Dance on the actual night it airs so that you don't need to invoke a cone of silence of all media channels for the day or two following an episode lest some radio DJ spill the beans on who got voted out, no problem.

Uber gf wants a not-so-quick piece, no problem. Well, at least no schedule problem :-)

Here's what I suspect is in my WoW future:

1) Amiva the Insane: I've been working on the rep grinds for Insane in the Membrane achievement for about 6 weeks now. Projecting out the remaining requirements and my own schedule, I'm estimating I'll ding Amiva the Insane during the October Darkmoon Faire.

The real question is am I completely off my rocker and going to follow up with Moodyswinger the Insane? The jury is still out.

2) Alts: As part of The Insane, you need to pickpocket 1405 (yes, you read correctly, fourteen hundred and five) junkboxes. Only a Rogue can do it, so I levelled one up to 68. And wouldn't you know it, I actually had fun.

Why was it fun leveling this alt as opposed to some other toons in the past? Because I have no end-game goals for this girl. If she took a year to get to 68, I wouldn't have cared a whiff.

I'll probably end up with like 10 level 80 toons by the time I'm done with this game. Or maybe just 3.

3) Casual Raids: I might find myself in an off-night naxx raid here or there. Or a VoA or an OS. Who knows, after everybody out-gears Ulduar, maybe I'll go back in there for a night.

But nothing scheduled or repeating.

4) Gold: I'm nearing 50k, earned via a combination of gathering high level herbs and ores, daily questing, selling the looted stuff from close to 300 dire maul runs (part of The Insane), and also buy/craft/sell value-added manufacturing of crafted goods.

I've got a very loose goal of hitting 100k before I quit the game, but that just sort of happens along the way, so no pressure, which is nice.

5) Battlegrounds: I love healing BG's on my druid. She's maxed out on No-Arenas-Required pvp gear right now. When the new arena season starts and the next tier of pvp gear becomes available from BG's, I'll probably hit the queues again like a crazy man.

6) Healing Heroics: I healed a few VoA's. I didn't like it one bit. I healed a few heroics. Its kinda fun. My favorite thing is letting an aggro-hungry Mage die when he refuses to (A) assist the tank and (B) stop with the nukes if he's close to the tanks threat level. I think its up to the healers of the world to teach people proper threat management via stopping fixing stupid mistakes, and I'm doing my part, one Mage at a time.

7) Rep Grinds: I dunno, I just kinda like zoning out and grinding sometimes. Its relaxing. I recently did the Explorer's League one-and-only daily quest for the 137th time, dinging Exalted and putting me at 38 factions.

Next up will be Ravenholdt, but only after roughly 1300 more junkboxes pickpocketed, which will be 39 factions.

40 is the big one, with "the Exalted" title. If I continue down the Insane path, it'll be Shendralar that dings me that. However, I need to loot 40 more librams for that. Took me close to 300 Dire Maul runs to net those first 42 librams, so who knows how long this mutha will take.

I might take a quick diversion to do Cenarion Circle as my 40th, and the Guardian of Cenarius title that comes with it. I like multiple simultaneous achievement dings, so I'm leaning towards this one next.

After that, I'll start jumping into every Black Temple and Mt Hyjal raid I can find to get Asstongue Deathsworn and Sands of Time exalteds.

Then maybe I'll take a look at more old-world raid reps, which I really don't know a whole lot about. As long as I can solo stuff on my druid tank with my Hunter following, I can solo my way to most of these.

8) Fishing for Profit: I fish a lot. I've been providing the fish feasts to my guild since fish feasts were introduced to the game. Some guildies chip in some fish here or there, but most of it comes from my pole (ewww).

Well, its time to fish for me now. Stacks of the ingredients for fish feast go for close to 50g if you time your auction right.

And I kinda want a turtle mount.

I also want that damn sewer rat, but it's not very lucrative to fish in there.

Anything else on the video game front?

If anybody knows a good current Realtime Strategy Game (like Warcraft II, or C&C, or Dune 2 from back in the day), drop me a line. I've got some room in my schedule for another game :-)

Or if any of my readers (you know who you are) wants to play some Rock Band, we can probably make that happen.

That's all, folks!

So this is goodbye. /tear

Last night was my first raid I was sitting out from.

While lazily taking an alt through Blades Edge Mountains, I saw the game generated announcement in my chat window that some guild just dinged the Realm First Algalon kill.

If it happened even one day earlier, I'd have felt jealous or envious or some other less-than-constructive emotion. But last night?

It echoed my relief at being off that treadmill.

Over the past nearly 2 years of blogging and 1.5 years of raiding, I've met some fantastic people and had some outstanding times with TagTeam/Kishi Kaisei during TBC, and in WotLK with Conquest.

Thank you all for reading, commenting, playing, and coming along for the ride. The experience has been memorable.

More Insight on the Missing Rush

2009-05-28T07:41:00.003-04:00

I've been doing lots of mental exploration lately about WoW and Raiding, and most specifically the missing rush of adrenaline that comes with progression kills.

The last BIG BIG Rush was Sarth+3, many many months ago.

Before that was a BIG Rush with Malygos.

And before that was a Rush when KT died in Naxx.

And then Ulduar was released. Fresh new content to push through. Should be pretty exciting, yes?

Well, it is exciting, but as I've shared in some other posts, it feels like its missing something. Many of the progression kills, even ones that required numerous wipes to master, just sort of happen and then you go loot the boss without so much as an elevated pulse.

There has been some good ones.

Our first Flame Leviathan kill, shortly after the servers came up on patch-day. I'd call that one pretty thrilling, in large part due to beating out the lag before all the majority of the server started raiding and crashing the instances rather than the epic feel of the event.

Mimiron was definitely a satisfying kill. Even the second kill evoked some dancing and fist-pumping celebration.

But what about all the others?

My most notable example: XT took us a few nights of learning attempts. Our progression kill was before they nerfed/relaxed his enrage timer, plus we weren't using the "bring him to one side, thus eliminating two of the four streams of incoming adds" strategy yet, so it was very challenging to master all the environmental factors plus keeping up with is enrage timer. No rush though, just loot like it was a farm raid.

And all the other progression kills? Similar. Wipe, learn, kill, put on Chef's Hat, take screen shot, loot, move on to next trash, notice you're still wearing the Chef's Hat, switch to DPS helm, prep for next boss. No rush.

So what is it?

I'm happy with our rate of progress on default-difficulty boss kills.

We're currently working on Yogg-Saron, having a pretty good handle on Phase 1 and had many good learning attempts on Phase 2.

We'll be onto Phase 3 and its insane DPS requirements soon enough, completing the full-clear of default difficulty.

Then it comes time for Hard Modes.

Which I think is the kicker. The thorn in the side of the adrenaline rush.

Yes, we killed the bosses. But did we really kill them?

Sure, our raiders are wearing the loot that only comes from a dead boss, so surely we killed them.

But it feels empty. I personally could care less about the loot. It is a necessary evil required for progress, but I'm here to bask in the glow of mastering the execution of complex encounters. I can mentally view each piece of gear our raid upgrades as one baby step towards being able to handle hard modes, but that only keeps the motivation for just so long.

Its tough to enjoy it if you know that when you come back for Hard Mode the fight that you just thought was a challenge will feel like a walk in the park.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I'm happy with how Blizzard designed the dungeon. Algalon, the real final boss is only available after killing all the Hard Modes of the other bosses.

Its unclear to me whether that is during the same raid ID, or if you just need to have the achievements of each of the other hard modes to activate him.

Doesn't matter.

What matters is that they've provided ample motivation for guilds to keep pushing Hard Modes until they're mastered.

Sure we killed Sarth+3D. Several times. But we definitely never got that on farm status, and after a few kills, most people lost motivation to keep wiping for "just a vanity mount".

So we gave up before I'd say we mastered the encounter.

I hope that the alure of Algalon keeps the guild driving to complete the Hard Modes and then continue to improve until they're on farm status.

We may never achieve that goal.

It may be too hard for the caliber raiders we have including myself, it may be too hard for the caliber leaders we have, it may be too hard for the number of hours we raid per week, it may require decisions of raid composition and bench warming that are too hard for our team to make.

But being on the path towards excellence, dying trying to make it happen, never giving up (until the next dungeon in the rat race is released), means way more to me than farming some loot off of default difficulty knowing something greater is out there.

For The Alliance Quickies

2009-05-28T07:39:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I dinged the For The Alliance achievement for killing all the Horde leaders.

So I share some quickies with you....

/trade LFM for the alliance - Logged in and saw the usual routine in /trade, some coconut is putting together a raid on Horde leaders. But I had a few hours to kill and my only real "goal" was to do some Jousting dailies and check the AH. Only one guildie on at the time and he was actually signed up to do it already, so I figured "what the hey".

Fountain Coins - Small aside. When you're in a raid group and cannot do any questing, fishing for coins is a not tooo unreasonable use of your time.

Staging Area - Meet up in Astranaar. Brings back old memories. When originally leveling, I had Amava hearthed to Astranaar for so much longer than would make actual sense. I was questing all over Azeroth, but would always hearth back to Astranaar and actually physically click on one of the beds upstairs to lay down before logging. Ah, the memories. Noob.

Yelling, Saying, and Emoting - One sure way (or rather, three sure ways) to ruin the element of surprise is to /y, /s, and /e (or any of the built-in emotes that don't require use of /e). Although the opposite faction might not be able to translate your words (kek), they will see the fact that you are nearby. Loose lips sink ships.

Don't Aggro The Guards - We assembled just outside the side gate to Orgrimmar with the instruction of "dont aggro the guards". I was fearing that this is when the PuG attempt would all start to unravel, before it even began. All it takes is one coconut to pull a guard and then hell breaks loose and we become a disorganized mob and fail. Kudos to the team for showing enough discipline to hold still and wait for instruction to commence the attack.

No Fuss - Not a whole lot to say, somewhat uneventful however lots of adrenaline. Most of the uncertainty was whether the PuG would collapse and we'd waste our time. Getting lost here and there added to the excitement.

The Route - Assemble outside Org. Kill Thrall. Port to Theramore and run to Thunderbluff. Brief moment of panic as half the raid got split up by taking wrong elevators. Kill Cow leader. Portal to Shatt and then portal to Isle of Quel Danas. Fly to Zul'Aman. Kill Blood Elf. Portal to Ironforge. Fly to Chillwind. Get lost trying to find sewer entrance. Get lost inside Undercity. Kill Undead boss. Hearth to Dalaran and check email.

Escorting a Friend - My friend was actually dualboxing the raid, playing his healer and /following his rogue. Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, FTW. Made transport of his toons so much easier.

War Bear - And I now have a Bear mount that I'll probably ride for a few days and then return to my Cobalt War Talbuk which remains my favorite mount. Something about the tall narrow shape and the hoof sound fx I like the best.

Better late than never - Some would say I was 6 months late dinging the achievement, and to them I would say "suck it".

The Number Nine - Nine honor kills. Yes. Nine (9). Only nine hk's in the process of killing all four Horde bosses. Talk about an organized resistance.

Leveling a pet and some RP

2009-05-22T12:52:00.002-04:00

Its nice that we have a larger stable than during TBC for all our hunter pets. Even nicer to now have Call Stabled Pet capability to switch pets when you switch dual specs, if you so like.

I've been running Marksman for about 2 weeks now. I'm very much liking the rotation/priority. My only beef with it is that every so often, I'll end up with Chimera, Arcane, and Aimed all reaching the end of their cooldown at the same time. Means that, for instance, Aimed shot will sit for 2 GCD's during which it is ready to be fired but is lower priority and so sits. No big, but I like complaining.

Lots of forums and EJ's and Pikes say that a Wolf and the Furious Howl attack power buff is king among MM pets.

So I figure I'll leave Memphis the Raptor as my Survival pet, and go ahead and find me a wolf.

Finally, I get to raid with a dog!

And its time for some Role Play.

I can't just get any dog. No, for me, I need to go on a mission to rescue a pup from evil and give him a nice home and teach him things like "sit", "stay", and "sick balls". The kind of pup who lusts to tear the faces off of bosses during the day, and curl up on the couch with me and watch some American Idol at night.

So I set off to Mulgore. Seems those cows from Thunderbluff have been mistreating their animals and Amava is going to try to set things right.

Found the lowest level (5) Coyote puppy I could and offered him some cookies.

He was reluctant at first, but I eventually earned his trust.

And wouldnt you know it, badda bing badda boom, he's level 75. Man, these kids sure do grow up quick.

Now its time for a name.

Wanting to stick with the Native American vibe in Mulgore/Tauren lore, I went to look up various tribal translations of the name Coyote.

As it would turn out, none of them felt right when translated to Night Elf lingo.

However, a common theme in Native American legend and myths is the portrayal of the Coyote as the Trickster (aside: often depicted with disproportionately large junk, so big in fact that our little trickster sometimes wears a backpack to carry his mule. pure win) who is a master of deception, usually using his guile to get into somebody's pants (again, pure win).

And after spending a few hours to level him up to 80 grinding rhinos and elementals in Storm Peaks, the name stuck.

So lets all welcome Trickster the Coyote to the Stable. Tonight's his first raid, so we'll see how things go.

A New Idol

2009-05-22T12:50:00.001-04:00

Do you mean your moody druid finally swapped out her last greenie, some silly mangle-enhancing quest reward loot that sits in the Idol slot?

Nope, I mean American Idol. All my friends in the guild make fun of me for taking wednesdays off of WoW to watch Idol, so as punishment, you all get to read about the finale here.

Here you go, some Idol Finale quickies:

1) When Fergie performs solo, I can't help but look for an Adam's Apple. No question she's hot, but it wouldn't surprise me for a second to discover twig and berries tucked around back.

2) WTF was with that Steve Martin banjo song? Me and the uber gf were debating about this one. She thinks its a serious song, I think its a parody about putting out on the first date hidden behind a fascade of seriousness. Either way, it was horrible. If you're going to bring Steve Martin, you better whip out some old school King Tut or something. Born in Arizona, moved to Babylon-a...

3) Norman Gentle, FTW. Outstanding delivery of the fake "what a surprise, I'm not prepared....HIT IT" routine. I'd totally go see him on an off-the-strip Vegas show or something. Then again, his schtick would probably get old after 15 minutes, but w/e, I loved him last night.

4) The uber gf called Keith Urban and Kris Allen's performance the Devil's Duet, because I mean really, staring into some dude's eyes while you're both singing about wanting to kiss a girl? All aboard the crazytrain, next stop, Broke Back Mt. I'm just sayin'.

5) From day one of the season, I was calling for Adam Lambert to bring some AC/DC. He's just able to do that kind of screaming/singing sort of thing. So when they whipped out KISS, pretty damn close. I'm generally not a big fan, but I must be a huge sucker for theatrics, because this performance was awesome for me. Even when I was scared Gene Simmons was going to break his hip while trying to smash his guitar, it was pure win.

6) Regarding #1 above, I'd still do'er.

7) Does anybody out there understand the appeal of Rod Stewart? Just how drunk WAS he during the show?

8) Cindi Lauper and Allison Iraheta duet was cool. They're both pretty wacky chicks, which only makes it more enticing. Hey, Cindi! Your knees are about 3 feet apart and the camera is staring straight up Grand Central.

9) Seacrest making fun of bikini girl's new fake rack was pretty close to the hilight of the evening for me. At first I was thinking "something looks different, but I'm not sure what?", and then he calls her out on it, and I was on the floor laughing. Kara's awkwardness after she almost flashed beav was icing on the cake and totally redeemed everything I hated about her all season.

10) I just don't understand Carlos Santana. No doubt he's got mad skillz, but the boat left and I wasn't on the boat. Maybe I'm just not a guitar guy, although I loved Slash's guest week. In Santana's defense, he did look totally badass on his little pedestle with white jacket and hat.

11) Sht, I cant remember the song right now but some white guy came out wearing a hat and a sport coat and a peace t-shirt and no shoes. His vibe and energy was so f'ing cool, it's probably the closest I've ever come to wanting to fill out a three way between me and the uber gf with a dude. And I usually hate goatees.

12) Lionel. Love his fiesta song even after like 25 years, he rules. But I couldn't help but feel bad for the guy. I mean, really. Your daughter is Nicole Ritchie, dude.

13) When the Peas came out to save Fergie from her lack luster solo, she suddenly stopped looking like a pre-op trannie. BEP are awesome, and the performance was outstanding. They should have put it later in the show, IMO, because Steve Martin totally killed the buzz this created. I want those zebra striped dancers to come with me to business meetings when I have to deliver bad news, just to lighten up the mood.

There you go. 13 quickies of the flat-out best Idol show I've ever seen. Good times, even if the wrong guy won.

Oh...

14) What's the first thing probably ran through Mrs. Allen's mind...."well, its been nice knowing ya." How long you think that marriage will last through the stresses and temptations of the rock star life?

Sht, Simon said it himself early in the competition "you may have brought out the wife a little early". Granted, he meant that Kris should have kept the wifey hidden for a little while to let the girlie voters fall for him, but if you notice, they never mentioned the wife again from that moment on. They just said "Kris's Family" when they panned the camera past his posse.

Oh, and one more...

15) Proof positive that America's racism < America's homophobia. We're enlightened enough to be able to see past skin color when electing our President, but put a little nail polish on a dude who won't openly announce, confirm, nor deny his sexual preferences, and buh-bye.

Not to take anything away from Kris, because he had some amazing performances during the competition, but Randy Travis's open homophobia was disturbing.

F'ing Boo-Ya

2009-05-21T08:28:00.002-04:00

I knew something was wrong, and I couldn't have come out of blog-hiding at a more perfect time.

WoW Insider - High Level Ranged Weapons Getting Buffed

The article even features a pic of the butt-ass-ugly Kologarn gun that I carry around. Auryia, you stupid cat lady, gimme a new bow, soon. I'm so sick of using guns.

WoW Insider, quoting Ghostcrawler, says that (A) Hunter dps is low because Blizz f'ed up the whole ammo change they were planning but failed to implement so the wep damage is being buffed to compensate, and even mutha'f'ing better, (B) they also recognize that Hunters are still a little low beyond that and plan to change it over the next few weeks.

On one hand, this plays even further into my QQ about how volatile the state of the Hunter is, as we'll be changing more and more.

But on the other hand, maybe they're giving the class a little potential.

To quote a wise man (me. from just a day or two ago)...

"I don't want to be imba or easysauce, but I do want to be competitive and have a reasonable number of attacks that interact with one another in a logical way."

The Ghostcrawler quote might as well have read (note: hypothetical fake quote)...

"We became concerned at the drawn out period of silence amongst the Hunter blog community, for instance, Amava became all emo and didn't post for weeks. Well, his/her return to blogging inspired us to stop making Hunters suck dck for every point of damage they deal and you'll see them be a bit more competitive pretty damn soon. Stroking his/her ego is what we strive for here at Blizzard.

Knowing his/her hatred for guns in-game, we're also adding a unique piece of code that increases the drop rate of the Cat Lady Bow considerably if a player starting with A and ending with iva is in the raid.

We humbly apologize if this buff feels like yet another change in a long line of annoying changes, and we dearly hope this doesn't bring evoke another completely justified, pouty, emo fit from our beloved blogger who makes the game as awesome as it is."

Yeah, that's what he should have said :-)

M.B.F.T.Y.P.

2009-05-21T08:25:00.001-04:00

This is My Big Fat Thank You Post.

Its actually rather thin to warrant the "big fat" title, but does My Little Thin Thank You Post really sound good? No. It does not.

Several of you wrote to me via blog comments, emails, in-game whispers on-server, and even a level 55 death knight rolled as a means to whisper me from off server (perhaps rolled for other reasons as well, but with my awful DPS lately, I'll stroke the ego however I can :-P )

To summarize those tidbits with a twist of my own slang and dialect, the common thread was: Where Fck You Been, Boi? Gitcho ass back in the writin' seat and gimme some mo'!

TOTALLY UNRELATED BUT HAPPENED RIGHT NOW AND I'M GOING ALL STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS ON YOUR ASS: I just won a f'ing donut! Tim Hortons (think Dunkin Donuts if you don't live in or near Canada) does an annual contest with their coffee cups. The contest is pretty much over, but the timmy-hoho's at work is still in stock with the contest cups in XL size. I just won a f'ing donut. I'm the King of the World! brb, donut....k, back.

My Big Fat Thank You Post is for you guys.

The past month or weeks or whatever gap its been has shown me that I write for myself, to explore my thoughts, to help make sense of the mental jumble that's pretty much with me day-to-day, to sing the praises of things I'm happy about, to vent my beefs and beat dead horses into the ground, to chuckle about frivolous things that I find amusing...

FYI, Lets talk amusement real quick. I wear my chef's hat for every boss progression kill screen shot, and sometimes forget to take it off for the next trash pull. Its my favorite part of the game, and if somebody stands in front of me, I get disproportionately angry. Down in front. Are my ears ok? Do these T8.5 legs make my ass look fat?

But I publish for all of you. It makes me feel good to know that people, however many or few, enjoy reading my walls of text, my far-from-scientific theorycrafting, my strategies and techniques that are anything but optimal, my revelations of things that've been spelled out much earlier and in much better detail elsewhere.

So here's a Thank You. The Big Fat variety.

And now to scan through the massive pile of unpublished posts to see if there's a tidbit or two worthy of the light of day.....

Publisher's Block

2009-05-19T07:40:00.000-04:00

Anybody who's been reading here for a while knows that the author is a bit of a strange bird.

Knowing that, you might not find it quite as weird that I've been suffering from publisher's block.

Its like writer's block, except you have lots of inspiration and write lots of material, but when you hover your mouse over the "publish" button, there's a demon who takes control and navigates the web browser away from blogspot and over to some barely legal smut sites. Weird.

I've actually written-but-not-published several posts like this one, trying to explore what's been going on in my head and why that demon has been winning the battles lately, as compared to the previous years (holy s, its been years?) during which, by willpower alone, I was able to delay the demon's inevitable websites of choice until after I published my bloggy blog.

Lets hope this post has a more impressive, or at least public, destiny than those that're sitting in the electronic Island of Lost Posts.

Start with the Positive

There's been lots of fun going on in my WoW game. Here's a few snippets for your enjoyment:

1) Raiding Progress - Last week, we got our first Mimiron kill. Its a fun fight with a lot of variety and the level of challenge is higher than WotLK has generally given us. Also, we started adding in some of the easier hardmodes this week, bringing down Flame Leviathan with one tower up. I like progress, I like hardmodes. Big win!

2) Healing BG's - ZOMG, I love it. My moody druid is pretty much in full Hateful/Deadly Gladiator now. Premade groups of 2-6 friends from the guild, and we just stomp around. A small pocket of players working very tightly coordinated and sticking to sound strategy makes such a massive difference to the outcome of battles. Very fun to see BG from a different perspective than my long-time hunter.

3) Low-Stress World Event - Argent Tournament. When I compare it in my mind to Isle of Quel'danas, it's a world of difference. When IoQD landed, I felt major internal pressure to exalt with the SSO and keep pushing those dailies every day. I have no idea why. Now with the AT, I'm actually enjoying it (well, except for that awful nasty awful jousting quest in southwest Ice Crown, which I refuse to do after that first awful time). I do a couple dailies every now and again when its fun. When its not fun, I don't do it.

4) Explorer's League - This one is purely frivolous. One daily quest for the faction. 250 rep max per day. I'm revered right now and my projections put Exalted somewhere in late July early August, depending on how often I forget to log onto the hunter for a day. No rewards that I know of, and I think that's actually what's motivating me. Pure amusement factor.

Some not-so-positives

1) The State of the Hunter - I'm actually growing to despise the Hunter lately. It feels like our rotation and the coefficients, tooltips, and internal cooldowns of our abilities change every week.

The current setup just feels like too many attacks/abilities to manage, and the cooldowns and durations overlap in a hugely counter-intuitive fashion. And to top it off, our DPS output is no where near what it used to be, even for outstanding hunters like the one I have the privilege of raiding along side.

Feels like punishment for the years of 1:1 macro spam and a brief period of unhealthy OP'ness at the beginning of WotLK.

I don't want to be imba or easysauce, but I do want to be competitive and have a reasonable number of attacks that interact with one another in a logical way.

2) Gathering - I've always loved gathering herbs and minerals. I find the activity relaxing and the gold income satisfying. Since I don't play the Hunter too much outside of raids, I don't gather very much. Even when I do, the markets for gatherables are collapsing on my server with stacks of herbs, even the fancy ones like lich and thorn, are selling for like 12g or less per stack.

But progression raiding costs about 1-1.5k gold per week, depending upon how many new gear items I get (driving enchant and gem costs up).

So I've been earning gold by buying these low cost mats, crafting across a diverse spread of professions, and selling high cost products.

Very profitable, with my best week earning roughly 885 gold/hour. However, I find the 2-4 hours I spend on that weekly to be massively tedious and draining. But, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

3) Za Za Zoo - Kary (sp?) Bradshaw blathered on and on in an exhaustingly annoying way about how a relationship should have that "za za zoo", which I think meant chemistry or buzzing energy or something.

Well, the progression kills in Ulduar really have been lacking that Za Za Zoo. We work at a boss. We kill the boss. And nothing. Nada. No cheers on vent. Barely a few gratz's in text chat. Quietly loot and move on.

Mimiron kill last week was different (edit: repeat mimiron kill last night was f'ing awesome, major adrenaline rush). There was a sweet sweet outburst of jubiliation on vent. We all got that long lost rush that was last seen for Sarth+3D, which was back in like january or something.

I'm not sure what it is that is lacking. Challenge? Certainly mimiron gave us the biggest challenge and the most number of wipe attempts before the kill. So maybe its that. But still, to have the pulse of the raid flatlined after a hard won pre-nerf first kill of XT and his brutal enrage timer? Or Thorim and his inexorable Arena and Assault team splits. Something is not quite right with the vibe in the raid.

4) Fail Events are Fail - Noblegarden and Children's Week. Fail and Failer. Sure, bunnies are cute, and I love cute. But orphans are ugly, smelly, are constantly hungry attention whores and pretty much just screw everything up.

Noblegarden reeked of timesink, moreso than any of the generally time-sinky seasonal events. I mean really, just sit there camping eggs for a few hours hating everything and everyone. And lets not even speak of what Children's Week did to battlegrounds.

Combine that with the overlapping proximity of the two events and you have a massive failure, IMO.

WTD?

So What's the Deal?

Sht. I don't want this to become more of a wall of text, but who knows, maybe that's what I need.

I think the bottom line is that the time sink aspect of WoW is bothering me more and more.

I thoroughly enjoy the invigorating parts of the game. Mimiron kill reminded me of how exhilarating progression raiding can be. Healing BG's is absolutely fun for me (at least when f'ing rogues aren't chain stunning me, but w/e). Relaxing heroics or a naxx alt run with the uber gf is outstanding.

But to reach any of these positive things, we need to do endless stuff we don't enjoy.

I want a faster flying mount. Means I have to suffer through awful seasonal events.

To perform in raids and BG's I need shiny equipment. Means I need to grind gold for enchants, gems, and repairs.

When gold earning is a natural part of my playstyle and server economy, life is grand.

When my Hunter's shot rotation makes sense and delivers quality results, life is grand.

When progression kills come with cheers and overflowing energy, life is grand.

Perhaps it is that fleeting "grand" aspect that's preventing me from publishing these forsaken posts?

Now they've gone and pissed me off

2009-04-24T08:51:00.001-04:00

Been quiet over here for a bit.

Its due to an extended case of the Monday's.

On the raid front, things are pretty cool. On the first night of the second Ulduar Raid ID we killed off Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT, and Kologarn, and took a few very cool learning shots at Iron Council. Hunter loot was flowing like beer, with all three Hunters getting sweet upgrades. Yay us!

Other than a general "Ulduar is pretty cool", I'll just say that having to carefully plan and execute on TRASH is a refreshing experience. Here's looking at you, buzz saws before XT.

But, Blizzard has gone and pissed me right off.

For no damn good reason.

And I want BLOOD!!!!

1) No more Pack - The f'ing Aspect of the Pack no longer buffs my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, so I have to run at normal speed like all the other elephants. Phooey!

2) No more Elevator - Standard pre-3.1 procedure for exiting Wintergrasp. Step (1) - Approach edge of zone. Step (2) - Mount up on Mammoth. Step (3) - Leap off 1,000 meter cliff. Step (4) - Walk away unscathed with mammoth taking 10% damage. Step (5) - Bitch and moan and QQ once patch 3.1 rewrites step 4 to read "Eat Rez Sickness and 25% durability loss because your corpse is stuck on some unreachable cliff location." I should have suspected this would happen once I noticed that Aspect of the Pack wasn't working. But I guess you gotta burn your hand once to learn not to touch a hot stove. Phooey!

We'll see if I can shake my awful case of the Monday's and return to some more regular posting.

Ulduar First 12 hours Quickies

2009-04-15T09:29:00.001-04:00

Its been about 12 hours since the servers came back on line after the ridiculous 3.1 installation maintenance window.

Lets reflect....

1) I.T. Slop - In my professional life, I'm involved with massive global software projects, so I understand all too well how complex the actual Go Time of installation is. I really do, and if you've never been exposed to it, its an experience worthy of a couple dozen red bulls, a whole box of Tums, and a pillow in your cubicle.

However, knowing how hard it is, but also knowing how important it is, I'm somewhat intolerant of slop. Most of Blizzard's big installations are full of slop. In my line of business, if we insisted on taking 7 extra hours, nearly doubling the originally advertised down time, we'd have serious problems. Sure, if it happens once, customers are forgiving, but if it is a routine occurrence for major upgrades, we'd have customers voting with their feet (and wallets).

Get it right!

2) Too Early - The patch came too early, damn it! I need 2 more cooking awards for my chef's hat :-( And the servers are still down this morning for a 2-hour follow-up maintenance, so I can't post the screen shot that I wanted to post first :-( :-(

3) Nuff QQ - No more complaints (wrong, there's more), because I'm actually a fan of the patch.

4) Got my Dual On - Through pure coincidence, I was logged out in Stormwind. Convenient to trot on over to the trainer and pick up dual-spec. One will be cookie cutter max DPS raid spec, the other will either be Mana Battery raid spec, or Indestructible Tank Pet spec for soloing stuff.

5) Black Arrow - If I understand it correctly, instead of trap dancing to trigger Lock n Load (which I never did in the first place), we just fire BA whenever the cooldown is up? Ok, another DoT and cooldown to juggle. No biggie.

6) Flame Leviathan - This one rocks! Very cool fight. Yes its a vehicle event, so it was chock full of UI issues, bugs, cludgey aiming mechanisms, and general slop (see #1). All that aside, the fight is friggin cool! I was sitting on the back of a Siege Engine, operating a gun turret. Just mowing stuff down and blasting stuff out of the sky. Lots of fun, and it'll only get better as bugs get fixed and addon authors tweak their code.

7) Its not a race - BUT, and its a big but, if it were a race, we got the server second kill of FL by a scant 5 minutes. Pretty cool stuff, especially because if you didn't kill him very quickly, the lag of all the other raids starting up destroyed your chances.

8) More with the slop - Ignis. A pretty standard choice for guilds to go after as the second boss. He randomly selects a raid member and puts them in a fire cauldron. If you survive, the raid moves on and you get an achievement with a great name, Heroic Hot Pocket. However, if the boss bugs out and does a melee attack on the cauldron'ed player for between 43k-73k damage, its pretty much undoable. Lots of other guilds reported the same problem. Get the damn early fights bug-free, Blazzard! If the final boss is buggy, it'll be weeks before we find out, but the early ones? That's the stuff that gets visited on the first night, so get it right.

9) So we change plans - So we switched to Razor-something. Very cool boss split between "nuke the adds" phase and "massive drake-thingie on the ground" phase. Sweet visuals of the drake or dorgon or whatever the hell the lore experts are calling this guy being hauled down to the ground.

10) And the lag bit us - A few attempts on Razor-something and we had to leave Ulduar, the lag was unbearable and made it pretty tough to interrupt the nasty raid-wiping chain lightnings.

11) Vault of [New Guy] - Alliance held Wintergrasp, so we fly on over to try out the new guy. Pretty neat fight, took 3 or 4 tries. Basic idea is that its one main boss with 4 adds. Periodically he'll select one of the adds and charge it up. When he charges it, you have a very short time span to focus fire and kill that add before it blows up the raid. Nice for a quick and easy pickup of some T8 gear.

12) Fishing daily - There were 24 other fishermen in that tiny lake in Sholazar when I was out there doing the quest. Silly, I tell you.

13) I can haz bag space - Hunter ammo goes in your regular bag now, no quivers needed. With my normal load of stuff that I carry around all the time, I can haz 47 empty bag slots now. Dual Gathering FTW!

Ok, time to check the servers to see if they're back up so I can get my Chef's Hat, and maybe try out the Argent Jousting thingie.

Druid Tanking Quickies

2009-04-15T08:57:00.001-04:00

First things first, some awards to hand out. As promised, the best comments to my Haiku post a little while ago will receive special mention on this here blog. The main criteria for "best comment" is actually having picked my own personal favorite as their own favorite. My blog, my rules :-) so the awards for Top Commenter go to:

1) Kestrel - Sure, he covered all the bases by including a few of his favorites, but he nailed it! Good job by you, Kestrel!

2) Kat - flattery will get you everywhere!

3) Fimlys - You'd think that since he started off the current round of WoW-ku poems, he'd come higher in the standings, but alas, he opted to not commit to a favorite one which limited his potential with the judges. Bronze medal is pretty spiffy though!

Thank you all for playing!

On to the tanking quickies

Well, this one is definitely old news. I mean, what with patch 3.1 landing a few hours ago, does anybody really even remember life before dual-spec? I didn't think so.

This past saturday we went on an alt run through naxx 25, during which I was part time bear serving as the third tank, and part time kitty serving as horrid DPS.

