the WoW Noob

Adventures in stuff!

2012-01-16T13:17:00.001-05:00

Happy Monday everyone! You may be wondering what I, our intrepid blogger, have been up to, or maybe not. Well, I'm going to tell you....

There has been raiding, LFR (with amazingly fail DPS on occasion), and Twilight heroics. There's also been me being told that 15k dps is not enough to be in the new heroics, and that if I'm not willing to switch specs to Survival, I should go farm old raids for gear. Since Garetia is almost entirely decked out in older raid gear (mostly bought with points, but still), I found that confusing. Also, if there are rogues trying to do Ultraxion (which is still a DPS race in LFR) with under 10 k DPS, I feel that 15 is more than adequate for any heroic. MARKS FOR LIFE, DAMN IT!

Redeemed continues to kick arse and take names in Dragon Soul. We're extending our raid lockout to work on Spine of Deathwing, and hope to kill Deathwing this week or next, before one of our tanks takes a much needed break. On that note, Redeemed is currently recruiting, mostly melee DPS. I should point out that the current raiding plan involves killing Deathwing, then taking it easy, doing fun runs, and relaxing a bit before the pandas attack. But if that sounds good to you, you don't mind slightly insane in the entertaining way, and you're on Shadow Council Horde-side, look us up!

In other news, I've wandered over to Norrath. Yup, a new year, trying a "new to me" MMO. My conclusions thus far:

EQ2 feels far less polished and more buggy than WoW. I've seen bugged animations, gathering nodes in midair, and my favorite bug, the ever popular "zone in, can't interact with anything, get kicked back to character selection screen and wait for a bit then try again". Best part is that I've had this happen on two different computers, running different operating systems, with the game installed two different ways. In other words, it isn't me, it's the game.

On the other hand, the world feels so much bigger than Azeroth does. I love the crafting (and I can gather all the things!). There just feels like there's much more to do, and the game is more complicated. Remember when WoW had weapon skills and spell ranks? Well, EQ2 still does. There's lore quests, where you find out about particular types of creatures by studying stuff they drop when you kill them, language quests, collections (shells, butterflies, that sort of thing), and crafting's more complicated too.

And here's screencaps!

Leveling in the frozen North with a class, well, think elemental warlock with pet.

My wizard looking at her home city (it's inside the volcano).

Heehee, I'm a fairy! Also, this is the most relaxing starting zone I've ever encountered.

Wizard again, in her starting zone, Timorous Deeps

MMO Reviews from a Wow Addict (games I tried in 2011)

2012-01-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

Figured rather than write a sum-up of 2011, I'd sum up the MMOs I tried and what I think WoW players might like or not like. So, without further ado...

Lord of the Rings Online
LIKE:
Free to play
Gorgeous world
Lots of character customization
Appearance tab (so you can look like you're wearing an awesome outfit no matter what mess you're actually in)
Epic Lore
Housing!
Semi-sane community (less STFU NOOB sort of thing)
You can PVP as a monster

DISLIKE:
Limited Storage Space (need to purchase)
Free to play is more like free to play till level 20 or so
Lack of actual wizards (for lore reasons)
Travel's much more complicated than WoW (though you can buy stuff to make it easier)
PVP is not free to play

COULD GO EITHER WAY
Leveling's much slower than WoW, but endgame doesn't feel as important
Loads of achievements (and you get abilities from said achievements rather than from talent trees)

WHY TO TRY IT
If you're looking for another fantasy MMO, like Middle Earth, or are just looking for a slightly slower pace, this is a great game. I still stick my head in now and again.

Champions Online
I played this for about 3 hours before uninstalling it, so I don't have much to say

LIKE:
Yay Superheroes
Free to play

DISLIKE (personally):
Art Style
Combat

WHY TO TRY IT
I'd say it's worth a try if you like the superhero genre and want more active combat. I'm not a huge superhero person, and I hated the combat (but that's a personal taste thing).

Kingdom of Loathing
You can argue that this isn't a true MMO. I'm reviewing it anyway.

LIKE:
Great humor
Runs in a browser window
Free to play
Nice crafting system

DISLIKE:
Limited amount of actions at a time because you have a limited amount of adventures and once they run out you need to go do something else

COULD GO EITHER WAY
Art Style. I think the stick figures are great, but they're not everyone's cup of tea.

WHY TO TRY IT
You don't have to install or download anything and it's free.

City of Heroes/Villains

LIKE
Character creator. Best character creator ever.
Loads of Customization Options (including the ability to customize what colors your powers use)
Great-looking world
Free to play

DISLIKE
slower-paced combat for the most part
can get grindy
there's only so many sewers, warehouses, and office buildings you want to go into
Very limited character slots for free to play
PVP not a big thing (from what I experienced)

COULD GO EITHER WAY
Loot (or lack thereof). You get stuff to customize your powers, potionlike stuff, and crafting stuff, but no gear.

WHY TO TRY IT
Because the character creator is beyond awesome. Seriously, it alone is worth the download. Also, it's the granddaddy of all superhero MMOs. Oh, and you can fly and beat up bad guys (or good guys).

So there you have it. This year I'm hoping to continue trying new to me MMOs, starting with EQ2, and possibly hitting up Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and whatever else sounds shiny and free. If you'd like to suggest a free to play MMO (or you want me to try a pay to play and are willing to pay for a subscription and box), comment or hit me up on twitter or email.

the Gear Gap, and Suggestions on Stopgap Solutions

2011-12-27T15:58:00.000-05:00

Yet again an alt has run full tilt into the gear gap between Northrend normals and Cataclysm normals. And rather than rant about it I figured I'd try to be constructive. I know that in the long run Blizz is trying to figure out what to do about gear inflation, but that doesn't help people right now. So here's some stopgap solutions in the meantime.

1. Have crafted gear that fills the gap. My tailor can't make a full set of Cat greens for a level 80, and neither can my blacksmith or leatherworker. Add some patterns and fix this. You could even have them drop from the level 80 Wraith dungeons. This isn't an ideal newbie solution, but it'd couldn't hurt.

2. Give the heirlooms that scale to 85 an i level (like 282). Heck, if you wanted to be really nice, you could make it a scaling i-level. It'd be nice to be able to queue with my cloak and helm of YAY XP, instead of queueing in greens I am just going to switch out as soon as I get in there.

3. Get rid of the XP gap between Northrend heroics and Cat normals. At least that way I could go farm Northrend stuff for XP (even if gear farming them is pointless). It just makes the gap a bit less painful.

4. Lower the ilevel requirements for the first two Cat normals.

5. Drop Cat greens in level 80 dungeons.

6. Make quest rewards from the level 80 dungeons equivalent to Cat greens.

Now, why am I harping on this? Well, imagine you're a new player. You've decided that you want to tank or heal at end game, so you've leveled through dungeons, or you've leveled through dungeons cause you like them. You're learning how to play, you've kinda got the gear thing down, and then you hit level 80 and lookie, you can't keep progressing the way you have been. You have to hope that a) you know that Cat greens can be bought on the AH and that you have the gold or that b) it occurs to you to go quest or that c) you have helpful and friendly guildies.

Otherwise, I can see a misinformed newbie thinking "okay, guess I need to run more Wraith normals" never realizing that they will never get to a high enough i level that way. And that could easily lead to a rage quit. If it's annoying to me (who has the gold and the knowledge to go get what I need from the AH), I can only imagine how frustrating it might be to a new player.

Stuff I've been up to in WoW

2011-12-23T21:56:00.001-05:00

Other than transmog? Okay, quite a bit of transmog. Lookie at the newest outfits!

Monera's new outfit, based around that pretty leather skirt. All pieces except belt and staff are low-level AH stuff. The staff will be replaced, once I find one I like better.

Garetia's new mail outfit. Not ideal yet, but I like the green theme. Based around the tunic, a dungeon quest reward from Auchenai Crypts. All other bits were either already in bags, purchased on the AH, or crafted.

And here we see Anput, my rogue. She's also rocking a chest from that same quest as Garetia is, just leather instead of mail. The pants are again AH, found while I was trying to put together Monera's outfit. Otherwise it's a mix of heirlooms, level 60 pvp gear, and the dagger is Fangs of the Father, a dungeon drop (don't ask me which dungeon, she's run 7 in the past few days and they've all run together).

Otherwise, there's been a lot of gearing up Eiunn the shaman, who is now 3/8 DS 10 as elemental and 4/8 DS LFR as resto. I've run a lot of the new 5 mans, and come to some conclusions.
1) caster mail is a myth
2) Echo of Sylvannas stinks
3) Thrall is this expansion's CoT Arthas.

Lyllea's 8/8 in LFR, and 4/8 in DS 10. We're running hard into the DPS check on Ultra (due to 3 healing it in normal Firelands gear), and have developed a great dislike of Warlord Buggy'McBuggyPants. I've gotten some tier from LFR, and while it looks like Lyl's 359 boots are never getting replaced, I did get a new main hand, so I can't complain much.

My DK's next in line for gearing, but it's hard to convince myself to run those 5 mans another 7 times after running them on Lyl (to cap valor if I don't want to deal with the stupid of LFR) and Eiunn (damn you caster mail, DROP!). So instead I've actually been leveling. In fact, at this point all of my alts on Shadow Council have run through all their rested XP. My mage is almost to 80, the rogue's 66, and even the warrior got some love (and a Blackfathoms run of "hit all the buttons because EJ has either failed me on a fury guide or I'm very tired and looking in the wrong place"). I also rolled a lock Horde-side to help Redeemed with Stay Classy. I'm looking forward to getting her into PVP, mostly because a) 7 heirlooms=OP, and b) an undead running around with gnome pigtails just seems extra evil.

Other than that, I've gotten into some achievement runs on various toons, and I'm dabbling my toe into the crafting transmog market. Eiunn's picked up both Ulduar and BT leatherworking and/or tailoring patterns, so I'm planning on making one or two, see if they'll sell. All this transmog is a bit hard on the old gold reserves, after all, and if I don't do something I might have to *GASP!* do dailies.

So that's what I've been up to during this radio silence. Now, off to bed, and before I forget...

HAPPY MIDWINTER HOLIDAY OF YOUR CHOICE!!

Transmogging without a set, how to create an original look

2011-12-23T06:31:00.002-05:00

So, I've been doing a lot of trying to figure out how to transmog stuff so I get unique and also nice-looking gear. And I figured I'd write up what I've come up with.

First, and foremost, get a addon that shows you what gear looks like on your toon. I love MogIt, but I'm sure there's plenty out there to choose from.

Second, run old stuff. My server has a lovely channel called achievements, and you can generally find at least one old raid going on at peak times. Look for mount runs, achievement runs, that sort of thing. Personally I don't pick my raid based on what it might drop, I pick it based on how much I like going there. That way any cool drops are just a neat bonus. But it is best to go in without a preconceived notion of what you're going for, so that you're more open to new things. I didn't go into Black Temple thinking I was going to get a shield, but I did. Also, I discovered there's a kick-arse mace in there, so it looks like my DK may be doing some farming.

Third, keep an eye out while leveling alts. I've already found a sword that I want to get on as many toons as possible, simply because it looks cool.

Now, you should hopefully have a good selection of gear at this point. Now comes the hard part, creating a look from this selection. Here's one way (the way I find the easiest) to do it...

Step 1) Find your favorite piece. Ideally you want something that's going to be obvious on your toon, like a chest or shield or staff or shoulders. This piece is what you're going to build your set around. In the case of Lyl, I started with the current priest tier shoulders.

Step 2) Gather all that gear you've been collecting. Hit the transmog guy and start experimenting. Keep in mind a few simple things, like matching colors and keeping the ornateness/simplicity of the gear more or less equivalent to your favorite piece. Generally you'll want to go with simpler looking gear than your favorite piece so the rest of the set doesn't distract. Also keep in mind that enchants on your gear will still be visible, so you generally don't want to transmog your nice sword with the glowing red enchant to the blue lightsaber.

Step 3) Now hopefully you've got at least the beginnings of a set. Start farming to fill in any slots, and don't forget about hitting the AH. Cheap leveling greens often have a nice look, and your friendly tailor can make some nice things too (like the black mageweave headpiece, or the admiral's hat). Heck, the Fel Iron sword is pretty darn neat-looking too, and that shouldn't be too hard to hunt down from a blacksmith.

Now, to put my money where my mouth is, here's my current looks...
Lyllea, starting with the current priest shoulders, adding a splash of Ulduar, tier 11 (the boots), and even a staff from Scarlet Monastery, which you'll have to actually go to the Armory to see, since I can't figure out how to change her pose to show it. I have no idea which tabard that is, since I don't have one that matches.

Eiunn, who is still a work in progress, first in what she's currently wearing (and yes, I need either a top with green or pants and shield with blue)...

And second, in an earlier version...(yes, that's not the best screencap ever, sorry). Since this cap, I've picked up a shield from Black Temple, cursed my legs for not matching, and gotten rid of the helm. Cool helm, but I didn't have anything else that matched it.

Here's my DK, Llonya. She's my only toon in a precreated set, and that is her original DK greens (never getting rid of stuff finally came in handy)

And here's MogIt in action, showing me what that offhand (in Black Temple) looks like on my toon.

And I have no idea why all my space goats look so grumpy! Didn't there used to be a way to customize the pose of your toons in the Armory? Did they get rid of that or am I just too tired to see it?

I hope this makes transmogging a bit less ACK! and a bit more fun for you. Sure, there's tons of great sets (I saw a lvl 60 dressed as a SW guard tonight), but I think half the fun's making your own, plus there's loads of resources on sets.

Slightly Disappointed

2011-12-02T20:16:00.001-05:00

So this is how I feel about 4.3...
http://youtu.be/3hgcy6bsg4g

Has it lived up to that? Well, I'm waiting for my decision after the Darkmoon Faire hits, but so far...

Really reusing the Eye of Eternity? Awesome setting, you know I love it (it's my blog's backdrop for goodness sake) but fail on something new and shiny. Sadness. Naxx at the beginning of Wraith? You failed there, you're kinda failing here...

Here's hoping the Darkmoon Faire is F-ing awesome, cause if not, well, watching Quills on Netflix (or South Park or Mad Men or random documentaries) is more appealing. At least with that, I get knitting done (and therefore have something tangible to show for it). But Blizzard, PLEASE! I don't want to give up the game that has led to so many incredible friends, please! I want to keep playing, give me a reason to (besides the horse and Diablo 3 for the year-long, cause I ran through Diablo 2 in a summer with pain meds (ankle-reconstruction, owie)).

But for something positive, my run with the raid finder was relatively painless. I want to figure out how to hit an idiot through the internet (my blue bar = your red bar, idiot, if I have no blue, then you have no red), but it was relatively promising. I'm just not sure it will remain so (or be so if I hadn't que'd for heals. Yes, I queue for new raids as heals, and new dungeons as DPS.) I blame the begininng of Cat, which made me doubt (and still doubt) my 5 man healing skills.

I did get tier (but am not sure if I want to break my 4 piece) and did see 2 fights. But that isn't enough on it's own to keep me playing. The awesome friends and guilds I have gotten to know do that, and I have yet to see something to keep me playing over the long-term outside of those. Blizz, I want to keep giving you my money, please please please be worthy of it!!!!

Yup, once again I am fail blogger

2011-11-27T18:54:00.001-05:00

WoW just hasn't been interesting to me lately. I've gotten my DK to 85, discovered that Frost dual-wielding is ridiculous fun, and been happy that both my first guild and my Horde guild are full of awesome people.

There's just been more to rant about than celebrate. Like the tier 4-piece for healing priests. "Dude, we heard you like fire, so here's some healing fire so you can heal while trying to stay out of fire!" I mean, really? Oh, and Ragnaros. Really starting to loathe that fight.

Ooh, and the new expansion. Pandas, well, okay, I'm willing to go with that. Pet battles, okay, could be fun. But, completely changing the basis of classes, AGAIN? GRRRRR!
I feel like there's no overarching plan for WoW anymore, and that we're being used as an experimental ground for Titan.

So, yeah, rather than rant about WoW, I've just not blogged. Sorry.

Instead, I've been trying new things, knitting, and now I've picked up a "sorta" new to me MMO. City of Heroes was my first MMO, I played right at launch, my computer didn't quite support it, and I quit after my free month. But with it going F2P and with a month's sub costing 0.99 (black friday sale), I said "Why not?"

The character creator alone is worth trying this game for. So many ways to customize your character! Here's 3 I've made.

First, we have Greensleeves Djinn, an amoral, profit-hungry villain who uses a bow, heals herself with green fire, and summons ninjas to do her bidding. Yup, ninjas. Originally I wanted to make a pirate queen (with pirate henchmen) and a battle cry of "Men, they stole our rum! GET THEM!" but no pirate henchmen are available.

Then we have Ilviena, a mutated (and slightly bitter) young hero who's making the world a better place by throwing enemies around and summoning random stuff to hit them with.

Here's a pic of her in action. She's currently my highest toon (at lvl 10), and a blast to play.

And then we have the first toon I made, a ice blaster. I've been having way more fun with Ilviena, so she's neglected, but I love her look.

I've also made Kudzu the Devourer, Antonia Drake, Moneri, and a lot of others. The character creator is SO MUCH FUN! I can change not only a character's costume, body shape, and colors, but also change how their powers look, and with the way their classes work, the power sets I choose can really alter how the class plays. Yes, I've spent several hours just making characters, and that's my one complaint about the free version. Two slots. TWO! But but but altaholic here! So I ponied up the 99 cents for a month of VIP time, just so I can experiment and fiddle. I figure by the time the month is up I should have a decently good idea of what I like playing.

I don't expect CoX to hold my interest long-term, but for right now, I'm having a blast. If you, like me, are suffering from WoW ennui, give CoX a look. Me, I'm going back to Paragon City, I have heads to bash in. See you on Virtue (the unofficial RP server, and my server of choice)

Look, RP Stuff!

2011-10-10T23:03:00.001-04:00

I was working on my baby priest (now 22 and hitting Hillsbrad, and Silverpine was epic, if troubling), and was inspired. She's on an RP server, and I do want to find an RP guild for her at some point. So here, the first entry of Ameldia's Journal.

Entry the first (though why I'm writing this is beyond me. I suppose it will be interesting to look back on my early days.)

I got asked the other day why I adventure. I suppose they were expecting me to say that I wanted to destroy the living, or serve the Dark Lady. I guess "well, it's something to do" isn't a common answer.

But there I go again, dropping into the middle of things. Sorry, when your unlife (or whatever you want to call it) starts that way, you try to ignore the importance of beginnings. When you don't have one, it stings a bit. Okay, a lot.

I'm Ameldia. Or at least I think I am. But does thinking I am actually make me so? It's questions like these that would keep me up at night if I slept. Am I supposed to sleep? You'd think they'd have a course or something when they raise you, but no, it's go get this and go kill that. Not so helpful.

I'm forsaken, or that's what they tell me. I know I'm a corpse, brought back by some unholy thing. I know the Light burns, but it's a good burn. I rather like the pain, it's nice to feel things. I don't remember anything, really, from life, but I miss feeling things and tasting things.

Physical description, in case you might care what I look like. I'm a bit taller than average, though I tend to slump (something about decay of the structures of the spine, I think). My hair is clean, if oddly-colored (I really doubt I had blue hair in life). My elbow and knee joints show, a common affliction, but other than that I'm quite well-preserved. I also have a baby lich thing that follows me around and occasionally frosts things. He gives me the creeps but I can't seem to get rid of him. My fingers are generally stained with ink, as are my robes. I suppose I'm decent-enough looking, for a decaying corpse. What are the beauty standards for us, anyway?

I have no idea who I was in life, so I'm trying to figure out who I am in death. It's as good a way as any to pass eternity, I suppose.

3 Things I Think Blizz Should do to Make Leveling Better...

2011-10-07T17:01:00.000-04:00

3 Things I Think Blizz Should do to Make Leveling Better...
1) stop trying to force us to Northrend, Outlands, or Vash/Hyjal with better XP. Quests and kills should give you the same XP whether you're in Borean Tundra or Netherstorm. It's all old content, and let's face it, most Wraith babies have done Northrend to death but may not have ever set foot in Shadowmoon Valley.

2) Following on from 1, BC heroics should give about the same XP for a run as Nexus or UK. Wraith heroics should give about the same XP as a Cat normal. Again, it's all old content, and doing this would allow for more variety in the 70-75 dungeon range. I was doing BC heroics with my mage, but given that at level 70 a BC heroic gives me less than half the XP of a UK run, it makes more sense to run UK for the 4th time, sadly.

3)The gear gap at 80. I've run into this twice now. Cata normals require better gear than you get questing in Northrend or running dungeons to 80. That needs to be fixed, it's really stupid to run dungeons to 80 because you'd rather run around Dal looking for Higher Learning books than quest, then suddenly be unable to run the new dungeons that are the only ones that will give you decent XP. I'm hoping that the new 80 gear sets are to help with this.

I know why these things exist, they're to force us into the new content. But the content isn't new anymore, so why keep the rails? Yes, when Cat came out it was a good idea to nerf Wraith heroic XP, but Cat's been out for almost a year now. Give us a bit more freedom, Blizz!

