Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Completely non-WoW related...(except that I've been known to do a couple rows while waiting for a raid to get going)

Hand-knit socks are insanely, insanely comfortable. Now I have motivation to finish up the second one. And figure out how to fix the screwy heel.

Yes, I knit. Mostly lace. It's a great stress-reliever for one, and well, I am completely incapable of sitting still and watching TV. I must read or knit or do something.

In WoW stuff, my warlock finally has a succubus. Also, I never thought I would find a spec that burns through mana as quickly as the MM hunter, but yup, the warlock manages it. Thank goodness for the wand.

I also ran Shadow Labs in a three man. Me, a really good resto druid (lvl 80) and a lvl 70 warrior tank. We burned it down, and apparently I did good. YAY! (It was a guildie run, and the lvl 80 is an experienced raider. If she says I did good, I did.) I even got a trinket (reduces my threat, great for delaying the inevitable aggro off the cat).

Friday, March 27, 2009

Random Funnies

(I would like to offer apologies to Terry Pratchett, who I stole the immaterial name line from. He is full of win and awesome and if you've never read any of his books you really really should.)

A female draenei, dressed in robes, with an exclamation point over her head, stood just inside Forest Song. A gnome, dressed in leather and carrying two daggers, ran up to her and spoke...
"So, what's your name, pretty space goat?"

"My name is immaterial," the draenei replied, looking down at him.

"That's a pretty name," the gnome said, smiling up at her.

The draenei rolled her eyes. "No, you don't understand. I'm immaterial."

The gnome poked her.

"Ow!"

"No, you're not. You're solid."

"Hey! No touching the quest NPCs. Look, all I'm saying is that my name is unimportant."

"But you just said it was immaterial!"

"You know what, I think I'll find someone else to do this quest," and the draenei stalked off. The gnome ran after her.

"Wait, I need the rep!"

And because I am too lazy to go through my massive screenshot folder, and also because it is a free LotRO weekend (and if I could find the discs I would so be reinstalling to try it again), I give you a silly LotRO shot.

You know, you'd think growing about 3 feet, shaving off the beard, managing to go from stocky to willowy, and growing pointy ears would successfully disguise me. Damn you!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wow Mistakes, and how I would fix them

There seems to be a bunch of qqing about what Blizz has done wrong lately, or maybe it's just me reading Wow Insider too much. So I thought I might talk about what I consider their mistakes to be, and how I would fix them. And I should probably add that I think Blizz has done an amazing job overall, and I'm certainly not suggesting I could do anything better. I just wanted to offer solutions to QQing.

Major Problem One, the old world is deserted. So is Outlands.
Major Problem Two, end-game is a bit of a drag. My guild seems to spend their time leveling alts and doing Wintergrasp, with the occasional dungeon run. I'm kinda sick of leveling at this point, so I have yet to experience end-game for myself. But I do get the sense that it's more or less what I'm doing now. Grind rep with factions, try to get gold, maybe work on Achievements or professions, and try to get more shiny things. Only difference I can see is that their shiny things all come out of dungeons, whereas most of mine are quest rewards.

One semi-easy fix to both problems is as follows...

Remember all those old-world and Outlands instances? The ones I've mostly never seen and no one has a reason to run save for achievements and seeing the content. Why not update them? Have different options for all dungeons from Deadmines to Sunwell, one for the original leveling dungeon, one for 10 man, and one for 25 man. To make it even better, have both heroic and regular options. Have updated loot, maybe updated versions of the original loot for extra awesome, and of course achievements. It would give people some reason to go see the old stuff, and give guilds more dungeons to run. Imagine taking Onyxia down in a heroic 25 man. You can't tell me that wouldn't be a blast.

Major Problem Three, DKs. They're awesome when you're playing them, and kinda annoying when you're not.

Let's face it, it's almost impossible to balance every class for 4 things, especially considering the diversity of specs, skill, and gear. That's part of the DK problem. The other part of the problem is that since DKs are easy to level, everyone has one, whether they're good at playing them or not.