The event was a mix of pretty cool and a pain in my ass. More after the fold....

-- fold --

Pretty Cool

1) The difference between playing DPS and Tank - Mr. No-I-couldnt-possibly-eat-any-more-beans Grobbulus. I'm in bear form, assigned to pickup slimes. Some how or other, the main tank dies while kiting El Farto around the room. Boss running loose. Raid Leader calls for wipe. Moody says "Not on my watch", taunts the bitch, and begins kiting. Although we ended up making 2.5 complete laps around the room due to low dps and a tank who has no clue what is the right kiting speed, we finished off the kill, no wipe needed. Try that lil move on your Hunter.

2) Eating Hateful Strikes - Or is it Hurtful? Who the hell cares, I was eating them. Patchwerk with a bunch of entry-level geared 80's. Not quite the 2.5 minute snoozefest we experience on our mains.

3) Damage Meters be damned - It was such a refreshing change to not care about the Damage Meters even a bit. If I'm alive and the boss is dead, we won. Works for me.

4) Raiding with the uber gf - Her first real raid ever. And she rocked it! Lol at #3 above, Damage Meters are the only thing that even matters in the game. Is there other stuff to do in WoW besides try to make your bar the biggest? I didn't think so. After Amava's first week of the Performance Improvement Plan early on during WotLK raiding, she reached a nice healthy 3.4K dps on our favorite benchmark, Patchwerk, and that was as a totally OP un-nerfed BM Hunter. The uber gf nearly did that on her first raid ever. And only died in the fire once all night. And didnt cross up the polarities on Thaddius. And avoided all the various and sundry nasty stuff on KT. A good time had by all.

Pain in my ass

1) Three tanks is like three thumbs - On boss fights where we needed all the tanks, it was awesome. The rest of the time, I was a kitty wearing dodge and stamina gear. Meh.

2) OT with better geared MT - Our MT was not quite entry-level 80, he's got some good equipment. Even his damn consecrate was tough to pull mobs off of, damn threat machine. And a rage-starved bear really doesn't stand a chance against a fully mana-loaded Pally.

3) Way too fast - We nearly went at the speed of our main raid. Not quite, but pretty damn fast. Makes it kinda tough to explain upcoming boss fights to the gf in between pulls. But we cleared the place in one long night, so I guess we have that going for us.

4) Pugs, just don't go there - Ok, so none of the puggers were THAT bad, but when you're used to a pretty disciplined, pro team, the random calls for "somebody list the damage meter" or whatever just add up over the night. But luckily I was distracted by how fast we were moving.

So there you go

This post will likely disappear amongst the full blown 3.1 hype that's running rampant through the community, but I wanted to share some of the thoughts that were going on, finding a new way to enjoy stale content just hours before it became obsolete(ish).

A Potential Twist to Immortal / Undying

2009-04-09T08:31:00.000-04:00

I won't really bother with a full-blown post about last nights Immortal attempt, or the associated emotions.

But I will sum it up: I went in not really even thinking about it. The butterflies are definitely gone. Two and a half wings later with no deaths, my interest was piqued. The first false-start on Gothic in four months of raiding, causing one player to be locked on the dead side and the rest of the raid on the live side showed me just how easy it is to piss this one away. Butterflies swatted, dead, kaput. They shall not be allowed to return.

Moving beyond last night, the experience over the past few weeks had me thinking about the overall concept of the Immortal.

(A) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to be for them personally and not for the team. As long as you personally survive each boss fight during one raid lockout, you ding the achieve.

(B) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to count for each boss individually, similar to the 20-man achievement. This week you do a clean kill of Anubrikan and ding that one part of the overall goal. Next week you do a clean kill of Heigan and ding that part of the goal, and so on with each boss being a discrete unit, until you eventually complete them all.

(A) BAH, and (B) DOUBLE BAH

The people voting for (A) are not team players. They should go play Legend of Zelda or something where your game only depends upon your own play. Raiding is a team sport, whether you choose to believe it or not.

The people voting for (B) probably don't deserve a "double bah", but I don't subscribe to that one either.

Don't Stop Believin'

Although the Butterflies are dead, I still believe in the spirit of the achievement.

As the raid progressed last night, and we killed boss after boss with no deaths, my excitement level was definitely increasing.

That's a good thing, I'm here for excitement, so even if the disappointment of that first death is a nuisance, I still value the experience of the night.

An achievement like Immortal / Undying is trying to encourage us to do what we're here to do anyway, but only do it better. Nobody enters a fight thinking "ok, i'd like to die on this one." Well, maybe there is a strat for a Warlock to commit suicide at the beginning of Malygos P3 so he can cast some curse or debuff or something before he plummets to his death, but that's a bit counter-intuitive and an exception to the rule.

Consider the RP Aspect

I'm not a role player, per se, although I do suffer from mood swings that make my Druid Moodyswinger's name an extension of my own personality.

But I can empathize with the RP aspect of a toon dying.

Picture yourself and a band of 24 comrades-in-arms venture off into a dungeon in search of treasure or thwarting evil or rescuing a princess or whatever.

One of you dies in combat. Hell, maybe one of you dies in his sleep. Doesn't really matter, does it?

You're dead.

Makes it pretty hard to enjoy the treasure that the dragon was hoarding or a passionate night with the princess who just fell in love with her heroic rescuer, yes?

Consider the Performance Aspect

Tobold recently wrote about some of his joys and griefs with raiding. One aspect I'll focus on here is the concept of exploring fights blind with no pre-knowledge of boss abilities, contrasted with the execution part of a fight where you have full knowledge of the boss abilities and also techniques used in the past to successfully defeat the boss.

Execution and performance is what I'm all about.

I recognize that not all players share that view, but for me, its all about planning our fight and then performing under the pressure of combat. Mix in just enough random effects to require some improvisation on the fly, and tune it to be very demanding on each player to deliver flawless execution.

Our strategy and approach should be robust enough to mitigate the risks of all the little things that can go wrong.

Sometimes you randomly D/C. Call verizon and have them check your line, maybe that's busted. Stop downloading nudie flicks while playing.

Sometimes the boss does random things that can get ugly. KT iceblock is one such example, the target is random. However, your strategy should plan for this by informing raiders to space out and then during the execution it is up to each player to be aware of their surroundings and find a safe spot amongst the rest of the team.

Sometimes your cat steps on the keyboard. Give him cement boots and throw him in the harbor. Dogs, FTW!

Having a reward for flawless execution is a Good Thing.

Where's the beef?

I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement is dependent upon 24 other people. Success as part of my team is what keeps me logging in and not playing a single-player RTS or RP game.

I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement requires intense focus and attention to detail across an extended period of time and is bound to a single raid ID.

But, here's my beef with the current way Immortal works.

Once you fail, that's it.

There is no longer any benefit for flawless performance during that raid ID. No reason to keep trying. And in fact, the de-motivation that comes with failing Immortal encourages sloppier behavior since people don't care about the run as much once Immortal is disqualified.

Sure, people who die suffer a slightly larger repair bill. Also, people who die on a boss slow us down a bit because they have to rez/run back and rebuff (but we're looting during this time anyways, so this is minor).

Recommendation to Blizzard

Immortal should remain unchanged. You got this one right, but...

Blizzard needs to add a separate, parallel, persistent reward for each flawless boss kill. "Separate" means it has nothing to do with Immortal, the two are totally independent. "Parallel" means that both achievements/rewards can be pursued at the same time. "Persistent" means that this reward is present each time you kill a boss, and not just the first time you ding the achievement.

The reward should be tied to team performance, and not individual performance. Remember, we're not out solo'ing, we all signed up for a team sport when we accepted the raid invite.

Proposal 1: Emblems - Somebody died? No Emblems off of this boss for anyone in the raid.

All bosses, all the time, not just your first clean kill.

And make the Emblem gear f'ing fantastic. Make us WANT this.

Encourage continuous drive towards flawless victory.

Proposal 2: All Loot - A harsher example would be all loot from the current boss. No loot drops if anybody dies. Perhaps too harsh, especially since your first few kills are the sloppiest and hardest, and the loot from those helps subsequent runs be flawless.

I dunno, as I re-read this one, a part of me is liking Proposal 2. No loot until the team figures it out and nails it. Once you prove that, then the loot flows, making it easier each time you come back.

Hmmm, I wonder? Probably too harsh.

Proposal 3: Selective Loot - Make a separate loot table that only drops when the kill is flawless.

In my ideal situation, it'd be the Best-in-slot gear that drops in this mode.

For each "difficulty setting" (id, 0 drakes, 1 drake, 2 drakes, or whatever the equivalent hard-mode indicator is for each boss), include some exclusive items for a clean kill.

The better the reward, the larger the motivation for teams to help eachother improve and help eachother survive. Even after a silly death due to unavoidable D/C on a boss early in the night, there is still a reason for the team to maintain focused.

Potential Pitfalls

One issue I could see with this is that people who die will be kicked out rather than coached on how to improve survival.

Sure, that's always a fear. If they nerf our class, change our utility, homogenize our spells, always fear that leaders will just kick you.

However, this fear would be mitigated by the fact that the Raid Leader would need to replace you with....a person who reliably survives. This is much harder to PuG, since you really never know what you're going to get from an unknown player. I think the challenge to replace you is greater than the effort to try to coach you for improved performance.

Another issue might be that players focus too much on survival and not enough on their responsibilities in the raid. I know I probably DPS a little bit lighter on Immortal attempts, just to be that much more certain to not pull aggro. But you know what? I'm damn well attentive to web wrapped people and I bust them out immediately instead of hesitating to get just one more shot in on the boss while my DPS trinket is up so I can boost my epeen (not that DPS players do that kind of stuff anyway, amiright?).

I doubt my proposals would cause people to stop looking at the meters as the be-all-end-all of raiding, but a boy can dream, can't he?

What do you think?

Is flawless execution worth striving for? Is it something that should just sorta make you smile when it happens but shouldn't expect it as a normal occurrence?

What other ways can Blizzard encourage the team to survive?

My first raid tanking Heigan

2009-04-08T07:35:00.000-04:00

Last night was my first attempt at main tanking Heigan in a Naxx-10 alt and PuG run. In case you're new here, I've got next to zero tanking experience, with only a handful of normal-mode northrend dungeons and a single heroic under my Eternal Belt Buckle.

I can't even describe the state of mind as we're standing there in Heigan's room getting ready to pull.

I mean, I know the basic idea. The tank is supposed to keep him moving through the safe zones, trying to keep him as centrally located as possible to allow Melee to stand behind-ish and not get fried.

Yes, I've seen it done dozens of times while I was standing on the platform pew-pew'ing and cursing the tanks for threat-capping the Mages.

But now you want ME to do it? Yeah, right.

I was mentally prepared for a wipe-fest here.

I was wrong, and we one shot it, just barely, through the miraculous efforts of our one surviving healer and the few DPS players who knew how to dance. Some hilights:

1) Walk Backwards - I considered strafing to allow for more movement speed. I decided against it and wanted to just work on the basics. Slow and steady motion from safe spot to safe spot.

2) Spatial Awareness - This was nearly as disorienting as Malygos P3 for me. At one point I lost all track of where I was in the room. Is there one more safe zone towards the door? Or is it time to reverse direction and move back that way? So I flipped a coin in my head, chose to reverse and head back in towards the middle. You chose wisely.

3) Two healers enter, One healer leaves - Our PuG holy priest ate it on the first dance phase, leaving our Holy Paladin the full load to carry, with perhaps some help from the Elemental Shammy. Outstanding work keeping us alive.

4) Battle Rez, FTW - Our PuG Boomkin died on the second dance phase, dead center in the middle of the room. I'll only get a single chance to brez him, as we cruise on by during a dance phase, for the very brief moment we'll be standing stationary in the mid safe zone. Wait for it.....wait for it....first safe zone...wait for it...mid safe zone....NOW...transform out of cat form (yes, I was dancing in cat form for added speed)....find where the hell your brez spell is located (my first raid ever as a druid. say it with me....n.o.o.b.)....begin casting.....holy sht its time to move....finish casting....sccoot your ass out of the fire and keep dancing. What? If f'ing worked? And I'm still f'ing alive? And the owl listened to the Raid Leader and didn't accept the rez until appropriate time so he'd survive and in turn, brez another failed dancer? Elune be praised!

5) Mobile Threat - Generating threat while moving. Backwards. Fun. Not. The hardest part was that I use my keyboard S button to move backwards. Sure, I use mouse movement for forwards and snap turns, but not for backwards. Tied my fingers in a knot trying to keep hitting Lacerate (2), Mangle (3), Maul (4), with the occasional Swipe (5), while also hitting S. I think I was using my middle finger on the S and my index and ring fingers hitting the numbers. Its hard to recall, the whole event is a bit of a blur. Will probably need to map backwards to something else. My mind jumps to mapping the scroll wheel to reverse as a pretty intuitive control, but I'm hesitant to do that because I've been using it for camera zoom out since level 1 nearly two years ago.

6) Feedback on the fly - One of the nice things about working with other alts of mains that I raid with is that we have an established pattern of giving eachother feedback during combat. While focusing on navigating through the safe zones and simultaneously generating threat, I lost track of how close I was to the platform. Too close and he silences your casters, which is pretty much a bad thing what with the silenced heals and whatnot. So one of the guild Officers, using a calm tone with no hint of alarm or judgement, told me I was getting too close. The feedback was soon enough to allow me to correct the problem before it caused a wipe, which was nice, to say the least.

You'd be hard pressed to find this calm, clear, constructive, timely feedback in a PuG. In most one-time-only groups, you'll get either pure silence leading to failure and threats of being kicked out of the group -or- one or two grumbly folks who just tell people they suck and need to L2P. Best results come from healthy communication, and this was perfect.

7) A good scare - I can only imagine the slack-jawed look of astonishment on the faces of my team when I keyed my mic and told them I was lost during #2 above. Lets just say, I'm happy I chose wisely.

So, after 10 minutes, which is what? 4 dance phases? 5? Whatever, it was an eternity. Not too many of us were standing at the end, but a few of us were up, and the boss was down which is victory in my book.

I was trembling. Such a strange mix of adrenaline rush and disbelief that we actually did it.

Sure, we continued on through those stupid mind-flaying eye-stalks and maggots, and beat up loatheb afterwards, but it just sort of blurred together and paled in comparison to that Dance of Dances.

Heigan found a new place in my heart last night, as did the tanks of our guild who make it look effortless week after week.

For those about to dance.....We! Salute!. You!
........
Fieeeeeee-ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I'm still trembling

2009-04-08T07:34:00.000-04:00

Short Version: Holy f'ing Dog Sht! I f'ing main tanked f'ing Heigan, having no f'ing idea what the f i was doing. And I f'ing did it! 12 hours later and my hands haven't stopped trembling yet. Major kudos go out to our friendly Ret Paladin disguised as Holy who kept us alive after her co-healer illustrated his lack of dancing prowess rather early in the fight.

Medium Version: Fresh off of tanking my first heroic, me and my alt-guildies were pumped up with confidence and ready to take on the world. So we filled in a PuG raid for Naxx-10 with full intentions of having the PuG DK main tank and me fill in the holes.

Upon discovering that the DK was...shall we say...challenged at following directions? Yeah, lets sum it all up and call it that. Upon said discovery, our little baby bear suddenly became the Go To Girl.

And Holy Sht, what a rush!

Long Version:

You've got a raid scheduled for tonight, but your team managed to clear out all the content in four or five hours earlier in the week leaving nothing for tonight's raid.

Ahhh, so that's what alts are for.

On to the heroics.

Tanking her first Heroic

Violet Hold. Sure, I know, not the toughest instance in the world, but we're new here, so bear (get it?) with us as we learn to tank.

Not a whole lot of fuss here, other than that I was totally undergeared and underskilled tank and our healer is undergeared but overskilled, while the DPS is made up of a collection of hardcore pro tank doing DPS to allow me to learn to tank, and a few alts of varying gear level.

And wouldn't you know it, we kicked its ass!

Noob mistakes galore, but we squeaked through and had a blast. Its always fun to learn new things along side with other people who laugh with you through the inevitable sloppy execution, ignorance of class abilities, fat fingers, untrained reflexes, and general lack of refinement.

Reflections on Tanking Ability

1) Was able to put out respectable single-target threat. Will benefit by tightening up the timing on refreshing lacerate and that other DoT (mangle?), I was likely wasting rage renewing them too soon out of fear of letting my 5-stack of lacerates drop off.

2) When a pack of mobs was under control, I was able to hold aggro on all of them via positioning my fat bear ass so that my swipes and glyphed mauls would hit all the mobs.

3) Total crap picking up a pack of incoming mobs. I tried FFF one, charge another, and then start swiping, and different variants of that cycle. Definitely need work here, and luckily will be saved by the bell that is 360 degree non-targeted swipe that's coming in a week or two. But still need work.

4) Health and survivability was reasonable. I can only really measure this via feedback from my healer, and he said there was no issue, and he's the type of person who'd tell you if you fail, so that's all that needs to be said about that.

Personally, I blame the DPS for #3, because its always more fun to point the finger elsewhere, and we all hate huntards :-) Focus fire. If you pull aggro, run TOWARDS the tank. But I digress, this is about my tanking, the DPS did just fine, so I should segue into a #4 about improving my communication skills to inform the team that I need their help in bringing mobs to me because I'm a noob.

And why not go for the Big Show

Fast forward through two more heroics during which I was DPS'ing as a kitty.

And a guildie asks if anybody wants to try out an alt/pug naxx-10.

Well, no time like the present, I suppose.

PuG a Death Knight who is supposed to be serving as main tank.

Begin the first pull, I'm nervous as balls. All these other people counting on me to keep the damn mobs off of them. And me having the whopping experience of about 7 or 8 dungeon runs tanked, with a single heroic thrown in there.

Trash is fine, even had to whip out a few improvisational moves to correct some sloppy multi-pulls. In my DPS world of Hunting, I have new respect for when a tank says "we're pulling these guys back".

Yadda yadda yadda, we're up to Anubrikan.

DK is on Anub, I'm on adds.

When its time to kite Anub, the DK didn't respond to the continuous, endless pleas from the Raid Leader to kite him. So he just stood there. So the fight was...interesting. But I did my job, took care of the adds, not knowing what to do, I dragged the adds away from the boss into the middle of the room. And threw a litle DPS on Anub when no adds were present.

All in all, a kill is a kill is a kill.

Is when I become Main Tank

RL wants the MT to be a bit more responsive to instructions, so we change assignments a bit.

Ahh, the bear is up front now! Time for some fun.

Lady Farina or whatever the hell her name is. To be honest, every single one of us forgot the "proper" way to kill her, we've been OP and just AoE'ing her down on our mains for so long. I'll admit that I was lying face down in the dirt at the end, died around 4%. Mr. DK did great job picking her up and the team finished her off. I cried for a little while.

Maexxena. A little uglier, however we did one-shot her. I died nearly immediately upon her enrage or whatever it is that she does at 30%. Me thinks I need to use more of the barkskin / survival instincts / frenzied regen stuff at this point. I was mentally ready to , but I was insta-gibbed so fast I didn't have a chance to trigger all of them.

Noth. Suck it! No fuss here. Easy because he doesnt blink/aggro wipe in 10-man, but still interesting to try to pick up all the adds during the teleport phase.

Heigan. TL;DR. Separate post. For the sake of this post, lets just say it was pretty f'ing cool.

Loatheb. Loatheb was fun because you just stand there and pour out the single-target threat. Didn't have survivability issues, no threat issues, pure win.

Mongoose is my new best friend

Got some new staff from the run.

Got my third mongoose enchant in three days.

Loot karma theory remains true, if you want to upgrade it, polish it and the loot will drop.

Confidence Boost

After clearing those two wings, it was bed time, so we called it quits.

I had no idea what to expect coming in to tank my first raid.

I could care less whether our success was because Blizz made raiding too easy or whatever. This was one of the most memorable raid nights I've ever had.

There's tons of room for improvement on both trash and bosses. There's tons of gear I should seek out to make life a little easier.

But the night showed that with the help of my team, I can hang in there and get the job done in a role that's so unlike ranged dps that its practically a different game.

And on the lighter side, hopefully the confidence boost to my tanking ego will ease the pressure to collect a backup set of healing gear, because all the multiple pieces is starting to make my head spin. I'm sure all you veteran hybrids are lmyao to hear that.

Alt Ding Quickies

2009-04-07T09:03:00.001-04:00

For the first time in my illustrious WoW career, I now have two max level toons.

Yay, me!

A Druid, planning on being a tank in alt-PvE runs and an occasional healer in Battlegrounds.

On to the quickies...

) Crafting and Enchanting: With aspirations of tanking comes the responsibility of gearing. So I did a little homework, bought up a king's ransom of leatherworking materials, gems, and enchanting materials, found my crafters, and have a nice shiny toon who might just be able to squeak through a heroic or two to begin the gearing process.

) Inscription FTW: This girl gets to skip over the Hodir's grind for shoulder enchant. Although from what I can tell, now that the initial surge is long gone, Dundernifflem is way more tolerable than when Amava ground through.

) Bring forth the Dual-Specs: I've got no problem forking over the cash to swap between tanking and healing, but I do have a problem re-assigning my talent points, changing my action bars, glyphs, and whatever. I'm slightly looking forward to dual-spec for my Hunter to switch between glass-cannon-dps-pet mode and full-blown-tank-pet mode. But for the druid, dual-spec will be a many splendored thing.

) Her First Heroic: Of course, being in a guild with some outstanding tanks, my little girl had to DPS her way through her first heroic, which was pretty pathetic given that (A) she's spec'ed and geared for dodge, stamina, and threat, and (B) I suck royal sausage at melee DPS. You want me to stand where?

) Her First Loot: And also of course, the first three sweet sweet leather drops are....healer items. So she's got a headstart on her healing set, which'll come in handy at some point, I'm sure.

) The best way to replace an item is to enchant it: Perhaps the shortest lived Mongoose enchant ever. That first heroic run also yielded a decent tanking pole, which Bears learned how to equip with patch 3.0.8. Now if I can only find the weapons trainer who does polearms.

) Swift Flight Form FT-mutha-f'ing-W: Its not even funny how imba swift flight form is. Instant cast? Loot quest items or herbs from the ground without breaking form? And most importantly at this here home of the frivolous entertainment, able to click instance summoning portals with a glowing beak? Just fantastic, I highly recommend it.

) And finally: Pretty interesting to have a max-level toon who technically has very little aspiration. No particular achievements (especially since she already has Jenkins from a fun-run following Amava and friends through Something-RBS back while leveling), no stress to max out cooking or fishing, no real gearing up pressure beyond the basics to tank or heal heroics. Nice to have a toon that's here pretty much to fart around and have fun with, while leaving the srrs biznis to Amava.

Immortal Aggro

2009-04-02T08:13:00.003-04:00

Immortal Failure
Achievement far out of reach
Death on second boss

A week or so ago, I wrote about the anticipation and excitement of our first deliberate attempt at Immortal achievement, clearing Naxx-25 without any deaths on boss fights.

Had two players D/C on the second boss, and one player run into the fire (invisible on her video settings), thus disqualifying the achievement about 20 minutes into the raid. Ok, put your feet up for the next 2.5 hours, the pressure is off.

Fast forward a week, and we're back at it, fresh raid ID, fresh expectations of becoming Highlanders. So how'd it go?

Death on second boss

Mind you, a different second boss than last week. This time we had somebody on the dead side of Gothick bite the bullet. Supposedly the DPS on that side were getting too close to whirlwinding mobs being tanked in the corner, leading the healer to need to blast away with larger than normal heals, leading to the healer generating lots of threat, leading to dead healer. I dunno, dude.

So, again, 20 minutes into the night, disqualified from the win.

From there on, it was all slop, all the time.

The highlight being a Gluth wipe that involved a continuous stream of zombie chow just running a train straight to the boss. Kiting was at the biggest all time level of failure. My favorite moment was when I "magically" had wings appear over my toon and I was unable to fire at any mobs for a little while. Did the f'ing pally cast f'ing BoP or f'ing whatever on me? Really? Are you f'ing kidding me? Makes it kinda hard to pull the f'ing chow chows off of the f'ing healers and f'ing boss.

Whatever.

I was able to control the nerd rage a little bit, and had enough composure to only throw soft non-breakable things around the room.

I'd be lying if I said it the experience wasn't upsetting, but then again, us drama queens thrive on getting upset, so in the end, a good evening of entertainment. There's no person to blame, there's no one single specific thing to change, its just that so many variables have to align perfectly, and I fear that we started too late to have enough chances before the upcoming patch that will make the whole point moot.

It Just Doesn't Matter

Like Bill Murray in Meatballs, I'm chanting "it just doesn't matter."

In a week or two, the hopes will pass and I won't be thinking about the fast flying mount that's out of reach.

And a week or two after that, Ulduar will release and we'll all be happily distracted for a while.

It just doesn't matter.

The Silver Lining

All was not sour for the evening.

A big feather in our cap on the Four Horsemen. We took a very slow, calculated approach to the fight to ensure no chain lightning nailed the team. We had good communication from the officers ensuring everybody knew their job, and the team showed good discipline during the execution. That was reassuring to see, although we did lose a player to god knows what in a phase of the fight that really should not have any death.

We also Safety Danced again, which is nice to know we can do that little beauty semi-reliably.

Kick me in the jimmy!

And the real kick in the nuts was when one of the players keyed his mic and we all hear a brief moment of cheering in the background.

Seems that his roommate or friend or neighbor at the LAN center or something just dinged Immortal.

In the immortal words (f'ing pun f'ing intended) of Buzzcut of Beavis and Butthead fame...

Kick me in the jimmy!

Ku-kie

2009-04-01T08:46:00.002-04:00

Fimlys at Asleep at the WoW put the call out for the wow-ku poems. He tagged some specific people (not me, which is good, because i'd likely not do it out of spite if he had singled me out. sorry, that's just how we roll). As of this writing, I also saw a post up at Kestrel's Aerie with some good poems also. Its a chain letter thing, so there will likely be more of them out by the time this gets published, but there you go.

I don't know what happened. I came back from a chinese buffet lunch, so clearly I cannot do any work for a good 30 minutes. Its like swimming after you eat. I read the Asleep at the WoW and Kestrel posts, and spent the next little while with the inspiration just pouring out.

Fimlys wanted to impose a constraint of keeping the poems limited to a single class. I went where the inspiration took me, so I bent the rules.

Vote for your favorite of mine in the comments. Creative comments judged to be the best comments of the bunch (ie, the ones that vote for my own personal favs) will be rewarded with the fabulous prize of special mention on this here blog. Does it get better than that? I've numbered them for easy reference in the many dozens of comments I expect on this thread.

Vote early, vote often...

Departing from our ordinary jobs

Number 1
Kiting Zombie Chow
Special job for the Hunters
No fun, want pew pew

We all like to be special

Number 2
Specialists beware
Hybrid class can dual spec
Where's my raid invite?

Number 3
Bring me, not my class
They homogenized our spells
I'm still a snowflake

Some more special than others

Number 4
His wife cracked the whip
Our mentor will write a book
Hobbes is in the pound

Number 5
TJ just posted
Perhaps he's not really gone
Send top secret mail

WotLK released almost 5 months ago

Number 6
No teamwork for trash
Don't wait, just A.o.E.
Skill not neces'sry

Number 7
Northrend in a funk
Farming naxx, maly, and sarth
Not enough content

Number 8
Achievements are cool
So long as we get rewards
Some folks disagree

Number 9
Some hard modes are hard
Others will be harder still
I can hardly wait

And an assortment to finish things off

Number 10
Factions waging war
Battling for Wintergrasp
Game completely lagged

Number 11
What's that on the ground?
Fire burning hot, health bar drops
L2P U Noob

Who knew fire had only one syllable?

Number 12
Rogue went AFK
The loot policy just changed
That's why I don't PUG

Go Vote!

Remember, there's an awesome prize for the most bestest comment. Really can't put a dollar value on it, its just that hot.

Disclaimer: The prize is special mention on my blog. If you're able to parley that into something of dollar value, good job by you. If you're a dick, I'll just delete your comment and give you no reward.

ZO-Mutha-f'ing-G, Breaking, HOT HOT HOT, Breaking News - MUST READ - GOGOGOGO!!!

2009-04-01T08:45:00.001-04:00

I just read this beauty.

Forget Ulduar.

Forget Dual Spec.

Forget One Hour Flasks.

Forget sweet awesome really hard hard modes that'll feed on my tears.

Forget whatever the hell they're going to do the Hunter class.

Forget influential entertaining informative bloggers who may or may not be leaving wow, and may or may not be using said departure as a publicity stunt for a top secret project.

Forget all that stuff. The important breaking news is in....

I can haz chef's hat.

And to think I was debating just yesterday to redeem all my accrued Dalarans and make some phat cash.

If the announcement ends up being April Fool's Joke, I'm going to enrage like the Incredible Hulk, lift my computer over my head, fling it through the window, jump through the jagged glassy broken window following it, lift the broken computer case over my head again, fling it through the nearest car windshield, reach through the broken windshield and open the door, use the smashed computer case to bust open the dash board, hotwire the car, and drive it and the broken computer off the bridge down the street and into the lake. Oh, and before all this, I'll make sure my WotLK install disks are in the drive so they get destroyed also. redeem the dalarans and sell the spices.

Living at the Threshold

2009-03-31T08:15:00.001-04:00

Matticus recently writes about the internal threshold of performance that each of us has, below which you push to improve, and above which, you've got little motivation to change things. Good enough, satisficing, perfection vs slacking, Pareto Principle, 80/20 rule, diminishing returns, whatever you choose to call it.

We all have an internal feeling for that threshold. It drives us when we're below the limit, it often leaves us feeling "why bother?" when we're above the line. And its unique for each of us.

There's three concepts intermingled in the original WoM post...

1) Human Performance

The post opens with human performance (dying on frogger, eating a flame wall, clearing the ledge), if Matticus is indeed human, which is the topic of endless debate on our Guild forum :-P

Each person is in control of his/her own performance. We all mess up sometime, the value is in how you recover and what you learn from mistakes. Are you interested in reliably surviving frogger? Then you can examine why you died and make changes. Did that fire wall taste good? No? Then you can try to review things like your positioning before the wall appeared (were you too far away from a safe spot? where would be better to stand next time?), or what distraction caused you to not react fast enough (was somebody babbling on vent, was House jibbering and jabbering about Lupus, or was your focus too narrow on your healing assignment at the sacrifice of situational awareness and personal survivability).

Although the specific threshold of performance is unique to each individual player, people tend to be highly critical of their own performance. I'd wager that most WoW blog readers/writers have a high threshold that they want to keep their performance above. Sure, some of us are in the blog world for pure entertainment purposes, but when it comes down to it, we're also looking for things that can improve our own performance.

Readers of my blog know I obsess on this aspect of the game. The experience of improving my own personal performance alongside my teammates who are doing the same thing is what keeps me playing WoW.

2) Toon Performance

The original post then moves to toon performance. Professions to eek out more heals, running a heroic every day until you win that one perfect trinket just incase you ever find yourself grossly under the hit cap, maintaining multiple sets of gear perfectly tailored for certain situations, and so on with the toon enhancers.

I think that we all vary greatly in our threshold for this aspect of the game. Personally, I'll grind the hell out of just about anything Blizzard can throw at us to get a gear item or a shoulder inscription (curse you, spear thrusting quest), but as long as I'm having fun with my profs, I have no intention of dropping herb/mining for a DPS enhancing profession, even if that means I'm leaving 20 or 30 DPS on the table. I tried the min/maxing LW drummer boy routine back in TBC, and learned that for me its just not worth it.

This will vary much more from player to player than our threshold for our own personal performances, and will even change over time as our mood or gear situation changes.

If I look back through my performance improvement plans at the beginning of WotLK raiding, it started out almost exclusively focused on gear items and enhancements, and then as I reached my internal level of satisfaction with my gear, my thoughts migrated deeper into the softer side of personal skill improvement.

3) Dim Sum

The article then moves on to food. Delicious food.

I discovered my love for dim sum on a business trip to Vancover. When I'm in town, my work team knows its all serious during the work hours, but once we leave the building, its all dumplings, all the time.

Inspired by my chopstick agility, the natives (well, technically Hong Kong natives, so I suppose Vanc "locals"?) started ordering some things that were clearly out of Fear Factor like duck tongues and chicken's feet. Once you get past the cultural gag-factor, both were outstanding, although I'd rather stick to the basics that Matticus will be forced to buy me next time I'm out that way and I stalk him down. Cue scary-laughter-and-eerie-staring-eyes.

Farewell to BRK, maybe?

2009-03-31T08:09:00.000-04:00

In case his farewell post isn't an early April Fool's Joke. Sorry, but the WoW community has jaded me to be suspicious of any major announcements near 4/1....

I just read the farewell post over at BRK's site. Seems that he'll be stopping playing/bloging about WoW to open up more time to spend on things that're more important to him.

I applaud the move. For someone who is as passionate about our shared hobby as BRK is, I'm sure it is a very challenging time and decision. I hope that it works out well for him and his family. And I hope he continues with his book project, if it is written even half as entertaining as the blog, I'm sure it'll be a fantastic read.

BRK has added so much to the community, and enriched my WoW experience tremendously. Through his teachings I learned so many of the finer things that make a good hunter stand out from the crowd. He's given us so many entertaining stories, whether related to WoW or not, its been some good times.

If the announcement is an April Fool's Joke, I'll fly down to Florida with a wet noodle (which is easy to get past airport security) and pay my "respects", but if its serious, I wish the best and hope to hear good things about your first book in the not-too-distant future.

Immortal Cocoons

2009-03-27T08:01:00.000-04:00

Ok, so yesterday's reference to "butterflies" was a phrase indicating a feeling of anxiety or nervous excitement, and not the airborne phase of a certain insect's lifecycle.