One Amazing Night

2011-10-03T12:45:00.001-04:00

Horde-side is turning out well for me. Last night just ended up being an AMAZING night and I have screencaps to share! (the day started off horribly, so last night was extra awesome as a result)

First off, I'd signed up for a Light of Dawn run (LK 25 heroic) that had been advertised in the achievements channel. We actually had 25 people, and lost more people to the elevator boss than any other boss before LK. One wipe on LK, and a new title (and a bunch of achieves) was mine!

Then the same raid leader (who was awesome and if you can go on a run Creacher's running, do IT!) said he was doing an Ulduar 10 drake run. We all know I've been lusting after that drake forever, so I was in. It was a spectacular group, and we ended up doing Yogg+0...

Razorscale's achieve (which we saved for last since it's really painful at 85)

And then went to say hi to the Observer

I won the quest thing and got to make the Dal skies all pretty!

And got my new buddy to top it all off! Oh, and some ulduar tier. I will defn be going on these runs again, it was a lot of fun and SQUEEE MOUNT OF SHINY!

Old Lyl, New Lyl

2011-09-18T17:53:00.002-04:00

Old Lyl...

New Lyl

I'm not overly thrilled with the tightly pulled back braid, but it was the only nelf hairstyle available and it didn't feel right for Lyl to go through a transporter/orb accident and turn into a belf and completely leave her old self behind. Yup, that's my IC explanation for how she became a belf. Right now, she's oscillating between trying desperately to hang on to her old life and working out how to embrace this new life.

I did go to TB on her, and was only focus-fired once! And my new guild does pvp nights, so I'll be healing in BGs more. I like doing that, provided my face doesn't get melted repeatedly and quickly, which more actual pvp gear should help with.

So we'll see how it goes. But is it just me or is it way easier to navigate Orgrimmar by flying mount than on foot?

Firelands Nerf

2011-09-16T12:16:00.001-04:00

So, the nerf to Firelands. I haven't talked about it because we've seen so little info on what exactly they're planning to do. I'm also trying to sort my own feelings out on the matter. But there is one major point I've seen that I agree with.

TOO SOON
Summer's never a good time for raiding guilds, or at least it's not for the ones I've been in. People go on vacation, do more family stuff, and generally aren't as available. This means less raiding. My former raid group actually went on hiatus for a couple weeks because not enough people were around. So, patch 4.2 comes out to now, that's 11 weeks more or less. Now, we raided 2 days a week, so that's 22 days minus 4 days which equals 18. 18 days and 2.5 hours of raiding per day, that ends up being 45 hours. That's a rough estimate of how much time I've spent in Firelands, and it doesn't seem like that much.

In that 45 hours, I've helped kill (in the order I killed them) Rhyolith, Shannox, Beth'tilac, Baleroc, and this week we downed Alysrazor. That averages out to about 9 hours per boss. Does that seem right to you? Now, most of that time was spent working on Rhyolith and Alysrazor, not because they were hard but because my old raid team died and I ended up in the other one which raids for longer periods of time and had started with the "easier" bosses.

9 hours per boss. 9! And it's important to remember that Lyllea is not well-geared. I hit Firelands in almost entirely 359s, but I don't farm valor and she's still mostly wearing that same gear (yes, I'm lazy). I remember struggling for a long time on Magmaw (my date for his achieve is early Feb, and I believe we started on him in early Jan). I know we struggled on a couple of the other bosses as well (Halfus and Council of Wind, I still hate your RNG), and I very, very much doubt that if you averaged out all my raid time over the previous tier, stopping when Firelands came out (and I was fairly well-progressed at that point, with every boss but the end ones down), that you would come up with 9 hours per boss. In fact, let's do some back of the envelope math on that...
Jan 1 (we didn't start raiding till after Christmas)- June 28 is 27 weeks. Roughly 135 hours of raiding. The average ends up being 16.8 hours per boss. That still seems short, but until I did the math I wouldn't have said that. Plus, that's still over 4 raiding days per boss.

So, based on my back of the envelope math, I don't think Firelands needs a nerf, at least for me. I've progressed further in less time than I did last tier, and certainly don't feel like I've stalled. It also worries me a bit. I do NOT want Firelands (or the next raid) to be a repeat of ICC in terms of content spacing. I'd be a bit less worried if heroic modes in Firelands were more like they were in Ulduar, or if heroic mode tier 11 dropped gear as good as Firelands normal. That way we could have options! Get bored with Firelands normal, go try tier 11 heroics! Plus, helm and shoulder tokens. Of course, they'd still look like urinals (stupid tier 11 shoulders for priests), but I suppose I can put up with them for a bit longer.

Now, I'm not against nerfing content to allow more people to see it, I just don't like the timing of this nerf.

DragonCon Pictures

2011-09-15T23:40:00.000-04:00

I took pictures at DragonCon, and here you go. Think of it as a RL screencap post... I worked for most of the con, so not as many pictures as I might like.

A toddler running away from a shark. It was a robotic blimp shark, very cool.

Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast. The clock guy was also there, but I didn't get a picture of him

Me with Lucius Malfoy. If you're wondering why I look hot, well, that outfit's made of upholstery fabric.

Me with Snape. Sadly, I didn't find a Draco to get a matched "Hot guys of Slytherin" set

Bob and Carl, Sci-fi janitors. If you've never seen their video shorts, go check them out. Hysterical.

A female Captain Jack Harkness in a GREAT coat.

Worgen

Spacegoat

Kick-arse Horde bracers

Human, but still a great costume

Great tabard

Troll

Alice in Wonderland set

Bearded Disney Princesses. Because I need to share the HORROR....

Malcolm Reynolds being awesomely overdramatic with a friend of mine. We may have spent a good chunk of one night searching out Doctors for him to hug. It was surprisingly fun.

female Iron Man.

Rogue and Gambit

Captain Jack and me

The Priest Plan

2011-09-13T12:10:00.001-04:00

I do have a plan for my new Forsaken priest. You see, I never really leveled a priest properly. Lyl was leveled via Recruit-a-Friend to 60 in combination with Monera. It was fun, and at the time it was the right thing to do, since I had massive issues leveling a priest normally. Lots of horrible, horrible death, going oom, and generally not enjoying it.

I know they've vastly improved the leveling in Cat, and I've had a blast exploring bits and pieces of it Alliance-side. Hence, my priest plan rules...
1. Must get loremaster achieve/finish the zone story for every zone I do until I hit Outlands.
2. Must try leveling as disc and/or holy. Probably going Atonement smite. I'm thinking once I get dualspec I'll go disc smite/holy. In the long term getting more familiar with holy can only improve my healing skills.
3. No heirlooms. This is not a hardship since I'm on a different server from my heirlooms anyway.
4. No dungeons till 60. Then I can go dungeon-crazy if I want.
5. Occasional PVP is fine, but I must remember the point is to see the new questing content.
6. Only one gathering profession, since again, questing!

This toon isn't completely on her own, since I have a DK and a troll druid over there, but that's more to avoid the pain of not enough gold to train than anything else. I ended up with a Forsaken because a) I keep hearing how awesome the new Forsaken experience is, and b) I haven't really played one before.

Now, if you want to play along at home, here's a more general set of rules. The goal is TRY NEW STUFF!
1. Must level primarily in a way you haven't done before or in zones you haven't done since Cat hit.
2. Must level as a spec and/or class you haven't leveled before, or haven't leveled in a long time.
3. No heirlooms with XP gain.
4. Only one gathering profession.

See, simple enough, right?

Now if you want to make it more complicated, you can
1) run with a different UI layout from your main
2) see how far you can get leveling in only whites/greys
3) have the toon be completely self-sufficient, no influxes of cash from DKs or the like
4) go for ambassador!

Stuff, more stuff, and shiny screensaps

2011-09-12T23:18:00.001-04:00

Well, Lyllea's becoming a belf, once I figure out the cash situation, and I'm already starting to stock up on cross-faction pets. White kittens, moths, the argent tournament pets, ect...

Sadly my liquidity's a bit low right now, due to my maxing of leatherworking, tailoring, enchanting, and blacksmithing, but on the other hand my alts have nice gear! Monera's now better geared than Lyl was when she started healing tier 11, so I think she's in a good spot to take over Lyl's place in Ars' raid. Plus, two disc priests is less than optimal. I just need to get the hang of resto druid healing, is all. I did two-heal a Halfus run, but my gear isn't quite good enough for that yet. I am having fun with boomkin, and my dps is decent. Still working on figuring out that gaming eclipse thing, but I do have the "DOT ALL THE THINGS, MUSHROOM!" aoe mostly down.

It'll be weird losing my stable of professions, but on the other hand, all they're doing for Lyl right now is making spellthread (and I've got a stockpile of that). I am leveling the DK (and mage) so I have a miner, and I guess one of them will become a JCr. Speaking of leveling, the DK's 78, and the mage is 68. The mage hasn't seen an Outlands quest in 8ish levels, due mostly to the fast queue times in Outlands and also my desire to keep her mining leveled.

So, where toons stand...
Lyl(priest)->still tier 11ish geared, with a couple nicer pieces. 4/7 firelands. And I've found her belf look...

Monera(druid)->ilevel 359. Has killed Halfus. Has also gotten the Patient title, and made love, not warcraft

Adowa (pally)->the much-neglected has a purple chest and maxed professions. I need to start Molten Front stuff with her to get the patterns. Since she's never set foot in Hyjal, this may take a bit.

Eiunn(shaman)->I honestly don't remember what her gear's like, but her leatherworking and tailoring are max'd and once the gold crunch settles down, I'll be making her some gear.

Garetia->same old, same old. Been neglected of late in favor of one of the other 85s. But she now has 50 mounts!

Levelers:
Llonya(DK)->max'd enchanting, and just learned the magic lamp pattern. She's 78, alternating doing dungeons and questing in Icecrown, and will be heading to Vash once she hits 80. Also, she has random honor points. Apparently before you hit 80, you get honor for killing bosses in dungeons and Justice for completing a dungeon. I did not know that.

Angetia(mage)->WHEE FROST! Having a great deal of fun with her.

I also have a priest project going on another server, but there's not much to talk about yet there. But see...

Not dead, just brain-dead

2011-08-29T16:10:00.000-04:00

So, job search. Lots and lots of internet surfing, revamping my resume for the millionth time, filling out applications, and all that other fun stuff. Yup, my job search has totally sapped my will to write and is now life-draining it. Stupid lock.

I'm hoping for good heals soon, but in the meantime, there has been wow. Lots of wow.

A shaman hit 85, and I discovered Elemental is awesome.
A hunter went a'raiding. She also got a rare Wraith bird and a lava spider.
A priest healed some people killing stuff in Firelands. (spider and steer by damaging feet guy)
A paladin continued to be ignored.
A druid started gearing, got really stupid purple shorts, and will be raid-healing on tuesday for trash. In fact, the dtuid may become my new main (there was raid team falling apart, but the other team in the guild needed another healer and ideally would like a druid. They're fine with Lyl if I don't like druid raid healing)

A mage wandered into Outlands and never has to see Blackrock again.
A rogue snuck into Outlands and is busily slaughtering and skinning everything in Hellfire.
A DK actually went up a level (yay dungeon-running at 2 am)

And I now have every profession above 500. Much gold was spent, but yay.

Oh, and I found my trans shadow set. See? Yup, hideous colors, but man, that silhouette will be kick-arse when Lyl's in shadowform. The shaman may end up in lvl 70 pvp enhance gear, mostly cause I think the shoulders are cool-looking, and the jury's out on the others. Haven't really seen a set that grabs me for them yet.

and here, a pretty picture....

Hope everyone's having fun. Now back to the job search, and DragonCon prep!

Weird Things I am Currently Pondering Doing

2011-07-20T00:32:00.000-04:00

Leveling the mage from 61-85 via BGs and dungeons (mostly PVP). This was inspired by Gnomeggedon's posts on mage pvp, plus I'd kinda like to have the cloth heirlooms free to roll a warlock if I can ever manage to free up a character slot

Tanking on the belf DK (obviously I'm insane but on the plus side my fail tanking couldn't be tracked back to me). Of course I should probably get her professions leveled first. Leveling mining, again, oh joy....

Leveling the space goat DK via BGs (I hate melee PVP, why am I even considering this?)

Grinding up two whelplings, a ooze, and a fox kit

Skyguard rep, Netherwing rep, Cenarion Expedition rep, and farming Magister's

oh and then there's 4? 5? quest chain minipets to get, one fishing daily croc left from BC, the Magical Crawdad, the Strand Crawler, and leveling archaeology to get those pets and mounts

Why am I pondering doing any of the above? Because...
a)raiding's been cut back till fall and I really miss it. Stupid summer doldrums.
b) they're all more appealing than finishing Deepholm on the shaman or Garetia. Seriously, I'd rather spend 8 hours farming for a 1/1000 drop.
c) the idea of running more Cat dungeons (especially troll ones) makes my brain try to escape through my ears
d) grad school apps scare me

Well, gearing's certainly gotten easier

2011-07-14T22:13:00.000-04:00

Finally, Garetia is (sort of) ready for raiding. She lacks shoulder enchants because I REALLY don't want to spend a few hours in Deepholm AGAIN, but I'm saving up honor for the pvp ones. Blizz, can the shoulder enchants be boa soon? Please?

In fact, having ready access to season 10 PVP gear's made gearing so much easier. Sure, it's got resiliance, which is pretty much useless for raiding, but on the other hand, it's ilevel 371 and has loads and loads of shiny shiny agility. Plus, I can fill in those pesky head and shoulder slots without having to pug to endbosses.

Speaking of which, that's how Lyl got those hideous shoulders. Pugged Al'Akir and BoT up to Chogall. Wow, the nerf.

In other news, I am sitting in Starbucks, waiting impatiently for HP7 part 2!!!!!!! Yes, I am going to a late-night showing and I am ridiculously excited. So, in honor of HP, I give you some random videos....

I love this song. I even started it in an elevator at DragonCon one year. Hysterical.

Because I am a Malfoy fangirl. Yup, I'll be in my bunk...

Um, urinals, really?

2011-07-14T15:51:00.000-04:00

Yup, those are the Tier 10 priest shoulders. WTF?

Brief news announcement...

2011-07-11T14:52:00.000-04:00

There's this really cool site called Space Gypsies. Here, go read their about page, and you'll see why I think they're cool.
A friend turned me onto them, and guess who's going to be writing for them about MMORPGS? ME!!! SQUEE!

I'm very excited, can you tell? But don't worry, the Wow Noob isn't going anywhere. I'll still be posting here, rambling on about what I'm up to in game and whatever else crosses my mind. After all, I suspect I'd confuse the heck out of the SG readership by talking about how badly Chogall got nerfed (and yes, the nerf was beyond massive. Making it to second phase on the first pull in a 10 man with only 3 people who knew the fight, eep! But I has tier 10 shoulders now, so I'm happy).

Will I talk about wow over on SG? Yup, but I make certain assumptions here that I can't over there, so for example, I could take my Thrall rant over there, but I'd need to explain far more about the lore and background. Here I can just spout off about aggro and pvp and how TB gets boring quickly and stuff like that without needing to explain what aggro is, or pvp, or the basics of the Tol Barad battleground.

Will I talk about other MMORPGS over here? Yeah, a bit. I do try to keep most of my entries wow focused, but if I'm playing other things you'll hear about them.

Will I cross-post? My goal is not. I may write two posts on the same subject, one for each place, but I want them to be different. I feel like this blog has one focus, and my writing for SG has another, and while there's overlap, they aren't the same.

Details are still being worked out, and I will keep you up to date! Now back to your regularly scheduled random wow-blogging....

Lotro: My conclusions must wait, but I'm having fun!

2011-07-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a monthish. I've been playing on and off, got my warden (who is ridiculously fun) to 19, and did some stuff....
There's a holiday going on, so I did a very fun quest that involved being REALLY drunk. My hobbit sings when she's drunk, it's very cute. Basically you had to run all over the Shire and drink 6 beers at each inn. When you finished, you got a title.

I bought a house. Then I was broke. But I have a house and isn't it cute!

Inside my really empty house.

Eventually I will be able to afford furniture. Until then, Syrana's sleeping on the bear rug.

But see, there's loads of options and you can change the floors and walls and even the music. Not that I'll be doing that any time soon, because, well, broke.

I'm waiting to give this game a full review (at least of the free-to-play bit) until after I get the warden to 20. That unlocks skirmishes, which I think are a big deal. But I am willing to say the following...

If you're looking for a quest-heavy MMORPG with an unlimited free trial of the first 20ish levels, you could do far worse than LotRO. Explorers, questers, and crafters will like this game. That said, if you enjoy the game you will end up spending money on it. The quest zones beyond 20ish are not free-to-play, though you could probably stretch the Breelands content to 25ish or so.

4.2 Ranty McRantrant ahead

2011-07-03T13:25:00.000-04:00

I finally got the chance to get started on the new 4.2 questlines, and now I must rant.

Thrall
Former Leader of the Horde
Founder of the Modern Horde

I do not care how many times you tell me he's neutral and all about saving the world now, he's the FATHER OF THE FREAKING HORDE!

Let me give you an analogy. Picture George Washington, Father of the USA and first President. Man who led the rebellion against Britain and kicked their arses.
Now imagine that he's joined Greenpeace (or another organization attempting to save the world, feel free to fill in your favorite).
Now try to convince the British that he's neutral now. No, really, try. They're not going to buy it, and neither am I.

Yes, Thrall is most likely genuine. That doesn't mean my Alliance characters are buying what he's selling.

So, let's go through the beginning of this questline from my hunter's fiercely proud kaldorei (nelf) POV. This may not make much sense if you haven't seen the beginning of the questline, so go watch it or read about it or do it.

Okay, go fix the world. Good plan. Hey, it's the leader of the Horde. Okay, former leader. Why's he helping?
Oh, cause the dragon aspects say so. Okay, I trust them.
Ooh, it's crazypants, the idiot grumpy founder of Darnassus, but now he's on fire. Not a bad look for him, actually.
Oh dear, he hurt orc guy. Do I care? Nope. Do I now want to fill what-her-face's head full of arrows for calling a member of my race a mongrel? Yup.
I don't care if he is CRAZYPANTS, Lover of RAGNAROS, he's one of the kaldorei! If he's a mongrel, so am I! WHY CAN'T I SHOOT HER!?

You're kidding me, right? So the founder of the Horde's gotten himself ripped apart or something, and now I have to go help his speciesist girlfriend put him back together? Dragon Aspects, I have no idea what you're smoking, but I want some. Also, I want to fill this Okra full of holes once we're done putting Thrall back together, but I bet you won't let me. Why didn't I retire to Zangermarsh like I wanted to? At least there, no one expects me to put the Father of the Horde back together. Sigh.

And in another, completely unrelated rant...
I can't queue for Cataclysm normals because my ilevel is too low. I can't queue for Lich King dungeons because I'm 81, I can't make myself caster mail because my leatherworking is too low, and I can't find any on the AH. I'm perfectly capable of running around the world and killing things, and completing quests, all in my lousy Wraith ilevel questing gear, but no dungeons for me. FSCK! FSCK!

Brief but important note!

2011-07-03T01:01:00.000-04:00

Hunters, your pet bar has changed. The options are now....
Passive->same as always
Defensive->pet will attack anything that attacks it or you
Assist->pet will attack what you're attacking

So, if like me you were very confused as to why your pet seemed to be acting like it was on passive in dungeons instead of defensive, that's why. You want your pet to be assisting and so far I really like the new option.

In other news, Garetia's now geared enough to run heroics. Granted she's geared in a really weird mix of AH greens, one purple alchemist trinket, one pair of blue justice point gloves, and now the new purple from starting the Hyjal dailies, but she's geared!

Getting ready to raid on a new 85

2011-06-27T13:26:00.000-04:00

This happened a few days ago...

and as a result I've been trying to figure out how to gear her and get ready to raid. So I figured I'd write out a quick how to guide for any level 85.

First and foremost.... hit Ask Mr Robot. This lovely site works as a great starting point. No matter what class or spec, Mr Robot will give you some idea of where to start gearwise.

Step 1) If your character is not yet 85, I would suggest picking class and spec and seeing what's BIS. This should allow you to do some preplanning, like picking up crafted items/recipes on the cheap, and questing in certain areas for rep.

Step 2) hit 85. CONGRATS!

Step 3) Learn to play. Yup, this is the hard bit. So hard, in fact, that I broke it up into substeps.

a) If possible, see what your new class is required/expected to do in raids. For example, as a hunter I would be expected to slow adds on some fights, as well as use tranquilizing shot. Also, I'd be expected to mass-rez everyone after we wipe (yay guild perk!).
b) Hit elitist jerks, class forums, wow insider, and class blogs. Read and experiment. Pick up as many tips and tricks as you can. Look at what your class is doing on World of Logs too.
c) Practice! Hit the dungeons. Go PVP. Spend some time at the target dummies. Get used to playing your new class, and your new role. Now, some stuff (like raid healing) isn't something you can practice outside raids, but you can get used to your spells and get comfortable with them.
d) Remember, Rome was not built in a day. It'll take time to get used to your new role, so don't beat yourself up if you're not the BEST EVER in your first raid.

Fire Festival...

2011-06-22T01:20:00.000-04:00

I really like the Fire Festival. Yay extra XP and purple cloaks and easy justice/valor points. So, I thought I'd dust off the druid and pally and go run Ahune with all 3 85s before using the XP buff to get Garetia a bit closer to 85. Here's what went down...

