The Wonderful World of Blogging (and all the complications that go with it)

So I had lots of free time today, being that it's Christmas, and I was talking to my friend and internet publishing mentor Dave about this little blog. He had some awesome suggestions about how to get my name out there, and what to do to get more than the 3 readers I have now. To really get that rolling, it would probably require a domain change and, quite honestly, more work that I want to put into a blog right at this moment. But I'm really interested in the possibility of making this thing grow, so I'm doing a bit of research over the next few days to see what I can turn up.

Eventually, I'd like to branch out of WoW and into other topics gaming-related. For now, I'll just stick with one step at a time and try to work up to a "real" blog that relates to WoW and updates on a regular basis. I'll see where it goes from there.

Here's to reinventing, and better blogs :)

My Class Imbalance

So. . .

I'm still plodding along with my druid and warrior. I finally got the [Essence of Gossamer] from heroic Azjol-Nerub last night and replaced my [Sonic Booster]. This puts me up to a solid 27111 health unbuffed, while keeping ~37% dodge+parry (before diminishing returns) and 20ish% block. All of the drops in Naxx-10 are either side-grades, or minor upgrades, except for tier pants and shoulders and a pair of boots.

My poor, poor druid on the other hand can't seem to get any gear to save his life. I still have a half dozen or so relatively significant upgrades from heroics that I can get, and of course everything in Naxx-10 is zomg good compared to what I'm wearing. I did manage to get my enchanting up to 440 though, so I can do all of the enchants from the shard vendor. But my pitiful 1550ish healing when specced resto, and 1660ish damage when specced balance are churning out numbers that I would yell at anyone else for having. But I can't get any upgrades from normal instances (except for a couple wonky trinkets that are too good for where they drop), so I feel sort of stuck.

I was amazed at Northrend when I leveled through it with both of my characters. It felt very natural to progress, and I never felt like I had "strayed" into a high-level zone that I shouldn't have been in. My warrior continued this progression all the way through Naxx. I've never felt like I wasn't geared enough to tank something on him. But my druid makes me feel like I missed a step somewhere. I keep looking at gems and enchants thinking that I missed a +150 spellpower upgrade. My glyphs are for resto, but I don't believe that swapping them to balance ones would increase my dps by the 500 or more that I need. All of the gear from normal instances are downgrades, but the heroic instances kill my tanks when I'm healing, or just leave me sputtering at 1500 dps. Maybe I just need more practice like my holy pally brother keeps telling me.

In any case, druid gear is what I'll be doing this week. I think another 2-3 solid upgrades, and I'll be set for Naxx.

Tanking and Healing

So, the 2-piece T7 warrior bonus is awesome.

I got my gloves Wednesday-ish, and my chest Saturday. I got my badge neck yesterday after two times attempting Naxx (and clearing the spider wing and up to the four horsemen in the death knight wing). I think this brings my count down to 1 pure upgrade from heroics, and 2-3 sidegrades. I'll probably be running Pinnacle for that sword until I get the next step up in Naxx.

I think this week will give me time to work on my druid. I feel like he's been neglected lately, but tanks are so hard to find, and I'm the only tank I know that's online most of the time. Ironically, all the death knights are dps (go figure).

It's odd to me that I feel more pressure to do well as a healer. As a tank, if I die in a heroic or raid, it's because the dps or healers didn't have enough throughput. As a healer, if anyone dies, it's because I didn't have enough throughput. It's pretty funny when you think about it.

At any rate, I've read a lot about druid healing in the last few days and found one particularly good post about direct heals that helped me decide when to use Nourish vs. Regrowth. Sadly, Nourish is pretty lackluster in most situations - especially compared to a glyphed Regrowth. Now, if there were a glyph for Nourish (and there might be, I haven't seen a complete list of druid glyphs anywhere, yet) that made it gain some portion of Improved Regrowth's crit, say even 25% instead of the whole 50%, it would be a pretty good spell. But I think the only glyph for Nourish right now is the one that gives it an extra 5% healing per HoT on the target. This makes it a nice spell, but it's hardly practical. Especially when the other glyph options don't have state requirements on them. Niche spells are nice, but not when the niche is so small.

My gear is still very much a work in progress. I'm up to 1430ish healing, but I think I'll need at least 200-300 more for Naxx. There are some really great pieces from heroics I can still get, so that's what I'll be working on this week. The T7 gloves and chest are requisite, too. <3 set bonuses. I think I can get 3-5 pieces this week if I need to for Naxx, but with the severe lack of tanks on the server in general, I think I'll probably just stick with my warrior. Remember when tanks and healers could get into PuGs? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Anyway, that's about it for me. I might take to leveling my shaman just to get his professions up, but honestly I'm not that impressed with him. Or my death knight. They both feel very clunky play-wise, but very solid mehanic-wise.

WTB MOAR PROFESHUNS PER CHARAKTER

. . .
. . .
. . .

And with that bit of insanity, I'm off to pusue merry ventures in that thing called "real life." Whatever that is.

On Being 80, Heroics, and Death Knight Professions

I'm back!

Well, I never really left. I just didn't have anything worth saying for a while. WoW has been exciting and fun, but there's nothing new to say that wasn't said a million times during the beta. But in an effort to combat blog silence, I decided to make a post about my progress anyway.

I've been doing a lot of heroics (as many as I can) on my warrior. He's got a decent set of gear now, and I'm looking to try to get him in Naxx. As soon as I get the 140 Emblems I need (of which I'm at ~50), I'll get my T7 gloves and chestpiece. Somehow the defense trinket from normal HoL has eluded me so far, and I still go in there when I'm not getting Emblems, but I think it might just be one of those pieces I miss.

My druid has sort of been shelved for now. I'm not sure whether it's the fact that he's resto, so can't kill anything without a lot of work, or that I've got a good rhythm down with my brother and girlfriend for knocking out heroics on my warrior. I still try to get him out to do the cooking daily quest and mine up more saronite (BOO to the last 5 points of engineering), but there's not a whole lot that I really want to do with him right now. I think once we get more 80s in the guild he'll become more useful, but with only one heroic "group" (6 80s in guild, I think - 7 if you count me for both of mine) we only need one healer. And my brother's paladin is way better at that than my druid.