But, to switch it around, if the Butterfly is what we'll morph into when we ding the achievement, then we must still be snug inside our cocoons, still getting ready to spread those wings and fly. I think we're pupas right now or something. Whether the biologically correct term or not, I just like saying the word.

Ain't I poetic? And mature?

How'd it go?

Well, the early parts of the evening went according to plan. Quiet, soothing environment. The calm before the storm.

When I logged in, I started looking over my alchemist to see if there's some other elixirs I'd like to use than my standard Mighty Thoughts / Agi combo.

Brewed up some of the +350 health ones (fortitude?) and some Guru's Elixirs. +20 to all stats is actually pretty cool, and since it buffs agi and also raw stamina which then gets converted to attack power via Survival talents, it is not entirely discarding all DPS enhancement value.

Just like in my good old ice hockey days when, before a game, I'd visualize laying out a incoming winger at the blue line, I mentally pictured the little things l'll be doing to stay alive in Naxx.

We got the team together. You could tell there was an electricity in the air, although, thankfully, nobody was harping on and on about our goal for the night.

Everybody take a deep breath, because we're starting trash pulls.

Patchy

Start the night with our good friend Patchwerk. Normally a testing ground for balls-to-the-wall DPS, HPS, and TPS. But not tonight. Tonight, we're here for one thing only. Ranged DPS wait 10 seconds or so before opening up. Melee DPS hang tight until the RL gives the instruction.

Spent way less attention to DPS than usual, and I refused to check the Damage Meters for the entire night. Despite trying to go so deliberately slowly, we still killed him in less than 3 minutes, which is comical.

25 players enter, 25 players leave.

Grobby

Ok everybody, you know its not polite to fart near your friends, so run to the back before you let loose.

Everything's going fine, gassy folks are positioning right, tanks are picking up slimes, DPS is truckin.

And then the dreaded.....Oh, SHT, [name-of-healer] is D/C'ing.

Ok, don't panic. Another healer calmly calls out that he will heal the DC through any damage. We're focused, we're on target.

And then, maybe 5 seconds later, and the second dread....Oh, FCK, [name-of-dc-healer] just got tagged. She's about to fart in the middle of the room.

But we're a bunch of cool customers, so we all shuffle around the expanding cloud of nasty that's occupying the middle of the room.

Things continue fine for another minute or so.

The exact sequence of what happened next is a bit blurry to me, and I'm not looking over the combat log until later, so this is simply from memory of what I observed during the event.

*) A melee DPS D/C'd. DAMN YOU, INTERNETZ! Whether he then was insta-gibbed by something and died, or if it was over a brief time due to standing in a cloud that follows the kited boss, I'm unsure.

*) A healer got flagged, made the correct move to run away from the huddled masses, but made the incorrect move and ran straight into existing clouds and died. The player says that her screen was not showing any clouds at all, perhaps a visual setting?

So, about 15 minutes into the much anticipated Immortal attempt, phoot, no mas.

Then what?

Despite the three losses, we killed Grob, no surprise there.

Move on to Gluth, still interested in practicing Immortal, and we nailed him perfectly, no deaths, outstanding kiting (IM-very-biased-O) by the hunters and mages.

And then Thaddius and the dreaded Ledge Boss. This is one of those moments that just make you cringe. On a personal level, its been months since I've failed the leap, but it still gets me nervous every single time. On a team level, I havent really tracked it, but it does seem that we lose somebody almost every week.

Nailed it. All 25 across safe and sound.

And then for the real fun. We're trying for the Shocking thing. Simple strat, basically same as we always do. Just run in very wide arcs around the boss as you switch sides.

As the fight wore on, the tension builds more and more and more. Who's going to fkc it up? More importantly, will it be me? Push those thoughts out of your head, focus on your positioning, the boss cast bar, and your own debuff. Run WIDE to the outside when you switch.

The lower the health of the boss, the further you move to the edge of your seat.

And then he dies, and your screen fills up with Shocking achievements, which was pretty damn cool. One shot, everybody survived, no crossed polarity.

From there, since Immortal wasn't an option any more, we went and 20-manned some of the wings, culminating in finishing off the 20-man achievement for many of the players. Topping the highlight reel was 20-man Safety Dance.

What worked?

Although we didn't ding Immortal, I am very happy with the evening. Here's some of the keys that I think build the foundation for when we will ultimately get it done:

1) Communication - Two of the Officers co-led the raid, and the two of them did an excellent job of using calm voices and giving very clear instructions for things that we'd be doing differently versus our normal routine.

2) Pace - There was absolutely no rush. Example: Patchwerk. Its annoying how he paces around. If you're not ready to engage him at the right time, he might walk away and you wait 5 minutes. Or you might rogue distract him or have a MD hunter risk the frogger boss to pull Patch as he walks away. Not tonight. We were very deliberate about all our actions.

3) Control - Although only a series of trash pulls, the combination of large kicking/stomping mobs, roaming patrols, and hidden shades between Gluth and Thaddius often give us issue. The raid showed excellent control and discipline as we smoothly handled this area, allowing tanks proper time for positioning, choosing when to engage, focus firing mobs. Its the small things that make a difference and this segment of the evening was just right.

4) Confidence - Yes, we didn't get Immortal, but we did go in and nail out several achievements, all one shots. Thaddius Shocking and zero deaths was a big win. 20-man Safety Dance builds confidence.

I truly hope the guild wants to keep trying. We showed what our raid is capable of when we focus. We are disciplined. We are focused. We have effective leaders, and members who can follow instructions and deliver results. Immortal is DEFINITELY within our grasp.

What needs to change?

While building on the existing strengths, we definitely need to learn from mistakes and not repeat them. None of these is intended to zing, or single out, the player(s) involved. I'm proud of the effort each raider put in. However, we do need to take action if Immortal is going to happen:

1) Visual Settings - The player who died on Grobbulus by running into the damage. You absolutely must get your visual settings configured properly. We can go to a Naxx-10 before next week's immortal attempt, and just sit in Grobbulus's room, fiddling with your UI until its right.

2) Disconnects - We had a few disconnects. Yes, it does happen, and often times it is out of the control of the player. Sht happens, especially when it comes to computer networking. However, some things might be in your control. For instance, I know if I raid from the house with DSL, incoming calls usually disconnect me, and the Cable Modem house does not have this risk. I will never attempt an Immortal run from the DSL house. Each player might have similar things under their control that can improve our chances.

3) Practice on Each Boss - I do appreciate that we changed modes once Immortal was gone and got a few other achievements. It was nice, it was fun, and many raiders (me included) needed them for the meta-achievement. However, if Immortal is ever to be a reality, we need to visit each boss with every raider thinking only about team survival. If we consistently stop practicing after the actual Achievement is gone, then we will have a tougher time on the later bosses, the first time the sun is shining and we succeed at the early ones.

The Future

Not sure what the future has in store for our Immortal attempts, or how many more weeks we have to shoot for it. Probably 4 more?

The thing I like about Immortal is that it really is simply encouraging something we should be doing anyway. We all want to be alive at the end of the fight, however, things like DPS e-peen, youtube videos playing on a computer next to your WoW monitor, and so on, all get in the way.

The more I think about it, the more I want Blizz to implement a similar achievement in each dungeon, but with a twist. I want it to give some tangible reward each and every time you ding it, not just the first time when you get a title or whatever. I think the game is better when everybody is trying to focus together on survival for every fight during every raid.

Immortal Butterflies

2009-03-25T07:31:00.002-04:00

Anybody who participates in my raiding life real-time will likely laugh when they see this post. Hell, even those who don't probably will also, but for other reasons.

As I write, it is tuesday lunchtime, waiting in anticipation for tonight's raid. By the time this post hits the blog, the events I'm anticipating will actually be over and done with.

Tonight is the first night we will be making a focused effort to become Immortal. Clear Naxx-25 without any deaths during boss encounters.

Prep Work

You'd like to think that clearing naxx every week would be prep enough. I mean, don't we all try to survive EVERY fight?

But this is different. Take Patchwerk. If you're shooting for a world speed record, every DPS will be pushing threat as absolutely close to the tanks as night elvenly possible. That runs a risk that a melee dps might eat a strike and bite the dust. I'll leave it as a debate for the readers as to whether that's reasonable or not, but the fact is, it can happen. Going for Immortal? Take your time. Instead of 2.5 minutes, lets kill him in 4 or 4.5. Let the rage-starved second and third tanks stay above you so they eat the strikes. Its why they're here, and its why we love them.

In prep for tonight, we've got lots of conversation going on the forums.

Tweaks to 4H to ensure survival. Tweaks to Thaddius, Heigan, Instructor Raz, and so on. Anywhere we've lost a player in the last several weeks. What went wrong, what do we do to fix it. On fights we havent had recent deaths, we reinforce the keys that make us win.

Then there's the consumables. Push the stamina and defensive stats more heavily than the raw DPS or Healing stats. We know we can kill these things with only 20 players, so go a little extra to help survive.

I'm leaving the decision of swapping a few gems for more stamina (which is also AP for my spec, so not entirely silly) for an impulsive decision close to raid time.

Execution

Once we start pulling, its Go Time. Game Face On!

No other computers on the network downloading anything or playing wow. No iTunes playing. No distractions. No extra sources of lag. No booze.

No "that's what she said" on vent, no matter how perfect the setup is, and how much its killing me to not say it. Lock it up and maintain focus.

Might bring my Immortal Ancona Chicken companion pet, but that's only because she's awesome.

I haven't died in Naxx in ages. Must remember the little things that increase personal and team survival.....

Nobody dies in Maex webs on my watch.

My grobulus farts go where they belong.

I keep my Zombie Chows on the frost so they cannot catch me.

Night Elves CAN Jump! Thaddius ledge boss will be cleared. I know what + and - look like, when to look for them, and what to do when they change.

I do not multishot on Razuvious so I don't mess up the priest MC's.

I assist the tank on the undead side of Gothik as he picks up the adds and I do not pull aggro.

I watch my debuffs and switch Horsemen without standing in the bad stuff.

My MD will be ready when Noth blinks to save my Mages.

I can dance like Swayze and Grey. Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

After eating a spore, I return to my spot to make the 3 seconds my healers get just a little bit easier.

I hide behind ice blocks and I mouse-turn to run out of the snow.

I know how to target the proper Soul Weaver and kill her from range. I know how to spread out to limit ice cube chains. I know how to NOT mana explode my healers. I'm ready to Wyvern Sting and Frozen Arrow any MC'd teammates.

I will not die in the fire.

I will not die in the fire!

Butterflies

Geeky or not, I've got butterflies in my stomach.

And I love it.

Thinking it over, this is exactly what I want out of Achievements. Immortal is pushing us to do something we should be doing anyway. Not like the silly 20-man ones, where Blizz is asking you to tell 5 of your teammates to sit out for no real reason. Stupid. Immortal is spot on. We raid naxx each week, and this achievement is making us do it better.

Anxiety. Tension. Build Up.

The team is depending on eachother to deliver flawless execution.

We might get it, we might not. Obviously I want to nail it, but if it doesn't happen, not the end of the world. Just exciting to be trying, and if we fail, I hope we come back and keep trying.

Tonight, before WoW time, everything will be peaceful and zen. When I get home, with a little help from the uber gf, I'll make some dinner, take the dog for a walk, do some coloring books and some bedtime stories, and then I'll tuck the little one in for the night, sing Twinkle Little Star, kiss her peaceful lil' sleeping forehead as I turn out the light.

Then, keeping with the calm meditative tone, I'll get tomorrow's breakfast and lunch prepared and packed and ready to go, make sure the dog has gone outside and he's curled up in a little ball all snug on his dog bed or the couch, that little rascal, and make sure everything is right with the world, because once I log in....

...its time for Daddy to kick some ass!

Flask Changes

2009-03-25T07:29:00.002-04:00

The following post is the result of a slow day of reading material to fill up a lunch break and a desire to see how many times I can fit the word "flask-hours" into a blog post.

So WoW Insider reports that Flasks change in patch 3.1.

Old: Recipe crafts 1 flask. Flask lasts 2 hours. Flask-Hours / Materials = 2

New: Recipe crafts 2 flasks. Each flask lasts 1 hour. Flask-Hours / Materials = 2

In both the old and the new, the number of hours I can be under the influence of a flask is 2 for the same material cost.

So why predict a change in the market price of flasks?

Some anecdotal evidence to start off...

Reflecting on my own situation only, I will be wasting less flask-hours.

My raids are three hours in length. To be continuously under the influence of a flask, I need to drink two of them. However, one full flask-hour is totally wasted (well, technically it benefits me while questing or farming or doing BGs after the raid, but that is time I would not actively choose to have flask buff for).

Lets say I raid Ulduar 4 nights per week, 3 hours per night.

In the old configuration, I would drink two flasks (4 flask-hours) each night, and a total of 8 flasks (16 flask-hours) each week.

In the new configuration, I will drink three flasks (3 flask-hours) each night, and a total of 12 flasks (12 flask-hours) each week.

Time for some conjecture here

I'm going to guess that the average raid has a duration that is close to an exact multiple of 1 hour.

A much smaller set of raids have a duration close to an exact multiple of 2 hours.

Blizzard makes this change, and the result is much fewer wasted flask-hours. For my raid, 25% of my current flask consumption is pure waste. Given how easy things are, you might argue that 100% of my consumption is waste, but go do OS+3D with a progression group a couple times and then we have a chat.

Impact

In the current setup, demand is artificially boosted. I'm forced to consume 4 flask-hours when I only want to consume 3 flask-hours.

Its like bread companies selling buns in packs of six, and wiener companies selling hotdogs in packs of 8. They're artificially forcing you to purchase 2 extra items which often go to waste (unless I plan on having 24 hotdogs, or if I like eating peanut-butter-on-a-hotdog-bun sandwiches the day after I eat hotdogs. did i get that right? maybe its sliced up bunless hotdogs mixed in mac n cheese. i always forget which one comes extra since I always eat 24 at a time anyways).

Now that we can purchase in more efficient quantities, we will be consuming fewer (wasted) flask-hours.

So demand drops. If supply of flask-hours remains the same (same materials input will produce the same number of flask-hours output), price per flask-hour should drop.

But that's not all folks

Next they tell us that gathering a node will yield more herbs than in the past.

So the expected impact is that supply for mats for flasks will increase. If you look at this in a vacuum, and keep demand for flask-hours constant, that should reduce the price of a flask-hour.

But we're not in a vacuum. We just said above that the demand for flask-hours will drop.

Hmmmm.

Lower demand for flask hours, this reduces the price for flask-hours. But then reduce the cost to produce a flask-hour. If they get it right, the profit per flask-hour, or cost/income ratio, might remain stable.

Just how good are the economists at Blizzard?

The question is...just how good are they?

If they have some existing data regarding how many wasted flask-hours there are on a server (perhaps measuring how much time players are under the influence of a flask but NOT in a raid instance. not perfect, but perhaps indicative of trends), and they have existing data on the herb gathering rates on the server (easy to gather since blizz controls the spawns and the parameters that control how much herbs show up in the loot window), they just might be able to tweak the herb drop rate to keep price per flask-hour stable.

They need to address the Elixir Spec procs as well. The current procs provide between 2-10 extra flask-hours (or is it 2-8? whatever). If the new procs provide the same number of flasks, they'll be providing half the number of bonus flask-hours for the alchemist, in effect increasing the cost to produce a flask-hour.

Of course, it'll need some time to settle since the first week after the patch hits, all sorts of craziness will happen as people dump stockpiles of herbs or flasks (bad idea, craft them after the patch or else your existing flasks will change from 2 hour to 1 hour overnight), or other people try to jack with the market.

Also, we've got another, less easy to predict factor. Is Ulduar hard enough to drive demand for flask-hours up? That might totally skew the entire market. I'm thinking that demand will increase quite a bit, but that's pure speculation.

Or a new limiting reagent appears like Frost Lotus. So all the other herbs are plentiful, but Frost Lotus doesn't change. That then becomes the price driver for the flask market.

Its enough to make you go crosseyed

Since I farm my own herbs, have stockpiles galore, and I brew my own flasks, I'm excited by the change since my three hour raids will be less wasteful, but it will be interesting to watch what happens to the market.

My only hope is that Ulduar is hard enough. Or rather, that the hard modes are rewarding enough to encourage ongoing participation beyond the single achievement kill. Default Mode Ulduar will be only slightly more difficult than Naxx, which is good to allow access to wide audience and also to allow rich folks to buy farming spots months after the progression experience is gone.

If hard-mode Ulduar is both hard and rewarding, there's going to be lots of demand for flask-hours, which will benefit me if I choose to sell my raw herbs or my refined flasks.

Plus, flask-hour economics aside, its hard-mode content that I'm actually here for.

Alt Leveling Quickies

2009-03-24T07:54:00.000-04:00

Looking over my posts from last week, one might notice a small slowdown. Leaves a hole in most of your hearts.

Stems from a few places: new and exciting stuff going on at work, in-game doldrums between patches, and more importantly, a super top secret pet project that I've started in WoW. I've been feverishly writing about it, but not posting yet, because I don't want my posts to actually interfere with the project itself. So lots of content that'll be posted probably starting in May or so, once I've concluded the project.

Of course, that means that once Ulduar comes out, and I've got lots to talk about, I'll also likely open the flood gates on these extra articles, so the timing is unfortunate, but what can I do. The inspiration for my project came to me when it came to me, and sadly not at a convenient time for posting purposes.

Here's a few quickies from this weekend:

1) Working on leveling an alt. Another player and I are mostly keeping our two alts close to eachother. Fun because its tank/healer (or at least was until he respec'd), so I'm seeing forming PuG's from the other side of the tracks.

2) One nice part of the design of Northrend quest zones is that we can keep one zone for solo work, and also keep another zone with quests totally synchronized (aka, don't go to the zone when the other guy isnt on). Piddle at your own pace in the solo zone, and then when we're on at same time, the synchronized zone just flys.

3) If you've never done a "Kill 15 xyz" quest by rounding up 15 mobs on a Feral Druid, and having a Shadow Priest Mind Sear them down, its a sight to behold.

4) One of my toons is a level 65 who's only real activities are earning tips as a Blacksmith and following Amava around for the daily JC quest. She went the full way through level 65 and dinged 66 simply by doing the one quest daily. If I was clever, I'd calculate how long it'll be till this girl turns 68 and becomes eligible for Northrend proper, but I am not so I won't.

5) Progress continues....slowly...on the Explorer's League. Roughly 1 month till Revered, then close to 4 months beyond that for Exalted, that is if I don't miss any days. At least the one quest is fun...ish.

6) I've been using the alt as a place to learn tanking. I've put that on hold, just a little bit. 3.1 will give 360 degree, non-targeted swipe, basically consecration for bears. I'll re-learn tanking once that's in place. Or just tank an instance when I have quests for it.

7) Group quests take on new meaning when you've got a level 80 with a gorilla hovering overhead ready to drop down and lend a helping hand.

8) Achievements that just sorta happen are a very amusing addition to the game. I fell off a cliff. I nearly died. I dinged "falling down" achievement adding a big chuckle to the moment. A level 80 Orc death knight was harassing two level 74 Alliance players. When we turned on him and killed him, I dinged some achievement for killing one of each race, adding a big chuckle to the moment.

DSL d/c from WoW

2009-03-24T07:53:00.000-04:00

Do any of you connect to WoW over DSL?

When I'm connecting via one of two DSL networks available to me, and there's an incoming call, 90% of the time I get d/c'd from WoW.

When I'm playing over a Cable Modem, no such problem (what with there being no phone on that network, its tough to compare apples-to-apples).

Anybody else have this problem, and more importantly, know a fix?

Ask Amava - Malygos, Main Assisting, and Teh Suck

2009-03-20T07:16:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the wall 'o text that is the latest edition of Ask Amava. Durgan is looking for some ideas about playing Hunter in Malygos, the concept and usage of Main Assist, and also is wondering how some Hunters can perform so poorly despite good gear.

And to top it all off, one little tidbit contained herein comes to you hot hot hot off the press, breaking news!!! just discovered last night. Read on for more!

All excellent questions. Lets take a look...

Malygos Spark Management

How do you see where sparks are coming from, for my first time in there it was really confusing trying to find these sparks that were flying all over the place, and with no DK to gather them up maly even got to eat one.

For those unfamiliar with the encounter, the Malygos fight takes place on a circular platform. During Phase 1, sparks form periodically around the outside of the room, and slowly make their way towards Malygos (who is the one and only mob you're fighting during P1). If a spark reaches Malygos, he does mean things to your raid. If you kill a spark before it reaches the dragon, a little patch of sweetness lands on the ground for a little while. If you stand in the sweet spot, your damage output is amplified greatly (forget the percentage increase off the top of my head, but it is very very nice). Spark Sweet Spots can stack, so if you pile dead sparks on top of one another, your DPS reaches Ludicrous Speed.

Spark placement is a balancing act. Clearly, your first motivation is to kill them before they reach Malygos. However, if you kill them too far away, then your Melee DPS can't stand in the sweet spots, hurting the raid. Its like The Price is Right, you want to get the spark as close to maly as you can without letting him eat it.

In 25-man raids, we generally use 2 methods for spark management. (A) Death Knight grip to bring spark over to where you want it, followed by focus fire for quick death. (B) Boomkin entangling roots to keep sparks from moving while Death Grip is on cooldown. The Boomkin will spend lots of his time scanning for sparks, which I can only imagine hurts his DPS, but he's performing a very valued service in return.

There are more sophisticated techniques that involve tank movement for optimal stacking of 3 or more sparks, but we're only just dabbling with that, so I can't confidently comment on how its done yet. It is this kind of mobile tanking solution that would be required if you want to stack sparks but have no DK available.

In 10's, you have much less wiggle room or extra classes. I've had to be the spark lookout sometimes in 10's. Unfortunately the only advice I can offer is practice. You need to constantly swivel your camera around to look for new sparks. Since P1 is not very mobile, other than the repositioning following a Vortex, it does get easier to figure out where the sparks are forming. Sorry, no quick easy solution here.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Hot Hot Hot off the presses! To make use of Improved Tracking, I generally slap on Undead, Humanoids, or Dragonkin, depending upon where we're going. Sure, since a recent patch, it doesnt matter what type of mob you track, just so long as you dont track minerals and whatnot. Well, discovering half way through Sapphiron that I was tracking "and whatnot", I stumble to quickly select someting. ANYTHING. that isnt a mineral or herb. I landed on Track Elementals.

Fast forward 20 minutes, and we're in malygos, and I'm seeing these strange red dots on my minimap, starting out from the perimeter and moving slowly towards the center.

Track Elementals, Bitches! The sparks show up there, making it much easier to identify and locate their position.

FYI, this is likely NOT breaking news, and I bet others have found it months and months ago. But for me and the hunters I roll with, it was a revelation, so there!

Main Assist

Speaking of assist, I still haven't encountered a group that uses it, and I think it would be such a huge benefit for everyone to be able to just concentrate fire on one thing at a time without guessing what the target is. Any explanation of how to set it up and use it properly would be appreciated.

Main Assist (MA) is a technique wherein a single player in your raid is assigned the aptly named job of Main Assist. The job of this player is to select targets. The job of the rest of the DPS is to assist the MA for selection of new targets.

Very simple in concept, very powerful in results. In a 25-person raid, if you have a 6-mob trash pull, and everybody chooses discrete targets, you'll have 6 mobs at 25% health, hitting just as hard as 6 mobs at 100% health. However, if you focus fire and burn down mobs one at a time, you will quickly remove each individual mob very quickly, thus reducing the burden on your crowd controllers (if you are employing them), and your healers and tanks (we love them).

Using a MA is a very effective way to achieve this focused fire.

1) It starts with the raid leader. The RL needs to assign the job of MA and communicate it out to the raid.

2) DPS needs to have an easy method for assisting the MA. Two good methods are:
a) Assist macro (/assist Player-Name) This works pretty well, just spam the macro as your target reaches the end of his life.
b) ORA2 Tank Frames. If your raid uses ORA2, the RL can designate the MA as one of the tanks (or there might be an actual MA function in ora2), and that player and his target will appear in your ORA2 Tank Frame.

I end up using both 2a and 2b simultaneously. For slow controlled fights, the visual effect of the tank frame is good, and when the stuff hits the fan, I spam my assist macro.

3) As the current mob reaches 10-15% remaining health, the MA should switch targets to the next one, and the other DPS should stay with the current target until its dead. This allows for seamless transition from one mob to the next.

4) If a sudden target change is necessary, the MA should call it out on voice. A good example is when Shade of Naxxramas appears mid-pull. MA needs to be a player who is alert enough and knowledgeable enough to make decisions like that.

When I started raiding 10's in Karazhan, we did not use MA, and personally, I think it led to a harder learning curve for the team at the time.

When we entered 25's and I became the Raid Leader, one of the first things I introduced was the MA, and it's been a part of my raiding ever since.

Hovering Bad Guys in Malygos Phase 2

How do you see those damn flying guys in phase two. I had a hell of a time looking up and trying to find them. Maybe a target macro would be in order, but I'm thinking maybe using assist would be the better solution.

Arrrgggh, Malygos! One of the most visually overwhelming encounters I've done.

First night in there, I was helplessly lost. I couldnt find these flying guys for the life of me, and I was beginning to go crosseyed by the end of the night.

I'm happy to say, its gotten much better.

Four things I do to make Flying-Guy-DPS easier:

1) Camera Zoom: I set my camera to zoom out further via...

/console cameradistancemaxfactor 4

Then zoom out as far as you can. Seeing the full battlefield makes life sooo much easier.

2) Main Assist: Durgan touched upon it in his question, and he's right. Using a Main Assist is outstanding here. Of course, this requires that you have a player capable of targeting the discs without the help of a MA, but oh well. If that guy happens to be you, hopefully a combination of #1 above and #3 below will make your life easier.

3) Tab Targeting: Once the mobs on the ground are dead, you can use Tab button to target new guys. Usually works ok, but its a little tricky visually locating the guy you just targeted. He might be out of range, or he might be slowly revolving around you so that he was in front for Tab to target him, but by the time you start firing, he's moved out of LOS. TAB does help, though.

4) Steady Shot: Ok, so Steady Shot doesn't help me acquire a target, but it does help me stay locked on. As long as your target is vaguely in front of you, your toon will automatically rotate to track your target while you cast Steady Shot. This helps very much as your target moves. Only works when you are safely under a magic bubble and get to stand still for a few seconds.

Last but not least...Teh Suck

One question though, how is that I, a sad little casual running around in my sad crafted purples and a few lucky drops from raids can out dps the other hunters in my raids by anywhere from 1000 to 1500 dps. I don't even know how a hunter with almost all BiS gear can do only 1500 dps

Yeah, I'm not sure where to go with this one. It is definitely true that you come across all types of output from all types of players.

Of course there's the basic stuff which can be Armoried, like:

1) Gear. Just a simple upgrade from the level 70 peacock xbow to my sweet and beautiful Arrowsong led to a nearly 30% DPS increase. I know that's extreme, because it was also a jump in 10 levels, but it proved the point to me that solid output requires solid gear. But Durgan's question addressed gear, indicating the players have good stuff, so we need to look further.

2) Polish. How do the enchants look? Empty gem slots or slots filled with green-quality gems? How's the help arcanum and shoulder inscription look? If you consider each enchant or gem on its own, they feel small, but the cumulative effect across all gear slots adds ~20% to your toon.

3) Hit Rating. This one is tricky. For a player who doesn't spend the time and energy that most blog readers/writers do, the concept of hit rating might go totally missed, since there's not a whole lot in-game to educate you about it. These players might have very good gear, but if itemized incorrectly, might be missing large percent of the time.

4) Spec. Talent points invested in the "wrong" spots can gimp damage big-time. Now, I'm not one to judge, because I think people should more or less do what ever the hell they want with regards to spec. However, raiders I want next to me will have cookie-cutter or very close to cookie-cutter for the talent tree they want to use.

Each of those points above can be armoried, so if the question were more than rhetorical, you can find pretty concrete answers.

But to get deeper than that, how about some of the things I've written about my own experiences?

Lag management - That's a sophisticated term for "spam your buttons". In my own case, I've seen a roughy 1k DPS difference when I spam or don't spam.

Rotation - This can mostly be seen via combat log reports. You can examine the relative percentages of overall damage coming from each type of attack. It should be roughly consistent across Hunters of the same spec. Maybe its a hunter who used to play BM in TBC, and is still pounding a 1:1 steady:auto macro. Times have changed, and so must we.

Kill Command - I remember back in TBC, one of the biggest things I found as I inspected new hunters was the limited KC usage.

Cooldowns - See that trinket? "On Use" means you have to use it. Look at combat log to see what they're doing.

Pet on Vacation - The only PuGs I do anymore are the occasional 5-man, and its not uncommon to see a pet just stand by the hunter's side the entire run. Silly, but very easy to notice.

And lastly...

Teh Suck - This could come out of inexperience, or could in fact be that they just suck. Inexperience can be fixed quickly via practice. But that requires the person to actually care about their performance and be interested in doing something about it. If they just plain old suck, well, that's why we're called Huntards :-)

Free Yourselves

2009-03-18T07:54:00.002-04:00

A post at Ms Elf got me thinking. Go read the original, but I'll paraphrase one snippet here. Basically, she's saying that most fights stress healers in ways that they don't stress other players, specifically DPS. If DPS stands in the fire for a brief moment too long, its usually something that a healer could technically make up for. However, if that healer chooses to not correct for that error, and the player dies, everybody screams "where's the heals" rather than "why'd you stand in the fire".

And I'll even add to that by saying that the DPS player will actually look even better on the ego stroking meter, since they were pew pew'ing during those precious seconds that they should have been moving, thus making it a nasty cycle reinforcing bad behavior.

One way to stop the cycle is to instruct healers to not heal DPS who stand in fire for brief moments. We're not talking about players who just flat-out stand in fire, few people have issue letting those folks die. Rather, I'm talking about the ones who are sluggish to move out of it in favor of finishing off that long cast or getting in another shot or two since Bestial Wrath is up. This is a difficult solution because your healers might not see where the damage came from, only that one of their precious babies took damage so they'll heal 'em up.

Another way to fix it is for raid leaders to perform closer scrutiny to combat logs. Examine your DPS players and see what damage they take. Rather than the reactive yelling at healers for failing to heal, lets get proactive and instruct players to more effectively avoid incoming damage. Movement might lower our standings on the beloved damage meters, so this would only work for sophisticated/organized raids, and would never succeed in a PuG where DPS e-Peen is King.

Ms Elf quotes a Blizzard forum post where somebody suggests another alternative. Blizzard could design a mechanic that puts responsibility where it belongs.

The quote uses Anub'rican and his spikes. Make the spikes pin the player in place and they can only damage the spikes, not the boss, until they break the trap and escape.

This would be an outstanding mechanic. HOWEVER, here's the catch I'd like to add. Well, one of two possible catches.

Catch A) The trapped player takes no damage while trapped. Damage done to the trap by the player in the course of escaping the trap will NOT be reported to the combat log. IE, the time in the trap does nothing but sap the epeen of the DPS'er because all the properly alert and mobile players avoided the trap and continue to pew pew.

Catch B) The trapped player takes damage, BUT cannot be healed. So the penalty for DPSing your own trap too slowly is that you die and nobody can help you, thus subjecting you to public humiliation and also no epeen since you do no dps when dead.

I absolutely love the idea of forcing more individual responsibility.

However, I do subscribe much more to "win as a team, lose as a team". My greatest joy in the game is tackling content with my team. The shared experience of knuckling down and defeating challenges together is the most fun for me. So I don't want every fight to be 25 solo players standing in the same raid dungeon.

But it never hurt to mix in a mechanic or two that very visibly places personal accountability on each individual.

Inner Demons in SSC were kind of like this, however they miss the mark. A tank or healer needing to DPS his/her Inner Demon required that player to sort of step out of their normal raid job/duty.

A mechanic that teaches/forces players to move from the fire quickly simply reinforces the behaviors that lead to success through out all raiding.

Hunter Techniques for Sartharion and Gluth

2009-03-18T07:52:00.000-04:00

In a comment discussion following a post on BRK's site, there was a hunter asking for some help on learning how to play hunter in two specific encounters: Pet Survival against Sartharion, and kiting Zombie Chow on Gluth.

Well, to be fair, given the context of his question, I think he's looking for some help with a variety of bosses, but only specifically itemized these two, and he was looking for video footage, which I don't have.

That said, I figured I'd give my Hunter techniques some air time regarding the two fights in question.

Pet Survival in Obsidian Sanctum

Pet survival in Obsidian Sanctum with drakes up is pretty brutal. However, even a Survival hunter gets 15-20% of the total DPS from the pet, so we all want to pay attention to it.

I have found some keys to keeping my pet alive when fighting Sartharion:

Run away, little girl! Run away!

Condition the stimulus response.

Stimulus: Ears hear "run away little girl".

Response: Recall pet and locate safe spot in flame wall.

Even with full Avoidance and Resistances, I have found no way for my pets to survive a flame wall hit. Recall pet, find safe spot in wall, watch wall pass, send pet back in, and resume pew pew.

Twilight Torment

Twilight Torment is a sneaky mechanic. You take damage as you do damage. You need to monitor your pet's health very carefully on this one and keep him by your side if need be during the Torment stage of the encounter.

TT is tough for the Hunter too, so you need to monitor your own health very closely as well. Mend pet, even the dull boring non-talented version that SV hunters have, will help your pet stay in there a bit longer, but be vewy vewy caweful.

Fissures

This one is tough. With your pet positioned behind a Drake, it can be very tough to spot fissures back there.

It is a shame when you see two or three hunter pets die simultaneously when a fissure comes up in a bad spot.

The flame wall and Twilight Torment are avoidable. The Fissures must be avoided without fail by the Hunter, and do your best to also spot pet fissures.

