Special Characters

Blizz has made the announcment that, upon the launch of 4.3, they will no longer allow special characters in names.  there has been some complaints, but most are in favor of this change, per reaction in the forums, of course.  but i can understand why.  there are people who use this feature to find a name that is already taken, not for the purpose of scamming, but simply because they want that name themselves.  the current system in wow does not allow multiples of the same names in the same server.  perhaps a surname would solve this issue.

but people would change one or two characters in their names to be special characters.  i understand the use of this completely.  my hunter, Burlésque, and my rogue, Brunö have these special characters because someone already took the original names.  anyone with a pulse will ignore the accents and pronouce my character's names without the accents.  those who argue about accents are just grasping at straws.  what i dont understand, and do not condone, are those who use special characters over and over again. it's not that special and gets quite annoying, really.  one example i have for you is shown below.  i was looking for my warrior's armory (on Ysondre) and found abuse. 

This is why special characters will no longer be allowed:

checking further, this is a level 25 alliance guild with 980 members.  nine. hundred. eighty.

Now, i understand if maybe they used all those characters to denote that even the name of the guild is "chaotic" but i doubt that.  even then, it is an eyesore and a total abuse of a system. take advantage of the "unenforced" naming policy long enough and we'll slowly get repercussions. 

Again, i have no issues with people changing one letter in their name because the original name is taken. blizz has made a concession for that and knows that there might be some abuse.  however, with the above name, that abuse gets way out of control.  Now looking at the members of the guild, i see very few with special characters.  even the guild leader's name doesnt have special characters.  but as a whole, the guild bugs me very slightly.  very slightly enough to forget this post next week.  but for those on Perenolde, and for those who might be in the Cyclone battlegroup, there may be a lot of /sigh when a member of the above guild is spotted.

Night Elf Druids (Lv 1-10)

Every now and again i will be blogging about my new adventures with my girlfriend. Expect updates on a weekly or biweekly basis, if we continue playing.

Me and my girlfriend started playing new alts just this past weekend.  We made two nightelf druids and began questing in Teldrasil.  Going through the quests a second time for me are a lot more fun than before.  firstly, i have a partner to party with. but secondly, there's things added to the game that makes questing more immersed and streamlined than before. 

The quests are a little more streamline--the quest givers are closer together and the objectives arent so far apart.  when doing the filling the moonwell quests, i noticed a little bit of story being told by the apparitions that appear at each moonwell.  this is quite a nice touch and gets people into the whole story of how teldrasil was made.  inside the druid's den, we had sentinels join us, leading the way around the big place.  one quest seems to be missing down there, but because there's just so many furbolgs down there and the den is almost like a maze, its a great idea that the quest was gone.   but a sentinel sidekick that shows us the way to go?  omg awesome!

The second thing i really liked about leveling a druid again is the change to wrath spam.  no longer do i have to deal with it for 20 levels.  actually, what i did previously was, if i can recall correctly, starfire, moonfire, wrathspam!! if they were tough, and most mobs back in the days were, i'd hit bearform when they reach melee and end the fight as a bear.  it was pretty easy, but long.  now it's just easy, but if you're not careful with add control, a couple of adds and you can go down quick.  My girlfriend found that out the hard way with the harpies in teldrasil.  pulling one to us would have been a better option than to root it where it was, aggroing another 3 in the process.  well, lesson learned.  So getting cat form at level 8 really helped to show what druids are all about.  we start off with wrath spams and moonfires, which is from the balance tree. then we get rejuvenation and nourish, quite awesome healing spells already at level 8-ish.  finally, we get cat form with several new attacks.  we get two levels to play before deciding on whether or not to go balance or feral.  restoration may be an option to level, even when playing solo, but who wants to willingly submit themselves to torture?

Overall, the druid leveling design has changed since i played in TBC, and it worked out well.  same thing goes for shamans, when i leveled my first orc shaman, i couldnt be enhancement until well into my 20s.  but my second shaman, a goblin, i got dual wield and imbues pretty early on, making me feel like an enhancement shaman when i actually picked the enhancement spec.  good job bliz!  back to my druid, picking feral gets me mangle at level 10.  this spell is my bread and butter at later levels, but should have been given to me at level 10 a very long time ago.  it's the backbone of our attacks and the very reason why our attacks do so much damage.  it leaves a debuff on the target so our bleeds can hit for more.  this ability should be learned initially and not left to level 60-something to get.  i am glad for this change.  my very next talent went straight to running faster as a cat.  with the added dodge (but who am i kidding, i really got it for the run speed), it really felt like a cat druid and not some sluggish, handicapped feral trying to claw things.  i had abilities and i liked it!  as a note, cats, dogs, even roaches really do run faster than things with two legs.  so having the run speed boost really makes being a cat.... a cat.

Now i know why i like my rogue so much.  we're all ninjas!  cats are ninjas too!  i really did like playing as a cat druid and never really connected it to my rogue, or other melee classes until now.  so with that said, i know i will be leveling as feral.  being feral also gives me a better stealth than the balance druid who just needs to go into catform and stealth in order to bypass some mobs.  but even still, the M.O., or modus operandi, for me and my girlfriend will be, especially if we dont have to kill x number of peons before we kill a named boss, will me to sneak past EVERYTHING, and kill the boss.  sneak out, turn in quest, level!

Now we're level 10 and just about to leave the starting zone.  hopefully we'll get acquainted with darnassus again figure out the map in no time.  this time, we'll be able to chill with the worgens as well.  hopefully they dont bite or else i'll have to go catform on them. but i hear they're a serious bunch and quite industrious in their old homeland.  after that, im really keen on helping my fellow nightelves out in darkshore and ashenvale.  hopefully, we can knock back the horde offensive there. 

as far as leveling goes, i really do want to keep things as close to night elf centric as possible.  i really want to level through the night elf story only (since i know leveling speed is a joke) to get the most out of the story.  If anyone knows the best path to take, please let me know.  i know for sure that darkshore and ashenvale will probably be our next zones.  but after that, i am not sure.  possibly stonetalon mtns and feralas?  i dont want to go help any gnomes or dwarves or humans, not unless i have to.  i dont hate them or anything, and there's nothing wrong with helping them, as they are alliance. but im more into helping the nightelf race solve their own problems first.  thanks!

Enough With the Panda Hate.

The actual original picture can be found here. 
Thread on this can be found here.   giving credit to where credit's due.

Let it be clear that pandas are awesome.  personally, i'd roll a horse elephant man if i could.

peace out and have a great weekend!

Tanking is Fun

Today's post is in response, actually not a response, but on the same topic, as gavlon's post found here and the grumpy's post found here.

gavlon states two very important things.  One, tanking sucks.  and two, to fix this, make all tanking like blood Dk tanking. Grumpy talks about how tanking in raids vs dungeons is like night and day.  i agree with grumpy on his opinion.  i disagree with gavlon.

Now here's my little input on tanking, why i like/dislike it, and what i could do to make it more fun.  Actually, if you read the comments from gavl's post, everyone is pretty spot on in their assessment of tanking in Wow.  it's something not many people would want to do, especially for Pug groups (which is why i keep asking my gf to see if anyone in our guild wants to join us).  Read the comments. they're very true of why wait times are so long for the dps and tanks are so hard to come by, in random pugs.

Let me explain why my gf is asking my guild if anyone wants to join in our run.  We're level 82 and 84, or about there but are on two different realms.  i blame the character limits for this. since i am only able to have 10 characters on one realm, making a new character to level with her requires that i make a new character on a new realm and level through instances.  you can see just how boring that can be, going through the same dungeons over and over again until, thankfully, we outlevel them, only to be greeted with 20 more runs of another dungeon.  So after maybe 82 levels if this, you can see why i soooo would rather party with people i know instead of a bunch of puggers who sometimes decides to act up or try to run the show (and why is it always a mage???).