I still have a couple zones to do quest-wise on my characters. My druid is pretty much done with everything except the faction quests in Sholazar for either the Frenzyheart or Oracles and still needs to do some quests in Icecrown. My warrior needs about the same Icecrown quests, but hasn't done more in Sholazar than getting the flight point set up. To be honest, I'm not in that much of a hurry to get them done, either. I'm sure I'll have some time to burn once I finish getting my heroic gear worked out and I can putz around questing then.

Oh, I do have a death knight. Just like everyone else. Mine is only 58 though, and I haven't even decided on professions. I mostly just wanted to do the questline in the starting zone and be ready to pick him up at some point in the future. Although with the appearance of the Darkmoon Faire and the Northrend deck trinkets, I might just take him herbalism/alchemy to get the eternal life that's required for inscriptors (scribes?) to make the cards. Oh, and to transmute my meta gems so I can get my jewelcrafting leveled. But I really don't want to level through Outlands again right now. I spent way too much time there in the last year. So that might be a while coming.

So that's a snapshot of my WoW status. Hopefully it will change rapidly so that I have something interesting to post here soon. :)

TwentyFifthNovember and Professional Gaming

As of last night(ish) all of the current content is cleared for WotLK. Assuming that all of the members leveled in 36 hours, that's one raid tier cleared fully in less than 8 days of progression attempts. To me, this highlights the cutthroat capitalism that permeates people everywhere. No matter what the activity is, someone will turn it into a business.

Part of me is saddened by this, since it's a game and should be fun. But most of me is just jealous. If I could describe my perfect day, it would be just sitting around gaming. Not just WoW, but all kinds of RTS, RPG, FPS, TCG (and other TLAs), puzzle, and board games. While my education (for the most part) has been in mechanical engineering, my passion (somewhat obviously) is for playing games. Sometimes I even dabble in the underlying mechanincs of what makes great games great. Dabble. Dabble. I'll try not to splash too much.

But even with all this, I'm not being paid for it. The players of TwentyFifthNovember, from what I understand, are. They get equipment and salaries for being the best gamers out there - at least at WoW. I guess the next best thing to simply playing games all day is to design and build them. Maybe once I'm 80 and raiding I can pull back the throttle on the playtime and shift more towards thinktime.

So while I'm entirely too jealous of their ability to do this with their lives, I still have a great amount of respect for their gaming prowess. Grats on the world first clear of content, TwentyFifthNovember!

Northrend! It's here! And it's . . . already populated with 80s?!

I've been working at leveling my druid since the release. I quest with my girlfriend (a hunter), and we've been breezing through zones. Borean Tundra? Check. Dragonblight? Check. Grizzly Hills? Check. . . well, almost. We hit 75 tonight, but I can't help but feel that we're still falling behind. The big horde guild on our server whacked out Naxx this afternoon (the "big" alliance guild is a joke comparitively. . . it makes me a little sad), and I can't help but feel that I'm missing the leveling curve and won't even have the chance at 25 mans. Not that I'll be doing a lot of them, but I would like to have the opportunity there to not take if I choose. I don't want to be locked out of them because I was just too late.

But then again, as I look around at everyone else leveling, I don't see many people over 73 or so. Tons of people in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Not so many in Icecrown and Zul'Drak. So maybe there is hope after all. I see bloggers posting about hitting 71 and 72. I see lots of tips on how to make enough money to afford training - which at 15-20g per spell per level isn't cheap, but not outrageous - and I see gearing guids for leveling. In my mind though, whatever gear you had on you when your soft little feet hit the beaches of Normand. . . I mean Northrend is plenty to carry you through until the quest rewards replace them. Instances drop ludicrously powered gear for how hard they are to do. Quests give 5-10g per, and that's more than enough to cover repairs and training. Hell, I even got myself a genuine [Repair-o-Mount] almost right off the bat and I haven't really missed the cold, hard cash.

I guess the best I can hope for is to just level through Northrend at the pace that I want to, and see what's waiting for me when I hit the level cap (again :) ). I've been getting enough cobalt to fuel a small army, so that's exactly what I'm doing with it. I've hit the point where I need saronite with both engineering and blacksmithing, used the crappy green armor from the blacksmithing to fuel my enchanting, and sent the extra ore off the be prospected into shiny new gems that get sold on the auction house for obscene amounts of gold.

All-in-all, I'm very happy with how things are going. I just don't want to get to the end of leveling and find out that if I had taken my time and leveled all my characters together I would have been just as well off. So here's to you, Blizzard. For another great piece of interactive video entertainment. And if you ever have a job opening, I'm very good at fetching coffee. . . .

A Summary of Suggested Paladin Stat Change

I've been running some numbers to determine how to homogenize the plate armor for paladins - specifically holy paladins - so that spellpower plate is phased out, much like feral attack power is being worked towards. With the conversions I've worked out, the combination of a spellpower 1h and shield will still be superior, but trinkets, rings, and necks will be a toss-up between strength and spellpower. So without further ado, here are the conversions:

1 str -> 2 SP, 1 int
4 stam -> 1 mp5

With these conversions (at 70, at least), a retribution pally with 1800 attack power and ~10k health will have (when specced holy) about 1200 spellpower, ~10k mana, and 175 mp5. I haven't looked at the conversion for prot yet, but without real numbers I think that the current talent can be reduced to 10% of stamina from 30% so that the str -> SP can be baseline. The str -> int and stam -> mp5 can be deep holy - at least 30 points. Sheath of Light could probably be done away with, or simply reduced to the HoT portion.

This opens up a door to new healing styles, since holy will have a significant amount of attack power. Healing spells based on damage done to an enemy, or similar engaging mechanics. Also a big bonus is that ret/arms gear now becomes ret/arms/holy gear. The dependece on spellpower doesn't make me too uncomfortable, since the weapons/shields will still be shared by elemental/locks/mages/priests. The same goes for jewelry and trinkets.

Of course, there's nothing inflexible about these numbers, and I haven't thought of every possible combination of gear that might make either ret or holy completely overpowered. I'd like to get this posted to the healing forums and get some feedback on it, but I think I'll need some more number crunching first.