Hunter Kiting adds on Gluth

This is a fun one. If you're assigned to Zombie Chow kiting duty, you will be playing a role that is entirely different than your job on every other boss in Naxx.

Bye-bye, Pew-pew. Hello, Frost Traps.

In 10-man, this is fun as hell, because you'll likely be the only person doing the job. In 25-man, still fun, but you'll need to coordinate your efforts with other players (other Hunters, and some Mages, in my experience).

The short version of the story is: Drop a frost trap and run circles around the perimeter of the frosty area, shooting at all the Zombie Chows you can see. Drop new traps whenever the cooldown is available.

Step 1- Drop ~~Trau~~ Trap: After you jump down from the pipe, run in a few steps and drop a Frost Trap as soon as possible. You want to get your trap cooldown ticking right away.

Step 2 - Blow the Whistle: Recall your pet (since you dismissed prior to entering the tube, yes?) and sic her on the boss. I just leave my pet chewing on Gluth to help out with the DPS efforts. I'm sure that more creative hunters can make use of their pets in kiting, but that's not me.

Step 3 - Pull Aggro: Look for Zombie Chow. They'll generally bolt straight for a healer. You need to nail them with enough damage to generate sufficient threat to keep them off your healers. I find Explosive Shot works nicely. If I have some distance between me and Chows, I'll stand still for a moment to fire an auto-shot for added threat.

Step 4 - Position for Trap Activation: Move your toon such that the Zombie Chow you just aggroed will pass over your un-triggered frost trap.

Step 5 - Round and Round We Go: Run in a circle around the perimeter of the frost trap. The Chow will basically remain stuck sorta in the middle-ish of the trap AoE, continuously turning to follow you, thus keeping himself slowed by the trap. Meantime, you run at full speed, so he never catches you.

Step 6 - Pickup Adds: Keep eyes open for additional Zombie Chows. Here is where it gets a little tricky because you use your mouse for movement to keep yourself running around the outside -BUT- you need to target the new Chows. So I usually briefly use my left hand on the keyboard for movement while I target a new chow via the mouse. It happens very quickly, so there's nearly zero interruption to the movement.

Step 7 - Renew Trap: Ensure frost traps drop as soon as the cooldown's up.

Step 8 - Other CC: Depending on how well the "round and round we go" technique is working for you, you may need to Concussive Shot and/or Wing Clip. A jump shot here or there can be added in for some style points.

Step 9 - Volley: At certain points, all the Zombies will run for Gluth. It'll be pretty noticeable because you'll think you just lost aggro on the entire pack you were kiting. Volley the hell out of them because it'd be bad for them to reach the boss.

There you go. Nine simple steps to kiting Gluth's adds. When done well, Step 5 in Naxx-10 is a sight to behold, as you'll have this nice tight pack of 6 or 8 Zombie Chows just spiraling in the middle of your frost trap.

Who's next?

I'm not claiming to be an expert on any of this stuff, but I do like sharing methods that have proven successful for me.

What other bosses would you like hunter advice on?

Oh noes, the blog

2009-03-12T08:24:00.001-04:00

I'll try to keep it quick, since the burning drama that I'd like to talk about (and no, those of you who incorrectly think I'm suffering from infatuation, its not the drama that you think it is, although there is some awfully big cannon fodder out there this week) is best kept quiet for now. You've been warned, it might be boring(er than normal).

1) Oh noes, the tadpoles! - My level 70 alt is questing through Borean Tundra and has reached the Murloc Quest line. It remains one of the most entertaining things in WoW for me. Between the baby murloc immature murgle-murgle noise generating glands, the goofy murloc suit, and the general clamminess of the event, its just fantastic.

2) Poundin' Some Bosses - No official performance plan update, other than to say that my Patchwerk numbers are back to right around where they should be. I might switch trinkets and regem for next week for no other reason than to try something different. 7 or 8 gems to switch, but luckily some joker is messing with the jewel market, listing stacks and stacks of dirt cheap gems. Annoying to my JC, but pleasing to my raider.

3) Enough with the leftovers - Infused Mushroom Meatloaf. Maybe 6 days in a row now. On three toons per day. My boots are starting to stink from running around the Sewers so much.

4) Slow Boat to China - JC daily quest is required to buy JC recipes. Most of the JC dailies can be done in Grizzly Hills. Not too far from there is the Explorer's League's one and only daily quest. The flight out to the area and the completion of both those dailies feels like the absolutely Slowest Boat to China in the world, with the end goal being 4 or 5 months out for both of them.

5) Big Love - Among the joys of multiple boxes is that you can take care of other stuff (see #3) while riding the slow boat to china (see #4).

6) On the Boosting front - The uber gf and amava went on a nice trip to Heroic Violet Hold with some friends. Its a great place to run because (A) its pretty quick and (B) if you're not a veteran raider/dungeon runner, it offers some chaos and requires paying attention to dynamic targeting and threat management. Fun had by all.

7) Melting Faces - Also on the Boosting front, the uber gf's gear is getting pretty solid according to the shadowpriest.com pre-raid recommendations. Plus she's performing better and better in runs with friends and PuGs, so that means pretty soon I won't be able to call it "boosting" anymore, which makes me both happy and sad at the same time. Plus, her shadowy flying carpet looks awesome.

8) Snot Rocket - Somebody had what I think is a baby murloc pet during our raid last night. During the quietest of quiet times, you suddenly hear this eerie giggle/whine noise. Soda came out my nose (tmi). I love it, and more to the point, I hope they don't over do it, because I rather enjoy the cleansing that comes with a carbonated beverage passing through your sinuses, but if it happened all the time, it'd lose its impact. I think celebrities and rich people pay thousands of dollars for these types of cleansing treatments at spas, whereas I get it for free as added perk thrown on top of raiding with the guild.

On learning to tank

2009-03-10T10:44:00.001-04:00

Short Version: If there is one ability that I'd like to see added to the Feral Druid tree, it is an AoE debuff that will cause the mobs to be immune to Death Grip. Nuff said!

Medium Version: Learning to tank at level 69/70 is interesting. For a player long trained to stand far away from the fight, to avoid being #1 on the threat meter, and to follow the pace set by another player, it is a very strange experience. I highly recommend all DPS players to try it out at one point or another, if for no other reason than to get a very clear pair of concepts through their head: FOLLOW THE DAMN KILL ORDER and THROTTLE YOUR DAMN DPS IF YOU'RE ABOUT TO PULL AGGRO!

Long Version:

By the time my Druid reached level 69, she really hadn't raised a claw in anger in her career. She flew from 1-60 as part of the RAF program, following her big sister through classic dungeon after classic dungeon. Then in Outlands to 68, she did a combination of questing and instance boosts, still with an actionbar that really only had a single macro on it..."/follow Amava".

Once she was Northrend capable at 68, she began questing in Borean Tundra, but still as a lover, not a fighter. Multi-boxing, FTW. This brought her to 69.

And then a friend leveling a healer was looking for a tank for Nexus or Utgarde Keep, so it was time that my little bear brushed her fur, cleared her throat, and started to growl.

Getting Ready

As you can imagine, things were not pretty at first.

Step 1: Get some gear. Level 69 is kinda stinky for AH greens and armor packs and stuff. Level 70 would have been better, but my friend was anxious, and since he was the healer, if he felt I'd be ready, then its time to take the training wheels off and see if this bike can ride. I was able to get a few items with agility and stamina, and some gems.

Step 2: Visit the Druid trainer. Hadn't been there in countless levels. A couple hundred gold in training :-)

Step 3: Spend talent points. 10 or 15 talent points just sitting there doing nothing, dump them into tanky looking abilities. I'll do my research later for a real spec, for now lets jump into the deep end and learn to swim.

Step 4: Glyphs? Who needs glyphs? Totally forgot to get any for the first couple runs. Oops.

Step 5: Browse the spell book and see what these bears put on their actionbars. There's a reason Blizz doesn't just let new toons jump in at 70. The array of abilities you're faced with is overwhelming. So I picked a few that looked reasonable. Hindsight showed that I was almost right.

Trial by fire

Did a couple runs at level 69 in Nexus and UK. I can only imagine what the PuG members were saying to eachother about the tank. Sloppy, to say the least.

But, I've got a reasonable handle on the game's mechanics, and sorta got the hang of things. Definitely rough around the edges. Definitely not using any sort of threat rotation. Definitely missing a few key abilities off of my action bar and talent spec (lacerate & charge, ftl).

Not too many deaths, but then again, a 5-man group with 4 level 71's won't have too much trouble in nex and uk.

Focused on watching the kill order and pushing threat on the current mob in the sequence, while also swiping for threat on the rest of the pack.

The runs all completed successfully, with the biggest obstacles being your standard PuG afks and other non-sense, not the hopelessly inexperienced and undergeared tank.

Changes at 70

After a few runs, I reached 70.

This allowed me to go to the AH and get solid starter set of gear, jumping from 9K health to about 14k health in an instant.

There's just so many more options once you hit 70, and the leap in stat allocation is nice.

And the big discovery at this point. LACERATE and CHARGE.

Went back into nex and uk with a real threat rotation. What a world of difference, as if that should be surprising. FFF, 5 stack lacerate, keep mangle up, maul like a madman, swipe if there's extra mobs.

Will I become a good tank?

I'm not sure if I'll make a good tank or not.

Not so much a skill question. I have no doubt that with more practice, I'll do a reasonable job at holding aggro. I'm sure I can study gear and spec and whatnot to become sturdy for taking hits. With experience, I'll learn the subtle art of positioning mobs to point where we want them and to move the packs such that the melee folks are not standing in fire.

No, my problem is an attitude thing. I react poorly to coconuts.

Mr. Death Knight who loves to death grip mobs away from me? DIE IN A FIRE. I shall not taunt anything off of you, not that it really matters at this level, you OP f'er. Even better that the healer is my friend, and we're in cahoots to let you die when you act irresponsibly.

Ms. Warlock with your little pet who is dumping out more threat than I can keep track of? What's the deal? Do warlocks have a pet that's more threat-oriented, or have a growl'esque ability like hunter pets that can toggle on/off? Either way, you and your pet annoy me.

Mr. Mage who thinks that we're putting icons up so that each player can pick his own mob to DPS? Watching you die was so. much. fun. I hope you don't have a lot of gold, and the repair bill was a big inconvenience for you.

All the DPS players who respected the kill order, and when things became chaotic you kept assisting me to keep up with my high-threat target? I love you, and you reinforce the behaviors I like to exhibit when I'm DPS'ing.

And it takes more than one or two boo-boo's to become a target of my hatred. Its those jokers who death grip every pull, or specifically target their own mob on every single pull. Those are the ones who need to either (A) leave my party or (B) die in fire, not necessarily in that order.

I hope to keep playing as a tank, as its a very different and fun view of the game. Time will only tell if I'll learn to tolerate renegade DPS, or maybe I'll just stick to runs with players I know.

A Weekend of Quickies

2009-03-10T10:43:00.001-04:00

A random assortment of fun from this weekend, which included some WSG action, some alt leveling, my first stab at tanking level-appropriate content, and paying a visit to Black Morass, Lurker Below, and Prince Malchezedoodle (and his whole band of merrymen in that there tower).

Coordinated BGs: If given the choice between premade and pug WSG, I vote premade. One small example: Horde FC is hiding in the Horde base. He's a Paladin, and he has with him two additional paladins and a priest. In a PUG that equates to hellish nightmare turtle with allies running in one at a time, chipping off 1% of the pally FC's health, and then getting crushed. However, a coordinated surprise assault by 4 of our players focus fired on the priest (dead before he knew we were there, /assist macro FTW), faked a focus attack on one of the others (to distract the healers away from the FC), then slaughtered the FC.

The Fisherman Below: A couple of us wanted to go fish up Lurker for the achievement. SSC with 5 players is an interesting sight to see. Fun to remember how intimidating some of those trash pulls in between Hydross and Lurker were the first time we saw them at 70. Also fun to AOE them into the ground at 80.

Jumpshots with the Flag: Although this does not require a premade BG, it is substantially more fun when you are the flag carrier being protected by a pain train of friends on Vent. When you're the FC, your normal reaction is to run in a straight line towards your own base. As the situation allows, you sometimes might engage in combat. As a hunter FC, you're generally dropping frost traps, wyvern stinging healers that're in front or off to the side, using Aspect of Cheetah or Pack when there's no enemy around, and running like Forrest Gump. A new twist I stumbled upon this weekend. Jump shot the pursuit team with Concussive shots and/or Wyvern Sting. Keep running, jump and spin in the air, and nail them to keep them away while you continue forward progress. Such fun.

Back to the Future: Upon reaching level 68, my Druid became eligible to specialize her alchemy. Elixir spec requires collection of quest items in Black Morass. So Amava, the uber gf, and the druid-on-follow went off to caverns of time. Discovered you need to rescue Thrall before you can do BM. These are two of my favorite TBC instances, especially when we were at a gear level that made them hard. Anybody else remember how much fun being on add duty was in BM and trying to keep the shield at 100%?

Important Safety Note: the frenzy fish in SSC will one shot you if you're naked. It is inconvenient to learn this by having your two available rez'ers drop into the water before putting their clothes back on.

Freezing Arrow, FTW: Run into WSG flag room via the tunnel. See enemy defender standing by ramp. Shoot arrow, freeze him, grab flag, and GTFO. Either he has to blow his trinket, making him easy to take out on the way back to your base, or he sits there till he thaws, in which case you're at mid-field already. This also works for freezing people that're off to the side of your path when you're the FC, although (A) your traps are likely on cooldown from frost traps, and (B) it requires you to use your keyboard briefly for movement so you can use the mouse to target the trap aiming reticle or activate autorun for a moment.

When was the last time you went to Karazhan? After fishing up Lurker, somebody wanted to see if Moroes would drop Mongoose since its still a very viable enchant. Well, he didnt drop it, but we did go on to clear the entire place, including both dragons and illhoofy hoof. We were a pack of school girls having a pillow fight, giggling amongst clouds of feathers. It was awesome. Pull entire rooms of trash dinner guests. If it gets too tough for the Warrior (pansy), just Gorilla-tank everything you can get your thunderstomp on. Chess was the only boss fight that was hard, but with only a couple players and no official healer they were all chaotic enough, and definitely nostalgic enough, to make the run worth its weight in gold.

I can haz tank: There's probably too much to talk about on this one to call it a quicky, so go read the next post.

/shoo Nightbane: For anybody unfamiliar, he switches modes and flies up into the air every 25% of health. But you can continue to DPS him while he's up in the air. We were cackling with glee to burn a full 25% of his health while he's up in the air, and then watch him fly down to the ground to start a ground phase, only to instantly fly back up, touching his feet for less than a second.

10 Reflections About 120 Days

2009-03-06T17:05:00.001-05:00

Matticus, GM of Conquest, posted his reflections on the first 120 days of the guild.

Here's some things I'd like to add about the experience. If it feels like fanboi jibber jabber, well, maybe it is. Bottom line is that the guild has been able to deliver on what is stated in its charter, which is a decent way of measuring success as an organization.

And since I took the leap of faith to transfer servers and join the guild based largely upon how strongly I agree with the mission stated in the charter, I'd say its been a pretty big success for me, individually as well.

Lets take a look at some specifics from my experience so far:

1) Bringing Like-Minded People Together. The biggest thing I enjoy about the guild is that we all have a pretty similar approach to our shared hobby. I think the charter, plus the general tone and expectations from the Matticus blog, make it very clear to applicants what the atmosphere will be like in the guild. Many people would not enjoy it, which is perfectly fine and hopefully those players find an environment suitable to their tastes. The most toxic thing to any group is when members have dramatically different expectations, and Conquest does a very good job of providing an environment consistent with its charter.

2) Successful at Progression. Conquest members signed up to defeat content, and we have accomplished that at the T7 level and are well positioned to continue to do so in T8. We do not aim to be server- or world-first, but we do aim to progress steadily and efficiently in a reasonably limited number of hours per week. "Reasonably limited" by our definition, your definition may vary.

3) Minimal Drama. It is a funny thing to consider how much press the Wayne situation received in the blogosphere (player who geared up very very quickly and decided to stop playing until T8). That is perhaps the single example of "drama" in the first 120 days, if you even want to call it that. The team reacted seamlessly and continued progress.

4) Recovery from main tank hack. It is awful for a player to have his account stolen from him. I hope he's doing well IRL, because he is a good person and we miss him. On the flip side, it is awful for a guild to lose their main tank. It is a testament to the strength of the organization (and the new MT's versatility and skill) that we adapted very quickly to such a big loss.

5) Healthy Turnover. We lost only a single raider due to differences of opinion, and the situation was handled by the leaders, members, and the departing player in a very mature fashion, allowing the guild to continue progress and the player to leave with zero bad blood between us. Any other turnover in the raiding team has been reasonable and mutually agreeable.

6) Efficiency. We start on time. We end on time. We waste little in between. One of the biggest things I appreciate about the officers in Conquest, that I was never able to provide for my raiders in my old guild, is an outstanding ability to deliver on the schedule. We all benefit from the time efficiency of the raids. Can we improve further? No doubt, keep pushing those limits.

7) Staffing. Conquest does a good job of maintaining a proper sized raiding pool. To ensure you can handle turnover, hacks, sickness, real life, and at the same time also stick to the schedule, you need to have the right number of raiders. Too many and you've got unhappy bench warmers. Too few and you've got late starts and canceled raids. It is always a dynamic balancing act and the guild has handled it well.

8) Vibrant Forums. One side of the guild that the public does not get to see is the level of engagement the team has on the forums. Lots of conversation involving a wide player-base, ideas, critiques, strategies, and even social threads having nothing to do with WoW (Oh noes! You mean you guys are both friendly with each other AND able to constructively criticize raid performance/strategy at the same time? Inconceivable!)

9) Loot Council. This one is probably the most subjective, and each player's opinion is his/her own. IMO, it is working exactly as advertised. Whenever possible, loot is rewarded in a way that will provide benefit to the guild. Whether that means it goes to a toon that will get the biggest benefit, or to a toon who's player reliably shows up on time ready to rock, or to a toon that specializes into unique and weird roles for specific situations (Sarth+3, here's looking at you), there has been a very good distribution of loot, which is a testament in part to the LC, but more importantly to the type of players that are in the guild. More often than not, raiders actually work the loot out among themselves with no need for LC involvement, and when LC needs to decide the outcome has been generally effective.

10) Blunt Feedback. I wrote about the style of very direct feedback from the raid leadership. If you like sugar to coat your pills, you would not enjoy a progression night in our raid. However, if you have a thick skin and like examining and improving your own performance with the help of those around you, even if that means you need to accept responsibility for your action...nay...specifically when you need to accept responsibility for your action. It'll be blunt, but it'll usually be right, and if you think they're wrong for saying you messed up, you better have some hard data to back your claims, because our RL sure know how to interpret a combat log and he rarely misses something. But if you do have evidence to support your position, they're all ears.

All good?

I'm sure there's more positives to write about, but you're probably getting nauseous already. Along the way, there's of course been hickups.

There was the Wayne situation, which really only was important because it was the first bump we hit.

I've had small nitpicks with the LC along the way, some of which got written up for the public here, and some of which were addressed in private channels. End result is small tweaks leading to a stronger operation, rather than silent resentment leading to total collapse.

Having your main tank get hacked is traumatic, especially right in the middle of progress through Sarth 3D. That was a massive challenge, definitely slowed us down by at least a week on the encounter, but was handled well by the team.

I wrote about a leadership mandate (shoulders and helms getting polished) that was premature in my opinion. Good intent, less good timing. But that's just my opinion, others in the guild have commented to me that they appreciate the leadership pushing hard and pushing early.

Are there any other issues?

Bottom Line

There might be other challenges, mix-ups, fumbles or whatnot that Ive written about or thought about along the way.

But the important thing to take away is that I can't remember them or they're not lingering because they came up, they were dealth with, and they're gone now.

Real life, hacks, nerfs, patches, guild policies, who said what to whom or who got offended by what on vent, silly wipes, educational wipes, achievements, dead bosses, epeen, recruiting, you name it. Things come up in any group activity.

That to me is the true sign of a healthy organization, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and continue on with the mission.

Lag Sux. QQ.E.D.

2009-03-06T07:22:00.001-05:00

Lag is starting to annoy me, so much so that it's inspired me into song....

Old NaxXramas had some lag.

E-I-E-I-Ohhhhh

With some latency here and a frozen screen there.

Here a pause, there a freeze,

Everybody D/C!

Old NaxXxramas had some lag

E-I-E-I-Ohhhh

Sorry, I just had to get it out of my system.

Did we all get nerfed?

One of the cool parts of being in a raid guild with a stable roster is that you can measure changes in your routine or gear (A) absolutely measured against yourself week on week, and (B) relatively measured by the other players in the raid.

So when you head on into Patchwerk, and discover that your own numbers are down 200-300 DPS over the previous week, you've got a place to look for root cause.

First step is to look at your own self. Did your gear change significantly, did you change spec or shot rotation, were you doing anything special that you didn't do last week? No? Ok, what now?

Next step is to look at other members of the same class. Ok, another Hunter who was very close to you last week is also showing the same decrease.

Great. Did they f'ing stealth nerf f'ing Hunters again this f'ing week?

Maybe, maybe not, so to continue the pseudo-scientific process, lets look at the other classes. Ahhh, seems that the entire raid dropped roughly the same amount, give or take some anomalies (dusty miner's leggings, here's looking at you).

Raid composition both weeks covers all the things we need. Timing of Heroism was consistent. All things seem to be aligned properly.

Only factor I can think of is some server-side situation being different, such as server LAG.

I'm starting to hate lag, as even 100ms changes are showing pretty big impact to numbers.

Sure, it doesn't really matter to the outcome in the T7 content that we're farming, I'm just using the encounters to compare week over week. But if boss fights become harder or if enrage timers are more aggressive, a 5-10% DPS loss across the raid due to some stupid server-side garbage or network bottleneck at Blizzard's datacenter is just brutal.

Consistent Pets

One thing that stands out when I review our WoW Meter Online report (like WWS, but different) is the consistency of pet DPS.

You might recall that our pets are what triggered my lag investigation to begin with.

The story went like this....two BM hunters, pretty similar gear, both OP and loving every minute of it, and both putting out pretty similar numbers.

Nerf bat to the crotch, we both respec to SV. We both show decreased output (expected due to nerf from OP to just P), but one hunter shows bigger decrease than the other.

The theory I had was that lag was the answer, namely that Brass was managing lag better than I was. We were both wearing the same similar gear, using similar spec, and similar shot prioritization, but his nerfed output was much better than mine. Continuing with the theory, I figured that as BM we did similar numbers because the automated pet doesn't suffer from lag issues and BM pet does 40-50% of damage. When we went SV, our pets change to 20% of our DPS which means that my poor lag management was showing a more visible impact to my total numbers.

Make sense?

Step one was to more properly account for lag in my shots (spam buttons), and the results were immediately positive.

Step two is complete this week. Comparing last weeks numbers where the two hunters did similar DPS, to this week where the hunters did similar to each other again but ~5% less than last week.

Examine the pet portion of the DPS. SAME! Across weeks, the pets show no noticeable DPS change, while the Hunters and the rest of the damn raid show a consistent decrease across the board. I'm attributing that to either a network bottleneck near the server, or a sluggishness on the server itself.

QQ.E.D.

Earning Middle Class Wages

2009-03-04T09:51:00.002-05:00

Having just re-dinged the 20K gold arbitrary threshold of happiness, and prompted by a reader's comment, I figure I'll throw out some ideas about how I earn my gold.

There's plenty of sites focused on earning gold with the least effort, min-maxing the gold game in the way that raiders min-max the gear & stats game. Just My 2 Copper is one such site. Follow those ideas if you want to find the most time efficient ways to earn your gold.

For me, its a middle class approach, I have enough gold for the fun things I want and the raiding stuff I need, but I'm not cornering any markets or becoming so filthy rich that I can collapse the server's economy.

You can look at the gold tracker on the right to see that my techniques result in steady progress. The flat areas are more due to me forgetting to run my tracking program for a few days in a row (still cant get Vista scheduler to work properly over a year later), and the big drop offs are when I buy fun stuff like mini vans or dragons or when my sac became gigantique (the doctor gave me a cream to fix that).

Note - This is how I got to where I am now, not necessarily what I'm doing in prep for a new patch. I really don't do a whole lot, economy-wise, when a patch is looming in the distance, but I'll think that one over and post about it later.

So here's some of my basic moves:

Gathering Professions

Its no secret...I love 'em. I've got 'em on as many toons as I can. While min-maxing for raids in TBC for a bit I waffled away from mining/herbalism on my main, but even then had Skinning as one prof.

My income is mostly from gathering stuff while I'm out and about doing my thing (daily quest for rep, flying to/from raids & dungeons, flying to sholazar to buy new egg, questing, etc), and then selling on AH.

I like Herbalism & Mining, because I treat them as a passive activity. Fly some place. See herbs. Pick herbs. Sell herbs. Buy Mammoth. I almost never specifically go on "farming" missions, unless there's 15 minutes until raid invites and I've already eaten dinner and the uber gf is nowhere to be found, in which case I'll take a swing around Storm Peaks or Icecrown for some quicky saronite and lichbloom lovin.

Skinning on the other hand is active. Since the mobs are everywhere, you sorta choose when to go skinning or not. So if you like the concept of setting aside 15 or 30 minute killing/skinning sessions, then you might like this one. It is nice because its not dependent upon the random nature of node spawn timers.

AH Mule

If you've not got an AH alt yet, this is a big help. Create a level 1 toon. Run him to the nearest city. Main mails everything to that alt.

There's tons of reasons to do this, however the one for me is psychological. There is a distinct break between when I'm out playing and when I'm doing financial stuff. Having the separate toons helps me mentally separate the activities and I can choose when to engage in either one.

Personally, I like having a guild bank for that mule. It helps me stockpile stuff during times of stupid market conditions. Some coconut destroying the Lichbloom market by listing tons for a few silvers? Just store your incoming herbs in the bank and wait things out. Once the joker is gone, you can trickle your supply back into the market.

Whether or not you want to buy this guy out and hope to deplete his supply at low price and then sell high once he's gone is up to you. I generally avoid the buy low/sell high speculation in WoW because I'm risk averse. If you choose to take the risk, you might be able to profit nicely.

Make a disenchanter

Disenchanting is a big money maker. Your main will bring in lots of disenchantable BoE gear. Some BoE items sell for a pretty penny, but most are worth more as dust.

Yes, you can have a friend DE for you, or if you have no friends you can hire a DE, but the convenience factor of having your own is fantastic.

DE is also for when people try to mess with your gatherables. If you're a miner/herber like me, you deal in raw commodities and you sometimes run into people who try to totally fiddle with the market.

Sometimes its just a kid who doesn't know market values, sometimes its a person trying to play their hand at the economics game, and other times, who the hell knows. Normally just wait a week and they go away. Other times your DE will come in handy for....

Craftable Alternatives

In the past, I would have viewed this as an "advanced strategy", but depending upon your server's market, you might need to consider this a basic move if you're to generate suitable profit out of dual gathering.

My old server had a very straight forward Ore market. Gather stuff. Sell it for generally stable price. Ka-ching.

The new server seems to be a much more competitive environment, both in raid progression and in the economy. Seems that there's continuous undercutting, attempts for monopoly on a specific item, barking in trade with a friend to artificially boost the price to make AH listings seem more attractive, and on and on with the schemes.

So I've had to be a little more creative to sell my gatherables.

Somebody messing with Cobalt prices? Craft some entry-level plate armor (either your own BS alt or hired help). Depending on your market, maybe that plate will sell nicely, but more than likely, DE it into dust for max profit.

Somebody messing with Goldclover? Brew up some elixirs. You need to experiment with your own server to see which elixirs will bring the biggest margins, but I've had pretty good success across the board during times when people try a focused financial attack at a specific raw herb.

Eternal Earth is another great example. Well, actually, Crystallized Earth, since that's generally what to sell, since ppl buy it for 10% more than the Eternal equivalent. I've got stacks and stacks of the stuff from mining. But so does everybody, because the demand is pretty low, so the prices are just insane low. So find a JC, craft that ring that only requires 2 Eternal Earths as mats, DE, sell dust, obtain gold.

On a server with competitive business folks or just plain stupid undercutters, you need to search out alternatives since it'll be much harder (or impossible) for a player to dominate all possible outlets for a given material.

Like I said, I used to reserve this as an advance technique, but on my new server, its a way of life, and in fact has replaced nearly all of my raw material sales just to prevent myself from crying over how ludicrous the competition is.

But don't feel bad if you're just selling your ores, you're still going to bring home the bacon, even in a competitive market.

A Penny Saved...

My last note regarding basic middle class economics...

The path to riches is simple....spend less than you make. The bigger the gap, the higher the slope of your own gold tracking chart.

I know, it sounds silly or simplistic, but there you go. Only spend on things you can afford. Do you need to enchant your level 57 alt's gear? Probably not. Do you need to buy that Kirin Tor ring? Its up to you, but personally I've chosen to not go there. Do you need all the JC recipes from Isle of Quel'danas? Not anymore.

Sure, you're fine if you do choose to buy things, useful or frivolous (train smasher, ftw), have fun. But if you're hurting for gold, think twice before spending.

The only place I recommend NOT skimping out is on gear enhancements if you're a raider. When 9 or 24 other people depend upon your performance, a few hundred gold on enchants or gems goes a long way, both in terms of stats, and more importantly, sending the message to your team that you value their time as much as you value your own.

The Rebirth of CC

2009-03-04T09:50:00.001-05:00

One of the toons that I do the daily cooking quest on is my level 69 Shaman.

She lives in Dalaran, really only leaving the city to pick carrots, or to occasionally follow Amava around and skin mass quantities of rhinos.

But the other day, I have no idea why I was looking, but I noticed that she had been given a refund of her talent points. Must have been some patch or other mixed shammies up enough to warrant a refund.

So I figured...why not throw the points into the Resto tree and see what this healing nonsense is all aboot.

LFG normal mode UK

Have you tried to get a run together for a normal mode dungeon lately? Not a whole lot of demand for that as it would turn out.

But, there were a few players in Amava's guild who wanted to go, and a brief visit to LFM channel found the rest.

Best part...tank was a level 69 Death Knight....

Who admitted he was high as a kite.

Meh. Whatever, we were just trying to have a fun run, no pressure. That's the beauty of finishing raid content very efficiently. If you've carved the time out of your schedule, but finish raid early, you can fart around with Smoke Dog the DK Tank.

Where's my pet, and what the hell do I do now?

(A) The hunter with us was confusing the hell out of me because I kept thinking his pet was my pet. /tap [forehead] Oh, right, I'm a shammy.

(B) What on earth do you want me to do now? I've got totems, I've got shields, I've got weapon enchants, I've got some spells or something.

Luckily, one of the guildies knows a bit about shamans, and the other knows lots about healing, and they're both extremely patient, which was just outstanding.

However, Smoke Dog's tanking ability was not outstanding.

The Rebirth of CC

I suppose we could blame the healer for the early trash wipes, since he's total noob and still wearing attack power belt and boots.

But we love the healer, so we're gonna look elsewhere and see what we can do with our motley crew.

Tank McTankerton was a bit squishy. And was pulling everything in sight. Ok, stop that!

And we've got a mage who's just itching to show off his cute Turtle Polymorph.

And somebody playing his Hunter alt, champing at the bit to try some chain trapping.

Lets Doo Eet! Sheep the moon, trap the square, I'll try to heal stuff, gogogogogoggogo!

It was awesome

It really was pretty cool again. The alt-Hunter did a great job trapping. Sheepy was spot on with his job. Despite having a kiddy pool for mana, the healer was sorta keeping people alive. Smoke Dog was showing signs of his mind altered state, but whatever, it was fun. And I dinged 70 while turning in the quest for the guy's head, so that didn't hurt the fun-factor at all.

We were relying upon the ancient art of crowd control, and every pull that we survived was actually a sense of accomplishment.

Stupid Quickies

2009-03-03T09:01:00.001-05:00

Some quick, some not-so-quick. All stupid.

Stupid Glyphs - Why is it that you find a glyph you crafted on the way up to the high levels has no current listings on the AH. So you list one for a reasonable price. It sells. So you list another one for 2 gold more. It sells. So you list another for 2 more gold. You continue doing this happily for several days. Then some other scribe comes by and lists 20 auctions at half what your original price was 5 days ago. Could be another leveler, although you rarely make too too many of the same glyph during leveling, since they go from orange to green pretty quickly. Why undercut like an insane person? Is he trying to squeeze competition out of the market? No problem, easy enough to just wait until the cheapo glyphs are gone, he eats his loss, and then resume selling, which tends to happen within a few days. Its consistent across 6 different glyphs now, and different players each time (same person using alts to disguise the effort?). Strange though.

Stupid Phasing - I found myself sitting with 129/140 quests complete in Icecrown, with a big old pile of group quests left to complete, stagnating in the quest log for 2 or 3 months now. Flying back from buying a new Oracles egg, I cut through the zone to pick flowers on the way home. Saw "LFM group quests". Phasing is a cool feature to WotLK zones, but it sucks when you can't figure out why you cannot see any of your teammates and they can't see your quest mob. But, the quest log is clear, which is nice.

Stupid Cards - Nobles cards were absolutely insane on /trade this weekend. Continuous streams of WTT, WTB, WTS for nobles cards. So I went ahead for giggles and made a card on my scribe. It was a nobles card. It sold within minutes, nearly paying back the entire investment to level Inscription, not that I'm necessarily doing it for the profit. But profit never hurt, amiright?

Stupid Mojo - The trolls in Grizzly Hills have way too many types of Mojo. Each quest in the Guru chain required a different kind of mojo. I'm surprised we didn't have to collect any soiled mojo during that outhouse quest.