My gf is lucky.  she has a bf tank who knows all the dungeons, pretty much inside and out, knows who to CC, who does the worst damage, how pulls should be coordinated, etc.  i know all this because i've tanked all of these instances many times before. going into gnomeregan, blackrock depths and blackrock spire i get comments like, "thank god, someone who knows where to go!"  my gf knows she's lucky and she makes me skewered eels for my hunter to show her appreciation.  ^_^

Now on to the bad. I dont like tanking.  i dont like tanking because i have to be responsible.  i have to know the fights, kill order, cc order, react to environmental changes, bad dps, etc.  i dont suffer from bad healing becuase, well, i have a pocket healer that does an awesome job.  but i really dont want to take on, what seems almost like a job, to play a game where the point of the game is to relax, or at least problem-solve to get my mind off of the real life issues such as work.  In-game, i dont want to be responsible for hearding cattle.  it feels almost like that sometimes, even if it's just one dps who runs around and acts a fool, it's still a pain to deal with.  i play this game to have fun, not to baby sit.  This is the main issue of tanking and many tanks have gone to great lengths to simply tank for their guildies, thereby bypassing a lot of the stupid that goes on in random pugs.  What is it about LFD that makes it soooo bad? it's because no one has any accountability that they can cause some amount of grief to their teammates and get away with it. i am not saying it doesnt happen before LFD, but LFD made pugs a ceaspool of stupid, rude and arrogant idiots that i hope never to have in my guild, no matter how leet their dps may be. 

The good thing about tanking is that, when i do get a good group (and lately i have), things go smoothly and i only have to deal with the in-game mechanics.  sometimes i get the occassional lazy dps who doesnt know how to target my own target, or the drone-like dps who doesnt see that they're breaking CC left and right. but those are okay to deal with (i sometimes let the aggro king tank the mob).  what i've developed is somewhat of a limit as to my responsibilities.  i am not responsible for a mob if it get's pulled off of me deliberately.  and not targeting my own target is deliberate. being too lazy to check the unit frames to see who i am tanking is deliberately being lazy.  so i let them tank it and not think too much about it. if others decide to pull for me, i can simply let them tank it.  and everyone goes at my pace.  sounds about right.  even the gogogogo baddies get ignored.  if they're doing low dps, i dont care. 

this attitude works out just fine in the end since most groups consist of at least one guy carrying everyone, especially when all of the dungeons are nerfed to death and people are buffed to kingdom come.  i was in violet hold, level 75 instance when i noticed this.  pretty much everyone except for rogues were doing 3k dps.  1k on bosses, but settling on 2-3k dps for most of the pulls.  now to put all of this into perspective, the dps requirement to do Naxx when Naxx was current content as 1.6k dps.  that's the low end and doing 2.0k dps was considered good. Ulduar saw it jump to 3k while ICC saw the minimum (not what people were doing, but the minimum to even be considered) was about 5k dps.  in one expansion, the dps requirement went from 1.6k to 5k.  that's ridiculous.  overinflation i tell you.

we were all doing awesome damage and so it covers for the fact that maybe there's one or two baddies in the group.  it's fine. even in vortex pinnicle, black rock caverns and throne of the tides, things went smoothly.  it seemed that the boss' health has been dropped to about half of what it was when cata came out. im sad at this.  also, many of the abilities arent as bad (except for Commander Ulthok's Dark Fissure, boy does that hurt) so level through them is cake, especially for a tank that knows the pulls.  Now, Ulthok did kill me twice with dark fissure, only because there's also a slowing effect somewhere and i ended up not able to run out of it fast enough.  he dropped a nice cape for me when he finally did die.  overall, tanking has dumbed down a little due to the easy mechanics of the fights now.  this doesnt change the fact that i may get some terrible players, or mages who try to lead the group, but at least there is some concession for tanks when they do pug. 

Tangent: i dont feel bad about needing on dps gear anymore, but i do watch to see if the dps actually needs it or not.  i just do if it has mastery, since mastery is great.  it's a universal stat, and if an item has it with crit or haste or expt, i simply reforge the crit/haste/exp to parry.  mastery smooths out damage taken, so i'll keep that, thank you very much.  so if no one needs it, i'll need it for tanking.  this is one thing that i really like about mastery is that it's a universal stat.  although some classes might not categorize it as high priority, it has uses for EVERY class in the game. before, i was limited to dodge/parry gear.  now i have an option to add mastery gear too.

Besides the random "good" people and the toned-down version of each isntance, problem solving in-game makes tanking fun.  what i mean by this is that each dungeon group is varied. although the mobs stay the same, the types of people, the class compositions, and the style of pulling all change and i must adapt accordingly.  it is not the same as the Diablo-esque feel where each time you step into the 1st floor of a dungeon, the maze gets reset and the layout changes to make it feel like you're in a new dungeon.  it's more of the way i want to pull, where i want to move the mobs, who i want to CC and who does the CC and for how long. each mob has their own unique ability where i may be able to dispel, or a hope that mage who tried to lead knows how to spell steal.  or hoping the group just doesnt try to aoe down two mobs. yes, i've seen many mages and warlocks use their blizzard or rain of fire... on two mobs. 

The best, and pretty much most important thing that makes tanking fun are the tanking abilities. I have all tanking classes and the most fun tanking class i've ever played is the warrior class.  Dks are fun too, so are druidsd and paladins.  but high above those three is the warrior.  The reason? Charge/intercept/intervene and shockwave/thunderclap. Now the first one is charge, and i will include intercept and intervene in the smae category.  it's my charge.  i rush in and do damage.  mob's somewhere else? charge!  healer getting chewed on? charge!   mobility is key when tanking, because if im charged (no pun) with keeping people alive, one of the best abilities to have is a gap-closer that will allow me to tank stray mobs somewhere.  i found this very useful and very rewarding.  what paladins have is a shield that silences to bring mobs to them and dk's have deathgrip, which has a long cooldown.  the only other class with this are druid bears who have a charge.  however, since i charge to start a fight, my charge cooldown really sucks when, in the beginning of a pull, the objective is to round up all the mobs into one convenient pack.  not having an extra charge reders the druid almost unless when rounding up mobs when initiating a pull.

The other ability is shockwave and to a lesser extent, thunderclap.  the two things these abilities have in common are it's abiltiy to do some Aoe effect beyond cleave.  now cleave is great, as is blood strike, hammer of the righteous and swipe.  but only the warrior have something that he constantly uses to basically "stomp" the ground and remind the mobs just how awesome he is.  shockwave is a great ability because it stuns the targets, giving everyone time to catch up, pick the right target, and top everyone off.  this ability is wonderful because it also acts as one of my interrupts.  no other class really has these two abilities although there is similar.  dk's have blood boil, but it doesnt have the same "umph" to it, nor does it apply a debuff.  paladins have it in the form of hammer of the righteous, but even that doesnt have any "umph" to it, nor does it apply a debuff.  also maybe avenger's shield, but it's strange to use it in melee, even if it works.  druids, well,  nada.  i sometimes wish druid bears can get an ability like the rogue's killing spree, where they basically randomly bite several random mobs in front of them for five seconds, but i guess we'll have to stick with the swipe and glyphed maul. 

To recap, i really do find tanking fun, especially if it's a warrior tank.  i think that, based on the link above, tanks are few because they're boring, have responsibility, requires thinking, and arent engaging as dps or healing.  but... with a warrior tank, i find that the tools i have to use make up for some of the negatives.  now if i were a bear or a paladin tank, i wouldnt be as enthused.  but each tanking class has their own strengths and weaknesses, and offer a lot of utility in different ways.  even if, in the end, it equates to the same thing (different spells, same effect). i find warrior tanking to be a lot more fun, simply because of the abilities that i have with a warrior tank.  perhaps it's just "flavor" but perhaps it is more than that.  as a tank who has played all the tanking classes, i have a different comparison than those who replied with tanks vs. dps vs. healing.  instead, i see it as warrior vs. druid vs. paladin vs. dk, and i can see what makes tanking fun based on the various types of tanks available, and hopefully this reason will be a reason that outweighs all the little negatives out there to keep people tanking longer, even in pugs.

