A very merry Christmas to you all!!

My daughter got the bulk of all the presents this year.  that's not a problem because i was notified someone purchased my swords deck.


merry christmas to me!

Edit:  Just so everyone understands why this is so "christmas"....

The Swords deck is made up of four cards:  Ace of Swords, Two of Swords, Three of Swords and Four of Swords.  Thats it. Collect all four, click on one of them, and you make yourself a Swords Deck.  Now the individual cards in the AH are selling for 90 silvers each.  yes. 90 silver.  less than one gold.  so with my 3gold, 60silver investment, i combined the cards and listed the Swords Deck for 99gold each, as seen above. 

after AH cut, total profit is about 90g. 

i went on to sell four more Swords Deck for 100g each.

i went further and bought the Mages cards (there are five, to make a Mages Deck).  I sold these for 150g each.  all sold.

i also sold 2 sets of Demonds (if i recall correctly) deck. these costed about 15g to make, but sold for 200g.

why are these decks so expensive?  they offer good rewards for twinks.  The mages deck gives a nice neck piece as a reward at level 30 and good for a level 39 twink.  at first look, the stats suck since everyone is playing with level 80-85 gear.  but understand that people in the 30s range have less to choose from, and you can see why these go for 150g.  maybe the buyer is waiting to resell these for 300g. who knows. 

What my Shaman can teach my Disc Priest

Wrath of the Lich King has taught me one thing.  Spam.

Yes, that's right.  Spam everything.

Resto Druids: Spam Rejuv.
Resto Shams: Spam Lesser Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Spam PWShields
Holy Priests: Spam Flash heal
Holy Palas: Spam Flash of Light (or Holy Light, depending on build)


Of course, after spamming these heals, there's always the obligatory bigger heals.  Think of the spam heals as buffers.

Resto Druids: Nourish.
Resto Shams: Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Penance
Holy Priests: Greater Heal
Holy Palas: kinda stumped on this one.


And of course, these heals arent all set in stone, meaning you dont have to spam rejuv for a resto druid.  i did an instance only putting rejuv on the tank with everyone else getting wild growth.  back in the day... when healing was boring. 


But what i want to talk about is the AoE healing that only a shaman can offer to a disc priest.  Why not druids? they have aoe heals.  yes, but that's instant.  holy?  that's dropped on people like a blizzard or a rain of fire.  but shamans are different.  see, their aoe is chain heal.  and it's casted at a single person (and heals 2 or 3 additional players depending on glyph). 

1. it is casted.
2. it is directed at a certain person.

this is exactly like prayer of healing.  =D 
as a disc priest, i've almost never.... no, actually, i've NEVER used prayer of healing unless it was to top everyone off at the beginning of an instance after i blessed everyone with fort.  there are simply better spells for me to use than prayer of healing when it comes to healing two or more people.  heck, i skip the binding heal as well.  but that was before cataclysm.  that was back when mana didnt matter much.  today, however, with flash heal being so expensive and pw:shield being so weak, we're stuck with heal and greater heal to do our work.  now is a great time to pull out prayer of healing as a viable heal when 3 or more people needs healing at once. 

honestly, i would never think of this before, but after playing a shaman, i have been "programmed" to toss chain heal often (for the haste proc).  with this mindset, i can easily go on my priest and prioritize prayer of healing more.  it does take some getting used to, but overall i think this is what blizzard wanted us to do anyway.  we're all holed up into a certain healing "style".  style doesnt mean more than having our own set of healing spells and ignoring everything else.   but now, our style will incorporate more of the healing spells we used to ignore.  this is a chance to use prayer of healing more, which i am glad to have. now if only prayer of healing gave me some other buff. that would be awesome. 

The World, Renewed

I will add to the plethora of "shattering" blog posts today by adding my own, albiet short.

GOOD RIDDANCE THE BARRENS!!


That is all.  have a great time enjoying the changes everyone!

My Warrior is Slacking Off

I decided the other night to get dual spec talents for my warrior in order to dps for simpler dungeon experience (kinda). when leveling my warrior up to 60, i was fury, and that was boring.  now, in arms, its a little less boring, but still boring nonetheless. upon hitting 60, he began tanking for a while and that's what he remained- a tank. he's been working hard on his rotations since the patch and have come to a point where everything flows really well.  all the abilities have a specific order and all the emergencies and contingencies have been thought out (what to do if this, what to do if that, etc).

And tanking hasnt really changed in the past 10 or so levels.  even with the addition of shockwave and intervene, there isnt much else to do besides what i've always been doing.  Charge, roar, cleave, rend, t/c, cleave, shock, cleave/tc/dev/shieldslam, etc, for mutli mobs.  For bosses, it would be charge, roar, shieldslam, rend, devx3 (for simplicity, i use cleave to dump range and not HS).  in fact, i might do that also with my dps spec as well.

in any case, tanking requires checking my surroundings, my team, my pulls, my mob group mix, etc. tanking also involves keeping aggro, so i have my taunt button at the ready.  i quite often use it since i have been in various instances where the dps would attack immediately after my charge.  i usually wait for a thunderclap at the very least.  anyway, no good to be playing aggro tag with other dps the entire fight, especially when my own rage bar depends on it.  after so many levels of this, im glad that i have finally gone back to dps.  its so much simpler.  pulls dont rely on me at all. the only time i really have to think is when i know there are some interrupts that must be performed.  otherwise, i charge, get behind my target, and cut them from behind.  tab to the next mob, slash slash slash.

that's basically it.  easy.  i am slacking off.  and it feels good. that is, until i partied with a group in Anh Kahet. It was a bad experience all around.  there was a DK tank (clearly new, as he was very timid during his pulls), my girlfriend healing, me DPSing as my warrior, a mage and a paladin. 

in terms of damage the paladin did decent damage along with the mage.  i was down there in dps with the tank is.  this is mainly due to me not having a clue how to play my warrior.  before we queued, i went to dragonblight to do those "wanted" quests.  i started off doing 400 dps fighting Dreadtalon in dragonblight.  Gigantaur was more tank-n-spank and i got 500 dps out of him.  By the time i got to the undead dragon person i was doing 600dps.  my gf healed me the whole time, of course, and she lost most of her mana on every fight.  she lost all of her mana on the undead dragon.  i forgot her name. sarathsa, or something. 

anyway, i did a little more than 1.1k dps with the mage leading at about 1.5k dps.  instance went by slowly due to several bad pulls by the tank.  overall, only one person died.  we killed all the bosses.  i had a great time even though the bad tank kinda stressed us all out.  also, the mage was trigger happy and would pull unaggro'ed groups to us.  he would reply with "oops!" and such.  clearly not used to waiting on tanks, i guess.

so my night ended pretty well.  we did a couple of quests to keep ourselves going along since i no longer tank.  or at least, i wont tank for a while.  its quite.... intensive.  i think tho, with trying to figure out my buttons, macros, rotations, and procs, i still figured that it might be just as much work as tanking.  okay, maybe more.  but when i do get it down, its down.  and i wont have to really think anymore when doing dungeons.  yay.  so burnt out on tanking.

My Rogue Feels Like a Cow

I have been playing my rogue a bit more often lately. So far, it feels like before.  But there's a difference.  I cant really put my finger on it.  It seems more... fun.  I think it is because im doing more damge.  actually contributing to kills, things like that.  when i first entered outland i put away my old rogue for something better, something more fun.  i leveled everything else besides the rogue.  she was just a placeholder then.  today, she has more gear and much better dps.  she started off subtlety years ago and changed to combat when a friend suggested that it would give me more dps. at that time, say level 60, i was in groups where everyone had a friggin AoE except for me.  actually, its still true.  I still do not have any AoE abilities, and im 66 now.  So since patch 4.0.1, and the forced reset of all my talent specs, i decided to abandon combat and return to sub.  after all, it was one of those assassin-like specs, more so than assassination. 

Then i remembered why i like my rogue to begin with.  it was because i was sneaky.  i would pop up out of nowhere and attack something.  it would be dead before other mobs would notice me.  going stealth and sneaking my way to a quest objective was quite fun, even if i get almost zero experience from killing mobs.  i would get the experience from turning in quests, and at a faster rate than someone who had to kill through an entire camp of, say, trolls in order to get to a box, or the head of a boss, or something like that.  and if the boss has goons with him? ignore them and kill the boss. vanish after you loot the head.  like those ninja movies, for sure.

anyway, it reminded me of when i first leveled my tauren druid.  she was somewhat of a bulky character.  she had hooves so being sneaky was a little difficult to do.  but when she turned into a cat, she sneaked around better than most rogues.  cats have this innate nature in them. they take each step with care and caution.  they make sure they cannot be heard and lie in wait.  patiently.  unmoving.  then at the right moment, they pounce on their victims.   that's how cats play.  that's how my druid was able to level her clumsy self to 80 with little difficulties. 

and as i play my rogue, i am reminded of my druid.  then i realized just how similar the two classes are.  it made me felt like i was back on my cat, playing my first level 70 character (also my first level 80 when wrath came out).  i was back to sneaking around and killing things.  i was back to doing single target dps madness.  it was fun, but i realize it will have its niche and one day i will leave it for a different character.  but playing a druid cat did teach me a few things about myself. 

1. I preferred the safety of stealth (even though sometimes i do get caught).
2. I like the feel of questing as a stealthed assassin.  It makes me feel like im playing Metal Gear Solid, or Socom, or Tenchu.
3. I like to see big numbers. Coming out of stealth with an Ambush that takes most of the enemy's health away? that's awesome. doing a finishing move with an overkill of several thousand health? awesome still.
4. I like having emergency buttons.  being able to incapacitate people even during a fight? awesome to the awesome. having abilities on my druid like maim helps buy me time.  having sprint is awesome when i just need to run away.  blinding opponents is wonderful.  vanish is even more awesome.  all of these things help me to survive when my blade just cant kill them fast enough. 

