Back to the alts...

So, since I've really stopped PvPing again with Sakuran I've taken to leveling Laic and Repentant. Well mostly leveling Laic and using Repentant as a healer for instances. My hunter is sitting pretty at almost level 45 and Repentant just dinged 38. I am contemplating doing some PvP with Repentant, just to get a feel for how PvP is with a priest. I'll hold off doing anything PvP wise with Laic until 51 when I can start AV with him, the rewards for that first quest are just too nice.

Speaking of Laic I've gotten pretty comfortable with soloing with him. I'm currently 34 points into survival, primarily to pick up Wyvern Sting (which I love). My basic pull is macro'd as follows

/petattack
/castsequence reset=combat Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, Concussive Shot

The first button press sends in the pet and casts Hunter's Mark. I wait for my pets first growl to go off (auto-cast) then I hit it again for the Sing. Then just auto-shot to victory. The Concussive Shot is for accidently pulling aggro or for mobs that flee when near death. If I get one add I hit it with Wyvern Sting, which usually puts it to sleep long enough to finish the first (or else I just melee it down). If I get two adds I'll drop a Ice Trap, hit multi shot to get the two coming after men and then immediately cast Wyvern Sting. I usually have enough time to get the cast off before they're on me. One stung, one frozen, and the one my pet is on, mostly dead. After that I'll just put the pet on the mob I stung and melee the blocked one. As I'm survival specced, I do enough damage with melee to take them out. If I get in trouble I can always root, kite, and drop another freeze trap.

On Saturday (I think) I spent a couple of hours on my Hunter grinding the Highborne in Azshara with a priest in the guild. Amazingly enough, there was nobody else on them and we were uninterupted. Having a constant renew of my pet meant we had ZERO downtime. I'd just use Autoshot and he'd wand away and the mobs would just drop. Undead tracking enabled us to make very, very fast time and the XP just flew by. Might have to make a return trip pretty soon :P

PvP grind, back again...

Okay, as everyone knows Patch 2.0 brought alot of changes, including the 'elimination' of the PvP grind. Well, sort of. It's true that the nefarious decay system is gone, but it's still a bit of a grind. I didn't start PvPing again with Sakuran until the nerf to honor, so I've all I've done is with the slower amount. Seems like I can pretty consistently get around 300 honor per hour (I'll ignore BG tokens as they are NOT, even remotely, a bottleneck). The first thing I grabbed was the Lieutenant Commander's Leather Shoulders (+17 STA, +1% hit, +1% crit, +22 AP). A nice upgrade from my Spaulders of the Unseen (+22 AGI, +7 STA). The cost was 4125 honor, or roughly 13-14 hours of PvPing, which is a decent amount. However the net bonus on the gear was +10 STA, +1% hit, and +.24% crit. Really doesn't look like much when you put it like that.

So, I'm looking at some other upgrades and I'm just not sure how convinced I am that I want them. My current headpiece is the Shadowcraft Cap (+20 AGI, +13 STR, +18 STA) and am looking to replace it with the Lieutenant Commander's Leather Helm (+23 STA, +1% crit, +1% hit, +36 AP) for a cost of 6375 honor and 30 AV tokens. So, we're looking at around 21 hours of work for a net improvement of 5 STA, .31% crit, 1% hit, 3 AP, and actually losing 1.43% dodge. Now, I suppose I could go for the Field Marshall's Mask (+27 AGI, +31 STA, +1% crit, +1% hit), but that's at a cost of 19125 honor or roughly 60 hours of work. With Burning Crusade 26 days away, why the heck would I do that? I do enjoy PvP, but not to the extent that I'll sink 2.5 days of my life into an upgrade that is going to be replaced within, I'd say, 3 months. Not worth. That being said, sinking 20 hours into a piece that will be replaced in 2 months is a little more reasonable, but just barely...

I think that, rather than sink my time into PvP, I'll again focus on my alts and try to level them. Repentant is still sitting at 36 waiting for some guildies to grind with (not that I can't grind on my own, but kinda promised I'd grind with them). Laic is at 43 and I think I have a decent shot of getting him to the mid-50's, or even 60, by the time BC hits. Who knows, stranger things have happened.

I <3 Mutilate

So, here's a number crunchy explanation

MH Damage: 146-199, 95.6 DPS
OH Damage: 57-77, 44.8 DPS

Mutliate: 60 energy, instant attack with each weapon +88 (IIRC). +50% damage if opponent is poisoned. +20% damage from points in Subtlety. +30% crit damage from points in Assassination. Grants 2 CP.

So, without poison...
Base Mutilate: 487 damage
Mutilate with MH Crit: 999 damage
Mutilate with OH Crit: 796 damage
Mutilate with both Crit: 1297 damage
and with poison
Base Mutilate: 747.9damage
Mutilate with MH Crit: 1498 damage
Mutilate with OH Crit: 1194 damage
Mutilate with both Crit: 1944.54 damage

Now, I have around a 20% chance to crit, unbuffed. Since each weapons crit is calculated independantly I have a 64% that neither crit, 16% MH only, 16% OH only, and 4% that both crit. Taking that I get an average damage (crit included):

Mutilate w/o Poison: 658 damage
Mutilate w/ Poison: 987 damage

Also due to talents I have a 100% of getting an extra CP from any ability that grats CP that crits. With mutilate that means I have a 36% of getting a third CP.

So, as an opener I can do the following:
Energy Skill
110 Base
50 Cheap Shot
70 -tick-
10 Mutilate
30 -tick- Cheap Shot breaks
5 Kindey Shot (Find Weakness +10% damage, Improved Kidney Shot +9% damage)
25 -tick-
45 -tick-
65 -tick- Kidney Shot breaks
5 Mutilate
So, for those 10 seconds I've got my opponent locked down, and done roughly 1746 white damage and, on average, 658 damage from the first mutilate (assuming I didn't proc a poison off my initial hits) and 1086 damage off the second (presuming poison procced somewhere in there, taking into account the +10% damage bonus from Find Weakness). Grand total for damage is 3490.

None of the abilities listed above can be broke by damage, so I am free to use Deadly Poison V, which deals 136 damage over 12 seconds and stacks up to 5 times, for a total of nearly 680 damage over 12 seconds. With a full stack that's 113 damage per tick.

Now, if I wanted to I could Cold Blood that last mutilate to bring it's damage up to around 2139, pushing my total damage deal in that 10 seconds (not including poison damage) to around 4542 damage.

At this point my opponent is free, but DOT'd and crippled and I've got 3 CP :P

Patch Madness...

Well, as I'm sure everyone knows, yesterday was patch day. And what a crazy day it was. I got a few of my addons updated, most significant were Bartender and AG Unit Frames. Auctioneer is down for around two weeks, so I'll be doing no AH work in the near future...

It's funny going back to Vanilla WoW. I mean, I have my couple of addons, but so much is new again. Fubar was throwing errors, so I had to disable it. I really like the new talents, though I've very disappointed that some of the newer announced rogue talent changes didn't make it. It doesn't effect the build I'm using now, but it does effect my planned grinding build...

Of all the changes, the one I'm adapting the worst to is no longer being able to auto change pages on my hunter. The newest Bartender3 build appears to offer page swapping while holding down a modifier key, but it's still not the same thing. That being said, auto attack and auto shot interchanging is a wonderful change! Still going to have to figure out how to make this all work...

More as I know it... What are your impressions on the patch?

Addons for next week

EDIT: I'm keeping this post up to date as I'll be directing people to it for info about my UI setup.

New Versions of stuff I'm using

• Bartender 3 - replacing Bartender 2, which I'm currently enjoying
• AG Unit Frames
• oCB - simple cast bar replacement
• Prat - All purpose chat mod
• ElkBuffBar - Much nicer looking buff/debuff timers
• OneBag and OneBank - as it sounds, consolidates your bags and bank.
• GMail - Simply an Ace2'd version of CTMailMod.
• FuBar - Says it's updated... But kept throwing errors last night.
• ClearFont - simply replaces the default font in WoW to a much easier to read font.

Stuff that sounds interesting but I haven't played with yet.

• Clique - As benecast and the like are going the way of the dodo, I think click casting is what we're left with
• KC_Items - Looks like an ACE'd version of Auctioneer. I'll definitely give it a look-see.
• ACE UI - cause comand line entry just plain sucks.
  

Stuff I really want replaced, but haven't found yet (well, I know where they are, but haven't found a WoW 2.0 version).

• TheoryCraft - Such a great program. I love having the average damage for my abilities visible on my buttons. For healing it makes it much easier to select the right heal based on the damage sustained on my target.
  

I know there are lots that I"m leaving out, but that'll have to wait.

EDIT (12/13) - I am still getting a ton of errors form the addons on my laptop, having to disable several of them. I managed to get the Auctioneer beta, so I'm back to my usual AH routine. KC Items was nice, but I just couldn't manage to get it set up right. Bottom Scanner, packed with Auctioneer, is interesting, but I think it ultimately needs more work before I'll really try to mess with it.