Stupid Horde - Up in Icecrown, there's an Amphitheater of Anguish-type event. Sometimes Horde think it'll be fun to interfere with our attempts at the event. I think its classic when they tried to surprise, but were caught early via Track Humanoids. I wonder how the priest and mage felt when they were lying dead and saw their paladin friend bubble hearth to safety, while we finished up the last boss guy in the amphitheater?

Stupid Lewtz - What are people thinking when trying to sell BoE epic raid drops? A guy lists a pair of bracers in /trade WTS pst with offer. So I pst with offer that is 10% less than my auctioneer appraisal, and a little less than WoW Head's list price. No answer. So I check AH. He listed it for 800% mark up. Later, some other guy lists a ring I'd like in /trade WTS pst with offer. So I pst with offer. No answer. I pst him just for fun, knowing we definitely are not doing business with eachother, but I'm curious. I ask what's the story? He says it's done, it just sold for 6500 gold. Yeah, ok. Auc values it at a hair over 1000g with 15 having been seen and WoW Head about twice that. Are people really buying these for 6.5k? I mean, I'd like the ring and what not, but Shirley you must be kidding me.

Stupid Mercenaries - Ok, this one isn't stupid, I kinda liked it. There's a quest in Grizzly Hills where you can request the help of an imprisoned Furbolg Druid, and you have the option of asking him to tank, dps, or heal. Pretty cool idea, mercenary NPC's.

Stupid Dungeon Idea - The massive tree fortress in the middle of the zone is visually outstanding. I'd love a dungeon or raid instance in that tree where you fight through gauntlet event through the battle raging outside, and then spiral around the ramp going around the outside down to the bottom, facing bosses along the way, and a final challenge at the bottom. I'm just sayin.

Stupid Timesink - Upon completion of Grizzly Hills and Icecrown, I can haz Northrend Loremaster Achievement. I debate seeking The Seeker via questing in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Probably better to level an alt, but I am kinda liking the rep gain for old world factions that'll come with the journey. Probably just go in small chunks of 10 or 15 old world quests at a time to keep myself from burning out.

Its really not a plan

2009-03-03T09:00:00.001-05:00

To keep my notes ongoing on my progress, I'll just float the latest update to the performance plan.

Its really not a plan at this point, its just a series of continuous tweaks as I identify areas of hidden DPS just waiting to be poured into raid bosses. Kinda like when you make a little bowl out of your mashed potatoes so as to hold more gravy. Sure, the mountain of potatoes with all its nooks and crannies of fluffy goodness can do just fine with a drizzling over the top, but with a simple spoon flick depressing the middle of the pile, you can really make the most of any gravy situation.

Small tweaks for big impact. That's what we're all about.

Mmmmm, gravy.

Last week

So, last week was my big "lag" revelation.

When LK rolled out, I stopped my TBC habit of hammering my shot key.

I mean, since I'm no longer macroing my shot rotation, and I'm selecting between a variety of shots in a priority order, I might as well just press the button once as soon as the GDC is up. Right?

Yeah....no.

Changes this week

I did install Quartz to help visualize the impact of lag. I honestly have no idea what I'm looking at, or more to the point, what to do about the information that Quartz is providing for me.

So the only real change I made this week was to spam the hell out of each attack. While the GDC from the previous shot was ticking away, I'd continuously hammer the key for the shot that'll be fired next.

The priority rotation stayed the same, the timing of haste pot & rapid fire & call o' the wild remained coordinated with heroism, kill command & savage rend remain together on a macro to be triggered each minute on the dot.

Only change was key spamming.

Oh, and properly tracking an attackable trackable (undeadables), rather than last week's wastable improved tracking on the non-attackable minerables. What????

Results

We'll go ahead and give it the ol'...Daddy's Back!

Lets take a look at the last 3 weeks:

Week 1 (simply pressing keys the instant the GDC was up): 4.4K DPS

Week 2 (carefully trying to press buttons a drop before GDC was up, to nip the lag): 5.2K DPS (includes adjustment for stupid tracking choices)

Week 3 (spam the bejezus out of the keys): 5.5K DPS

I'm going to go ahead and say that its a bit annoying that abusing my keyboard results in a solid DPS improvement, but oh well, I suppose I'll have to live with it.

94,000 DPS

The raid had a collective 94,000 DPS, which was just sweet to see. Almost got Patchy down in 2 minutes.

It feels pretty good being part of a team with every DPS player above the 4K watermark, most above 5K, and even players breaking the 6K barrier. Not many raid bosses can withstand firepower of that magnitude.

And you know you're pushing the limits of your gear and spec when two Hunters standing side by side end the fight 1049 damage apart from one another.

At the DPS we're doing, that's less than 2 tenths of a second between us.

And to think, I let my serpent sting fall off for one tick during the fight :-0

But its all good, and definitely reassuring to know the Hunters and the whole raid are putting up outstanding numbers as the T8 content is coming into swing.

And how cool to be able to get some payback from Hodir in Ulduar for all the crap we had to go through grinding rep with his damnable Sons in Dunder NIfflem.

Quartz. Now Spam?

2009-02-27T09:15:00.000-05:00

So I installed Quartz to help out with the impact of lag on my shot rotations.

I don't know if I'm doing it right.

The only noticeable change to my UI is a big casting bar in the bottom-middle of my screen.

The bar has a small red section at the end to indicate my server's lag.

What am I supposed to do with that?

Do I wait until the casting bar reaches the very initial tip of the red zone, thus snipping out the lag?

Do I still have to wait until the cast bar runs its full length before casting another shot?

Speaking with another hunter who does some stellar DPS and uses Quartz, he just said "spam the buttons and forget the rest".

So I spammed

Anticipate what shot will be fired next (using the priority of Explosive > Kill > Serpent > Multi > Steady), and begin spamming it as soon as you identify that its the shot you'll be wanting to fire once the GCD is up. (I waffle between ES or KS being first, but lately favoring ES, dunno why).

And my DPS went up considerably. I've only raided Sarth+3 and Malygos so far with this, which does not really give a scientific benchmark since Sarth is soooo mobile and dependent upon variable factors, and Malygos changes by how many sparks you stack and the ridiculous dragon vehicle mount in phase 3 messes up the combat log. But a general comparison of my standings overall in my raid show a big improvement by spamming.

Really?

After 4 or however many years, is that the best Blizzard has come up with?

No good way to solve the lag between client and server, so spamming buttons is the best because it will fire the shot as soon as physically possible, rather than waiting until some visual cue says you are ready to fire?

I had no issue spamming a single button in TBC. It was actually fun, and became the source of many jokes when I'd key my mic during combat and my raiders would hear the slamming of my #3.

But switching between spamming 4 buttons? Stupid.

I take no issue with needing to choose between 5 available shots and have to effectively give priority to the proper shots at the proper times. It adds an additional technical component to combat as a hunter, and I've grown to enjoy it.

But having a several hundred DPS difference between firing a shot the moment the visual indicators say a shot is ready to fire and spamming a button so as to have the shots fire sooner than the game is saying they're available?

This is stupid.

But I'll do it because I'm a big fan of more DPS, in case you're new here.

Who Moved My Cheese?

2009-02-27T09:14:00.000-05:00

So, how yall doin with the patch 3.1 stuff comin out?

Some people absolutely thrive on getting access to new stuff as soon as humanly possible. There's new armor and weapon art to look at. New dungeon and boss encounters. Changes to talent specs, spells, abilities, stats, whatnot. A tournament world event thing, involving championing the city of your choice. Profession changes. Changes to hunter pets, ammo, quivers. Changes to glyphs glyphs glyphs. Dual Specs.

All sorts of changes.

And if you follow WoW Insider or more than one or two blogs, the hype surrounding each and every change is out of control.

BREAKING NEWS

Really? Breaking???

A large passenger jet recently crashed into a residential neighborhood near where I live, causing a .5 mile fireball, killing everyone on board and injuring/killing people on the ground and destroying houses. Complete tragedy for the family and friends of those involved, heroic effort by fire fighters to limit the extent of the damages to the surrounding area, and caused a big impact on the whole community.

I'm gonna say that that initial news report warranted the label "BREAKING".

Video game patch? Not so much.

But I do understand that many of us take the game seriously, so we'll let it slide.

Anything good in there?

I've mentioned that many of my guildies are hitting the PTR to see Ulduar. Given the hours we raid (max 12 weekly), we don't try to compete for server firsts or anything, but we do like to push ourselves to get the most out of the time we do have. So we'll hopefully see a few encounters on the PTR to help the early days of live server action.

Having never done that before, I'm a little excited to try it out. Sure, like one of the readers here pointed out, that might lead to experiencing doldrums or boredom more quickly after patch 3.1 is released, but I'm willing to give it a whirl.

What about the business opportunity?

We're already seeing posts cropping up about business opportunities. Such and such item is changing, which means so and so material will drop/rise in value so TAKE ACTION NOW!!!!! And the climate will only get more and more urgent as the business folk discover more and more impacts on the economy.

Sure, if you are able to anticipate changes, you can make or save a pretty penny.

Your average player? Probably not that concerned, other than maybe learning about some new daily quests that'll come out to grind out a minimum wage.

The rich will get richer, the folks who only care about having enough dough to enchant and repair won't really give a hoot. I think I count as middle class maybe, somewhere in between the true rich and the i-cant-respec-back-to-my-raid-job-because-i'm-broke ppl, having enough money for frivolity, but earned via gathering and questing rather than buy low/sell high or whatever. I doubt the middle class cares too much about the patches.

The only one I actually care about

This post was actually inspired by one of the dozens and dozens of "3.1 PTR" posts at WoW Insider. This one.

Seems like they might change Fool For Love title to require only 6 out of 8 candies, which means that when I log into the live patch 3.1, I'll instantly be a fool for love, since I've got 7/8 candies at the moment.

And I think that annoys me.

Not game changing in any way shape or form. Nobody's house blew up or any airplanes crashing.

The seasonal event came and went, for better or worse, you either got it or didnt. Sure, I, like many others, felt the seasonal event was soured by the short duration and total dependence on the random number who-haa.

But its over. And it was soured. It gets no less sour by granting me the title after the fact by altering the requirements.

Its like competing in the olympics, not getting gold medal, then 6 months later, video review of the race shows that the gold medal winner stepped his foot out of bounds so he's disqualified and you win gold....6 months later.

Yes, you carry the achievement with you forever, and you hang the gold medal in your trophy room or wear the title around azeroth.

But the moment came and went, and you missed out on it. I highly doubt you'll get a Wheaties box picture 6 months later.

Getting the Lover title months after the event ended will just be stupid and anticlimactic.

I might feel differently if I was trying to get the reward for all the seasonal stuff (special mount, maybe????), but I'm not in the brew of the month club, so that'll be waiting at least until September 2010 I think, and who knows if I'll even be playing WoW at that point?

Who Moved My Cheese?

I seem to always get annoyed by all the hype when big patches first hit the PTR.

This patch is the first big content patch where I'm part of a guild that's cleared everything up to this point and ready to jump in head first, and I think that actually has me even more annoyed by the hype, which seems counter intuitive.

But I suppose that's me....counter-intuitive and fearing of change.

MUST. STOP. READING.

After I finished this post, I read another at WoW Insider, which has now been removed from my feed reader for the next week. No Soup for Insider! One Week!

Luckily, enough regular bloggers write about incoming changes, so I likely won't miss out on any breaking news ;-)

Normal mounts won't dismount when landing in water. Cool.

New aquatic mount added to game. Also cool.

Inferring that this means the next expansion pack will be about some Maelstrom or whatever? Are you $#@#$ing kidding me?

Whether true or not...its just ludicrous!

LK has been out for ~3 months. And they're already leaping to conclusions and making half-assed extrapolations about the next one.

And I though it was only jack@ss bloggers who did shoddy research and then made outrageous incorrect claims.

Alternate Quest Reward

2009-02-24T07:57:00.002-05:00

Hardcore Casual recently ran an article describing MMO quests as lackluster (my paraphrase). Whether it is the difference between trivial tasks (kill some rats) and epic quests (change the world), or the text we all ignore since we really dont care about an NPC's starving family, we just want to level and move on.

The author touches upon the possibility of putting in some random rewards. Sometimes gold. Sometimes gear. Sometimes...an XP boost.

And that last one hit a chord with me.

WoW is the first game I ever played where the expansion packs require you to PLAY the original game plus all earlier expansion packs.

Many games require you to BUY and INSTALL the original, because the companies want to get paid, but to play the expansion pack, you can jump right in and play the expansion pack.

MMO is different. They require you to buy, install, and PLAY all past versions of the game before you can start playing the xpac.

And the parts of the old versions that you generally get to play are the (my opinion) less exciting ones. For a large group of the player base, the end game is where the fun is at. Questing and leveling provide some entertainment, but often are viewed as an obstacle in the way of the end game. When you want to play the expansion pack, you don't pause to enjoy the classic raids at the appropriate level, since everybody else is playing the new expansion's end game and in a social game, you pretty much need to be at the same general point as a large group of other people.

Blizzard seems to acknowledge this so they reduced the XP needed to level in classic, and then TBC levels. They invented recruit-a-friend so you can sucker in other paying subscribers and help them fastforward through the obsolete content (or triple box your way to a half baker's dozen level 60's). If you want to play an alt, you can Death Knight it up and hop in at 55. Still only applying to your own alts, there is the 10% increase in XP from heirloom shoulders.

Seems that they realize nobody wants to play the old games as much as they want to play the new game. What a revelation??!!??

I doubt they'd build a Death Knight-like path for every class (do some entry level stuff to learn the very basics, and then enter the world at 55 or some other fast-forward point), which would be nice, IMO, even for new players.

But, maybe just add in an optional Quest Reward on all quests that currently allow you an option of gear or potions or whatever.

I'd choose "Nice Chunk of XP" as the reward every time, especially when playing a toon that's getting a free ride through quests by their big sister level 80 toon, and therefore does not need any gear.

Round and Round We Go

2009-02-24T07:57:00.001-05:00

Short Version: Don't go AFK out in the world on a PvP server.

Medium Version: I can haz jump shot skillz. I nailed that f'ing warrior with countless Explosive Shot jumpers, while running circles around a little pile of dirt in Hellfire.

Long Version:

If you've been following along with my beloved blog, you might know that I'm not a big world PvP guy. Occasional (read: one) raid on Horde cities, occasional turf battle over a Titanium node (however, single click mining has taken most of the fun out of this one), and just generally defending myself when the enemy strikes.

So I'm out in Hellfire Peninsula, multiboxing to boost my jewelcrafter up to 65 so she can start doing the JC daily, and I'm over in the west part of the map. There's a Cenarion Expedition camp just south of the main road that runs horizontally across the zone (glory road?)

That camp sits immediately south of a small mound of dirt, and there's a quest NPC on top of the mound.

My lil JC turns in one of the quests, and I minimize the WoW screen to fiddle with iTunes and my level 80 and 62 toons are just sitting there waiting to be slaughtered.

While playing DJ and queueing up some music, I see out the corner of my eye on the other screen that some pain in my ass Horde warrior felt he didn't want any Alliance on that little hill.

By the time the WoW screen regained focus of my computer, my little baby 62 was dead, and Amava was at about 80% health.

Round and Round We Go

So clearly he's gonna whoop me. (A) I'm not that good at 1-on-1 pvp, (B) I'm wearing PvE gear so I've got zero resil and no trinket to get out of stuns, and (C) He's got a 20% health head start on me.

But, he's not going to get away without a fight.

Since I had been AFK, I think he was startled that I began evasive maneuvers.

What's the single most important resource in a fight between a Hunter and Warrior? Distance.

Wing Clip, Disengage, Frost trap, Run like the dickens

That little mound was just hysterical. I started running circles around it. Doing whatever I could to maintain distance.

Kite the bastard.

I was doing my normal Strafe-Kite routine, but it was leaving me unable to fire some of the time, due to the orientation of me not facing towards him enough.

And it dawned on me....Jump Shot.

I've been using jumpers more and more in PvE lately. Very useful in Malygos phase 2 when running from shield to shield, on Sartharion while maneuvering to get in safe spots in the flame wall, or on Heigan to keep doing damage while playing DDR.

But PvP? I've never really done it effectively so sorta gave up and stick to my strafing routine.

So I try the first one. Run directly away from him. Jump. Spin 360. Fire Explosive Shot while facing him.

HOLY SHT! IT WORKED!

And Lock-n-Load proc'ed off that first one. Happy Hunter :-)

So again and again. Running circles around that mound. Dropping frosty traps, mixing in concussive shot, keeping serpent sting ticking.

Explosive Jumpers galore.

Had him down to 10% before he finished me off.

I lost the fight, but , man, oh, man, was it a cool feeling to successfully execute some clean jump shots. I think I'm going to have to visit a few BG's and try this out some more.

If only I had been questing in PvP gear

My only regret was that I wasn't in PvP gear at the time. He was sooooo dead if I had my dancing shoes on.

Also, it was the first time I ever did a completely clean for-real jump shot on purpose in PvP, so if I was thinking right, I'd have kited him in a straight line all the way to Honor Hold instead of round and round that dirt hill. Whatcha gonna do? /shrug

But it was fun as hell. And he did the honorable thing and accepted his victory and went on his merry way rather than camping out.

ORA2 Tank Frame Misdirection Addon?

2009-02-23T08:28:00.001-05:00

Quick question to readers:

I would find it very useful to be able to click (or right click, or whatever, just no menu systems during combat) on one of the tanks specified by the raid leader in the oRA2 Tank Frame window to cast Misdirection on that player without changing my current target.

Is there anything out there like that?

A New Visit to the Performance Improvement Plan

2009-02-23T08:26:00.001-05:00

When my WotLK raiding began, it became clear very quickly that I had some work to do to extract more performance out of my toon. So I started my formalized improvement plan, with just about weekly updates tracking the progress and revising the plan as changes occurred.

The plan was most helpful in the beginning because a fresh level 80 toon has such an immense breadth of options to go after. Prioritizing the top 5 items allowed for constructive progress, without the overwelming feeling that comes with excessive options.

Over time, the very concrete items like specific gear items or faction reps began getting replaced with softer skills like working on the shot rotation, more detailed reviews of the talent trees, different timings of special abilities during boss fights, and so on.

Then some insane nerfs came in and flipped the performance plan inside out, mostly centering on learning how to work with a totally different set of special shots, pet capabilities, and the always-wonderful-but-strange-to-a-new-comer Lock and Load.

After the BM nerf came the stealth Explosive Shot nerf, leaving any baseline comparisons from week to week in total confusion.

But we've been stable for a couple of weeks, and an old friend threatened to have his alt hunter surpass my DPS on Patchwerk, so it was back to the drawing board.

Three key adjustments on my part for this week's : Anticipating Lag, Timing Special Abilities, and Being A Tard

The Real Kicker: LAG

I've had a sneaking suspicion that Lag is causing me some DPS issues

Comparing my numbers to brass (a hunter I raid with), when we were BM, our DPS numbers were much closer to one another. Since the switch to SV, we both took a decrease, but my numbers dropped disproportionately. We talk about shot rotations, gear items, stats, you name it, all the time, but nothing was coming out as a clear reason for us to have such different numbers.

My first theory was "he's just better at huntering than me". Likely true, but I'm not one to just sorta sit there and write things off.

So I developed an updated theory..."BM gets lots of damage from the pet that is doing automated attacking which has much less dependence upon client lag than human-activated key presses, therefore my higher Lag is hurting my SV output more than it was hurting my BM output. and brass is also just better at huntering than me."

Lag is unique to each player and a few in-game comparisons show mine to be about 100-200ms higher than what the other hunter has.

So this week, I decided to try to push those GDC's a little bit.

Hammering my shots just a fraction of a second before the GCD appeared to be up.

And lo and behold, the shots were firing without any issue, and clearly firing in a much tighter rotation than was previously achieved if I let the GCD fully expire before trying to fire.

Pain in my ass from a "repeatable scientific" perspective, because lag is variable week to week as network conditions vary. But interesting to note.

Timing Special Abilities

Timing is everything, and not just for GCD's and keypresses.

In the past, when BM was king, timing things to ensure I had Bestial Wrath ready when Heroism was called was a massive DPS increase. Likewise for other On-Use performance enhancing abilities.

On the plus side, proper timing allows for a very low cost way to improve your DPS, and is available to all players without any gold or grind. On the down side, optimal timing requires good knowledge of the encounter, your team's performance and time-to-kill, when your raid leader will call for Heroism, and so on.

But my benchmark is Patch-25, which is a very well known fight, with a very confident estimated duration, and a predictable Heroism invocation.

SV has no BW and both of my trinkets are on-equip rather than on-use, so I took a look at what cooldowns I have to play with: Rapid Fire (haste boost) and Call of the Wild (attack power boost)

I used to be a CotW auto-caster. 5 minute cooldown. So in a Patch-25 three minute kill, this would autocast right at the beginning. The new routine is to manually casting it during Heroism, which I know for my raid to be somewhere in the 2:00 or 2:15 point of the fight. Curse the pet special action bar and its 4 available slots.

Rapid Fire, since special shots dont clip auto-shots anymore, I don't think there's any such thing as too much haste. Why not lump that one in there with Heroism and CotW? Only going to get one shot at RF in a 3 minute fight, so lets make it count.

And Haste Potion.

I really wish I had opened up the character screen to see my shot speed, but it was just a machine gun. RF, Haste Pot, Heroism. Gattling would have been proud.

Who brought the Huntard?

Yeah, this one just sucks. You know 5 of those points you invested in Tier 1 of the Survival tree? The ones in Improved Tracking? Yeah, those!

YOU GET JACK SHT FOR THOSE POINTS IF YOU TRACK MINERALS THE WHOLE DAMN RAID!

Improved Tracking adds between 2-5% to your DPS, so lets just call it 3.5% that I shoved up my tail pipe. I thought I was sitting a little funny during that fight.

Results

I wish I could separate out the improvement via my lag adjustment from the improvement via my special ability timing, but whatcha gonna do?

Last week: 4.4K DPS

This week: 5.0K DPS

If we account for the Improved Tracking Brainfart: 5.2K DPS

Not quite a "Daddy's Back" kind of moment, but I'm definitely happy with the changes, and very happy to be back above the 5K arbitrary line of joy.

These techniques were used during all boss fights (although none are quite as 100% predictable/comparable week-on-week as Patch), and I noticed improvement across the board.

F#ing Lag!!

And then there was one....faction

2009-02-20T08:31:00.000-05:00

Why is it that faction exalterations seem to come in groups for me? I've long had a history of dinging Exalted in various factions within a few days or so of eachother. And Northrend seems to be no different.

Kirin Tor. Do the daily cooking quest for a WHOPING 150 rep per day. That's just outstanding! Gonna ding that one in no time flat. But luckily, they giveth us the Tabard championing concept, so I wear the goofy Tor Tabard for a while, and bingo. Not sure what this brings besides cheeper repairs in Dalaran, but certainly appeals to the completionist.

Wyrmwrest Accord. Three dailies avaialble. Two reasonable ones (disrupt energy beam in dragonblight, harpoon a lil dragon in coldara and farm 3 stacks of cobalt and two stacks of tiger lily on the way over), and one hateful one (aces high. once you figure out how to survive malygos phase 3 more than 80% of the time, aces high can suck an egg). 500 rep per day from the reasonable ones is slow and steady. Throwing the Tabard into the heroic mix helps things along. Sat down yesterday, did the two reasonable ones, collected the nice stacks of ore, gems, crystalizeds, and herbs along the way. Found myself 37 points away from exalted.

So I caved and went Aces High. Long story short, if you see anybody else in the area....group up. Two of us did the quest in no time flat, me DoT he HoT, ding exalted. And some other achievement for finishing off a bunch of Northrend exalteds.

And another dragon to fly on, dinging 10 mount achievement. Tough to choose between Cenarion War Hippogryph, Red Wyrmrest Dragon, and Purple Netherwing Dragon, they all feel a bit different when flying, which is probably just the eyes playing a trick on me, but its fun to have choices.

And then there was one...Explorer's League. 4K into Friendly with only one daily quest worth 250. What is that? 5 months? 6 months? IF you do it daily.

We'll see.

Doldrums?

2009-02-19T09:06:00.002-05:00

So I wrote up a post yesterday, all slap happy about how I finally got most of the crafting professions up to being able to make most of the stuff a Hunter or Shadow Priest need. Sure, one might argue that leveling Blacksmithing to really only create 4 or 5 belt buckles and one epic caster mace, Inscription to make a glyph or two and maybe dabble in darkmoon cards, Alchemy to make a couple of potions and elixirs, Engineering to maybe not even ever make any bullets before the ammo-changing patch, and LW to make 3 or 4 armor patches that'll get any personal use is rather costly and frivolous, but whatever. There's something fun about it.

Before posting, I did something unusual, I actually re-read it instead of just throwing it out the door and leaving it up to the readers to decide whether to jump ship after the first paragraph or two. Came out boring, even by my standards. So it shant see the light of day.

Then I tried to think of another topic.

Another description of a heroic PuG that had a total jabroni, who got kicked and replaced by a nice fella, and we looted some badges? Bah. Not enough drama to be story-worthy.

Do I write about clearing Heroic Sarth+3, Malygos, and 75% of Naxx in 3 hours? Efficient, yes. Good material for a story, no.

How about topping the meters on 4 Horsemen, which is only story-worthy because (A) with the team i'm in its rare enough, and (B) the nerfs have been pissing me off so its a smack in blizzard's face? No, (A) the attitudes on my team are cool enough that it really doesn't feed the ego, and there's only one guy who actually boasts when he's on top and we all hate when he does that, and (B) i still suck on many of the other fights, so this was probably an explosive-shot crit fiesta anomaly.

What about more ranting over the hit rating, and how I'm playing with a helm downgrade that lets me regem everything else resulting in a roughly 700 gold cost for essentially a side-grade that frees me of some these stupid +hit gems? Booooorrrrriiiinnng.

Anybody care that I raided with a Raptor instead of my lil kitty Princess Vespa? Likely not. Although he is from Arathi Highlands, one of my most sentimental places in Azeroth, which is nice for me, but boring for you.

Everything I came up with is not really story worthy.

So it got me to thinking.......is this sorta what WoW is going through right now? A doldrum?

Ulduar is set to come out some time soon-ish.

My guild will probably fiddle with it on the PTR, which I've never done before, so that might be interesting.

This is the first time in my WoW career where I'm progressing at or faster than the pace of content release. By the time I began raiding TBC, everything but sunwell was already in play, meaning that there was always content out of reach, and my raid never had the feeling of "ok, now what?", plus the content felt harder so we didnt get to the 3 hour kara farming runs for months, until everybody was geared in T5/6 equivalent gear from badges and pvp.

I'm definitely not bored in game. I'm hitting some heroics, seeking out some random achievements, playing with alt professions. A random battleground here or there, some wintergrasp when I'm in Dalaran and the event kicks off. Playing with the uber gf. Holiday Events. Farming herbs and ores, which is one of my favorite relaxations. So lots of activity and lots of fun.

I'm not one typically subject to writers block. Maybe that means I usually have low enough standards that I just brain dump and fling it out the door, but I wonder if there's something to it?

Anybody else feeling in limbo before Ulduar's release? Not bored, but just sorta in a holding pattern?

Reflections on Foolish Love

2009-02-17T08:41:00.001-05:00

Another seasonal event came and gone, so its naturally time for reflecting upon the experience.

To recap some of the earlier reflections:
1) Merrymaker - big win. Fun combo of group and solo play. Very accessible.
2) Elder - pretty good, big hickup that you are forced to run a heroic, and therefore are forced to level up to 80.

So, Love Fools out there, what'd you think of this one?

I'll sum it up my experience with a word....

RNG

Random Number Generator.

If the RNG granted you one or more Bags of Candy, and then the RNG again favored you by giving you each of the required candies, you probably liked this one.

Looking at some of the achievements I dinged, you'd think the RNG was a big fan of me this weekend.

I got the Black Dress, which isn't required for the title, but is supposedly hella rare.

I got the permanent companion pet guy, which isn't required for the title, but is supposedly hella rare.

6 Picnic Baskets, although you only need one. Where's Yogi when I need him?

I even got two bags of candy.

Every single achievement associated with the event. Almost.

One silly piece of candy.

"You're mine" or whatever. Just a single piece of candy missing out of the pile.

So perhaps my assessment of the event is skewed. I'll try to remain objective...

The Good

1) A variety of activities, mostly just some talking to NPC's, which isn't too intense, good for a relaxing morning or two.

2) I don't know why, but I've grown to enjoy the ones where you have to locate one of each class/race combination. For Alliance on my server, Troll Rogue seemed to be the universal goocher. What was your toughest one to find?

3) Voting for your favorite Faction Leader. (see more on this below). Fun. Although I like Ironforge the best, I had to stick to my Nelf roots and go Darnassus.

4) Much less running around than other events. I did enjoy the exploration side of the Elder coins, but I'm also happy that most of the traveling for this event was portal to city / hearth back from city.

5) Mending Hearts. When I first thought about this achievement, 20 mendings, i was annoyed. Once I got into the groove, it was kinda fun, in a totally killing time way.

The Bad

0) Too Short - lol, that's what she said. 5 days? 6 days? If you had anything else going on this weekend, such as RL valentines day for the many many folks who choose to embrace a commercialized event in which corporations tell us to spend money in an effort to tell the important people that we love them, then you were definitely hard pressed to get it done. This loses major accessibility points in my book. But, if you say I Love You on a regular basis, say...via boosting runs, you're free of the normal pressures of val's day XD

1) Like a Plague - Thursday and Friday night in major cities was worse than when the Plague hit right before WotLK's release. Every coconut on the server was running all over the place. /General and /Trade were 1000% less readable than normal. If you're going for "game altering experience" then this was win, but those first two nights were intolerable IMO.

2) Un-Mendable Hearts - The overall mechanic of of the broken heart and requiring another player to mend, kinda fun. However, trying to finish off the Darnassus gift on a saturday morning, when your morning is 3 hours before the server's morning? Awful. I got a broken heart with no mender, had to abandon the pursuit until much later. I understand the "lets get players to interact" part of it, but would have been nice to have something other than a 1 hour timeout to reset this without blowing my hearth to go to Dalaran for a mending.

3) Shooting rockets - Ok, I get the reference to firing rockets too fast and what not. Hardy har har. But these add very little value. Map to action button, spam button, spam mouse click for ground area target. Complete achievement. But whilst going for speed, you barely even get to enjoy the visual of the rockets firing, which I think takes away from the experience.

4) Voting for Faction Leaders - I already said I like this one, so what's bad about it? Nearly zero publicity. They should put a NPC running around in Dalaran, constantly barking out the standings. Make people actually (A) aware of the standings, and (B) sorta want to contribute to it. Put a massive statue of the currently winning faction leader in front of both banks in Dal, updated hourly or something and the winner gets to keep their statue in place for a month. Make this stuff relevant. I think the only actual benefit is the winner gets some buff-giving NPC tucked away in some old-world capital city for a week. /bah

5) Too Many Items - I think the number of items was excessive. Sure, I'm nitpicking, but there were too many bag slots required, there were too many Icons that look identical or nearly so, too many differences between soulbound, non-soulbound but you must conjure it so no trading, non-soulbound but you can trade it, on and on.

6) 1 Minute Cooldown on Fragrances - Why? Just why? I mean, the whole concept of a seasonal event is a time sink that's mildly entertaining. Why require one minute between applying Perfume and Cologne?

The Ugly

Already said it. In the end, completion was entirely RNG based, which combined with the shortened duration of the event, is fail in my book.

Even if I had gotten the last candy, I'd still be disliking this aspect. But not quite as much :-)

The other ugly: Ganking Coconuts in Gurubashi

Four horde just stayed there for hours ganking anybody trying to pity the fool in Stranglethorn Vale. Again, I know the whole concept of the event is a waste of time, but this brings it to a new level.

Luckily in addition to being stupid, they also had slow reflexes, so I was easily able to spawn, drop the fool, pity the fool, and even make some headway towards the exit before they got me again.

And the Paladin who tried to chase me down, thinking crusader aura is the shiznit? Lol. Mammoth with Aspect of the Pack runs just as fast as you. I kited him nearly all the way to Booty Bay, /waving and /cheering the whole way, before he realized he wasn't going to catch me.

Bottom Line

Some fun random activities.

Potential for inter-faction and inter-race competition via leader votes.

Too much dependence on random numbers.

Accessibility cut short due to short duration.

Maybe a 5 out of 10?

I Will Survive

2009-02-17T08:38:00.000-05:00

How does one follow up after last week's shenanigans?

Continue to muddy things up with additional conflict?

Describe the outstanding experience of a boosting run through Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle this weekend where the boostee may or may not have contributed to a few wipes (*), and yet the tone on vent was light, fluffy, and full of laughter and win?

Share two additional reputation-based anecdotes from the weekend (one where positive rep caused gain, another where poor rep caused loss/closed opportunity)?

Tell the tale of a PuG run (no uber gf) where two DPS'ers were below the tank and yet we still managed to clear Heroic Nexus in 32 minutes without any wipes, beating the Raid ID reset timer by 7 minutes allowing a second follow-up run, thus efficiently grinding gear, emblems, faction rep, and hunter pet xp?

Go passive/aggressive by floating teasers about several occasions where cooperative play led to fun, gear/economic gain, or both? (mabye, just a little bit).

Nothing to see here, folks

Nah, I'm gonna take the advice of several people I respect and just move along. Nothing to see here!

What to do then? How about a tribute post linking to a funny page, followed by a review of the most recent seasonal event (see next post)?

/voice [Karazhan Chess Piece that kinda sounds like George Takei] on
Sounds fine.
/voice off

So, first on the agenda: tribute.

Here's a recent outstanding parody song over at BRK. Very well done, sung to the tune of Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, captures the inner conflict amongst the Hunter community quite nicely.