It is sneaky.  it is stealthy.  it is more a mind game than outright dps. a sneaky cow.  that's what i was.

Tankin and Spankin

For the last couple of weeks, my gf has been leveling a priest.  I got her started with the basics (look for cloth gear with int, spell power, spi, stam, ignore the rest for now) and saw her heal more and more.  now she's more pro than before.  now she's healing bad tanks and just complains about them behind the screen (but will keep them alive anyway just to get the instance over with) like its normal.  We talked about holy and disc and how they're different and all that.  she chose Disc because i chose disc... on three of my priests.  Yes, there're three disc priests.  dont ask. i just like them.

anyway, she got her priest leveled up to about 60 when i decided its finally time to break out my old tank and practice a little.  He's a burly orc warrior, with massive teeth and a dogface stare, ready to kick some butt.  i started off looking at my reset talents.  as i stared at the new tree, i realized that it was pretty much a no-brainer what i should get: more survival, more threat, more rage, better mobility.  i wasnt able to get shockwave tho, as it was one of my favorite spells.  i'll get it at level 67. 

i then got all my new spells at the warrior trainer and then started on part two of my night:  macros. 
it didnt take long before i realized several things about the macros.  its not different from before. just about every spell i used before was still there.  nothing has really changed except for my macro to shockwave.  that just gives me a red question mark.  i'll get that spell soon enough so i didnt bother changing it.

i went into ragefire chasm and started running around to practice.  there were two people hoping for a run, so i took them with me.  they dinged in the two runs i was there.  grats to them. after two runs i got used to the buttons, made some changes in my macros and decided it was time to take on some more solid content. 

seeing that my gf was 60, we started the night in ramps.  i grabbed, and grabbed and grabbed.  it was fun.  almost chain pulling, but making sure that the current group was just about dead before i moved on to the next group.  most of the night, i was at near full health.  of course, i was 65 doing a 60 dungeon. 

several tries at ramps and then blood furnance, i ended the night at 66, almost 67 (and ready to do some durnhold, save my hero thrall, keep runs).  he's not really my hero.  he's my orc's hero.  he'll be a warrior just like... wait... thralls a shaman.  nevermind.

my gf got from 60 to.... 61!  yep.  rocked.  but i knew that once i hit 69 or 70, i wont be able to do randoms with her anymore.  i can, however, queue up for specific dungeons with her.  that sucks. the extra bonus exp will not count since im too high level?  really?  that's really sad.  anyway..... i got on my rogue (who's level 61 as well, who i havent played since forever.  to put this into perspective. she has slow riding, which was about 90gold at level 40, back in the days.  and at level 60, we would get journeyman, fast land riding for about 600g.  that, i would not pay for since i wanted to stop playing my rogue.  yea, thats how old this rogue was.  wasnt played with for a long while).  i got on and repsec'd subably, made some macros for stealth, openers, finishers, and combo point makers.  then i configured my buttons to just the way i liked it.... and queued up with my gf.  at the start of the day, at level 61, i was doing about 500 dps. 

okay i lie.  i started off doing about 350dps.  then, as i got the hang of it, ended the instance with about 500dps.  several quests and several instances later, i was doing slightly more damage. it wasnt until late last night, about level 65, with several dungeon pieces (mostly gemmed with delicate bloodstones (yes, just bloodstones)) that i finally broke 1k dps.  1k dps!! wtf??? yes.  its awesome. then by the end if the instance, it leveled out to about 800-900 dps.  not bad for a 65.  what happened is this. i found out that my biggest damage came at the beginning of a fight, and only coming out of stealth.  so i wait for the perfect time to shadowstep, then ambush (3cp), someone will crit (4cp) and i will simply do a backstab (5cp).... then finish with Evis.  they die.  in about 6 seconds i just did 10k-12k damage. the rest of the fight has me applying backstab+evis, or hem+rupture.

there really isnt much else to do because after the first mob dies, everyone else is at about 1/2 health anyway.  there is absolutely not enough health or time left to get a full stack of combo points to really do anything useful.  and then there's the bosses.  =]  love those fights. 

anyway, hopefully spending some time as a rogue will help me with my paladin dps. lol fat chance.  but will hope.

as for my warrior, this was how it was played for the several instances that i actually tanked. 
for trash, i would charge in and rend immediately.  then thunderclap to apply rend to everyone (and slows them), then cleave.  thats it.  all done. actually i'd demo shout at times, shieldslam as often as possible, revenge when proc'd, shield slam when proc'd, thunderclap on cooldown (unless i see more mobs coming into the picture, i can save it for them) and cleave to dump my rage. 
on bosses, i charge, shield slam, devastate, rend, devastate, devastate, revend on proc, shield slam on proc, keep sunders up (and increase my threat lead) with devastate.

i find that devastate is pretty useless with trash unless its one of those "theres nothing left to press" situations.  trash dies quickly enough.  healer has no problems healing me, and i rather save my global cooldown for some more aoe moves than a single target move.  that said, devastate the boss, cleave the trash.

one other thing, my gear is made for questing.  my spec is for questing. i leveled up as prot for a while and it was awesome.  even in outland, lack of defense gear is not doing any harm to me. i'll save the dodge gear for later, when i hit 70 and have to get the cobalt set.    my design before was this, to allow myself to be hit more, thus gaining more rage, but also being able to heal myself as i fight.  this worked well, but those days are gone.  now that i am doing dungeons regularly, i dont want to be hit more to gain rage.  i'll be hit plenty, so i'll have to slowly switch over to more mitigation, avoidance, and stamina gear.  my talent tree is not as customizable any more, so im stuck with a cookie cutter spec.  thanks bliz.  now we're all the same.

anyway, thats just my update.  it feels like the weekend but its not... yet.  have a great weekend everyone!

On Victoria Secret gear.

Me:  So whats going on?

GF: So im 59 and a half from doing quests in Hellfire Peninsula. A got a hat, some armor panties and a slutty top.  and i got killed by some human paladin.

Me. I guess panties and slutty tops are too naughty for paladins.

I still say... keep the slutty armor coming.  VS catalogs are all the rage anyway.  i love when mine come in the mail... that and fredericks and venus.  yea, i get those.  so what??  what i see in those catalogs are things i might buy for my gf.... and me. 

Besides.  isnt the next expansion like... submersed under water or something? or at least a zone or three?  why not give us all bikini armor?

PS.  I'd totally love to see a tier set named after VS.  Talk about "expose armor" and all that. 

Small update

Hi readers.
Just wanted to give a small update on how things are going with me.  I spent most of the night last night doing laundry so when i did get to play, it wasnt to heal on my shaman or to finally spec my druids.  no, it was to get on my paladin, Devynity, and run through ZG for the two mounts.  gotta say it was kinda fun for two people.  my girlfriend came along.  im glad she got to "discover" how hard some of these things can be.  enjoy it cos that's how some fights are like later on in raids.  but anyway, every boss has their own "mechanic" and so we walked into ZG without much knowledge of anything (only i knew about the healing) and walked away with the annoyed look of dont-ever-wanna-do-that-again.

but it was great to see my gf yell ohshit so many times... until she realized somewhere halfway... that she should just get used to it and deal with the consequences when it comes.  as paladins, we had plenty of tools to overcome both of the boss encounters. it was an experience in learning not to panic and learning to queue up your countermoves should you need to.

and that's essentially what we did.  i went as ret and my gf went as prot.  we walked up to the raptor boss and promptly hacked and slashed him down.  then i realize i should be attacking the raptor first.  sure thing.  next, we had to deal with the fears, which was fine.  wait til it wears off, heal to recover and then continue burning him down.  it became almost clockwork after the... fifth fear.  then on the sixth fear, we aggroed a group.  panic again, but this time it wasnt so bad.  my gf got aggro and i slowly burned the adds down one by one before i went back to the boss.  my heals were expensive, but after about two hits, i was back to full mana.  so it wasnt so bad.  finally, the raptor boss died but he didnt give up his mount.  /sad

the zulian tiger boss was next to go down, but he had goons.  so i figured it would be much better for me to go in as holy (which may or may not have sped things up).  my gf stay prot to tank all three of them.  it was fine in the beginning, but i was surprised how fast her health was going down.  i was spamming exorcism and casting holy shock and judgement on cooldown.  my Word of Glory was used to heal us primarily, but sometimes i had to use holy shock to heal.  we burned the bosses down slowly, but it took us a while to time the attacks so that they would all die close to the same time.  there were about five ressurections, so it did take us a while to get it down.  my gf had a good time learning to read nameplates to switch targets, and for once, burning down bosses isnt the priority here.  the priority is in switching targets, interrupting heals and staying alive over the course of a long fight.  because really, if every fight was tank and spank, who'd want to play wow?  anyway, no tiger.  /sad

tonight, we're gonna go to kara to kill attumen and midnight... to get midnight.
and then we're headed off to magister's terrace for some more really hard "know your shit" kinda fights. that, and to get a chance at the white hawkstrider and pet phoenix.
and then... one more... ravenlord mount from heroic sethekk halls.
hopefully, someone forms a "for the horde" raid too.

now, all i have to do is read up on how to get the kara key....

CONGRADUATION!!

Grats to my girlfriend, who started playing WoW about two months ago, on finally getting her first toon to 80.  Krisseven (yes, the seventh Kriss) hit 80 just last night while on her way to the Storm Peaks to meet me for a quest.  well, i got about 25% left to go on my 79 shaman, so we'll be running more dungeons for more gear shortly.  she'll probably end up like my latest three 80s, without any emblem gear since we'll not need them any time soon.  she'll end up loading up on gear from ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR... and anywhere else.  DPS should increase nicely from 1.5k to 2.5k.  OR, she will play her alts and forget she even had an 80.

