. . . and the time for me to stop subscribing to World of Warcraft is now.
That's right. After just over five years, I'm hanging it up as a subscribing player. I'll still play occasionally, since now WoW has gone "free to play" to level 20. But my days of raiding and playing at level cap will end as of next month when my sub expires.
This is not a sudden decision; it's been coming on for the last few months. It's not because I cannot afford it.
Basically, I'm paying for a sub I am not using as much as I once did. I've logged into WoW maybe three times in the last week for maybe an hour or so each. Before this, I was spending in excess of 20 hours a week playing the game or reading up on the game or researching specs, raid strategies, gear, etc.
Now, with all I have going on, I have a different set of priorities.
There's also the fact that Jameece no longer plays. I really enjoyed playing WoW with her. However, she did not enjoy raiding, she hates PvP and is far more into the social element of the game. I like having her along for my adventures.
Finally, there are the changes that went in with the latest expansion. There's some awesome stuff in there . . . but when they dialed the difficulty up on normal mode raids, it hit a point where I could no longer keep up. My reflexes are not that good to start with, so I tend to stand in fire too much for the folks for whom this game is life. In the last expansion, I could keep up with the kids in terms of staying out of the bad stuff. I cannot do that anymore.
Even now that they dialed down the difficulty a bit on the previous tier's raids . . . I just don't have the time or inclination anymore.
Right now I am getting my game itch scratched through Facebook games like Backyard Monsters, Galaxy Online 2. I'm also active in the Central Valley Pathfinder Society, doing table top RPG at Fresno's most awesome game store, Crazy Squirrel Game Store.
I am not rage quitting and it is not goodbye forever. It's a sober recognition that now is the time to go do something else. After all, things change, people change, and under a different set of circumstances I could see myself going back to Azeroth.
Showing posts with label WoW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WoW. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Mount and Pet gathering
For a number of reasons, I decided it would be better for me if I stopped raiding for a time. As much fun as raids were, I probably spent more time prepping for raids than I ever did playing D&D.
Without a commitment to raiding, I now am having a lot of fun doing other stuff, like maxing out Archeology skill, collecting pets and mounts and doing the "personal progression" bits in the Regrowth / Firelands region of Hyjal.
Here's are just a few of the rewards I have earned, all through daily quests. The firebird mount, of course, is the awesomest one. I got that for completing the Hyjal / Firelands daily quests. The white cat mount took three weeks of dailies for the Wintersaber Trainers in Winterspring. As I get more screen caps I'll post them for your amusement.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
The WoW 4.2 Patch Day PvP Troll / Griefer Blues . . . And More
Warning: This post contains some rather naughty (NSW) words.
I am not going to rant about the intricacies of World of Warcraft here. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It's just that WoW is a perfect vehicle for my observations this Day That Patch 4.2 Dropped. I'll do my best to avoid or translate MMO-speak, largely because most of you are not conversant with MMO-speak and because the issues I am highlighting are more about human nature in cyberspace and some issues I am working than specifically ranting about WoW trivia.
This particular bit of new content, Patch 4.2, has been in the works for quite awhile. Two of this patch's great new features are several very lore-heavy new quest series. One of them is a one-pass -- non-daily -- quest series that has as its reward a considerable sum of gold and an "epic" item grade cloak. Since my characters' cloaks are nowhere near this quality, I made doing this quest series a priority as far as my WoW time was concerned.
I can understand everyone and his dog doing these quests along with me, since this is Patch Day. Good cloaks were hard to get in Patch 4.1. Folks of both factions, the awesome Alliance and those motherless curs of the Horde, gathering in confined areas where the quests -- killing swarms of elementals -- were happening. Then some folks of both factions were showing up for these quests "flagged" for Player-vs-Player (PvP) combat. The default on my server is that players must voluntarily "set their PvP flag" to engage in PvP. However, under certain circumstances -- like attacking or healing a flagged player -- the PvP flag gets set without player input.