Allods and How I Understand WoW's New Talent System

I spent some time playing Allods Online the other night.  "some time" includes the opening quest chain that takes you from your beginning zone to your real beginning zone.  they actually make it a little exciting (as opposed to wow's opening, where things seem a little static).  The static leveling zone can be found at around level 3, after the intro.  Obviously, it appears the intro zone cannot be revisited, so take a look around and breathe in the atmosphere, or whatevers. 

Anyway, i downloaded a bunch of free to play games recently so that it will give my daughter of four years something to do on the computer.  now i have to problems with letting her play eden eternal or dragon nest, although dragon nest may be a little too advanced for her age, and adding allods online may be a good addition. We started by picking races.  She wanted to play a girl toon so we went through several races and classes. But she ultimately chose the faeries or elves of the game.  she made it very clear that she wanted the Psionicist faerie.  I named it for her but she chose the features (purple hair, etc).  Now we go on and went through the entire opening chain quest until we finally hit the official starting zone.  it appears to me that the starting chain quests are instanced and we do them solo.  the beginning zone we end up in will have interaction with others.

Now here's what i found out about my elven psionocist. She floats.  She uses a dagger.  she also mind controls.  she is hard to kill, even as melee.  the intro sequence helped players understand the basic concepts of the game, how to heal, how to assign talents (the act of assigning talents itself, not where one should put talents), how to equip new gear and how to loot, etc.  But my first roadblock is this.  When i hit level 2 or 3, i got an option to assign my talent points to some stats. now first, i've never played a psionocist before, so having a big window with 20 different stats where i can place talent points (stat points, in this case) to any stat i want is daunting.  i was figuratively lost (no, not literally lost. i was sitting in my chair at home. so no, not literally lost at all - more on the misuse of "literally" in another post).  Without having played a psionocist before, and having never played this game before, i figured i had to have some background knowledge before i can actually assign a talent point. because people who use mind tricks to win battles probably use magic, i thought maybe add to intelect.  but then, i thought, why the hell do i have a dagger?  and a wand!??!?!!!.

Welcome to noobsville. Now for those who do not remember, when you first started WoW, it was the exact same thing.  No one told me where to assign my talent points (although it wasnt stat points, since the stats are from gear, and some stats increase naturally), i just did it without really knowing or understanding.  I did not read many blogs or guides on the internet. My first character was a mage--a frost mage at that. I decided that i needed to give him faster frost bolts and that was it.  talent points werent stat points.  and that was a great change from some of the other games i was playing.  but even with talents points in wow, i can see how people can get confused and not understand them. back when i had 61 talent points to spend, and no talent tree lockout, i had a difficult time figuring out where to put what.  granted, my mage only got to level 40, but even there, i was able to assign 31 points already, somewhere in various trees.  No one told me that i should focus on one tree first, then move to the next.  no one told me that i should focus on certain talents if i was going to quest instead of dungeon.  no one told me that i shouldnt worry about this or that, and focus on that or the other.  i had to learn this stuff on my own. but i did understand one thing.  i knew that my intellect increased every time i leveled.  so that was an important stat. 

but here, in allods, i felt the exact same way i did when i first started wow.  i looked at the stat allocation table and said, forget this.  so now i am reading a bit about the psionocist on the internet and understand it a little more.  i'll be better prepared to make my character better than i would have yesterday. 

When blizz announced that they are going to revamp the entire talent tree system, i believe i understand why.  They're not catering to those who have played for years. or those who have switched from other MMOs and understand the talent and stat allocation game. no, they're targeting those who do not care to understand that game.  they're catering to those who enjoy killing monsters and complete quests. they dont want to have to stop players from playing because, instead of blowing things up with magic, they're now forced to decide whether they should be a mage with faster fireball casts, or harder hitting pyroblasts. or something.  Blizz seem to be saying, we dont want players to focus on little things like cast speed, crit chance, etc.  we just want them to go out the and cast the damn spells instead!  play the game!

With that in mind, i can see how they want to take a lot of the theory-craft out of warcraft.  the talents will come every 15 levels.  15 levels is way more than enough time for someone to get used to a spec/class combination and decide what they value more.  let's look at a the hunter's 1st talent choices.

1. Frozen Arrows - Auto Shots decrease mob's movement by 30% for 10 secs.
2. Arcane Arrows - Your auto shots has a 50% chance to restore 5 focus each.
3. Poison-Tipped Arrows - Auto shots causes stacking poisons on your target.

Now all three talents affect one thing: your shots. They effect it in several ways.  But the idea here is to kill your mob or opponent before it/he kills you.  with frozen arrows, you're given more time to shoot at something before they gnaw at your face.  means that, although the fight may just be as long as before, the mobs will not be at your face as quickly or as often, decrease bandage/eating time, increasing leveling speed, though indirectly, and adding more possible gameplay mechanics to your level 15 hunter. 

With Arcane arrows. you will end up with more chances to fire off more shots, since you're eventually going to regain enough focus to add an extra special shot.  Mobs will still get to you as fast as they would at level 14, but you may have an additional shot, therefore increasing the damage dealt.

With poison tipped arrows, it is essentially like arcane arrows in that it adds extra damage, but the extra damage comes not from a spell we chose when we gained enough focus, but from poison that stacks.  for longer fights, both arcane arrows and poison tipped arrows will seem to be a better choice than frozen arrows.  some will say frozen arrows is simply for pvp. but i can see how it is also a good talent to take when leveling. 

Also understand that hunters usually have pets (or tanks) to tank their mobs for them.  if this is the case, frozen arrow might not be needed at all. overall, the idea is this, Blizzard doesnt want you to have to decide whether a talent is good or bad for what you do.  they want you to evaluate your play style and decide for yourself which talent is better -- for you.  would you prefer to get an extra shot in every 10 seconds?  well arcane arrow is for you.  would you rather have extra damage instead?  then poison tipped arrows works.  are you a hunter who likes to run and shoot at the same time, grab five mobs, freeze trap it then multi shot them down because you like how they all die in the same area so it will make skinning them a lot easier with your pet only there as added bonus dps?  well frozen arrows will help you do that better! 

With the future talent choices, i see it more as playstyle tweakers instead of the talent points we see today. when standing there looking at the extra talent points to use, it can be a little difficult to know exactly what will benefit the class the most.  however, blizz new take on talents will definitely remove all such thinking and simply let the player play the game.  because, after all, we have many, many little games inside this big game we're trying to play.  having complicated talent trees just slow everyone down.  who needs that, right? 


in all honesty, i do like the current talent point system we have now, minus one feature.  you have to use 31 talents in one tree in order to move to a new tree.  i remember then days of leveling a paladin and thought going into the first 15 or so points in the ret tree helped tremendously.  since low level dungeons weren't that big of a challenge, and anyone with a pulse, and mail gear can tank in those days, adding talents to the ret tree was my best course of action.  really, it was only because i was trying to get to one talent, Seal of Command, that made the trek down the ret tree even necessary. 

but there it was, a ret paladin tank. but i knew that in dungeons like scarlet monastery, there was really no issues tanking in ret so long as i pulled intelligently (there wasnt even a difference between dps and tanking gear then).  for those who are confused, seal of command allowed my seal to hit two other mobs. and since the flavor of the year was aoe tanking, this seal helped a lot when it comes to holding threat on mobs.  before this, there was nothing.  heck, i dont even think hammer of the righteous was even available before level 60.  so besides consecration, this was our only aoe option.   now i knew that as soon as i hit seal of command, every other talent point will be going into the protection tree.  and when i reach level 60 and am able to get hammer of the righteous, i would then respec into it, in order to have a proper tanking build at level 60ish.  this is where having a tanking spec actually mattered.  then, i can slowly spec into seal of command again.  this required one respec, plenty of planning, and lots of knowledge of how my class, as well as how dungeons work.

So i see a compromise in the works. Bliz will automagically upgrade our stats, that's how it worked before, that's how it will work now.  All abilities and/or spells that we had to pick as we filled out our respective talent trees will be added automagically. there will be no more thought to this.  also, abilities that we have to go to the trainers to learn will be added automagically as well. i can also assume that this will mean we will learn both our current pve and pvp abilities, since we're not given a choice in picking. so how exactly will that combat rogue sitting next to be be a completely different combat rogue than me?  i am a little unsure now.