What is particularly odd about this is that I get different errors after copying the addons folder directly from my Desktop. I'm not sure what is going on there, but may kill most of my saved variables folder and see if that helps.

Pwnd in RFC

Now, I don't generally like to use 'l33t' speak, but I do feel it is appropriate in this instance. Last night Nascere (level 14 priest), Lugnut (level 14 Warrior), and Coberg (level 15 Hunter) tried RFC and got our butts kicked. None of us were well geared nor highly skilled at our class. The hunter's pet did a majority of the tanking, so Lugnut was short on Rage. We could handle the single and double pulls, but at three we wiped. My mana bar would run out about 3/4 of the way through the fight and I had many dead pets on my conscience :P N0t to mention a plethora of wipes or sprints to the instance portal. I am also responsible for training about 15 Troggs to us while getting ready to clear the cavern where the dead Tauren is...

Wrapped a few quests up with Laic but 40 still eludes me. I think I may have to just plug away and ignore everything else for a bit. Moved him over to Swamp of Sorrows as I read there is a decent quest chain there. If all else fails I'll just find a grind and do it.

WoW 2.0 is now announced for next Tuesday. I'm quite anxious for it as it looks to offer a TON of new stuff. Perhaps not new content (aka instances), but with new talents and spells it will feel like a content rich patch. I am really looking forward to an in-combat Wyvern Sting with Laic. Just think it will be sweet.

What part of the patch are you, faithful reader, excited about? Talent changes, UI changes, macro changes, new spells, new honor system, or something completely different?

So close...just couldn't finish

So, I hopefully will ding 40 tonight with Laic. I planned on doing so last night but I hit a batch of very low motivation and after being in game for an hour while accomplishing NOTHING I gave up and logged off. Tonight is RP night and I am looking forward to some RFC goodness with Nascere. I have main healed very few instances so it will still be an educational experience for me. I am also not using any of the 'healer' addons as I want to learn to do it before WoW 2.0 lands. As I type this it occurs to me that I'm really learning to heal on my level 14 toon and not on my level 36. Just haven't done that much grouping with Repentant...

Speaking of WoW 2.0, I logged onto the test servers this AM just to play around a bit. After looking at the talents in front of me, Sakuran will be going 41/5/5 for PvP goodness until the expansion when she will be respeccing for something in a combat sword build, probably 11/40/0. Talent point at 61 would go to Surprise attacks and then go towards filling out the Assassination tree. I would imagine that I'll spec back to daggers when I hit 70. Swords>daggers for grinding, but daggers>swords for PvP.

Laic will certainly be going for 40 points in survival. The change to Aimed Shots just doesn't make it that important anymore (that change being that it resets your shot timer), it'll still be nice for an opening strike, but you'll not be seeing it used in combat anymore. I'm really looking forward to Wyvern Sting, which in BC can be used in combat. Got an add? Put it to sleep for 12 seconds, lay a trap and have a half dead mob by the time it gets to you. Also looks like my pet is getting a decent buff. Will have to really look at the numbers, but off the top of my head I'd say that the armor was up by about 200 points. Has anyone seen what the conversion is on hunter stats to pet buff?

On burnout, distractions, and the Burning Crusade

So, I write this post after playing very little in the last week. A nice 4 day weekend would usually mean lots of WoW for me, but not so. In my last post I mentioned that I got my Wii on Wednesday, best console ever. I played it pretty exclusively Thursday and Friday. After literally huting my arms play Rayman Raving Rabbids I did take a bit of a break and play some WoW Friday night.

I have been enjoying my Forsaken Priest, Nascere who is now level 14. I think the quests in undead zone are about the only newb ones I haven't worked on, so that was a pleasent change. It's also odd to play on a server where you don't have piles of gold. I actually couldn't afford all my spells at level 14. 12s a piece and 5 spells means one broke priest. I find it shocking that I may need to start farming at level 14 :P

Later on that night I ended up assisting with a Deadmines run. Now, I could have just grabbed Sakuran and cleared it for the group, but instead I brought repentant and focused on healing. It was a decent run with minimal deaths until we got trained twice in a row heading up to VC. As it was very late I called it a night.

Saturday I went out of town to do some Christmas shopping and get our car looked at. Spent more money than planned, which is always fun, discovered that nobody on the face of the planet carries the Wii Nunchuk. That evening I logged Nascere for a bit finishing up a few quests.

Sunday after church I logged onto Lamentation and grouped with a buddy of mine, Reverenddan. We worked on the quest on the way to Menthil where they have you kill some orcs. Good fun. He's just learning to tank and pull so it was a bloody affair. Doesn't help that I go DPS crazy either... After that I logged Sakuran to run him through the stockades for a quest he had. Do I need to mention that I love 1-shot ambushing mobs? Lastly spent an hour or so on Laic questing in Arathi Highlands.

Later that evenging I went back to Lamentation to group with my buddy and actually got my wife to log Saian, her Warlock. The three of us made short work of the gnolls north of Lakeshire. After my wife logged (sleepy girl), Reverenddan and I spent forever working on the Redridge Goulash. I've got to say that the drop rates on the Though Condor Meat suck, plain and simple. Why, oh why, do those quest items have what feels like a 7% drop rate?

As I mentioned in my title, I'm feeling a bit of WoW burnout. I'm not really interested in doing anything with Sakuran as BC is just around the corner. Levelling alts is okay, but it feels kinda like work. Honestly I'm having a lot more fun with the Wii, so wouldn't be very surprised if I put WoW on the back burner till BC, or at least this new patch.

Thinking about patch builds

Okay, as the patch is coming soon, I'm trying to think about what builds I go with once I have to respec. It also makes sense to plan these out till 70, so that's where I'll be doing with that

• Sakuran will likely go 31/15/5 at 60 I'd level to 31/25/5 and likely respec depending on what my guild is doing at the time.
  
• Repentant who is at 36 will go 0/0/26 with a goal of 20/0/41 at 70.
• Laic, whose talents are a mess right now will go 0/0/29 with a goal of 0/21/40.

Those are the only of my characters that I've really given much thought to. As far as my Shaman, Warrior, and Mage are concerned what do the experts out there suggest for a level 70 build?

Illness, Guitar Hero 2, a Hunter, a Priest, and my Wii

Okay, so been pretty crazy in RL recently. My son was very sick all of last week, had to take him to the ER and everything. Doing better now, but then my wife and I got sick, so fun all around.

Got Guitar Hero 2 for my birthday, I forget how much fun that game is. Two-player coop with Lead/Rhythm/Bass tracks is a blast, not to mention variable difficulties. So I can practice the Lead line on Expert while my wife tags along on Easy Bass. Should be a good time for a while. Don't knock Freebird, it's insanely hard there at the end.

Haven't played Sakuran much at all. I'm sure she'll lose Rank 8 today, which is fine. Been spending most of my time on Laic, got him from level 36 to nearly 39 in the last week. I would like him to hit 50 before BC lands, though that may be difficult. Never underestimate how freaking easy it is to grind with a hunter. Hunter's Mark-> Pet Attack->Aimed Shot-> Serpent Sting-> Feign Death-> Autoshot. Works every time.

Started a Forsaken Priest on our RP server, named Nascere. Backstory:

I was beautiful...once...

I have few memories of my life then...mostly I see images like a painting...my families estate...the Temple of the Light... Some things I only remember as a feeling, like the first time I saw the Light...such warmth and comfort... I was beautiful then, not that such things were important to me...but it is easier to be humble when you have it all...

When the Plauge came I saw my friends and family succumb...I fought with such ferocity I have never known...little difference it made... I spent an eternity as a slave to the Lich King, all I can recall from that time is the compulsion...the rage...the hunger... All my faith and training in the Light could not prepare me for that... For that eternity I saw not the Light, I felt not it's warmth, just the compulsion...

Upon awakening recently the compulsion was gone, though the aches of hunger remain... The Light is distant, though I can again catch a glimmer of it... I have wandered a great while in this shell... Where once I was beautiful, I am now little better than the mindless corpses that shamble about in graveyards on moonless nights, still slaves to the Lich King...still bound by the compulsion...

I have stuggled to feel the Light again...to feel it's warmth... Though I can still call upon the Light, it's power is no longer the comfort it once was... I can feel the power flow through my body...but it is no longer warm...no longer comforting... Perhaps as my very body and existance have been perverted by the Lich King...can he have perverted the Light against me? I know not the answers to such things...but I intend to find them...

I once walked in the Light, comforted by its warmth...and I have walked in the Shadow bound by the compulsion...now I walk between them, neither warmed by the Light nor bound in the Shadow... I exist in the penumbral regions...where scholars have yet to walk.