So there I was, killing elementals when I swapped targets to a flagged Hordie and popped him with my trusty boom stick. Hunters in WoW have animal companions that fight alongside them, so my trusty gorilla (yes, I engage in Gorilla Warfare) did his area-damage thunder stomp . . . and suddenly I was being hit by six Hordies. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, damage piling up like a wreck in tule fog on I-5 . . . all I could do is fight back till I died. I took two of the fsckers with me, though -- hunters are nasty in PvP.
I waited five minutes while dead. If a PvP flag is set automatically, it goes away after five minutes of no PvP action . . . and the Horde guys cannot see me if they are alive and I am dead. I resurrected and made the adjustments -- an animal companion without an area of effect attack, my raptor "JeebusPony". I also took a few other measures too technical to detail here to limit the chance of attacking flagged Hordies.
My point is that the people on my server are mostly dedicated to questing and raiding -- in other words, Player-vs-Environment (PvE). If we wanted the addedpain in the ass thrill of needing to watch out for the other faction all the damned time, I'd play on a PvP server where my PvP flag is ALWAYS set. Questing in crowded areas flagged is trolling for unintentional PvP combat against people who usually do not want it -- like me.
Most of the trolling people had special PvP gear -- there are special armor pieces and weapons with statistics that enhance PvP performance -- that gave them an enormous edge in PvP. Most of these unintentional fights were rather one sided due to gear and the PvE mindset. I spend very little time engaging in PvP, so I'm not familiar with class tactics and I do not have gear with PvP stats.
But not all fights like these are one-sided. I got flagged again. This time it was a flagged lone death knight -- think of a non-evil slightly undead anti-paladin -- who got dinged by the accidental fire of my boom stick. He closed the range, which is a move right out of the "How to Kill Huntards for fun and profit" book. He proceeded to beat the ever-loving snot out of me with his ugly-ass two-handed sword . . . but he was alone and did not have PvP equipment. I managed to open the range and keep it that way with "stun and run" tactics right out of "How to Kill Death Knights For Fun And Profit". Down to less than 5% of my hit points, he retired from the fight for a short but obligatory dirt nap.
So flag trolling on a PvE server is kind of dickish. It's within the rules of the game and if not done to excess, not harassment. However, there was another move being pulled that some saw as dickish. There is a class of no-no behavior in the WoW community called "griefing" that is simply not tolerated by the Game Masters. Player accounts have been permanently banned for extreme instances of griefing. Standing atop key NPCs, killing key NPCs, blocking access to inns and in-game mailboxes with large mounts, which makes interaction with these in-game assets very difficult or impossible -- these are just a few examples of griefing.
Anyway, several of these PvP-flagged people were standing on the quest NPCs for the various phases of the new quest series. Not only can you not easily interact with the NPCs, trying to interact with the NPC and mis-clicking may well lead to an unintentional attack on a PvP-flagged foeman.More unintended combat, more delays resetting the PvP flag.
Something people who know me well -- or not so well -- realize upon spending time with me is that I have a mercurial temperament coupled to an incendiary temper. I've gone from zero to full asshole rage in slightly more than nothing flat. Far too often, these rages have been over life's more trivial matters, like a certain popular multiplayer video game.
A couple of years ago, I would have nerd-raged over the level of jerk behavior I saw this morning while playing WoW. I would have reported every one of them to a Game Master, their Guild Masters and possibly posted their names on WoW Jackass for good measure. I may have even raved about it on one of my blogs . . .
Oh, wait. . . . .
Anyway, the point is this: Things that used to utterly piss me off, small stuff that usually prompted me to go on a raging tear, don't do that to me anymore. I still get angry -- oh hell yes I get angry!
However, I'm in control now, not the anger.
What happened? I Got Help™ -- long long overdue Help. Some of what some of you have been telling me for years finally forever defeated the demonstrable impermeability of my skull. I gained practice with my toolbox o' Cope Building® working my issues. I now have a deeper store of Cope® than I've ever had. I ask for what I want, I practice avoidance only as a short term relief measure, a "time out" to give me the ability to face the issue. It's not all about me. I now assume going into stressful situations that I can and will handle it. I seek solutions to problems, I don't just recapitulate them. I relax now on cue, meditate away the stress and work with the understanding that people do stuff that annoys you not because they are evil dickheads. More often than not, annoying behaviors are the other guy's way of Dealing With Stuff, not malevolent asshattery aimed at me deliberately.