Log onto druid. Wonder what all the buttons do. Remember something about being a crit chicken. Enter queue as dps and go work on troll dungeons questline. Vaguely attempt to figure out Wrath and Eclipse states and WTF do all these buttons do!
Queue pops...
WTF DO ALL THESE BUTTONS DO!
What's my aoe? Do I have an aoe? Isn't there something about gaming eclipse to get max AOE and WTH is my aoe?!?!?
Find Wild Mushroom spell. Attempt to use. Give it up, and hit hurricane till I run oom. Hit tranquility by accident.
Ice core pops up, single target dps! Yay, I kinda know how to do this bit!
Repeat till Ahune dies. Be glad I don't have recount visible. Still don't know what all the buttons do.
Curse strength cloak drop. Wonder what to do with flowers.

Log onto paladin. Enter queue and start unlocking Hyjal. Be glad spellflash works well for ret because otherwise I'd have no idea what buttons to push. Vaguely ponder if there's an aoe seal, and decide not to worry about it.
Queue pops...
Lalalalala I hate melee, stupid adds won't stay still, why won't they stay put GORRAM IT!
Divine storm. Repeat. Hit stuff when possible.
Get most of way through fight before the healer asks for concentration aura. Realize that I have no aura up at all. Yup, failadin for the win!
Ahune dies. Curse caster cloak drop.

Log onto Lyl. Enter queue as heals. Curse UI that's currently set up for Chogall fight and is distracting.
Queue pops. Buff, and start fight.
Curse melee-heavy group.
Oh crap, my fade's on cooldown and the adds are eating my face! HELP!
Repeat till Ahune dies, with a side order of smiting during core time because well, I can.

Log onto Garetia. Spin around the pole for 30 mins while waiting for dungeon queue to pop.
Queue pops. Vortex Pinnacle, yay easy one.
Why does our healer only have 40k mana?
Why is our healer wearing strength plate? This may not end well.
Wow, I'm the queen of agro! Wait, that's not good.
Oh look, we died.
Again.
And again (but I feigned death and survived, go me!)
Oooh, trapping stuff! Crap, wrong trap. Crap, trapped too early. Repeat.
Darn, my XP buff fell off.
Yay finished (finally). Boo, no level gain.
Oooh, I have dungeon quests to turn in. I should do that. And then there was....

Just one more level to go! Between that and preparing for Firelands (because I really wanted to run Hyjal on 4 different toons, damn you Blizz!) I should be pretty busy. I'm hoping to use the festival XP buff to focus on getting Garetia to 85, then work on Eiunn (the shaman) and Llonya (the DK).

Cho'gall and Tank Healing Brain Dump

2011-06-17T01:03:00.000-04:00

Well, after a night spent wiping on Chogall, I have the following questions/ideas/stuff to get out of my brain. I'm tank-healing (a new role) in a fight that's new to me (and to many of our raid), so I'm trying to get everything down while it's fresh. Feel free to chime in with tips, tricks, or anything else.

1) About what throughput should a tank healer have on this fight? I was managing about 9.6k hps, with my top 3 heals being PW:S, Greater Heal, and Penance, but man, the tanks health yo-yos like crazy.

2) Mana? I've just redone my spec to pick up the shorter shadowfiend cooldown, and hopefully that'll help. Part of the problem (I think) is that I'm always healing the tank on Cho'gall, so I don't really get any downtime to pop Hymn of Hope or just passively regen. I need to talk to the other healers, see if there's a spot where either the raid healer or other tank healer could keep an eye out while I pop it. Same goes for pots of concentration.

3) I need to figure out where in my UI the stupid corruption thing is. Never did find the sound meter for Atremedes, and I suspect it's the same problem.

4)Cooldowns. I need to talk to the tanks about calling these out. Also, I need to figure out how to view their debuffs, see what that fire thing vuhdo shows me is, and what debuff's causing the massive health drops. Once I figure that out, I'll have a better sense of when to panic.

5)GTFO is incredibly helpful for this fight. Seriously, with most of the raid stacked up with me, I can't see a darn thing on the floor. My tunnel healing vision does not help.

6) Power Auras for stacks of Grace and also for PoM. Ooh, and a low health one would be nice. And Inner Focus, Power Infusion, and Pain Suppression. Reminding myself I have these means I'll use them more, and I need to.

7) Shadowfiend macro. Why do I not have one? And while I'm at it, Misdirection macro for the hunter.

8)Do we have only one melee? Maybe we should have one of the ranged stand with the rogue, so the tanks don't have to worry as much about that possession thing.

More lotro and a bit of WoW

2011-06-10T19:10:00.000-04:00

I've been laid up for most of the week with sprained ankles. This has given me a lot of free time to play games, lotro in particular. Oh, and if you're interested in lotro, please read the excellent comment left on my last post explaining the classes far better than I can.

I've been having a blast, especially with my Hobbit Warden. I'd forgotten how relaxing I find farming, and isn't she cute?

And here we see the Shire at sunset. So pretty!

In WoW news, I may be switching healing roles from raid to tank. The holy pally in our raid team wants to try raid heals, so we'll likely be switching roles. I need to figure out stat weights, and I'll likely spend some of my weekend playing around with Mr Robot, experimenting with different stat weighings. I'll let you guys know what I come up with, but tonight I wander around Bree!

Noobing it up in LotRO: Part 1

2011-06-05T18:35:00.000-04:00

This is the first in an occasional series about other MMORPGs. Basically, I'm going to try games, and report back. First off is a game near and dear to my heart, Lord of the Rings Online. This game is free to play, and while there are loads of extras you can buy, you earn currency through in game stuff as well, allowing you to never have to purchase points if you don't want to.

To that end: complete deeds. I know, you're going "wtf are deeds?" Deeds are rather like achievements, but there's a lot more of them and you get titles and turbine points and virtues from them. So, you kill x goblins, you complete a deed. You use special attack A so many times, you get a deed. See, here I just got one for Wolf-Killing.

And here's my deed log, showing an example of a virtue. There's deeds for exploration, killing stuff, questing, using special class abilities, running dailies, and probably more I don't know about yet. The toon there just got rolled this morning, and already has quite a few deeds to her name.

So, when you see a deed pop up, try to get it done. More points = different classes, more bag space, quest areas, crafting bonuses, and a bunch of other stuff.

Now: classes....
Your creation screen won't look quite like this. I ponied up for the two pay classes, Warden and Runekeeper cause I wanted to. But the basics are pretty similar to Wow. Different races, not every race can be every class, and oh, no female dwarves. Dwarves and elves start in the same zone, and hobbits and humans share the other starting zone.

The class info screen is really useful. Class difficulty, role, and gameplay are all things you want to take into account when rolling up. Below is a very vague description of each class.
Burglars->rogue-like
Captain->think pallies with squires. Yup, they're a pet class.
Champion->warriors (but not prot ones)
Guardian->the tank
Hunter->More or less the same as WoW, but no pets. Good in range, not so good in melee, kinda squishy
Lore-Master->the closest you're going to get to a mage, but with pets.
Minstrel->healers and buffbots
Rune-Keepers->Dunno, haven't rolled one yet.
Warden->weird combo of ranged and melee dps with complicated on the side. My warden's lvl 2, so it's entirely possible I have no idea what a warden actually does yet.

There are a few things to keep in mind with lotro. First, it's the journey, not the destination. Yes, there's end-game raiding (or so I'm told, my highest toon is in the low 20s), but there's a huge amount of stuff to do before then. In fact, if you rush straight to endgame, you're kinda missing the point. There's a huge world and tons of content!
Second, crafting's a bit more complicated than in WoW, but also more valuable if you keep it up (the weapons I crafted right off the bat are better than any quest drops I've seen).

So, go try lotro. You lose nothing by trying it (being free and all) and it's a fun game for explorers and quest-lovers. Just be aware, if pvp's your thing, this is probably not your game. PVP is monster PCs vs regular PCs, and is not free (last time I checked).

I think leveling has driven me insane again...

2011-05-31T21:35:00.000-04:00

Sung to the tune of "I've been working on the railroad"

I've been leveling in Hyjal
All the live-long day
I've been leveling in Hyjal
Just to pass the time away

Can't you hear the raid lead yelling
"Druid, get that guy reborn!"
Can't you hear the raid lead yelling
"Dk blow your horn!"

DK, won't you blow?
DK won't you blow?
DK won't you blow your horn?

It's entirely possible I'm more than a bit sick of Hyjal. And Deepholm, Uldum, Vash'jir, and Twilight Highlands. But here, have a blind dragon death shot from a couple weeks back while I go back to gritting my teeth and leveling the hunter (or procrastinating by doing just about anything else).

2011-05-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

So I haven't logged onto WoW in... a week and a half. Thus, complete and total lack of blogging. Also, complete and total keeping up with WoW news, reading WoW blogs, ect. I have, however, been playing a game. Yup, I'm cheating on WoW with....

Fallout 3

Since I'm an Explorer/Achiever, this should not be a huge shock. I like wandering around a world, seeing it, and learning about it. And let's face it, there is very little left for me to explore in WoW. But a mutant wasteland, oooh, that's new! I've gone through the main questline ( and am extremely sad about the lack of a "My dad's insane, I'm just humoring him" option), and now, there's mostly just wandering around collecting bobbleheads. Like Oblivion (which I LOVED), this game has a kinda lousy main questline, but a great open world and the ability to just ignore the main questline if you want to. Oh, and it also has a remarkably interesting and annoying collection of bugs. Ask me how I feel about having to install a mod so I can alt+tab out to go check gamefaqs. On the other hand, ask me about god mode (hey, I haven't played anything remotely resembling a first person shooter in a long time, I dislike being ripped to bits, and it's a single person game so cheating will not change anyone else's game experience, only make mine a bit less frustrating at times).

So, except for raiding, I don't expect to spend much time in WoW for a bit. A break will do me good. And Fallout 3: New Vegas is sitting on my bookshelf, calling to me with its' lack of confusing Metro (which I can navigate perfectly well in RL).

WHEE! 300 posts!

2011-05-02T13:48:00.000-04:00

I'm going to take this opportunity to thank some bloggers, past and present, who have inspired me. So...
Thank you to Big Red Kitty, Pike of Aspect of the Hare, Tam and Charity of Righteous Orbs, Amber of I Like Bubbles, Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn, Blog Azeroth, and everyone I'm forgetting! You all are awesome!

I know I'm forgetting some great people and I apologize for that. The wonderful thing about this wow-blogging community is that there are so many great blogs!

Here's to 300 posts, and to Blizz for making a game that's managed to do what no game ever has before, hold my attention for more than a couple of months!

2011-04-28T00:23:00.000-04:00

Wow, that's a lot of red thunderstorms/tornadoes/ weather that is trying to kill me headed this way. Eeep.

Anyway, I did run Zul'Aman before the weather decided to kill me, and it was fun. Loads of fun. Many purples, and Fun! I managed to pick up new shoulders, a dps caster robe, and gloves, and had a neck drop as well (since I was healing and the neck had to hit on it the mage got first dibs and de'ed it, sigh)

Zul was a blast, and I look forward to (very slowly) finishing the quest chain (stupid two-heals spec!) and running the other dungeon and yes...

CELEBRATING MY 300th EPISODE!

Patch 4.1 Doom, more doom, changes, and oooh, videos!

2011-04-26T14:57:00.000-04:00

My computer just downloaded a ton of stuff, we have extended downtime, and they released the video for 4.1....

So, why are there no female trolls in this? Great trailer, but um, why?

And watch this trailer while you're at it. Not because of lack of females, but because it does help with some of the lore of 4.1 and also it is awesome. Plus, Zul' Aman has returned as a dungeon.

Anyway... PATCH STUFF! I am picking out the stuff I care about, so go read the patch notes for full details!
1. I love the idea of guild challenges and am looking forward to them
2. Call to Arms, eh. I'll be more likely to queue if I can get a shiny, but I rather doubt it'll favor healers any time soon.
3. Disc gets nerfed. Owie, Power Word: Barrier cooldown now 3 min, and Power Word: Shield only lasts 15 secs. I said my piece on why I don't like this a while ago, I see no reason to repeat it.
4. No more hunting for corpses for rezing. Good!
5. Interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit. Tanks and healers no longer have to worry about their interrupts missing because they're not hit capped. YAY!
6. DKs get a battle rez.
7. Lifebloom nerfed, tranquility's cooldown decreased, and efflorescence (aka the green circle) has been redesigned. No clue if resto druids are celebrating or complaining.
8. No more pet happiness system. Oh well. Guess I can clean the pet food out of my hunter's bags.
9. No more pet leveling, anything you tame is your level.
10. Righteous fury now persists through death. Pally tanks everywhere are celebrating.
11. Dispel Magic now only works on the priest as a baseline. So, was shadowpriest dispelling really a big problem? This really annoys me, since I liked being able to help out the healers by dispelling when in shadow.
12. More mind sear damage is nice.
13. Spirit Link totem sounds cool, pity it's a totem. Looking forward to experimenting with it.
14. Dungeon finder now taking armor into account. About time.
15. You get valor points the first 7 times in a week you queue. HAPPY DANCE TIME!

There's also tons of dungeon and raid changes, class changes I don't really care about, guild changes, battleground stuff, world changes, and even UI changes. Go read the notes here, Me, I'm going to watch Doctor Who, eat fresh strawberries, and plot hitting the new dungeons ASAP.

Friday Funnies

2011-04-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

Funny screenshots, because I can!

I HAZ A HELMET!

Yoga on wolf-back.

WWF Redridge

HELP! My guildie's head's being eaten by a FISH!

New UI Details.

2011-04-20T14:13:00.000-04:00

Since I've been fiddling with my UI (again), I figured I'd show the latest incarnation. First off, Lyll's disc setup in a 5 man....

We have the following addons (from lower left corner and going clockwise)...
Shadowed Unit Frames (for my frame, target frame, and focus only)
GupPet (yay pet and mount)
Chatter (chat box mod)
Decursive (those grey squares above the chat)
Recount
Chocolate Bar (and assorted plug-ins)
Satrina Buff Frames
Sexy Map
DoTimer (trying this as a replacement for Forte, and so far I like it)
Bartender
and in the middle is Vuhdo.

Here's the same setup in a raid as holy... You can see BigWigs in here too

And then we have it on leveling alts, first a DK...

And then a warlock...

You can tell these aren't healing toons because I've done nothing to customize Vuhdo (I'm lazy).

So far I'm pretty happy with this UI, and its' ease of setup across different toons. Only things I really need to customize per toon are the Power Auras (if I bother), Vuhdo, and any sort of special resource (runes, soul shards, holy power sort of thing).

Call to Arms, Goblins, and other stuff

2011-04-17T12:48:00.000-04:00

I've spent some time pondering the Call to Arms, and while I honestly don't know if it'll work or not, I do think there's a couple things Blizz could do to make it more likely to succeed.

1. Allow the call to arms person to queue with one other person and they both get the goodie bag. This would still help with DPS queues, while ensuring that the tank/healer has a friend with them (because instances are more fun with friends).

2. Add mounts that aren't so easy to farm for. Say, raid drops from BC like Ashes or the horse from Kara. I would never suggest adding achievement mounts (ulduar and icc drakes), but how bout the Time-Lost Drake drop, or the Deepholm one?

I've actually run some randoms lately (mostly on the druid), and the only bad behavior I've seen has been from tanks. One tank dropping after the first boss died, and another dropping after he died (he went out of range of the healer and pulled). But for the most part, groups have been pretty decent.

I also finally got around to rolling a goblin. There's some good moments, but for the most part the starting zone left me cold. There's not the same sense of cohesion that I felt the worgen zone had. I think, like Uldum, there's too many pop culture jokes. I do have one random question though. Do goblins always stand on their mounts, or is that just a starting zone thing? Also, enhancement is really fun. Why did I not know that?

Raiding-wise, we bashed our heads against Atremedes all Thursday night. Part of the problem is my not-so-awesome holy skills. Body and Soul is a great great thing for that fight, but my unfamiliarity with Holy raid healing meant I did stupid stuff like stand in fire. We're hitting Bastion tonight, so I'm going to get some practice with holy in fights I know, which will help. I felt like a complete failure after Thursday, and I'm hoping tonight will be better.

In the meantime I will probably go back to fiddling around with my lowbie Horde alts. My blood elf DK finally wandered into Hellfire, and was promptly squashed by a fel reaver. It's kinda odd to not be able to fly in Outlands yet, but it's very cool to see things from the Horde side. Plus, with warlocks getting pets of both sexes (YAY!), I can run around with an incubus.

There was uproar (but I am momentarily ignoring it in favor of screenshots)!

2011-04-12T01:25:00.000-04:00

I am ignoring the Call to Arms thing not because I have nothing to say, but because it's late, I'm tired, and I have other stuff to post. Stuff that doesn't require me to be coherent!

Hey, look, we killed Omnomnom...

Then we killed Chimereon. Both in the same night. Two first boss kills in the same night is awesome.

Then I managed to get going down because I forgot I was on the pally who does not have levitate...

Then we killed Meloriak? I think that's his name. We said hi to blind dragon guy, but his sonar threw us for a loop, so we're going back next week with jamming devices.

A shaman hit 80, and now I've gotten one of each healing class to 80. Next stop, 85!

And a paladin hit 85, while looting a chest. It was the most epic ding EVER, and was totally accidental. Sadly, the trinket I got is an agility one, but yay gold?

In random otherness, Lyl is now disc/holy. I needed better raid tools, darn it. Stupid alchemist dragon guy with his massive aoes....

How to Disc, a Simple Guide. Part 1: the tools, speccing, and glyphs

2011-04-07T14:57:00.000-04:00

So, you've decided to jump into Cataclysm healing with bubbles, or you're tired of getting trounced on the meters. Either way, welcome to the bubbling side, we have Power Infusion but sadly, no cookies.

First off, disc healing is no longer about spamming PW:S. You do not have the mana pool to support it, trust me. So, here's your spells and when you might wish to use them. Keep in mind that there is no healing rotation, and this is just one way to heal. Also, I'm raid healing, so I talk about spells more from that perspective.

Power Word: Shield-> still important, still useful, but now costs more. In raids I try to keep this up on the tanks, and throw it on dpsers or healers in immediate danger. Try to avoid having shields fall off, you really do want damage to break them for the mana return.
Flash Heal-> Honestly, the only time I use this spell any more is when I hit it by accident. It's expensive, and if I need a fast heal, I have other spells.
Penance->Your fast heal. Also the "crap, about to die" heal and the "yay I can stagger the tank" heal.
Greater Heal-> best used with the borrowed time buff from a pw:s cast. When I need a heal and penance is on cooldown, this is my go-to.
Prayer of Mending-> Keep this Frisbee of healing goodness bouncing. It's cheap and a smart heal.
Prayer of Healing->This is your group heal. It's best used with Inner Focus, and remember it's a group heal, not a raid heal. You need to cast it on someone in the group you want to heal.
Renew->useful as an extra tank cushion or a on-the-move heal for someone who needs to be topped off but isn't going to die immediately
Power Infusion->If you're down to the wire on an enrage, throw on a dps (mage preferably). Otherwise, keep it for yourself for a little extra healing oomph
Pain Suppression-> Your tank-saving cooldown. You could possibly also use it to mess with your tanks, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Leap of Faith-> a way to pull people out of bad stuff, or a way to mess with fellow raiders. You can also use it to help kiters.
Inner Focus->Try to use before as many prayer of healing casts as possible if you're raid-healing
Power Word: Barrier-> great for incoming heavy raid damage, just keep in mind the long cooldown and that people have to stand in it

Inner Fire vs Inner Will->Inner Fire's best used for tank healing, where you need more power to your heals. Inner Will's great for raid healing, as it lets you throw more shields about without going oom and yay faster movement.

Now to the specs and glyphs. Disc priests have a choice to make, spec into Archangel and smite-healing, or not. Archangel does not return enough mana to make up for the mana you used smiting, and you don't have control over who gets healed with the smite. It automatically heals the lowest target within 15 yards, including temporary targets and pets. I'm currently spec'd into archangel, but I'm going to redo that, as I'm really not using it. I like the idea, and I'd say try it both ways, and see which works better for you.
Disc spec without smite and archangel
Disc spec with Archangel
There's some optional points in there, especially in the shadow tree. Personally I'd pick up the spell haste, but that's optional.

Glyphs->
Primes: Penance, PW:Barrier, PW: Shield, and/or Prayer of Healing
Majors: Divine Accuracy (for smite builds), Prayer of Mending, and whatever else you'd like to take
Minors: Shadowfiend, Levitate, and whichever other one sounds appealing

Next up, updating the gearing post!

Things I'd like to add to the game...Visual Customization

2011-04-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

After reading the latest Dev Q&A on weapons and armor, I was rather disappointed at their comments on the barbershop and visual customization. Personally, I would love more customization, even if it's just more hair colors and hair styles available in the barbershop. I was trying to think about how I would add this, and here's what I've come up with.

I wanted to include as many professions as possible, and allow players to create new looks or copy existing NPCs. I also wanted to give people a reason to go run old content and have players talk about what they're wearing.