I was beautiful once...now I am Forsaken

Pretty fun playing new quests as this is offically my highest Forsaken character at level 9. I hope to get her to level 12 tonight so that I can join the RFC run that we're doing. Only played that instance once, and that was with Didgeridoo at level 21. Bit overpowered.

Lastly, my sister and her husband stood in line for 12 hours for the Wii on Saturday. As they are very nice people, they picked on up for me along with the new Zelda game. I will have to delay my gratification until Wednesday after work as they live 4 hours away and won't be here till then. Oh, the anticipation is killing me!

Having not owned a Nintendo system since the SNES (Gameboys not withstanding), I look forward to the simple pleasures of console gaming. Was hoping that Red Steel would get better reviews, but it looks like a rental at best. Seems odd that the reveiew are consistently at 50% or 75%, with little in between. So, guess you'll like it or hate it...

Second lastly: Blizzard did something odd this AM, not all servers went down for service, roughly half of them only received a rolling restart at 5 AM PST. I realy hope this is a sign of things to come as it would be nice to play on Tuesday mornings before work, least in some capacity. I know it sounds really sad to be upset about one morning of downtime, when I'm only really able to play for 30 min before work...

/castsequence

Okay, this has to be one of the better posts on the Blizzard forums right now. It talks about all the new, cool things we get to do with our macros. If you scroll down to the 4th post though, you get ot discover this little gem:

/castsequence [options] reset=#/target/combat spell1, spell2, spell3

Yes, I am in love with this. This macro will simply give a button you can mash to cast a series of spells. Sophisticated? No. Effective? Yes.

The classes that gain the most benefit from this feature are those who utilize spell 'combos' a great deal. Though any class can find use for this I anticipate Shamans and Warlocks utilizing this to highest effect.

Why? Both classes use spell 'cycles' a great deal. Shamans habitually throw a great deal of totems, and frequently the same ones. This macro will give them one button to mash to 'stomp' their totems. Warlocks use a large number of spells on enemies upon entering combat, this will let them mash one button for all of their DOTs.

Other uses I can see vary on class. When Sakuran was combat specced it would have been nice to mash one button to cast Evasion, Blade Flurry, and Adrenaline Rush for pure mayhem. Repentant seems to cast the same three spells at the start of every encounter: Power Word: Shield, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay, Wand. Button mashing would simplify that.

One of the example that was mentioned in the original post was mages mashing Frost Nova and Blink. For PvP I am dreading that combo... Though a lazy rogue could have his stun lock broken into a couple of buttons

• /castsequence reset=combat/target Cheap Shot, Sinister Strike, Gouge
  
• /castsequence reset=combat/target Kidney Shot, Backstab, Blind

And so on and so forth. So, yeah, I can't wait for BC. Acutally, I can't wait for this next patch which is coming SOON!!! Okay, maybe like a month, but that works for me.

Regurgitation 11-16-06

• Life in Azeroth is trying to cut back a little...
• Mystic Worlds talks about why she plays WoW and how different that is from why her son plays.
• Gitr talks about WoW Addiction, seems to be trend around the blogosphere.
• Mark of the Wild has some musing on PvP post WoW 2.0.
  

Regurgitation 11-15-06

• Blessing of Kings got some decent loot recently.
• Gitr dinged 37 last night.
• Kinless contemplates what to do now that the PTRs are up.
• Mark of the Wild hits Rank 7 with Phaser.
• The Many Relms of Relmstein laments a ninja looter.
• Inner Fire on enjoying raids.
• 
  

Regurgitation 11-14-06

I had originally planned this post to be on Friday of last week, so there's a lot of content.

• Mystic Worlds is on the final stretch to 60, and later dinged.
  
• Life in Azeroth has a lengthy post on "Old School Priests"
• Mark of Wild hits Rank 7 and dings 60.
• AFK Gamer has a series of "Where in the WoW" which I normally don't post, but this is a very cool one that I wasn't aware of.
• Frostbolt has another raid roundup and talks about swapping professions.
• Gitr talks about dinging 36 and hits the big time!
• Mark of the Wild posts an Eye of the Storm preview.
• Inner Fire talks about Shadow Priests in raids. As I'm leveling a Shadow Priest, I found it very informative.

What brings you here?

So, as Gitr and Inner Fire have both asked, I too am asking: Why are you here? I guess I see my blog as a place for me to write down my thoughts about Warcraft, point out things I'm reading about Warcraft, and toss out ideas that I have. I'm curious though if people's expectations different a great deal from what I'm providing. So, please, let me know what you're here!

Been gone

Sorry for the absence. My son has been very sick, though doing better now, so haven't been at work to post anything.

Also been playing Final Fantasy XII which is a blast, best game in the series IMHO.

Hit Rank 7 with Sakuran, so now the big decision of whether or not to continue to grind Honor with her. Also took Laic to Rank 1, been fun playing AB with him, though at 36 with mediocre gear his use is limited.

Hopefully get a decent sized post out soon, but wanted to let everyone know that I'm not dead and haven't quit WoW, which from the blogs perspective is the same thing...

Oh, to be a n00b again

So, I got a buddy of mine to pick up WoW. He's never done a MMO before, and isn't very familiar with the universe. Last night I spent my game time showing him around and it really struck me how much I miss being new to the game.

Most of what I did was help him with quests and 'coach' him in the game. I also gave him a bit of a tour of the eastern continent. As he is a human I ran him up to Stormwind, took the Tram to Ironforge, and flew back to Stormwind. Yeah, it's a short tour, but remember how cool all that stuff was the first time you did it?

I made a point of telling him to look up while taking the tram. I remember being blown away with how cool that first ride was, now it just feels tedious. Before getting on the Gryphon back to SW I explained to him what we were going to do and he replied "Flyyyy???". I had forgot how cool it was to fly from SW to IF, how scary the Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge were, how 'accomplished' I felt when I actually made it there with Sakuran. Now, I don't even think about it.

It's kind of frustrating to realize how those little things are what got me 'into' WoW, and now I don't even see them. I actually called my wife over and made her watch my first IF-SW flight. It was soooo cool. I remember the first time I went to SW from Goldshire, I literally stopped and stood in awe of the statues. Now, I'm usually auto-running and can't wait to hit the AH.

Sigh...

There are so many things that I remember being blown away by in Warcraft, and now it just feels so...normal.

EDIT: What were some of the things that made your jaw drop when you first started playing? Share below, I think it would interesting to figure out if there are some 'common' things that just floored everyone.

Regurgitation 11-9-06

• Gitr offers Part 2 of his Priests Guide to Deadmines and posts his wishlist.
• Mystic Worlds talks about pre-BC endgame boredom.
• Team Kinless runs into a rough PvP night.
  

  Enough with the Horde losses! Or, if you are going to keep losing, do so consistently! Team Kinless for the win!

• Tobold talks about the lengthened leveling curve in BC.
  

Regurgitation 11-08-06

• Inner Fire finished her Priest Healing Guide.
• WoW Insider has some interesting information on PvP statistics, including average rank per class and amount of time spent in-game per rank.
• Blessing of Kings offers further analysis on SoC vs SotC.
  

  Some commenters have questioned the tradeoff in the last post. I don't deny that you do give up a significant amount of damage by not using SoC. To my mind, though, the added flexibility and regeneration of SotC make up for it.

  Frostbolt talks about downing Patchwork.
• Gitr offers the start of a Priest's Guide to Healing Deadmines and an example of how not to endear yourself to your Priest.
• Mark of the Wild rakes up the DK's in Lakeshire:
  

  Well your server is going to be offline for 36 hours, so what do you do? I say rack up a bunch of DKs on your old toon!

• Tales of a WoW Addict has fun with a Warlock Alt.
  
• Tobold talks about the differences between PvE builds and PvP builds and then advocates for a cheaper respec cost.
  

Rank 7...actually no...Rank 6, still

Well, I was pretty sure that my title today would be "Rank 7 FTW", but when I logged on to check my rank, I was 95% though Rank 6. I'm pretty bummed as I was really looking forward to getting a few pieces of my PvP armor. Ah, another week...

I'm currently contemplating if I still want to try and hit Rank 8. At my current pace (~90,000 honor last week) it will take me three weeks. That being said, I'm thinking that it might be nice to do anything in game aside from BG's with Sakuran.

So, Rank 7 next week for sure, beyond that...who knows...

Regurgitation 11-07-06

Going to do something a bit different. I'll post regurgitation after my morning reading, rather than waiting for the end of the day. Anything that pops during the day will get queued for tomorrow's post. It's too easy for me to forget to actually publish the post before I leave from work. If you can think of a better way for me to do this, let me know. Oh, and I"m quoting, when appropriate, from the posts I'm linking to now, give it a bit more of a chunky feel.

• Blessing of Kings challenges the notion that slow weapons are better for paladins.
  

  It's for these reasons that I feel that Seal of the Crusader is actually the best Seal for a raiding paladin. It's not as spectacular as Seal of Command, but it is far more consistent, and allows a paladin to use her other abilities to larger effect.
  