These changes could not come a day sooner. For one thing, I was dreading the kids' summer vacation this year. Last year's edition was sheer hell for me. I was stressed out and grouchy all the time. That is a Very Bad Combination around children . . . hell, around human beings. As Esteemed Younger Son started counting down the days to Summer Vacation, I'd gotten so far out of hand that my behavior was threatening all I had worked for over a year to build here.
So, Esteemed Younger Son's annoying behaviors are not him trying to drive Uncle Rich up a wall for shits and giggles. He's trying to get wants and needs met by methods he understands how to use. I do things to limit how much the TV volume bugs me rather than bitch about it. When I need a time out, I think of it as a tactical retreat under fire into hard cover to regroup and plan how to overcome the emotional challenge. I buy time to think when I need to. I do not need to have an instant answer for everything.
By this time this summer, I thought I'd be going absolutely batshit crazy. Instead, I'm going sane. OK, maybe saner. I'm sure to run into scenarios where no amount of Cope® will suffice, where no tool can magically fix things. However, in the event of a lapse, I'm going to redouble my efforts and remember that "error" is just another name for "learning experience."
Whotta concept, eh?
So, in the context of the above, all the griefer madness today in WoW is simply gamers being gamers. Not one of them did what they did because they had it in for me. The very worst thing they could do to me is render my avatar dead.
As my dad once said, "What is the worst thing can they do to you? Cook and eat you?"
I am not going to rant about the intricacies of World of Warcraft here. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It's just that WoW is a perfect vehicle for my observations this Day That Patch 4.2 Dropped. I'll do my best to avoid or translate MMO-speak, largely because most of you are not conversant with MMO-speak and because the issues I am highlighting are more about human nature in cyberspace and some issues I am working than specifically ranting about WoW trivia.
This particular bit of new content, Patch 4.2, has been in the works for quite awhile. Two of this patch's great new features are several very lore-heavy new quest series. One of them is a one-pass -- non-daily -- quest series that has as its reward a considerable sum of gold and an "epic" item grade cloak. Since my characters' cloaks are nowhere near this quality, I made doing this quest series a priority as far as my WoW time was concerned.
I can understand everyone and his dog doing these quests along with me, since this is Patch Day. Good cloaks were hard to get in Patch 4.1. Folks of both factions, the awesome Alliance and those motherless curs of the Horde, gathering in confined areas where the quests -- killing swarms of elementals -- were happening. Then some folks of both factions were showing up for these quests "flagged" for Player-vs-Player (PvP) combat. The default on my server is that players must voluntarily "set their PvP flag" to engage in PvP. However, under certain circumstances -- like attacking or healing a flagged player -- the PvP flag gets set without player input.
So there I was, killing elementals when I swapped targets to a flagged Hordie and popped him with my trusty boom stick. Hunters in WoW have animal companions that fight alongside them, so my trusty gorilla (yes, I engage in Gorilla Warfare) did his area-damage thunder stomp . . . and suddenly I was being hit by six Hordies. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, damage piling up like a wreck in tule fog on I-5 . . . all I could do is fight back till I died. I took two of the fsckers with me, though -- hunters are nasty in PvP.
I waited five minutes while dead. If a PvP flag is set automatically, it goes away after five minutes of no PvP action . . . and the Horde guys cannot see me if they are alive and I am dead. I resurrected and made the adjustments -- an animal companion without an area of effect attack, my raptor "JeebusPony". I also took a few other measures too technical to detail here to limit the chance of attacking flagged Hordies.
My point is that the people on my server are mostly dedicated to questing and raiding -- in other words, Player-vs-Environment (PvE). If we wanted the added
Most of the trolling people had special PvP gear -- there are special armor pieces and weapons with statistics that enhance PvP performance -- that gave them an enormous edge in PvP. Most of these unintentional fights were rather one sided due to gear and the PvE mindset. I spend very little time engaging in PvP, so I'm not familiar with class tactics and I do not have gear with PvP stats.