Engineers would make a camera-like device. Using it would allow a player to take pictures of any npc. Then you would take the picture and find a tailor, leatherworker, or blacksmith (depending on whether you were wearing cloth, leather/mail, or plate). Give them the picture and they'd be able to change your armor to match it. Now, if you want to look like you're wearing a particular piece of armor, you need to go get that piece if you can't find an npc wearing it. Basically you need something for the crafter to work from, which is pretty reasonable. Photos could even be sold on the AH, so if you manage to get a shot of a rare npc, you could get some gold.

Now, this could cause some PVP problems, but the system could simply be set so that your armor reverts to its original appearance in arenas and bgs. Plus, inspecting you would show the original armor.

I'd also love to see the addition of dyes, made from milled pigments by alchemists.

And yes, this is because I totally want to wander around in a green and silver version of the blood elf guards armor. Plus, my paladin could run around in a dress, and my mage could look like she's wearing plate.

I talk about disc healing

2011-04-04T17:43:00.000-04:00

I am a healer again. Okay, I never really stopped being a healer, but I wasn't healing in raids, or 5 mans, or pvp. In fact until last night the last time I'd healed was Oscar Night.

But we had a bit of a raid problem. There's been some reshuffling, and well, you don't really need two shadowpriests in a 10 man. So our awesome resto druid has gone to the dark side, summoning demons for fun and dps, while I've gone back to bubbles.

I managed to top the charts with hps, which does not feel right. I suspect it has something to do with how my shields are counted vs normal heals. My guess (based partly on the overhealing numbers) is that when a shield absorbs X damage and is used up, all X is counted as a heal. It'd actually be quite interesting to see if that even takes armor and other mitigation into account. I know that disc priests have gone from looking horrible on the meters to looking a little too good, which is sad. I honestly do not feel OP. In fact, I feel underpowered, at least when it comes to effective raid healing tools. I end up resorting to shields, simply because I don't feel like I have much else to do. Even with popping Inner Focus, my PoH hits for laughable amounts, so my shields end up being the only way I have to buy time to get people up with Penance and/or Greater Heal.

50% of my healing done last night was PW:S, with the PW:S glyph being another 12%. That seems like quite a bit for one spell, and given the incoming nerf in 4.1, it worries me. I generally have Weakened Soul up on about 3 targets at a time, two of which are our tanks. I'll keep practicing, and working on using my other tools more, and hopefully I'll get to a place where my comfort level is higher.

And in other news....

5/12! Elementium Monstrosity down, with a couple sub 1% wipes.

This just in, Heroic LK 10 Still Hard (and other random things)

2011-03-30T01:52:00.000-04:00

So, there was stuff this week.

And yes, I did go on a ICC drake run. My opinion is as follows...

everything before PP, easy-peasy even on heroic and while trying for the achieves. Someone may have died on heroic lootship, but I was too busy going "WHEE! CANNONS!" to notice. I like the cannons :)

PP, plague still kills, but we killed him fast enough it didn't matter (if you've never done PP on heroic, there's a plague he gives you that you have to pass around). We soulstoned one healer, passed it to them, then the second go-round did the same thing, except with a battlerez. PP didn't last long enough for a third.

Dreamwalker: wow, I remember this being really hard on heroic, and now it's easy. Sadly, we didn't get the achieve

Sindy: same as Dreamwalker

LK: This is the only heroic fight I'd never seen in ICC 10. Yeah, after several wipes on heroic, we did it normally so the people who'd never been that far before could get Kingslayer. It's still difficult, and there's a ton of stuff going on. It reminds me more of a Cataclysm raid, really. Just a ton of stuff, not all of it happening at once, but enough stuff overall that the fight doesn't make much sense until you see it a time or two. We're going back on Sat, and hopefully we can get the achieves for Dream and Sindy and down LK on heroic.

Shaman-leveling: is coming along. The walrus people dailies continue to give good XP, so I'm trying to remember to log in to do them, even if I don't plan on working on her that day. She's also started the Tournament stuff. I still don't like the tournament at all, but a) good XP, and b) Lyllea and/or Garetia will need to go back to do it to get the mounts and pets. So might as well get some practice jousting (which I am fail at). Profession-wise, her tailoring's hit embercloth, and her leatherworking continues to lag due to lack of mats. Which leads me to my next topic...

Other leveling: Oddly enough both the pally and the hunter leveled this week. I got bored of Northrend, so I played around on the pally and discovered that I want Deepholm to end, NOW. I love the dailies there, I just really really HATE having to do the entire zone to unlock them. Why can't they be like the Uldum daily, just a short questchain and then you get to hit pygmies with mallets? Especially given that the enchants aren't BOA, this is extremely annoying. The pally's my 3rd toon to do Deepholm, and I've got two more on the way. I don't want to do that zone twice more, I really don't!

As for Garetia, I decided to drop herbalism and pick up skinning. I need a high level skinner to feed mats to the shaman, so she can make gear for herself, the druid, and Garetia. The pally can make gear for herself and weapons for everyone else, and I just picked up a couple of JCing recipes for rings and neck pieces, so in theory I can trick my alts out without running heroics till I want to stab things. In practice, I'll probably end up running heroics till I want to stab things for rep and chaos orbs but at least I'll be doing it on the shaman, right? Garetia's getting leveled in the slowest way possible by leveling skinning while waiting for the dungeon finder, then leveling archeology (vial of the sands, I will have you!) while waiting for the dungeon finder, and possibly doing old rep grinds while waiting for the dungeon finder. There's going to be a lot of waiting.

Of course, that does lead to a problem. I have no idea how to hunter with focus. Seriously, I'm just button-mashing over here. I know MM is supposed to be a bit underpowered, and Garetia's UI is having issues, but I'm pretty sure that I should do more damage now than I did in ICC, right? Right? I think my priority's probably wrong, that I shouldn't be using SS, then Chimera, Arcane, Aimed, and SS as filler, but EJ is not being helpful on that front. It's not horribly urgent, but I don't wanna be a huntard! I also am really rusty at CC, which is the reason I was planning on leveling via the dungeon-finder. Lots of practice is a good thing, especially since now we need hunters (both ours decamped) for Magmaw. Not that Garetia's going to be 85 and raid-ready any time soon, but I want to be prepared.

I guess I just like having a certain amount of competence with my alts. I expect to die as melee dps, and I'm not very good at it, but as ranged dps or heals? I have some clue what I'm doing, and I want to do it well no matter which toon I'm on.

Thus I have my list of things to learn/figure out this week:

1. BoT fights for raid

2. how to mm hunter with focus

3. multi-target elemental dps

4. what mats I need to get leatherworking into Cat levels, and get them

5. if the shaman and hunter can be completely raid-ready with only crafted and rep gear, and if so what reps and what mats? This is probably going to be a hit Mr Robot for a bit question.

Randomness

2011-03-23T01:32:00.000-04:00

I found quests (and a quest hub) in Dragonblight that I never knew existed. This is especially weird since Garetia has the Loremaster achieve for that zone, and I've leveled two other toons through there. Huh. Did they add a new quest hub when they took out the Wraithgate stuff, or have the kill harpies/gather wood/kill undead goblins always been there?

Today (or yesterday depending on how you look at it) I've....
gotten the shaman from 74 to 76
gotten her two dungeon achieves (and ran as DPS)
got Lyl two more achieves towards the red drake (yes, the red drake from Wraith heroic achieves. I am lazy)
got Kael'thas to drop the pheonix pet
discovered the shaman can now make frostweave bags, and conveniently I have a ton of infinite dust from DEing all those greens I made to level tailoring

Economically, I'm kinda stuck. The jcing market is incredibly volatile and competitive, and I'm considering wandering into the glyph market. I've got a guildie trying to make the Vial of the Sands, so I'm giving her my truegold transmute for the moment. Most of the gold I make goes into herbs and volatile life for making Darkmoon cards. I'm holding onto all of the ones I make at the moment, since I'm not sure which will make me more profit, a full deck or individual cards. On the plus side my hoarding tendencies have really paid off with tailoring leveling. I don't think I'll need to farm or buy any until I hit later embercloth recipes. Leatherworking, now that's a different story. Wow, leveling that takes a ton of mats.

What I've been up to...

2011-03-20T23:57:00.000-04:00

Helping my guild get to 4/12 by killing Valiona and Theralion. Now on to the Elemental Council (we've made it to phase 2 on our first few tries because we are awesome).

Gone back to Wraith to get a few achieves (and completely redone my UI while I was at it. Looky at the nifty transparency!)

Started farming Kael'thas's arse for his pet birds. Since they're adding a 100 pets achieve in 4.1, I'm trying to get Lyl as close as possible, plus I want a Yarping Bird Mount (Hawkstriders make a YARP noise when you summon them and it makes me giggle).

Other than that, it's been shaman-leveling, card-making when I find cheap herbs on the AH, and general slacking off.

So you want to start raiding...

2011-03-19T12:15:00.000-04:00

But you're not sure where to begin. Well, things are different than at the end of Wraith, you actually have choices of where to start! There's 4 raids and 5 bosses you can start with, and having downed all but one of them I sat down and rated them from easy to hard. Obviously this is my option, but at least it'll give you some ideas.

1. Pit Lord Whatshisface->Located in Baradin Hold, the Pit Lord is only available if you have Tol Barad. Remember VOA? It's like that. Honestly, I think this boss is the easiest to start with. The strategy (divide into two groups, stack on the two tanks, run around when there's fire on the ground) is very simple, and the fight is more of a DPS race than anything else. If you can't take this guy down before the enrage timer with no DPS deaths, you need to look hard at your DPSers and make sure they're pulling their weight.
2. Magmaw (aka worm dude)->This guy's located in Blackwing Descent, and he's a big lava worm. There's quite a bit more going on in this fight (lava parasites, floor on fire, boss eating a tank, having to use chains to pin the boss's head down, a burn phase), but once you get the hang of it, you're golden. Keep in mind that there's loads of ways to handle the parasites, and experiment.
3. Omnitron Defense System->Also located in Blackwing Descent, these guys are a bunch of robots. The robots activate and deactivate, they all have different abilities, and once their shields come up, any DPS can cause a wipe. There's much more going on in this fight than in Magmaw's, but if you lack enough ranged aoe or a good kiter for Magmaw's parasites, this is a good option instead. Also, even if you off Magmaw, you still have to kill these guys sooner or later to progress in Blackwing Descent.
4. Conclave of Wind->This is located in Uldum, and is off the coast. You're got 3 bosses, and all 3 need to die within a minute of each other. It's not a hard fight, but is very unforgiving of mistakes or bad luck with the RNG. Also, killing these 3 only unlocks your access to Al'Akir and he's probably not one you want to tackle until you've got better gear and experience.
5. Halfus-> Located in Bastion of Twilight in the Twilight Highlands (look for the spiral tower thing), this is an extremely variable fight. Depending on the drakes you get, it can be a piece of cake or your worst nightmare. I'd say check to see what drakes are up, and then decide whether you want to tackle it or not. My raid team is actually saving our lockout with Halfus down so we can try the twin dragons (almost got them) without having to deal with a really hard drake composition. Plus, the trash before Halfus is rather icky. But if you want to progress in Bastion, you have no choice but to kill him.

If I was starting a raid team, I'd start with Pit Lord, then (or if no TB) hit Magmaw, go see what drakes were up on Halfus and maybe tackle him, and then tackle either the Defense Council or the next boss in Bastion. But I've really gotten to dislike the Conclave, so that has something to do with it. No matter what you decide, remember to do your research ahead of time, try different strategies if something's not working, and adapt as needed. Raiding in Cat's harder than Wraith was (imho), so be prepared to spend quite a bit of time on the cold floor dead. Best of luck!

random update and screenshots

2011-03-10T16:14:00.000-05:00

The shaman's coming along decently well. She hit level 70 two days ago, and yesterday was a write-off as far as Wow playing goes. Having podcasts to listen to helps a ton with my boredom levels with this content I've done 5 times now. Merlin knows what I'm going to do when I hit my 5th alt going through Cataclysm and really can't vary my zones or ways of leveling as much. After all, I need to do most of Deepholm on all my toons till they make the shoulder enchants boa, which leaves me with the choices of Vashjir vs Hyjal and Uldum vs Twilight Highlands, and those end up being determined as much by rep rewards as anything else. Note to self: look up casting shaman gear rep rewards so I know where I should be going before I hit 80.

In other news, I am still pondering identity. I've always thought of Lyl as a healer. She was leveled mainly as a healer, started raiding as a healer, and being shadow came along later. But since Cat hit, well, she's shadow 99% of the time. I've had guildies forget I have a healing spec until a healer goes down and I start spamming Greater Heal to keep a tank up till the battle rez comes in. This doesn't bother me so much as it confuses me. In my head, Lyl's a healer. If I wanted a dps, I'd have leveled Garetia, but I leveled Lyl cause she's a healer. I understand where my guildies are coming from, after all I'm the only priest in guild with a dps spec and a healing spec. We have 3 other priests, but two are shadow only, and the other's disc/holy.

This came up because we have main spec vs offspec rolls, and I have no idea which spec is main anymore. Given the competition for dps cloth, my guess would be that I should go with healing since there's no cloth healer in my raid, but then I'm competing with 3 other healers for trinkets and things, and they'll get more use out of them than I will. Plus, that puts me last for dps trinkets and the like. I plan to ask the raid lead tonight which he'd rather have me do.

And now for screenshots... first, my antidote to a sinus headache...

Then we have a cool moment on my way to a raid...

Yet another warrior attempt, this one with an obscure and (to me at least) amusing name...

Proof that you can get the Hyjal quest achieve without playing the really annoying Joust game...

Because they're pretty....

Patch 4.1 Doom or more doom?

2011-03-07T14:11:00.001-05:00

Well, the patch is on the PTR, so I figured I'd talk about the latest patch notes from MMO Champion and how I feel about them. And yes, I am kinda bitter about the disc stuff.

Priests

Divine Aegis duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
Dispel Magic can only be used on the casting priest as a baseline effect.
Holy Fire damage has been increased to be approximately 30% higher than Smite.
Holy Word: Sanctuary has a new spell effect.
Inner Will and Inner Fire now last until canceled.
Mind Sear damage has been doubled.
Power Word: Shield duration has been reduced to 15 seconds, down from 30.
Talent Specializations
- Discipline
  - Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.
  - Atonement now works with Holy Fire in addition to Smite.
  - Power Word: Barrier's cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes, up from 2, and its effect has been reduced to 25%, down from 30%.
  - It is now possible to remove Weakened Soul effects that were a result of another priest's Power Word: Shield through Strength of Soul.
- Holy
  - Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.
Glyphs

Glyph of Divine Accuracy now also affects Holy Fire in addition to Smite.

Okay, yay more Mind Sear damage. But let's talk about the disc changes. First, okay, nice that Holy Fire is now Atonement-friendly. Of course there is the problem that Atonement isn't really horribly usable in raids, but um yay Atonement? Now, PW:B nerf, owie but not OMG HALP NERF BAT! bad. But PW:S? Really?

I'm not spamming bubbles, and as far as I can tell, the only disc priests capable of doing so are in 25 mans and are stacking druids for innerviates and are mostly in heroic raids. So... why is Blizz balancing around a small minority? There's other alternatives to this, ones that aren't going to hurt leveling and 5 man running priests. How bout a max of 5 shields on at once? When one breaks, you can cast another, but you can only have 5.

Honestly, I wish Blizz would give up on the bubble spam bugbear. If you design a large portion of a tree and a mastery around one spell, players will *SHOCK! HORROR!* want to use that spell fairly frequently. I'd rather have them give us alternatives to bubble spamming for raid healing rather than hit us with a nerf bat. That said, here's a thread on the forums calling for Blizz to sit down and tell us what they want Disc to be, complete with loads of ideas, some QQ, and blue posts. I'd love to see that, since right now all I know is that they don't want us bubble spamming.

As far as the dispel stuff, I'm not thrilled, but I'm not sure how much that'll affect me as a raider.

Dungeons & Raids

New dungeons available for partial testing.
- Zul'Aman has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring a revamp of the original dungeon and improved loot!
- Zul'Gurub has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot!
- Both dungeons will be in a new Dungeon Finder difficulty tier above the current level-85 Heroic dungeons and offer epic-quality item level 353 loot.
- These dungeons may only partially be available for testing at this time. Stay tuned for additional updates.

Blackwing Descent

Flash Bomb (Golem Sentry ability) now has a more clear warning visual.
Magmaw now triggers a raid emote when summoning Lava Parasites.
Further improvements have been made in the Maloriak encounter to avoid Flash Freeze targeting the tanks.

The gold amounts on the following encounters have been substantially reduced: Flame Leviathan, Magtheridon, Gruul the Dragonkiller, Doom Lord Kazzak, and all encounters in Karazhan.

Yay new dungeons, and I'm happy they aren't putting in the new raid yet. Since only one guild on my server is 12/12, we're not running out of content in a hurry, and I don't want to see a repeat of the Ulduar/Trial fiasco.

Guilds

The Guild Perk, Cash Flow, no longer prints out text to the Chat Log. Instead, the daily amount deposited is shown in the Guild Vault Money Log. In addition, players can view the weekly contribution in a new window at the bottom of the Money Log.

We have added two new custom guild tabards as Guild Rewards. The tabards are account bound and offer a bonus to gaining guild reputation.

Yay less chat spam, and huzzah for tabards that help you gain guild rep!

Items

Item Sets

The current damage-dealing death knight 4-piece raid set bonus now also grants increased attack power when Killing Machine triggers, as well as when the death knight gains Death Runes).
The current Holy paladin 4-piece raid set bonus now grants 540 Spirit for 6 seconds after casting Holy Shock.
The current healing priest 4-piece raid set bonus no longer requires a target to be under the effects of Weakened Soul for the priest to receive the Spirit bonus. Instead the benefit will be granted each time the priest's Penance spell heals a target.

And here's another point about that bubble spam thing. If our 4 piece bonus depends on it, that might be a reason we're spamming it. Glad they're changing it, still don't think it's a worthwhile bonus.

Well, I'm not happy, but I'm not ready to say the sky is falling yet. I think we need to see how things play out on the PTR, and in the meantime I'd suggest people who have not yet tried Holy should try it, especially leveling players.

Me, I'm going to start powerleveling my shaman so I have another enjoyable ranged dps/healer just in case disc gets nerfed to the ground. Only 19 levels to go to 85....

Identity, in game and out

2011-03-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

You may be wondering why I haven't been blogging much (or answering comments or paying attention to twitter). Well, there's been some interesting RL stuff going on....
I was diagnosed with ADD at age 3. By a pediatric neurologist, and this was a bit before they started handing out Ritalin like candy. I spent most of my childhood on a low dosage of an ADD med (not Ritalin), which certainly screwed up my hunger impulse, but never seemed to make much difference to me (others said they could tell a difference between my being on or off the med). I've been off meds since college, for various reasons, and I cope pretty well.

It's always just been part of my identity. I have blue eyes, I'm extremely smart, I have ADD. And now that part of my identity may be in question. I went through some exhaustive testing, and we'll see what they come up with.

But having part of my own identity in doubt made me start thinking about how my WoW identity changes in RL.

If asked, I play WoW. In fact, I generally volunteer this information. It's a hobby to me, just like my knitting or reading. No biggie. I play CRPGs, who cares? I also play D&D, have a physics degree, love fiddling with computers, and worked in IT. Heck, in high school I did Science Olympiad and Academic Bowl. I am a nerd/geek, and I honestly see nothing either wrong or odd about that. I spent large portions of my childhood and adolescence buried in books, and believe me, if the internet hadn't been invented I'd still be doing that.

But I realized something while thinking about all this. I play WoW pretty much exclusively. The only other hobby I spend anywhere near as much time on is knitting, and I do that while watching tv or movies. I occasionally get together with friends for a D&D session, but that hasn't happened in a while. So, am I still a reader if I don't read books rabidly anymore, or do I still count because I still read rabidly, it's just mostly digital. And am I still a gamer if all I play is WoW or should I just call myself a wower?

And while I'm at it, am I Alliance? My Alliance toons get played way more, in fact I don't think I've logged on to one of my Horde toons since the Shattering. But I don't really have any strong feelings for one side or the other, so it seems somehow wrong to call myself Alliance.

I don't really put myself into my toons, they're characters, not me. Lyllea and Garetia and all the rest are digital avatars in a manner of speaking, but how much do they really reflect me?

I'm going to keep thinking about this, and maybe I'll come up with something. Right now I just have questions. Oh well, I think, therefore I am confused, right?

Kill Shot (RIP Halfus)

2011-02-28T00:58:00.000-05:00

3/12 BABY!
It took every mana cooldown I had (shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope, Concentration potion, mana tide (twice!), a spirit trinket) and then some, but Halfus has fallen!

Also, yes that is me healing in a raid for the first time in quite a while. Our resto druid had Oscar aggro, so I had to go heals. Oddly enough I was at an Oscar get-together while raiding, and I have no idea who won anything, but I do know that Cate Blanchett's dress looked like a very badly designed WoW guild tabard.

It was a lot of fun to heal again, and I need to go through and revise some of my ui, macro shadowfiend so I can keep the tank targeted, and remember that I have more buttons than PW:S, Penance, Greater Heal, and bouncy healy spell. Also, is Archangel for mana regen worth it at all? I need to figure that out too. I know I love it for shadow, but dark archangel is 5% mana return, not 1%.