Okay i lie.  One of my 80s, Devynity, used his emblems to buy pvp gear.  boooooo!  it will all be going to waste anyway.  but it was fun while it lasted. but really tho, i dont know why, at this time, anyone would want to spend any justice points on anything.  perhaps just to be ok geared for leveling in the next expansion, but im pretty sure the ilevel 200 stuff would suffice.  im all for delayed gratification.  my gf thinks im crazy when, for instance, i eat the best stuff last.  she eats dessert first, btw. 

One other thing i noticed while DPS-ing with my paladin, the longer the fight, the higher the dps.  it is really because it takes forfucking ever to build up combo points.  Crusader strike, 4 seconds, crusader strike, 4 seconds, crusader strike, TV!!!!!!! of course, in between CS i judge and watch out for insta-free TV and Art of War procs.  but even that gets kinda dull.  i miss the old FCFS style of play.  =[

again, GRATZ!!!!

Shaman going LMN-tal

So there i stand at Death's Rise, looking out into the Northern Sea, wondering, why the hell does it take so long for me to kill something, anything, even a shark?

Then i look to the island that is my bane for the past several hours.  wondering why everyone likes standing so close to each other and why there are so many humans with flying mounts just merrily flying around, watching and waiting for someone to come along so they can double--no, triple team them to death.  I know my healing is great, and i can survive groups of five or six mobs at once.  i'll heal mysel through it, do a shock every chance i get, and drop searing or nova totem when they drop.  but that takes time.  it takes minutes.  nay.... tens of minutes to go through my quest objectives.  it is fine when i play with my girlfriend. she grabs everyone on the shore and dps them down by the time i throw her my first heal.  but without her, it takes forever.  sure, i probably have more survivability than she, but i dont have any way of actually dispatching, incapacitate, or disable any of my attackers in a short time.  my battles are all battles of attrition.

and then, only after 78 battles did it ever dawn upon me that i basically have the same gear any other elemental shaman would have for his gear, bsides +Hit, of course.  everything else was basically the same. So at that very moment, i went LMN-tal.  and it was good.  my healing sucked, but i realized that maybe faster questing would benefit me and my gf.  instead of relying on her to always kill the mobs, i can suppliment the dps with my own dps and we can kill things twice as fast.  although i still do have to make the occassional heal, it isnt as obtrusive as i imagined.  there will still be some fights where i would prefer to spec into restoration, but for general questing, some of these abilities rock my socks. 

78 levels of restoration, basically.  78 levels of doing nothing but healing and i figured i might as well get a second spec, its only 100gold now!

and after playing 78 levels of Resto, i've come to realize just how awesome elemental is.  it is, indeed, LMNOP. 

get it?  OP?
yea dumb joke.  okay but yes....... i can do damage now!  gimme some quests to do. dailies would be great!

What happened to Paladin Schmaladin?

UPDATE: They're back!  have a good day everyone!
____________________________________________________

Today's a slow day.  and when slow days happen (believe me, it doesnt happen often anymore), i tend to browse through all the blogs i usually visit.  Well today i caught up on a bunch of blogs but when i finally tried to read blogs on Paladin Schmaladin, i was shown this:

I have two requests.
1. if anyone knows what happened, please reply.  that site has been a great resource for paladins for so long, its sad to see it go.  maybe they're purging all the old guides. who knows.

2. can someone please show me how to put borders on my pictures? this editor isnt the greatest, but i'd like a definite separation between my blog's background and a gif/jpg i put up.

Thanks all!

I have done zilch on my 80s

I just wanted to say that, for about the past month or two, i have done zilch, zero, nada on my 80s. 

This is in part due to getting my girlfriend to play.  Now she has several characters, six of them being bloodelf warlocks.  But she does enjoy playing her paladins.  yes, with an S.  There are several classes she does get bored of though.  She doesnt like hunters and elemental shamans.  she likes the melee classes more but sometimes goes and plays her mage.  even as a mage, she casts things in melee.  no really.  that's how you know she's one of those up-close and personal (or in-your-face, depending on perspective) kinda people.  She now has a rogue which has leveled past 50 in about a week.  she's into combo points and stuff (which i really hate, and hate even more now that it has infected other classes), being sneaky, backstabbing folks, etc.  she's dual spec'ed assassination and subtlety (which, after about two hours of practice, she is able to pronounce that word correctly). 

"so i am trying out my subly spec"
"its suttleteeeee".
"so anyway, subaly is.."
"SUT-TLE-TY"
"yea subably is great"

Anyway, lets talk about her two paladins.
One is level 78, almost 80.  We're getting there.  The paladin is paired with my shaman, who's a healer.  and i figured i could have simply dual spec'd Resto/Elem and not have to deal with gear changes much.  She's dual spec'd Tank/DPS on the paladin.  Preferring tanking more since somehow, it does more dps. odd or what?  the only problem is that she's never seen many of these dungeons in northrend before, so playing with guys who have played for years is difficult, mainly because no one wants to wait.  if that was me, i'd let the anxious dps die.  actually i do let them die since i heal on my shaman.  Healing on the shaman is quite fun actually.  i dont bubble spam. i dont rejuv spam. i only have one shield, my HoT has a cooldown and my AoE heal is limited due to a long casting time and proximity issues.  which allows me to THINK.  =]  Thank you bliz on this one!

The second paladin is a Holy/Tank.  More tank, less holy.  about level 50 just waiting for paladin #1 to ding. She's liking the healing but does have mobility issues due to not having a shield/rejuv like mechanic, which stays on the targets even when she's not in LOS.  I did install Vuhdo for her so things got a lot easier (the easiest being the ability to tell who really needs a heal) since she's able to see the health bars better and can tell who has aggro.  Unlike me, she's into the whole combo point/holy power thing.  for healing, its just holy shock, holy shock, holy shock, word of glory.  that's half of the healing.  the other half is Holy Light spam.  that's it.  i've been trying to get her to use her "hand" spells more but often, they're not needed until level 80. and even then, some people still do not know how to use their spells. but i digress.....

Anyway, so there's an update about me and my gf.  we're going to level our DK's next.  im blood tanking and she's unholy dps (and still wonders why she's doing 2k dps while her paladin, 6 levels higher, is only doing 1k dps.  my opinion: dumb combo points).  we're early 70s getting queues for AN and OK, if that gives you some kinda perspective. 

And so, this is why for the past two months i've basically neglected all my 80s.  It is not why i havent been posting much, however.  This is due to moving to a new job environment.  Im doing the same thing, just with another team of people (old boss retired, they wanted to keep me in the company so i had to work for another team).  Different location too!  I'm in the edge of the financial district in San Francisco.  Awesome place to be in the early mornings.  there's about three coffee shops on every block. and my new team is giving me a lot more to do, so less time blogging.  I'll also get to those Patch 4.0.1 changes when i can, but i've been playing more on my shaman to try to get him to 80 these past two weeks that i havent really been able to really write about any other class.  oh, and they took away treeform. it almost makes me want to close this blog.

Anyway, im hoping my posting pattern doesnt drop off like it did in october. Six.  SIX POSTS!!! grrrr.

Post Patch 4.0 Musings - Resto Shaman

I am bored.


I really am.  Of all the changes made to every class (some catastrophic, others not so much) i find that the shaman falls into the category of not so much. 

What i did before the patch:
On me - water shield and earthliving weapon.
On tank - earth shield.
I am missing a few totmes.  but that's ok.  my elementals are there.  my bloodlust is there.  i'm missing the tidal something waves spell that gives my spells crit in emergencies. but that's fine.  now its a little more built into a talent so that if my guy's low on health, i do some auto-crits anyway.   that takes the thinking out of that. They played around with my healing waves a bit.  now i dont even use lesser healing wave.  or that instant spell they gave me that ate up my mana (kinda like what every healer gets now, right?).  No, now all i use is riptide and healing wave.  greater healing wave is new to me and is added for those ohsht moments where i forget that we're in a dungeon. 

i am glad they took away a few buttons and gave me a few more that i'll never use.  but whatever. now i am back to healing almost exactly as i did in the previous patch.  the names of some spells might have changed, but the whole shaman healing mechanic remained relatively unchanged.

Before Patch:
Earth shield the Tank (or whoever).
Riptide for insta-heals (trigger tidal waves).
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
Riptide for insta-heals
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
repeat repeat repeat.

Sometimes i add in a chain heal if i feel like changing things up a bit.
Earth shield the Tank (or whoever).
Chain heal on lowest dps with most strategic position (trigger tidal waves).
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
repeat x2139482303.

After the Patch:
Please see above.



So what did change?

What i noticed first and foremost was that i never run out of mana.  actually, i am healing on my shaman at level 70 last week (currently 74) and i almost never go below 90% mana even at the most demanding of times.  my mana regen is almost off the charts.  its completely crazy. 

Second thing i notice is there's a lot less DKs tanking now.  THANK ELUNE!!!!  and when i do get a DK, they're actually tanks and not DPS wannabee making our lives harder bs crap shit bitch yadayada people who cant be assed to wait in queue. 
Oh wait, this post is about my shaman.  sorry.

Honestly, besides the addition of Greater Healing Wave and the removal of that one CD i almost never used and cant be assed to look it up, NOTHING has changed in regards to Shaman Healing.

Oh and my talents got wiped and several new talents were added, things were removed, etc etc etc.  if you want more resto shaman healing detialed stuff, find a resto shaman blog.  as far as i can tell, the talent trees were blah and the new healing mechanics are even blaher.  See why im bored now?

