The Scroll of Rez is AWESOME and wow, what a week!

I finally decided to use a scroll of rez to reactivate my second account for, well, the free Cat upgrade and the lvl 80 toon.  And that got me playing more than I have in quite a while, with awesome results....

First, we have a before of my new druid...

Then an after the pimp bat hit her. That gear's good enough to get into Cat normals, and she's got more bag space and medium flying (280 speed). I have 85s with less bag space and slower flying. Totally, totally worth it, and if I'd sent the invite from another server besides Shadow Council, I could have also recustomized her and server-moved for free. Only complaints I have are that now I have to level professions from 1 to 525 and that she has no glyphs. They spec'd her but did not glyph her. And those are pretty minor complaints.

Then I had fun with having free character slots again. Yes, that's a gnome priest. I keep trying to level a gnome, maybe this one will work.

A goblin hunter. Because I could. And also, maybe leveling a new hunter will help me with learning focus. Sigh, I still miss mana and learning which bosses I could steal mana from, and working out how to spend as little time as possible in Aspect of the Viper.

A goblin shammy (because I want one, darn it!). She's now level 13 or so, and made it to Org. I really like the casting animations and totems the goblins have. Also, I had shaman heirlooms lying around, might as well use them.

And Aethelred the Perpetually Unready with the invisible bear phobia has been reborn as Aethilred, the Sneaky and Still Unready. You may vaguely remember Aethelred from my World Cup posts. And yes, he does have an invisible bear phobia. He got killed by them in Silverpine frequently pre-Cat.

Then I lucked out, and got into a twitterland raid yesterday. Tons and tons of fun, and look, achieves! I just love this view....

But I still have no idea what happens in the Al fight.  I must study for next week, since I believe we'll be going for heroic.

And earlier in the week I ran around with friends in Silver Dragoons. Sadly Ars has died, so I'm back to SD Alliance-side. Not a big deal since between twitterland raids and Redeemed, I can still scratch the raiding itch. Plus it's fun to run around with people who were there when I started raiding back in Naxx....

The Problem With Warlocks

So why are there so few warlocks? Cynwise has a great series of posts on the matter, and I figured i'd throw in my 2 cents.  First off, go read his posts. It's okay, I'll wait, plus it's a great blog...

Leveling Data on warlocks is worse than I thought
Where did all the Warlocks go in Cataclysm?

Now, having just leveled a mage to 85 and being (in a rather slow process) of leveling a lock to 85, I figured I could perhaps shed some light on the leveling game.  Here's the problems as I see them...
1)No real incentive to have a 'lock in a raid. No nifty buffs, just healthstones and demon TV. At least as a mage I can give my healers more mana (mmmm int buff) and cake. As a lock, I can give you underwater breathing. Big Whoop.

2) Warlocks are kinda underpowered in the leveling game. Mages are too, actually, or maybe I just stinke at frost maging. But playing affliction, I feel like I barely have time to dot a mob before the other dps have killed it. Destruction feels a bit better, but not by much.

3) I get bitched at for Life Tapping. Only way I can do halfway decent dps on non bosses is Rain of Fire, and that gets expensive mana-wise.  Healers that don't mind Life Tapping seem to be few and far between. Believe me, I understand, I hated life tapping locks too, but a good warlock knows when you life tap and when you don't.

4) PVP survivability. I have none. Luckly I don't mind this overmuch, since I die a lot in PVP anyway, but it's kind of annoying being completely heirloomed out and still being that squishy. I do get a ridiculous amount of glee running around a BG with my gnome hair (on a Forsaken) dotting the crap out of everyone and giggling when my dots kill them. Sadly, this is generally shortly after they've killed me.

5) Pets. I remember my first lock (a belf who's somewhere in the 30s level-wise and this was endBC/beginning of Wraith days) having a blueberry who held aggro. He was a complete idiot compared to my hunter's pets. Still feels that way. Running around with an imp who does more damage than I do (because his cast time is less) is plain embarrassing.