But not all fights like these are one-sided. I got flagged again. This time it was a flagged lone death knight -- think of a non-evil slightly undead anti-paladin -- who got dinged by the accidental fire of my boom stick. He closed the range, which is a move right out of the "How to Kill Huntards for fun and profit" book. He proceeded to beat the ever-loving snot out of me with his ugly-ass two-handed sword . . . but he was alone and did not have PvP equipment. I managed to open the range and keep it that way with "stun and run" tactics right out of "How to Kill Death Knights For Fun And Profit". Down to less than 5% of my hit points, he retired from the fight for a short but obligatory dirt nap.
So flag trolling on a PvE server is kind of dickish. It's within the rules of the game and if not done to excess, not harassment. However, there was another move being pulled that some saw as dickish. There is a class of no-no behavior in the WoW community called "griefing" that is simply not tolerated by the Game Masters. Player accounts have been permanently banned for extreme instances of griefing. Standing atop key NPCs, killing key NPCs, blocking access to inns and in-game mailboxes with large mounts, which makes interaction with these in-game assets very difficult or impossible -- these are just a few examples of griefing.
Anyway, several of these PvP-flagged people were standing on the quest NPCs for the various phases of the new quest series. Not only can you not easily interact with the NPCs, trying to interact with the NPC and mis-clicking may well lead to an unintentional attack on a PvP-flagged foeman.More unintended combat, more delays resetting the PvP flag.
Something people who know me well -- or not so well -- realize upon spending time with me is that I have a mercurial temperament coupled to an incendiary temper. I've gone from zero to full asshole rage in slightly more than nothing flat. Far too often, these rages have been over life's more trivial matters, like a certain popular multiplayer video game.
A couple of years ago, I would have nerd-raged over the level of jerk behavior I saw this morning while playing WoW. I would have reported every one of them to a Game Master, their Guild Masters and possibly posted their names on WoW Jackass for good measure. I may have even raved about it on one of my blogs . . .
Oh, wait. . . . .
Anyway, the point is this: Things that used to utterly piss me off, small stuff that usually prompted me to go on a raging tear, don't do that to me anymore. I still get angry -- oh hell yes I get angry!
However, I'm in control now, not the anger.
What happened? I Got Help™ -- long long overdue Help. Some of what some of you have been telling me for years finally forever defeated the demonstrable impermeability of my skull. I gained practice with my toolbox o' Cope Building® working my issues. I now have a deeper store of Cope® than I've ever had. I ask for what I want, I practice avoidance only as a short term relief measure, a "time out" to give me the ability to face the issue. It's not all about me. I now assume going into stressful situations that I can and will handle it. I seek solutions to problems, I don't just recapitulate them. I relax now on cue, meditate away the stress and work with the understanding that people do stuff that annoys you not because they are evil dickheads. More often than not, annoying behaviors are the other guy's way of Dealing With Stuff, not malevolent asshattery aimed at me deliberately.
These changes could not come a day sooner. For one thing, I was dreading the kids' summer vacation this year. Last year's edition was sheer hell for me. I was stressed out and grouchy all the time. That is a Very Bad Combination around children . . . hell, around human beings. As Esteemed Younger Son started counting down the days to Summer Vacation, I'd gotten so far out of hand that my behavior was threatening all I had worked for over a year to build here.
So, Esteemed Younger Son's annoying behaviors are not him trying to drive Uncle Rich up a wall for shits and giggles. He's trying to get wants and needs met by methods he understands how to use. I do things to limit how much the TV volume bugs me rather than bitch about it. When I need a time out, I think of it as a tactical retreat under fire into hard cover to regroup and plan how to overcome the emotional challenge. I buy time to think when I need to. I do not need to have an instant answer for everything.
By this time this summer, I thought I'd be going absolutely batshit crazy. Instead, I'm going sane. OK, maybe saner. I'm sure to run into scenarios where no amount of Cope® will suffice, where no tool can magically fix things. However, in the event of a lapse, I'm going to redouble my efforts and remember that "error" is just another name for "learning experience."
Whotta concept, eh?
So, in the context of the above, all the griefer madness today in WoW is simply gamers being gamers. Not one of them did what they did because they had it in for me. The very worst thing they could do to me is render my avatar dead.
As my dad once said, "What is the worst thing can they do to you? Cook and eat you?"