The Big Ten

In just a few short days, 10-man raids will no longer be the place that "real raiders" get stuck before getting the gear to allow them into the "real raids." This is a huge boost for my guild - a purely 10-man guild who managed 3 timed chests in ZA before 3.0.2 after only about 2 months of raiding. By the end of next week, saying things like this won't get you looked down on by 25-man raiders.

I'm very excited to see how our little guild progresses. In the last month, we've jumped from 134th(ish) to 43rd ranked guild on our server according to WoWjutsu. To me, this change really allows people to show off their skill instead of just seeing who can gather up enough people to tromp around endgame. Homoginization of both gear and roles encourages the acquisition of skill over gear as well, and encourages more small runs in addition to the raids that currently happen.

I'd like to see this trend continue and have more questlines like the ones for the level 60 warlock and paladin mounts, and the druid swift flight form. Epic, single person quests that can rank you on your skill if they get progressively harder - like the racing quests on Netherwing Ledge. If the quests are restricted to a single player, even with some group parts, then you can't "fake" your way through by buying a group of people to carry you.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves in WoW. I hate seeing people who have either eBayed their account and so have no idea how to play, or who have PvPed their way to ZOMG EPIXX0RZ and think that qualifies them to raid endgame. So implementing a system that combats this would be a dream come true.

At any rate, smaller groups put more dependence on the individual raider which in turn shows off skill more than larger groups. Hooray for expansions!

Quick Note About a Pally Change I Came Up With

I had an idea last night about how to keep holy paladins able to solo while allowing ret to have seals and judgments nerfed for whatever reason.

1. Put two talents of however many points into holy. One that has some conversion of strength->spellpower and the other that converts stamina->mana/5. Exact conversion rates can be determined later.

2. Scrap all plate spellpower gear.

3. Profit!

The basic idea here is twofold. First, holy paladins are the only spec in the game now that has a set of gear all their own. Second, it's very flavorful to have a "holy warrior" type character that can heal more the stronger he is, and can last longer healing if he has more stamina.

Using str/stam/crit plate dps gear, the holy pally would have spellpower/mp5/crit which is exactly what they're after. If they stack too much tank gear, then they can heal forever, but they lose spellpower. This may not be a complete fix for the entire class, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

What the PuG!?

In the last couple weeks, I've been in PuGs for just about every raid, except Sunwell. Some have been successful, some haven't. But it's still amazing to me that they exist. On a server where the top Alliance guild was selling chances at tier pieces mere weeks after first downing the bosses themselves, and most of the inhabitants are just looking to get "epicced out" - regardless of the stats on the gear, it's somewhat refreshing to see people have complete PuG runs where rolls are simply mainspec first, then offspec.

All this freely available gear has set rumblings in the foundations of some guilds. I've seen a few 25-mans break into 10-mans, 10-man guilds split into arena teams, and arena teams disintegrate into individual battlegrounders. Of course, this might just be the result of pre-expansion restlessness spreading wanderlust that makes people test the waters of what they can accomplish on their own.

I have some very mixed feelings about these PuGs. On one hand, they get the bosses down (sometimes), and that's where the phat lootz come from. On the other hand, they're terrible players who are so sub-optimal at their roles that even after the patch boss nerfs, wipes are vastly more common than boss kills. So while I enjoy reaping the benefits of killing bosses in Black Temple, it helps to have a movie to watch during downtime, and maybe a game of solitaire going to keep my clicking finger from locking up.

On the whole, I think that more PuGs can only be good. They stimulate the interest in raids and heroics, and keep the game from becoming stale. But I'd like to see a return of attunements with the increase in PuGs. As easy as this game is, some people just aren't good enough at it to perform at the level required to do high-level content. To me, this is the challenge of game design: invent a natural content progression that cultivates building skills that will help you later in the game. Of course, this would effectively "lock out" some people from the end of progression, but I'm conceited enough to believe that I can perform well enough to make it to the "end."

This ties in to how I think that progression should depend on skill intead of raid size, but that's a whole different post. Perhaps later this week.

In the mean time, enjoy the free PHAT EPIXX L00TZ0RZ flowing out of PuGs.

WTS!: In-Game Loot Distribution

We're all familiar with the typical loot options in the game. I think the two that get used the most are Group Loot and Master Looter. I don't know anyone who uses Round Robin or Need Before Greed, and Free-For-All is pretty much a gimmick option for running lowbies through things, or similar off situations. I would like to see implementation of a loot system by Blizzard for raids, so there is a "standard" method - even if Blizzard makes it optional.

In my mind, a player should have an "edge" when rolling on items for his spec and professions, as well as when he hasn't received any loot from a boss (or raid) over multiple kills. Of course, this can't "carry over" between guilds, so each raid would have to be tagged for a guild or as "PuG" when entering, and each player would have a running tab of what amounts to DKP with each guild he runs with, while PuGs remain how they are now.

As an example of the mechanics, let's say that the bias for a player who can use an item is +5 to a roll, and the bias for not having won something yet is another +5 per boss. So in your Sunwell raid, the engineering goggle upgrade for your character's class and spec drops, and you haven't won any loot for 5 kills. So you have a total of 30 points to add to your roll. What I'm suggesting isn't a straight addition, but simply an increase of top roll - so (/roll 1-130) instead of the normal (/roll 1-100). These additional points would be "spent" on a winning roll, but retained on a losing roll. This puts a soft cap on the amount that you can effectively use, and so encourages people to roll often without making any points over a certain number useless.

This also leaves a large part of the loot to chance. The roll isn't being sold to the highest bidder, it's being biased toward the unlucky. There is still the chance for someone to show up, roll 100 on everything and leave, or for a dedicated raid member to lose every roll, even though he has a bonus of 500, but these are very unlikely situations.

Of course, a huge dilemma with this is that there is no "standard" system now, so how can Blizzard choose one to impose? That's why I suggest that it only be mandatory in a PuG setting, and can be turned off in a raid to allow a guild to use whatever system they're already using. I don't really expect to see this anytime soon, but here's hoping!