6) Pure DPS class, no other options. Let's look at the other pure DPS classes....
Mage->squishy, can have pet, long cast time, but 2 viable end-game specs, much-wanted buff, portals and cake! Competes for cloth gear.  Stupid cloth competition....
Hunter->Fast-paced, many options in terms of pets (and pet buffs), extreme soloing and farming very viable. Only competition for agility mail is enhancement shaman
Rogue->Just got a legendary, can pick-pocket, and stealth. Plus, seen as the extremely viable PVP class.  Only competition for leather agility gear is feral druids.

7) If I want to play an evil toon, warlocks seem like a natural choice. But DKs start at 55, get ridiculously good gear to start, and are easier to play well. So unless I must be ranged, I'm probably going to go for a DK

If I have a friend just starting to play WoW, I'm going to steer them towards a hybrid class. If they really want to play pure ranged DPS, I'm going to suggest a hunter or mage. The dot DPS of locks is fun, but I play a shadowpriest, I'm used to dot management and it took me several months to learn how to do it properly. Warlocks are simply not a class I'd recommend to a beginner. I also wouldn't recommend priests (shadow is complicated), or feral druids. If you want to heal and hit stuff with a big weapon, I'd say pally, if you want to heal and cast I'd say shaman, and if you want to tank and or hit stuff with two big weapons, hello warrior. If you have no idea at all, I'd say hello druid.

Warlocks are awesome, and I'm actually really looking forward to raiding on my 'lock when she gets there. Here's hoping Mists makes them a bit more viable, since a good warlock is a wonder to behold.

UI Design for Dummies

First, figure out what's the most important stuff to know. This will vary from role to role, and from toon to toon. Generally this would be....
Party health bars for healers
Threat levels for tanks
Procs and/or DoT Durations for DPS

If you're raiding, this would likely also include
Boss Health, timing of bad stuff, warnings about where you're standing, that sort of thing

If you're PVPing, this would likely also include stun durations, cooldowns of your team, that sort of thing.

Now figure out how you want to display this most important stuff. Party health bars could be displayed by Grid or vuhdo or the raid frames addon of your choice. Threat levels can be displayed by Omen or tidy plates: threat plates. Procs could be displayed by NeedtoKnow, Power Auras, or a bunch of others.  Dot durations can also be displayed by the above.

Positioning wise, the most important thing to remember is....
PUT THE MOST IMPORTANT STUFF CLOSE TO YOUR TOON!
Now, here's Lyllea's healing UI in a raid, to see what I'm talking about....

Notice vuhdo right in the center there? And under it is BigWigs countdowns for tank cooldowns. Below Vuhdo are my bars, and my cooldowns are shown on the spells themselves.

And here we see her DPS UI. See the difference (other than the minimap, which is due to it being patch day when this was taken and out-of-date addons weren't enabled)? Power auras is telling me I have shadow orbs, and vuhdo's off to the side.

And here's Eiunn's DPS UI as another example. Hopefully this gives you some ideas.

How to get a mage somewhere in 10 steps...

Step 1) curse paucity of dungeon-choices in random dungeon finder from 84-85. Stonecore I HATE YOU! Vortex, I still like you, but only in comparison to Stonecore. Seriously, aren't there supposed to be others in here besides you two?

Step 2) Continue to run dungeons, while cursing. Console self with rep gains and justice points. Almost hit justice cap.

Step 3) Stop by the Faire long enough to pick up one of the books that allows for collecting of things. Because those things sell well in the AH, that's why.

Step 4) Curse tanks who see either Stonecore or Vortex and drop. HATE THEM SO!

Step 5)

Step 6) Put on full set of 377 crafted pvp gear. 

Step 7) Spend those hard-earned justice points. I went for a ring, a neck, and a wand (decisions based only on upgrading ilevels)

Step 8) Check gear score. 0_o at fact that in about 10 minutes went from new 85 to geared enough for Hour of Twilight heroics (okay, pvp gear is nowhere near optimal, and I'll be testing my dps before I hit them to make sure it's adequate, but still!)

Step 9) Realize it's past 4 am. Also realize that Ask Mr Robot is now firmly convinced Angetia's gearing for PVP (can't think why :) ). Decide to blog briefly, then go to bed.

Step 10) Figure out how to mage at 85 (that's tomorrow's problem)

BOOYA!

I believe the phrase I'm looking for here is...