There are several possible solutions, but every one has some downsides.
First, you could allow anyone to roll one of any class (complete with fast mount and awesome blue gear) once they hit lvl 55 on any class. This will make the old world even more empty than it already is, but it might a) help with the healer shortage, and b) do something about the plague of DKs in Outlands. It might also help the lvl 59 Battleground bracket, which DKs rule.
Second, you could allow people to roll another lvl 55 (again with the shiny gear and mount) once they have one of that class at lvl 55. Aka, you get one priest to level 55, you can now roll another on any server at hero level.
Now, neither option really helps with class balance, but it would cut down on the sheer number of DKs. You could also leave in the one per server rule, so that you can a) roll a DK, b) roll a shaman at lvl 55, or c) keep your DK and level the shaman the old-fashioned way (or as old fashioned as you get with RAF and bind on account xp-boosting gear). I can forsee maassive QQing if they decided to keep the limit in, and heck I'd probably be doing some of it. I may not play my DK much, but darn it, she's tanked Scholo, and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time leveling professions (and still not done). I'm attached now.

Major Problem Four, class balancing for arena PVP, regular PVP, end game PVE (aka raiding), and questing PVE.
There's an easy solution to this, different rules for PVP and PVE. Take serpent sting. Maybe it's horribly overpowered in Arenas,semi-oeverpowered in BGs , but great in PVE. Blizz could nerf it for Arena PVP, semi-nerf it in BGs (though you would have to be careful not to change the core behavior of the ability), and not touched in PVE. Yes, it would be a bit awkward at first, but it'd be nicer than constantly being nerfed or buffed based on an activity I never engage in.

I'd also like to see BGs based on skill, but since I have no idea how to do this, I'll just leave it be. Basically it seems kinda wrong to me that someone like me, who is massive fail at PVP, can just follow the mass and get honor points when I really am not doing anything an am 5 levels lower than most everyone else.

Feel free to offer any suggestions you have for what you'd like to fix, and how you'd fix it. And since I've been all serious, I give you fanservice...

Yes, her dress matches her skin tone. No, I did not mean to do that. And yes, that's my priest. Grumpy space goats for the win.

And lastly,


I dinged while Harrison Jones was saving me. That's almost as wrong as hitting lvl 69 while doing the Scholo key quest.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Alt Project Update

So... Warriors. Mine is now level 10, and the only thing I like about her is Charge. Charge is a blast, but otherwise, I am not impressed. She takes about as long to kill stuff as my pally (note, it is entirely possible I am doing it wrong) but lacks the healing. I want oh shit buttons, darn it, and Gift of the Naaru is not enough. I've resorted to sending her potions from the priest (and now alchemist) just to make her not so annoying to play. I don't know if I haven't gotten far enough into the class or what but there just doesn't seem to be any spark or finesse or even a nifty gimmick to hold my interest. Just a ton of hit things, try not to die, lather, rinse, repeat. I chose Blacksmithing for her, but I'm beginning to think Herbalism (for the self heal) and Alchemy (for the pots) would have been better.

The priest is now level 10, and heading towards 11 at a fairly regular pace. Once I get into the rhythm of (new spell I just got and can't remember), Smite, Shadow Word Pain, wand till dead, with occasional applications of bubble and self heal (followed by another smite), she became fun to play. She also lasts longer than the warrior (because of the healing). I've decided on Disc spec, since a) that fits the character's personality, and b) I did want to do a healing spec for leveling and Disc is apparently less ick than Holy. Alchemy is kinda wasted on her but I like the armor potions.

It's funny how with some of these I can see how I'm going to spec by how I play. The druid will be a boomkin because well, that's the way I play her. The warlock is destruction because I like burning things down, and the mage is frost because while I like burning things down, it's hard to do without a blueberry to hold aggro. Frost lets me slow stuff down enough to slaughter it.

Profession-wise I have noticed some useful things. One, enchanting goes quite well with jewelcrafting. Make the ring, disenchant the ring, repeat. Two, if you have an engineer, it is nice to have both a skinner (for leather) and a jewelcrafter (for prospecting). Third, an engineer mage might be very nice. I haven't tried it, but the target dummies could provide a nice blueberry substitute. Four, inscription is nice while leveling (due to the recall scrolls), but man, herb intensive. Fifth, have a tailor. Bags are expensive (more so on my Horde server than the Alliance one). I want a soul bag, darn it (and at 80 gp they're completely out of reach for the level 21 warlock).

Ironforge is hands down the best place to level mining and herbalism. Way more herbs and ore than any other starting area I've seen. Loch Modan's great as well.