WTB!: Commentary on RNG Loot Mechanics

I read a blue post this morning responding to someone complaining about the drop rate of the [Sinister Squashling] from the Headless Horseman. The Blizzard poster said that the drop rates were based on a person doing the event an average of five times per day (I'm assuming this is on a per character basis), and that even if the boss was killed those five times per day for the duration of the event, some people still would not see the pet drop. This is to be expected, since we're dealing with bell-curve fitting, but still discouraging.

It seems to me that just having an RNG determine whether something drops, and then another one to determine wheter you win that item is leaving too much to chance. However, if the chance is taken out of drops too much, then either everyone or noone will end up with the item. Well, that's not exactly true. The legendary weapons from classic WoW had only one part that was RNG based (from what I remember off the top of my head) and the rest of the parts were guaranteed drops from certain bosses. And these items are still very rare. I'd like to see more things like this instead of pure RNG drops. Oddly enough, the extreme difficulty of the achievement to get one of every mask is being dropped from the meta-achievement to get the title "The Hallowed" because of its reliance on RNG items.

Now, for an achievement that doesn't have a time limit (pretty much everything but the seasonal ones, from what I see), then having a large time component required doesn't hurt too much (think the Loremaster title for doing lots and lots of quests in every zone of the game). However, once a clock is put on the achievement, this is no longer workable. It makes the achievement too luck-based, or just flat out impossible. If RNGs are going to remain the prevalent method of item distribution, then some modifiers need to be placed on the drop AND the loot roll that follows.

The problem then becomes how to measure something to determine who should get a modifier. A quest line is probably too easy, but maybe simple is good in this case. The modifier doesn't even have to be large, but it would be nice to see preference given to people who are working towards the titles from achievements over those who are just there because they're bored and don't want to do anything outside the game.

Weaksauce!? No, Just Equilibrium

I see a lot of people complaining on forums about their class being too underpowered with the release of the 3.0.x patch. The weird thing to me is that every class is saying this. And no class is getting weaker than they are now. So people are assuming that other classes are getting more buffs than their own class is. How paranoid can you get?

Having never been forced to sit out due to min-maxing, it's a lot easier for me to see the buffs at face value. I can understand how people would be worried that they will get side-lined, but if Blizzard's statement about role equity is taken as true no class will be sidelined. Only certain players will be sidelined. I support this change.

As I understand it (and have seen for myself), there will still be "specialization" among roles for each class, but these abilities won't be head and shoulders above the other classes in those areas. Since tanking is my "forte," I'll give some examples of that.

• AOE tanking - Thunderclap and swipe will now hit all targets, but consecration will still be more threat per target.

• Off tanking - Druids will still have a "larger-than-average" health pool, but paladins and warriors scale with stamina exceptionally well compared to non-tanks.

• Main tanking - Every boss will be tankable by every class. Warrriors still have the most tricks up their sleeves, but that gap is narrowing fast.

I haven't mentioned death knights in these comparisons because I don't have a 70, and haven't done enough playing on one to know exactly where they fit. But everything I've read indicates that they will be a high avoidance/low(ish) health tank class. Threat won't be different to any significant degree on a single target, and will only slightly vary on AOE targets, between all classes.

I can't see any reason for anyone to worry about their class not being wanted by a raid. Except perhaps healers, but that would be a rare case indeed and would require serious construing of raid makeup.

I admit that the ones hit hardest by the changes are dps players. With healers and tanks able to do some notable damage, dps have to bring some truly remarkable damage to be beneficial to the raid. But I think this is a great change. One of my biggest pet peeves is a dps class who can't do more damage (or dps) than my tank. Having a reason to push those players to do even halfway decent damage can be nothing but good.

So to all the people who think that they won't be able to get a spot in a raid after the changes, maybe you should consider whether the problem is your class, or your ability.

To Raid or Not To Raid

One of my very few regrets with WoW is never having been in the "endgame." I went into Naxx yesterday for the first time and stealthed around as much as I could and it really hit me that I wanted the legendary [Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian]. I probably could have worked through Burning Crusade and picked up my 40 splinters, but I was getting my T4 and leveling my warrior and shaman.

With the reduction in raid size in Burning Crusade from 40 to 25, I was able to get into raiding. But this only garnered me one tier of gear before I gave up on the "hardcore" raiding in favor of hanging out with my friends. I briefly took my shaman into T5/T6 and was able to at least see the instances, but I hated the huge amounts of downtime and incompetence of the other raiders.

As WotLK advents, I think Blizzard is showing that they understand these frustrations, but also those of the extremely hardcore raiders by having dual-size raids. The hard jump from 40 to 25 man raids caused an almost universal wipe of guilds, with a few exceptions. By offering the option to continue on the 25 man path, these established raiding guilds aren't hurt. By dropping better gear than the 10 man versions, these guilds aren't trivialized. But by implementing these 10 man versions, just about everyone can venture into "engame" and complete the story arc of the expansion.

The only thing that is still up in the air is ZOMG LEGENDARIES!! In classic WoW, there were huge quest chains leading up to obtaining obscene amounts of materials to craft your own legendary weapons. In Burning Crusade, these weapons were just drops from the "end" bosses of the game in their respective patches. If this trend continues, the legendaries in WotLK will be kill-quest rewards. I don't think this will happen, but I am concerned that they will be 25 man only drops. While this is very fair, it puts me back in the same position that I'm in now. We all know that Frostmourne will make an appearance, but most likely only from hard mode Arthas 25.

Also of concern to me is the class restriction on these items. The huge uproar caused by the [Star's Fury] being given to a rogue over two hunters is well known. While I know this won't be a problem in my guild, I don't want Blizzard to react by restricting Frostmourne to Death Knight only.

I'm sure BlizzCon will shed lots of light on the situation, but until then, I'm on the edge of my plush gaming chair.

New Gear, Just a Year Too Late

Last night my guild did an odd thing for us: we voluntarily switched up our Kara run with several alts. And we didn't have any wipes (except for a dumb mistake on my part when I pulled a group before taking out the patting Stagehands on the way to Opera). This earned us a three hour (give or take 5 minutes) run, and 22 badges.

I used those badges to pick up the last piece I need for tanking on my warrior before WotLK: [Girdle of the Fearless]. I still have the [Devilshark Cape], but I don't see that going anywhere until I hit Northrend. [Slikk's Cloak] is better, but it's also another 35 badges. And I'd lose some of my ever-dwindling block value, so I think I'll just hold out for a WotLK variant.