Fight-wise, the healing got easier as the fight went on. That was good as by the end we were all healing on fumes. I healed a bear tank and threw around bubbles and such on raid/other tank when I had the GCDs and mana, our resto shaman got to raid-heal by their lonesome, and our pally healer had the pally tank. A pretty sub-optimal healing makeup, really, but we made it work.

And no, I have no idea what Raid Achievement Rank means, but I like that ranking better than the others, cause it makes us seem more awesome.

Wish List: A Training Ground for Tanks

2011-02-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

I'm learning how to tank on my druid (one raid needs a tank or they can't raid), and I so want the following...

Basic Tank Training: this would be a series of quests you'd be required to do before you queue as tank. You'd get teleported to a series of rooms. First off you'd either be able to talk to an NPC about the basics of tanking as your class (aka, a warrior uses a sword and shield. They use the following abilities to keep the mobs on them (thundershock, whatever else they use), and are in defensive stance. They like mail/plate gear with defense and whatever else warriors like) or skip the intro and jump into the first trial. All basic trials would have a NPC healer to keep you up, and who can pull healing aggro.
First trial: hold a boss mob's attention. You don't have to move. You would have a threat meter and you'd need to get it above a certain point in a certain amount of time.
Second trial: hold a boss's attention while periodically needing to move out of bad stuff.
Third trial: get and hold a trash pack of mobs. First group is all melee, second has a ranged/caster.
Just a very quick intro to tanking. You could always go back and redo any trial, even if you passed. The idea would be that experienced tanks could breeze through these in a few minutes, but that novice tanks would learn stuff.

Intermediate Tank Training:
Similar setup, but now we include NPC DPS. You'd repeat trial 2, then do trial 3 twice, once with suggested crowd control and once where you chose the NPC DPS group and tell them what to cc. Again, all trials can be repeated, so you can really experiment with different group makeups and crowd control options.

My guess would be that Advanced Tank Training would involve trigger-happy dps, tanking cooldowns, and switching tanks. Doing all three questlines would get you something, like a shield vanity pet or the title Tank.

I would kill to have this stuff in game, especially the ability to practice! DPS get target dummies, why can't tanks have practice scenarios?

Ooh, another way to gain rep!

2011-02-13T00:58:00.000-05:00

For those of you thinking about getting the Ambassador title, working towards the Exalted, or simply wanting to ride around on another race's mounts, I have news!

We all know the factions have tabards, and you can gain rep by running dungeons with them on. But did you know that you can wear the city tabards at 85 and go run Stockades and still get rep?

See!

Best part about this, it should work no matter what your level. It's not a ton of rep per kill at 85, but if you're in the dungeon anyway, whether to get the achievement, farm enchanting mats, or just to see if you can solo it, you might as well get rep from it.

I checked the tooltip wording of the tabards, and the city ones (SW, Ironforge, Gnomer, ect.) are the only ones I could find without a level requirement, so I believe these are the only ones that will work. That's probably a good thing, as really the only incentive I have to run heroics on Lyl is to grind rep (or to help guildies). Yeah, I still have a gear upgrade available from jp (hat) and I could use new shoes, but that's about it except for purple rep rewards.

I just figured this trick out tonight and decided to share while I was thinking about it. Now go forth and get rep!

So there was this patch thing...and I made some gold

2011-02-11T02:14:00.000-05:00

I've waited to comment on the patch because I wanted to give it a good trial, especially the priest changes.

I LOVE MY BUFFS!

Yes, the shadowpriest rotation has gone back to it's old complicated self, aka....
Dot. dot, dot, mind blast when available, mind sear as filler, which is a bit of a pain. For new shadow priests (and those that tend to raid tired, like me), I would recommend an addon called Spell Flash and then Spell Flash: Priest. It's basically a prompter, flashing the spell it suggests you use next. I don't believe it's been completely updated for 4.06, but I use it to prompt dot refreshes, and weave my blast and sear by hand.

Plus, mastery no longer stinks. My dps (with no changes in gear) has gone up by 2-4k because all that mastery on my shared gear is no longer a wasted stat in shadow. This is good, as I'm likely to be raiding as shadow for a bit. Our raid team's beloved main tank is taking a sanity break (much-deserved) so our shadow priest of awesome has stepped up a bear alt and we still have 4 healers, so I go shadow or the druid goes boomkin and the default seems to be me as shadow. Works for me.

The TB changes seem to be working. I'm seeing it change hands much more frequently. As an example, tonight I went in defending just before raid start and we lost it. Then while we were in raid squashing worm dude and working on the conclave, we got it back. Of course, once people adjust to the flag changes it may not switch so easily, but we'll see.

Oh, and in other news...
Remember the saronite shuffle? I've been experimenting with the elementium/obsidium shuffle. Basically you buy the ore, prospect it, then...
Green quality gems->
save blue, green, and purple for jcing dailies. Throw 3 on the AH early in the day and they'll sell for 25-30g apiece.
Use the other colors for crafting rings, the fist weapons, and necklaces. Sell the blue quality ones on the AH (200-400g apiece) and DE the green stuff, then sell the mats or turn them into enchant scrolls. Me, I've been selling the mats.
Blue quality gems-> cut and sell on AH

I invested 1k gold (elementium was at slightly under 4g apiece), and with a few gems left to sell I've made 6k. Now, there's some big ifs in this scheme, so check the Undermine Journal for your markets and make sure you understand what ore needs to be at for you to break even. Auction House Junkies is a good podcast for this sort of idea. I've been paying more attention to elementium, because the price is the same and the gems are better. More info available here at Cold's Gold Factory and here at WarcraftEcon.

Not much else going on, really. I'm gradually grinding rep on Lyl, got the rogue to 51 (I love heirlooms), and finally pinpointed the "WTF let me interact with my spells and bags" bug that's been showing up occasionally. That one was having Adobe Reader running, go figure. Monera's sadly neglected, mostly because going through the entire gearing process, yeah. Unless a guildie needs a healer for a normal, she's not running anything. Given the time investment for a heroic and the fact that Lyl still has rep and gear upgrades available from heroics, it doesn't make sense to bring in an alt.

Raiding-wise, we've got worm dude mostly on farm, and we're making really good progress on Conclave. I'm hoping that this Sunday we squish Conclave and then hit Halfus. I may even heal on Halfus, since disc is really good for that fight. We shall see what the raid needs.

Women in game: Source of drama or easy scapegoats?

2011-02-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

I was wandering through the new Raid and Guild Leadership forums when I came across How to Deal with a Girl in my Guild. Obviously I started reading it, and thus started pondering where this idea of women as drama-makers comes from and is it Truth?

First off, no, I don't think it's Truth. I think some women, like some men, cause drama. There is a certain subset of the human population that causes and enjoys causing drama, and both men and women are part of this subset. Most women I know, both in and out of game, do not like drama. I personally hate any conflict in groups I am a part of, and want everyone to get along and be happy. Obviously I cannot make the assumption that the majority of women in game are like me, BUT neither can I assume that I am abnormal in my desire for no drama. My best guesstimate is that I have some level of familiarity with about 100 players in game, of which a substantial minority are female. With 11 million players, 100 is nowhere near a decent sample size. In fact, I very much doubt that any player could manage to interact with enough people in game to form a decent sample, not to mention the fact that different servers have different norms and personalities (for lack of a better word). So, please bear in mind that there is no Truth here, only individual truths.

Now, where does this women cause drama idea come from? I'm not sure, but here's my guess...

In the early days of the Internet, it was male-dominated, and dominated by a particular type of male. We all know the stereotype. The geek/nerd who doesn't interact much with women, and whose higher brain functions tend to shut down in their presence. From what I have seen, these men tend to think of women as a weird and strange species and treat us differently. Some women (and some men) took and still take advantage of this tendency. If you like drama, and you can use your sex to cause drama, well then you're probably going to do that. If you don't like drama, and don't like being treated differently because of your sex, then you're likely to just keep your mouth shut so no one finds out which sex you are. Can you see where this is going? Those most likely to be open about being female are also the most likely to use that fact to cause drama, thus creating the perception that all females cause drama.

Now, there is some female drama that the woman herself has nothing to do with. If player A finds out player B is female, and treats her differently from then on, then the fault lies with player A, not with player B. Any drama caused by this different (and likely preferential) treatment is player A's fault. But sadly, many will look at a scenario like this and say "See, girls in game cause drama!" and place blame on B instead of A. This is rather like introducing a minority person into a group and having drama because a member of the group reacted in a racially-insensitive fashion. Would you really blame the minority person? I doubt so.

If you look at the original post in the thread I linked, the scenario is not so cut and dried. You have a loot council member who is spending most of his time socializing with a female guildie, and his loot council decisions show favoritism towards this guildie. We have no way of knowing if the guildie has asked him to give her preference, or if she expects him to socialize almost exclusively with her. It is a fairly well-known phenomenon that people tend to want to spend time with the people they're dating, and many do take that to an extreme. Also, people tend to favor giving loot to people they like, a known problem with loot councils in general. So, if you remove the female guildie, would there still be drama? I'd say yes, sooner or later. The loot council member has shown that he has trouble removing his personal prejudices from his decisions. A woman may have brought that tendency to the forefront, but it's probably been there all along.

In closing, I would like to point something out that most of us forget in these kinds of discussions. When you generalize about women, or men, you are generalizing about 3 BILLION people. Even if you're saying something like "women get tetchy once a month", which may or may not be true for any woman who menstruates monthly. Assuming that statement is true for all women still means you're ignoring a substantial population of women who have passed menopause, are currently pregnant, or due to medical abnormalities do not menstruate or do not do so monthly. It's a natural tendency of humans to generalize, it makes the world easier for us to deal with if we can put people in neat little boxes, but in real life, people don't always fit into those boxes and trying to force them to fit is harmful both to them and to you. Sometimes women cause drama, just like sometimes men cause drama. If you're not comfortable making the blanket statement "men cause drama", then why are you comfortable saying that women cause drama?

Yay I get to BUBBLE AGAIN!

2011-01-28T13:44:00.000-05:00

Things are going well, all in all. RL's been very stressful and busy, so blogging was not a priority. Yup, I am a bit fail.

Murderotica's downed Magmar, and we're working on him again this week. We've made it to lvl 13 as a guild, yay perks (mmm, heirloom cloaks of awesome and rep gains). Baradin Hold guy is on farm, and best of all, I get to be disc again!!

I've never really been comfortable as holy, and well, last night my raid leader asked if I wouldn't mind switching back. Of course she asked in the middle of the raid, so I did my best to set a time record for respecing, reglyphing, redoing my bars, and redoing my vuhdo. We got much further once I went back to disc, and my comfort level was higher.

I do think this experiment with holy was good for me. I'm now much more familiar with my group-healing tools, and I've gotten a new understanding of why I hate Chakra. The number of times I've yelled FUCK! as Chakra falls off just as I'm casting Holy Word:Sanctuary, well, it's in the hundreds. I will miss my Lightwell, and the lovely massive group heals, but I have my bubbles back!

Plus, I can go into TB or bgs as disc without feeling useless, and I get to smite. Yup, I went for an Atonement/Smite build, though I don't really have a good sense of how I feel about it yet. Hopefully I can talk some guildies into a heroic or two so I can practice and get a feel for how much healing Atonement does.

In other news, feral kitties are way OP. My lvl 84.6 kitty should not be within a couple k of Lyllea in dps. It just shouldn't happen. Feral dps has grown on me, and I plan to keep the kitty spec, and maybe do resto as well. The tank need's diminished, so I figure I'll do something I know I like, and if we need another bear down the line, heck, bears and kitties have a lot of gear overlap.

I'm still trying to figure out which alt gets leveled after the druid. Garetia's a blast to level, but her alchemy's maxed and there's nothing for her to learn in Twilight Highlands. The pally is not as fun, but I know there's blacksmithing and engineering patterns to unlock there. And then there's the dark horse DK, since there's enchanting patterns in Twilight too.

And some fun stuff. First, Monera got a title (she's the kitty in the center)..

And Lyllea finally got that rare spawn killed and thus a new pet...

If you're wondering, that's Jadefang, the only green shale spider, and she drops the Tiny Shale Spider pet, who looks just like her, but tiny.

Raiding. Easier than heroics? Also, 3 of my favorite addons.

2011-01-14T23:58:00.000-05:00

The Baradin Hold boss certainly is. Whee, stacking, running in circles, then loots!
On the other hand this guy...

Well, he's a bit tricker. Not quite Deadmines with a drunk tank level, but pretty hard.

In other stuff, I've been profession-leveling, toon-leveling, and heroic-running. And no, I have not forgotten about the UI series. I just got distracted by...

a confused dog in way too much snow. So much snow that it basically shut down my city for 4 days. Not that I'm shocked, mind you. We have about 1 dumptruck with a plow attachment per million people. Yup, gotta love Hothlanta.

But I do have some addon stuff for you. Three great addons that really have nothing to do with each other, but I love all 3.
First-> Archy. You can see it in the below shot. It lists the artifacts I'm working on, the dig sites I have (and identifies which type they are), prompts me when I have enough pieces to finish one, and gives me a little distance indicator. Best of all, I can make it vanish with just a click.

Second->MarketWatcher This is an AH addon. You tell it stuff to scan for, scan occasionally, and it keeps track of prices for you. You can even mouse over the items and it'll show you a nifty graph. I use it to keep track of gem, ore, and herb prices, so I can find deals and get a sense of when it makes sense to post cut gems and when I should just wait. It's also keeping track of Shadow Dust for me, mostly because otherwise I forget to look for it.

Third-> Buttonfacade. This is a UI addon that allows you to skin your buttons. See, here's default...

Here's another skin (dream)

And here's Zoomed (what Lyllea's currently using)

I tend towards subtle skins, but there's a ton out there. Just hit Curse and look. Caith's quite popular, I know, so is Gears.

ButtonFacade also works with many other addons. For example, Satrina Buff Frames, so your buffs can match your action buttons. It's a nice way to keep a consistent feeling, plus I think the skins look nicer than the default.

There you have it, 3 of my favorite addons. Now back to farming for the shale pet. IT MUST BE MINE!

How I Make A UI Part 1: A Starting With Bartender 4

2011-01-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

This is just a walkthrough of how I get some of the addons I use to look the way they do. We'll be working with bartender 4, shadowed unit frames, vuhdo, align, sunn viewport art, sexymap, and DS Graphics Sunn Viewport Skins. This section starts with bartender, since it's the first addon I configure in a new UI. Originally I was going to do them all in one big post, but well, that would have been a REALLY big post, so I split them up. Next time will be Sunn Viewport Art and Shadowed Unit Frames. Here's a nice picture with the addons all labeled so you can see what is what. It's also a good example of what you'll see when you first log in with all these installed.

Now to configure!
First off, we start with our action bars. So type in /bt and hit enter. You see...

We're going to go to the Blizzard Art Bar option and disable it. I don't particularly like that art. That gives you...

Now, enable bar 2 if you want. I like to have bars 1-4 enabled, but it does depend on how many bars you want.

Then type in /align in chat. That'll put a grid on your screen so you can line stuff up. Then you want to uncheck the Lock box in the bartender window, then close the window. Don't worry, you can get it back any time by using /bt, and this way we have space to move bars around. Move the bars where you want. I go for bars 1 and 2 centered at the bottom of my screen, but that's me.

Now, not only does bartender let you move bars where you want, you can also change the scale of a bar (I shrink my bag bar and micro menu, since I don't need them as big as the default has them), change the number of rows (allowing you to make an action rectangle instead of a bar), and even change the number of buttons per bar. You can also do cool things like having bars faded out.

Once you're done moving things around, lock the bars. I ended up with...

That's bars 1 and 2 in the middle, and 3 and 4 on either side. 3 and 4 have been scaled down a bit and also made into 3by4 rectangles. The micromenu, stances bar, and my bag bar hang out neatly on top.

Now, I know you're thinking..."But I don't want to configure bars for all my alts. That's such a hassle!" And with Bartender, you don't have to. All you need to do is...

Log in on the alt.
/bt
Go to Profiles
Select Copy from
And copy from the toon you just set up. See...

Here I'm copying my previously setup hunter's bars to my warlock. And it looks like....

And there you go, you now have customized action bars and you know how to use bartender 4. And remember, you can always reset the profile if you hate what you've done. Oh, and set your keybindings if you need to.

One Boss DOWN!

2011-01-08T13:35:00.000-05:00

Brief post to brag...

That's the voa boss of Cat, and I healed him. Undergeared me! Oh, and a awesome holy pally too, but yay I raid-healed and I didn't go oom (though I did have to pop 2 of my 3 mana cooldowns) and no one died. Plus, we two-shot it! Yup, I have awesome guildies. We split into two groups, stacked on the two tanks, and ran around like chickens with their heads cut off during the lots of fire phase.

Raiding officially starts Thursday, and my gs seems stuck at 338. I'm hoping the purple gloves from Earthen Ring bring it up enough, and maybe a few more heroic drops? Every item I have is 333 or above, so I'm not in bad shape, just not as good as I'd like to be.

So here's hoping that this BIG STORM that's supposed to hit Sunday night brings loads of snow and no power outages, so I can run heroics all day for rep and shinies. Mostly rep.

My redone UI (thus far)

2011-01-05T00:01:00.000-05:00

I spent a hour or so on this tonight, and so far Lyllea's, Anput's, and Eiunn's UIs are doneish. Here we have a few before and after shots...

Eiunn, the shaman. Before....

Eiunn's after. I still need to fiddle with Sexymap to make it match better

Lyllea's, in shadow, before

Lyllea's, also in shadow, after. Vuhdo's not completely set-up, I do not want it in the middle of my screen as shadow, but that's tomorrow's fix.

I've gone from 70+ addons to 40ish, which I think is good, and I like the switch to the lighter grey color-scheme. Also, that spell timer isn't visible all the time, I just hadn't locked it when I took the cap.

My Current To-Do List

2011-01-02T14:29:00.031-05:00

Okay, this is mostly because I'm getting myself confused, and needed to write this down somewhere.

First Goal: Get Lyllea raid-ready. To do this I need to/should probably...
a)unlock Hyjal and start that rep grind. Ideally I'd be at exalted when I start raiding. While I'm at it, I should probably start running Wildhammer dailies and figure out if Ramwhatever has dailies and unlock those.
b)get therazane and earthen ring to exalted
c)either level Monera's inscription to get This great holy offhand or get the mats and get a guildie to do it. I already have 4 of the inks needed, and all of the volatiles. 4 more inks would be 800 gold, or I can keep herbing and buying up cheap herbs when I see them.
d)get enchanted. I've been slacking on this, partly because I have to level the DK to get mats and I don't really wanna level more in Northrend. Been there, done that way too many times.
e) actually run heroics and normals. I've been avoiding doing this, but with the first raid in a couple of weeks, I REALLY can't put it off any more.
f) Building two gear sets, one for holy and one for shadow. This isn't horribly urgent, since I know I'll be healing in raids to start with, but it'd be nice to at least have a hit-capped gear set.
g) Redoing my shadow spec to pick up silence.
h) Get rawr working and have a gear upgrades list ready to go.

Second Goal: rebuild my professions web. There's some overlap here with getting Lyllea ready. For this I need to...
a) level Monera's inscription and herbalism, since she's the current leveling alt. While I'm at it, I'll be attempting to get her heroic-ready.
b) level Garetia's alchemy for access to metagem and truegold transmutes. This may or may not involve actually leveling her. I'm not sure if Alchemy has some recipes locked in Twilight Highlands or not.
c) look into the other professions (enchanting, leatherworking, blacksmithing, tailoring, ect.) and see what I feel I'm going to need. Tailoring, enchanting, and leatherworking are all on toons that have to be leveled to be useful at this point, so they're probably on the back-burner.
d) Actually remember to do the cooking daily on Lyllea, Monera, Garetia, and possibly Eiunn. Also need to remember to do the fishing daily on Lyllea and Garetia (Lyllea for the skill points and Garetia for the pet).
e) Get Lyllea all the gem cuts she and Monera will need. Then pick up gem cuts for other alts as I level them. This means hitting EJ and looking at what fashionable priests and druids are socketing this season.

Third Goal: get my UI cleaned up. This is probably going to involve a complete rebuild, starting by backing up all my addons and settings, then reinstalling what I think I can't live without. I know I'd like to find an addon that can replace mfclip and hotcandy, as well as show me feral dots. I might try a new bar mod, and I'm certainly going to find a new buff mod, or just not use one at all. This'll probably end up being a blog post or two. It's really high past time I rebuilt my UI from first principles, and a new raiding season's as good a time as any to do it.

Fourth Goal: look at pvp. Seriously, I haven't even set foot in Tol Barad or a bg since Cat hit (except for a very brief Strands match).

Fifth Goal: Don't panic, remember it's a game, and have fun!

Sixth Goal: Get Lyllea a special mount. I don't care which one, I just want a nifty flying mount. Skyguards, Netherwing, and raid drakes are all possibilities. I may even get lucky and win a roll on one in a guild fun run. And I'd like to push Garetia to 50 mounts and 100 pets. She's been at 46 and 92 for a long time, and it'd be nice to hit that.

Obviously this is a ton of things to do, and I don't think I'm going to have all this done any time soon. But hopefully getting it all written out will stop me from logging on, running some dailies, and then going "crap, what am I supposed to be doing?"

It's been a crazy, crazy week

2011-01-01T23:47:00.000-05:00

In RL, not in WoW. In WoW, well....there was an awesome fun run and I got some nifty achieves. Personally I'm the most fond of More Dots, since I was shadow at the time.