• Gitr's WoW Blog is down at the moment. The RSS feed seems to still work though, here's what I got off his last post, since you can't go view it...
  

  I broke the stinking theme AGAIN!! After all that work, too. I’m getting a parse error for an extra ‘**DESCRIPTION**#8217; on a line that doesn’t have an ‘**DESCRIPTION**#8217; and it’s really ticking me off. So I’m switching to this theme. It’s really cool, except for the issue that it is supposed to be 3-columns. So, it will be up and down and colors all funky, but should get better all day long. When the blogroll splits into my categories and slides over from underneath the other column, you know I’m learning something.

  My car is running on 3 cylinders today after a spark plug gasket blew yesterday, so it’s time to replace the whole kit. I’ll be leaving after lunch, so we’ll see how much blogging I get done.

• Kinless contemplates AV, Black Dragon Scales, and bots. I actually typed boats the first time, but that would be just wrong...
  
• Mark of Wild contemplates what to do with extended down time.
• Stropp discusses Warcraft addiction:
  

  What would I be doing if I didn’t play WoW?

  I guess I’d be watching a lot more TV, I think a lot of other WoWers would be doing this if they quit.

  I’d probably go out and buy a couple of other games that I’ve had my eye on. I might read a little more.

  I doubt if I’d go out socialising much more than I already do. I’m a bit of a home-body anyway, playing a game or not playing it wouldn’t change that.

• Tobold has more BC beta goodness:
  

  [T]he Burning Crusade challenges my perception of what exactly a level is. I might be "leveling" twice as fast as I thought, depending on how you define it.

• Zenos and Zarina sound like they may be phasing out of Warcraft.

BG screenshots from last weekend

A few screenshots from the last weekend. Certainly not a complete detailing of my weekend, but the highlights.

• A very long, but ultimately successful WSG.
  
  
• A longish AV.
  
  
• A shortish AV.
  
  
• A losing AB, but what was fun about this is that I ran straight to the farm, stealthed, beat up a mage, capped the flag, beat up the mage again, then got swarmed by the Horde. Gotta love cold-blood ambush.
  
  
• Was able to fill out a partial premade who proceeded to whump the opposition. Pretty sure this was the same premade I group with last week.
  
  
• Then I caught them in WSG and enjoyed winning with them again.
  
  
• Lastly a PUG WSG where the Alliance actually played to win, and, well, won.
  
  

Regurgitation 11-06-06

Another weekend update.

• Frostbolt has another raid round up and shows off a bit :P.
• Gitr has Staff of Jordan lust, and rounds has some good blog roundups.
• Kinless dings Exalted with his third character, and here I am bragging about hitting it for the first time.
• Relmstein has a WoW class wishlist. Necromancer FTW!
• Stropp has a rough Molten Core run and unbearable queues.
• Tales of a WoW Addict has a new layout.
• Tobold responds to Warcraft Addiction and major leveling nerf in beta.
• World of Warcraft Addict talks about, wait for it, Warcraft addiction.
• Zenos and Zarina talk about a guild schism.
• Inner Fire talks about professions and an RP Raid (I know, oxymoron :P)
• WoW Insider offer a preview of Nagrand and also discusses the grinding nerf.

Role Play

Okay, after being inspired by Kinless' Chronicles I've got my guild doing a RP night on Twisting Nether. I'm kinda nervous about it, because as much experience as I have with RP games, I'm not a very good at RP. I'm great at coming up with backstory, but being IC is really hard for me. That being said it looks like a lot of people are interested in it, posting the backstories on the forums and such. I'm hopeful that it will be another fun thing for the guild to do together.

That being said, here's part 1 on my Tauren Shaman Magankan:

Magankan, a Shaman of the Skychaster Tribe.

At first impression, Magankan appears older than he really is. While barely out of his adolescence, Magankan has seen more than many Tauren twice his age. Somewhat cold in affect with a distant gaze, Magankan often comes across as aloof, which is not the case. Rather, Magankan has seen the death of those close to him and that sense of loss is never far from him.

Magankan was named after a Great Tauren of the Skychaser tribe. Long before the formation of the Horde, before the Burning Legion invaded Azeroth, before even the Orcs came from beyond the Dark Portal; the Tauren warred with the foul Centaur. While the Tauren had Strength and Honor on their side, the centaur perverted nature and used it as a weapon, nay a slave.

The mightiest of the Tauren Shaman, Magankan, called out to the uncorrupted spirits of the land and asked them to strike down the foul Centaur that balance might be restored. That day fire and stone rained from the sky and destroyed the bulk of the centaur forces. However, the cost of vicotry was more than Magankan could bear. Many spirits had sacrificed themselves that they might free their bretheren from corruption. Those that remained always felt the searing heat of that flame and the weight of that stone. All of Magankan's descendants shared a charred black hide, that they might never forget the sacrifices that were made that day.

The young Magankan was raised with the knowledge that his was part of a noble line. His parents strove to live up to the expectations of their heritage. It was only natural that when the centaur rose up again, this time in a land known as Desolace, his parents were among the first to go and push back the Centaur. Again the Skychaser stopped the centaur, though also with great cost. Both of Magankan's parents fell to the centaur, though not before taking a great many with them.

Yes, it's kinda cheesy, but hey, it's my toon :P Anytime I role play I end up with some dark depressed character and I really suck and playing mopey, you'd think I'd learn from my mistakes, but people just don't do that. If we did, Cowboys wouldn't wear cotton pants.

Return of the laptop

So, my laptop arrived today, which I am very excited about. As much fun as I'm having with PvP, I think I actually have more fun playing a level 5 Druid with my wife's level 5 Shaman. It's very nice being able to play the game with her instead of just staring at the computer while she goes about her evening.

Oh, and WoW while laying in bed with insomnia is not to be underestimated :P. Though who knows if WoW is helping or causing my insomnia. Much like the great line in Twin Peaks:

James: Why did you start smoking?
Donna: It helps relieve tension.
James: When did you get so tense?
Donna: When I started smoking.

Something along those lines, though no doubt I'm butchering the line. As I mentioned before though, PvP with the laptop is a mixed bag. AB and WSG run okay, but AV is almost out of the question, certainly can't try to play D with it.

Backstabber!

Well, I went ahead and respecced for backstab and, I've got to say, I love it. I ended up with 31/8/12, and have no regrets. It's amazing how much it is making me relearn my class. As I was leveling I never really used daggers, think I specced swords from level 15, so I never really messed with backstab and gouge. Now that I am using it, WOW, what fun :P

Playstyle for a sword rogue is really quite simple, use your opener, mash the Sinister Strike button till you have 5CP and pop your finisher. Rinse, repeat. Now I've got to actually PAY ATTENTION while playing: Cheap Shot, Sinister Strike, Gouge, restealth, Ambush, Kidney Shot, Backstab... It's L2P all over again!

Oh, and seem to be much more effective in PvP, it's much easier for me to solo opponents and I'm occasionally able to take out two, provided my sap holds on the first.

Regurgitation 11-3-06

• Blessing of Kings bemoans a lack of Paladin drops.
• Gitr: [sarcasm]Are guns bad?[/sarcasm]. Also had some PvP fun last night. In addition, offers an [sarcasm]apology[/sarcasm] regarding a previous post. So many posts in one day :P
  
• Tobold talks about the lack of real skill needed in leveling tradeskills.
• Inner Fire offers a Priest's Guide to Molten Core.
• Adventures of Aeigelus offers the Guide to Hunters in Raids/Dungeons.
  

AV Exalted - so close...

So, Sakuran is less that 800 points away from AV exalted. I was expecting to hit it last night, but had one of those AV's where nobody turned in their loot. For anyone out there who does AV, if you don't plan on porting and dropping stuff off, DON'T LOOT. A lot of rep comes from people turning that stuff, and as far as I can tell, everyone in the raid benefits from it. So, please, turn in your loot if you are looting.

That being said, tonight better mean AV exalted. I plan on buying Don Julio's Band and the mount right off the bat and then grabbing The Lobotomizer when I have a bit more gold. After grabbing the dagger, I'm thinking of respecing for backstab, but I'm not quite sure. I've never played as a Backstab Rogue, and am not sure if I'll adapt very well. I love Seal Fate though, so I'll certainly be trying to keep that...

Currently leaning towards 30/8/13. I'll gain a real high chance of critting on Backstab and Ambush, for lots of damage. I'm going to lose a lot of white damage, Riposte, and Blade Flurry. Now that I think some more, prehaps 31/8/12 is better... So much to think about...

Regurgitation 11-2-06

Working away from my desk this afternoon, so here's what I've got. Bit shorter than usual...

• Gitr talks about leveling in the low 30's.
• Mark of the Wild has a great post on getting to know your guild.
• Mystic Worlds talks about Alterac Valley.