I'd like to scrape together another 40 badges on my druid to get some [Grovewalker's Leggings], but I'm not sure if that'll happen before I make the plunge to the Icy North.

Incidently, it looks like with the change to spellpower, healing is ending up just barely on top. Presumably the +81 healing and +40 damage enchants are the "same" ilevel, but while the +40 damage just goes straight across, the +81 healing turns into +42 (or 43, I can't remember) spellpower. Since I want to heal anyway, it won't hurt my feelings to have gear itemized for that, but it's something to keep in mind before the patch.

Here's looking forward to achievements!

Just Say "No" to PuGs?

I've taken to PuGing Kara with my warrior lately. He still needs 40-odd badges, and can get a few offspec upgrades in there as well. What I'd really like to do is see him in ZA, but he's nowhere near as geared as my druid and with the new content coming soon, it'd be a waste to have a "geared enough" tank in there in place of an "awesomely geared" tank.

With that said, are PuGs getting better now, or just more geared? I haven't had a Kara run not make it to Shade (even though that's about when everyone just gives up because it requires more than button-mashing) in a few weeks, and we've even gotten Illhoof down a couple times. I'd like to think that my hotness that is tanking makes a huge difference in that, but it's more likely that the gear level of the group is going up on average.

The thing about that being true that I don't understand is how I still manage to get in a group with at least the other tank in nothing but quest greens. And how Kara senses that this person needs gear so drops nothing but that person's spec/class loot.

I ended up running the show Sunday night, since I was apparently the only one who had been inside Kara before. We started with 4 (Count them! FOUR!) Ret pallies, so when we hit Maiden we only had a small issue with Holy Fire almost killing our healers. All our dps could cleanse it from themselves.

By the time we got to Curator though, we had lost all of the paladins, and the dps were having a hard time coping without Blessing of Salvation. I think we degenerated into name-calling and POM-pyroing around the 3rd flare from Curator, and called it after struggling with Illhoof, but killing him finally.

As frustrating as this was, in a normal PuG, or just a few months ago, I wouldn't have expected to get farther than Moroes. And this was all done with an offtank who effectively doubled his tanking gear value by picking up 3 pieces. Oh, and he thought that this [Good Luck Charm] was for rogues. I just about left the group after that comment.

The bottom line is that PuGs are geared enough now to accommodate just about any heroic or Kara. PuGing ZA probably would get a boss or two down. As long as you're willing to put up with a few wipes and don't expect anything spectacular, you can probably get a group for anything now that nobody's raiding.

[Enhancement Shaman Semi-Spoiler]

Since my last statement that enhancement shaman wouldn't make the exceptional list, I've played a bit on the beta with mine. He hasn't suddenly become über-awesome, but I think I missed a couple things, or they have been added.

There's a huge synergy between melee and spell damage now. Maelstrom Weapons encourages the use of heals when needed and offensive spells otherwise by making them instant. The new Flametongue Weapon gives bonus spell damage in addition to the on hit effect of fire damage each swing, and using Flametongue on your offhand weapon is hugely encouraged by a new spell (Lava Burst? I can't recall at the moment, and the realm is down) that deals instant offhand weapon damage as fire, and deals 25% more if the weapon is enchanted with Flametongue.

Couple this with the new Stormstrike that is only useable by the shaman who put it there, but also increases frost and fire damage in addition to nature, and suddenly my want to not be able to afk through a fight is fulfilled. I have totems every 5 minutes to place, and Stormstirke, Lava offhand, and Shocks every 8, 15?, and 6 seconds respectively.

A side benefit (or maybe hugely intentional) is that if you're using Flametongue on your offhand and Windfury on your mainhand, then you can follow the fury warrior/rogue model of having as slow of mainhand as you can get and as fast of offhand as you can get, which in turn reduces the number of weapon sets that have to drop, so everyone can get their gear faster.

As a side note, I think that having fewer pieces of gear drop, while hugely beneficial to raid progression, is a bad thing. No, I don't like waiting in Kara 8 months to get my last two enchants. But I think that it takes the uniqueness away from your character. There's no way to differentiate between Paladin and Warrior tanks just by seeing them from across the field, except if they have tier sets on. Rogues and feral Druids are the same, as well as enhancement Shaman and Hunters; Mages and Warlocks. Of course, resto and balance Druids get leather, resto Shaman and holy Paladins get mail and plate respectively, and holy Priests get cloth. So at least the healing classes will have different armor models. Maybe.

The collapsing of damage and healing to spellpower means that resto and balance Druids get basically the same stats. This goes for holy and shadow Priests, and elemental and resto Shaman. So now you won't be able to tell what spec someone is, either. I know that it's a small thing, but I liked being recognizable by what I was wearing. I like having [The Sun Eater] on my Warrior. I like having antlers and a [Squid Stick] on my Druid. (I have the [Wildlife Royalty Staff] now, but I'm trying to make a point ;))

Anyway, I think the change is good (for now). We'll see how it plays out on the live servers, and with raids and WotLK endgame.

The State of the Game Address

Hmmm. . . where to begin? The beta is shiny. And I mean very shiny. I think the graphics have been souped up a ton. But the really exciting thing to me is that the patch is coming! I want to share the shiny with my friends. 

The new talents are promised to make content super easy, and I think that ZA won't be challenging at all, except to learn the dance of the new fights. We still have some time to get a bear mount or two if we hurry, but honestly, I'm not too wound up about them. Might and Aeon (as well as a couple other guilds) have been selling bear mounts forever, so every dumbass who can scrape together 10k gold can get one. I much prefer my Raven Lord.

This isn't to say that I won't enjoy ZA. I want to get in there and just destroy Zul'jin. The fight seems interesting, Hex Lord's fight is complicated (which means fun!), and if I can get another potential "achievement" before the patch comes, I love it. I think the guild is plenty geared, and we just need practice at taking down the trash before the dragonhawk and lynx bosses. The bosses themselves we one-shot on their respective first attempts.