I do like having a choice.  but i also do like having consequences when i pick one ability over another.  i do like to be challenged and to think.  what i see as the future, as far as talent trees are concerned, is that there really isnt much consequence to picking one of the three, for any situation.  it is merely a playstyle preference, and picking one talent over another only goes to improve your own playstyle.  on one hand, bliz is really helping those who like to play a certain way from being told they're doing it wrong.  however, it is at the cost of dumbing down this game so much that even i wonder if i am playing an MMO Action game as opposed to an MMO-RPG game. Not that i dont like action games.  i just have better options when it comes to action games with an rpg element and mmo element.

In Before the Announcements

So before Blizz decides to mention what the next expansion is going to be about, i want to get my guess in.
1. The infinite dragonflight and Nozdormu. 
2. Panderen Monks (no, not Panda-like people, but actual humans-like nation in some continent on the other side of Azeroth called Pandera).

Since we'll finally get to meet Azhara in the upcoming dungeons, although only for a short time, we do see how she can be a target for the new expansion.  However, i think we'll have to deal with Nozdormu first.  His dragonflight has been with us for the past three expansions, making us fight in different times just to keep the timelines in-tact.  i think this is a more involved story if we end up fighting their corrupted form, the infinite dragonflight. i am sure Noz may try to no more damage in the timelines and we're supposed to correct them before, finally, meeting Noz's dark form. 

The panderens, they're monks, they love rice wine, they are kung fu masters.  i doubt this will be the next expansion but a lot of people seem to think it is.

Alt Leveling Project

Hi folks.  I just wanted to say that since my wow time has been quite limited lately, and will be so for the next five months, me and my gf have decided to level alts.  they will be nelf druids.  we'll be a druid duo running around doing quests.  what's mostly beneficial to this arrangement is that we can practically be the trinity of groupings with just two players.  I think i'll play feral tank and combat while she heals and moonfires things.  i think this will be a great way to pass the time when it's late at night and there's really nothing left to do besides level an alt or do a random dungeon.  and we've had quite a bit of random dungeons lately.

So, since i am out of room in Ravenholdt, we'll make the characters on Wyrmrest Accord.  Now the thing about WA is that it's a pacific time server, perfect for us, i guess.  and also, it is a "normal" server where world pvp is voluntary.  this will appease the gf a little.  however, i dont have any qualms about being ganked, or ganking others.  in any case, it will still be an RP server so there's plenty of dressing up, talking in a certain, more dignified language, and more slow walking to be had!  like we RP at all. but if the time comes where we can, we'll be able to!

Since we will be alliance, and questing is quite a "new" exprience for the both of us, it will seem like a totally brand new game. in order to keep this feeling as much as possible, there are some things i'd like to keep as a rule.

• We can only quest to level.  No grinding mobs for experience either.  we kill what we need to kill for the quest or to get to the quest objectives.  gathering professions are out of the question since we do gain experience from them.  we can always power level professions come 85 anyway. 
• No random dungeon finder thingey.  ever.  well we can use the finder to look for a specific dungeon group if the dungeon is appropriate for our level and also only if we have quests that requires us to enter these dungeons.  they've streamlined the dungeon quests for dungeons up to level 60, so you can get all the quests inside the dungeon.  we'll have to figure out the best way to deal with this when we get there. but i hope to only do the dungeons once ever and continue on with questing from then.
• No Heirlooms.  HAHAHA forgetaboutit!! really, none of that for-handicapped people stuffs allowed. we're leveling on greens and maybe blues.  no overpowered gear for the push-here-dummy crowd.  really though, i think the extra 30% (chest shoulder helm cape) is a bit too much.  that, and the gear is usually 2x better than whatever else we can get at our level, having heirlooms is just overkill for leveling.  we're experienced players anyway.
• No leveling guild.  Nope. We will not join any guild that has fasttrack.  actually, we'll probably just end up making our own guild there and calling it Brazen.  Or maybe call it Accordians, get it? *ahem*server name*  Doing this will ensure that we get almost zero bonus experience.  we might end up with the rested experience thing, but that's all we'll take. 

So with all those rules above, i think this will give us a good challenge for the road ahead.  even without heirlooms, instance leveling is so easy.  questing is super easy and even group quests no longer require groups to complete.  in all honesty, this project is something i'd like to do on my spare time when i just want to learn the rehashed stories.  we might even have to lock our experience so that we can go through all of the zones and do all of the little things we can do before we outlevel the zones.  i think is is quite impossible to do considering the starting zones are all far apart and the leveling goes by so fast.  it might be more feasible to go through all of the leveling zones when we're higher, say level 30 or so.  We'll see how it goes.  i'll have a chart with all the zones, dungeons and their levels just so we'll know where to go and what to do when we finally leave teldrasil.  and i am thinking darkshore will be an awesome new questing experience.  so if you like to join us, we'll be on alliance side on Wyrmrest Accord.  make some characters and chit chat with us!

The loss of Audacity

Today's post is in response to a thread actively going on since friday.  You can read the thread here.  Beware, it's past 25 pages as of today (it's only been three days!).

Here is the gist of what happened, based on what i've read and what i surmised as the truth.

Audacity is a guild on the Ravenholdt server, hordeside.  they're a fairly good raiding guild that has cleared normal content in approximately a month.  They were in direct competition with another guild on that server who used to get server firsts since Wrath called Shadows and Dust (now i love the name of this guild because it reminds us that we're not special snowflakes but just shadows and dust... taken from the Gladiator movie by Ridley Scott, but that's besides the point).   The core of the audacity raiding group took a break several months back to play League of Legends and basically neglected the guild. The guild leader promoted a great deal of people to Officer status and did not log back on the guild leader toon.  I do not know if he logged on alts just to level and chat and things, but he did not log on to the toon with the guild leader tag for over a month.  This allowed one of the officers to petition the GMs to make him the new guild leader.  after a successful guild leader switch, the new GL kicked everyone out of the guild, except maybe his alt or his friend.  then took as much gold, mats, gear, etc as they possibly can from the guild bank.  the guild bank looks like it had about 170K in gold.  The guild now sits as a stagnant level 25 guild with no activity. 

Now a bunch of the guildies who were kicked approached the ousted guild leader (possibly on an alt, or playing with them on another game, LofL, or by whatever means) to question why they were kicked out of the guild.  former guild leader logs back on to see that the guild has been taken from him and plundered.  then he made a thread about it on the wow forums, as linked above. 

Now i know how a guild can suffer from not having an active raiding group.  Mine was just the same for a while, but had solid members playing and contributing nonetheless. even still, there wasnt that much activity and zero progression as a guild.  even as a non-raiding member of the guild, i had a sense of belonging even if i did not participate in a guild first kill, or something similar.  i wanted to see my guild progress and be proud i was part of something that actually had success.  when my guild stopped raiding for a while, i felt no real desire to even log in or even felt good about my guild.  now, they're pushing to kill rags and hopefully enter into heroic version soon.  it leaves a good feeling.

The responses in the forums were basically split between two different opinions, while most ignore (or maybe accepted) the wrongdoing of the usurper.  One side believed that it was the responsibility of the GL to log on and actively lead the guild, otherwise, lose the guild to its members.  It is, after all, a group identity.  the guild was built by its people and that its leaders are there to constantly lead the people of the guild. the guild leader deserved to have his mantle stripped from him (no matter what happened after that).  The other side believed that the guild should not have to suffer such a "coup" or takeover like this and demanded Blizzard make some kind of restitution.  Hiatuses should be allowed and GLs should not be penalized for taking long times away, lest thieves break in and steal their stuffs, leaving the guild in a much worse state than before. 