Go go go, read....nay.....sing that post now.

(*) Oh, and for the record, it was actually the boosters who caused the wipes not the boostee (one was specifically me not getting it through my thick head when the healer asked for "hunter take out the witch doctors", but I digress), but its moot because the end result was a fun hour or so of play time for five people.

When Goblins Fail

2009-02-12T17:21:00.002-05:00

Its a sorry sight to see when someone you used to respect as an intellectual person who is willing to take a controversial position resorts to slander and personal insult.

What follows is likely an incohesive, meandering braindump which is nothing new around here XD.

I wasn't going to honor the situation with much of a response other than to confront my attacker, but I'm following the example of BBB, a person I have tremendous respect for, and just let it go where it will when an Internet personna makes an attack without fear of real life consequences.

I'll warn in advance, I've got a bit of spare time today, so this might become a book.

Lets see where this one goes, shall we...

[EDIT: played out pretty long. BBB'd be proud. So I slapped the usual short/medium/long format for your convenience. Let me know how far you make it.]

Short Version

Intellectual debate turns ugly when greedy goblin resorts to personal insult and slander rather than provide meaningful content.

Medium Version

GG is out to prove that cooperative teamwork is fail because he has yet to be successful in a cooperative environment and he lacks the empathy required to imagine what its like when he reads about the experiences of others.

When he does read of success coming out of a cooperative environment and he has nothing of substance to support the position he is clinging to so vehemently, he launches personal attacks.

And destroys any respect I used to have for him.

I suppose in the end, I should just stop boosting the website traffic of an interpersonal M&S.

Long Version

For the few months that I've been reading Greedy Goblin (when he was recently linked by Tobold, yet another writer who discusses controversial issues without resorting to personal insult), I've thoroughly enjoyed what I read. His posts about economics are interesting, sometimes informative, usually entertaining whether you agree or disagree with his position.

His approach is much harsher than your average person is used to, but once you see past that, there used to be some value here and there, however those economic posts have become much more rare of late. His posts about grouping are horrific but sometimes entertaining, but in the look-at-the-train-wreck-who-cant-play-well-with-others-and-blames-the-others-for-it kind of way, rather than the quality of the content or (lacking) supporting evidence for his position.

However, he's turned to personal insult. He's turned to completely unsubstantiated accusation. He attempted to find a flaw in a post I wrote yesterday, his research came up empty, and with no other way out, he accuses me of lying.

Intellectual Debate Gets Ugly

In the short history of emails, blog posts, and comments between GG and I, we've had agreements, disagreements, thought provoking intellectual conversation. Facts. Ideas. Professional/adult debate.

He took two recent posts of mine and tried to dissect them, in an effort to prove....something? I'm not actually sure, as he's provided no support for any position other than wanting to bash me.

Granted, both of my posts hi-light how un-goblinish behavior led to (A) fun/entertainment value, or (B) economic value.

So a response is not a surprise. What was unexpected was a personal attack completely devoid of fact or substance.

First Post:Strong Raid Guild Brings A Friend Into VoA - Boosting is frowned upon by businessmen, so GG takes offense.

Second Post: One Example Of Guild Reputation Making A Difference In A Business Transaction - In the past GG has used a loose analogy to some academic research to try to demonstrate that reputation does not matter, so he takes offense.

However, in neither of those posts do I make any claims that this is a universal truth. I'm merely conveying the story of two in-game events that brought me joy or gold, and some of the background behind how I came to that joy or gold. No claims that this will work every time, for every person, guaranteed. Just two fun anecdotes that contrast to the extreme position that's been portrayed in GG's posts.

No attack on anybody else, or any attempt to bring somebody else down, but rather, simply celebration of some things I've enjoyed.

Cooperative Play Accomplishes Results

My guild is very successful at raiding. We work hard, we play hard, we distribute gear effectively, we challenge underperformers. We have proven results.

Icing on the cake...we are successful at raiding while maintaining very positive environment, we have lots of fun, and while doing so, we waste very little time.

I'm pretty sure a business person would be very interested in an operation like that.

Using a cooperative approach to teamwork, a core group of people tackled the hardest 25-person content the game has to offer, and plans on continuing to do so as bigger and bigger challenge is released.

We're at the point that we routinely clear all 25-person content in 6 or 7 hours, and improve on that time each and every week.

Morons & Slackers?

We do not carry poor performers on our roster for very long. In fact, the performance culture we've bred weeds out 90% of the M&S before they even apply to the guild. An effective recruiting process, and an effective trial raiding process takes care of the rest.

As a result, even our lowest performing raiders are of an extremely high caliber, and continuously strive for self-improvement.

How would a business person NOT be interested in something like that?

But for some reason, GG cannot accept that we enjoy this kind of success, and is out to prove something, although nobody's quite clear on what that something is.

We Boosted, and it was Fantastic

We boosted a friend in a VoA run.

We had fun!

You cannot put an economic value on "fun" and therefore, GG must reject the pursuit. But, lacking anything of substance to say on the topic, he resorts to childish insult.

Although we have not tried yet, I believe we could probably defeat Heroic VoA with 9 or 10 of our top raiders, and any collection of 15-16 other level 80 toons you can find.

There is zero risk to bring a friend. We will not wipe. We will not waste unnecessary time.

This is not Sarth 25+3. This is VoA.

The result of boosting a friend in a low risk situation is to bring the team closer together.

A business person who does not understand organizational dynamics cannot see the value here.

But the leaders and members of our Guild do understand the bond that forms and how it can improve team performance if managed properly, and we've got the proven results to show for it.

Reputation Makes A Difference

I describe one solitary situation in which a customer explicitly informs me that the reputation of my guild made a difference in one business transaction.

I do not claim this to be proof that reputation has value for all groups in all situations, and provides a blank check with which to do as one pleases.

I do claim that for ME in THIS SITUATION it DID!

There's plenty of data out there in real-world business to provide the proof that Brand Value and Reputation have actual real economic value. A simple example is on the shelf in your local pharmacy. Tylenol bottle of same dosage of same medicine sits right next to Generic Acetaminophen. Tylenol costs double. Tylenol product line has not been discontinued due to zero sales or financial loss. That's proof enough in my book that brand and reputation have economic value.

You can say that reputation has value because of Morons & Slackers believing marketing hype, but doing so only illustrates your complete inability to understand group dynamics.

GG Has No Real Response

He has some internal feeling that nothing good can possibly come from cooperative behavior. I've got my own ideas on how a person can reach that state of mind, but I'll keep them to myself as I'm trying to avoid the whole personal insult thing.

So he tries to tear me down. GG cannot prove otherwise, so he attacks.

Tries to claim I'm a liar, simply because he cannot find a shadow priest in my guild with quest greenie gear, zero or few raiding achievements, and 450 mining.

He cannot find this player, so he accuses me of lying.

Nice Work, Sherlock

He claims to have done "research" to find my realm, guild, and toon.

My Armory Link is Right There -------> in the upper right of the blog. Always has been.

Intellectual Property Theft

He took an image from my site, posted a copy onto his host, and re-used it on his site. Not even a simple embedded image linking back to my original, but direct plagiarism. In the same post that he copy-and-pastes several paragraphs from BBB's site and reposts it on his.

Your posts regarding business ethics have new meaning to me.

Srs Bsns!

Durgan gets to use Amava/Amiva interchangeably. GG does not.

The toon name is irrelevant (armory link points to correct toon), the internet persona is Amava. Respect it!

Just like you wouldn't call Prince "Prince" while his name was that funny symbol, you don't get to call me Amiva.

Bottom Line

I'd like to thank everybody, besides GG, who is still reading by this point.

I warned of incoherent meanderings at the top, and if you made it this far, you deserve a Pepsi (not some generic cola, brands have value, lol) or a coffee (starbucks) or something. Go ahead and get yourself one.

I would have much preferred if GG either (A) had something to add to the discussion supporting or refuting my thesis that reputation has real value, -OR- (B) provided a response with unenlightening-but-entertaining content without turning to personal insult.

I suppose in the end, I should just stop boosting the website traffic of an interpersonal M&S XD

One Example of Guild Reputation

2009-02-12T07:25:00.001-05:00

What follows is basically just a story of selling two titansteel cooldowns, with a little guild-ego stroking mixed in. If you find that boring, /shoo

Reputation is a tricky thing. It takes consistent behavior observed over a period of time to build a positive reputation, and a single bad event can crumble what takes months to build.

This holds true for individuals, families, small groups of people, and even large corporations.

Companies spend enormous energy trying to build up their reputation or brand value. Its brand value alone that lets Tylenol charge more for the exact same pill that your local pharmacy sells a generic version for dirt cheap.

A Business Deal

Although I enjoy reading about the economic practices of Goblins, I'm definitely not one myself.

I make my wow-gold by gathering while I'm out and about doing what ever it is that I'm doing. And "what ever it is that i'm doing" is often daily questing, which only further divides my activities from the efficient gold/hour numbers that Goblins are capable of.

However, even I recognize the value of a daily cooldown.

Smelt Titansteel

I should probably be using my Titansteel cooldowns to save up mats to boost my gf with an epic shadow priest mace.

But, I'll deal with that when I get to it, and I'm about 20 blacksmithing points away from needing to worry about that.

In the meantime, there's always somebody willing to pay good money for a cooldown.

One such fella barks on /trade, he and I arrange a get together at the Dalaran forge.

Badda bing, badda boom, he's got his steel, I've got my gold. Smell ya later.

But then a happy moment comes along.

Oh, cool, titanium

The uber gf was out and about doing whatever it is that girls that play wow like to do, and she's a miner, and came across a titanium node and mined it.

Go you!

Wait a tick? I thought titanium required 450 maxed mining. When did you ding that?

This morning

Ah, gratz. Wait another tick? Wanna make some gold? (digital pimpin', ftw)

My happy customer from just moments ago, as it would turn out, is interested in one more Titansteel.

So she scoots back to Dalaran, he trades over the mats.

Like a Bat out of Hell

And what he sees next is....the toon he just traded a hundred or so gold worth of mats with...she bolts like a bat out of hell out into Dalaran.

WTF? or at least that's probably what was going through his head as he trotted off to follow her.

You see, having just dinged 450 that morning, she hadn't trained to smelt titansteel yet. And in a brain fart, rather than just talk to the mining trainer right here, she decided to wander deeper into the city.

So I reassure him what she's up to, so please don't worry.

Respect

It was his answer that made the ape-subroutines ingrained in my genes smile....

I'm not worried, I respect your guild. I dont think she'd stiff me.

And she didn't. Two seconds later, she's trained up in steel, he's got his product, she's got her money. Smell ya later.

Sure, we're not talking about world-changing stuff like the brand value of Google or Nike, but the guild's reputation did keep things calm in a situation where the customer might have started crying "NINJA!!!"

Its all about respect, and it looks like we're doing something right.

How to make a Goblin Cry

2009-02-11T08:10:00.002-05:00

Goblins are business people. They thrive on information asymmetry to part idiots and their gold, and they strive to earn max reward with minimum effort.

Some Goblins write entertaining, informative articles about economic principles, while taking extreme but misguided positions on working in a team of other people.

Two big things make Goblins Cry:

1) Buying 10 Crystallized Fire for much more gold than 1 Eternal Fire

2) Boosting weak people through content, allowing them to earn epics without equal input (

Well, #1 is a little mis-placed because generally the Goblins are the ones selling the Crystallized, so it only makes them cry if they accidentally purchase an expensive item when there's an equivalent cheap item available. But Goblins are perfect, so they never make those kinds of mistakes ;-)

However, boosting the "dumbs"! That's a sure way to rub a goblin the wrong way.

A Shadow Priest's First Raid

While I was getting ready for our 25-person raid monday night, the uber gf was putzing around in Dalaran and saw some PuG 10-man looking for a Shadow Priest for Vault of Archavon.

She said she's going for it! And what's VoA? pst, its a raid, honey :-)

Woe-fully under hit cap, clad largely in quest greens with a couple Heroic Gumdrop drops, all nice and neatly gemmed and enchanted.

She lets them know she's a recent 80 new to end-game, and they're all good with it.

Rock On!

Luckily, VoA is a quick little run, so for a casual player jumping into a group can have some fun without a major time committment.

So I give my advice (stuff falls from ceiling during trash, move out of it. stalactites fall from ceiling/boss during boss, move out of it. keep vampiric touch up. have fun.) and she's off.

Quick like a bunny, she kills the boss and its on to looting.

And the T7 priesty pants drop, and they're all hers!

Gratz on your first epic, lady!

Boosting to make a Goblin Cry!!!!!!

A Shadow Priest's Second Raid

While all this is going on, we're getting our 25-person raid together. The plan is to do VoA real quick, then head over to one-shot Malygos, and then call it a night.

As it would turn out, some people were already saved to heroic VoA, which is pretty puzzling why we have folks running 25's out-of-guild, but I digress.

So we found ourselves short on players.

Around this time, I excitedly tell the team that the gf just did her first raid, 10-man VoA.

Many cheers, followed by the GM having the sweet idea of inviting her for some Big Leagues action.

And since she's already right there at the portal, all the better.

So, how did it play out....

1) More news to fuel the Goblin fires. Less DPS than the tanks. Taken on the surface, its boosting at its finest. However, when you look beyond the surface and consider these tanks are the best geared and skilled tanks on the server, and the player is in her first 25-person raid ever, 1200 DPS ain't too shabby, and provides a good benchmark as she works on getting a little +hit gear and a spell priority/rotation.

2) Take a look up top. We got your stealth nerf....RIGHT HERE!

No phat priesty lewtz on this run, which truly would have put the nail in the goblinish coffin, but whatever. It was fun as hell.

If only Greedy Goblin could have been there!

I just wish GG could have been there.

It was boosting in the finest form.

And it absolutely made my night!

Blunt Feedback

2009-02-11T07:57:00.000-05:00

I've had a couple posts brewing in my mind for a while now, all centered around my server/guild switch when WotLK came out, my personal switch from being raid leader to worker-bee, switching from regularly being top one or two in DPS to being anywhere from #1 to #12 depending upon if I sneezed during heroism or who nerfed what this week, and a whole host of cultural changes that come with the experience.

Reading a post over at Big Bear Butt inspired me to try to get one of the posts out onto e-paper. Read BBB's original, because as always its a good one. To paraphrase...he expects people in game to interact with other people the same way as they'd interact face-to-face. IRL, there's consequences in the form of knuckle sandwiches if you break the social rules of rudeness/offensiveness/whatever-ness. He's a US Marine, therefore, likely to receive a fair bit of well-deserved respect IRL (unfortunately probably out of fear of receiving a thumping, rather than out of respect for helping defend our country and freedom, but I digress).

Communicates Well With Others

One of the things that always strikes me in-game is how people give feedback to another player regarding behavior they'd like to see change.

Consider an example...Player A pugs with Hunter B. PA inspects HB and sees a variety of +strength gear. PA would like that behavior to change, since he has some information about the mechanics of the Hunter class.

How does the average Player A in WoW convey this information?

Response A) - I noticed you are wearing some [bad-stat] gear. I'm not sure if you are aware of it or not, but [bad-stat] provides very little benefit for your class, you'd be better off with [good-stat] or [good-stat]. To learn more, a good resource is wowwiki.com/[Class].

Response B) - dude, [bad-stat] sux. you should get more [good-stat] or [good-stat].

Response C) - fail [class] is fail. l2p noob, ur g@y

Ok, so lets take a look at the available options:

Response	Pros	Cons	Liklihood in WoW
A	Treats the person with respect. Focuses on facts and/or behavior, not personal traits. Shares some info, and also a place to go to learn more.	Wordy, long to type. Player B might not absorb everything being said.	Near to Zero
B	Succinct, quick to type. Focuses on facts and/or behavior, not personal traits.	Provides fish, but does not teach how to fish. Without supporting information, no way to tell if Player A is informed/uninformed, right/wrong.	10-15%
C	Very compact, easy to type using abbreviations.	Provides no constructive feedback to Player B such that he/she might improve. Includes personal insults and derogatory language.	Damn near all the time

What works best?

Ok, so A,B,C are some what exaggerated to prove a point. C is most likely to be found in PuGs and on /trade channel. A is best if you have a high bandwidth communication channel such as Vent or even better face-to-face where you can include the extremely high bandwidth non-verbal communication of facial expression and body language. B works reasonably via text, if the person is interested in change they can ask for followup, and if not, there's no insult or harm done.

The transition from my old guild to my new one was full of uncertainty regarding delivery of feedback.

I'd heard so many horror stories of hardcore raiding guilds and raid leaders who scream at or belittle people as their way of providing feedback.

I'm a big fan of leadership, both in the theoretical world of academia and literature, as well as practical applications of leadership as a manager at work, in emergency fire situations as a volunteer firefighter, captain of inter-scholastic sports and academic teams (nerd jock, ftw), or as a Raider/Raid Leader.

As such, I was very curious to see what style of feedback would be given in the new guild, and what my reaction would be. As much of a fan as I am of leadership, I also have a massive problem with authority, especially if the powers-that-be are abusive.

Blunt and Focused on Behavior

The heading says it all.

What I've seen so far in Conquest is blunt. The Response A given above is pretty much non-existent. Pleasantries or other fluff is basically absent in either text or voice feedback.

When you die in the fire, you'll either be asked why you died in the fire, right then and there during a post-wipe analysis.

If you're bringing sub-par threat, you'll be called on it.

If your healing assignments are dying, and the officers can figure out that your assignments aren't doing stupid stuff like standing in fire, you'll be called on it.

If Tenebron doesn't die before his second set of whelps spawns, underperforming DPS players will be called on it.

No pleasantries. No fluff.

However, the key to success is keeping the feedback focused on behavior.

"Player X, you died in the fire. Stop doing that."....

is very different from...

"Player X, you died in the fire. You suck".

Sure, among friends, telling eachother "you suck" is fine. However, in a raid environment, not everybody is close friends. Many of the 25 are there simply to accomplish a difficult (or not so difficult, depending upon your thoughts of how hard WotLK raiding is, so far) task together. Friendship grows in pockets, but it'd be a stretch to call all 30 or so raiders "friends".

Feedback focused on behavior allows the recipients to make desired changes without feeling personally insulted.

Dish it out, and take it as well

The next part that actually makes it work, IMO, is that the officers providing the feedback do not treat themselves as perfect.

Classic was a night trying to kill Sartharion + Three Drakes.

Very hard fight. Very long night (25 wipes, followed by a successful kill). Silly wipes due to void zones or fire walls become increasingly frustrating as the night goes along.

So the Raid Leader reaches, not quite a breaking point, but definitely a point at which the frustration is boiling in his voice.

He lets the raid have it in very blunt un-ambiguous terms that it is unacceptable to die in the fire, and deaths due to fire are the single barrier preventing us from success.

The very next attempt, he himself dies in the fire.

And during the post-wipe analysis, gives it to himself just as directly and bluntly as he gave it to the raid.

More attempts, fewer deaths in the fire, finally resulting in looting a boss in one of the hardest encounters in the game.

The key to the blunt feedback...and this is a recurring theme here...nothing personal. It is focused on observed behaviors, documentable facts (recount/wws data), and avoids personal insult. Note, that does not mean it avoids placing personal accountability on a specific individual when they die in the fire. Die in the fire and you'll get called out by name. However, the feedback is focused on the behavior, which is something you can change.

What's your experience?

How do you like to receive feedback?

How do you give feedback?

What's the norm for your guild? PuGs?

Where are the servers?

2009-02-10T08:50:00.001-05:00

A question came up this weekend.....

Where are the servers located?

If your server is EST timezone, do they geographically locate the hardware close to the east coast? Likewise for the other timezones.

Or is the server time simply used as a means to align the prime time of the players on a zone, making it more likely to find groups at the same time as you are available?

I was of the opinion that Blizzard has one data center (well, hopefully two located more than 200 miles away from eachother, so one can fail over for the other in case of disaster), because that'd be the least expensive for them.

Latency and bandwidth has so much more to do with where you personally sit on the network backbones, than it does with actual geographical physical location.

But my opinion was the laughing stock of those on Vent at the time. Curse you all!!!!

I could understand wanting an Asian datacenter, a European one, and an Oceanic (is that also Asia, or just Australia/NZ?), as the pipelines across the Pacific are generally low performance, and the Atlantic is better but far from ideal, however within the US, once you clear the bottleneck of your local ISP, data traffic on the tier one backbones make little difference from northeast Maine to southwest Califlowernia.

Anybody got inside knowledge on where they locate the servers? Hell, a simple traceroute with a little research to map the IPs to locations would show what I'm looking for, but that's probably beyond how interested I am in actually tracking down an answer.

Instead I'll rely upon the readers :-)

3.1 - I suppose I'll have to chime in

2009-02-10T08:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, patch notes. 3.1? or is it 3.0.9? Who can tell lately with all the change?

1) Ammo (pouch-b-gone) - Sweet. Getting another 22 bag slots (my sack is, indeed, gigantique) will be very cool. Especially as I grind out a full set of PvP gear that I generally want to have with me at all times incase Horde wants to Waltz Matilda by my Titanium node.

2) Sniper Training - Excuse me? Did I just hear you say "stand still for six seconds before this ability even kicks in?" So for a benchmark fight like Patchwerk, if you kill the boss in 2:53, then you'll be benefiting for 2:47, which is nice. For any other fight, do you ever stand still for 6 consecutive seconds? Maybe here and there. But 6 is only the beginning of the benefit. Do you ever stand still for 10 consecutive seconds, during which you'll actually get a return on your talent points for 4 seconds? This talent goes from "fun dance to try to remain at max distance which really feels like a mile away when you've got Hawk Eye" to "prolly not gonna take it".

3) Ammo (not consumable) - Still sweet. If you're not an engineer. I just might have to flip my favorite engineer a sweet tip when the patch hits, just to soften the blow of the dried up revenue stream.

4) Beast Master Buffs - BM looks like it'll get better. But predictions are that SV will remain on top DPS-wise. Assuming they keep Explosive Shot reasonable.

5) Hunting Party - This depends greatly upon your raid needs. My raid leader said it'd be best if I did NOT invest points here, since we reliably have two other mana batteries in our raid. The patch notes say it'll also grant a passive bonus to the Hunter. Will this passive bonus be mana-regen related? Unless Ulduar changes things drastically (yes, please!) mana is a non-issue. Aspect of the Viper gets used between trash pulls, and that's about it lately. When beginning Naxx, I'd use it from time to time. In fights where we lose 50% of the DPS and the raid leader doesn't call for a wipe, mana is an issue. So meh on this one.

I think that's it. If I find anything else of note, I'll complain about/cheer for it in a future post.

PvP and Q.Q.Quickies

2009-02-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

Spent a good portion of my WoW time this weekend in BG's, in Wintergrasp, and leveling up some alt professions. The following is a series of quickes celebrating the fun and whining about the bad. Same as always.

1) Do you have Emblems of Valor just burning a hole in your pocket? - Why not deck yourself out in Hateful Gladiator gear? The full set will run you quite a few tokens, but it seems that the T8 dungeons will have a new type of currency, Emblems of Conquest, so you likely will not be stinging yourself if you blow Valor on PvP gear. Somebody please bookmark this post and throw it in my face when I qq that I need to save up a million Valors later.

2) How bout Wintergrasp? - Assault is fun, feels like William Wallace laying siege to York. Defense if fun-ish. If you manage to get one of the guns, its fun for the first 10 seconds before they focus fire you. Other than that, hiding in the fog of ~~lag~~ war and taking out siege vehicles and healers is pretty cool. And the best part is, you can very quickly build up tokens to buy gloves and boots for PvP.

3) Mages who think they are cute...aren't. - I haven't fell for this one yet, as I'm pretty weary of any player-made portal I click on, however, you are guaranteed to find at least two false portals right on top of the WG portal in Dalaran. This is pure asshattery and if a player takes your Theramore portal and has his hearth on cooldown, you've directly caused him to be unable to participate in Wintergrasp. This should be ban-able, IMO.

4) Druids are unstoppable. - No joke. Resto Druids are unstoppable in battlegrounds. I've seen one take on 4 dps focus fire him, and just sit there healing through it, not dipping in health at all, and 20 minutes later went OOM. If you ignore him and DPS somebody else, he just heals that guy through the damage. I'm crying OP, damn it! :-)

5) Strand of the Ancients - Good clean fun here. I like this one. However, its still subject to the coconuts-who-just-grind-HK-in-the-middle-of-nowhere problem. Seriously, they need to come up with some way to reward behaviors that are tied to Strategic Victory. However, they'd also need to reward Defenders for kills in the middle of nowhere, because that ties up the offense, and is therefore Strategic. Not easy, but I credit Blizzard with being able to solve difficult problems, despite their inability to calmly and smoothly bring Hunter DPS to the level that they think is appropriate. /cry

?) Ride the Tanks - WG or SotA. Ranged DPS and Healers, jump the F on the back of those tanks. And kill/heal stuff. So. Much. Fun. Unless the driver of your tank is one of those coconuts who hides behind stuff while the battle rages way up ahead and barely makes any impact. Jump off of those immediately.

6) Anybody know a good Resilience target to shoot for? - What's a reasonable amount of Resil? I think my set is around 580 or so with close to 22K health right now. I definitely take a while to kill, but I'm not sure if it'd be better to keep pushing resil, or would I be better off using any additional gems/enchants for DPS stats or pure stamina?

7) PvP as Survival = Fun - Ok, I definitely miss my big red get out of jail free card, but in a high mobility environment like PvP, I'm digging the Explosive Shot and Improved Stings / Noxious Stings. Word on the street is that I should gem for Attack Power over Agility, since AP improves Explosive Shot more, but I'm unsure. Any ideas?

8) Shadow or Heal? - Using a solo/heroic dungeon PvE Shadow Priest spec, what do you think is most effective in a Battleground: going shadowform and doing damage, or no shadowform and casting heals? Bottomline is the uber gf should do what's more fun, but I'm curious to hear what the community thinks is most effective.

9) The Spoils of Power leveling - Have you ever power leveled a profession? How about 8 at roughly the same time (lw, eng, bs, jc, alch, scribe, cooking x 2)? You end up with so much garbage. Mats you farmed/bought but didn't need, intermediary products you crafted but ended up not needing, all those stupid random inks and pigments, silly potions that nobody in their right mind would drink, foods that do nothing that you couldnt get from a vendor cheaper, random leathers that might have been useful when max level was 60, but now are garbage. Way too many bank slots and toon bags filled with his crap. And I'm too stingy to just decide to vendor half of it, and I take my time on the AH. Decent income, but massive annoyance factor.

10) Disengage - I had not cast disengage more than two or three times prior to this weekend. It is so fun. I highly recommend it, although the semi-unpredictable distance/direction is awkward at best.

Stealth Nerf

2009-02-09T09:43:00.000-05:00

Short Version

Explosive Shot got kicked in the bean bag.

I normally try to just roll with the changes as they come, and make the best of situations.

But this is starting to get annoying and distracting.

Medium Version

So I take a day or two off from reading blogs.

Then I raid Patchwerk.

DPS decreased by 15% from the previous week. Brass's DPS down 10% over previous week.

So I turn into an emo b12ch.

Then the next day I read some blogs and find out there was a stealth nerf to Explosive Shot.

I'm still emo.

TL;DR Version

Thursday night. Naxxramas speed run, hoping to shave a few minutes off of our time to clear the full place. (just about 2:55, if you don't count the silly, avoidable, due-only-to-ppl-not-remaining-calm-in-the-face-of-some-bad-luck wipe on KT).

Naxx nights are always fun because ~~I love repeating the same dungeon again and again for months~~ Patchwerk is a good place to assess my performance.

No gear or spec changes this week, so the comparison would only be assessing how much tighter my SV shot-priority rotation has gotten over the past week.

I even brought Haste Potion same as last week, based upon the helpful suggestion of one of the commenters on my beloved blog.

Everything seemed to go perfectly. Well, I think I blew one Lock and Load proc, overriding the last tick of one of the Explosive Shots. Also think I had one GDC where I let Serpent Sting expire. But lets not get picky, generally a good performance, IMO.

Dead boss.

/recount toggle

4.1K DPS

WTF?

Last week was a nice and tight 4.8K DPS.

What about Brass? Always good to have his numbers to compare with. He's down from 5.1K to 4.6K.

WTF?

Neither one of us had any idea what the deal was.

For the rest of the night, Brass actually kicked major ass, showing Blizzard what he thinks of the damn nerf. My output was pretty meh, but I did get a new belt which will let me re-do a few gems and get some more agility kicking which is pretty big. But not enough to justify how much I suck compared to what's possible to output.

Then I ~~have a slow day at work~~ read some blogs and wowinsider, and discover that tuesday's reboot contained a stealth (unannounced) nerf to Explosive Shot.

Enough to justify a 10-15% decrease in overall DPS?

If it were just my numbers, I'd just figure I was a noob. But when both hunters see a marked decrease, you know something's up.

The Ding of Dings

2009-02-06T07:07:00.000-05:00

So the Lunar Festival comes around and provides some nice relaxing WoW that's easy to enjoy for hardcore and casual alike, perfect for a raider and his gf to kill an afternoon or two.

Until you reach the Gumdrop elder and discover that the coin guy is only there in Heroic mode.

Kinda sux if one of you is only level 78.

But that's pretty easy to fix by spending some time in Zul'Drak and Icecrown, aided by some epic cold weather flying, and a week later she dings 80 without really needing to push beyond a normal casual routine of playing the occasional evening here and there, or maybe filling the cold empty void that comes with a significant other who regularly raids in a cone of silence (ah, new cordless headphones, how I love thee).

Big fat gratz on dinging 80!

What's a Shadow Priest to do?

So, we've got our sights set on Heroic Gundrak.

Before going anywhere, lets make sure to reduce as many noob indicators as possible.

Enchants, gems, all the nice things a player can do to improve what she's wearing without leaving the comfort of Ironforge.

But, neither of us really has any clue what a SPriest needs at level 80.

Consult the Armory, check out one of the guild's shadows, and monkey-see monkey-do.

30 minutes and 600g later (its good to be rich), and all her greenies are nice and shiny.

Time for some action!

Welcome to Heroics

You can imagine the situation is pretty nerve wracking.

Here's a player who has a very casual view of the game, getting in on her first real Northrend dungeon run, at level 80, in heroic mode, in a party with 4 pretty hardcore players.

That's a lot of pressure! When ever you have two different cultures collide, there's potential for drama and conflict.

Luckily, the players that joined us are the types who are experts in their roles, geared out the wazoo, plus, they're very welcoming of social members.

The run was a beauty.

The uber gf remembered to buff people, kept her mana battery spell up (vt? ve? i can never remember which), and most importantly....she didn't die in any fire in the one or two fights that come with that hazard.

And, after surviving all the combat situations, and generally staying with the pack and assisting the tank for DPS targets and remembering to mana up after fights, she went ahead and, completely out of combat, fell into some water and got eaten alive by some fish, which was just amusing.

Outstanding work for a first timer, if I do say so myself.

If you want to replace it, polish it

I'm a long-standing advocate of appeasing the loot karma gods by enchanting the hell out of any piece of gear you want to replace.

Well, fresh at 80, you pretty much want to replace every single piece of quest greenie gear, so that's what she did....enchant & gem everything.

And lets just say that it worked.

Every. Single. Boss. dropped something cloth with wonderful spell power, crit, and intellect (all things which EJ says SP like to wear, if I'm not mistaken).

Four sweet Heroic Blue items. Luckily the team we're running with is (A) geared up in ilevel 213/226 epics, and (B) very cool and happy to help a new priest upgrade her stuff.

By the third and fourth drops, it was just getting silly on vent.

So another 400g was happily withdrawn from the Gear Polishing Fund and she's off to a sweet start to her set of gear.

But that's not all, folks!

She's still got a few coins left to get her Elder title, so we're off to Black Rock Spire.

And one of the achievement-hounds in the guild notices and wants to try to trio the Jenkins one.

Have you ever tried this with only 3 players?

All I can say is .... WOW!

That's a lot of whelps.

Warlock runs around grabbing all the whelps while Hunter stands on explosive trap and Priest bubbles everybody. Seed, Volley, that thing that Shadow Priests do for AoE.

3 or 4 seconds of terror as 50 or 60 whelps spank us.

Ding Jenkins!

Sweet way to end a sweet night.

Prep for First Raid

2009-02-04T08:48:00.002-05:00

A little ~~hordie~~ birdie asked me for some tips on a Hunter's first raid, so here's a few gems to ponder. These are built from my own experience and thoughts, with some conjecture thrown in. Some of this talks about emotions and other such frivolous topics, which is totally taboo in the world of anonymous 1337 Internet supermen who tell mere mortals to L2P.

What follows is less about how many stacks of such and such reagent you should bring, and more about controlling the irrational pressure that the gaming community puts on new people. Most of what you read from the hardcore and most of what you hear from the vocal people you encounter in-game gives the appearance that on day one, you're supposed to know everything, be skilled at everything, and be immune to human emotions.

I say BUNK. A person's first raid can be fun, exciting, and also nerve-wracking. To keep the night focused on the fun/excitement and less on the painful side, here's some food for thought.....

Before the Raid Night

1) You are New, but you are not a noob - The word "noob" comes with such negative connotation in WoW. Forget that crap. But you are new, so accept that (A) you might make mistakes, (B) its totally ok when you do, and (C) someone might call you noob when you do. Ignore them when they say that. Just wait. They'll mess up soon enough, and you can do a Victory Dance in your house when they do :-)

2) Prepare ahead of time - Polish your gear (gems enchants etc), stock up on elixirs and potions and food. You know your raid is friday or saturday? Get your stuff squared away on wednesday or thursday. Make sure your Vent is setup in advance.