Thank you Gitr

After being mentioned as one of Gitr's top 7+1 Warcraft Blogs I had a pretty significant increase in traffic. Has as many unique visitors (who accepted the cookie) yesterday as the prior three days and as many page loads as I'd had all week. Pretty amazing what one post can do to your page count.

That being said it was pretty humbling being mentioned in the same paragraph as the blogs I'm reading daily. I'll try to keep the content coming.

Regurgitation 11-1-06

• Frostbolt recounts the last few raids, and may be taking an unwilling break from raiding.
• Gitr is grinding away. Also has a list of his Top 7+1 Warcraft Blogs. Pretty elite company there :P
  
• Kinless discusses the future of PvP rewards.
• As does Tobold
• AFK Gamer designs the ultimate MMO city.
• Relmstein talks about Fear.
  

Shock and Horror - Victory in AB and WSG

Yes, you read that title right. Won AB (which if fairly unusual) and WSG (which is very rare) in the same day. Was a crazy night.

• Victory in AB.
  
  
• Victory in WSG.
  
• Xelzozier and I guarding a flag.
  
  
• Mythor and I screwing around in SW.
  
  

Unfortunately I had to give up my AV queue for the WSG victory, so no CE turn in for me...

Regurgitation 10-31-06

• Gitr talks about depression of WoW players, then segues into playing with people in RL.
• Tobold talks about 'luxury' servers, interesting idea.
• WOW Insider asks if you care about the Lore.
• Mark of the Wild discusses Honor inflation on AV weekend.

Survey says....Knight

Well, I'm 40% through Knight. Acutally I'm a bit surprised that I'm not farther into the Rank given the mass of honor I earned. I ran over to the officers quarters, but didn't have time to really look around (lunch time WoW...). I'm curious as to how much RP I actually received, and if there is a average amount of honor per RP. I know that the higher you rank, the longer it takes, but I always figured it was due to decay, not any decrease in the honor-RP conversion.

So, hopefully I'll be able to get some good PvP time in this week and make it to Rank 7 and new gear. I also think I'll hit exalted with AV pretty soon, maybe even tomorrow night (Halloween plans are going to conflict with a lot of honor/rep gain tonight).

More honor

Had some more fun with PvP last night. Grabbed a couple of screenshots to show off the highlights

• Managed to join a pre-made that proceeded to 5 cap the Horde. Was beautiful.
  
• Later was in a very, very close AB. Managed to win by 10 points, just as the Horde grabbed one of our flags. I'm not sure how it could have been closer.
  

Okay, this last one isn't based on PvP, but was a bit of guild humor. The lesson one should learn is to always remember when tormenting officers, we have the power of the /gkick. Pay particular attention to the lower left corner of the screen (where my guild chat is).

Ah the nuggets of humor in the mounds of drama...

100k Honor and counting

After a long, long day of PvP on Saturday, and a bit yesterday, I have 100,000 honor. That should be enough to put me up to Rank 6. I'm guessing that it will translate to 9,000 CP, which after decay should be enough to put me well into Rank 6.

AV honor weekend is crazy fun. As I try to save my tokens for Concerted Effort turn ins I need to get into a lot of AB and WSG. I think I'm currently sitting on 15 AV tokens and maybe 1 each for WSG and AB. Question of the day: do I continue to hold onto the tokens for CE effort or turn in everything tonight to try and boost my honor as high as possible? I'm leaning towards the latter as I'm usually able to get enough AB and WSG tokens for one AV a night, and I've yet to see AV be the bottleneck.

Also speaking of AV, Exalted is getting close, only around 8,000 rep to go. I'm sure I'll finish that up this week sometime.

Regurgitation 10-30-06

Didn't post over the weekend, so this will be a bit longer than normal.

• Aeigelus is raiding again.
  
• Blessing of Kings talks about Razorgore (again) and Spiritual Focus.
• Kinless had a long AV weekend.
• Mark of the Wild discusses unusual luck (for Alliance) at AB.
• Mystic Worlds respecced Holy (for shame :P)
• Tobold discusses the BC Beta and PUG Raids.
• Inner Fire has a "Funny Airline Speach"
  

Regurgitation 10-27-06

• Gahlok @ Frostbolt clearing Naxx.
• Gitr, survived the wedding.
• Kinless has led the Horde to, gasp, AV victory!
• Thinking with my Fingers has a very enlightened post about 'addiction' and Warcraft.
• AFK Gamer offers some [sarcasm]tips[/sarcasm] for those new to raiding
• Relmstein discusses the importance of positioning in raid encounters.

Back on the saddle again...

Okay, so finally got to spend some time in game. Seems like I've hardly been on this week. Got some PvP and aided in a LBRS raid (link to a write up on the new COTL blog :P). Going to try and get back to a minimum of 70k honor a week and hit rank 7 soon, and 8 shortly there after. As my goal per day is roughly 10k honor, it seems that one concerted effort turn in gets me there. It would be nice if that turn it could be something other than 3 WSG losses, 3 AB losses, and an AV win. The occasional AB win does 'spice it up', but I think I've only seen two WSG wins in the last month. Very frustrating...

After reading Kinless' site for a while, I think it would be really interesting to RP a character. Not sure I'd enjoy in-game RP, but out of game RP (similar to what Kinless is already doing) could be cool. Perhaps I'll propose something like that to the guild and see what happens.

Still want to get Repentant leveled, but that's a secondary endeavor to hitting rank with Sakuran.

Regurgitation 10-26-06

• Blessing of Kings downed Ragnaros again and discusses the 'nerfing' of Crusader Strike and Vengence.
• Tobold talks about jewlecrafting and a buggy instance in BC.
• AFK Gamer informs us that Madonna is in WoW, and she's a raided out forsaken priest. Talk about Will of the Forsaken...
• Gahlok, of Frostbolt fame, plays with Patchwork.
• Relmstein discusses the negative effects of buying gold in WoW.
  

Regurgitation 10-25-06

Well it occurred to me that I read a lot of great stuff on other Warcraft blogs. It also makes sense to me to direct you to those other great blogs. While the link on the side of my screen are there, i think I'm going to occasionally highlight some for you. As it's nothing new, I think Regurgitation is an appropriate, if unglamorous, title. So, here goes Regurgitation for October 25th, 2006.

• Gahlok over at Frostbolt downed C'Thun for the first time. Congratulations!
• Two posts from Kinless, the first is an IC back story for he and his partners Forsaken characters. The second is an OOC account of playing a warlock and priest pair. As always, great reading.
• Tobold has an interesting post on the 'content patch' that we're assured will hit before the expansion. One mistake is that the current top of the trees is 41 points, not 51 as is mentioned in the post. I may just be misreading it...If I see new stuff during the day I will update this post.

Speaking of October 25th, I wanted to take a moment to tell Meghan, my RL wife, that I love her. We've been married three years today and I look forward to many, many more. Now if only she'd read my blog.

Thoughts on the BC release date

Well, as I'm sure you're aware, the BC release date is out. Looks like sometime in January 2007. Honestly, I should have anticipated it, but I had convinced myself that we were looking at the end of November/beginning of December. So it'll be another 6 weeks from my best guess.

As mentioned in my last post I had been wondering why I was busting my butt with a PvP grind with stuff that would be outdated very soon after getting it. As such I had devoted my weekend to leveling my priest instead. Only got around 25k honor, which I'm sure will result in a loss of rank. Now that I know that I'm looking at two months minimum till BC, I think I'll go ahead and try to get to rank 8. Still going to try and level my priest, but that will no longer be my sole objective.

Of course there are always guild runs that need assistance, so who knows how successful I'll be in those endeavors.

So my pre-BC wishlist is as follows:

• Sakuran - AV Exalted (hello Lobotomizer)
• Sakuran - PvP Rank 8
• Repentant - level 60
• Laic - level 50+

Yes, that's a lot of wishful thinking, but I would really like to have a few toons to try the Outlands with.

Post-BC plan

• Explore Outlands with whatever toons I can
• Explore new 5-man instances ASAP
• Roll a F Draeni Shaman
• Roll a M Draeni Warrior

Just some rambling. Nothing new to report.

Now, why exactly am I doing this?

So, last night it occured to me that I was on a grind that will be meaningless in two months. I had set a goal to reach Rank 8 before BC hits as I wanted the 4 pieces of the blue PvP set. After reading a number of posts about the gear that is dropping in the BC beta, it looks like Rank 7 and 8 gear would only last me a few levels. So why exactly am I grinding 2-3 hours a night for honor?

It also appears that a number of raiders are experiencing the same feelings I am. Why bust your butt in MC/BWL/AQ40/Naxx when that gear is going to be replaced fairly soon? The AQ40/Naxx gear should last you till near 70, so I imagine folks in those instances will continue to slog through them The rest of us who are looking at superior greens in the first BC dungeons have to ask ourselves, why am I grinding?