And last, but not least,

the Pally hit 30. Yay mount.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Screenshot Funnies


Only a day late. Go me.
And we are just not going to discuss how many times I managed to do this. I need dracolich triple A or something.

Real post coming tomorrow, I promise. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a party to go to and beer to consume. Mmmm, good beer.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Brief Hiatus

Not much to say, sadly, Between the sporadic internet, the computer issues (now temporarily repaired), and the GRE studying (ack I take this test in less than a week and I can't remember my multiplication tables DOOM!), there hasn't been much time for Wowing or blogging.

I did get the 50 pets achievement. I am quite happy about that.

And here's the warrior, now level 10. There is an entry forthcoming for her, I promise.

So there won't be much happening here till after next Friday. I apologize for the hiatus, and for the short notice, but um, getting into grad school trumps Wow. (okay, if 3.1 hits I might have something to say, but I doubt it's coming this Tues)

Monday, March 9, 2009

Why choose a gathering profession?

One, gold. Mining seems to be the best moneymaker, especially with the lower level ores.
Two, the nifty abilities. I heart my herbalism healing thing, it's one of my panic buttons. The skinning thing and the mining thing aren't bad, but man I love my self heal panic button.
Three, it gives you an excuse to wander all over the place.

And while I'm at it, fishing + alchemy rocks. I made 20 pygmy oil (which I had already fished up while getting fish for healing/mana replenishment food. The 20 oil took me from 375 to 390ish alchemy with no effort at all.


Oh, and I discovered something very shiny today. I did the mating of the sea cow daily, and you can kite the bull over to the cow as long as you have one fish. Saves a ton of time when you're competing for pools with half the server.

Now, back to attempting to get the desktop to boot. I got it to boot once, and then WoW crashed it again. Now it won't finish booting. This could take a while.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Where it all got started

I play D&D. Not the online kind, the old school one played with shiny dice, paper, and books. I've been playing since college and I love it. And I was randomly surfing youtube and I found this (I started with Firefly and somehow wound up with it).


That's a local band (well sort of local, if you don't mind a fairly long drive), and the song cracks me up. Possibly because in our current campaign, I am the damn thief, and the last time the party let me out of their sight we ended up with a Holy Hand Grenade. And an archmage really pissed at us, but that's another story entirely and I blame it completely on the gnome. *nods head sagely*

Anyway, with this entire broohah about bring the player not the class, and composition of raids and much qqing, I figured we could all use a funny little reminder of where this all started.

(Yes, I play the thief. A half-elf teenager with 16 charisma, a wizard father, and an emo half-elf druid for a boyfriend. Our campaign is nothing if not interesting)

Also, this just makes me happy.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

I was thinking about my enchanter and how much easier it would be if she could just run through Stockades, DM, SFK by herself and de everything for raw materials. Plus, if she could do that, the level limit (you can only train so high at lvl 10) wouldn't be a problem.

Then I started thinking about what toons I have and what their professions are. I know I want Garetia to hit 80 first (73 now), and the DK will probably be second, and the pally 3rd. So I'll have an herbalist/alchemist, a miner/blacksmith, and a miner/engineer maxed out. But having two miners doesn't really make sense to me, and I want a max level enchanter.

Thus, I decided to change the DK's plan. Instead of being a miner/blacksmith, she'll become a miner/enchanter, and when she hits max level (and I have massive, massive amounts of ore, far above what I'll need to level BS), I'll drop mining and pick up blacksmithing. It's not like I'm that far in BS right now, only 151, so it's not a big deal, and I'll have a high level enchanter.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Fun Friday

I don't have much to say today. I spent the day concentrating on real life stuff. So I figured I'd give you a couple of amusing screenshots instead.
First...

You know, escape pods normally don't work when the ship is on the ground.



Okay, who ordered the light gnome? The kitchen may have let that one sit a little too long.



They won't stop following me! HELP!

The second screenshot was taken outside the Nexus. The DK was originally sitting on an egg, which I broke for a quest. She then mourned the loss of her egg.

And the last one is currently my desktop wallpaper.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Titles

Pike of Aspect of the Hare had an interesting post on what titles your character would have, if any here. I answered there, but wanted to expand on it here (plus there are RP reasons).