3) Scouting - This might sound funny, but your first time in, you might not know where the instance is located. In Conquest's first 25-person raid, I didn't know where Obsidian Sanctum or Naxxramas were, other than what's listed on Wiki, which is "dragonblight". Dragonblight is a big place, and knowing the exact locations beforehand will make you feel less like a noob come raid night.

4) Don't worry about Boss Fights - Here's a place where I diverge from the popular concept of knowing boss fights in advance. If your raid is planning on tackling a large chunk of Naxx in one night, you will be way way way too confused if you try to research each boss. If you're planning on doing only one wing, then definitely read up and try to watch some vids. But 14 bosses is too much to digest. Ask questions if you're unsure of how a boss works.

At the Start of the Raid

5) Be Early - if possible, log in an hour early on the night of the raid, with plans to do nothing but think about the raid. You'll probably be excited and nervous, and allowing as much time as possible will help reduce anxiety. And since you already scouted out where the place is, you'll have plenty of time to get there and help the other early guy summon people.

6) Repair and get Ammo - I don't care what consumables or mats or whatever else you pack. If you only do two things before the raid (A) Repair and (B) Full quiver. Oh, and remember to bring your DPS pet.

7) Growl off, Passive stance - I know, I know. But its at these exciting moments of a first raid that we forget the basics. Growl off, passive stance.

8) Know Your Tanks - Make sure you know who the tanks are. It works somewhat better to Misdirect onto them than onto the other players.

9) Know Your Targeting - For target selection, you should either have a designated Main Assist, a raid icon kill order, or at the very least, a tank who you will use for selecting your next target. Ask about MA or Kill Order at the beginning, and if there's no satisfactory answer, just pick a tank and assist him/her all night.

During the Raid

10) Fire Bad! - Generally, anything funny looking on the floor or flying down from above is bad. Step out of it.

11) Ignore Recount - Whether you run a damage meter yourself or not, I'm sure some idiot is going to post a recount report to /raid at some point in the night. Completely ignore the output of the report, unless you're on top :-P and also completely ignore that person going forward. It is hugely detrimental to team unity when those people spit out those reports. Definitely review WWS after the night is over for constructive feedback, but for now, ignore it.

12) Turn off Viper - Once your mana is full, turn off Viper. Uggy, I hate when I do that.

13) Loot your Badges - ...er...Emblems. Dead boss means (A) Phat Lewts, and (B) Emblems of Something. Don't forget to loot your badges.

After the Raid

14) Sleep. Or Not - If you're like me, you spend the hour after a raid totally wired. The first few raids I was in, it was like two hours before I could even consider falling alseep. It is exciting stuff. But that's just me. Maybe you'll sleep like a baby.

15) Empty Your Bags - I have maybe 15 bag slots filled with raid stuff. I hate when I forget to empty my bags and then head straight out to quest or gather, and suddenly find my bags full. Empty that raid stuff out into your bank.

16) Review WWS - depending upon when the report gets posted, maybe you view it that night, or maybe the next day. Take a look at things like how many misses, or what percent of your DPS came from what abilities.

17) Growl on, Stance of your choice - I always forget to turn growl back on, and then the next day I wonder why the first mobs I solo run right up to me. Noob!

Summary

So there you have it!

Some might be obvious, some might be all emo and carebare and touchy-feely. Some of these are things I do at the start of each and every raid, whether its a farming run through Kara at 70, or a 3 Drake progression night at 80.

Its all about keeping calm and remembering the basics.

Fire hurts. Mobs hit the thing with the highest threat. Empty quivers fire no shots.

I can't wait to hear about how it goes.

Incohesive Ramblings (aka, some more quickies)

2009-02-02T08:56:00.001-05:00

This is not a cohesive post. At least less cohesive than usual.

Maybe call it a quickies post? We'll see how it turns out.

[EDIT: as it would turn out, its a mish-mash of Surival Hunting, Naxx Achievements, and other stuff]

1) Survival Performance - Doin pretty well. 4.8K DPS on Patchwerk. If I compare that to my pre-nerf BM best of 5.3K, the result is an approximate 9.4% decrease, which is less than I had predicted (15.6% was the prediction). Sure, I'm comparing apples (BM for 3.5 minutes) to oranges (SV for 2.5 minutes) because I was trying to model the change to BM before / BM after the patch, but I'm trying to make a point here, so sue me.

As a comparison, Brass went from 5.5K BM-best to 5.1K SV last night, 7.3% decrease. So I suppose I feel pretty good about my baseline stand-and-deliver numbers. Not to say I'll just let it stay at that, but also not going to douse myself in gasoline and light the match.

2) Quickwerk - Its not even funny. Our previous best was 3:03. Last night was 2:34, a full 29 seconds faster than the previous attempt. There were 5 players over 5K, and nearly everyone over 4K. If I'm reading what one of our Officers posted correctly, this is the 247th fastest Patchy kill ever, which I find incredibly amusing. Rock on! The improvement is attributed to (A) Warlocks using Doomguards and (B) Hunters adjusting to the nerf and not sucking this week.

3) The Immortal - no, we didn't get it. This one makes me laugh though. You kill three or four bosses with no deaths, and all of a sudden everybody's on the edge of their seats for The Immortal. HELLO, McFLY! THERE'S A REASON YOU DON'T SAY THE WORD "SHUTOUT" TO A GOALIE WHO HAS NOT ALLOWED A GOAL YET, HALFWAY THROUGH THE FIRST PERIOD! Sorry to be shouting there, I'm more amused than angry, I figure this achievement will happen when it happens without any special deliberate attempt, beyond the normal desire a player has to NOT die. Or not.

4) Splitting up the Horsemen - We did the Four Horsemen one where you kill them within 15 seconds of eachother. This one was fun, because it takes some precise coordination between the 4 sub-groups on each boss mob. Fun to see that the Officers want to allow some focus on Achievements. Sure, the Achievements themselves don't mean much, but it is cool trying to do farm-status fights in strange ways. Along the way, I discovered a hidden pitfall for a SV hunter....

5) Sniper Training can sting you in the rear - If you dump points into Sniper Training, you'll generally want to stand very far away from your target. However, along the back of the Horsemen room, if you stand further than 30 yards from your target, you'll still be in range to get the debuff from the boss you just swapped off of. Fail Hunter is fail, dead as a door nail. But we got the achievement, so that works for me.

6) Burst the Webs - Maxxena. Hunters are assigned to break people free of the webs. Explosive Shot, FTW! Very fun to have strong burst damage for this. As a BM, this was actually tough, because you'd not use your pet (since she'd have to run all the way across the room, would be very ineffective), and your personal Hunter burst is ZERO. Webs were being busted faster than you can say "Lock n Load".

7) Professional Madness - I flipped out this morning and decided to start leveling two toon's worth of cooking, and while I'm out there, make a skinner, and using the gathered mats, level a leatherworker. I can tell already that its biting off too much, but I suppose that's Classic Amava in action. If I let myself take time (aka, not force it all to Grand Master level this weekend), I might retain some sanity and sociability (real word?). I doubt it'll work out that way.

8) Uber GF - She's knocking on the door of 80 with 4.5 XP bubbles left. Rock on! Once she dings, we'll enchant whatever she's wearing and head straight on into Heroic Gumdrop to finish off The Elder.

9) Last bit about SV - The "shot priority" style of WotLK Surivial Hunter DPS, versus the "shot rotation" that was king in TBC, is fun. I like slamming my #3 key macro as much as the next guy, but maintaining a priority of Serpent Sting > Explosive > Multi > Steady is pretty cool, especially when Lock and Load procs and you've got to weave things such that you don't overwrite any ES DoT ticks. Mentally taxing, but as I get the hang of it, its kinda fun. Still want a better contribution from my pet, but I'll bet that doesn't surprise you.

I think I'm going to blow off the rest of the day and go drink while it snows the three or four feet that're predicted for the weekend. [EDIT: we did not get that 3 feet. Only one foot on friday. But the drinks worked their magic anyway]

Fish Feast, FTW

2009-01-29T09:11:00.001-05:00

OS25+3......ding!

You saw my spoiler yesterday, or maybe you read about it here, so its no surprise.

And now I have to wrestle between being Chef, Elder, or Twilight Vanquisher. I suppose its not all that hard to pick for the time being.

All those moving parts I tried to enumerate yesterday clicked.

On the winning attempt:

A) People stayed alive through fire walls and fissures.

B) Adds of all kinds were handled properly.

C) I-Kill-You-Now effects mitigated through perfect coordination of cooldowns by three players.

D) A few players attribute a benevolent RNG that helped with the timing of one of the I-Kill-You-Nows, but I'd challenge that and say it was just our turn after a long string of malevolent RNG's. /cross-arms-and-glare-defiantly Next week's repeat performance will confirm my defiant glare was not for naught.

E) See (A) above

The Beauty of the Fight

Here's the beautiful thing about the encounter, that'll take me a minute to get to. Read on!

Each time you add another drake in the progression from +0 to +3, the fight is mechanically the same, only the complexity skyrockets.

As a team that's been practicing three drakes for a few nights, when we succumb to the clock and raid ID reset schedule and kill one drake to finish off the night with a +2 kill, its just a complete and total cakewalk, because your mind and senses are tuned for the hyper-complex +3 environment. Mechanically though, its the same.

So doing +3.....the first drake flies down. The complexity is evident, but nothing too bad yet.

Then the whelps and elementals (who then quickly enrage as flame wall comes). Complexity increasing.

Then the second drake comes down. For the period of time that these first two drakes are both alive, the chaos spikes, ridiculous like.

Then the first dies, and the third arrives, which brings with it the lovely Twilight Torment (when you do damage, you are inflicted with damage, like that guy in Heroic VH or Zul'jin of ZA fame during his tornado phase), and you're at an all-time-high level of insanity with melee players leaping into portals, immense numbers of adds all over the place, plus the usual Fire Wall/Fissure/Meteor/I-Kill-You-Now routine.

If you're waiting for me to get to the beauty, we're almost there.

There's a pivot point, it would seem, about 80% of the way through Shadron (the second drake).

If you make it this far, you have illustrated that your raid knows how to handle each and every mechanical component of the fight. You no longer need to question your strategy at all, and the only thing that's in your way is execution.

You could feel it in the air as Shadron dies, leaving essentially an OS25+1 fight left (with a massive quantity of adds left over from the early parts of the fight)

And now for the beauty...

You've gone through this spike in chaos, eliminated most of it, BUT the fight is still got a long time left.

Vesperon (last drake) and Sartharion himself have a lot of health.

And for that whole time, you can just feel it, coursing through you.

WE'RE GONNA DO IT!!!!!

Sure, there's still a million and one things that can go wrong, and everybody needs to stay on the ball.

WE'RE GONNA F'ING DO IT!!!!!

I'm not sure if Blizzard intended this feeling or not, but I'm a big fan.

Contrast it with a fight like Prince Malcheezar. Fights that kinda increase in complexity over time, resulting in the last few seconds being the most stressful. At the start, you've only got one Infernal to worry about, and over time, there's less and less safe spots, and then the axes, and then his crazy attack speed and power buff. Granted, Prince is a strange example, because there's so much randomness in there, but work with me, its an analogy.

In 3D you experience the apex of intensity in the early parts of the fight, and then get to bask in the glow as you finish off the job.

The Ugly

A few forms of ugliness reared their...well...ugly...heads during the the progression night:

1) Discipline - I wrote about this one yesterday. During an early attempt, an overzealous DPS'er pulled aggro on Sarth while we were waiting for the first Drake to land. Although the tank regained aggro and nobody died, the DPS Lead ordered an immediate wipe then and there to prove a point. Absolute correct move. There is simply no excuse for this. As described above, the ending phase of the fight is not an issue, so claiming the value of carving off an extra 2-3% of Sarth's health at the beginning does not compute. When the Officers ask for "no dps", they're doing it for a reason. Discipline!

2) Radio Chatter - As the fight moved through the ultra-intense early parts, into the less-ultra-but-still-very-intense middle parts, and then on into the intense-but-starting-to-feel-good end phase, the Vent radio chatter increased. Inane stuff like "if you need help with those adds, just call out for it and I'll help you" by non-Officers. Sorry bub, but this type of verbal communication is unnecessary and can derail the team. (A) Its useless because if the guy needs help, he's going to call out for it without your permission or reminder, (B) you're occupying the voice channel and may obstruct actual necessary comms, and (C) you're encouraging more of the same, snowballing the whole thing down hill. Sure, we're all feeling the rush of impending victory, but that's exactly the time to NOT lose composure, only to silly wipe.

3) My DPS - Yeah, I'll call it ugly. Somewhere around 2.9K DPS for the encounter (going off memory of recount, I can't hit our WWS parse from ~~work~~ my preferred blogging location). Knowing its a Hunter unfriendly encounter, I compare myself with Brass, who did phenomenal during the kill. So I can't blame the nerf. Areas that need attention (1) ensuring I'm at max range to take advantage of Sniper, (2) more effectively managing Lock and Load to ensure I'm neither overwriting DoT ticks, nor wasting any time after the last DoT tick before reapplying Explosive Shot, and (3) actually using Rapid Fire, which is simply negligent oversight. But, I survived through the fight, so I'll give myself that pat on the back :-)

The Truth Behind How We Won

All those wonderful things described above (aka, not dying in fire), are great.

But you wanna know the true secret to victory?

I got two words for ya.....

Fish. Feast.

I spent the hour before the raid flying between Grizzly Hills, Borean Tundra, and Sholazar Basin fishing up Glacial Salmon, Musselback Sculpin, and Nettlefish, so I could fry up some vittles while sitting inside OS waiting for the raid to start up.

A little extra stats spread across the raid, and a little extra stamina for everybody.

A new title to show for it.

Harder than the coordination of the I-Save-You-Now abilities was the feast-dropping rotation between the Hunters.

Fish Feast, FTW

Pluggin away at the Drakes

2009-01-28T07:30:00.000-05:00

EDIT, and massive SPOILER: You know how there's a 12 hour delay between when I write these and post them? Yeah, well....we f'ing DID IT! More on that tomorrow. Please enjoy the following story about when we ALMOST did it.

OS25+3 is the goal.

We will make it happen.

Very soon.

We're so close to the turning point at which the battle moves from total chaos into a much more controllable situation.

There's so many moving parts that we're just needing to have all 25 players firing on all 8 cylinders during the same attempt, and this baby is down.

We've got it so down, that when we end up doing one last attempt with only 2 drakes before the servers reboot and start a new raid week, 2 Drakes is an f'ing joke. We bat OS25+2 aside like its nothing, as the complexity difference between +2 and +3 is exponential.

3 Drakes must die!

Cut to the Chase

If you don't want to read a littany of the obstacles in the way, clicky click for personal reflections or Survival performance.

23 Issues

Well, you've got your flame tsunami (1) with its random direction and random safe-spot location.

Then you've got your ground fissures/void zones (2) and their random location and complete and total ability to visually blend in with Death and Decay. Oh, and also a penchant for one-shotting you if you don't move.

And you've got your whole area surrounded by lava. Evil lava (3).

These three are the basics. No matter what else is going on, each and every raider must survive these on his own. Evil lava can be healed through for short stints, so sometimes the melee and healers make a deal on that one.

But the tsunami and fissure, no negotiating.

You've also got the big stinking dragon, Sartharion (4). He/she needs to be positioned away from the raid so only a tank is in front of him/her.

You've also got meteors (5) flying down from the sky, blasting whoever they land on. People say you can predict where they land and avoid them, but I've yet to figure that one out.

Then you've got your first dragon, Tenebron (6) and the melee hits he brings hopefully only to the tank on him. Watch out for his breath in a frontal cone (7).

And the eggs that Tenebron hatches into whelps periodically (I'll call this 8, but there's a bunch of whelps, but I suppose we won't itemize, will we?). To be successful, thou shalt kill Tenebron before the second wave of whelps hatch. Burn Heroism and all cooldowns immediately on this guy.

And make sure somebody is picking up those whelps and some AoE folks are killing them (9), because healers tanking whelps is a bad thing.

Oh, did I mention that there's also Fire Elementals (10) that come out? And they enrage when the flame tsunami hits them? Enrage must be dispelled (11), maybe a rogue with some poison or a hunter with a tranq shot.

Oops, and one more thing. From time to time, Sartharion (or is it one of the drakes?) has an I-Kill-You-Now move (12), that requires very special handling. Priests and Paladins seem to be two classes capable of that "special handling" but with all these moving parts, my understanding doesn't quite make it this deep into the other specialities. I do know that the cooldowns on these I-Save-You-Now abilities is long, requiring a finely coordinated rotation amongst the saviors.

If your DPS is on schedule, somewhere near the death of Tenebron, the second drake, Shadron, will appear. Must tank him (13), and watch his breath also (14).

What is with these drakes and their breath? What profession can craft a toothbrush? Engineer? Wouldn't that be something? Alchemist to craft toothpaste out of fluoride mined from special nodes around the perimeter of Obsidian Sanctum?

Tenebron must be killed before anything else (16). Ignore portals up to this point.

Now that tenebron is down, and Shadron is being tanked in a good position (bad breath pointing away from people), melee and a healer need to scoot into the portal and kill off the acolyte (16), while the ranged folks continue to AoE and dis-enrage the fire elementals AND pour the DPS on Shadron (17).

I've no idea what that Acolyte does if left unchecked, but I'll assume its evil.

While Shadron is being destroyed, Vesperon will arrive. Sensing a pattern here? Tank him (18) and watch the breath (19).

We're getting near the end here folks, can you feel it?

I'm unsure of what you do with the portals once Shadron is down? Is Vesperon's acolyte evil also? I'll vote yes, just for the sake of padding the numbers (20).

Shadron goes down, all DPS that's not portal hopping move to Vesperon and burn him down (21).

Vesperon's dead, so lets get to the meat and potatos, Sartharion himself (22).

Oh yeah, and I totally forgot the best one. Twilight Torment (23). Randomly members of the raid will get debuffed with TT, I think after Vesperon lands, wherein you take damage as you DPS. If a DPS player gets this, he's either got to stop doing anything, and simply avoid the tsunami and fissures until the debuff wears off, or you need healers with balls of steel who can heal through the massive damage TT will inflict.

Personal Reflections

0) To whoever hacked our main tank's account and put him out of service for the last week and a half as well as the forseeable future.....kiss my ass.

1) On a lighter note, this fight really is so cool. The margin for error is non-existant at this point in our gear progression and amount of experience working the fight. The challenge is great.

2) The level of intensity and concentration throughout the night is incredible.

3) The annoyance factor when there's a tiny delay before a fissure appears on your screen (lag? video settings? L2P?) and you're dead before you even see the fissure on your screen is extreme.

4) The team stayed very positive through the whole night, which makes the difference between three hours of agony and three hours of invigorating action.

5) Some people need to L2STFU and let the Officers do the talking, but I suppose that's not my call. As long as they're remaining calm-ish and positive, I won't complain (more than I just did right here).

6) When the Officers call for "no dps on sarth while waiting for tenebron to land", why is it that half the casters are nuking sarth and causing the DPS Leader to call out an aggro warning? Discipline! But again, I suppose I won't complain. A Warrior taking a few swings to build up rage to allow for easier interception of Tenebron? Pure Win. A caster elevating the blood pressure of the sarth tank, the DPS officer and any raid healers? Unnecessary risk, even if justified with the excuse of "trying to get a trinket to proc" or whatever. Discipline!

How's SV Doin?

One of the many beautiful things of raiding along with a Hunter with a brass pair, an insane ability to deliver damage, and a non-gloating attitude when he comes out on top is that I have an excellent litmus test for my own performance.

As we both L2SV (amava, stop with the L2 crap), it is enlightening to see attempts where we have very similar raw damage output. Gives you a sense that we're both extracting a high amount of the potential damage available to us given the similar spec, similar gear, similar raid circumstances, and similar raid job assignments.

The fight remains very Hunter unfriendly from a DPS perspective since your pet is continuously on the move to avoid flame wall. Spec the pet in both boars speed and dash.

The longer the fight goes, the better the Hunter performance seems to be, relative to the other classes, which is interesting to see.

This difference is likely due to two things:
1) Early wave(s) of whelps give AoE classes massive raw damage
2) SV lacks any trinket-like period of excess, like BW. Heroism gets triggered very early in the fight, and SV has no special ability that can be triggered at that time. You can only hope for the various crit-enhancing abilities to proc during that 40 seconds for maximum bang.

DPS output seems to be in the mid- to high-3000's, pushing into the higher 3k's for the longer fights, which is nice for such a high mobility fight focused on personal survival (not spec survival).

The long range of Hawk Eye also helps as you can keep drakes in range while maneuvering through the Flame Wall opening that randomly gets located in the middle of the battlefield.

Amava-crest....OUT!

Sorry if this one came out boring, because it doesn't do the night justice.

Lots of excitement, lots of adrenaline. You can feel the team slowly but surely clicking, each attempt getting a little bit more survivable and a bit more under control. With so many factors in the fight, its a matter of repetition, and small tweaks to get through each micro-phase of the fight.

Sarth+3 will die!

Reflections on the Elderly

2009-01-27T08:21:00.000-05:00

Dumb and Dumber was on TBS yesterday...

See, the elderly, while slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose

Welcome to part two of what now has become my ongoing reflections on the seasonal events: Lunar Festival, and the Elder title.

You'll recall that I was a big fan of Merrymaking. The biggest success factor was the inclusiveness of being able to enjoy the event with a girl friend, and the lack of dependence on daily 5-man runs and a random drop that might never appear.

So how did Lunar Festival stack up?

I'm not doing ratings as part of the ongoing series, but how about 7 out of 10?

Lets dive deeper:

Inclusion

I was out picking flowers and enjoying one-click mining, taking advantage of my early wake-up on the east coast, while the majority of the server is sleeping on the west coast.

Brass pops on and we figure we'll go become Elderly together.

Kinda busy work, running around the whole world getting coins. Became more fun when the gf got home and she jumped in.

I'm a big fan of inclusive stuff, and she was able to just jump in. Sure, she'll have to go back and do the ones she missed, but since its not a linear progression, she's able to jump in and enjoy the rest of the day with us.

/win

Invasion

Stripping naked, except for Sombrero and Tabard (Amava don't nakey dance), we make a mad dash into Orgrimar, talk to the coin NPC and gogogogogog quick like bunnies back out to safety.

This is just plain fun. We were giggling like school girls having a pillow fight the whole time.

The other guildies listening in on vent know that Hunters are a few cans short of a six pack to begin with, but this only reinforced the message!

Thunderbluff was equally fun, until I brainfarted and fell off the side of the cliff.

But that only made us laugh harder.

Phasing, FTL

One caveat to the "inclusion" and the "invasion".

If you are mid-way through the Battle for Undercity quest chain. The one with the cut-scene in Dragonblight, that's all the rage amongst the people who want to make a meaningful impact on the MMO world.

Yeah, if you're mid-way through that one, Tirisfal Glades and Durotar are totally phased out, so you cannot get the coins there.

It was classic. Me and the gf are riding the Mammoth, traveling from WPL into Tirisfal Glades.

I weep for forgetting to take a screenie, but all of a sudden, on her screen, the Mammoth is driver-less.

And when we found the coin NPC, he did not appear on the gf's screen.

Phasing, FTL.

So the coin NPC's in Tirisfal Glades and Durotar, including the ones in the Horde cities, were totally inaccessible.

/pout

Classic Dungeons

I dislike the need for daily 5-person dungeon runs, as seems to be required for Halloween seasonal event.

I like that they mixed in a variety of dungeon runs for Elder. Run a bunch of dungeons once, and not even a full run at that.

The classic dungeons were fun to visit, and avoid mobs and walk in and get the coin.

Except for Mauradon. That one is a maze that had the three of us hopelessly lost.

Putting critters to sleep with Wyvern Sting is pure win.

Northrend Dungeons

This was a little different.

Start with two level 80 Survival Hunters kitted out in full 213/226 ilevel gear, and a level 78 Shadow Priest who's never done a dungeon in her priesty career.

Pick up the GM's level 71 alt.

Head on into Nexus.

Much fun to be had, using the pets as tanks and just sorta limping through. Respec to BM for sturdier pet tank, FTW!

It got harder and harder as we went to higher and higher level dungeons (duh!!!!).

Utgarde Pinnacle was rough. Out with the 71 alt, in with the well-geared 80 Disc Priest.

Suffice it to say that the gauntlet was a challenge without a real tank. But we made it!

Bubbles the Gorilla successfully tanked the Gruul boss in Halls of [Stone? or Lightening?] Something, which was funny.

So, we do all the dungeons, and we're left with Gumdrop only....

The Roadblock

Gundrak must be run in Heroic mode.

/fail Blizzard.

What was originally a fun day of inclusive socialization and group play has now been buzz killed.

So the uber gf is left with either forcing herself to ding 80 within two weeks, or have to bow completely out of running for the Elder.

I don't like that. Seasonal Event was fun because the only prerequisite was that you needed to be of Northrend levels. I'm willing to accept that as the minimum barrier for entry, since Blizzard runs a business and they want you buying their xpac.

But to say a player needs to be 80 to enjoy a seasonal event, which IMO should be a relaxed social casual FUN event, rather than yet another grindy grind that forces people to maximize?

I'm rethinking that 7 of 10 i awarded above. More like 5 due to the kick in the nuts of requring Heroic mode Gumdrop.

Luckily the uber gf is a good sport (she'd have to be to stay with me raiding 3-4 nights a week, plus generally smelling bad and making strange noises), so she didn't get bent out of shape as I kicked her from the group and invited a Prot Pally so the level 80's could go run Heroic Gundrak.

The Elder

So Brass and I ding Elder, and I get yelled at for donning my brand new Chef title instead of the Elder.

The gf is finishing up the Battle for Undercity quest line. As a casual level 78 player, might be tricky getting to 80 before the event is over, but hopefully she'll have fun trying rather than feeling pressured to grind away like those of us who are unhealthily addicted.

Overall, a fun seasonal event, but quite irritating to hit the roadblock.

Quicky-Butter Jelly Time

2009-01-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the title, sometimes "inspired" and "twisted" get mixed up in my head.

Quickies:

1) Do not Misdirect Explosive Shot in a raid setting. You'll pull aggro via the dots a fraction of a second after the mob appears to be headed over to your tank/MD target.

2) Beast Mastery still has a place. Banging through the Northrend dungeons for "The Elder" title, no tanks around. Send one of the hunters to respec BM, go fully into talents that boost pet survivability (not DPS). Bubbles can handle just about anything normal mode dungeons have to offer. Challenging, because real tanks do lots of fancy stuff us DPS'ers never really see or appreciate, but a Gorilla can serve in a pinch.

3) Watching your favorite hunter discover #1 on the fly, that's just pure entertainment. Especially when the team is on-the-ball and successfully adjusts and the fight continues on.

4) Long live T5 two-piece bonus (see #2). Quite frankly the single most useful two gear items a Hunter can acquire. Definitely worth going back to SSC for, and maybe fishing up Lurker for an achievement while you're in there.

5) Getting two titles in the same day is confusing. Which one do you wear? I've been longing for Chef Amava, but Elder Amava is in style for the next couple weeks, especially when the uber gf smugly points out a mysterious and unwelcome grey hair that seemed to sneak its way onto my head. Already?

6) Bored people in WoW need to find something else to do.

7) While BM still has a place, that place is clearly not the damage meters. We bring in a tank for the last run. Prot Pally showed us what real damage looks like. Well, truthfully, the SV hunter with us showed what REAL damage looks like. /sigh. Granted, I was spec fully for sturdy pet, but I digress.

8) One sign that you're bored in WoW, and therefore need to find something else to do....jumping into the fountain in Dalaran to block fishermen from clicking their bobbers. Seriously? /shoo

9) Until I get my hands on Surge Needle Ring, my +hit rating is gonna continue to dictate and consume every single gem I bring into battle. If I level another toon high enough to kill Worgs, I just might need to make that guy a skinner, and go farm the hell out of worg haunches. Then I can eat Worg Tartare (+40 hit), regem to be 40 points below hit-cap, and claim more fortunes on the leather market.

10) WTF is up with Eternals and Crystallizeds on Ner'zhul? No matter how low I price them, they barely move on AH. Various stack sizes, various times of day/week, various forms (eternal/crystal), various elements (air, fire, earth...). Fire sells, but is rare when gathering. Shadow sells, sometimes. Life and Earth? I'm running out of bank space for stacks of these puppies.

On a totally separate note...

2009-01-26T08:39:00.000-05:00

.....Lock and Load is pretty frikin sweet. I'm a big fan of getting insta-boom no-cooldown Explosive Shots. A big fan!

It confused me at first. I be like...."i just fired the damn shot, why is it not on cooldown? did it not go?"

See, what happened was I respeced like 5 minutes into the raid, and then got summoned back into OS to start on the boss. Took a cookiecutter build off of EJ, and had zero time to figure out what the hell all these goodies are all about.

Then, during a break while everybody logged out to preserve their flasks (cheap bastards, 6 gd minutes and you gotta log out?), I take a gander over to the talent page and see the lovely LnL.

So, maybe the new performance plan is "read the damn talent tooltips, lol".

What about the title?

Well, the content of this article is exactly the same topic and drivel that's been coming out of this blog for a week, or maybe even a year and a half, isnt it?

Well, the "separate note" is "positivity".

See, I can haz a positive outlook, even amongst the funk and pouting of the nerf bat.

I must be getting soft or something, or maybe its the third Sugar Free Amp Energy Drink I've had this afternoon.

Seriously though, this stuff is no joke. Two cans is like crack, only without the vitamin B. Three cans, and its like you're in a parallel dimension where there is no donuts and no WoW. The Horror.

The abuse of a phrase

2009-01-26T08:37:00.000-05:00

Throughout the WoW community, you cant escape hearing the phrase "min/max".

Since patch 3.0.8 came out, the phrase is appearing more and more frequently, specifically with regards to Hunter DPS output.

When I first started playing WoW, I never heard the term before, but over time, you infer from context that it means something along the lines of pursuing things that provide maximum results while avoiding just about everything else, and the connotation that came along with it is that a person trying to min/max is a d0uche bag who would slit their own mother's throat for a .3% crit increase.

Hearing the term so much lately, I actually looked it up, and hopefully I found the right entry because it has some really interesting background in games theory (if you're really interested in that sort of thing), although I bet most of the people throwing the term around have little to no exposure to the formal maths.

So, Hunters.

A class that primarily brings DPS to the table. Also some CC ability, some frenzy dispel, misdirection, yadda yadda yadda. But the chief reason we are in the raid is to provide DPS.

Long-Term Raid Invites Are Contingent Upon Performance

If bosses are not dying, raid leaders will investigate why.

If the analysis shows that the boss dies due to lack of damage output (enrage timer reached, too many of Sarth's i-kill-you-now effects occur cuz you dont kill shadron fast enough, etc), then the performance of the DPS players will be called into question.

Damage meters, web stats reports, and whatever other tools, will illustrate trends.

If you are a DPS player, with a primary goal of providing enough damage to kill the boss, and with no other roles you can spec or gear into, what trend would you like the analysis tools to illustrate?

The general consensus is that DPS players would like to be at or near the top of the damage production spectrum.

Meter-topping ego-stroking epeen is one thing.

Happily sitting below the top, but within a tight pack of well-performing DPS players is another.

Competing with the tanks for last place is yet a third.

Making choices that influence DPS by 20-40% shall not be dubbed "minmaxing"

Situation A: you are consistently second on the damage meter for your raid, and the #1 guy is consistently 100 DPS above you. You love your professions so you keep them where they are (tailoring hunter, ftw), you adore your spec as it fits your personality/style and the RP story of your toon, and you refuse to equip a gun because the noise is annoying.

Situation B: you are consistently second on the damage meter for your raid, and the #1 guy is consistently 100 DPS above you. So you drop Herbalism, a profession you really enjoy, and take up Leatherworking, which you find to be boring as hell, because LW gives you a fur lining to your bracers that increases your damage output by 10 or 20 DPS.

Situation C: you were consistently producing >5K DPS on Patchwerk, and at or near the top of a very strong DPS team that's knocking on the doorstep of the Quickwerk achievement (3 more seconds is all we need to shave). Blizzard rho-sham-bows you square in the bean bag and you find your old spec and techniques to be producing 40% less, making it tough to distinguish your damage meter line from that of a resto druid with no offensive spells on her action bars, just using thorns and pulling healer aggro. So you drop your preferred and comfortable spec and techniques, adopt a new routine, and write a new chapter in the RP story of your toon's life to justify the change, because said changes bring your output back to nearly the same level it was before the crotch kick.

Questions:

Are any of those players min/maxing?

Are any of those players a slacker?

Are any of those players a wh0re?

Answers:

Yes.

No.

and, No, but if player C could get paid for it, I...er...i mean...he/she...most certainly would.

Its not even close

I'm hugely amused at the conversation in BRK's comment threads reflecting on the 3.0.8 changes. So many die-hards of a given spec call people who migrate to another spec a "minmaxer" and use the phrase as an almost derogatory term.

If the difference between SV and BM was even vaguely close, I'd be willing to stipulate that the immigrants are min/maxing.

But its not even close.

Both the theorycrafters (who min/max, and I love them for it) and practical experience agree.

Its not even close.

Exotic idea for Raid benchmark

2009-01-26T08:36:00.000-05:00

Being thrust into a brand new spec, with a variety of new attacks available, I am at a heightened level of need for performance measurement data.

When we first started raiding in WotLK, Patchwerk was the perfect benchmark to measure changes to your gear, spec, rotations, DPS, healing through-put, damage mitigation/avoidance, threat output, you name it.

Long (ish) fight, zero maneuvering, easy to predict where incoming damage will land (if not 100% easy to know when).

One would not want every single fight to be like this, but I'm very happy they put one stand-and-deliver fight.

Patchy served as an excellent benchmark.

But then we got better.