I'm starting to come to terms with holy. Most of my frustration is, well, mana. My current philosophy is "tank near full, dps gets a renew if I have extra mana, otherwise they fend for themselves unless they're under half health and the tank is good". I may need to rethink that keeping the tank near full, and just go for tank above half.

As far as gear goes, my list goes...
int>spirit>haste>mastery>crit> to hit. I'm reforging to add spirit whenever possible, and while I know this gear priority isn't ideal for shadow (shadow likes crit more than mastery), I figure it'll work for the moment.

Rep wise, I'm doing the dailies for Therazane (aka Hodir for Cat), and wearing the Earthen Ring tabard so I can get those sexy purple cloth gloves. I'm revered with both, and I'm hoping to get exalted soon. I'll likely keep checking on the Therazane dailies even after I'm exalted though, since I want the baby earth elemental pet. Oh, and if you're having problems with that quest, hug the right wall. Trust me, it works.

Then I need to make some decisions. Wildhammer has a nice neck, Hyjal has my head enchants and a purple waist, but I need to unlock them and do the zone, and Ramkahen has purple shoes and a camel. Probably I'll be doing Hyjal (since ooh spirit on the waist), and running dailies for Wildhammer. Meanwhile, the druid's leveling slowly, and sending all her herbs to Garetia for leveling alchemy. I want access to that truegold transmute, darn it!

So, that's where I stand atm. Hope everyone had a happy new year, and here's hoping 2011's a bit brighter than 2010!

Are Cataclysm Heroics Too Hard?

2010-12-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

Are Cataclysm heroics too hard?

Are they harder than heroics at the end of Wraith? Heck yes. We don't over-gear them.
Are they harder than heroics at the beginning of Wraith? Yes, I believe so. I don't remember group makeup being important (besides the obvious healer/tank/3 dps thing), and I don't remember CCing.
Are they harder than BC heroics? Not sure, since I never ran them at level.

But there's several other things going on here that make difficulty harder to judge.
First, we've all been revamped. This hit some classes and specs harder than others, and we didn't have much time to get used to the new status quo before Cat.
Second, Blizz has decided to change the way we heal with Cat.
Third, we have far less control about who we end up grouped with (if pugging) and far less knowledge about them.
Fourth, CC/interrupts/stuns/kiting hasn't been needed for pretty much all of Wraith (unless you PVP), so most people are anywhere from a little rusty to completely unfamiliar with them.

Honestly, if we were coming into Wraith heroics this way, I suspect we'd find them pretty difficult as well.

But I think the better question to ask is "Are Cataclysm heroics fun?" Well, not for me thus far. Running with my guild makes them more entertaining, but I still haven't enjoyed one yet. I do them because I need gear to raid, not because I want to.

The unforgiving group makeup problem is really the deal breaker for me. A suboptimal group makeup, even if everyone in the group is a great player, makes for lots of wipes and frustration. Don't have enough stuns or cc? Then certain trash pulls are nightmares, nightmares that reoccur over and over again. Call me a wimp, but I really don't enjoy that sort of thing. Most of the boss fights I've gotten to see I thought were great (except for the tornado boss since that's a little too RNG dependent), but the trash, ugh.

So for me, I think the answer is that, yeah, they are. They're too difficult for me to have fun in them, and I have to wonder why, with Blizz introducing the random dungeon finder to make it easier to run stuff, that they went to such a difficulty level. Seems counterproductive to have this tool to make finding dungeon runs easier, and then bring out a bunch of heroics that discourage pugging due to group makeup and difficulty level.

It's been a busy week here, and I went holy

2010-12-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

First there was...

Then there was... and yes it took me long enough.

Then my guild leader had a request. That I go holy. Since I kinda need to relearn how to heal anyway, I figured why not try it. So far, well, I've managed to heal one boss. While I picked up some power auras from Tales of a Priest (which is a great resource, btw), I'm not sure what they mean yet. Plus, I keep forgetting I have this nifty group heals. Guess I spent too long playing whack-a-mole with flash heal and pw:s. But I'll get it, eventually.

But while figuring this out, there was also...

And yup, in that last one I'm healing as holy. It was the second try at the boss, who has a fairly brutal aoe (it might not be so brutal if I knew wtf was going on, but since I didn't...), and I got shiny shoes. You can see the power auras, and I know one is circle of healing's available, and maybe the other one's something to do with Chakra? While I understand the chakra thing in principle, in practice I'm a bit too busy trying to figure out which spells I need to be using to keep people alive without going oom. Quite frankly, right now the entire chakra thing is another layer of complexity, one I really don't need.

As a disc healer in Wraith, I used pw:s, flash heal, penance, and prayer of mending almost exclusively. In Cat, disc throws in Archangel and smiting when possible, plus using heal and possibly renew. The challenge there is figuring out when you can dps, when you need archangel, and trying to make the two mesh somewhat. Or at least that was my (very) limited experience healing while leveling.

As holy in Cat, so far I have Renew (which I like), Heal, Greater Heal, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, that other group heal spell that I can't remember the name of, and the occasional free Flash Heal. And I have three chakra states, each which makes that Holy Word thing do something different. Of course, that assumes I remember I have chakra states and that holy word thing and am not just fairly frantically figuring out how to keep the tank up as far as possible while keeping the dps above 50% and not running oom every pull. Okay, so I'd be worrying about the last bit as disc as well, but holy just seems to have this added layer of complexity that it really doesn't need.

I can't help wondering if that's one of the reasons holy was buffed so much. The OPness of it right now induces people to try it that otherwise would look at the complexity and go "nope, not for me". I suspect part of my own problem comes from being a mostly single-target healer for so long. That, combined with new tools, old tools I actually need to use now, and a resource I need to pay attention to, makes holy quite a challenge for me. Good thing I can always queue as shadow and go quest for a while for a break, right? Or hit an alt.

Click-casting and you: A primer

2010-12-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

Given that many people are trying new things in Cat, I figured I'd write a guide or two on various things. This one is on click-casting, keybinds, and how to figure out what to bind to what.

First off, what is click-casting? It's the ability, primarily used by healing classes, to mouseover a target either in raid frames or party frames, and heal them with a click. It's faster than selecting the target, then hitting a heal.

Second, how do I do this? Well, you have several options. Me, I use the addon Vuhdo, which is a raid frames and click casting addon. Other people use Grid (a raid frames addon) and Clique (a clickcasting addon) together, or simply use mouseover macros and the default frames.
Here's the vuhdo wiki.
Here's a couple blog posts about how to setup Grid and Clique.
Here's some info on mouseover macros.

Third, what do I bind to what?
Okay, this you want to think about carefully and have an overall strategy for. I'll walk you through my disc priest setup for Wraith to give you an idea.
   First I figured out what buttons I can use easily. Since I play on a laptop and use a trackpad, I really only have left and right mouse buttons. But vuhdo allows me to use ctrl, shift, and alt, as well as combinations thereof, to modify my clicks. The combinations aren't really workable for me, so I'm left with 8 click-casting options.
   Left click and right click: these two are the easiest and fastest for me to hit. So, I bound my two most-used spells to them, Power Word: Shield, and Flash Heal. I changed Flash Heal to Heal when Cat hit, but the sentiment of "most used" is still there.
   Ctrl+left click and Ctrl+right click: big heals. I bound my two biggest single-target heal spells, Penance and Greater Heal, to these two buttons. Having my two big heals use the same modifier button helped me remember the bindings when I was learning them.
   Alt+left click and Alt+right click: select target and levitate. Alt+left click is actually the easiest for me to hit, so it made sense to me to bind something I use a lot there, plus I needed some way to select people from raid frames. And as for levitate, well, I like having it keybound, and when I had a heal bound there, I kept forgetting about it. So it made more sense to just bind non-healing functions to alt.
   Shift+left click and Shift+right click: I never used these in Wraith. I believe they were bound to Renew and possibly Prayer of Mending, but I'm not sure.

Since I'm limited in my click options, I tend to be picky about what I bind and don't bind. If I generally only use a spell on one target (renew, prayer of mending, earth shield), or the spell has a cooldown (pain suppression), or does not need a target (circle of healing, holy nova, power word: barrier), I don't bind them to mouseclicks. All those spells are bound to my number keys, and that's how they get cast.

So when considering what to clickcast, and where to bind it, consider:
like functions (aka big heals all using the same modifier button)
ease of clicking (aka bind most used to left and right click)
how spell is used

It's important not to overload your brain. Start small, maybe just with left and right click bound, and gradually increase. If you're moving to click-casting on more than one toon, try to keep the philosophy consistent. For example, my leveling resto shaman has her fast heal and her to go heal bound to right and left click. For my druid, it's regrowth and rejuvenation. For my pally, it was holy light and flash of light (but I haven't looked into pally healing since 4.0).

Hopefully this will help make the wonderful world of click casting less scary. It's my preferred way to heal and I think once you convert, you'll never go back.

For RL sanity!

2010-12-15T23:22:00.000-05:00

We interrupt this normal blog post to bring you this breaking news...

My life is extremely stressful right now, and WoW is adding to the stress rather than decreasing it. Lyllea is not yet 85 (6 bars away) and I have not been on in 3 days. So instead of insightful commentary on healing heroics, or something, I give you random screenshots.

I found this in my screenshot folder. It seemed to fit this post perfectly.

I have an octopus on a stick! Best RP weapon ever. All of this gear has now been replaced, but I am keeping the octopus on a stick. I even named him Stanley. Every priest who dabbles in darkness should have one!

This quest amused me greatly. Oh, and someone get Hastur off my head, please.

I have no idea what the heck is going on in this screenshot. No clue at all, but it looks nifty.

Deepholm is ridiculously beautiful in places.

It's the yellow box graphic bug of DOOM!

It really really annoys me that my armor clashes with my hair and I can't change my hair to match. Seriously, I am so glad I spend most of my leveling time in shadow. WTB red or black hair dye please!

Again, Deepholm is pretty.

I hope to have things settled and my stress level decreased by the weekend, at which point I get to start gearing up. Good thing I like the Deepholm dailies, right?

My First Night in Cat

2010-12-07T14:30:00.000-05:00

First there was...

Then a lot of staring at a log-in screen

Then I got to the docks and took a boat

Then a kraken tried to eat me

Then I ran Gundrak with guildies to get a guild achieve, a bit of XP (but a very little bit) and some guild XP.

Then there was a priest (not me) tanking the trash in Blackrock Spire, which was very entertaining. Gotta love really good heals (again not me) and an insanely talented shadow priest.

Then it was back underwater and time for some hardcore leveling. Vash'jir? is very lovely.

And it would have been far easier to level if my quest log had actually told me about quests. Oh well, thanks to the addon Lightheaded (which loads wowhead's quest comments for you) I did okay.

In the process of wandering around there was a ding!

And now I'm trying to figure out how to get back to the beginning of the zone to do the quests I skipped. Sadly, this seems to be beyond me atm, especially since I can't remember the name of the beginning place. Oh well, I shall figure it out.

Whee!

2010-12-07T08:23:00.000-05:00

Really, really sleepy, so I'll make this quick...

Vash'jir is AWESOME. Lyllea's gone up a level and a half in 5 hours. It took me 20 minutes to get on once Cat hit, but totally worth it.

I have many nifty screencaps, and I managed to skip ahead somehow while looking for ore, so I'm halfway through the zone and don't have a mount yet. On the plus side, skipping ahead meant I got ore, and it was FAR less crowded. Now if I could just figure out how to get back to Stormwind to train the next level of mining. I remembered to pick up Old World Flight, and COMPLETELY forgot to train mining. Ooops. Still getting XP from nodes, and hopefully a ton of cash on AH.

And the server first profession achieve was cooking, and it happened before I even got in. Good thing I wasn't trying for one, right?

Hope you're all having a blast with Cat, and I will come back with a proper post with details and screencaps once I get a nap. All-nighters are not my friend.

Almost toasted, but not quite

2010-12-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

Well, the sky turned red...

But I didn't die, so I ran up to the top of a tower for a better look. I didn't manage to get it in the screenshot, but I did see a large wing. Guess Deathwing wanted to flame all the lowbie undead, instead of the plaguelands.

The Alliance wants you... to quest in the Southern Barrens!

2010-12-05T00:52:00.000-05:00

That's precisely what I've been doing. It's a great zone, really, much better than the old Barrens horde-side.
First off, you have several factions, Stormwind, the Earthen Ring, Cenarion Circle, Ironforge, and even a bit of Gilneas. Yay loads of rep!

Then you have the zone flavor. An embattled Alliance is fighting both against the Horde and against Nature itself. How cool is that? You have quests to, among other things, go save an ambassador, capture a hill for the Alliance (which isn't as easy as it sounds), get supplies, burn down catapults, save people from a burning building, and trust me I could keep going. Want to know what happened to the Tauren village outside Mulgore? Well, you got to find out.

And I just want to keep questing there. I've already gotten the quest achievement, but the storyline isn't done and I want to find out how it ends. That, more than anything, impresses me. I want to know how it ends, even if it isn't a good ending for the Alliance.

I wish I could tell you more about it, like the one questline that seems so ho-hum, until you get into it and it turns so epic, but I don't want to spoil it for you. Just go do it, preferably on an alt of the proper level (30 to 35ish). Anput hit it at 30, which was about right, and she's now 36 and is a bit overlevel for the last bit.

Waiting for Godot. Or Cataclysm. Whichever

2010-12-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

Well, the last frantic push to "finish" raiding in WotLK is on. My guild, the ever awesome Murderotica, is 9/12 in heroic 10 man ICC, missing only Dreamwalker, Sindy, and Arthas. Oddly enough, we had Blood Queen heroic on farm long before we defeated Blood Princes. Go figure. And wow, it's weird to call Murderotica my guild. Silver Dragoons was home for a long time, but now I feel more comfortable when I'm logged on a toon in Murderotica than I do when I'm logged on a toon in SD. SD's kinda shifted, and I don't spend as much time there as I do in Murder, and I don't raid with them. I miss raiding with Fidelma and Gariath and Jes and Kana, but I'm less thrilled by raiding with some of the new members, and I really don't miss raids that never started on time.

Hopefully on Sunday I'll have a Sindy kill to report. I know we can do it. And in a couple of weeks, I will hopefully have my very own sexy drake.

Otherwise, there's not much happening in my wow-verse. I'm leveling the rogue like mad, and having a blast wandering around the Southern Barrens. I've dabbled in the new fishing and cooking quests, but my 80s are mostly neglected. Economics-wise, I've been dabbling in the pet and vanishing powder markets, since epic gems are, well, kaput. It does never cease to amaze me that a pet you can buy in Dal for 40 gold sells in the AH for 100g. Yay lazy people, I guess.

I have laid in a supply of coffee for Monday, and while I am not happy about the servers going up at 12 PST (since that's 3 am my time), I am looking forward to my first midnight opening, and 3 hours gives me plenty of time to install, patch, and pray that the server gods look favorably upon me.

Oh, and word of advice. If you want to level quickly, get herbalism and mining as your professions. See the XP in that screeny? That's a bit more than I'd get for a single mob kill. Grabbing all those yellow dots adds up REALLY quickly.

And yes, that's the rogue's UI. I mostly like it, but if I was raiding with it, I'd do some fiddling, make everything match, that sort of thing. I need to fiddle with Lyllea's UI, the default casting bar keeps showing up and I have to reload ui to make it go away. But since the Cat install will probably break a lot of my addons anyway, I'm thinking it's time to start from scratch again, see what I can come up with.

I didn't want to stop!

2010-11-29T23:37:00.000-05:00

I logged on today to fiddle around on the rogue, maybe use up her rested xp. 4 hours and 4 levels later, it took way too much willpower to log off so I could a) write this post, and b) go to bed. All I did was quest, and it was SO MUCH FUN!

First, there was running through the rather long questline in Darkshore to get...

my very own not-so-little pet treant. His name is Withers, and he's taller than a gnome atm, but will shrink. The questline for the Alliance starts with the beginning quests in Darkshore, and is detailed here on wowhead. Horde can just buy him, I think. I think I'll be picking him up on a lot of my toons, he's cute.

Then there was massive questing through Ashenvale. I've done over half the quests in the zone at this point, and have outleveled a few already. I'm still going to go back and do them, since this zone is pretty epic. For example...

that's me in a wind elemental fighting the fire guy who set Ashenvale on fire. There's also a great quest that made me want to slaughter all the orcs I could find. They're killing Laughing Sisters while a good chunk of the forest they want is on FIRE and you have to go recover these corpses. It just made me really angry that orcs would be stupid enough to slaughter these dryads while there's this huge volcano thing going on. Hopefully the horde side of things has some quests to deal with that too.

So the new Ashenvale gets a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up from me. If you're Alliance, it's well worth the questing, even if you did it before Cat. Garetia did every single quest in the zone, and while some of them are familiar, Blizz has managed to make even the familiar ones fresh and new.

Plus... who doesn't love random tentacles?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, there are two other pets I'm aware of that are new since the Sundering and available via questing...
Brezie's Sunflower which is available through the Plants vs Zombies quests.
Tiny Flamefly which is available in Burning Stepps. Link goes to Alliance version, though I'd guess there's a horde version too.
I'll eventually be picking both of these up, if I can ever manage to stop questing on the rogue.

I love this brave new world!

2010-11-25T12:26:00.000-05:00

I've been having a blast playing around on lowbie alts since the world broke. My mage is just the right level for the plaguelands, and it's been so much fun seeing how everything got changed. My rogue's wandering through Darkshore and Ashenvale, and it was fun to see a quest I remember being the "obscure guy in middle of nowhere quest" now living at a quest hub. Speaking of hubs, there's many more than there used to be, and most of them have flight points. Yay!

If you haven't hit the redesigned Azshara yet, you totally should. Heehee rockets!

The only problems I've run into are....
1. The doorway is an illusion bug. This has happened to me in the Stockades room (I couldn't go through the doorway, there was an invisible wall), and to a guildie in Gundrak. Very annoying, but easily fixed.

2. You move, you dc. Happened in Howling Fjord, and had something to do with the water in the bay. Hearthing worked like a charm to get out of it.

3. The portals are gone. Yes, I know this was intentional on Blizz's part, but I miss them! Could the Alliance get a portal to Tanaris in Darnassus or something? Having two cities up in the north of the continent makes flying to the south a pita. Or maybe they could give the Horde a portal to Tanaris in Orginmmar and a portal to Booty Bay in Undercity, and the Alliance gets a portal to Tanaris in Darnassus and a portal to Booty Bay in SW. That way there's still no portal hub per say, but the time spent flying factor is greatly decreased. Especially since we'll be spending time in Uldum, and man that flying's going to be a massive pita.

Honestly, I'm having way more fun on my lowbies now. I'm hopeful that when Cat hits, Lyllea will again be the center of my attention, but until then she's mostly neglected. I did go work on Glory of the Hero with her (and some of my wonderful guildies and it was a BLAST), and I have all the Occulus achieves but Amber Void now. Still have 14 or so to go, but I'm not in a hurry. It's really just something to do.

Oh, and

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I'm happy

2010-11-23T22:07:00.000-05:00

So, Deathwing has awoken, the world is shattered and I've got a huge smile on my face.

Important/Nifty Things:
1. The notice board in the capital cities gives breadcrumb quests appropriate to level. My rogue was sent to Ashenvale, for example.
2. The city quartermasters are near the flightmasters.
3. No, you can't fly in azeroth yet, that's coming with the patch.
4. Yes, you can roll a Tauren Pally, or dwarf shaman, but not a worgen or goblin anything.
5. The Explorer achievements seem to be bugged atm. My priest now has everything in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms explored except the starting zones. This varies by level, if you are 60 or higher you may now have these achieves.
6. Loremaster counts have been wiped. I personally am hoping it's a bug.
7. Yes, the portals are gone from Shat and Dal.
8. You can now fly to the Exodar. FINALLY!
9. The quest panel now shows you a picture of the particular quest mob you're going after for some quests, plus gives you a skull on the minimap.

10. The cursor has now changed when you're fishing. It's an awesome touch.

2010-11-21T20:43:00.000-05:00

There's not been much going on WoW wise over here. In fact, I don't think I've logged in since last Wed's raid. I believe I may have hit the dreaded Bored-and-waiting-for-Cat slump, exacerbated by a) the shinynewness of Lotro, and b) the oh crap why did no one tell me you get cold really easy after you lose 115 pounds and I must knit sweaters. gloves, and socks now! (They also neglected to tell me that both my shoe and ring sizes would also change, but oddly enough my breasts have not. Go figure)

Sadly, the elemental invasion was cool once, but none of the bosses drop anything I want, and even if they did, the possible corpse run to Maraudon or Blackrock something-or-other just kills any desire I have to run them again. I did them once, they were rather hard to heal, and none of the gear they drop is worth the trouble to me. Blizz, pets and mounts. Seriously, you wanna motivate me? Pets and mounts. Why isn't there a pet, Blizz, WHY? Grumble, zombie invasion had cool bat, we get zip, grumble.

Anyway, this song has been stuck in my head for two days straight, and if I didn't have strep throat right now I'd record a version just to get it out of my head. So, enjoy the earworm of doom.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2010-11-12T23:37:00.000-05:00

Okay, not completely different, just sort of. I've been dealing with WoW boredom, and that combined with rewatching the LotR trilogy inspired me to try LotRO again. I have played it before, and enjoyed it, but then I started WoW and it ate my brain and yeah, it's been years. Like 3 of them.