Post Patch 4.0 Musings - Intro

It has been about two weeks since we all received our can of whoopass haha learn2play patch and i feel a little overwhelmed still with all the new changes to every single friggin class there is.  so i guess this calls for a little series i would call Post Patch 4.0 Musings.  And it will be regarding pretty much every class i play. 

So i am thinking of first, since this is supposed to be a healing-centric blog, i would write a little about healing.  That's coming shortly.  also, since this supposed to be a blog about druid tree form whatever it is called now, i may as well do the dreaded deed and log on to my druid healer to relearn druid healing.

my schedule is pretty rough these past couple of weeks.  I work at a different office now, so my commute is completely different.  same company, same position, just different office.  i have a few more responsibilities and find that my downtime is very little apart from the long lunches with the coworkers or with clients.

i might have to stop playing for this weekend tho.  aparently it seems that all the quality players are stuck in the OC attending this thing called Blizzcon while im here at home stuck with stupid, idiotic and jerky players.  really, the quaility actually went down several notches AND the wait times have increased slightly for randoms.

yes this is a rant hidden within the guise of an "update".  anyway, lets hope my future posts arent full of rants, but actually full of useful info about Shamans, Druids, Paladins, Death Knights, Warriors, Mages, Warlocks, Priests and even rogues.  yes, rogues get a little love here and there too.  just dont expect me to write about huntards.  ugh.  /wrists.

okay enjoy your day and thanks for dropping by!

its past 11pm pacific time... and im still installing this patch.  =[

FML???  oh hell no.

im not that emo /wrists kinda guy.  practicing my peggle moves and stuffs. =P

The Rock

Last night i was tanking a bit and found myself looking for level 70 gear to tank with, as if i didnt already have the entire cobalt tanking set already. why not have a choice? maybe i do like a few more options to itemize my stats (yea i realize that BC plate gear is itemized for the pala and warrior tank and is not that much useful for the death knight that was introduced in Wrath). things like shield block and block rating ignored, there are some nice pieces for tanking.  i am especially looking for anything to compliment my cobalt set which includes a cape, rings, trinkets and a neck piece.  i dont understand why DK's do not get their actual tanking runeforge until level 72.  it was a bit of torture tanking Utgarde keep and Nexus between level 70 and level 71.  Even with the runeforge (Stoneskin gargoyle or Nerubian Carapace) tanking wasnt fun as i would get hit for a lot of damage often. 

Anyway, so i queued for various dungeons, including Shattered Halls, The Botanica, The Black Morass, The Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth. I think i skipped over Steamvaults because it didnt have anything exciting for me.

In ay case, of those five instances, i was given The Arcatraz.  things started off pretty easy at first.  I'd deathgrip the first group on the left, then the group on the right.  then i took the middle group along with the mutation.  Easy enough.  Then we got the big mutation thing and we took care of that easily.  I dont understand how previous runs resulted in wipes at this point.  but in previous runs, i was not the tank, or the healer. I was merely dpsing.  this was several months ago on my paladin.  in any case, we cleared pretty much everything without incident until the last room, where the healer decided to go afk.  then we wiped and healer left.  an insignificant dps left as well.   This left us with top dps shadow priest and second top dps mage.  The priest decided to switch to healing so we moved on to take out the trash mobs.  In the last room, there are several difficult mob encounters, but they can be pulled separately.  firstly, there's two groups of two satyrs immediately inside the room, with a patrolling infernal.  you can aggro the inferal without aggroing the two groups of satyrs.  and that's exactly what i did.  the inferno is probably the funnest fight due to it casting meteor strike.  simple watch the ground around you to monitor if you're being targeted for meteor strike.  if you see red fire ripples around you, move.  thats it. it gets tough when tanking because i really dont know who is being targetted.

The drill is simple.  tank until he casts meteor.  move to position 2.  he casts meteor again, move back to position 1.  the problem occurs when there's four people and two of them have pets.  or in our case, one mage caster with a pet.  sometimes they get targetted.  what we did was set the mage's pet to stand at a certain spot.  if he tanks the hit, then great!  if the mage gets targetted, he moves to the priest.  if the priest gets targetted, he moves to the mage.  if the tank gets targetted, he moves somewhere.  after dying several times to this (since there are two infernals in that room) we finally downed them.  having just the tank and the healer made it easy (albiet long) to complete since meteor can only hit one of two people.  plus, with PWS up, we both can withstand a meteor hit.  however, it will usually leave us with about 10% health so a quick heal is needed after the meteor strike.  i continued to use vampiric blood whenever i can (1 minute cd) and IBF in between (really not sure if meteor strike is physical or magic damage or both). 

In any case, with that fun part out of the way.... we went in and one-shot the boss.  many would remember this fight as being a fight with three semi-bosses and then one boss that sometimes mind controls and will make copies of himself (twice) during the fight.  each copy needs to be killed.  overall, it took several minutes with one mage dpsing.  but we did, in the end, kill Skyriss.  simple encounter.

So no real post with content today.  im just telling a story of victory over nerfed content!

I'd Tap That

I play a warlock from time to time.  Actually, i play three warlocks from time to time.  I used to have it so that each of the three would have different specs.  Akeelah on Ravenholdt is affliction and goes apeshit with the affliction spells.  Rivendale, another Ravenholdt resident, is spec'd for demonology and tops meters 75% of the time running through outlands.  he should be 65 or 66 right now and enjoys the aoe goodness of metamorphesis+rain of fire.  he doesnt enjoy the soulfire procs as things die so fast by the time he is done casting the spell, the boss is already dead.  El Segundo, (the second, as in, my second character) is actually Elsegundo from Shadowmoon and rocked Destro, until one day i logged on him and found out that his talents were reset.  I promptly made him demonology that day since i cant friggin remember how to spec as destro. 

In any case, when im instancing, playing around on my locks, i find myself doing a lot of tapping. Life Tap is one of those spells unique to warlocks, where we take some HP and turn it into MP.  sounds reasonable.  sounds awesome actually.  mana regen? who needs that when you can have lifetap!  its an awesome idea actually. i get all the benefit of having a full mana bar, able to dps and get things done without having to slow down for a drink or to wand things down. When im questing outside of instances, i also use lifetap. this is mainly because i know for sure i will be getting life back through corruption and sometimes drain life.  why only sometimes? because corruption's life draining ability is good enough for me. after every fight, i can, if i choose to, bandage or eat.  its pretty simple.  and foods/bandages often give me health quickly as compared to drinking for mana recovery. 

but you say, mobs are attacking me, why would i lifetap?  because i have fear.  i have howl of terror.  and in dire straights, i have deathcoil (which is 200% cooler than the death knight's death coil, btw).  what do all these spells offer me?  one, fleeing mobs grab more mobs so i can drain more life, gain more exp, and run around to collect loot.  second, they offer me a little bit of breathing room to regain mana, lifetap and apply my dots.  i often go around and pick up at least four mobs for this to be anywhere effective.  demonologist, i suggest you activate soul link. affliction locks have a bunch of talents that make draining life super easy. destro locks?  sorry, you guys are drinking. play like a mage, drink like a mage. thats your punishment.

So when should you lifetap?
Lifetap between spells.  yes.  please.  i hate healing warlocks who dont lifetap between spells.  i dont mind the lifetap, really i dont.  the less you have to drink, the faster we get through our instance. but the problem lies in this, i've finished drinking and ready for the next pull.  then the lock decides to lifetap.  like wtf?  it also happens at the end of the fight, when im low on mana and im drinking.  they lifetap and wait.  they dont sit to eat. nothing.  im drinking so you drink.  please. its only polite. 

For affliction locks, there's a lull when it comes to casting.  when?  when you're waiting for haunt to fall off, or when you're waiting to refresh unstable affliction.  sure i might fill in that wait with a shadowbolt since you do want to keep your improved shadowbolt debuff up, but lifetap dammit.  dont wait.  just do it. i tap right before i get my haunt back.  really?  yea.  it works awesome.

For demonology locks, you're working a different set of spells.  try to get it in there somewhere. you dont get a nice health return like from Haunt. but you do get some health back.  demo locks are a little more reliant on the healer to heal us tho, so remember when a good time to tap would be.  during the fight.  this is when the healer is able to toss you a renew, or a rejuvenate, or a riptide before they go back to healing the tank.  it flows for them.

what i find in instances is that warlocks dont lifetap as often as i'd like them to.  not only that, when they do lifetap, they do it at the most inconvenient times.
1. tap during combat, in between spells and upon anticipation of a big heal from Haunt.  if you do this right, you wont have any mana or health problems. any gaps in health will be covered by the healer. 
2. tapping after a battle will annoy your healer (ie. me) because i would have already evaluated everyone's health and, after topping everyone off, would have started to drink.  if you lifetap now, chances are i wont heal you until the next pull.  why? because i dont know if i have "extra" healing to spare.  actually, whats more the case is that i dont have time.  i have to first shield/hot/buff the tank first, then i can go to the lock and heal you. and by then, you're in need to life tap again because you're now low on mana.  that's just how it goes.  its kinda like a domino effect here. 
3. same as #2, dont lifetap right before a pull.  it annoys me as now im thinking, crap, this guy might die. and you might just die.  please dont do that.  tap when its safe.  tap when you know you're getting health back from your spells first and foremost.
4. dont take it personally when you dont get heals.  eat a health stone.  cast corruption on everyone.  drain life.  if it stifles your dps, know that this is because you're bad at managing mana/tapping.  its your fault and only your fault. 
5. run with the mentality that you dont need the healer to heal you all the time.  again, you have health stealing spells at yoru disposal.  use them.  when you're sitting there at 100% health, those spells are wasted.  why? because they're not healing you.  you cant have more than 100% health.  so tap once, get it refilled, tap again.  easy isnt it?

im just rambling now.  life tap is your friend.  it helps you dps longer.  please use it.  but use it wisely.  weave it into your rotaions.  dont drop to 0% mana and tap all at once.  that's annoying.  especially if im healing you.  it shows you dont know how to manage your mana.  its a game within a game.  if you dont find it fun then maybe you should have been a mage, or a hunter. anyway, that's really all i have to say. 

oh and to the druid who said that his mana pool is not my mana pool, a big middle finger to you.  then dont heal me.  i can heal myself.  no im not writing this blog entry just because of one experience with a bad healer who doesnt know that healing me = less healing overall.  but im writing this because some people still dont know how to life tap, or dont know when to life tap.  last straw was when i was in an instance with two locks, both of which likes to tap at the end of a fight.  grrrrrr. 

anyhow, heal the lock.  lock does more damage (instead of just standing there with zero mana or wanding).  things die faster.  when things die faster, i dont have to heal the tank as much.  i dont have to heal the melee's collateral damage as much.  i can start to regen out-of-combat mana earlier.  i will drink less.  i will finish the instance faster.  i, as a healer, would love to heal locks who lifetap.  i dont know why others dont. its stupid.