Monday, May 23, 2011
Taming The Beast . . .
We have two Windows desktop systems here -- Jameece's "Beauty" 3.3 HGz i5/ 4 GB DDR3 / 1TB HDD / Windows 7 screamer . . . and "the Beast" (2.8 GHz P4 / 2GB DDR2 / 350 GB PATA HDD / XP SP3), some of the components of which are older than my goddaughter.
We got Beauty with a tax refund check because The Beast was behaving, well, beastly. World of Warcraft was undergoing random abnormal terminations, locking up the system and causing video to go completely away every few minutes. Installing the final patches of WoW patch 3.3 was a hell of "download incremental patch . . . attempt install . . . fail install . . . troubleshoot . . . repeat."
When my trusty MacBook migrated to "format and reinstall" land (Apple - gear, double flash startup), I grabbed Beast for my various WoW playing stuff. I need to wait a week or two to buy a Snow Leopard CD (my old one did not make the trip to Fresno last year).
Until them, I had to make the Beast work for games.
Round 1 of troubleshooting: memcheck found some bad RAM, which we replaced.
While we were at it, we also upgraded the video card (because Jameece also got a new Viewsonic monitor that seems to work best with ATI hardware . . . we had an nVidia in there) and reinstalled Windows XP.
The memory errors went away, but WoW and The Sims 3 were still randomly crashing. Ran Windows Update and applied all updates. Still crashing. I ran dxdiag. It showed DirectX 9.0c was up to date and completely functional. I installed the latest and greatest video card drivers (Radeon HD 3460), applicable hotfixes, etc. I updated the motherboard AGP bus (I know, sad , . . .) drivers, tweaked the AGP aperture in BIOS . . . nada, Ran temp monitor software on the GPU -- even with ambient cooling this card's GPU temperature does not exceed 75 degrees C. Card is not overclocked. No spikes or error messages are logged -- ever.
Then I ran an OpenGL stress test on the GPU -- No issues.
It took me just five minutes to find out how to force WoW to use the OpenGL renderer.
No more issues. I played WoW for several hours on the Beast with no issues at all.
We got Beauty with a tax refund check because The Beast was behaving, well, beastly. World of Warcraft was undergoing random abnormal terminations, locking up the system and causing video to go completely away every few minutes. Installing the final patches of WoW patch 3.3 was a hell of "download incremental patch . . . attempt install . . . fail install . . . troubleshoot . . . repeat."
When my trusty MacBook migrated to "format and reinstall" land (Apple - gear, double flash startup), I grabbed Beast for my various WoW playing stuff. I need to wait a week or two to buy a Snow Leopard CD (my old one did not make the trip to Fresno last year).
Until them, I had to make the Beast work for games.
Round 1 of troubleshooting: memcheck found some bad RAM, which we replaced.
While we were at it, we also upgraded the video card (because Jameece also got a new Viewsonic monitor that seems to work best with ATI hardware . . . we had an nVidia in there) and reinstalled Windows XP.
The memory errors went away, but WoW and The Sims 3 were still randomly crashing. Ran Windows Update and applied all updates. Still crashing. I ran dxdiag. It showed DirectX 9.0c was up to date and completely functional. I installed the latest and greatest video card drivers (Radeon HD 3460), applicable hotfixes, etc. I updated the motherboard AGP bus (I know, sad , . . .) drivers, tweaked the AGP aperture in BIOS . . . nada, Ran temp monitor software on the GPU -- even with ambient cooling this card's GPU temperature does not exceed 75 degrees C. Card is not overclocked. No spikes or error messages are logged -- ever.
Then I ran an OpenGL stress test on the GPU -- No issues.
It took me just five minutes to find out how to force WoW to use the OpenGL renderer.
No more issues. I played WoW for several hours on the Beast with no issues at all.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
This week in WoW: Of The Ashen Verdict
This week Outcasts did its usual runs through Icecrown Citadel. I got to heal throughout. On 10 man we one-shotted the lower spire and and got Rotface and Festergut down until the run was called. Same with 25, except for one wipe on Festergut, and we got two tries in on the Dream Dragon. In 25s, the shield I have been lusting for did not drop, but two additional healer pieces did, and I was able to upgrade my Ashen Verdict reputation ring to the one for Exalted reputation.