First off, I had to remember what server my toons were on. Since, unlike WoW, Lotro is not so nice with the switching servers bit, it took a while. I finally found them on Gladden, and figured my hunter would be the easiest to jump into. Boy, was I wrong. Hunters in lotro are more like mages in WoW, glass cannons who depend on CC and really fast dps. No pets, just traps and nerves of steel. Also, a really pretty world and ooh, I can make my own bows! (I love being able to do that). Here we see my hunter wandering through Erid Luin, with her crafted bow clearly visible. See, very pretty!

There's a lot of stuff I miss when I play lotro. For one, all my buttons are different! I am slowly remapping them, but it's a bit of a pain. I also miss addons, and um, actually having enough cash to train skills. I am broke. Really broke. Like, can you spare me 50 silver so I can go train a skill I got access to 5 levels ago broke. I'm attempting to try the AH there, which just made me miss Auctioneer. Also, I don't have much of a clue what my various toons (hunter, minstrel, and captain) need profession-wise so I'm never sure what to sell and what to keep.

Is LotRO going to replace WoW for me? History says probably not. I played LotRO last time for about 7 months and got bored. WoW's held my attention more or less for almost 3 years now. But there are things in LotRO I loved, like the crafting and the customization and the achievements with titles and possibly the housing. Due to the lack of cash, I've never actually had a house, but I suspect I'd enjoy it. And with LotRO now free to play, I see no reason not to wander into Middle Earth now and again, even if it's just to chop some logs and remind myself why WoW priests trump LotRO minstrels any day of the week.

Making your UI work for you: What I'm Starting With

2010-11-12T19:04:00.001-05:00

This is the start of a series of UI design posts. I figured before I start talking about how to design your UI and make it functional for you, I should discuss my own.
First, we have the DPS UI. This is Lyllea's.

The most important thing (other than not standing in BAD) is MFClip, which lives just above my bars. This keeps track of my dots for me, in a nice visual package. Next to it is Decursive, which is fairly central so I notice and remember to dispel and cleanse people. Omen lives in that blank space to the left of my bars, just below Vuhdo. Vuhdo itself is off to the side so I don't forget I'm dpsing and start healing. I have what I consider to be a nice clear field of view. My minimap's faded out so it doesn't distract me, and skada would be faded out if I weren't dead.

Then we have the healing UI. Same basic principles, emphasize the important stuff, that sort of thing, just much more going on.

Vuhdo's taken pride of place here. My hud's telling me all about my target (the tank). This time I'm not dead, so Omen is clearly visible. Decursive's in the same spot in both specs, as I really try not to move stuff around unless I need to. Skada's displaying (which I need to fix), since I don't care about HPS. Scrolling combat text is telling me important stuff like penance is ready. Again, most important stuff is right underfoot.

Now, my UIs could both be improved. Just looking at it, I need to figure out a better place to stick the casting bars in disc, trim down the amount of info my HUD (heads up display, the stuff right around my character) is showing me, trim down what battle text I'm seeing, convince Skada not to show in combat, and maybe look into a neater buff solution. Also, it'd be really nice if I didn't have to display both the blizzard buff frames and my addon ones just to click off a buff.

But any UI is a work in progress, and I am quite happy with what I've come up with thus far. And both screencaps are just decent shots from my screencaps folder. First one is a rather epic heroic bloodqueen kill, and the second's from a fun run of Sunwell.

I have internet again, finally. Now if I just had something to talk about...

2010-11-11T12:45:00.000-05:00

My router decided it didn't like my DSL modem, so I've been without access for a bit. Finally got it fixed, yay, but haven't been on WoW for more than a few minutes all week. Thus, I have nothing to talk about.

Instead I wish to point you at something funny. There's a blogger/comic guy named Shamus Young. His blog lives here and has some great stuff. I'd particularly recommend DM of the Rings and Let's Play. He also writes over at the Escapist, and just started a WoW series. It's an Imp's Life is the first one. It's very funny, and reminds me of Terry Pratchett's work. If you are not familiar with Terry Pratchett, well, go become familiar. Seriously, you'll thank me later.

I promise to have something vaguely useful to talk about tomorrow, like making gold in the early game, or how to design a ui. Something.

Planning for Cat: We've only got a month!

2010-11-01T20:18:00.000-04:00

Since we've got about a month to go, I figured I'd discuss what I'm doing to prepare for the coming Cataclysm. After all, we should be prepared, right?

Figuring out what I'll be doing first is the challenge.

I'm not going for a server first of any kind, but I do want to get my mining up to max as quickly as possible so I can make a tidy profit selling ore. To that end, I'm scouting out the two starting areas, trying to get a sense for which has more ore, and which I might want to start in. I like Hyjal because well, I like nelf areas, so I'm leaning that way. I'll probably go with the organic quest and ooh ore strategy, because I have little patience for farming. I'm also going to leapfrog ahead to the next zone asap, since the starting zones will probably be swamped.

To further this strategy of ooh ore profit, I'm going to try to get my DK to 80 before Cat. She's also a miner, so even if I end up leveling Lyllea healing in instances with my guild, I can still go out there and profit! I figure I can always farm the mats to raise my JCing later on, there's not a rush there.

I'm going to try to do the same thing with Garetia and Monera and herbalism. I'll also need to look at both inscription and alchemy, decide which one is going to be more helpful/profitable, and level that one first.

I'm also trying to get my tailor/leatherworker to 65ish, and get her profs maxed. She's at 58, not too far to go. As a bonus, I'll finally be able to use the flying carpet she's had in her bags for several months.

Basically, I'm trying to make sure I can level whatever profession's going to be the most profitable. In the meantime, I'm slowly liquidating Wraith stuff, for the most part. I am hanging onto some ore, just in case.

And I finally settled on a look for my worgen lock.... I like this in both her human and worgen forms, so I'm going to try to replicate it. Also, the music in the beta is great, just thought I'd mention it.

I do have some other goals, like knocking out Loremaster of Kalimdor on Garetia (only 120 quests to go), but if I don't make it, it's not a big deal. I'm also cleaning out my warrior and rogue's inventories, since at least one of them must go to make room for the lock. And I need to get my pally her robot chicken and a sprite darter for the druid. I should get on that...

On the 12th day of 4 (a song parody and random patch thoughts)

2010-10-25T23:27:00.000-04:00

It may not be 12 days, but the song parody popped into my head and I ran with it. Just pretend I wrote this a few days ago, k?

On the 12th Day of 4 (because 4.0 is too many syllables)
(sung to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas)
On the 12th day of 4, Blizzard gave to me...
Twelve pallies quitting
Eleven mages porting
Ten tauren a-punting
Nine gnomes giggling
Eight rogues a-ganking
Seven PVPers qqing
Six alts a-leveling
Five Tricky Treats!
Four Hallowed Helms
Three Sinister Squashlings
Two squishy tanks
And a disc priest going shadow!

In actual news...

The meters and I are having a hps love affair. I know it's not right, but damn, they actually count my absorbs without extra addons now.

Heroic 10 man PP is hard. Having two shadowpriests and multiple shadowy apparitions running about makes it more hard. Guess what, even putting on costumes didn't help, cause the apparitions were wearing them too. Best part, you cannot pass Unbound Plague to a shadowy apparition. This caused many deaths.

I like the flexibility smite-healing gives me, but most of the time I'm still healing, not smiting.

The druid is much more fun than she used to be. I like rolling Lifeblooms on the tank, and I never used Nourish, so I haven't had to adjust much.

The pally is much less fun. Completely new melee dps rotation thingy, plus complete change in how she heals means I don't have much clue what I'm doing on her, and well, my brain cells have other things to figure out.

I got to see ICC-geared tanks go SQUISH in Ulduar. To trash. Two-shotted. Ouchies.

Rogues are ridiculously fun now. Part of this might be that the rogue in question was level 9 when the patch hit, so it's not like I had to relearn how to play her. This is great, it gives my brain a nice break. Plus, heirlooms+recuperate = I STAB YOU IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY. Seriously, she's hard to kill now, and herbalism gives her XP. I am saddened by the loss of my Lifebloom heal though.

Disc in 4.0: A FAQ for this brave new world and for confused raid leaders...

2010-10-23T13:54:00.000-04:00

1. WTF is my disc priest on the dps meters?
Blizz, in their infinite wisdom, gave disc a few new tools. Among these new tools are Atonement, Evangelism, and Archangel. Atonement heals people when we smite, and damaging stuff gives us levels in Evangelism. We can use these Evangelism levels with Archangel, which gives us mana and increases our healing power for 18 secs. So your priest is smiting to heal people, make their heals more powerful, and get mana back.

2. What role is the disc priest suited for?
A disc priest still has the shields of awesome we have come to know and love. Our tank healing is still quite strong as well, and our group heals not quite so strong. In a 10 man, I'd bring a disc priest in as a tank healer, or as a supplementary healer. Personally, I act as a supplementary healer with a holy pally and a resto shaman. My strong tank heals help keep the tanks up (and wow, do tanks get hurt more now), and my bubbles help prevent damage. I've also got that frisbee of healing goodness bouncing around the raid, and in a pinch I can group heal.

3. Why should I bring a disc priest to raids instead of a shadow priest if they're going to be dpsing anyway?
Well, a disc priest is not going to be dpsing all the time. It's an occasional thing. Also, while a shadow priest does do much more dps, their healing is dumb. A disc priest can smite, turn around and save that mage standing in the bad stuff with penance, throw a few flash heals on people who are getting low, then smite again. Yes, the disc priest is not going to be high on the dps meters, nor should we be. We heal, with a side order of dps when possible. A shadowpriest hurts, with a side order of unintelligent healing.

4. Should disc priests be able to roll main spec on gear with to hit on it?
Honestly, I'm torn on this one. Yes, to hit now has some value for disc priests, but I think it has much more value for the dps casters, and given the amount of competition for cloth, I'd say no. Even if I do want those stupid bracers that drop every week and every week a dps gets them. Grr...

5. Why did my priest suddenly sprout wings?
We drink too much Red Bull now.
Seriously, your priest has wings because they popped Archangel, which increases healing power and mana regen for 18 seconds. The wings are just a lovely side effect.

6. What's that big golden dome thing?
Power Word: Barrier. It's your friend and a group shield. Stand in the dome, please.

7. How has disc healing changed since this new patch?
Well, it depends on the priest. It is currently possible to heal as we've been doing, but given the changes to our class and Blizz's stated intent, many of us are trying this new smite-heal thing. We still bubble, we still penance, we just smite stuff and pop wings occasionally. Think of it like a holy pally dpsing to get haste or mana or whatever the heck they get when they dps. For well-geared priests, PW:S, Penance, and Flash Heal are still the winners, with Prayer of Mending (whee frisbee!) and the occasional Renew making an appearance. Less well-geared priests may have switched to Heal. And, of course, everyone tends to heal slightly differently, so one disc priest may Renew every chance they get, and another may Penance, and a third may flash heal.

8. How can I help my priest come to terms with these changes?
Normally I'd suggest running older content, but since I saw two ICC-geared tanks get two-shotted in Ulduar this week, older content might not be so good. Give your priest time to come to terms with their new healing. Don't immediately throw them into the deep end, and give them the freedom to screw up. Switching back and forth between dpsing and healing's a BIG shift in our thinking and the way we do things, and it's going to take some time to become comfortable with it. Give then that time, and be thankful we're trying to learn this new style now, rather than when Cat hits and you want to get into that shiny new raid content.

Patch Impressions... and a NEWSFLASH of AWESOME!

2010-10-14T00:14:00.000-04:00

Well, once I got over the "ACK! WTF!" anyway...

First off, tanks are squishier. I actually sorta have to pay attention in heroics. And my mana regen as disc, well, let me put it to you this way: I started a run at 40% mana and by halfway through was full up. Yes, I was healing and using more Penance than I normally do, and my mana regen is BETTER than it was. Go figure. Lyllea is currently rocking a PVE smite spec, which means I get WINGS. WINGS!

That would be Archangel, btw. I smite, I hit it and my healing gets better. Very cool. Also, notice new UI. Some stuff will be changing, but I like it atm. My guild ended up doing a great fun run tonight to get everyone used to the changes. Serpentshire Cavern, Blackrock for Leroy, and then we 11maned Obsidian 25. It was awesome!

Focus is weird, not bad, but weird, and it's going to take me quite a while to get used to it. But oddly enough, hunters are not the most confusing class atm. Neither are druids (boomkin is awesome even with the Insect Swarm bug), or priests. Yup, the pally's thrown me for a loop. New resource+new attacks/spells=confused me.

All my 80s are mostly set up (the pally still needs work), and I ended up taking a brain break for a bit. Hit my baby mage, did a random, and discovered that nothing much had changed, except for one tidbit of great!

Mining gives you XP now!!!!!

It's so cool. Yup, tons of stuff is broken, one of my addons won't let me log out, and I can't figure out how to pally or tree, but MINING GIVES XP AND I HAVE WINGS! Best patch ever.

Patch Day Survival Guide

2010-10-12T15:52:00.000-04:00

1) Relax. Do NOT panic or freak or stress out. Stuff has changed. Hopefully it has changed for the better.

2) Things will be broken and/or screwy. Accept this. I would not recommend attempting anything major, like progression raiding, for a day or so. Maybe go do a fun run or two. That should help you get used to the new way of things while giving you a nice cushion for failure.

3) Update your addons. While you're at it, figure out what addons are musts and update them and get alternatives for them. For example, one of my musts is vuhdo. If vuhdo is borked, well, I know that my options include healbot and grid/clique. It's also a good time to see what addons you can live without, and a good time to check out the changes to the default ui.

4) Your class has changed. Find info on said changes. Here's a lovely compilation for patch 4.0.

5) Don't overwhelm yourself! If you have more than one toon that's changing dramatically, focus on one at a time. Allow yourself to process and understand the changes on one toon before moving to the next.

Again, relax. Don't stress out too much. It's a game. And to hopefully make you smile and remember why you love wow I give you random awesome machima!
Roflmao

Boom De Yada

Lament of the Highborne

Big Blue Dress

DON'T PANIC! Keep calm and carry on.

2010-10-12T14:35:00.002-04:00

It's a brave new world out there now. 4.0 is hitting (and breaking) the servers, and well, I dunno about you but I thought I had another week or so to prepare.

So, yup, I am NOT prepared. I know what pet I'm using (yay Dragonhawk), but I have no idea of hunter specs, rotations, or glyphs. I know disc has two viable specs, smite and um, not smite, and there's this handy-dandy explanation and specs and stuff which I will be using. But shadow, yeah, shadow I have no clue. My current rotation was working in the Cat beta, so I may stick to that. As far as the pally and druid go, well, um, I know I have holy power on one and an eclipse bar on the other.

My current plans when the server comes back up are....
1) Cut and post every bold and bright cardinal ruby I can get my hands on. Lots of regemming will hopefully=good profit.
2) See what the glyph market looks like. Jump in. Again, hopefully yay profit. My gold reserves are low due to gearing Adowa, so I'm trying to get some saved back up before Cat.
3) Go get the corehound I want
4) Get Lyllea's shadow spec figured out.
5) Make a ton of mouseover macros for disc healing. I'm expecting Vuhdo to be borked. Actually I'm expecting my entire UI to be borked.

It was rather interesting seeing what people were doing last night. Many of my guildies were trying to get Explorer or Dungeon Hero achieves. Me, well, I spent 8ish hours getting this

an item with a 1/1000 drop rate of elites in Winterspring. And why?

Because a) I knew I wouldn't be able to do it once 4.0 hit, b) it's a piece of WoW history, and c) it looks DAMN sexy. Yup, I got me the epic quiver from Vanilla WoW just before quivers turned into bags. I'm kinda hoping the appearance stays after it's changed, but I'm not expecting it. Oh, I really wouldn't recommend farming for something with a 1/1000 drop rate when you've only got hours left before it's gone forever. It's a BIT stressful. So go get those Azure Whelplings now folks! (I got one yesterday, but I'm going to try for at least one more so I can keep one and sell one for a ridiculous amount of gold).

BETA: Random Useful Links

2010-10-10T01:15:00.000-04:00

I have been wandering round the net, as I am prone to do, and I found a couple useful beta info thingies. Figured I'd share...

First, for all you hunters out there. You know our pets are changing (like our class and our resource), but do you know how to select which pet to bring to a raid? Our viable options (viable as in you can justify them without going "cause I want to") will vastly increase. You want a buff, well, our pets are bringing all sorts of sexy buffs. And by sexy I mean stuff like Heroism, Blessing of Kings, 5% crit, 8% spell damage, good stuff like that. Now, the beast masters get the best ones, cause well, they're all about the pets, but there's a lot to love for all of us. Only problem is deciding what's best for any particular group.

Well, thats where this awesome Petopia thread comes in. Scroll down to see a lovely flowchart which walks you through a pet selection process. Plus, it lays out the pvp abilities as well, and has a spreadsheet! Great thread, and one I know I'll be referring to when I request Gariath bring a particular pet. Me, if I'm raiding on my hunter I'm probably bringing Eriador, my dragonhawk. I miss having him around.

Second, archeology. I fiddled around with this in beta, it's nifty, and hey, here's an excellent guide to it, written by Mitarn.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to keep hunting a dragon. He's got this sinew that, when combined with a leaf and patch 4.something, will turn into a 24 slot bag. Here, dragon dragon dragon!

Time to cash in those emblems and honor! Now what do you spend them on?

2010-10-07T15:12:00.000-04:00

Well, Tarinae over at A Healadin's Tear has posted a lovely entry on the emblem/honor change that's coming, and what everything will cost.
It's a really good post so go read it, then come back...
You back?

Now, like me you may now be wondering "Wtf do I spend my emblems and honor on?" Especially if you had been saving them, thinking that they'd have a better transfer rate and thus you could get a head start on gear when Cat hits.
First off, emblems.
You can...
1) get an offset/leveling gear. For example, my druid may be leveling as feral so I could use her emblems to get some good feral gear for leveling.

2) if you have all the offsets and/or leveling gear you could ever want, how about heirlooms? You may have gotten all the ones you need for your worgen or goblin, but having a few extra around never hurts. So, here's the ones I'd recommend based solely on how many different specs/classes can use them...
   First off, the Swift Hand of Justice. This trinket is at least vaguely useful for every class and spec in the game. Sure haste isn't great for everyone, but self-healing is. No matter what alt you roll, they can use this trinket. The other trinket I'd recommend, Discerning Eye of the Beast, is a nice one for any mana-using class.
   Second, armor. Given the xp bonus, giving a new alt the shoulders and chest is a great thing to do. Obviously, the cloth ones can be used by everyone, and they're great for mages, warlocks, priests, resto and boomkin druids, elemental and resto shamans, and holy pallies. If you don't already have them, I would make these your next heirloom investment. The plate's next, since DKs, warriors, and prot and ret pallies can use them, then the physical leather ones for hunters, feral druids, and rogues. You might want to look into getting the PVP leather shoulders for 200 Stone Keeper's Shards instead of the pve ones, since the pvp ones have agility. Once you've bought all of the above, you've got armor for any toon you might want to level.
   Third, weaponry. The caster staff is going to be a decent choice for many classes, even elemental and resto shamans (since offhands are not so easy to come by). The only caster spec the staff is useless for is a holy pally. If you're looking for physical dps weapons, the choice is a bit more complicated. The two-handed axe is a good way to go for pallies, warriors, and DKs. It's at least usable by enhancement shamans, though dual-wielding is probably the way to go there. For feral druids, rogues, and enhancement shamans, the Venerable Mass of McGowen is a good one handed choice. It's also not a bad choice (but not ideal) for prot warriors and pallies.

If you're rolling a particular class come Cat, and want to get heirlooms for that, I'd suggest Psyinster's Heirloom Purchasing Guide

3)Epic gems. Or Primordial Saronite. Stuff you can sell in the AH for gold.

Now, what to do with all that honor? Honestly, I'd say MOUNTS! There are several pvp mounts you buy with honor, and a full list of the alliance ones is here. At 50k a piece, they may not seem cheap, but you can make 10k honor in an evening just through random BGs and Wintergrasp. You could also invest in pvp gear, and I'm planning on getting one pvp trinket for each toon, just because I figure I will do some leveling in BGs and it'll come in handy.

Hopefully I gave you some ideas. I'm sure I missed stuff you can buy, so feel free to mention them in comments.

I'm not sure how this happened....

2010-10-03T01:06:00.000-04:00

Here's the situation. Lyllea runs with Murderotica, and I love them. She does their heroic icc 10 man group.
Garetia runs mostly with Silver Dragoons. She does icc 10 with them (except for this week when she went with Murderotica's B icc 10 because I knew I wasn't going to make SD's run).
And now we have Adowa. The B Icc 10 needs melee dps. I have a pally. Said pally is ret/holy. And I have fun with the B icc10 and Garetia can't run with them (because she's committed to SD).

So I volunteered to be melee dps. And now I have (or will have) 3 raiding toons. One healer/ranged, one ranged, and one melee. So, time to be horribly confused....

I now need to keep 3 gearing things in my head. Lyllea's automatic at this point, and her major upgrades are going to be from getting tokens for the upgraded tier 10. Oh, and I should probably occasionally pug icc25 for the stupid trinket.