How to be a Great DK

As DPS.

Because if you dont look like a bear, or have a shield, you shouldnt be a tank.  jk.


But really though, here are some things to always look out for when doing dps in five mans or whatevers.

1. Use Anti-Magic Shell. Often.
It absorbs magic damage around you and give you runic power in return (for more death coils, mind freezes, and gargoyles).  what's not to like about this ability?
It eases the strain on healers healing multiple people through magic AoE damage.  they'll really like you for it.  trust me i would.  unless they're bored.  yes, then they'd want everyone to take some damage so they can heal and act somewhat useful.
What else does it do?  it keeps you from having to run for your life in certain situations. Boss is casting an AoE blast (Loken, anyone?) what do you do?  run away?  no.  you cast anti-magic shell and anti-magic his ass. note, do this for the second blast, since the first one doesnt hit that hard. anyway, overall, this improves your dps.  you want that dont you?  go you.

2. Use Icebound Fortitude. Same reason above.
When things get hairy and the tank cant keep up with the 8th add to the pull, you IBF and tank it for him for a second.
When an "engineer" decides to toss you a land mine or bomb, or when mana wyrms blow up when they die, IBF. 
When a boss decides to whirlwind and you want to stand in it for an extra few seconds.  IBF.

3. Learn to Death Grip.
No i do not mean learn to press death grip when you see a mob.  anyone can do that.  what i mean is learn when you should use it. 
Use it to grip a caster the tank doesnt have aggro on.  stand close to the tank and deathgrip a caster.  if you place yourself right, the caster should be standing right in front of the tank.  of course, you'll grab aggro for a sec, but any smart tank can see you just did him a favor and will taunt it off you or hit it off you.  or mind freeze the caster and he will eventually fall to the tank's AoE attacks eventually anyway.  end result?  you look awesome.  healer doesnt get aggro. everyone thinks you're "pro". 
death grip a mob who's running to the healer (whose purpose is to bash said healer's face in, ofc). sometimes this saves your healer and will give your tank some valuable time to grab the mobs back.  always remember that you're using this spell to "guide" the mobs back to the tank. 
One thing to remember about death grip is that it interupts casting.  meaning, that healer who's about to heal the whole part is almost done casting Greater Super Prayer of Healing.  what do you do? you're too far away to do a mind freeze (more on this later), and you're out of runes.  Deathgrip will kill the cast. 

4. Mind Freeze Casters, especially healers
You can often tell when a mob is casting.  they have casting animations.  you can also tell, from experience, who the healers are in a group.  always save your runic power, at least 20, for situations like this where there are healers, or casters who casts mana burn, or casters who will do some AoE damage... oh and of course those casters who like to polymorph random party members.  Some even work on the boss. It doesnt hurt to try.  These interrupts can be a life saver.  sometimes, its just there to speed things up.  the less a mob healer heals their party, the less time you need to spend killing.  the less a mob casts mana burn, the less time you have to wait for the healer to drink.  see how that works?  When that first boss in Ramps yell, Heal Me!! Quickly!!  you turn to his lackeys and hit Mind Freeze.  no more heals. 
The above advice also works with Strangulate. It does the same thing but has two big differences.  one, it can be cast at range.  and two, it lasts for 5 seconds. oh and it costs 1 red rune instead of 20 runic power.

5. Use your Cooldowns.
Wait, dont you mean IBF and AMS? you already mentioned that in 1 and 2. 
No, i mean the other ones. Blood dps have Hysteria.  Use it on yourself, or the top dps to make his dps even more uber.  Frost Dps should all have unbreakable armor.  its has a strength boost similar to a trinket.  use it.  use it in conjunction with your trinkets.  use it in conjunction with Blood Lust.  Use it, use it, use it!  Unholy Dk's use your bone shield to gain more attack power, use your pet's frenzy if you have it. These are all spells used to increase dps.  use them!!

6. Use your Resets.
Most DK's only have two.  Rune Tap resets a blood rune one cooldown and makes it a death rune... to be used for ANYTHING.  if your spells dont work, its because all of your runes are on cooldown.  this spell will give you one rune back to be used for anything.  use it.
Empowered rune weapon.  this is even better.  it resets all your friggin runes. come on now.  whats not to like?

7. Use your Final Talent Tree Abilities.
Blood Dks have dancing rune weapon.  Unholys have a gargoyle.  Frost has... well nothing really.  but they're so awesome they dont need a stupid pet weapon killing things.
Anyway use those.  the talent points are spent, so use the abilities already. 


There.  Hopefully this list will help the OK DPS DK, doing uber dps and all, topping the charts dk , hopefully it will help him to actually learn to play his class.  hoepfully.

Rotations

There's this one blog that i love reading.  The guy who writes it is pretty entertaining.  but he speaks truth even in an entertaining form.  he's a little over-the-top when it comes to explaining things.  but hey, it gets the point across.


so from Jong and Forbearace comes this:

What are you doing "thinking" about your rotation anyways? It should be like breathing. Do you sit there consciously observing the intricacies of inhale/exhale mechanics? It should just float off your finger tips while you tend to the real task: orchestrating the efforts of clueless scrubs running around flopping they arms.

So with rotations, live it. breathe it.  make it roll off your fingers without even thinking.  go to the target dummies and spend 10 minutes a day there.  watch your dps meter and adjust if you want to, just to see if you can gain more dps.  you'll do two things here.  you'll hone your rotations to maximize damage on your own (and not from a website) and you'll train your fingers to press the right buttons at the right time all the time.  when it comes time to top dps in instances, you'll have that muscle memory working for you.

remember to switch it up.  that's the main thing.  people dont take the time to put different spells in to spice up their rotations. and sometimes, that results in an increased dps you never knew you could have done.  some will argue that you have to do it in the instances for it to be "real" since that's where it counts.  but i find that doing it at the target dummies make it much much easier to transfer all that newfound skill into the "real" world. 

and its always good to go back to the target dummies every 10 levels while leveling since you're always learning new spell and abilities as you're leveling. And every time you upgrade gear sets at 80 (or even one or two upgrades, since they offer bonuses or stats that may alter your rotations for maximum dps).

just a reminder to visit the dummies.  i love dummies anyway.

Monday Report - Outlands: Halfway mark

It's Monday and I just want to update my two or three followers out there about the happenings of WoW and stuff for me and my gf.

This weekend we got our deathknights to level 66-67. We've been going through dungeon after dugneon trying to get some very nice gear but unfortunately, things arent going that well.  Neither of us got the boots from Ramps (tho we both have hellreavers and the belt).  i could never get quagmaron to drop the chest piece so im stuck buying fel iron chestpiece from the AH.  quest reward items and green drops have been sucking lately as well.  my gf has a bit more luck with drops tho.  she's got matching chest and pants from some dungeon.  What we're trying to get are shoulderpads, boots, a new sword or hammer, and a nice chestpiece for me.  Sucks. but oh well.  with all the gemming we do to the new gear (note that these gems are from the Wrath expansion and not the Burning Crusade expansion) we are pretty over-geared for the content we do, even if we dont have all the gear we want. and this is the sole reason why i see level 65s do 600-1000 dps in dungeons.  back when the burning crusade was the only expansion, the gems that you can place in these slots werent so hot, but helped anyway.  seeing 600 dps was the cream of the crop.  but now, seeing 600 dps is the standard.  anyone below that?  we know they dont know how to really "play" their class.

anyway, with the list of rewards slowly going obsolete in four levels (and it is very important to a tank, as every tank that i took personally to northrend who wasnt geared in northrend items usually died in two to three hits, with any pulls that had more than 3 mobs obliterating each and every one of those tanks) i think its a good time to save a little bit of cash to buy up cobalt bars.  i'll also have to get someone to craft the entire cobalt set.  actually i've been looking since two nights ago and can only find the gloves (since the material costs to make it is low, people usually make tons of these to level up their profession, not knowing that other pieces will sell for a lot more). 