I find clearly that playing a game like WoW is oftentimes involes taking on responsibility many do not want simply because many believe that this should just be a game.  However, it is a hobby for some (like other socially involved hobbies in real life, there comes a set of responsibilities attached and requires constant involvement, ie. reading club, bowling league).  Should one leader step down or stop being as active, another one should take their place. Since wow is a hobby of sorts, guild leadership often carries a heavy weight of responsibility that often negates the fun out of the game.  However, the responsibility or the act of doing the responsible tasks may, in and of itself, be just as fun for the guild leader.  Let the leaders lead and the followers follow.  And many derive fun from just killing things, or players.  And let those be the Raiders, or the PvPers, or the Members.  Of course, there are officers and whatnot, but lets keep things really simple for now.  The system works to a certain point.  Leaders find it fun to lead while followers find it fun to follow, and play the game at the same time.  Both consider this a game, however the leaders may find this game more of a hobby than the followers. 

Skip to the problem at hand, i find that the guild leader had not done everything he could have to prevent a takeover of his guild.  that is a fact.  i feel that the guild leader did a good job with the guild did well for the guild to notify his members that the "core raiders" will take a break and move on to do various things for a while.  this could have involved playing with alts, playing a new game, seeing the sunshine for once, etc.  but his intention was to keep his members, those who are not part of the core, interested in playing and staying in the guild until December when the next patch hits.  They had every opportunity to leave the guild and find a home elsewhere should they disagree with the path the guild is taking.  However, the members stuck around while the core just chilled somewhere, having some online presence but not really moving in any progressive direction. 

I feel there is nothing bad about the blizzard policy of replacing an inactive guild leader.  Whether or not guild leaders around the world knows about this rule is not the point.  When taking on responsibility to see the enjoyment of a group of people a guild leader decided they want to lead, that guild leader should understand all that goes into being a leader, including all of the rules blizzard has for replacing an inactive guild leader.  They have a responsibility to their guildies to do so.  So in the case linked above, blizzard has done nothing wrong.  they simply followed procedure.  whether it was known to others or whether it was for the benefit of "bad" people is irrelevant at this point.  the rules were followed.  that part is pretty clear.

However, i do not condone the actions of those who tried to take over leadership.  what they did was unacceptible, despicable, cruel and disgusting. They basically stole from the guild.  Although they themselves have stated that they took back what they believed they contributed from the bank, this seems very suspicious because not all the moneys can be accounted for.  Not only that, they took what others have also contributed, the others who were ousted/kicked, and called it their own because they somehow contributed to killing a mob that dropped a BoE.  They're basically saying they're owed the gold because they contributed some, but let them take other people's share too, because, well, they got kicked lol.  somthing like that.  let's not sugar coat what they did. it was stealing, showing that their responsibility was only to themselves. 

As unfortunate as this situation is, it shows just how people with no responsibility to the community can do when given nearly absolute power.  the phrase absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that with great power comes great responsiblity are key when analysing this incident.  here we see the evil that men can do to each other for the sake of gold and in-game materials.  in real life, we see a lot of this happening for tangible items like money, someone else's boyfriend, or status.  but in a game, even for something as small as in-game currency, we also see people stooping to such lows in order to get what they want.  And then they try to justify their actions.  i am not buying that.  claiming that the guild leader left is one thing, but then taking over the guild, kicking EVERYONE, then taking all the gold and items, claiming that your'e just taking back what you guys contributed, is totally different. 

For the guild that died and the people that made up its members, i hope everyone finds a new home. the loss of the guild is not just in gold or mats, but bank tabs, perks, acheivements, etc. all these things can be replaced with further hard work. sure, it's not the original guild, with the original acheivements, experiences, victories, hardships, etc.  but at least you can start anew and rebuild, this time with a better understanding of the dangers involed in being part of this game and its community.  i am pretty sure it wont be the same. it really will not be. it's much like going back to an ex that has cheated on you, it just will never be the same as it was.  good luck.

Resolution thread here.

Raidfinder is For the Masses

I was thinking a little today about what i want to do with my free time for the next several months.  I know i've mentioned that i want to start two characters within the next few weeks because my girlfriend is going back to school, but now plans got a little delayed.  Program doesnt start until the end of November, so i have at least another month to drill out some raids with her.  yay!  but i still think about the future of wow and about the time where i will be leaving this game.  One thing i find very useful is playing my xbox when i do get the chance.  it brings me a little bit of playing "perspective" from other genres and gives wow a little more life... being that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" or "how can i miss you if you dont go away?" kinda thing.

So when i do play other games, i find that i always end up going back to wow due to two reasons.  First, there's always progression on my characters.  Second, due to this progression, the game is never finished. Contrast this to many of the other games i've played, i played it to the point of the last battle even, and then quit before i reach the end.  it's never the end that really forces me to continue playing. it is always the journey.  and even in wow, level 85 begins a grand new journey that is drastically different from the previous.  from 1 to 85, you're chasing after that experience bar, equiping gear that's appropriate for your level and class.  but at 85, there's no more experience, only gearing.  and some of that gear comes from reputation "experience" or dungeon "experience" (ie. grinding a dungeon for the 10th time for that one last piece of gear) and, finally, currency "experience" where the currency is used to purchase better buffs, potions, upgrades or gear.  in the case of wow, it's gear. upgrading my gun with a scope? no, im replacing it with a boss drop!  see the difference?  not much of a difference at all now is there?

In any case, i am reading up on the 4.3 patch notes today and come across a wide variety of buffs.  Holy priests may be playable again.  beasts and survival hunters are getting a small buff to, hopefully, bring them out from the dps pitts and make them "ok" again.  nothing useful for paladins. etc.

what i do find most appealing is the raid finder tool.  now i dont care to nitpick at any of the minor details just yet (you know, with the whole world is ending if they dont change this or that before they impliment it... chances are, they will change little things here or there to make it whole.  also that whole winged guardian minipet OMG end of the world crap just needs to DIAF).  anyway, raidfinder.  it will be the ultimate weapon of the casuals to do casual things.  all the raiders are complaining and thinking, wtf, it wont work, raids are a complicated logistical mess, is it not?  but hey, if you dont think it's optimal for you, then dont use it.  and who is to say bliz wont design it so that it WILL work with 25 random folks?  somehow us players think it needs to pass the [insert your name here] Seal of Approval before it can be implimented into a game, a game that isnt even ours. we only pay to play it.  but really, bliz has already thought about most of our concerns when this feature does hit.  lower ilevel drop, limited rolls on gear, will not lock you out of the real thing, mechanics will not be as unforgiving as a real raid, etc. heck, if they had this for WotLK i would have used it to kill arthas.  hell yea i would.  break up all the wings into different instances also.  yes. do that. i'd love to raid like that.  anyway.

So this new raidfinder thing sounds great.  more stuff to do for those who are done with the heroic dungeons, have all the vp gear they need, and are ready to do something more, but cannot commit to a guild to raid on a weekly basis.  it's also more stuff to do for those who already have one or two raiding mains and would love to get more of their characters progressed to the point where they can "adequately" stand in for a missing raid member, if needed, without having to run zulroics 40 times in order to do so. 

My horde guild is odd.  no they're not odd. it's just that when i am on, half the people are already in a raid.  that leaves me with nothing to do really.  i ask around sometimes to group with the "leftovers" for a zulroic, or to add to someoen's BH run.  that's about it.  i've only been able to raid with this guild twice ever. and this is only when the moon and stars and planets and all the asteroids allign.  it was on a weekend.  it was on a day they needed an extra player and i had the opportunity to play for 3 hours.  it's difficult to even get to that stage because any extra player would have been filled up fast. but i think those days, i beat someone out on replying. =P  anyway. this gives me and maybe a couple of random stragglers who are online while the main raid is going on to actually get into another raid and kill a few bosses.  gear would be better than what we have but will not be as great as the ones in the normal raid.  fair enough.  i like that.