That being said, I have enjoyed PvP and don't plan to drop it all together, but I am not going to concern myself with getting X amount of honor per night/week. I'll still queue a bunch on Saturday and Sunday, but anticipate that a majority of my in-game time will be spend trying to get some of my lower level alts up in level so that I can experience the new content from a variety of perspectives.

FuBar vs TitanPanel

Okay, been using FuBar on my laptop for the last month or so instead of TitanPanel, and I think I'm going to convert. Had to say what the difference is, but I just think the features are superior. From what I've read it sounds like fubar utilizes less system resources as well, which is always nice.

What do y'all use and why?

1680x1050 goodness

Origionally posted on my guilds website.

Here's what I've got my UI looking like at 1680x1050

A few explanations as my screenshot really doesn't show it off as much as it could. Bottom left chat frame is just the system information (people logging on, etc.) without any chat channels. Bottom right chat frame is guild/party/raid/whispers. Beneath my minimap is my combat log, gotta see those big 5 point Cold Blood Eviscerates :P

The bar to the left of the minimap is my default bar which obviously switches when I stealth. The bar to the right alternates between an in combat bar and an out of combat bar. The Professions button right of that toggles a new bar with all my professions. As I now have more space I'm thinking of moving to two bars on left and two on the right without swapping for in combat and out.

Unit frames are a custom job utilizing Discord Unit Frames. The artwork at the bottom is from Discord Art. Action bars as Discord Action Bars. Moved the minimap and other things via Discord Frame Modifier.

Not visiable are CT colored buffs (stole from the Photek UI), enemy cast bars (Natur I think), KLH Threat Meters, and my ArcHud.

Well, aside of a few minor changes I think this is about how I want it. Whatcha think?

Sorry for the delay

Well, Saturday AM my laptop died (don't know why). Still under warrenty, so is getting sent in for a replacement. Of course this left me without a computer that could run WoW all weekend. Got my 20" LCD last night so I'm back. Had a couple of lengthy posts on my guild forums that I'm copying and posting here, as they're just as valid here as there.

Enchanter run

Mae the 225+ enchanting run for the first time with Repentant. Quite the pain for those who haven't done it. You have to get someone to clear the front of Uldaman for you and hope you have enough mats to get to 250 so you don't have to go again. Unfrotunately I wasn't prepeared and only levelled to 230 in there, meaning I'll have to go through it again. Oh well. Live and learn. Hopefully as I level tailoring and I can DE my products and get my tailoring to 250 before I go back. I despise that instance with a passion and set foot in there as little as possible.

Weirdness

Okay, I take lunch at my parents house as it is close to my work and my own home is far enough away to make going home impractical. Normally I meet my wife and son there, but today they stayed home. As I had an hour with littel to do I logged on and got into a WSG PUG.

Then the strangest thing happened, we won 3-0. First WSG victory I've seen in maybe the last 10 matches.

What made it weirder is that I was pretty far up the charts, and my UI was all messed up. I am a bit of an addon junkie and run with a pretty customized interface. Not just flash and bang, but a lot of utility type stuff. Running without that makes me feel pretty naked. So it was odd ending doing better than I normally do with half of my 'tools'.

As odd as this is, I think it can be safely attributed to a horrible Horde PUG.

BC Rogue changes

So, Drysc posted the following here:

The rogue ability and talent preview for the Burning Crusade expansion has been live for a while, and after collecting your questions and feedback we wanted to provide you with the answers to the most common of those questions and concerns. We realize that this may not cover every question that you have; however we hope that it comprises of the majority of major questions and concerns.

• We wanted to first state that we are currently in the process of redesigning or adjusting many of the rogue talents and some of the new abilities. We wanted to state this first as many of the concerns specific to the current talents won’t necessarily apply as they are currently under revision. The questions we have provided answers for below remain more specific to functionality of talents and abilities, and not necessarily on the side of providing information on the talent and ability design and reasoning, as many of them are already planned to be changed.
  
  
• We’ve seen some concerns that the increased emphasis on stamina in the expansion may negatively impact the ability to do damage quickly or keep incapacitate effects applied sufficiently throughout an entire fight. We do expect that crit-based builds for all classes are going to see a general “rounding” of the effectiveness of burst damage, but from our current testing the rogue class is transitioning quite well into the expansion. We’re of course going to be keeping an eye on everything and making additional changes and adjustments as we see become necessary.
  
  
• There have been some questions on Resilience, which is a new crit mitigation stat visible and modifiable in the expansion. The impact of this stat has been changed and now balances the mitigation between damage reduction and crit resistance. This allows more crits so that abilities depending on them are still viable, but may reduce the damage of the crit still making resilience a worthy stat. We’re going to be continuing to evaluate this mechanic and make any necessary adjustments moving forward.
  
  
• One question that came up quite a few times was how Mutilate will work with Seal Fate. Mutilate, although combining the attacks of two weapons, is only counted as a single attack and thus only gains a single combo point from Seal Fate. The most combo points you can gain from a Mutilate attack/crit with Seal Fate would be three. Although mutilate is counted as a single special attack each weapon is rolled for separately, meaning each has the ability to crit on its own.
  
  
• We’re currently in the process of redesigning Disembowel. We still plan to keep the synergy with poison application to some degree, but we’re currently designing it to use up the poison applications to apply additional damage..
  
  
• New poison ranks will be available in the expansion for those that already scale. We have no new poisons currently planned beyond Anesthetic.
  
  
• We’re going to look at the possibility of increasing application charge amounts for the various types of poisons.
  
  
• Mutilate and Shiv are both affected normally by the off-hand damage reduction modifier, but are also affected by dual wield specialization.
  
  
• Find Weakness works as stated and only increases damage of offensive abilities (yellow damage) and not normal auto-attacks.
  
  
• With our current implementations poisons will affect the vast majority of bosses in the expansion.
  
  
• A new mechanic is being introduced with the release of the expansion that will visually indicate to a rogue that a monster is able to detect or see through stealth.
  
  
• There is a cap on run speed, and Fleet Footed would max out that cap regardless of what else was increasing your run speed. You won’t be able to stack multiple ‘increase to run speed’ modifiers beyond the max 8% increase.
  
  
• The mechanic of thrown weapons is being changed in the expansion to be similar to a normal weapon. Once a stack is used it will remain in your inventory and can then be repaired to refill the stack, similar to repairing broken armor or weapons. This allows us to put stats on thrown weapons and itemize them as we would any other weapon.
  
  
• Although we recently removed the ability for poisons and other temporary item buffs to persist through zones due to performance issues, we believe we have overcome those technical limitations and plan to have the functionality re-implemented for the expansion.
  

Thank you everyone for remaining active on the boards and taking the time to submit your questions and concerns. As we move into future talent and ability updates we hope to be able to address any more that you have. Thanks for reading!

Nothing too specific at this point, but it is interesting to see the direction Blizzard is taking the rogue, particularly the mention of "redesigning or adjusting many of the rogue talents".

I may have to respec to take daggers as:
Cheap Shot->(tick)->Seal Fate->Mutilate=5 CP in two seconds

Hunter changes

As Blizzard and a number of blogs have reported, the hunter talents and skills are out. There is a leaked list of pet abilities out there, but I'm going to avoid comment until Blizzard "officializes" them (yes, I made that word up).

Of note today is a post where Blizzard discusses a number of changes to the formulae that the hunter uses to calculate damage, dodge, and crit. What strikes me immediately is that Hunters are going to become much more viable in melee than previous. They're crit chance should be equivilant to a rogues and they'll acutally have a pretty decent chance to dodge. The reduction of RAP to 1 per Agility should have interesting effects as it will require massive reitemization, though I've yet to deduce how they'll do it. Oh, ranged DPS shouldn't change much as they are going to up the damage on ranged weapons significantly, which will actually help non-hunters also as ranged attacks will actually be somewhat useful for anything other than pulling.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm looking forward to the expansion and all the changes that will come with it.

Rank 4 and LCD woes

Okay, so I had the day off yesterday (Yeah for silly government holidays) and was going to grind some honor and AV rep. I come downstairs and sit down at the computer only to find my LCD is dead. Well, not completely dead, only mostly dead. It will turn on for all of two seconds only to die again. Researching the problem it's somekind of inverter that has died and cost of repair is nearing $200. So I said what the heck and started shopping for new moniter as I am reluctant to throw that kinda money into a 4.5 year old moniter. Ended up settling on an Acer 20" widescreen, which I will order tonight after we sort through the bills.

What does any of the above have to do with Warcraft? Well it meant that my honor grinding was done on my laptop which made it much more challenging. I'm so used to having the numeric keypad that its absence was very noticable. I'll probably just set my laptop up with my keyboard tonight and remap all my keys so I can get some kinda grind going on. Haven't tried AV on the laptop and I'm kinda scared to try. It's not the most powerful computer and gets bogged down pretty easily by WoW. Not to mention that I can now not group with my wife as we are down to one machine. Very unfortunate as this is one of the funner elements of the game for me. Pray my moniter gets here soon.