Since its a whole set, im probably going to buy up the cobalt bars i need and tip a BSer to make the items for me.  they will fill in nicely at level 70.  i dont think i want to tank anything in northrend until i actually get this set.  i've healed some squishies in UK and Nexus before, and those were people who had really nice gear from outland. and they're squishy in northrend. seriously they are. 

in any case, back to outland talk.  we've just opened up Escape from Durnholde. Hopefully we'll find a group for this during the weeknights.  I know a lot of people dont bother to do the quest to open up these instances, but how many more times can someone go through mana-tombs and sethekk halls before they rip their eyes out?  durnholde, and the followup dungeon Black Morass, will help break up the monotony. actually i kinda want to do tempest keep stuff before we hit 70, but seeing that these dungeons are 70, i might end up skipping them.  sucks for a tank, because tanks need to be able to soak up the damage the mobs deal.  but we'll work on it. 

doing the higher level dungeons will probably be a lot of fun.  its not a breeze like northrend, really.  what i mean is that these dungeons are still "hard" if you dont come to it with your full attention.  i actually would rather just do instances for content rather than gear. so these instances will still be on my list of to-do even while im past level 70.  actually, my paladin, Devynity, was still doing tempest keep and magisters terrace at level 74 (which i think, is the last level i can queue up for those dungeons.  sad but yea).

okay, so coffee is kicking in now and hopefully i'll have more to say a little later on today. so there, we're about halfway through all of outland's dungeons. we barely scratched the outland contenent itself, but we're slowly getting there.  in any case, six instances explored, about eight more to go.  gonna write more later, hopefully. 

Compliments

Just to think, i thought my tanking kinda sucks cos of all the stupid things that keep the tank sapped, disarmed, or feared. and then i get this...

I was actually complimenting the healer as he never let me drop below 50% health.  okay maybe once but that was due to a bad patrol running around.

keep on tanking?  hell yea!

now all i gotta do is figure out why dks have bad rep.... ha!

DK Blood Tanking Lv 60

Death Knight Tanking So Far

So my girl and i decided to make death knights!  i already have several death knights.  Unholy Tank, Frost DPS, and some others i got bored with.  What i find most interesting is the whole experience of tanking at level 60, and then turning around and healing other DK tanks at the same level.  Here is my experience so far.

Death Knight's POV
Here i am standing at the entrance of Ramparts, level 60, with brand new spells like Death and Decay.  I dont have all the talents i need yet to be effective (and when i say effective, i mean super good that everyone praises me and stays in hopes that i queue up again).  But i do have enough points to do what i need to do.

Preface:  There are talents in every tree for tanking, and in the first tier.  these talents should be used by all tanks at level 60, even if it keeps us from the juicy Howling Blast talent.  These talents are easy to get, as they're in the first tier of each tree.  Blood tree, get Blade Barrier. Frost tree, get Toughness.  Unholy tree, get Anticipation.  These talents are there for every Dk to easily get so they can tank effectively in any spec they choose.

I am spec'd in blood so i have some of the juicy self-healing spells that totally rock.  i also have the DK's version of the warrior's last stand.  I am sooooo hoping for icebound fortitude soon (warrior version is shield wall), which will reduce the damage taken by about 40%.  since i dont have defense rating, i'll need to glyp it, but i already have my two glyph slots filled (dilemas!!!) with Death Strike and Vampiric Blood.  I should probably get rid of the DS glyph. its more damage anyway.  I was thinking of replacing it with Rune Strike, but +10% crit "can" help, but not really if my main concern is just to hold aggro and stay up.

My blood tree is filled with talents that improve my survival, increases my runic regeneration, and gives me nifty tools to regain lost health.  it does not include any extra crit, but i do have the 2-hand weapon talent.  more damage is, actually, more threat.  but im more concerned about survival. 

I've also gone ahead and put 5 points in the frost tree in Toughness and 5 points in Unholy tree in Anticipation.  These are the bread and butter of tanking, but it does require 10 points spent elsewhere, and early on.  optimally, we'd want to spend those 10 points after we fill up 51 points in our main tree.  but for tanking, im at 40/5/5 instead of 50/0/0.  Since i only have 40 points in Blood, one juicy tanking talent (the one that reduces damage if im lower than 35% health, i forgot the name) is missing.  Imagine being a Frost tank, and not having howling blast (a staple) until level 70 because we have to spend 5 points in blood and 5 points in unholy first.  that sucks for frost tanks (unless they skip Blade Barrier and Anticipation to fill them up between 60-70). 

I am now building up my unholy tree and hopes to get a shorter cooldown/CD on Death and Decay and longer disease durations.  As of right now with zero points in Morbidity, i find that if DPS are decent, we will kill a group about 10 secnods before my DnD is refreshed.  What i'd like, is for the DnD to be available immediately after killing one group, so that i can use it on the next, or that i can use it again should there be adds. 

What i also find is that tanking is not as smooth as dps.  every pull requires Death and Decay.  why?  because of Disarms.  that's correct. for those who have never tanked Ramps, it is an annoyance for many tanks due to the mob's disarm effect.  they will "disarm" me for several seconds.  in which time, i am unable to attack much (but i do punch!) so having DnD down to maintain aggro is a great tool.  I cant imagine tanking without some AoE tool that will allow me to hold aggro until i get my sword back. and once i do get my sword back, i get disarmed again after a hit.  its quite annoying, but im still doing my job.  oh how i miss DPS.  i never get disarmed and my rotations are always as smooth as silk.

Positioning: In terms of positioning, Ramps is quite a challenge.  Every group is spread apart OK, with very little wiggle room to move around.  Not only that, there are patrols roaming around.  If those patrols arent dispatched properly, they can aggro during a fight (and not only the patrols, but also the group standing close enough to the patrols, so then you'll be dealing with two GROUPS of adds, instead of just one).  what i try to do is face the mobs to the side so my back is usually against the wall.  this offers lots of camera angling and zooming just to be able to see around me, but it keeps me and the DPS from "butt" pulling the next group. To butt pull, simply walk backwards into a group.  They will notice your butt and spank it.

This "buttpull" happens a lot with new tanks, actually.  They seem to not realize that when they charge into a group of mobs, the melee dps needs to stand BEHIND the mobs they're tanking.  in so doing, there is a possibility that the DPS will aggro a new group.  This is stupid play and all tanks should learn to move the group of mobs to a safer spot in order for the dps to actually stand behind the mobs.  now if you have only ranged dps, where the tank faces sometimes does not matter.  The tank still needs to be able to face the group to see if there are mobs running to chew on the healer or ranged dps.  but i find this practice uncommon in the many instances i've been in lately. 

Although it seems like i can handle two groups of mobs at a time, i usually try to keep it to one group only.  the reason for this is that i do not have all my cooldowns yet, my rune usage is wonky, i dont have rune strike until level 66 and i do feel a bit squishy.  When am i not squishy?  when i never dip below 35% health (this is when Mik's Scrolling Combat Test chimes me that im low in health).  But when the healer constantly has to work to keep me up, i know that im taking a lot of damage.  Whats strange is that i've healed many dk tanks similar to me and it felt just fine.  my mana usage was decent, my heals were flowing nicely, and i rarely had to use Nature's Swiftness emergency spell.  But when it comes down to me tanking, i have this irrational idea that if i dip too low in health, i shouldnt tank (maybe this is due to countless heroics where i've tanked, and kept many tanks up where we're never below 50% health unless somoeone screwed up bad). 

Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts on level 60 tanking.  it sucks.  i dont know how people do it. 

I Heart Shields

i like shields.  i really do.  they make life a little easier when it comes to healing.  now i havent played holy paladin healing much (since he's holy pvp, and i do mainly pve crap) but i have played the other classes.  what i find most awesome is that each class has its own version of a shield, whether it seems like it or not.
I'm writing this because i have been thinking about the differences in playing styles between my druid (which i love love love) and my shaman, as well, with my priest and my paladin.  heck, throw in my death knight and warlock (because they can heal themselves!) and we'll have a nice healing party.  i'll bring the kungaloosh.

Lets start with the obvious, priest's Power Word: Shield. I wonder if there are any other "Power Word" spells.  anyway, this is the obvious shield, with disc getting a secondary shield as well.  this shield rocks my socks and it does exactly as it says, it shields.  damage taken is damage absorbed.  makes sense right?

The second shielding type of healer is the paladin.  his shield absorbs damage as well. but it also increases healing on the target with the shield with this thing called a HoT.  like the shield above, it lasts for a certain amount of time or until the shield is completely used.

The third class with a shield is the shaman.  now his shield acts a little different because it shields the person kind of.  what it does is each time it gets whacked, it heals the bearer of the shield by a certain amount.  its not as effective as the priest shield with its "partial" absorb, but it has one thing the other shield doesnt have: longevity. it lasts for quite a while, and only needs to be refreshed when the shield runs out of charges.  whether it has 8 charges or 2 charges, the heal per hit will be exactly the same.  only limitation is that this shield only works on one person, per shaman, at a time.

The last type of shield isnt really a shield at all.  it comes from the awesome tree druids and they call it rejuvenation.  this spell is an inexpensive heal over time spell that simply exists.  if your "shielded" party member gets hit, it will kick in once every three seconds to heal him back up.  if the party member doesnt take any damage, it overheals, but its waste is neglegible (liken unto a shield that doesnt get used up).

people will argue that the druid talent living seed can be this shield. i find it lacking the very basic concept of a shield.  the fact that it only plants by chance makes it unreliable.  with all the other spells, the shield can be cast at-will, barring any cooldowns or debuffs.  although living seed may seen like a great "sheild" type spell, its very situational and would probably be considered a proc heal that may or may not be used.  what?  well what if the tank gets a living seed proc, awesome! but what if the tank is also at full health?  that next hit, whether it be blocked, parried, dodged, or taken, will still cause living seed to burst, thus wasting a good heal. i'd love living seed to go off if the tank were to die. that would rock.

but anyway, rejuv is a shield.  it is also a hot.  but it acts as the shield in many cases and tops people off nicely.  it is used in conjunction with swiftmend and nourish to blow away the competition.  it is the base for which druids get their healing bonus.  sounds like a sacred shield, power word shield and earthshield to me!

anyway, those are the shields in my life and i love them. 