My alliance guild is also odd. there's two main differences.  one, there's a lot less people, but of those people, everyone has different alts that arent really considered "alts".  they're really co-mains. this guild raids often, and most would take their alts to various raids throughout the week.  this not only gears up their alts, but makes their alts just as geared as their mains.  having two solid mains give them the flexibility to raid several times a week with different compositions, keeping relatively the same core members.  i am not part of that core group since i only raid with them once a week.  for a guild like this, the raidfinder tool really isnt a desirable option for them, unless it becomes an alternative to gearing alts through firelands (t11) to get t12 ready.  i think this will be what they'll use it for. 

So for both types of guilds, and i know there are more types of guilds out there, but at least for the guilds that i am in, random dungeon finder will be beneficial to both groups in two similar but different ways.  Horde guild will have a bunch of mains playing to gear up because it is an alternative to the three new heroics (and they're not part of the raiding core) and alliance guild will use it to better gear up their alts to be raid-ready for their "alt" t12 deathwing raid 2, or raid 3, or however high it goes. 

For the strictly socials, or non "hardcore" players who dont raid, this is an awesome addition.  for the raiding hardcore who have many co-mains, this is also an awesome addition.  For those who have one main and raid exclusively with that main, pushing server firsts and all that, well those people will probably have as much use for it as grinding earthen ring rep.  or something similarly useless. for those who like rep grinds and daily quests, this feature might not be for them.  the vast amount of options at the end game is why wow is so popular still and shows its dedication to cater to a wide array of players.  having a raid finder might not be useful for everyone, but for a lot of people, it's a great feature i am definitely looking forward to using. 

Tedium, ad infinitum

Today we celebrate points reset day, where we can gain a measly 980 more points this week from the randomizer and/or raids.  I've been thinking lately just how long it takes to actually buy a piece of gear, if played diligently.  Let's do some napkin math and see where it leads us.

Chest and pants both costs 2200 vp. Gloves costs 1650 vp. Bracers, Rings and Necklace cost 1250 vp. Relic slot is 700 vp. Most classes can only use one of the rings while some may use a suboptimal second ring and reforge the useless stat and require two.

The result is 2(2200)+1650+3(1250)+700 = 10,500.  This is for most classes.
With 980 vp/week, if i cap each week, it will take me 10,500/980 = 11 weeks to get all the gear i need to max out this tier, without raiding.

My hunter is my only raiding character and has had to buy practically every piece of gear from the list, barring the 700 required for the ranged slot, as no gun/bow/xbow is available.  However, i do have the lavabolt, so that's not a problem. the other item that she doesnt need are the bracers. shaving 1250vp off.  The reason for this is because the BoE bracers that drop from firelands is actually better, and so i coughed up about 7k gold for it and bought it.  Both items saved me a total of 1950vp. so to max out my character since i have no luck with drops, i will need 10500-1950 = 8,550vp (9 weeks) to max out my character.  honestly, i've only gotten the headpiece from shannox and a bow. that's it.  still hoping for the ranseur of hatred. after 10 weeks still hoping.  Now this is great and all, 9 weeks of continuously getting capped and i've come a long way.  but i still do not have everything.  i had to take a break for the last two weeks and only did a random here or there.  i am still hoping to get the gloves this week and i should be done with the valor point grind. 

Now 9 weeks or a little over two months of playing and you're awarded with very piece of valor gear.  that sounds absolutely great, but there is always a downside to this. people have real life obligations and cannot raid all of the time.  and even when we raid, there is no guarantee that we'll actually see these points or a conparable drop.  my groups have been plagued with RNG and poor... whatevers. i dont know.  random messups here and there causing us to play longer and longer, then ending the night with just shannox down and maybe rhyolith.  beth kills us at 10% after the 5th try and we call it a night.  so much for gearing.  how do you gear when you dont kill bosses? 

I know, im one of the few minorities who still cant get Beth down even though nerfs has hit two weeks ago.  thanks for the cheering up.  i needed that.  in other news, and back on track, my army of alts require much work. 

For every person who has a main and maybe an alt, there's another person with 10 alts sitting around.  Gearing these alts are a pain but gear them we shall.  for my dk i am about halfway to getting the next and almost final upgrade.  also, my rogue and paladin only has one vp item.  the rest are jp items and some from opening the molton front.  Although all these items are easily gotten, what seems to be a problem has always been gearing my five-ish alts sufficiently throughout the expansion.  Remember that formula above where it's calculated that it takes over 10 weeks to get all the vp items? let's not go into how a zul-roic can turn out and how not finishing it will result in nothing. nada.  useless JPs but no VPs.  yep.  those have happend and 40 minutes of wait plus 80 minites of hurting in a dungeon ends up with ZERO VPs.  thanks blizz. you are the roxxors. I can split up 490 of the points and get 7 from normal heroics and do 4 zulroics.  even then, these are heroics which i've done countless times already.  compound that with having already done these dungeons in normal mode too and you can see just how crazy it all gets.

in any case, what i am trying to get at is this.  while i know that gearing up a toon requires a lot of work, and sometimes i am just happy with gearing them up just enough to do OK damage in a zulroic setting, i do find the whole process tedious to the point of NOT playing my character after i've acheived a certain threshold.  Once i have received my last piece of vp gear for my dk, i will probably never touch her until next patch because blizz has caused me to put all my efforts into her and i have nothing left for rep grinds, mount grinds, or even pet grinds.  yes, pets.  i dont have all of them but i do have a lot.  =P

With the length of the grind i have to set my own standards and limits when acheiving something. And it is not for lack of time that i do this.  i have a solid 3 hours a night and a little more on the weekends to do all of this stuff, but it has gotten to the point where the 40th zulroic is just... enough.  Dont belive me? here...

As you can see, Sethekk halls and MGT did not drop their mounts for me.  but also, a total of 33 successful Zulroic runs.  there have been many unsuccessful ones as well. 

And this is just one my DK. 

None of my characters have even started to do the daily quests for the molton front. None.  Zero.  I've opened up the vendor in the very beginning and that's it.  There's really no way i can gear up my toons, do dailies AND try to raid and make my gameplay meaningful.  meaningful being the ability to gear up well. but people have done this and are doing this right now, and they pvp!!  but for me, i dont consider myself the normal player.  but i still am one of the customers who try to play this game.  it's the basic develop-the-character kinda game.  and i have... five.  and more on the way.  i'll have to one day decide who to focus on but for the time being, the only fun characters have been my dps characters. 

Overall, i just think the gearing process is too long, especially for a game where most of us have alts.  and i wouldnt post this at all even, except for the fact that 4.2 raid content has been nerfed so that we can quickly gear up for the next patch, which is in the PTRs right now.  this means i have about 2 months before all my hard work becomes obsolete and i'll have to start over again.  maybe if i stick to one character, things will be fine. but the fact is there is no one out there with just one character.  we're all playing this fantasy game trying to experience the game from different points of views, some more obvious than others.  but this grind is really causing me some issues.  do i really need 17 zul amans and 16 zul gurubs to finish gearing?  really?  add my hunter, rogue, paladin and maybe another toon and now we have a problem.

in conclusion, the whole moral of this?  i dont know.  i just know the grind is long so come 4.3, these next three dungeons better be awesomer than the ICC 5mans they came up with a couple years ago.  those sets of dungeons were awesome and kept me playing another 5 months.

Tanks and Their Need for DPS Gear, Pt. 2

I understand the game mechanics, that if you can roll "need" on an item, that it's fine to roll need on it.  No one will stop you. Blizz will not "punish" you since they gave you the option to roll need.  But there are some social mores out there that tells people not to roll need on offspec items unless no one else needs it.  There have been so many jerk tanks (my gf when leveling her DK had to deal with this constantly) who need on dps plate and dps weapons and accessories it annoyed me to no end.  Then one day, i just accepted the fact that these guys will do what they do, and there is nothing i can really do, besides preemptively making a snide remark as we watch the /roll fall out.  I am ok with it.  i really am. i still dont like it, but i have come to the point where these things do not really matter anyway. 