Logged in at lunch today to see that I made Rank 4, which was a pleasent surprise. Even with camping over the weekend and a dead LCD, I was able to get 90k honor in. Will have to check it from home tonight to get some sort of an idea how long I can expect to hit Rank 7. All I'm hoping for is 1 Rank a week. If I have to step it up, I suppose I can. 15k honor in a night isn't too hard to get. My plan is to get one Concerted Effort turnin per day. Assuming I am able to win AV that is. Then again haven't lost AV yet, so who knows. But 3 AB and 3 WSG is pretty decent hon0r and winning AV is great honor. The bonus from the turn in is just plain gravy.

Leveled Repentant to 35 last night. Will probably level tailoring until I run out of vendor recipies. Then I'll start saving up enchanting supplies so I can hopefully get all my vendor recipies form Uldaman in one fell swoop. 40 is within spitting distance now, so I'll proably focus on leveling him when I'm not PvPing with Sakuran.

Mediocre PvP night

Well last night was not the PvP night I was hoping for. I was on for a little bit right after work, but ended up in a Stratholme run until 7:00 when I had promised my wife I would watch My Name is Earl and The Office with her (wonderful episodes BTW). So I get back on at 8:00 and head over to the SW Chapel for an in-game service (which was wonderful BTW). That wrapped up at around 9:00, with my queue for AV popping shortly their after.

AV was horrible. The Alliance was fighting for SH making it impossible to get the Horde away from FW, and with all the combat around SH, I couldn't even stealth past without getting ganked by half a dozen Horde. That persisted for about 20 minutes when I heard my son fall and hurt himself, so I go upstairs to see if he's okay. I'm up there for a fair bit and when I come back to my computer it logs me off as /afk as soon as my butt hit my chair. So that put me at about 9:45 with 15 minutes of deserter debuff, which prevents you not only from entering a BG, but even from entering the queue! So it would be 10:00 before I could even enter the queue, which would put me at around 10:10 before getting into a BG. As I had to work this AM I gave up and went to bed. Very frustrating.

Ended up with a measly 3k honor for the day.

Duos

Been thinking a bit about the best class combination for a duo to play. First thing that comes to mine is Warrior/Priest, which is wonderful, but unoriginal. So this got me thinking of what every group really need:

• DPS
• Damage reduction
• healing
• crowd control

So, the Warrior/Priest combo can do very well at three of these areas, but are week in crowd control (undead aside). What about other classes? Rather than using my brain I reference the Class page on Wowwiki and came up with the following (not taking into account talent builds):

• Druid
• Great Healing and Tanking
• Decent DPS
• Situational CC
• Hunter
• Great DPS and CC
• No Healing and limited Tanking
• Mage
• Great DPS and CC
• No Healing or ability to Tank
• Paladin
• Great Tanking
• Decent Healing
• Limited DPS and CC
• Priest
• Great Healing
• Capable DPS
  
• Situational CC and no Tanking.
• Rogue
• Great DPS
• Decent CC
• Limited Tanking and no Healing
  
• Shaman
• Decent DPS, Healing, and Tanking
• Limited CC
• Warlock
• Decent DPS
• Pet can Tank
• Situational CC
• No Healing
• Warrior
• Great DPS and Tanking
• No Healing or CC

Looking at the list above the only classes that are Decent or better in three areas are Druid and Shaman. Now other classes can compensate through talent builds for added strength in specific areas. For alliance I would look at substituting Hunter for Shaman as the Hunter has great DPS and CC and has a pet that can easily Tank if the Druid is Healing.

Should it be any coincidence that my wife and I just rolled a Shaman and Druid to play together?

Rank 3

Logged on yesterday to find that my 70k honor was good enough to net me Sergeant (Rank 3). Quite a move up form Rank 0. Just goes to show you how much easier honor gain is at 60 than any prior levels. My current plan is to shoot for Rank 7 and 70-100k honor per week. I'll have to wait for next Tuesday to determine if I'll have to step it up higher or not. My concern is that BC should go live in the next 6-10 weeks and I'd like to have what I want from the Honor/Rep system before it all resets.

Oh, and incase anyone didn't know, when turning in honor marks from the BGs, save up for the big turn in as it is the best Honor and Rep gain.

As far as actual play is concerned, last night was awesome. Was in two winning AB games and one shut out WSG. Amazing what communication and teamwork can do for you. I even had one flag run. Didn't get into AV, but that was okay. Was more fun to get into a group with a couple of guildies for AV anyway.

PvP

Okay, so Friday night I started PvPing for the first time on Sakuran. I'd done the odd 10-19 WSG with other toons and it realy wasn't much fun, so my expectations weren't high. I certianly didn't expect to have the blast that I ended up having. I did AB and AV primarily of the weekend and ended up with some significant progress. I got ~70k honor from Friday night through Sunday night (which I'm told is fairly good) and ended up 10% into Honored with Stormpike.

One oddity I noticed is that while the Alliance sucks, I mean sucks, at AB and WSG, we won every single AV. I don't understand the difference, but regardless the rep and honor in AV were outstanding (though inflated due to AV weekend).

I actually had enough fun to respec into a PvP friendly build, 30/21/0. When BC comes out I'm not sure how I'll take it. I had origionally planned on keeping my original 31 points in Combat and simply grabbing Cold Blood/Seal Fate, but now I'm not sure. There's somthing kinda liberating about not having Sword Specialization any more. I mean, suddenly there's a whole world of weapons out there at my disposal. A nice mace drops and I can use it. A nice dagger? Same thing. Even a fist weapon. I actually forked out 200g last night for Scarlet Kris, a rediculous nice offhand weapon. It should certainly keep me happy till I hit Exalted with AV and can grab The Lobotomizer, which is just plain crazy.

The only unfortunate thing about this whole PvP thing is that the gear that's an improvement for me is found mostly in WSG and AB, or through Rank (Rank 7 and 8 Specifically). Why that is unfortunate is, as I've mentioned, that Alliance seems to suck at WSG and AB. I've been in exactly one winning AB game and 1 that was close. THe other dozen were just straight losses. Don't even get me started on WSG. And rep is gained primarily through completing the BGs objectives and then by winning. While I don't think it's impossible to get high rep with them, I don't think it'll happen by the time BC hits the shelves...

Any advice for WSG and AB? Aside from rolling Horde?

Scheduling Woes

Part of the frustration I experience as an officer for my guild is scheduling acitivies for the guild. We've recently stepped up the amount of scheduled runs in an effort to have content for as much of the guild as possible. We have a very diverse mix of levels and it seems that regardless of where we direct our energy, someone is 'left out'. So I've scheduled one lower level instance and an engame instance every night of the week. Of course I can't have them at the same time as I'm sure we wouldn't be able to fill them all. So we have one run at 8:00 PM and one at 10:00 PM. Of course this works for some and not for others. The 8:00 run is a bit early for us MST and earlier folk while the 10:00 run can get late for the EST folk (though luckily our GM is a night owl, while in EST, he habitually stays up later than I).

Other things we will be incorporating are Raids, PvP, and Fellowship.

We had an awesome all guild game of Hide and Go Seek in Stormwind last night. No prizes, just good fun. Was nice to do something different. Ideally we'll have something like this planned at least once a month.

We have a couple of people in the guild who really enjoy PvP, so I'm going to attempt to schedule an Alterac Valley night, though I'm not sure how successful that will be. I've heard that entereing AV with a group takes a good chuch of time, so we'll see. I'm tenatively thinking of Saturday/Sunday nights that don't have raids associated with them. Perhaps AV one night and AB/WSG the other.

A fellow officer is taking care of scheduling and leading the raids. I believe we'll be looking at one per week on a Friday-Sunday night. As we don't have enough 60's in guild anymore to fill a 20 man, we will be relying on our alliance with the Knights of Valor to fill our runs.

So yeah, at lot to keep track of...

L2Tank

Okay, so we ran Stockades a couple nights ago and I ended up bringing Daroul, my level 24 (at the time) Warrior. I don't think I've played him in several months and I've never used him to tank in a group. It was certainly a learning experience. I don't think I did bad job either. I was able to keep mobs on me 90% of the time and the only deaths we had came from unmanagable adds. We had one wipe from an accidental Psychic Scream, but we recovered well. Anoth thing that added to the general stress of the run was most people in the party were playing classes they were unfamiliar with in groups. A couple of mages who weren't sheeping adds (corrected halfway through, CC FTW), the priest was attempting to DPS rather than focus on healing (again corrected quickly), and just general carlessness. Both Dextren and Bazil were prox aggroed by someone other than me and I quite a few times I was unable to get Aggro on mobs before the mass DPS started. Not anything that was unusual, but certainly an educational experience. More later...

Horde Ho!