I grabbed the hands and arms -- even though they broke my Tier 10 4 piece bonus -- because they added something else I also need: massive amounts of haste. With gems and enchants I went to almost 1200 haste, which is very close to the cap. Damn shammy T10 healer gloves have NO HASTE on them
For healers like shamans withfew one fast healing spell, haste is THE STAT to stack. Under the right conditions my weakest heal is now almost an instant, and I can get off a chain heal in 1.2 seconds. This is blazing speed!
On the druidic front, Nartyros got his alchemy up to cap and is now an Elixir Master, so he can get more money-making raiding elixirs for those rare materials and can transmute rare gems and metals. With Tyrtrinos as a miner he can get and smelt the metals and cut the gems. Jewelcrafting, Mining, Herbalism and Alchemy work together like the Beatles. Narty is now level 70 and questing like a fiend through Northrend.
Narty and Tyrantos are paired in what they call "the Saronite Shuffle." Here's how it works: Tyrantos mines Saronite -- a metal ore that can be smelted into bars at a rate of two ore per bar. The metal bars are passed to Narty and transmuted by alchemy into rarer Titanium at 8 bars of Saronite per bar of Titanium and passed back to Tyrantos, who smelts three titanium and some elemental ingredients into Titansteel, a rare metal costing around 100 gold a bar that is in very high demand for many types of crafted weapons and plate armor. 16 Saronite per Titanium, 3 Titanium per Titansteel. The elemental components are easy to obtain; for about 30 minutes of mining and "farming" elementals in Sholazar Basin and Wintergrasp I got enough Saronite and elementals for two bars.
I've also gotten Jameece's character Clothisis involved in this scheme, transmuting gems for me to sell on a fee-per-transmute basis.
When not transmuting gems for me or making me flasks for raiding, Clothisis is working on three things in game: the Loremaster achievement (completing about 2000 quests in all portions of the game world), another for collecting 10k gold from quest rewards and a third for collecting fifty different mounts. When I'm not raiding, I help her out, of course. These achievements do not really float my WoW boat; killing the Litch King in Icecrown Citadel with Outcasts does. On the other hand, Jameece is not into raiding at all. She tried it and did not like it. Nonetheless, I feel that its important to have couple time in game, so I'll take a break from leveling Narty or making money with Tyrantos to help out Jameece on Clo or her warrior alt Ereskigal.
Not only that but Narty can create epic-grade gems, just one every 20 hours, but each gem can be sold uncut for 80-150 gold or custom cut by Tyrantos and sold for 100-plus gold each.
I grabbed the hands and arms -- even though they broke my Tier 10 4 piece bonus -- because they added something else I also need: massive amounts of haste. With gems and enchants I went to almost 1200 haste, which is very close to the cap. Damn shammy T10 healer gloves have NO HASTE on them
For healers like shamans with
On the druidic front, Nartyros got his alchemy up to cap and is now an Elixir Master, so he can get more money-making raiding elixirs for those rare materials and can transmute rare gems and metals. With Tyrtrinos as a miner he can get and smelt the metals and cut the gems. Jewelcrafting, Mining, Herbalism and Alchemy work together like the Beatles. Narty is now level 70 and questing like a fiend through Northrend.
Narty and Tyrantos are paired in what they call "the Saronite Shuffle." Here's how it works: Tyrantos mines Saronite -- a metal ore that can be smelted into bars at a rate of two ore per bar. The metal bars are passed to Narty and transmuted by alchemy into rarer Titanium at 8 bars of Saronite per bar of Titanium and passed back to Tyrantos, who smelts three titanium and some elemental ingredients into Titansteel, a rare metal costing around 100 gold a bar that is in very high demand for many types of crafted weapons and plate armor. 16 Saronite per Titanium, 3 Titanium per Titansteel. The elemental components are easy to obtain; for about 30 minutes of mining and "farming" elementals in Sholazar Basin and Wintergrasp I got enough Saronite and elementals for two bars.
I've also gotten Jameece's character Clothisis involved in this scheme, transmuting gems for me to sell on a fee-per-transmute basis.