What used to take 7 minutes now takes 3 minutes and 3 seconds (yeah, damn hunter nerf prevented us from getting Quickwerk achievement, /pout)

Mana is no longer an issue, so that's kinda removed from the benchmark equation.

Most abilities and trinkets are able to be used only one or two times during the fight. Maximizing output became more a matter of hyper-tuning the timing of special abilities to the known duration of the fight and confident knowledge of when heroism would be activated.

Over time, Patchwerk has become a less valid yard stick for me.

An alternative, flawed benchmark

Reading over at BRK, he often describes his own personal DPS tests that he performs on the dummies.

He generally uses the basis of "choose a rotation, fire 1000 rounds, assess results. change one variable, fire 1000 rounds, assess results."

The problem I see with that mentality is very similar to the problem I now have with Patchwerk....the time is variable.

Using the BRK method, if you stack haste, you'll come to the conclusion that mana is no problem what-so-ever. Autoshot blows through the 1000 rounds lickety split and you're off happily, but incorrectly, buying up haste gems and only considering Intellect as a means to increase your Attack Power (if you spec appropriately).

Benchmarks need to keep time consistent.

Exotic Idea

Using a boss as a benchmark is flawed because the time will vary as your teams DPS varies. Your team composition may vary from week to week also, but given a robust Raid Comp, this is less of a factor, at least for 25's.

Using a "fire X rounds at a training dummy" is flawed because (A) time is variable by your haste, and (B) no measure of cross-player interactions and buffs. To mitigate (B), raid leaders could choose to always start raids in Exodar and begin each raid with a 6 minute dance with a dummy, but I'm doubtful that would happen.

So the new and innovative idea I have is for Blizzard to introduce a twist on Patchwerk.

You know how Sartharion has a difficulty setting, whereby you kill or don't kill drakes prior to engaging the boss.

Give us a similar mechanic for Patchwerk.

Three trash blobs stand off in corners of the room, with tiny aggro radius, so its easy to leave them alone if you want.

Kill all three, and you get Patchy as we currently know him.

Leave one blob alive before engaging Patch, and at the start of the fight he will gain an Immortal buff with a duration of four minutes. If his health reaches zero while buffed Immortal, he stays alive until the buff wears off, at which point he dies immediately. If his health is above zero when the buff wears off at the four minute mark, its just as if you had killed all three blobs, keep up the pew-pew until he's dead.

Likewise, two blobs gives a 5 minute timer, and three blobs gives a 6 minute timer. Or some other options instead of 4,5,6, but you get the point.

One special case to consider, for example in the "one blob" (4 minute) option, if you bring him to 0 health at 3 minutes, but then wipe while the Immortal buff is active, don't release, he'll die the moment the buff wears off. They need to program in this special case so he doesnt reset or evade bug. Maybe have him do funny emotes or some other strange easter egg.

Doubts

I wonder if raids would accept adding 3 additional minutes, and perhaps additional consumable usage (I need to drink zero potions on Patchwerk now, might need to drink a mana pot if fight lasted 6 minutes), to an encounter in the pursuit of better measurement of performance?

Most raids would want to actually ding the Quickwerk achievement before entertaining this type of scheme, but personally, as a player who is very interested in learning the capabilities of a brand new spec and selection of shots, this would be very valuable to me.

It keeps getting sillier and sillier

2009-01-23T07:16:00.002-05:00

Yeah, yet another day of writing a post, having things totally change between time of writing and time of posting, and then just deciding to wing it and brain dump here.

1) MM spec lasted about 4 minutes into the raid. When Brass and I came up with the plan for him to go SV and me to go MM, we pretty quickly saw the theorycrafters touting that SV is about 1k dps higher than MM. But we wanted to try it out anyways.

2) No dice. Half way through the trash in OS25+3, I asked for a portal to Ironforge. Welcome to the world of SV.

3) Worked for 2 hours on Sartharion plus three Drakes. This fight remains the coolest in the game so far.

4) However it is not cool when a patch alters what setting of spell detail video configuration is required to see the fissures (fire on ground, bad to die in). While I wasn't the only one to die due to the issue, I was the first, which when combined with a shaky start and a respec, is nerve wracking.

5) Set spell detail to a mid setting. Death and Decay is nearly impossible to discern from fissure, so just pretend DnD is fire also and run out of it.

6) We're consistently around 20 seconds away from having the three drakes fight under out belts. Make it past that next 20 seconds and the complexity and awful debuffs reduce considerably. We're gonna do it. Soon.

7) SV performed outstanding. Sarth plus drakes remains terrible for Hunters, so Iwon't really comment there. Archavon after the raid. Brass posted 5.2K DPS which f'ing rules. I put up a healthy 4.2K, which I am very happy for, considering I am completely unfamiliar with the spec and rotation and such.

8) More to come about my progress as a Survival Hunter!

Keep moving your feet

2009-01-22T08:11:00.003-05:00

Lacking inspiration to write a real post, but not wanting to let my annoyance at having to learn a new spec the day before a 3 Drakes progression run completely stop me in my tracks, here ya go:

1) The plan: I go MM, Brass goes SV. If one spec dominates, we both go there, if they're equal'ish, we probably stay split for different utility. SV seems to be DPS King according to the theorycrafters, by a big margin, but we'll still work this plan until that King is clear to us.

2) So far, MM is strange and awkward. Part of that is just getting acclimated to the new spec, part of that is because its strange and awkward. First observations: (A) Burst is fantastic. I've got 3 instants (Chimera, Arcane, and Aimed) for big bang. (B) Mana is gone instantly. Kill three trash mobs and OOM using the recommended rotation. (C) It doesnt matter, because if I take on three mobs, my pet is dead before the second mob dies.

Will reserve judgment until I see it in action in a raid setting.

3) Cooking. In a happy moment, today's daily rewarded a base of 2xDalaran, plus my spice bag had 1xDalaran, thus accelerating the Chef title by two days. Unless there's another happy ending to friday's daily, I'll be Chef Amava on saturday.

4) That's all I got. Still grumpy and pouty, but trying to learn from sites like Stabilized Effort Scope and ElitistJerks on how to be a Marksman.

R.I.P. Beast Mastery

2009-01-21T00:52:00.002-05:00

I predicted a roughly 15% DPS decrease due to the 3.0.8 nerf.

Tonight's Patchwerk kill would indicate that I was wrong.

Last week: 5.3K DPS

This week: 3.3K DPS

Decrease: 2.0K (38% decrease)

It was not a pretty sight at Amava's house :-(

Will Level 80 Heroics Be Memorable?

2009-01-20T08:34:00.000-05:00

During this weekend's craft-a-thon, I had to level some lowbies up to appropriate Grand Master level (65 for the Inscription/Alchemist, and 60 for the Blacksmith/Jewelcrafter).

Despite some excellent answers from readers to my post about "what's the fastest route", my leveling method of choice remains boosting multi-box runs through dungeons. Whether its the fastest or not, it is definitely brainless, and makes the grind more like playing a relaxing mind-numbing game of minesweeper, rather than fighting with glitchy quests, competing with death knights for spawns, and actually gears the babies up nicely should they ever have to fire a shot in anger.

So I found myself back in Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog, Mana-Tombs, and Sethekk Halls.

The experience evoked some outstanding memories.

Outlands Heroic Memories, FTW

Heroic Slave Pens wasn't always about 3 badges in 27 minutes. My first run in there was 4 hours of trying to get past the big two-mob pull that's shortly before the first boss. Un-crowd controllable, and we were at a point that the tank really couldn't handle both beating on him, and the healer could't really heal through it. But that run, while somewhat painful, stands out in my mind. The bond forged with the players in there lasted well beyond that saturday afternoon.

Heroic Ramparts. That pull at the top of the curvy stairs with one melee guy and four casters. Hours and hours of trial and error. Certainly not efficient in the Badges per Hour sense, but with the right group of people, and a healthy sense of humor, it was one of the most memorable runs ever.

Heroic Sethekk Halls. First Boss with three waves of elementals. Sure, by June or July 2008, we could burn him down and ignore those adds and the boss would be dead before the adds had time to travel all the way over to the healer. But in the early days of heroics? Took us quite a bit of creativity to work with what we had and make it happen.

So many memorable experiences in those dungeons.

Did you ever kill the fire b1tch in Heroic Mechanar? The first time five of us from the guild killed her, gchat erupted more than on our progression kill against Prince Malchezzar.

Remember when the 7 mob pull in Heroic Shattered Halls required you to control 5 out of the 7 mobs, or else your team would get crushed? Or maybe CC 4 of the mobs while you (hopefully) burned down the non-elites?

What about Northrend?

But what about the Level 80 Heroics?

Is there anything that will stand out as memorable in Northrend?

I've been through them all, except for Occulus.

What stands out?

Ok, so the gauntlet with the harpoons in Utgarde Pinnacle has a certain blend of style and challenge. I've had cake walks through there, a run where we actually 4-manned cuz of an afk PuG pally (thanks, bud), and a few rough runs that had some wipes and adjustment.

The Old Kingdom boss where you ~~get pwned by your GM's alt~~ have to fight your teammates in a 1-vs-4 arena match? Certainly memorable, if still a very sour taste in my mouth from the one and only time I've been there.

Maybe. Maybe that lady who dropped santa hats in Nexus and whips you around on the end of long strings. I'd say that one stands out in my mind, but more for the novelty effect of bouncing around, rather than the challenge standing out.

How about Occulus? For those who have been through the place, it must be memorable, since they'll never go back again. I've had countless people (guild, small but growing list of friends, LFG, /trade channel, PuG'ers from other instances) express their desire to NEVER RUN OCCULUS AGAIN. So I suppose that's memorable?

I'm not knocking the place!

WotLK 5-man dungeons are very cool. I definitely like the visual appeal, the varied mechanics, the creativity behind the dungeons in Northrend. They are real, and they are spectacular.

Culling of Stratholme is certainly entertaining and interesting.

But will an single run ever be as memorable as those Outlands ones?

Is it just because Outlands was virgin territory for me, and now I'm a salty raider?

What 5-person runs stand out in your memory?

I, Craftbot

2009-01-20T08:30:00.001-05:00

I snapped and went on a professional rampage this weekend.

It all started with a little email from Blizzard customer support. "Here's your 3 Dalaran Cooking Awards, be careful where you click next time."

Their desire to make the situation right, plus my newly confirmed knowledge of the required toon levels for grand master training in the crafting profs, inspired me.

Only a coconut would max out cooking

All I have to say is....cooking skill 440 is pretty easy to reach, you can practically get here just by doing the cooking daily. Cooking skill 445 is not that much more costly.

To get from 445 to 449, well, not so much. 200. Two Hundred. Northern Spice to gain those four points.

But, Amava, 449 isn't maxed out? I thought the cap is 450?

Well, considering how much meat that last point took, youdda thunk 449 was the ceiling.

Another two hundred spices to get the last point.

I sht you not.

Armed with a six pack of fine micro brew, a revenge of the nerds dvd (panty raid, ftw), and a nice chunk of spare time, I happily dinged 450.

Luckily, those stacks upon stacks of food sell like hot cakes, easily recouping the Northern Spice investment, but I digress.

EDIT: just wait till the servers come up today. Patch 3.0.8 makes it so feasts remain yellow up until 450. You'll need to make maybe 10 or 20 meals, a stark contrast to the 400 I had to make. /slap

There's fish in them thar pools

The majority of the food came from fishing.

Here's where the Achievements / Statistics interface becomes cool.

Start the day ~300 fishies.

End the day in the 800's.

5 points away from maxed out fishing.

NOTE TO J@CK@SS(es) : It is considered rude and impolite to begin fishing in a pool that someone else is already fishing at. Its like walking up to a urinal that's occupied, and unzipping and shouldering your way in and going to town. Do that IRL and you get (A) pee'd on, and (B) punched in the face and fall down, and (C) pee'd on again. /shoo

Time to Craft

It was at this point that the mental insanity clicked in.

Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, Inscription, and Alchemy.

All blown through the Outlands levels from 300 to 350.

Well, that's a lie, as I still have a couple points of JC to do. That one kinda sucks, but whatcha gonna do?

All with self-gathered mats.

If I see another Adamantite node, I just might cry.

The Outlands green-quality gems are close to worthless, making JC awful on the bank account (through wasted opportunity cost of selling all that Ore, or rather, spending the same time gathering more valuable ores and selling those)

Outlands Blacksmithing stuff is awesome. Death Knights buy the craftables up like they're going out of style. Plus, disenchant FTW. Sure, could make more money doing more profitable activities (sorry, but reading Greedy Goblin makes you think like this), but all in all, a very decent recovery leveling BS.

Inscription. I think I hate this one. Not sure why, but I'm a sucker and will keep going. I think my dislike comes from the fact that in a 25-person raid with a fully featured raid comp, scrolls are unusable. WTF?

Alchemy. Ah, alchemy. This one rules. My only regret is that I never had a leveled up alchemist during the potion chugging days of TBC. Half a bank tab of Northrend Herbs stored up brought this guy into the 420'ish range. I'm a big fan! Even bigger fan of how well the Northrend potions and elixirs sell.

Stop, Thief!

Along the way, I've accrued half a guild-bank tab of lockboxes of all levels.

Never picked a lock in my career.

Took the Rogue out for a few sessions of picking.

Hint for would-be lock picking power-levelers: Set small goals. I do 25 points at a sitting before switching to something else. Got me close to 250 without killing anybody IRL to break the tedium (much like reading a content-less post like this one).

90% of those lock boxes are now picked and disenchanted.

First Aid

I also made 3 heavy frostweave bandages to keep my questing stack full.

Just wanted to be complete :-)

I Love Raiding

But cancellations are kinda nice.

So is fishing. And beer.

And the single best moment in cinema history...the panty raid.

Meatloaf Again?

2009-01-16T14:03:00.002-05:00

Hasn't this guy eaten enough meatloaf?

Its been days and days in a row that all the cooks have been shoveling his face full of meatloaf.

Not that I'm complaining, because its one of the easiest/cheapest ones to complete, but come on man!

I'm wondering who's colon is stronger: the meatloaf guy or the cheese platter guy?

In ongoing news, there is nothing new to report with regards to my ticket to hopefully have a wrongfully purchased duplicate recipe replaced with one that helps progress towards Chef Amava.

If patch lands on tuesday, and ticket is not resolved to my satisfaction, there will be delay earning the achievement. Earth Shattering!

If patch does not land tuesday, ticket non-resolution will only cost me 10 Northern Spices, thus ~45 gold. Earth Shattering!

I can haz responsibility

2009-01-16T14:03:00.001-05:00

One of the Conquest Loot Council members needs to focus some time in another direction, and the GM was left needing a replacement.

Lucky Winner!

So I suppose my days of sitting back, enjoying things when they work, and complaining when they don't are over.

Well, being involved never stopped me from complaining, so I'll be sure to keep that up.

The real beauty of it is that 90% of the loot decisions lately resolve themselves. Conquest members have proven to be very generous with eachother, often expressing interest only to withdraw upon seeing a comrad in arms who needs it as well. LC only needs to step in when there's no clear resolution, which is less and less as more and more members have best-in-slot gear.

The first run will be thursday night, which includes finishing off Naxx-25 and Malygos.

So we'll be hitting the bosses who drop ilvl 226 gear, thus meaning we're likely to have a disproportionate number of multiple players wanting the same pieces of gear, as these puppies are the best in the game right now.

Yay, Confilict!

Is this true?

2009-01-15T08:46:00.001-05:00

350 - 450 Grand Master

level required:

Alchemy 65
Blacksmithing 60
Enchanting 60
Engineering 60
Inscription 65
Jewelcrafting 60
Leatherworking 65
Tailoring 60

Is this true?

Because, somewhere along the way, I got it my head that level 70 was required to train Grand Master in all crafting professions.

60/65 would make me very happy indeed.

Mammoth, FTW

2009-01-15T08:43:00.000-05:00

The Mini-Van is one of the funnier parts of WotLK for me. Everybody's got an opinion on whether its a waste, a good idea, or simply another form of ego stroking.

I dunno where I stand on it. Largely a novelty, I suppose. If I were hurting for gold as a result of the purchase, I'd probably regret it, but since there's no interest-bearing savings accounts in WoW to justify massive gold pile, and I don't really care for playing the true goblin game of flipping AH items or buying mats to sell end products, I'm pretty happy with the Mini-Van.

But since its soulbound, its kind of a moot point anyway, isnt it?

Features

For a hefty price tag, she provides:

- Room for two other riders. Mildly fun for other actual people. Very helpful for multi-boxing.

- Vendors. They provide the basic foods, drinks, reagents, ammos, and what not. Great for when there's no mage biscuits available or you run out of arrows. Also great for saving a flight to a town to dispose of revenue-generating bag-filling grey trash items.

- Repairs. Perfect for those wipey progression nights, especially in mount-able instances like Malygos or Obsidian Sanctum.

- Down Elevator. Jump off of a cliff of any height. Mammoth dies. You don't. Just mount back up for a brand spanking new ground level mammoth.

- Speed. Aspect of the Pack affects the mini-van, making it as fast as a Paladin with Crusader Aura. But it does get dazed if it gets hit, which makes for fun when exploring low-level Horde territory. Sorry, but this one is exclusive to Hunters.

- Endless Conversation. No, not the obvious "oh look at that guy, he must be compensating for a tiny little..." kind of conversation, but rather a whole spectrum of opinions regarding whether the mammoth owner should get a discount, or a cut of the profits, or free repairs, or so on and so forth. Good clean fun.

- Adorable jumping animation. Awww, isn't she cute?

Tips for people who raid with a Mammoth rider

Between wipe attempts, the mini-van can provide a handy service. Lets promote some general awareness:

1) To the left - Repair guy is on the left butt cheek.

2) Run away - Since we're getting ready for another attempt, the mammoth rider wants to dismount as soon as possible to start preparing. He cannot eat the feast, drink the elixirs, feed the pet, or cast any spells while mounted. Once you're done with the vendor, please run away.

3) Buff the Pet - Tied in with #2, Hunters really really want to dismount as soon as possible, because while mounted, our pets do not get any buffs. When the whole raid is casting their wonderful buffs, our pets miss out if we're mounted. So buffers, wait till the mammoth guy is dismounted, or please give spot buffs to the pet after the fact.

Tips for people who want to ride on the Mammoth

Mammoth owners love to take people for a ride. Here's some tips:

1) Party Only - Anyone of the same faction can use the vendors, however you need to be in the mammoth rider's party to get on.

2) Vendors - The rider needs to kick off a vendor for each passenger. If you see both seats occupied by players or vendors, that means you can't get on yet.

3) Damage - Yes, you can take damage while riding. Hell, each passenger can be in combat independently of one another, such as when taking baby alts for a ride and running past mobs. The babies aggro nearby mobs while the level 80 driver does not. Confusing. Funny when you run past Fel Reaver in Hellfire Peninsula and see your baby get one-shot since the aggro range is different by about 10 miles for a level 58 and a level 80.

4) Glitchy - The passenger part glitches out all the f'ing time. Most commonly manifesting itself in not being able to get onto what appears to be an empty seat. Annoying, I know. You think they'd test this crap out before charging us an arm and a leg for it.

5) Phasing - This is the weirdest. When two players are Phased to dramatically different views of the same landscape, you get confused and crosseyed. Had an alt riding on the mini-van, running through Dragonblight. All of a sudden, the alt gets knocked off and killed instantly, while on Amava's screen there was nothing but snow. Glance over at the alts screen and see masses and masses of plague-infested ghouls. Phasing, FTW!

Whaddya Think?

What's your experience been with the Traveller's Tundra Mammoth?

Like the Greedy Goblin, do you think it's the stupidest thing you've ever seen?

Did you want one when you first heard about them, but change your mind once you saw them in action?

Do you wish there were interest-bearing savings accounts in WoW so you'd have somewhere useful to dump 20k?

Dancing with the Drakes

2009-01-15T08:42:00.000-05:00

Conquest decided its time for Sartharion plus all three of his drakes to die in one epic battle.

Sarth and company didn't quite agree, but they were willing to indulge us with a few hours of Waltzing Matilda.

All I can say is...this fight is simply awesome.

I know most of Conquest was way more progressed in TBC and Vanilla than I was, so maybe they saw more epic battles than I ever did. And maybe they'll think I'm a turd for saying I loved a night that could be interpreted as fail if you view life through a black/white win/fail lens.

But it was just so cool.

Lets explore...

Challenge

Few fights in WotLK have provided Conquest with much challenge.

Sarth+1 was a one-shot, but I'd venture to say it was no cake walk. Fun night, though.

Sarth+2 was an hour or two of wiping, adjusting, tweaking, slowly progressing, resulting in a kill our first night trying. So a bit harder, and subsequently, a bit more satisfying when we nailed it.

Malygos was cool. A night of endless wipes, but steady progress through the phases. Practice Aces High daily quest for a few days. Return to kill him on our next night of attempts. Again, seeing steady progress and relying upon your Officers to adjust strategy and your members to adjust execution, very cool. The only thing that soils this one in my mind is how Phase 3 is totally unrecognizable mechanics that have nothing to do with the 80 levels a million hours of raiding you did with your toon. And you're riding a stupid dragon vehicle mount. But I digress.

Sarth+3 is tough. Very tough. Through a two hour wipefest, we made progress, tweaking one small piece of strategy at a time. Overall, the progress was still just the tip of the iceberg, where we can semi-reliably take out the first drake. So many moving parts to master, this one is going to be so sweet when we kill it.

Moving Parts

Moving parts you say? Do tell!!!

Of course, all this is from the perspective of a team that is still very early in the encounter. I'm sure there'll be more to tell once we've seen the full encounter, but here goes. Also, its from the perspective of a ranged DPS class, but you know that.

1) Flame Wall - You start off with the basic Flame Wall, same as in zero drakes. Make sure you recall pet each time you hear "RUN AWAY, LITTLE GIRL!" regardless of how much it'll gimp your DPS or how much of a Bestial Wrath you'll need to waste.

2) Sartharion - Also, same as in zero drakes, you've got Sarth himself. Nasty cleave in front of him, so make sure you know which way he's pointed. Not sure if his tail is evil or not, but I'm not about to hang around his arse to find out.

3) Void Zones - We all hate dying in the fire. So stay out of the void zones.

4) Lava - You're surrounded by lava, so don't run off the edges of the platform, unless you're choosing lava as the lesser evil when faced with an inescapable flame wall.

5) Tenebron - First drake to land. Need to watch the aggro and positioning while a tank picks him up. Oh, and to make things fun, a Flame Wall shows up right as he lands, making the transition rough. He's got bad breath that'll fry you, so watch your positioning closely.

6) Whelps - Tenebron periodically hatches eggs or something. Those eggs become nasty whelps. You must (A) have a way to handle the whelps, and (B) burn Tenebron down before he hatches a second set of whelps.

7) Flame Elementals - I think this is same as zero drakes. Fire Elementals wreak havoc amongst the raiders, so you need a way of controlling them or killing them. When Flame Wall hits them they enrage, so need someone like a Rogue to remove the enrage.

8) Shadron - The second drake to land. If your DPS output is like ours, you'll have overlap. Tenebron is still alive while Shadron arrives. So a third tank is required to pick this fella up.

9) Shadron's Portal - There's a portal with some acolyte or something in it. He does something bad. Good idea to kill him, which requires some DPS, a healer and a semi-tank (DPS spec DK or the likes) to pop into the portal from time to time.

And that's about all I can share from personal experience.

We had some attempts that were insta-wipe. We had some attempts that showed incremental progress over previous attempts. We had one attempt that was clicking, and went much smoother than the others, thus leading to the need to figure out how to transition from one portion of the fight to the next.

Interface Changes

Two interface settings help this fight out substantially.

1) Spell Details - Via the normal Video Settings screen, crank Spell Details down as low as you can. This makes the void zones stand out visually very clearly, and removes confusion that can come from Death and Decay or Consecration.

2) Camera Zoom - Why a special command is required for this, and not just the default camera zoom slider in the camera settings thingie, is beyond me. Zooming your camera way way out makes it way way easier to see the flame wall and determine (A) which side its coming from and (B) whether the gap is on the sides or in the middle.

/console cameradistancemaxfactor 4

I also use this on Malygos, and it helps a ton for spatial orientation during Phase 3. It definitely takes some getting used to or else you lose your own toon in the crowd, but once acclimated to the wider view, you're in business.

More fun to come

After a while, the raid leader called it and we went over to Naxxramas to pwn some mobs before going to bed, which was a good move as it vented some steam after an exciting but tough start to the night.

I think the general conclusion is that we didn't have enough DPS to reliably take Tenebron down fast enough, and also haven't mastered how to control the whelps yet.

I sure hope we keep pushing, though. Finally we found a challenge in WotLK worthy of night after night of slowly mastering the encounter.

Its fun, its got a lot of variety, there's a huge number of tactics we can use to make it happen, and most importantly, there's no stupid dragon vehicle mounts.

It would be a shame to abandon the challenge and wait till we get a little bit more gear raid-wide.

We can do this if we focus and keep trying.

Is when I have fat fingers

2009-01-15T08:41:00.000-05:00

The whole "soulbound" concept is a harsh mistress.

One click of the mouse, and ding, no refunds, no exchanges. Buyer Beware.

And it really sucks if the thing you intended to click on costs 3 awards, which can only be earned at a rate of one per day.

And even worse if there's an achievement that's going to be made accessible in the next patch (any tuesday now), and you're on schedule to be ready for that achievement the moment it opens up.

But only if you DONT FAT FINGER THE DAMN RECIPE AND BLOW THREE DALARAN COOKING AWARDS ON A STUPID RECIPE YOU ALREADY KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oye Vey!

So I opened a ticket.

I hope its a slam dunk. I mean, there's a soulbound recipe in my bag that I'm unable to do anything with other than DESTROY. I can't learn it since I already know it. Vendors aren't interested in giving me silvers for it. I can't mail it to the uber gf since its soulbound. And, not mere coincidence, there's a recipe that costs the same, is not yet learned by me, and is required for Chef Amava, and sits directly next to the incorrectly purchased duplicate recipe in the vendor's display window.

Unless the GM is evil and out to get me, I'd think he'll see that this is a case of fat fingers and will either give me my 3 awards back, or give me the recipe I was trying to buy.

So the first-level GM guy talked to me, seemed to agree that I'm an honest chap with a clicking problem.

He told me not to fiddle with the ticket in any way shape or form, and escalated to a "Character Specialist".

My bet is that the Character Specialist will actually get to the ticket AFTER I've already earned enough Dalaran's to buy the two outstanding recipes, PLUS the one I accidentally didn't buy today.

/doh

My only wish is that they make the Chef title come with a special hat. Whitemane's Chappeau is the closest thing to a chef's hat that I know of, but it's red.

Ten Naxx-10 Quickies

2009-01-14T07:26:00.000-05:00

Enough walls of text and psychological babble. Lets have a quickie, mostly but not all, about a Naxx-10 run:

1) Bring the player, not the class -BUT- don't ever forget to include at least one player who can replenish mana (ret pally, shadow priest, survival hunter). Jimminy Christmas, last night's Naxx-10 was one solid block of mana management, resulting in one of the most challenging and yet fun Sapphiron kills I've been part of. All Hail King Mana Tide.

2) I love Druids with a sense of humor. Especially when nobody will rez a dead one, and a snot-nosed hunter says he'll cast Revive Pet if she just changes her corpse over to bear form. /sorry

3) More with the replenish. Seriously, though. I spent more time in Viper in one raid than I have since dinging 80. Suddenly 4 piece T7 doesn't sound so bad.

4) Amava Knows Ammo. Four hour marathon in Naxx. 28 Slot Pouch full at the beginning, mostly Timless Shells, and 8 stacks of Mammoth Cutters for boses. Blew through all of it, and had to mount up and buy 8 stacks of bullets from my Traveler's Tundra Salesman. These bullets don't grow on trees, people! Ok, they kinda lay there in nodes on the ground, but that's not the point.

5) Not about Naxx, but immediately before the Naxx-a-thon. Easily found 2 low level quests in Area 52, so I am now an Outlands Lore Master, although I still couldn't tell you what a Naru is (perhaps a god of the space goats?) or why Illidan is a Bad Guy (maybe he just needs a Tasty Cupcake).

6) More with the ammo. Seriously, though. Getting near the bottom of the barrel, during a single KT attempt I swapped ammo twice. Started with Timeless Shells for the trash waves, switched to Mammoth Cutters for KT himself, ran out of those, and swapped in the vendor bullets at the end. That 28 slot bag takes up half the damn screen.

7) Lore or Nostalgia? I'm sure there's a good reason Magtheridon is locked in his chamber, but I dont know what it is. I think he pissed off Illidan (took his tasty cupcake?). But, boosting an alt through Blood Furnace and seeing Maggy down there brings a smile to my face.

8) DPS Races Are Fun. Sometimes the over-competitive nature of DPS'ers causes unhealthy situations. But, when the tank dangles a carrot out there (which ever hunter comes out on top on Patchwerk doesn't have to kite on Gluth!!!!), its GO TIME. Brass beat me by 5k damage, which I attribute to him having slightly better timing with one of the BW calls. I suppose it serves me right for letting him do the opening Misdirection :-). And Dusty Miner's Leggings the Mage tried to keep up. Did a miraculous job, but there's something sweet about the Sustained part of MQoSRDPS that a Beast Master brings to the table (at least for now).

9) Dinging "Mama Said Knock You Out" is just plain old fun. Achievements really are full of win, especially when you're not expecting them and then they pop up with a funny name.

10) I openly admit I died in the fire on KT during our raid vacation week. This does not give a golden ticket to say "What'd Amava die from? Void Zone?" any time we wipe on KT now. I share brain dumps of whatever's on my WoW-mind, whether it be ego-stroking or things I think need improvement. My writing on a public blog shall not garner special treatment, either via ass kissery directed at the Loot Council (keep em coming ;-) or via my admitting to mistakes. Future abuses shall receive a thumping, and I'll warn ya, I've got the Knuckle Sandwich achievement!

Its that time again, Performance Improvement Plan

2009-01-14T07:24:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'll admit that I'm losing steam on the Plan. Patch 3.0.8 is looming over us and by the time this post gets published, may even be live. That brings so much change and uncertainty to playing a Hunter, it remains tough to focus on the here-and-now of improving what I've got.

But, its important to keep things moving, and now would be the worst time to let the plan go off the rails.

Review Previous Five Steps

1) Daily Mantra - I have not died in the fire for two weeks now. While not intending cease this pursuit, the mantra gets to take a rest.

2) Finish off review of Wishlist - I've come to the conclusion that I'm well geared. That's a good thing, because we all love pew pew that gear brings, plus shinies stroke the ego. Its a bad thing from the perspective of complexity. There are a couple clear improvements that are no-brainers. There are many items that provide a side-grade, or perhaps offer flexibility in the form of +hit or a socket. I think there's only three items I have left to do the analysis on to classify as: don't want, side-grade, upgrade.

3) Macro KC - I ended up only doing this for Steady Shot, since no matter what's going on, steady seems to sneak in there, even post patch 3.0.8.

4) Thaddius - I read over the wiki page for the fight and can't find any specific trick that might boost my numbers. In a naxx-10 run, I did find that having the other players die sure helps improve my position on Recount, but that's sorta cheating. I'll just have to accept that my output on this guy will suffer, and take solace in the fact that I generally don't fail at the ledge boss. (oops, just jinxed myself).

5) Purple is as Purple does - I replaced my last greenie the very same night I wrote my last plan update. Fury of the Five Flights off of OS25+2. Once patch 3.0.8 lands, my feral staff will have its stats changed to Hunter stats, and my last blue will out the door. In the process of looting FotFF, I dinged Epic!, but only by cheating and swapping some ilvl 200 and 213 trinkets and rings. Sue me.

Out-of-Plan Changes

Well, the biggest is Kel'Thuzad dropping Envoy of Mortality, which shall not become known as my new precious, as Arrowsong was substantially more beautiful. But, I'll take it!!!

And I think that's it.

Assess the Results

We fought Patchwerk before KT dropped the gun (natch).

5.2k DPS, ftw!

The majority of the night in Naxx-25 consisted of Brass and I taking turns at the top. And celebrating that this might be the last week we get to do it, woe is us. Actually, he'll generally stay on top even after the nerf, but I might have to go back to the formal Improvement Plan to get back up there. Cry me a river.

The real key at this point is understanding the timing of the encounter, rather than gear.

We kill Patchy in a smidge over 3 minutes.

This means I get one shot at Readiness.

Seems like its two BW's, and then we're at a point that the DPS lead calls for Heroism.

Save Readiness until near the end, and use it to trigger BW during Heroism for max results.

Maximizing the output becomes harder for fights that're less predictable for duration, and also mobility or other factors.

Like Grobbulus. How frustrating to get nailed by one of his farts immediately after triggering BW, and have to run all the way across the room to avoid blowing the raid up?

The New Steps

I'm not going to force it to be five steps anymore, but rather just go with what needs attention.

1) Pet Spec - During OS25+2, the Hunters were discussing pet specs that might make the fight tolerable. It really is awful on Beast Masters in here. Some additional magic resist might be good. It'll be tough to pick what to give up to get an additional two points for full resist, but I guess that's the fun of talent points, making compromises.

2) EJ Spreadsheet - A reader commented and emailed about the EJ Spreadsheet. I downloaded it and tried it out. It is very involved and quite complicated for a new person. I failed to get it to do anything. I think I'm going to try again, as it will be a very useful tool to weed out the last few upgrade vs side-grade decisions.

3) Sit and Wait - Yeah, 3.0.8 is just too dramatic a change to really do anything about (and I really don't want to go on the PTR to play), so its time to sit and wait, and keep in touch with the major Hunter resources to see what the general opinion is (aka, what's the new cookie cutter, and is it so divergent from my fun of uber pet that I cant stomach it).

And that's all I've got for now.