BOOYA!!!!

Lyllea, Destroyer's End. Has a nice ring to it. Yay Redeemed for coming back from a series of heartbreaking sub 5% wipes to squash that stupid dragon!

I should write stuff here, shouldn't I?

Sorry about the radio silence. Between a massive serotonin drop (stupid brain) and my new class (whee becoming a certified project manager, boo 10+ hours a week on class and homework), I haven't been very motivated to talk about stuff.  But here, stuff! In more or less brain dump fashion....

1. You can get to the frogs for a chance at Mojo in Zul Aman without being in a group. Here's how I did it on Garetia (my hunter)...
a. Open doors with help of NPC (most annoying part of the process, I swear)
b. Make sure mass of mobs has spawned and is coming towards you. Make a run for the exit. Once outside wait about 30 seconds or so.
c. Carefully sneak back in. The mass of mobs should be gone, and now all you have to do is avoid the wandering elite patrol, kill some of the very squishy trash in your way, and get down to the water. Sneaking and or potions of invisibility are helpful, as is a track humanoids ability (which you can get from a particular food if you're not a hunter)
d. Use up all hex sticks on frogs hoping for Mojo. There's 16 or so frogs, so I'd get as many sticks as you can.
e. Good luck! I'm going to try this on Lyl as well, see how it goes on a character without stealth or humanoid tracking.

2. I've joined twitterland raiding. I have yet to do anything with them, but I like the idea. I do wish there were more Horde raids though.

3. Healers Must Die is really useful for dungeon-running.

4. I'm currently experimenting with seeing how fast I can gear up two toons. One, my much-neglected pally (and I might even make her a holy set), and two, my 84.5 mage. The mage already has a full set of pvp blues, 3000ish justice points (from being leveled mostly through dungeons from 70-now), and a good collection of 308 and 316 gear. I am beginning to think all other dungeons besides Throne of Tides, Stonecore, Blackrock, and Vortex Pinnacle are myths though.

5. I finally have a shaman set I like. I need to go farm the mace that looks like a torch, and I'm still deciding on shields, but I think this is a pretty awesome looking set. I'm not so sure about the shirt, but the armor's a bit too revealing by itself, and I've yet to find another shirt I like.

Speaking of transmog, Redeemed wandered into Ulduar 10 to work on getting people drakes, and Lyl picked up some good gear (including a really cool-looking offhand). I'm hopeful that before Mists, Lyllea ends up with the ICC and Ulduar 25 drakes, as well as the tier 11 and Firelands ones. Eiunn might end up with some as well, since she's my alliance main (and thus the one who's likely to go on the twitterland raids). 

6. Redeemed is beating our heads against Madness of Deathwing. We're only really raiding for 2.5 hours a week, so progress is a bit slow. We did get him down to 5 million health last week, but with 3 healers all oom, everyone went squish quickly.

7. Still having fun with my baby lock. I'm really looking forward to getting her to 85 so I have an alt for alt run stuff, and also because affliction lock is entertaining and reminds me of shadowpriesting. I'm also still having fun with her in PVP. DOT ALL THE HEALERS!

8. I'm in the ongoing process of creating a more or less uniform UI across all my toons. This is taking a while.

9. And I probably should figure out another mage spec besides frost. I'm already getting snarky comments about it, but Angetia's never been anything else, and I don't want to bother learning arcane or fire till there's a call for it (aka putting out decent DPS in the new 5mans and LFR). 7ish K DPS is fine for the leveling dungeons, darn it!!

10. And last but not least, the Mists talent things scare me. The only way I'd want to group heal with Holy Nova is if I could chose where it's centered. Otherwise it's far too dependent on my knowing where everyone in the raid is (and I never do). If it ends up being our only group heal (no prayer of healing), and stays centered on me, I'll be trying Holy again. I love bubbles, but I'm also a raid healer and need to remain viable in that role.

So there you go, stuff I've been up to. Now bed. I'm sleepy, I have to get up early, and I have a ton of homework to get done. Plus knitting, I also have a ton of that to get done, and Anachrocon starts on Friday, so I need to prep for that.  ACK, BUSY!

Adventures in stuff!

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