Without going into any detail about the new talents or abilities or anything, I think that feral is weak, and resto is strong. Balance is strong like a bodybuilder at Venice Beach. I love the conversion of damage/healing to a single stat, and have long thought that it should be that way. It means that healers can actually solo without taking a year to kill something, and that the caster specs (elemental, balance, shadow) of those classes can toss around heals in need without being at half-power.

Sadly, I don't see my shaman making the list of exceptional specs. He's enhancement, and I really have no desire to play as elemental (since balance is so good) or resto (since resto druids are so good). Fury is making awesome headway due to their 51-point talent, so melee dps will probably be my warrior. Rogues are reported to be zomgsupergood with assassination, while combat is decent and subtlety is still PvP only. So I might try to level my rogue (currently 12, lol) and see what happens there. And it's not that enhancement will be bad, it just won't be good, either. Just sort of hanging out until a future patch.

But here's to new content, new abilities, and sharing them with friends!

Beta Key! Northrend Ho!

So I found a nice surprise when I opened my e-mail this afternoon: A WotLK beta Key. I debated hocking it for an hour or so, but then decided that running around and taking screenshots would be more fun than trying to undercut people on eBay and getting a couple bucks.

I'm probably not the typical case of what people are like when they get a beta key in that I don't really want to spoil the content for myself. I know, I know - why even get the key in the first place, then? Well, I want to see how the new UI changes are going, and I want to play around with macros and a couple of new talents. I very specifically DO NOT want to level through Northrend just to have to do it all again in a couple months. Repeating content exactly makes me a sad panda. In fact, repeating content similarly makes me a sad panda. I like new. I like different. Probably just like everyone else.

I'll try not to post any "spoiler-ish" things here, so that everyone else can enjoy the content fresh and new when they can get the game for themselves. If, for some reason, I do feel the need to post spoilers, I'll be sure to warn everyone before they come up.

I'm hoping that the beta won't take me away from the other things I'm doing in-game. I just want to explore a little and see what the buzz is all about.

[Off Topic Rant] Incompetence at Its Best

Today is the day I was supposed to have shiny, new internet service. I say "supposed to" because I don't actually have it yet. 

I talked to the DSL people downtown on Monday about getting set up with a modem and service and was told that it would take until the 15th before my service was ready, but I could have the modem now and he would call if my service could be turned on any sooner. I received a call that evening saying that my internet would be ready and waiting for me on the 11th instead of the 15th. This was great! I could have even less time being overcharged by the cable company for spotty (at best) service. 

So today around 1 p.m. I set out to connect my new toys and get BLAZING ZOMG FAST internet. I kept getting errors telling me that the "far end" was not responding. Bad. I double-checked every setting on the modem and my router. Same error. I bypassed the router and jacked directly into my laptop. Same error. I call my brother (who knows way more about networking than I do) and he comes over to look at it. Same error. I finally call up the DSL help line from the card the salesman gave me. The non-native English speaker on the other end told me that I didn't have service because I wasn't scheduled to have it activated until the 15th. *sigh*

This wouldn't have been a problem for me at all if I had been told the correct date from the start. But when some underpaid salesman tells me a fictional figure to make him look better to me, and then can't deliver on that figure, it makes me irritated. I even tried to call the salesman on his "direct line" to try to get some information from him, and was forwarded to voice mail.

So now I have to wait until the original date (which I'm fine with) even after having been promised a connection in half the time (which I'm not fine with). Oh, well. Maybe I need to upgrade cities a little further before I can expect actual service.

Hopeful UI Changes

Blizzard is promising a lot with the coming expansion, and it seems to be the big thing everyone wants to know about. What kind of raids, what kind of zomg purplez, what kind of monsters. . .

The thing that I don't hear anything about (possibly with good reason) is the UI. I've heard about a built-in threat meter, but no other real changes to the interface. Is it because they don't want to increase the requirements on the system any more than they have to with the new content? I'm not sure, but from what I understand unless you have hundreds of addons, or a really old computer, the load on the system isn't that big.

If they're trying to keep the UI open for 3rd party developing, what's stopping that if additional functionality is incorporated in the base UI? I would love to see some kind of action bar flexibility and more mobile frames. (In addition to the promised threat meter) Other than these, what kind of UI mods are there? Sure, some mail things and specialized things for inventory and auctions, but all-in-all I think the most pervasive ones are covered under frames and bars.

At any rate, I'm really hoping they imbed some of these. I would also like to see a default "DKP" system that could be overridden if your guild chose to. I just don't think that many guilds I've been in have been "fair" with loot, instead favoring the guild master/officers/friends. It sounds (from what I've heard) like Warhammer is instituting something like this with their public quests, so that whoever contributes the most gets the most out of the reward.

We'll see how it all shakes out, but here's hoping!

Struck Down Before They Had a Chance

I just read that the Feat of Strength titles associated with reaching level 80 first on a realm have been removed. I love it! I think that this change demonstrates Blizzard's willingness to listen to its customers about what they want from the game.

I also read some changes that are planned for warriors (specifically protection) and I'm very excited to see the end results. The only problem I see so far is that it might come close to equalizing damage done for tanks compared to some dps. Now I personally don't have a problem with this, but I don't want to listen to all the dps people whine and complain about how "sum n00bz0rz warr tnak just did 2x damg then me! NERF WARR NAOW!!!!" or similar for druids/paladins/. . .death knights (I guess. . . . .bleh).

I fully expect that if a tank is well-geared and can play his character decently, a lot of dps will find themselves out of a job. Or just relegated to PvP where they'd rather play, anyway. 

This change won't bother the actual good dps (all 4 of them on our server), since they know how to play their classes and will just scale up with the changes. It will just serve to weed out the people we always seem to PuG. . . full S2 and 300 dps. >.<

Hooray for good news day!

Holding Pattern

In talking with my brother about the coming expansion and what we want from WoW, it came up that once we get to see end-game (with the new 10-man raids) there really isn't a reason to keep playing. Sure, we could join a larger guild and do the same raids for better gear, but it loses it's charm after a while. I know that doing Kara for the last year solid has sort of burned me out, but I still enjoy going in with friends.