Garetia is currently the mad in Flag RSP, mostly because everyone believes she's insane. Basically Elune appeared to her and told her that Darnassus was corrupted beyond repair and must be destroyed. She actually spent a few years in the care of healers for that. She doesn't want to destroy her race, rather transplant them to Darkshore and Ashenvale. It's the reason that her mounts make no sense. She believes anything from Darnassus is tainted beyond recovery.
There is the Insane coming in 3.1, but unless Blizzard changes things I really don't think it's doable. I would like to get her Diplomat, Loremaster, and Old Salty though.

My space goat DK would be the Happy. Partly because she is, and partly because it'd confuse a ton of people. She suffered a bit of brain damage with the dying and being rezed and having melee skills shoved into her priest brain, and now she's happy all the time. Not a bad way to live, and yes this is an antidote to all the brooding "oh noes my life is horrible" dks on my server. We're not even going to discuss the demon disguised as a ne who forgot that he was a demon until Arthas brought him back as a dk.

My pally would like to be the Holy or Knight, and my mage would just like to make it to 30 without dying every ten minutes. I think one of the tricks with her was rearranging her casting bar so I can easily recognize the instant spells (also known as the "oh shit I'm in melee spells").

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Garetia has now hit 72, and I've gotten to do some dungeon running. I've also finished the Borean Tundra, and am about halfway through Howling Fjord. Most of my equipment has now been upgraded and I've gotten a few new abilities.
This is my DPS from part of Nexus (and the only one higher than me is a lvl 80 hunter)


You may have noticed the Cat. I decided to do a bit of pet experimenting. Boo, much as I love him, is not holding aggro. Not that I'd really expect him to when I can take down a mob in 4-6 shots (assuming mob is non-elite and at my level). Misdirect is costly, and I go through mana ridiculously fast as is. So I thought I'd try a couple other tank pets. While I was wandering around, I remembered that a) I had sacred frostsaber meat in the bank and that I'd wanted to tame Shy-Rotan. I picked her up and I've been running around with her ever since.

I've been pleasantly surprised by her. She can hold aggro once I misdirect onto her (unlike Boo) and she does more damage so the mob falls down faster. Boo did more front-end threat, but once he lost a mob it was gone. My new cat has actually pulled them back off me.

I will likely pull Boo back out of the stable once 3.1 hits (since all tenacity pets will be getting Thunderstomp), and I will be keeping my eyes out for SW's albino crocolisk, but for the moment Cat is the pet. Now I just need to name her....


Oh, and I did a little experimenting with the mechanicals in BT. Boo had much more trouble than usual holding aggro on them, and after fighting a couple and looking at the combat logs, they may be immune to growl. More testing is needed, since I haven't tried manually casting it yet.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Update on the Alt Project

Well, I've rolled all the toons, and here's where I stand...
Druid-> level 5, will be inscription/herbalism
Pally->level 26, engineering already above 150, leaving only mining (currently at 112). And she can make fishing lures, which my main needs. Yay.
Mage->level 21, actually got played for a bit yesterday, enough to give her teleports to SW, IF, and Exodar. Mining is 115, and JC is 96. Have I mentioned I hate the bronze/iron gap? I do.
Rogue->Level 14 Leatherworking is 45ish, and skinning is 78 or so. Not really liking leatherworking, but I'm hoping that will change.
Priest->Level 5, at an inn. Still debating professions. I'm leaning towards herbalism/Alchemy simply because it's been so long since I had a low-level alchemist.
Warrior->Also level 5, also at an inn. Mining/Blacksmithing for her and she's learned mining.
Shaman->Still level 11, now ready to level. Tailoring is maxed at 150, and enchanting is at about 110.

I have a few things to decide, like do I run all the space goats through Azuremyst, or send some elsewhere? I've never actually run a low level toon through the dwarf quests past level 5, so I may send someone over there. Since the shaman, priest, warrior, and mage are all space goats, I'm getting sick of their quests. Also, do I pick up tailoring and say, herbalism on the priest, or do herbalism/alchemy (since my only alchemist is my main), or do I do something weird?

My plan right now is to try to get the 3 lowest toons to level 10 (so I can create a Alt Project toon list with armory links), then level one at a time.

I have figured out a few useful things though...
Jewelcrafting rocks for low level alts.
Engineering is a bit of a pain, but you get exploding sheep. Plus goggles.
Leatherworking is great for low-level hunters. Make your own quivers/ammo pouches.
Blacksmithing is a decent profession for any melee character.