So, I've been at a conference this week. Thankfully the hotel has wireless internet connection so I haven't been suffering too much. Weird part of out of town conferences is that they run from 8:00 to ~4:30. Like we're supposed to find something to do in the middle of nowhere. Luckily Warcraft kept me company. So, getting to the point of the post, Wifey and I created new Undead toons to level together. We've tried that before, but I'm always ended up leveling them without here and then the level discrepency is too high to group. However I think this will work better. All my other Horde toons are Orc or Tauren, so the starting areas will fresh/new. Anyway Wifey rolled a Priest and I'm on the Warrior. So a good combination.

I've got to say that starting over was nice. Don't get me wrong, I love my guild, but it was nice just having my Wife and I. I'd say that every other time I log on I wind up helping someone with something, which isn't a problem, but when you just want to unwind and play it gets in the way. So, while we have a guild on Dunemaul I'm not sure I'll be adding these toons to it. I think it might be nice to just have an unknown toon to play when I don't to deal with people (aside from my wife).

Necklace debate

Now, Saturday Night in LBRS Talisman of Evasion dropped and as I have Abyssal War Beads, I passed. The other rogue already had it so I figured it would go for DE. To my surprise the group leader insisted I loot it and most of the raid (yeah, 10 60's on LBRS, went quick :P) thought it was an improvment for me. I guess I really don't see that as an improvement. In fact I used to use Talisman of Evasion and replaced it with Abyssal War Beads. Here's the stats for the link lazy out there:

Abyssal War Beads
+15 Stamina
+20 AP
vs.
Talisman of Evasion
+13 Agility
+1% Dodge

Normally I prefer to Agility to AP, but in this case I see the Abyssal War Beads as clearly superior due to the Stamina bonus. As most of what I do with Sakuran is instances, I see 150 extra HP as worth more than 1% dodge by a significant margin. If I end up with Aggro, I want to make sure I survive it and I see alot more added security from 150 HP than +1% dodge, well 1.5% with the AGI. Oh, and for those of you who reference AEP, Abyssal War Beads = 25 and Talisman of Evasion = 13.

Abyssal Leather Leggins of Overexposure

Well, got some new stuff for Sakuran over the weekend. I picked up the Abyssal Leather Leggings of Striking, which are 1) very nice and 2) a little too revealing. They basically look like two leather ovals stapped to the front of the thighs and nothing else. I'm just glad that Sak is a NE female and not, say, a Dwarven male. Still, feel kinda odd running around as a half naked girly. A step up from the ugliness (in appearence, not stats) that was the Devilsaur set.

Now, the Devilsaur set is a very nice set, and has served me well. In fact, I was hesitant to replace it at all. However, I've had my Darkmantle Gloves sitting in my bag for a bit and was simply looking for some better pants. Yes, the +2% hit (15 AEP) is nice, and going to be missed. Now this is not a AEP based decision, as losing the set bonus points outweigh the gains on the indivual items. Worth noting is that my talent build includes +5% to hit already, so that 2% hit is white damage only, I'll still not miss with specials.

I don't see all +hit as the same. After the first 5% I see it's value as significantly lower, perhaps 1/3 as important as that first 5%. With that logic (faulty as it may be), the set bonus only translates to 5 AEP.

For completeness sake:
Abyssal Leather Leggings of Striking = 51 AEP
152 Armor
+15 Strength
+15 Agility
+15 Stamina
+1% Crit
vs.
Devilsaur Pants = 48 AEP
148 Armor
+12 Stamina
+46 AP
+1% Crit

and

Darkmantle Gloves = 39 AEP
108 Armor
+12 Strength
+22 Agility
+9 Stamina
vs.
Devilsaur Gauntlents = 35 AEP
103 Armor
+9 Stamina
+28 AP
+1% Crit

1-59 vs 60

As any Warcraft player who's hit 60 can attest, the game changes. And this isn't new information. I know that as long as I've been reading about WoW that's been a topic of discussion. The purpose of this post is try and identify, from my perspective, what those differences are how a player addresses them.

1-59 the grind
When you start the game and get familiar with it you have one ultimate goal: XP. Sure the methods of getting XP differ and can be fun in their own right, but it all boils down to XP. I'll go kill this mob or collect these drops for an NPC and I'll get XP along the way. Ultimately I'll get a few levels and move onto other NPC's that'll offer me the same thing. Occasionally you'll get the opportunity to get some nice items, but that is really secondary to the whole XP thing.

The nice thing about XP is that it's a time sink. If I invest enough time in questing or grinding I'll get a level. With that level comes talent points, new skills (evens only), new weapons and armor I can use, etc. So you get rewarded for investing time in questing or grinding. You can even get XP for PvP with the token turn ins. All of these things are very solo friendly. While you can get nice blues from instances, it'll still be eclipsed by the greens that drop commonly in another 5-6 levels.

60 End Game
The thing that I noticed most when I hit 60 was that the only way to improve my character was by improving my gear. Now there are a lot of ways that one can get gear at 60. PvP, raiding, reputation, instancing, etc. However you no longer can count on gains from a simple investment in time. Aside from grinding reputation almost everything you do to get better gear involves a group and involves a chunk of committed time. For a lot of people, myself included, that's a significant barrier. I would not be surprised if I spend as much time in game as many 'hard-core' raiders, but my time is rarely garaunteed to be uninterrupted. With a wife and small child, I have a many significant RL responsibilities that require my attention and certainly interfere with my ability to be part of an instance or raid.

What this realization meant for me is that I play my "Main" less that I play my non-60 alts. All my toons are in the same guild and the only time I really log Sakuran is if I know there's a instance going on and I think RL can wait for a bit (AKA they're asleep), otherwise I grind Laic, Repentant, or Didgeridoo as that game can easily be in 15 minute chunks.

What do I think Blizzard could do to improve this situation? Simple make more loot obtainable through quests that don't require you to step into an instance. Now, I'm not asking that the gear you can obtain be better or even equal to what you can get inside an instance, but at least make it worthwhile. From the perspective of my main, the only gear improvements I have ahead of me are in instances. Most of my Tier 0 could be considered an improvement (all BoP from here) and even the 'casual-friendly' updrades to Tier .5 require the freaking 45 minute Baron run (yeah, right) and UBRS.

Not that I'm griping about that, but I'm just really amazed at how much my play style has changed since I dinged. Now, admittedly, when Burning Crusade comes out we'll have 10 more leves of that first game, which should also take around as long as the 1-59 originally took. If Blizzard stick to their expansion a year plan perhaps my end-game woes will be less fequent than my 'instant' gratification of the grinding game.

So, until next time I'll be grinding my alts :P

Grrr @ Goldsellers

/rant true
Okay, I have the silly little Google ads, mostly for humor value. Reading the information on it they'll only send you a check once you're earned $100. Realistically I suppose that could happen in 2034. However, I'm opposed to gold selling and have worked to keep my ads free of that. So I'll ban the sites that are selling it whenever I can. That being said these guys are like the little fuzzy things on StarTrek that multiply and take over the ship. I'll call them Furbies (do to my dislike of them) though I know that is incorrect. So I notice that the Furbies are back and I ban them and two days later all my ads are Furby related again. Frustrating.....
/rant false

Life at ANC

Life at ANC

Buddy of mine just started his own blog. While not Warcraft related, I know Bilder through WoW as we're both members of CotL. So hit him up and show support!

Discord, pt 2.

Okay, I set up Discord on my laptop last night and it was a lot less painful than I expected. Before logging into WoW I coppied the addons from my desktop to my laptop (rather than re-download). I also copied the settings from the saved variables folder on my desktop, this let me avoid having to set up all my bars/unit frames/art/etc. again. Of course the aspect ratio on my laptop is different from my desktop so I sill had to move some stuff around, but it was very painless. One thing that I did and hadn't done before was set up my chat windows the way I like and then copy the Chat Chache and I think Layout files from one characters saved variables and paste into each other characters. I don't know why I had never thought to do this before with all the various chat frame setups I've had. Still need to remember to post a screen shot while I'm at home as I can't while at work. Of course I'd much rather be playing WoW when I'm at home... I can quit anytime, honest :P

Discord

Okay, took the plunge and installed all the Discord mods. Action Bars, Unit Frames, Frame Modifier, Art, and Minipanels. Will eventually get around to playing with Group Buttons. My first victim was Sakuran. Ended up with a very nice UI with a couple of neat features. Have two bars that interchange based on whether I'm in or out of combat, very nice. My main bar has all my main attacks and finishers. I need to setup a fouth bar for tradeskills, just haven't got around to it yet. Next step is to modify it to Repentant and Laic. Both should be somewhat challenging as Repentant is a healer and will need to incorporate Group Buttons (or maybe just stick with Benecast) and Laic has all his traps/aspects/tracking to incorporate.

What's kept me from using it till now is my concern about how it'll screw up playing on multiple machines. I primarily play on my desktop but do a far bit on laptop. In addition I sometimes play on my fathers laptop when I'm over at his house. Setting everything up on three computers will suck, but thus far I think the benefits will outway the cons.