I think that this ties in with my dislike for PuGs. I just came out of a Kara PuG tonight that took 6! hours. . . and we didn't even kill Prince or Netherspite. I don't like grouping up with people who really don't care about doing well themselves, as long as the group is good enough to get them their l33t 3p1x that they can show off.

I like the trend that Blizzard is heading toward with the 10-man raids. It means that every person's contribution matters four times as much as when Molten Core and Onyxia (and the old, er, current Naxx!) were the big things to be doing. But while my contribution is more than it used to be in a raid, that also means that the guy who's in full S3 but can still only put out 400 dps also has his contribution amplified by 4 times what it used to be.

I would very much like to play a game with my friends and family that is like World of Warcraft, without having to deal with all the idiots who populate its servers. The appeal of "private" servers is becoming greater every time I have to deal with some moron who either can't communicate in my language, or can't communicate well enough to assure me that they understand what I want them to do in a particular fight.

I know that this is supposed to be a Massively Multiplayer RPG, but sometimes more just isn't better. What I would like to see from a game is something where individual ability is appreciated more than the ability to wrangle a mass of people together and have them sit through something for 20-40 hours per week. My view of raiding might be severely skewed, but the only "raiding" guild I was in required 4 hours a night, 4 nights a week of raiding, and that you bring all your buff items with you (food, flasks, elixirs, potions, etc.). This meant that if I wanted to see endgame content, I had to first go out and farm for things that I wouldn't otherwise use and then I had to endure hours of what passed for progression that mostly consisted of everyone complaining about how so-and-so took too long, or was afk for something, or whatever. I only got about 3 or 4 hours of actual boss-killing and raiding out of the 16 that were required, and spend another 3 or 4 preparing myself for those. So 20 hours a week spent just to boast(?) that I had seen MH and BT.

In a sense, I like the approach that Blizzard had when World of Warcraft was first released and only 5% (or whatever) of the population of the server saw the inside of Naxxramas. Make the encounters difficult. Make the skill of the player count. Make it even more worth it to hone your tradeskills to max level, and get the rare plans/schematics/recipes/formulas/designs/patterns. That way, when someone says "I have full T9" it actually means that they're good, not that they got into a good guild.

Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword. It means that to get these awesome items that I want, I have to be good at what I do. Not only do I have to be good, but the friends and family that I play with (who range from the equivalent of a 10-year-old girl gamer to the really cool father of a friend who really doesn't know that much about gaming) also have to be good. And for them, being that good at a game just isn't fun; it's work.

Anyway, maybe I'll put down the keyboard (for gaming! I still need it to publish my inner secrets about life, the universe, and everything) and take up cribbage instead. At the very least it'll help me build tighter relationships with people that I currently forsake to kill demons and alien orcs.

One Final Patch Day

All I heard about today from random scrubs on the server was how the patch was coming, like it was some kind of digital messiah. While I'm as excited as anyone to have a new hairstyle (OH, and a 51-point talent), is this the kind of thing that really warrants incessant chatter in trade?

As I stated before, I'm really looking forward to the new Prot Warrior and Resto Druid trees. This patch will also include the ability to level inscriptions to 375, and a few other random (but appreciated) changes. But what's the big deal? Blizzard hasn't even set an approximate date for the patch to go live. Or patch notes, for that matter. I'm not enough of an optimist to think that this will solve all the problems that exist. I'm tentatively hopeful that it will treat some of the symptoms that WoW has, but a complete cure is probably too much to ask.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to having new toys to play with. I just don't expect a godsend.

Low Population Servers: Pros and Cons

I decided last night to level engineering on my warrior. I know - I must be mad to level engineering, especially this close to an expansion release. The truth is that it's an upgrade to him. His professions before were skinning/herbalism and I don't have a leatherworker, so I figured that dropping skinning for something productive couldn't hurt.

I already have a miner (well, one maxed, and one in the 250ish range) so getting the materials to level it isn't that big of a pain.

I didn't last too long before that idea was thoroughly purged from my mind. I was at about 200 engineering when I couldn't find enough stone from the minerals I was getting to make the blasting powder in the quantity I need. So I went to the auction house to just buy the extra I needed. This is when I started cursing my lower population server. There were exactly 0 of the stones I needed up for sale.

Now don't get me wrong - normally I love not having to fight over every single herb and mineral. I love being able to complete quests without having to push and shove my way to the front of the line to talk to a quest giver, or wait for hours to kill X of a particular thing in an area.

But when I can't get something on the auction house because there just aren't any, or I can't find someone to craft something because the person who got that rare drop recipe hasn't been on in a couple weeks, it makes me feel helpless about the situation. Sure, I can go farm up the stuff I need to level engineering; that isn't a big problem. But what about when I want someone to make me a meta gem that's only a world drop? How do I get something that I can't go out and farm myself? A more ethereal quality to the problem is getting groups. There are times I feel like pugging (I know, but I consider it my charity work for the year) and I can't get a group. Even on my tank or healer.

The whole point of having a MMORPG is the MMO part of that. Massively Multiplayer Online. So supposedly, I should be able to play with hundreds or thousands (or more!) people at once. And they can be across the world from me. But low population servers, whether they serve multiple nations or not, don't deliver on the most important part of the title: Massively. We can tell it's the most important because it's the first word of the genre. And because it's the only thing that makes it different than, oh, Final Fantasy XXVII or whatever the next big console RPG is.

I'm not sure how to combat this. Do you trade the convenience of being able to do what you want when you want for the ease of obtaining tradeskills? This isn't a problem for me most of the time, but when it is a problem, it gets severely frustrating very fast.

I'm hoping we can see some improvements to this with WotLK with people returning to the game for ZOMG NEW CONTENTS AND STUFF, but what's the sustainable answer to low population servers? The current band-aid of high server->low server transfers apparently isn't working, and I don't think I can afford hundreds of dollars to transfer all my siblings characters somewhere else.

AHH I'm Squishy now!

So I took the plunge and spent the 15g (I know, qq) to respec my druid to resto. All of a sudden, I'm so fragile! It is nice to be able to pull off 3500+ Regrowth crits, while keeping 2 or 3 people topped off with Lifeblooms. I especially like Tree of Life form for the increased healing aura, and huge mana discount on spells.