Swift Backhand of Justice

The Swift Hand of Justice is a trinket.  It improves haste rating.

Like all other heirloom gear, the haste rating incrases as you level up.  Now imagine using this at level 20, healing through some very bad pugs.  this haste increase, at that level, does nothing for my cast time.  actually, my casting time is exactly the same unless i do a resurrection (which takes 9.9 whole seconds). 

At level 40 somewhere, i notice that my casting speed has increased by 0.1 seconds.  yay for haste improvements!!

so now my lesser healing wave takes 1.4 seconds. and my healing wave takes 2.4 seconds.
and its been sitting there ever since.  im now level 62 and i still dont see an improvement.

I know haste rating is great, but at lower levels, it doesnt do jack.  it isnt until much later on where i can actually see a difference in my cast time.  i know 50 haste at level 80 isnt a whole lot, but almost zero haste at level 20 sure doesnt help one bit. its illogical. haste doesnt work the same as spell power.  it doesnt work the same as stamina.  the scaling is different.  if the trinket gives me hast by percentage, then that would make sense.  i'd like a 15% haste to my spells at all levels.  that would rock.

Death Knight DPS Spec vs. Tanking Spec

Here's why i am writing this post:

GF: Hey which DK spec is for tanking?
Me: All of them.
GF: ???   What about DPS?
Me: All of them.
GF: What?
Me: It depends on the talents within each spec. 


So here's a picture i stole somewhere on the internet. it shows the basic Unholy DK DPS build that many people have agreed as good.  Well, i took it a bit futher and put yellow boxes around the talents an Unholy DK would pick if he were to tank as Unholy.  Then i crossed out some of the talents that's blatantly for dps (as in, no respectable tank would ever pick these talents. although there's some talents in the blood tree that needs to be "wasted" to get to improved runetap). 

Click Pic to Enlarge

Note that this is the level 80, single target (ie. bosses) talent spec.  leveling spec would be a little different but very much the same.  also the only different between this spec and an AoE spec is the switching of two talents.  otherwise, everything's the same.  note that for tanking, you'll need talents from every tree.  note also that some of your fun dps talents are crossed out.  this is because no tank needs a ghoul, and no tank needs a gargoyle.  those are strictly for dps.  since this is an unholy spec, you're also giving up some nice dps talents from the blood tree as well.  you still want 2hand swords, but you're going to give up some in bladed armor to jump to blood tap and improved blood tap. 

I can do this for the Blood tree and the frost tree as well, but since my GF is Unholy, i fugred this is the best way to explain so she'll have some idea what im talking about.  unholy dps is really good with the AoE dps.  I also find that Frost dps is great as well.  Blood dps is solid, but rather boring.  tanking, however, is a totally different game and requires a familiarity with your buttons and surroundings that requires a good proficiency in one of the three specs.  what i mean to say is, get good with one spec before you plan on tanking in that spec. 

So to debunk some common misconceptions (pre-cata, ofc)...

1. All specs can tank.

2. The difference between dps and tank are the talent choices within their relative tree.

3. Frost is not THE tanking spec.

4. Unholy DPS is the highest dps spec, for you.  this means that if you spec into all three specs, assuming skill level is the same, you'll do more dps as unholy.  This does not mean that i wont come by in my frost dps spec (and since my skill > your skill) and decimate your dps.  again, assuming the same skill level, unholy will do more dps.

The Kerning of Instances

Today's blog entry is on the kerning of instances and a brief update:

Brief update of this past weekend. Me and my gf went off and completed a few more instances of Dire Maul East to finally reached 58. My gf was sitting pretty at 59 but I wasn’t the bit worried.

We traveled to the dark portal the long way so she can pick up some flight paths along the way plus see some of the zones she'll probably never return to. we ran through swamp of sorrows and killed a few things. I honestly would never want to quest there again. I did it on my paladin not too long ago and hated most of the quests. Anyway, we entered the dark portal and was ushered into a whole new world full of demons fighting. it was a pretty awesome sight to see. that battle has been going on for ages, but to every new person passing through that portal, it is fresh and feels like things are happening as we speak (not 4 years ago). we then went through the intro quests and finally on to thrallmar where we collected blood, destroyed some tanks, killed a bunch of demons and broke nearly every demon teleports there are in Hellfire Peninsula. I wonder if HFP was actually a peninsula before the world got broken apart. hmmmmm...

After we took care of the bombing runs I decided to skip the quests in southern HFP (Spinebreaker post) simply because it’s a very crowded area full of mobs. it’s a busy zone. there were quite a few people leveling through that area, much more so than in azeroth. the reason for this is probably because in azeroth, there are various different zones of the same level and many of us are able to pick and choose which zones we'd like to quest in. not so with outland. everyone starts in hellfire peninsula. we're encouraged to play against each other. I like that idea. but I also like the idea of northrend, where there are two level 68-72 zones. and all the zones somehow kind of overlap. dragonblight isnt level 73, you can go there at 71 and still be okay. etc.

Now that we're both 62, I think we can go back to southern HFP and finish off some of the quests there. however, we really do not need to. we can just move on to the next two zones to play (Zangarmarsh and Terrokar forest, with terrokar just a smudge higher level than zangar).

Outland Instances and their Set up
Now in terms of instances, we went through quite a few over the weekend. I still do not have the kilt of rolling thunders, and my gf is still looking for the gloves from the maker in bf. I did end up with a nice belt. I got leather gloves from the first boss in underbog then saw it drop about five more times. I would love that totem for some more mana regen though. gf got the belt from the hydra and shoulderpads from the hunter. just gotta get the pants from the hunter next time around and the hammer from the hydra. I will run ramps again for the shaman pants. this works out because my gf can get the boots off the dragon boss too. she already has everything else she needs from that instance, hellreaver included.

So here we are sitting pretty at level 62. we've been here for four levels and have done four out of the six lower level instances in HFP. The other two are in mana tombs and auchenai crypts. but I think by the time we get to level 67, we'll be doing sethekk halls durnhold. Its somewhat sad to see this because there's quite a few more instances out there left to do. In Tempest keep, there's the Arcatraz, the Mechanar and the Botanica (think: the Exodar, but as three separate dungeons). Hellfire citadel has one last instance at level 70 called Shattered halls. Coilfang reservoir has one called Steamvault and Auchidon has one called Shadow Laberynth. Oh and lets not forget Caverns of time's The Black Morass. These are all level 68-70 instances that may be skipped. /sad

Here is the breakdown of dungeon clusters in Outland:

1. Hellfire Citadel: Ramparts & Blood Furnace (58-62), then Shattered Halls (70).

2. Coilfang Reservoir: Slave Pens & Underbog (60-64), then Steamvault (70).

3. Auchindon: Auchinai Crypt & Mana Tombs (64-66), then Sethekk Halls (67-69), then Shadow Laberynth (70).

4. Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde (66-67) and The Black Morass (68-69)

5. Tempest Keep: Arcatraz, Mechanar & Botanica (68-70).

There are also raids that are obsolete, but people do still run those from time to time.

So with this list up, I see things pretty spread out, having things for everyone to do at whatever level they might be. The problem for me is this: We're pretty much going to skip 7 or 8 of those instances. Forget all the ones I've marked as 70, since those will be skipped in favor of Utgarde keep, a level 68-72 instance in northrend. Also skip escape from durnholde and black morass since much of the population do not know how to unlock it, or wont be assed to do it even if they knew how. I will tho, I love those two for the same reason I like culling of stratholme. Theyre not a regular instance like everything else.

what I would love to see is that the level requirements for most of these instances reduced a bit. im sure these instances have been nerfed in the past, and so lowering the level requirement will only help for a bunch of people to actually see some of this stuff. I do want to do Shattered Halls, Steamvault, Shadow Lab and all of the Tempest Keep instances before I hit 70. My last level 80 did them all as well, but Devynity didn’t get to finish all of those instances until level 74. Yes, level 74. I remember fishing in Dragonblight waiting for the queue for Mechanar and Arcatraz to pop. Really? 74? come on bliz.

I want to see some of this stuff before im too high leveled for it. that's basically my point. I know, no one is stopping me from doing them now, or later. But the rewards they give don’t match up with what new content can give. This is the same for the transition between Azeroth and Outland. Stratholme, Scholo and BRS do not offer enough incentive to stay.

I know, there are people who do not have the expansions necessary and are limited. But in a day and age where I can simply check the AH for some Outland gear at level 58, even on a toon who's stuck maxed at 60, he can still wear some of this good stuff found in outland. Same with Northrend. I can check the AH if I don’t have the Wrath expansion and get some gear that can suppliment my tanking, dps, or healing. Heck, at level 70, I can get the Cobalt tanking set and tank all of outlands with it. it’s a lot better and can be easily made (since every BS has to make some of those items to level up).


Cata hopes:
What I am hoping to see in Cataclysm is that the instances don’t start at level 78. I would hope they start out at level 83. yes, 83… all so that people will be arsed to do the level 80 northrend instnaces as well as the harder icecrown citadel instances.

It would have made a lot of sense if the new instances (back when they were new) were bumped up about two levels or that the old instances be pushed down about two levels. actually, the older instances have been nerfed to oblivion, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t lower the mob's levels as well (and also lower the level requirements for some of the boss drops).

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the layout and pacing of all the instances in this game. not saying they did a bad job with it, as it was a pretty awesome job back in the days. but as time progressed, expansions entered the picture and things should change. What I see is that things arent changing as newer content is being added. I think it would make a lot of sense to actually go back and tune some of these instances for lower levels.

How I Play a Demonology vs. Affliction Warlock

A lot of people has stated that affliction leveling is best with a warlock.  i am not sure why, as i do not think people play as i play. Sure, my corruption ticks for a little more, but my pet sucks balls compared to demonology.  destruction is as boring as... well, mage leveling without evocation.