I was on my paladin last night in two very fail groups that kept dying to things, first in ZA, and then another random in ZG.  However, we did prevail once people understood the fight the first time around.  The 1st tank wasnt stellar, but he had enough play time to know how each fight went.  He didnt quite understand the dragonhawk boss mechanic, but he knew to kill one of the hatchers.  What i can see from this is that he's been through this on an alt or on his current character as dps. Now he's tanking it as a warrior. we went through the whole instance with about five or six wipes. not too bad, but not nearly what i am used to.

The second group was a ZG group that started off dead.  Actually, i joined at the snake boss fight, with the tank and a dps dead (same guild).  I lasted about 30 seconds getting the boss from 40% to 20%.  then died with the other dps and healer.  we redid the fight a couple of times.  I should have left, but i persevered.  Either i have a lot of patience or a lot of hope in these people.  Now i am not saying i am the greatest, but i am saying i know mechanics enough to not die.  well, what happend was this.  We went on to 1-shot the Ogan boss, but died to trash along the way.  We wiped once and nearly wiped again on one of the archeology bosses.  It was the one that enrages and does a pursuit.  We 1-shot the cat lady but wiped once to Zanzil.  Now i know Zanzil because he's infamous for giving my hunter Zulian Slicers (useless) and almost never drops it for my DK.  Also, my gf has been waiting for him to drop his plate healing shoulderpads for a month, but hasnt.  I am beginning to think that the shoulderpads doesnt exist.  anyway. he killed us the first time due to summoning poison cauldron first.  healer dies but we manage to avoid damage until he summoned the zerker. we all die to the zerker.  the second attempt was awesome mainly because he summoned the little skeletons first.  all three melees grabbed the fire cauldron so we can do some extra dps on the boss.  by the time he was ready to summon a zerker (2nd cauldron call), he was dead.  easy if the RNG is right.  somewhat difficult if the RNG goes to the zerker (just kite for a while). but difficult if he does poison because all of the dps loses the fire buff.

Now on to jin-do and we 1shot him. wow.  awesome sauce.  the 2hand hammer drops and i need on it.  20 seconds later, the tank needs it, gets it, and promptly leaves group.  as if it was some easy way of "getting away with it".  although i can totally tell and if i get into a group with her again, i will promptly ignore her, need on all the tanking stuffs, then leave group.  oh and i will do this as a healer too, so he will die and suffer a repair bill.  or maybe i can pretend i was afk.  haha. baby aggro.  no one knows.  yea. blizz, please have me play with this ninja tank again so i can be a jerk. some people just deserve it.

Now i did not need on the tanking necklace (although i greeded it just in case, instead of disenchanting it) that dropped. Nor did i need on the tanking sword that dropped from Ohgan boss.  I know the dino is maned Ohgan because he keeps calling him during the fight. but for the life of me, i dont know the boss' name.

Anyway, i can understand why some tanks will need on dps gear.  It's for their dps set, and some people can rock it and some people are just horrible at it.  i am not sure how i can fix this issue.  i really dont want to actually. i say if they're able to roll need then they can.  but only if the mainspec dps who would benefit from that item pass, greeds or disenchants it.  surely, going to someone who might use it sometimes is better than going to someone who will just vendor it or shard it.  anyway, i am not mad. just disappointed in people.

Overall, i am ok doing 12-15k dps on bosses rockin a Wild Hammer from normal mode Grim Batol.

Rogues and Paladins

I've played a rogue over the past few months and geared him up to the point where im pretty much "maxed" out on valor gear and zulroic gear. "Maxed" because i dont raid or want to spend all that gold on some nice crafted or FL trash dropped item, and because i dont want to waste gold regemming/enchanting a piece that may only be marginally better than what i already have.  That said, my rogue is pretty decently geared and can probably do well in a FL raid.  He's been on hold for the past couple of weeks because there's simply nothing else worth while to do, at least on him.  This is the same for my deathknight.

There are two things i want to touch on when it relates to this rogue.  one, i want to compare it with ret paladins due to their usage of combo points.  and two, i want to theorize about the gearing process and what we might see in the future. [after writing this post, i got lost and cant seem to think straight anymore. so you're left with the first topic of combo point generation and its uses.  I'll talk about gearing a little later.]

Paladins have three combo points whereas rogues have five. as it relates to ret, these combo points are used as a damage buff, an attack or to proc an ability.  Sometimes it can be used to heal, like a holy paladin, but never for spells specific to prot.  understood.  the paladin, with his 3 combo points and 4 second-ish gap between getting each combo point, is a static battle mechanic for both prot and ret.  i believe holy has a different way of getting combo points altogether, which doesnt include CS, HotR or DS (bound by that 4 seconds with little else in between).  four seconds is a long time. and because we're not locked to mana usage when using these abilities, not if we judge, then what happens is that we fall into a pattern of always having to use a combo point ability every four seconds, or our dps falters.

Contrast this to rogues, who's combo point generation is dependent on an energy system and whose abilties are locked out only by a global cooldown, you can ramp up the combo points quickly and wait a few seconds for the final combo point, then finisher. it gives the rogue a lot more flexibility to use their abilities when they want, with the only limitation they're trying to fight is not being energy capped.  can you imagine Sinister Strike (SS), SS, pause for the hell of it, SS, pause because you're expecting a kick, then finisher? all this while keeping your energy below 100?  that seems like a lot to watch, sure.  but it's more exciting than for paladins to Crusader Strike (CS), hope a filler procs, if not wait four seconds for another CS, hope a filler procs, if not wait four seconds for a CS, then YOU MUST CAST INQUISITION AS YOUR FIRST FINISHING MOVE and use up all your combo points.  Then repeat the above for 12 more seconds until you can actually do a beefy damage blow.  what's that? 24 seconds?  some fights last just that long and we've just finished our "ramp up" sequence.  And why is it that my 1 point slice and dice rocks while my 1 point Inquisition is useful for... 2 attacks?  The scaling of the ret finishers are also crap compared to rogues. 1 point gives me about 30% weapon damage, 2 gives me a bit above 100%.  3 will give me over 300%.  that means, even at two combo points/holy power, a templar's verdict will do crap damage at 2 combo points.  We must have 3 combo points to do anything worth while. length of Inquisition? same deal as above. 

Anyway, as you can see, i am not complaining about dps.  i am doing almost just as much dps on my ret paladin as i am with my rogue. and im barely able to enter zulroics on my paladin. imagine beating out my own rogue in dps with similar gear.  that would be odd.  but i have to keep two things in mind.  one, the length of the fight, and two, the use of available cooldowns.

i play as a combat rogue, so this is coming from a combat perspective.  I have two solid cooldowns, which is killing spree and adrenaline rush.  KS is on a 2minute cooldown while AR is on a 3 minute cooldown. in a boss fight, depending, i can possibly get two KS and maybe, if i am lucky, two AR's in.  but i really doubt many fights last more than 3 minutes now.  this provides a nice burst only after i get SnD up, which is really quick.  a 2point SnD will cover all of KS or AR uptime.

However, for a paladin, the buffs are a little different. Again, ramp up time is slow, so Inquisition has to be at 3 combo points.  not only that, zealotry has to be at 3 combo points.  this is great if i get a proc, but horrible if i have to wait the full 24 seconds.  Wings can go up any time and has a 3 minute cooldown. Guardian of ancient kings has a 5 minute cooldown.  Some things to note. 24 seconds into the fight 2 cd's go off.  Zealotry and Wings. Awesomeness happens when i get Art of War procs as well.  However, zealotry started 12 seconds into an Inquisition buff, which means i'll have to reapply inquisition with my last zealotry application.  an application is when i use my 3 holy powers gained from zealotry.  this last application has to be used for Inquisition otherwise, i will spend the next 12 seconds without Inquisition buff.

About 2 zealotry induced Templars Verdicts in, i pop Guardian of Ancient Kings, which i will shorten to Ancient Kings. This Kings will last me through wings and zealotry.  I know, people have other ways of doing this to maximize their buffs, and i am slowly getting into this so i'll have to change my play just a little bit.  Either way, the point here is that there are several buffs that need to go up at once, or else your dps will suck.  Now the trick is to get the boss killed before your dps starts to trickle.  and trickle it does.  the second time around, your first ability to come off cooldown is Zealotry.  So use that, by itself. Then Wings.  So use that a minute after.  Then Zealotry again a minute after that. With Kings a minute after that. Basically your buffs steadys out the longer the fight goes, with some abilities overlapping the further we go down the timeline. but six minute fights are rare. so lets not deal with that for now.