The reasoning behind doing all this was to have one tank, one healer, and one dps. Since I already had decent gear for druid healing (and it's the only kind that really appeals to me) that's the character I chose. For my tank, I still have my warrior, and for dps, I have my Enhancement shaman (whee! Windfury crits!). 

As WotLK comes closer and closer, I'm thinking that this is a good way to go. The new feral talents look a little weak compared to the coolness that is Shockwave, whereas Flourish seems to be the new ZOMG LOTS OF BIG HEALZ spell. I am a little worried about Enhancement as a spec, because the 51-point talent of summoning a pair of spirit wolves seems. . . . lame. Balance druids already have this spell, except it summons three treants and is only a 41-point talent. I just can't see a reason to justify not getting even the base talents in Elemental instead. Unless, of course, the spirit wolves do awesome damage and have a short cooldown. Not something I really expect.

I really hope that the 51-point talent gets replaced with something flashy, or at least useable. The reason I don't play my shaman anymore is mostly that he's a one button machine. Stormstrike. . . .wait. . . wait. . . shock. . . wait . . . wait. . . Stormstrike, and wash, rinse, repeat. I'd like to see some more active abilities rather than passive talents that you just build in, and afk through a battle with.

At any rate, both Protection for warriors and Restoration for druids look really strong. That'll make leveling through Northrend very easy for two out of three of my characters, and anywhere from pleasant to aggravating for the third. All-in-all, not a bad way to start an expansion.

The Problem with Random Drops. . .

is that they're random. But sometimes it doesn't seem that way.

For instance, my guild is comprised of my two brothers, my girlfriend's two sisters, and a couple of friends. This leaves us with at least one spot on our Kara runs that we need to fill every Sunday. Well, I say "need" but we really can 9-man it. It's just a good way to keep the pace and get it done in a reasonable amount of time. We have all the tanks and healers, so we just need one little dps to come along. Three of the last 4 weeks, however, when we pug we end up with someone so horrible that the healers out dps them on some fights. 

This in and of itself isn't as bad as the fact that the loot table seems to sense this and want to improve them somehow. Every boss drops something this 10th can use. We even had a hunter rolling on resto shammy gear because "I can wear it, too."

Even this last week, when we had to pug 3 and actually got people who know what they're doing, we ended up giving everything to an elemental shaman.

I guess I wouldn't care as much if we weren't trying to gear up a couple of alts. All of the mains in the guild are in full badge and/or PvP gear, so we don't need anything that Kara can drop (except those damn enchanting formulas!). But to go in every week and have gear drop that nobody can use except the 150 dps hunter is just frustrating.

ZOMG NEW SHINEYS!

So. . . .the new tabard and pet available to anyone (who participates in PvP) that Blizzard released today. On the one hand, I think that it's a good idea to make exclusive content for different aspects of the game. Like the achievements that are being instituted in WotLK. But on the other hand, I HATE RANDOMNESS.

Just in case that wasn't clear, the pet is only obtained on a *chance* every time you win a battleground. So far, it seems that it doesn't take any other factors into account; just if you won the battleground. I've heard of a lot of people who got it on their first win, and others who are going on 20+ wins in the struggle for the [Gold Medallion].

This is something that has bothered me about the game from my first days playing. I'd run an instance hoping for a particular drop and by the time I get it, I've picked up something better from a quest reward or a vendor. It never fails that on all of my 70s, I've gotten no more than 2 pieces of my Dungeon Set 3 before I start getting random bits of armor that are twice as good from rep grinds or whatnot.

I think there are two viable solutions to this problem.

1. Make the drops better.

If the dungeon drops (or random chance items like the dragon pet from PvP) are good enough, then it will be worth winning enough battlegrounds or completing enough instance runs to get it.

2. Increase the drop rate.

This can be done by making tokens similar to the tier piece tokens that drop 100% of the time for multiple classes, or simply by increasing the drop rate of the items themselves. This way, the items are of some use when they drop other than being turned into shards for the auction house.

How does this pertain to the PvP Chinese dragon pet? Well, it's hard to get. And by hard, I really just mean unpredictable. This means that someone with no PvP skill at all (myself included in that very large group) can simply walk into a winning battleground, beat on some things, heal some people, and walk away with a bright new pet. Admittedly, this is how I came away with my [Reins of the Raven Lord], but I like to think that I had to have at least some skill to survive the heroic, even if the skill wasn't that much.

I guess this is all just a frustrated outburst about how I can't get my pet, even though I've won a total of 12 AB matches since the release of the tabard and pet. I haven't done any PvP before this, and don't intend to after, but I'm doing it now for the pet. Similarly, I did Slave Pens for the [Deathfrost] enchant and [Frostscythe of Lord Ahune], but don't really plan on going back until another special occasion. 

So if you want to think about the Olympic pet as a rare drop in an instance then, compared to similar seasonal bosses, I've more than paid my dues.

The Secret of Not Wiping

Going through heroics this last week (and possibly the week before) with my warrior tanking has given me huge amounts of perspective on the game in general. Last time I leveled through heroics it was on my druid tank, and I thought that they were incredibly difficult at that level of gear. I felt that I was stuck between Kara and heroics, and neither one was really doable with the gear I had.

Looking back, though, I realize that I was fine gear-wise. It's very possible that I could have been so horrible that I just didn't have the skill to do things without being overgeared for them, or I could have just been running with completely hopeless groups. I prefer to think that it's the latter, just because I would hate to have been that bad.

I think the big motivator in the change has been my brother, a holy pally, who is more than willing to try anything, regardless of level. Of course now he has 2000 or so healing, so it makes it much easier for me to survive where I'm not supposed to be. :P

Just tonight I got my [Sun Eater] from heroic Mech to replace my [Inuuro's Blade], and we breezed through the instance -- even the fire lady boss we normally have a 50ish% success rate with. Now, my warrior is decked out in mostly blues so I'm not going to say that my tanking made all the difference, but at the same level of gear with my druid I was struggling to find decent tanking leather and running the same normal instance over and over for the one drop from the final boss that was a slight upgrade. Heroics were out of the question.

So either my skills have become so great that I should just start tanking Sunwell on my druid, or I've started running with better groups. We'll see what turns up from here.