Garetia's not too difficult, I just have to keep checking the spreadsheet to make sure armor pen isn't better than agility. As far as secondary stats: crit yay, arp and ap yay, expertise and haste boo and to hit is double boo. She's decently enough geared that I'm not worrying about her much.

And Adowa. So far I have strength is awesome. I would guess crit is good, dunno about haste, and I should probably find out what my hit cap is. I should also check her spec and figure out what upgrades to buy. Is tier 9 decent for ret? Oh, and professions. Obviously I need to max her BSing, and um, wth does engineering give me other than goggles? Not that goggles aren't awesome. And of course, what do I need to get from heroics vs badges, and what reps should I pay attention to? Also, what do I do while waiting for the queue?

We're not even going to discuss my needing to get used to moving around a LOT more.

Yes, eventually I'll figure this all out. Just not right now. After regemming Garetia and fiddling with Adowa's gear, my brain's fried. Time to go to bed.

KINGSLAYER!

2010-09-26T22:36:00.001-04:00

Lyllea is a kingslayer! Two tries earlier this week, then a one-shot tonight. Beautiful kill, and congrats to Rere as well. And thanks to Murderotica for bringing me along! I bubbled everyone over and over again, and it was a blast! So yeah, now I have defeated every boss in Wraith but some of the ones in Ulduar. Go me.

BETA: wow, a fresh 80 is painful...

2010-09-25T22:12:00.000-04:00

Well, after having beta issues, I finally got the druid transfered and logged in to see how a fresh 80 in fresh 80 gear will handle the new zones.

Not so well, as it turns out. Monera (who's been renamed on the beta server) is a moonkin, and by the time I'd managed to kill my first earth elemental, she was at half-health. Now, granted, she's a caster so she's a bit squishy, but that seems wrong.
Here's her talent tree, which I didn't research at all, and she may not be glyphed. I kinda forgot to check.

So the lack of glyphing may be one problem, and my ignorance of the new boomkin rotation is another. As far as I can tell, instead of Insect Swarm, beam of light from sky, Wrath till eclipse, then switch to starfire, it's now....
pick one dot (since dots now add arcane or lunar energy), then wrath or starfire till you get an eclipse, switch to other dot and spell, repeat....

Here we see me practicing at a dummy. I'm going to play around with this a bit, but I may end up going feral for leveling again. This makes me sad, cause I like boomkin, but seriously, one mob reducing me to half health isn't really viable. Of course, when your first quest rewards you with....

those, it might not be such a problem. And for comparison, yes, Lyllea is wearing the shadow tier 10. That green is almost an upgrade, and that's the first quest in Hyjal.

and yes, Lyllea is now a belf. One of the most entertaining things about the beta is that they're testing all the paid features as well, so I get to fiddle with races and changing from Alliance to Horde and stuff. She was even briefly a gnome, till I remembered why I don't play gnomes (can't stand being short in game).

BETA: Looky at the new UI stuff (and a couple other random screenies)

2010-09-16T10:39:00.001-04:00

I got to play around some more in the beta. I had transfered some premade characters, and *gasp* they actually showed up. So without further ado, I give you...

The New Glyph Interface. I really like this. It's actually easy to find the different glyphs and you can see all your choices, and yes, this makes glyphing MUCH easier.

Blizz has also incorporated a Power Auras Classic bit to their UI. Here we see me being alerted that um, I should Frostfire because I have some buff that makes it free... I like the highlighting of the ability on the bar as well, it's a nice touch.

And here we have the current state of the female worgen.... I'm really not sure about the pink box, I was rather hoping for blue.

And last, EYE CANDY. I'm not saying where this is from, but it's gorgeous. Trust me, just wow....

YAY!

2010-09-14T22:34:00.000-04:00

Yes, I totally staged my ding shot. Hit Storm Peaks till I was very close, then wandered back to do one of the druid quests. Then hit the trainer, spent 380 gold (obviously I forgot to train for a bit there), and am now trying to figure out boomkin and tree gearing while equipping the few purples I had saved up for her.

But mostly, YAY! Next up, getting enough emblems to get actually useful idols, and maybe reinstalling Pawn. Also, tree healing at 80, can I keep a tank up? More on this as I learn....

Random Happiness

2010-09-13T18:43:00.000-04:00

Dragonhawk Fire Breath: Now increases the enemy's magic damage taken by 8% for 45 sec., 30-sec. cooldown.

Yay, I have a reason/excuse to bring my beloved Eriador to raids, rather than the wolf. My hunter can be a special snowflake again, yay!

Yes, I know I'll be giving up dps to bring a cunning pet. And yes, depending on how focus ends up, I may hate playing my hunter in Cat, but for the moment, YAY! I missed my pretty dragonhawk.

Leveling the druid

2010-09-10T22:39:00.000-04:00

I want to like the druid. I really really do. But I've run into this slight problem...
Been there, done that, bored to tears.
Leveling via questing? Done it. Seen it. 3 toons at 80
Leveling via dungeons? Practically memorized all the Northrend dungeons and still should be running them daily for badges on two toons.
Leveling via pvp? Wait, haven't done that yet. Or not really. And hey, the Call to Arms thing is NOT Warsong. Let's go see if this is something vaguely entertaining. Let's try as feral...

OH GOD NO! I now remember why I don't pvp on the pally. I dislike melee dps in dungeons, I hate, loathe, and DESPISE it in pvp. I'm a keyboard turner (and a keyboard dpser but a mouse healer), and I have issues with positioning and switching targets. Needless to say, kitty dps is probably not the way to go.
So, let's try boomkin. OMG, this is awesome.
So far I've gotten her to 79, run Wintergrasp (I got almost no XP, but lots of honor and it was fun and I managed to kill 80s!), and spent an inordinate amount of time in Isle. If it's the weekly, the queue at peak times is almost instant, and win or lose I have fun and get decent XP.

I have noticed that there is apparently only one way to win...
take workshop, take docks, hit east gate. This seems to be the default Alliance strategy. Occasionally you get people suggesting we take the hanger instead, but workshop/docks seems to be default. I'd kinda like to do a BG where we do docks/ws/west or main gate, just for a change of pace, but I keep getting yelled down every time I suggest it.

I was worried that I'd be vastly underpowered, but such is not the case. I get a decent amount of killing blows, and for not really knowing what I'm doing, I seem to be doing okay. I mostly dot then wraith like it's going out of style. I may throw out the occasional heal, but mostly I blow stuff up with the power of Nature. It's surprisingly satisfying.

I'm even trying to figure out a pvp boomkin spec, and considering gearing her for pvp once she hits 80. I won't be doing Arenas any time soon, but I like BGs, and it's a nice change of pace. Plus, extra honor means extra epic gems which means more gold which means Lyllea gets that shiny drake sooner and then I can get Garetia some better gear too.

Of course all this depends on what happens with raids. Currently Silver Dragoons is 5/12, and we don't need extra healers. Tanks yes, dps, yes, healers no. I dislike holy pally healing, so if we end up needing a backup healer, the druid would be pressed into service. She may get pressed into service anyway, since we have at least two hunters in every run and crit chickens bring sexy buffs.

In other news, character transfer is still nonfunctional in beta, so no heirlooms for me. I'm now experimenting with a gnome priest, mostly to see their new area.

BETA: Whee, Worgens

2010-09-08T09:23:00.000-04:00

After finally getting enough of the beta downloaded to allow play, I rolled a worgen. Male, since the female ones aren't available yet.

The starting zone is quite good, but um, OH GOD the female voices. It's sad, cause it's great otherwise but the awfulness of those voices completely destroys immersion for me. Hopefully they're still working on that. Blizz, just saying, if my first thought upon hearing a voice is "Why is she trying to combine Cockney and Drusilla from Buffy/Angel and doing it badly?" well, the accent is not good. Dunno what it was supposed to be, but not good.

My human face is apparently trying to disguise itself as a Forsaken. Yeah, that 5 o'clock shadow's a bit out of control. But you can switch back and forth between forms while character-creating, which is very nice. Oh, and text in pic is spoilery. Sorry, that was the least spoilery human pic I had. But here he is in worgen form, and other than the pink in his muzzle, I quite like him.

I still die a lot as a rogue, but I don't mind so much. And I'm hoping my toon carrying bags and heirlooms will be transfered soon so I can kit this rogue out. I went subtlety, and have no idea what I'm doing beyond... Sneak sneak sneak, AMBUSH, sinister strike/eviscerate, mob dead now. Just can't be caught out of stealth.

I also rolled a troll druid and tried that for a bit. Didn't get to form levels, and well, having done the troll starting zone recently in vanilla, I can safely say that the first few levels are completely different. After that, it seems to be pretty familiar. At least they increased the crawler mucus drop rate. Hate that stuff.

And yes, everyone's going "oooh Gnomer" but my plan is to do that this morning. Way too crowded last night.

BETA: a picture to distract you...

2010-09-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

I am frantically getting ready for DragonCon, writing a fic that's due today at midnight, and generally in panic mode.

So have a pretty picture to distract you from lack of content. Ooh, and ammo has been removed from the game. Of course I'd be much happier if the Launcher didn't crash on me, but the process keep running in the background. It's confusing and annoying. Guess I should go search through the beta forums for info on that, but with what time? Must write! MUST!

BETA: thus far (talent tree spoiler)

2010-08-30T15:28:00.000-04:00

I'm going to put BETA in all posts discussing any aspect of the beta, so that people can avoid spoilers. If I need to do more, please let me know. I am going to try to avoid discussion of plot and zone changes as much as I can, but if something is OMG Amazing, well, I may not be able to resist squeeing.

Anyway...
thus far there has been a great deal of waiting to download, some crashing, some cowering, and a few nifty discoveries. I have yet to make it to a new zone (heck I'm having issues just getting Lyllea out of Northrend), but I have learned some important things.

One, Darnassus was not a good place to have Lyllea parked when I transfered her. I actually had to retransfer her (once I moved her to Dal), because she was stuck. I'm now having issues trying to make it off the continent via portal to Stormwind. My baby mage is also in Stormwind, and I can't load her either, but I suspect that has more to do with lack of zone info (the download's not complete) then anything else.

Two, beta is buggy. Very buggy. Like randomly not being able to click on anything buggy. Like cowering every time you log in buggy. Like, um, crashing the game by casting levitate buggy. Yes, buggy. Did I mention the bugs? Good thing Blizz has me to point them out, right? Well, me and about 50k other people.

Three, the talent trees. Weird. I'm still getting used to the idea that you kinda have to fill out rows.

Without further ado... Random Screencaps! Because I can.
The talent tree, to explain what I mean by filling out the rows. That's shadow.

Dal under construction.

Power Word: Stand in the shiny for once

I HAZ BETA ACCESS

2010-08-29T21:35:00.000-04:00

So I have beta access.

Yeah, just before DragonCon, I get beta access. I think Blizz may be torturing me.

But I have transfered over Lyllea and my baby mage so far, and will probably try a pregen hunter. Lyllea was an obvious choice, being the main and all, and the mage will give me an idea of how the leveling experience is mid-range. Most of what I've seen is focused on the starting zones and end-game, so I figure finding out about the middle might be good.

Any requests? Anything you really want to know, want screencaps of, or just my opinion on? Number-crunching isn't my forte, but I can tell you stuff like "shadow priests feel op" or "wow, focus is annoying" or "gah, disc not so fun anymore". Not really hard number stuff, but it gives you an idea of things (and the three above are random examples and may or may not be true. I dunno, I just started the download).

This doesn't mean I'll stop playing Wraith. It just means I have slightly more to talk about and that my boredom is less. Both are good things imho. And there's stuff I still want to do in Wraith, like get the boomkin to 80 (78 and leveling), and prepare for Cat and um, possibly level the shaman more. Dunno if I'll get to that or not.

And I got to do a few Ulduar hard modes this week, which made me happy. 4 towers FL is hard, even in ICC gear. The flowers keep eating our faces. Not much else to say, frantically prepping for DragonCon. Not sure why I thought dressing as a draenei would be a good idea, but now I have to find horns and makeup.

NOOOOOO!

2010-08-24T11:59:00.000-04:00

NOOOOOO!!
Not VOLLEY!
Anything but Volley!
How am I supposed to top DPS charts now?!?
Next you'll be taking away Mind Sear. 40k dps is not overpowered. Nope. Not in the slightest.

And now what do I use to hit multiple mobs? Multishot? I have a multishot? Oh yeah, the thing I tend to hit by accident in Steamvaults and pull mobs off Boo. I don't like that shot. I don't wanna use that show.
WAAAAAAAAAH! MEAN BLIZZARD'S TAKING MY BEST TOYS! WAAAAAH!

(above is all in good fun. I like Volley, I will certainly miss Volley, but I trust Blizz. And if they screw up, that's what I have a well-geared disc/shadow priest for, right? And yes, a 40kdps mind sear. Many grouped mobs + mind sear + icc buff= insane dps)

Stuff....

2010-08-17T12:31:00.000-04:00

I am fighting the pre-Cat blogger slump. Wow, exciting, I know.

Anyway....
I've done more raiding this past week than I have in a long time. Two ICC 10s, one 25, and two weeklies. Having two mains (or rather one main and one raiding alt who needs emblems and gear) is a bit more work than I thought it was going to be. It was nice to pew pew stuff again as a hunter, and I even got a new trinket to replace my Naxx trinket. Now if I could just replace all my other gear (except the two piece tier 9) I'd be good.

So far I do enjoy raiding with my new guild. And 4 piece tier 10 shadow, SO SEXY. I am never ever getting rid of it. It makes my dps priority simpler, what's not to love?

Without 4 piece, shadow dps goes like...
Devouring Plague
Vampiric Touch
Mind Blast
Mind Flay
Shadow Word: Pain
Then keep all three dots up, while Mind Blasting every time it's off cooldown and using Mind Flay as a filler. SW:P more or less keeps itself up, since Mind Flay refreshes it, but the other two have to be watched (and have different durations and casting times).

With 4 piece
No more Mind Blast. So instead of watching 5 spells like a hawk, I only watch 4. Granted, the faster Mind Flay takes a bit of getting used to, but so worth it. And the faster MF means movement isn't quite as painful, which is nice too.

Okay, not much in the way of actual interesting content, I know. I'm kinda flailing for topics right now.

GQuitting should be more dramatic

2010-08-11T11:12:00.000-04:00

Yup, Lyllea left Silver Dragoons this morning. She's going to Murderotica where they run 10 mans and 25 mans in conjunction with another guild, raids start on time, and they have fun. In fact, I hopped on their vent for my trial and thought for a moment I'd gotten onto SD's instead. I wanted fun raiding, with a side order of competency, and both 10s and 25s and they have it.

Now for a flashback...
When I started raiding on my hunter (and first 80) I raided with SD. At the time, we had enough people to run 10s and even run 25s with another guild. I have very fond memories of the fun we had then, and Murderotica's raid reminded me of that time, when I was a noobish hunter constantly running oom and trying my best to hit the top of the meters while squealing at new shines.

Murderotica may not be horribly progressed (11/12 icc 10, not sure on 25 but I know Positive Push is further along and they're 11/12) but the lure of having a blast while raiding trumps progression, at least for me. Plus I might actually get to see Ruby Sanctum, without pugging. I'm not sure I want to pug any place that requires crowd control.

Other stuff:
There's a guild on my server selling rusted proto-drake runs. I want. I want really badly. That drake and the skeletal blue one are the best-looking mounts in the expansion, imho, plus I want to see all of Ulduar. It's 20k, so I need to start playing the AH instead of dabbling in it. So far I'm selling...
1) Cut epic gems (including the ones I get from transmuting)
2) Netherweave bags (my shaman's finally high enough in tailoring to make them and while the profit margin isn't huge, they do sell very reliably)
3) Enchanting mats (and some enchants)
4) Vellums
I'm considering dipping my toe in the Darkmoon Faire deck market again, but I suspect the most profit is to be made by assembling complete decks, getting the trinkets, and selling them, rather than selling the decks or single cards. That makes this into more of a long-term project.

Since I have Alchemy, JCing, Enchanting, Inscription, Herbalism, and Mining all maxed on at least one toon, I figure I should be able to make a nice chunk of change. I'll let you know how it goes.

Okay, the RL boss needs to stop criting me...

2010-08-09T14:08:00.000-04:00

Yeah, it's been a crazy week. Craziness is likely to continue. Stupid RL boss, stuck in crazy phase.

In wow news, I did manage to trial with a guild, and have heard nothing since. Given that my trial was on Wed, and it's now Mon of the following week, I'm not sure what to think. I did just send a ingame mail thanking the officer for letting me come, and complimenting her on her group. It was a lot of fun to run with them, and I do hope I get in. They aren't SERIOUS raiders, more social competent with a side order of fun, which is what I was looking for.

I'm also now signed up to try for the Immortal with pp. I need to figure out where to practice the mind soothe/mind control thing ahead of time, and review the fights. It's been a while since Naxx.

Silver Dragoons did manage to get into ICC 10 this week, and got 4 down with some struggles. One undergeared healer and me makes for me running through my mana pool like water. I also encountered a pug'd holy priest who did not use coh. Always thought that was a defining ability of the spec, and given that the priest was a Kingslayer, I was a bit confused.

Now must dash. RL boss has launched another "Take parent to doctor" attack.

AH Dabbling

2010-07-30T13:19:00.000-04:00

It's been a very busy RL week. Raiding decisions got put on hold while I dealt with stuff. Not fun stuff. Stuff that ended up making me VERY sleep-deprived.

Sadly there was almost no wow. Or SC2. I have the lovely box but haven't had the time or brain energy to install and start playing it.

So instead I'm going to talk about AH dabbling. I do dabble, really. I have some enchants that I stick up from time to time, I pay some attention to raw mat costs, and I try to post my cut gem every day, but I don't take it seriously and I don't attempt to hit the gold cap. I generally try to have enough to buy epic flying or other things as I want them, but that's about it. I figured I'd talk about nice dabbling opportunities, ones that don't require a huge outlay of gold or time but do decently well for me. You'll need a max profession for most of these.

1. Gem flipping. This only works if you have access to a max jcer with a nice selection of epic cuts. The uncut gems can vary wildly in price, so I'd get a sense of the market before jumping in. But really all you do is...
a) purchase cheap uncut gem (epic)
b) find best epic cut (this may not be the one that is the highest price. Some of the more popular cuts, like a runed cardinal, will be slightly cheaper but sell better.)
c) cut gem and list on AH
d) profit!
The profit here can be rather nice. I picked up about 8 ametrines for 60g each (that's quite cheap for my server), and am gradually cutting and reselling from 100-120g each.

2. Prospecting. I use Wow Prospector to determine if it's worth it or not. Since I also do my jcing daily, even if I can't sell the green quality gems I'll eventually use them, so not a loss either way.

3. Transmutes. Because of all that prospecting and/or mining, I tend to have gems lying around. One blue gem + one eternal = one epic gem, with the chance of multiples since my alchemist is transmute spec'd.

4. Inscription. I make vellums, resell inks, and make cards for Darkmoon decks. The vellum and inks are probably your best bet, as the price of Eternal Life is higher than most of the cards sell for right now.

5. Enchants. I dabble here, really. Vellums come from the scribe, and mats from the AH if I can get them cheaply, or from dungeon runs. There's about 100 g profit in selling a scroll of Enchant Staff: spellpower (the best one), and it means I don't have to lay out 500g every time Lyllea gets a new staff.

6. Selling everything. Yup, everything you get from leveling, all that stuff. Mail to bank alt and sell. You might want to avoid the weekends for this, as the low-level markets get flooded with leveling alts selling stuff.

Now the most important thing to remember is....
Everything has a cost. Farmed mats are worth what you can get on the AH for them, they are NOT free. To give an example...
I often mine ore on my way to ICC. If I luck out and get a scarlet ruby out of one, that's 40 g. Now, I can send that to my alchemist, combine with an eternal fire and get a cardinal ruby out of it, but the cost to make that cardinal ruby is still eternal fire cost+ scarlet ruby cost. Make sense?

2010-07-26T10:30:00.000-04:00

Once again, I am contemplating finding a proper raiding guild. I love my guild, I really really do, but I want two things it seems incapable of managing...
1. Raids that actually happen
2. And start on time

I have really been enjoying raiding with Positive Push, but the Saturday night thing is a bit of a problem. Saturday night is the night my friends generally get together, and it's also the night PP runs their 25 mans. Any other night of the week I could manage without a conflict, but Saturday is problematic.

I don't want SERIOUS raiding, just um, killing the Lich King eventually, and fun. Ooh, and an earlier start time to raids would be nice. I'm on Eastern time and the server's on mountain and raiding till 2 am my time can be a problem, especially since the hard fights tend to be later and I'm not really awake and there is standing in bad stuff and yeah, bad. Ooh, and I want a guild that doesn't mind that I have mining. I like mining, and randomly spotting ore and grabbing it makes me happy.

I'm currently looking through the recruitment threads on the realm forums, and well, healers seem to be in a bit of demand. I'd like to be able to switch-hit though, so I may have a bit more of a challenge. And lots of openings for holy/shadow, none thus far for disc/shadow. Gorram it, I like my bubbles.

If I decide to go forward with this, expect more posts on it. Now off to um, do real life stuff in prep for tomorrow.