So what is the difference between affliction and demonogy exactly?
Besides the different spells they both have?

- Demonologists have stronger pets, has some procs, and a transformation once ever few minutes.

- Afflictionists have stronger Corruption, two more DoTs, possibly another curse (of exhaustion), and more efficient lifetaps, howl of terror, and darkpact (you know, those things you might need if your pet isnt cutting it, or if you're not using the pet at all, which makes complete sense).

This is how i play my Demonology Warlock while questing.
1. Use felguard (or voidwalker before lv.50).  send him in.  wait a second for him to get some aggro.
2. Add the following spells: Immolate, Corruption, Curse of my choice, Shadowbolt if mob has lots of health, drain soul if mob has less than 25% health.
3. Shadowbolt if Nightfall procs; Incinerate if Molton Core procs. 
4. Check cooldowns for spellstones. tap when necessary.

thats it.  easy huh?

This is how i play my Affliction Warlock while questing.
Single Target:
1. Use Felhound/felhunter.  Imp before that.  Voidwalker if mob hits hard.
2. Add the following spells:  Haunt, Corruption, Curse of my choice, Unstable Affliction. Refresh when theyre down.
3. Fear
4. Lifetap twice before Haunt finishes.
5. Shadowbolt if Nightfall procs
6. Drain soul when mob is below 25% health.

Multiple Targets:
1. Use imp, leave on passive.
2. First mob: Haunt, corruption, curse of agony.
3. Second mob: corruption, curse
4. Third mob: corruption, curse.
5. Fourth mob: corruption, curse
6. HOWL OF TERROR
7. Fear mob #4
8. Lifetap/darkpact
9. target mob 1, refresh dots (drain soul til dead)
10. target mob 2, haunt. refresh dots (drain soul til dead)
11. target mob 3, refresh dots (drain sould til dead)
12. mob 4 should be coming out of fear now.  refresh dot and drain soul til dead.

note:  lifetap and dark pact takes your life and gives you mana.  imp is your mana battery.  your spells, haunt and corruption gives you life back.  this allows you to lifetap endlessly.  drain soul will return 15% of your mana.  so its okay to not lifetap in steps 9 through 12.

Have fun.  good luck.  and be prepared to die a few times getting all this right. 

My Alliance Toons

So my girlfriend noticed that i did not list any of my alliance characters on my blog.  you know that little widget on the left that has all my characters?  well there's no alliance characters at all.  and i have to say, i do have quite a few alliance characters.

The only problem is, most of them arent touched, ever.  i've made them a long time ago and i dont expect to return to play them any time soon.  maybe one day, when i get over this whole Horde>all mentality. but even still, its only a designation in-game and doesnt really mean much. it just gives us gamers a sense of belonging.  and i have no hate for alliance. some of my favorite people are alliance.  actually, no they're not.  but some of my favorite bloggers are alliance.  does that count?

Here is a list of my Alliance Characters:
Server: Shadowmoon
1. Thalyndarr - first toon ever.  Level 40ish mage. died like a billion times on this guy.  farthest i took this guy was to the deserts of Tanaris where he tried to kill Calif Scorpidsting and failed.
2. Elsegundo - its actually El Segundo, for "the second" as he was.  he's a gnome warlock who has also died a billion times.  he went a little farther and leveled to 68 when level 70 was the max.
3. Azurielle - She's blue, hence the name.  Night Elf priest, level 40ish.  i got really bored drinking water after ever 2 pulls, even with spirit tap.  she's basically retired.
4. Azuriella - Level 67 death knight.  supposedly its Azurielle resurrected, but i couldnt figure out how to write a story about that.  oh well.
5. Primoprimero - stupid name, huntard, dwarf.  died a billion times as well. level 64, i think.  bored of playing him? yes.  totally. bored of playing casters, actually. and he was a caster of sorts! 

The remaining toons there are just trials.  they dont do anything but take up space actually.

Server: Ysondre
1. Cryogin - Mage.  Cryo - frost. Gin - iono. it completes the name. he's a male draenei mage.  leveled to 20 so he can easily teleport to cities and buy pets to trade to the horde, and buy pets from the horde.  but that project sucks because there's like 10 others on my server doing the same thing.  currently, he's leveling with my girlfriend, slowly, but surely.
2. Voltaris - Night elf warrior not even level 20 yet.  first i wanted to try out Arms dps. but after remember how long dps wait times are, i just decided to go Prot again.  prot level is fun anyway.

And that's pretty much all my notable (keyword notable) alliance toons.


Now that i've listed by toons, let me answer a question my gf has been asking me for a while.  Why horde?  why dont you like alliance?  every time she mentions that she's going on her alliance mage (cos she really likes mages, and she thinks draenei women are the hotness) i always either roll my eyes or sigh.  and she keeps asking.  so let me see if i can answer.

Alliance has no mystique.  Every race (even the gnomes) are set in a well-established city.  They're cut and dry.  its just, for lack of a better word, boring.

The humans are in this nice, claen city. although there's much going on under the surface, it feels clean, organized, and of proper society.  there are no vagrants, no crime and no demonstrations.  nothing. the buildings are nice.  the canal is clean.  the park is awesome.  the only vice to the humans is that Goldshire is a mecca for sexual role play.  otherwise, its dull, dry and drab. 

The dwarves live in a mountan, with a city dug out from the inside.  its gigantic, but still, its nothing more than an indoor city with a small gnomish population.  the homes are carved from the stone and rock, the lava running through it are channeled through varous parts of the city to provide for smelting purposes. even the dark corners of the city look like the rest of the city because the whole place is dark.  the dwarves have been in azeroth since forever and are nicely situated in an area relatively free of hostiles.  They also make beer. boring.

The gnomes live with the dwarves.  what else is there to say? they make machines?  sure. 
The night elves live in this faraway "tree" that's bigger than most zones. isolated, they like to consider themselves better than everyone else.  they only agree to siding with the alliance out of convenience.  they're guys that used to live forever, but currently are dealing with the loss of their immortality.  They're all about the moon, and Elune, and being one with nature.  a very perfect view of nature, or the outdoors.

The only race that may not fit this, although it still feels really boring, are the Draeneis.  you're set in a crashed spaceship. but they came from a very advanced race.  their spaceship is made out of a large diamond with lots of diamonds and crystals to power it.  although there is a lot of damage to their ships, the look and feel of it is still very clean and rich as if you're walking into a palace of marble and crystal.  they're refugees running from a race of demons out to hunt them down.  or bloodelves. i forget.

How does the horde differ? 

The orcs are invaders from Draenor (aka Outland) who walked throug the dark portal like years ago.  decided to conquer azeroth, and in its wake, caused the humans and dwarves to take up arms. they were effin invaders.  they were tools of destruction.  can you get any more awesomer than that???  not only that, they have since freed themselves from their imprisonment (physically and mentally) and are rebuilding their nation in Durotar under Thrall's leadership.  These guys are gruffy, dirty, and often do not speak in complete sentences.  they're the ruffians of any society put into one race and location.  badass.

Trolls have this character about them.  they're into voodoo. they're into the mystics, the darkness, the bad stuffs, if you will.  they're also refugees driven out of their island homehald and has joined thrall for the time being.  they're ugly. yes, ugly.  well the guys are.  the girls can be ok.  anyway, there's not much you can say that's pretty about them.  just like orcs, they have features that arent desired in humans.
Now lets talk about their home.  its rough.  its dirty.  it looks like several makeshift villages put together and called a city.  the streets are made of dirt, the buildings are made of trees, not stones or concrete or crystals. even the stone buildings look primitive. 

Blood elves.  now this is supposed to be the "pretty" race for the horde.  well they're not that pretty if you look around.  half of their city is in ruins.  half of the good part of the city seem to be under some kind of martial law and oppression.  right at the entrance of the city, there's a harrassed citizen.  in the bazzaar, there's a demonstration and/or gathering with people arguing. the robots seem forcibly subduing citizens to keep them in order.  everyone else in the city is suffering from withdrawal.  i really think smc will see a riot before long. it was a great society gone to ruin. seems to me like Rome before their fall.  Or rome after their fall. or something like that.

The undeads.  These guys are like all the other undeads, but because of Sylvannas' powers, they're able to live and think for themselves.  These guys are trying to live and struggle in a world that's not meant for the unliving.  not only that, they're trying to fight the mindless undeads still roaming the lands.  they're basically fight two fights.  they do have a score to settle with Arthas but also will, in the future, need to fight for their right to exist in Azeroth.  Formerly humans, now granted imortality, these guys will be the cause of much conflict in the future.  Like the night elves, the undeads are merely entering into an alliance with the horde for the simple fact that its convenient.  Although it might seem that the relationship between Sylvannas and Thrall may strengthen the bonds between the two races, the undeads really do not need to allign themselves with any of the races of azeroth. 

Finally, i just have this annoyance for humans.  King Wrynn of Stormwind.  He's an idiot.  he's been hating orcs for so long and cant see past it.  he cant even get it right.  why the hell does he dual weild one-handers?  Titans grip came out two years ago.  Fury is, indeed, one way to describe him. His ass-hat-ness makes me want to delete my human toons.  Arthas, another piece of royal idiocy.  Culls stratholme?  really?  goes to northrend and becomes the lich king.  why?  stupid cowboys.  Jaina.  Queen of Theremore?  not anymore.  she's some pansy who's running around calling Wrynn her king and Arthas her man on the side while she's really into Thrall but cant say it because she likes how Wrynn does it too.  or something.  Make up your friggin mind you stupid blondie. The whole human race is the whole reason why we have so many friggin problems in wow.  screw them.  FOR THE HORDE!!

/opinion.