As you can see from the above (or not, i dont know), Paladins produce the bulk of their dps after the first 24 seconds of the fight, for about 20-30 seconds. then slowly trickles with occassional bumps every minute after the second minute.  Depending on how you look at it, this is bad for 8 minute raid boss fights.  Good for 2 minute 5-man heroic boss fights.  Why? because paladins rock the meters in the first 2 minutes of a fight.  Please notice i never added procs. if procs happen, the whole fight might favor the paladin even faster.  but the cooldowns remain the same.  instead of starting doing really good dps after 24 seconds, they can start as early as 2 seconds. but that's RNG.  and we hate RNG.

anyway, the above is a simplified and poorly explained mechanic of how i play a ret paladin and a combat rogue.  now i dont want to suggest any changes, other than give me a free exorcism after i CS (always), or let me use holy shock as a filler for those times i cant use Exo or TV.  i need something in there to bridge the tedium of waiting for CS.  OR... make CS faster, give me 4 combo points with 3-second cooldowns.  i'd be a much happier paladin.  also, stop making 1CP inquisition basically useless.  hell. just make us all rogues already. 

Working on teh Alts

I've been working on Alts lately.  Many many alts.  Adding to the alts i already have.  yes. more alts!!

What started this week was a gradual pregression into altaholism due mainly to my inability to play wow in one huge sitting with my girlfriend because she started school again.  And since i work and we have a 4-year old not yet in school, the gf has to take night classes for the next... six months or so.  this leaves me no opportunities in the evenings to devote 3 hours of gaming time to. 

when i get home, its already about 7pm.  I know i have to pick up my gf at 10:30ish from the station, so i have about three hours in between to do what i want.  Well, that's a good chunk of raiding time!  but alas, i have to feed the little one, get her bathed, and get her ready for bed.  all this is done in little segments since my gf isnt home to prep all this for me.  even in doing a raid from 7-10, it still will not be acheivable since i will be taking small breaks to do the above, and also take care of myself (ie. shower, etc). so with this change (and im not complaining about the change, just stating the facts) comes a change in playing priorities. 

Of course, Wow is a game that's been slowly worked to cater to those who have very little time for raiding, or time to really devote huge chunks of the day to.  The ultimate change to cater to all of us with time constraints and juggling tasks, chores and errands, is to give us a pause button. that would totally rock. When playing xbox, i hit pause, save game, wash dishes, go back and play some more.  In Wow, i find that the best thing to do is to roll a rogue, or a druid.  I've created a troll druid and a bloodelf rogue this week just for that purpose.  =D  and will be leveling them sometime within the next month or two.  that, and i have several level 80s to max to 85 and several 85s to max out on gear.  OK, maybe not max out on gear, but at least have enough to be ilevel 350-ish.  this will allow for me to enter any silly PUG that might go on for BH, or BOT or BWD, even FL.  yes, FL!  but whenever that may happen. And of course, who could ever miss out on the chance to do one of those 2-hour Zul-roics??  no ways! im there!

Add to the list, if i do get any time on the TV, i have a slew of hack and slash games like Darksiders and Bayonetta, some FPS's like Gears and Halo (not a fan of Call of Duty), and possibly Forza... and thinking of picking up RPGs like Saints Row and on and on... the list goes on.  But the TV belongs to my toddler girl, who demands to control the TV whenever i decide to hop on.  So playing on the xbox might not be possible.  As for her habit of taking over, she does that with everything.  If we're playing on our computers, she wants to play too.  Thankfully, she has her own netbook and her own trial account.  =]

Back on track: this is my list of characters and their progress or planned progress for the next five months.

My 85's
1. Burlésque - (MM Hunter) Raiding on weekends with the girlfriend. On weekdays, will just check mail for juicy AH sales on PvP mail goods.  that's basically it.
2. Devyn - (Frost Death Knight) Non-raiding. Been Frost since Wrath. Frost for life!  Geared to the teeth from Zuls and VP/JP. There is no meaningful progress outside of raids.
3. Brunö - (Combat Rogue) Non-raiding.  Geared almost to the teeth from Zuls and JPs.  Has some VP gear but need another, or two.  and will be done. 
4. Epicurious - (Fire Mage) Non-raiding. Trying to be fire in an arcane world.  srsly.  Doing heroics. Not yet Zul-ready, but close.
5. Devynity - (Ret Paladin) Non-raiding.  Geared for heroics. does about 9k with no thinking. does about 14k with more mobs and seal of righteousness. does about 15k on bosses with all cooldowns on, seal of truth and bossfights lasting 1minute.  on longer fights, dps decreases due to cooldowns on cooldowns. Currently trying to gear this char for Zuls and beyond.  Ret dps is decent, but very RNG. sometimes its good, sometimes it sucks.  but overall, Ret is in a decent state.  the problem isnt just RNG, but also, that it's not fun. the fighting mechanic just sucks.  everything is slow unless i get procs. and that's RNG.
6. Diinky - (Druid) All she does is her daily xmute.  That's all.  nothing else. /sad
7. Brooke (prot pally), Ithacus (prot war) and Krakkenskull (Blood Dk) are all 85's with nothing to do.  dont want to tank too much. 

As you can see, there's just one active project during the week, and that's my Ret Pally.  This will continue until i get bored of Zulroics and eventually somewhat be proficient at pally dps.  Other than that, there's nothing else going on.  I may take Epicurious on a couple heroics and then wait for my gf to come home.  Weekends will involve raids. hopefully that will be all i do on the weekends, leaving me with lots of time to do other things, like enjoy the sun, visit a park, or window shop at the mall.  or something else besides playing wow!

As for non-85's, here's another list:
1. Akeelah - Lv82 Warlock.  She is my enchanter and tailor. I'm only leveling her for her tradeskills and that's it. 
2. Aquilla - Lv.70-something Priest.  Not really useful at all right now. She herbs, but so does two other toons.  She's an alchemist, but so are two other toons.  Priesting is fun, but not enough to want me to level through dungeons healing aoe happy tanks.
3. Bersaeus - Lv70-something blood dk.  yes another blood dk. but this one is on a different realm which i like to have more toons presence. =D
4. Druid2 - lv 80something druid used only for JC.  maybe i'll level her as feralcat. maybe.
5. Rockdarr - Lv 80 shaman. maybe healy.
6. Xylie - lv 45 priest.  my third priest.  i know.
7. Voltaris - lv. 50ish prot warrior.  this dude is leveling with my gf's shaman.  thank god for xrealm partying. 
8. Primo - lv 67 dwarf hunter.  will level with a 60something gf's alt when she gets there.
9. El Segundo - 68 warlock.  maybe in a couple years.
10. Cryogin - lv. 35ish mage.  this is on hold.
11. Thylandarr - lv. 45 mage. this is my first character. he is on hold forever. =D
12. Azurielle - lv. 72 priest.  shadow.  leveling with one of my gf's alts.
13. Azuriella - lv. 68 DK.  another fun character to play when im bored.

Most of my characters are horde but my one raiding character is alliance.  hopefully, i can join some pugs on my 85s and run some raids when i can.  as for the level 70s-80s, they will eventually be 85. but it gets super complex when pairing these toons with my gf's toons to level together. sometimes i just need to level a couple solo.  what makes it more complicated is that they're in different factions and realms. my toons are scattered across three realms for the most part, and a fourth one soon.

In any case, the above post is really for my benefit, as it lets me see the majority of my characters' progression and so that i can plan my priorities for the next several months.  hopefully, they'll all be 85 with some just waiting to gear up to the max. 

one thing i'd like to also see one day is the character limits for each realm. i'd like to see a couple or 10 more slots added, maybe 10 per faction even.  who knows.  anyway. glad i can post and hope you guys have a great day!