When not transmuting gems for me or making me flasks for raiding, Clothisis is working on three things in game: the Loremaster achievement (completing about 2000 quests in all portions of the game world), another for collecting 10k gold from quest rewards and a third for collecting fifty different mounts. When I'm not raiding, I help her out, of course. These achievements do not really float my WoW boat; killing the Litch King in Icecrown Citadel with Outcasts does. On the other hand, Jameece is not into raiding at all. She tried it and did not like it. Nonetheless, I feel that its important to have couple time in game, so I'll take a break from leveling Narty or making money with Tyrantos to help out Jameece on Clo or her warrior alt Ereskigal.
Not only that but Narty can create epic-grade gems, just one every 20 hours, but each gem can be sold uncut for 80-150 gold or custom cut by Tyrantos and sold for 100-plus gold each.
Friday, May 28, 2010
This Week's Fun . . . My RNG Karma is Strong!
1. ICC 25 -- Ran as Enhancement until the PlagueWerks, then respecced Resto. The Shield of Much Awesomeness, aka The Biggest Resto Upgrade For Me, dropped, but a guildie won it. Gratz Maddie! We went "bounce" off the Plaguewerks, again. No upgrades this run.
2. ICC 10 -- Last night's run netted me a couple of big Enhancement upgrades: One was a weapon off the Gunship in the Lower Spire, the other was my first piece of Tier 10 for my Enhancement set. Of course, the piece broke the 4 piece T9 bonus . . . but the increase in damage was worth it. If the T10 Enhancement gloves or pants should ever drop off Emalon in VoA . . . I got to heal on Marrowgar, Lady D and the Loot (Gun) ship, and did damned well, according to WoL parses. I went Enhancement on Saurfang after winning an axe (see below) and I am not so disappointed in my damage output anymore.
3. Two RNG (Random Number Generator) wins this week: One, in VoA-10, was a new mount: the Grand Black War Mammoth. Rare drop, rare mount, and it is one of three mounts in the entire game that carry more than one person. I've been playing Taxi for Jameece's characters hauling them around and assisting them when I'm not raiding or running Narty. The other win was in a random daily dungeon . . . a "Battered Hilt" dropped and I won it. That Hilt starts a 15 step 3 dungeon quest chain to reforge an ancient sword that results in a weapon as good as any that drop from ICC-10 (Item Level 251). Until then I had no iLevel 251 weapons on my character's Enhancement set, so this was a big win for me.
Combining these two RNG wins with the win of the rare drake last week, I have to say that my Loot Karma has been quite strong. What goes around, really does come around.
I also added a neat new item to my Enhancement set: the Shammy helm that is dropped by Onyxia. I've had that damned thing forever but I was afraid to break a set bonus by using it. Now with the Tier 10 piece breaking the 4 piece set bonus, no reason not to add the helm. It's T9.5 (iLevel 245) -- an uprated T2 helm with improved stats. As a result, my Ghetto-Sim DPS (Ghetto-Sim is what I call a five-minute attack run on a Heroic training dummy with all cooldowns popped in the first second (Heroism, Feral Spirits, Fire Elemental Totem, trinkets popped, etc) but no raid buffs. It went from just over 4k to 5k after all changes. I've also tweaked the combat priority queue a bit as well in preparation for 2 pc T10. Finally, on Saurfang, last week I was pulling just over 4k with my old gear and combat priority queue and fully raid-buffed. This week, with full buffs and the two new weapons (the axe minus its enchant) but no T10 or Ony helm, I was just over 5k on the same boss. I expect 6k on Saurfang next week.
4. Operation: Healbot -- Nartyros is on the verge of heading to Outland (level 57) -- heirloom gear rules. I'm really enjoying the Balance play style as much as I do Resto. Ph33r teh B00mCh1kkin!!
2. ICC 10 -- Last night's run netted me a couple of big Enhancement upgrades: One was a weapon off the Gunship in the Lower Spire, the other was my first piece of Tier 10 for my Enhancement set. Of course, the piece broke the 4 piece T9 bonus . . . but the increase in damage was worth it. If the T10 Enhancement gloves or pants should ever drop off Emalon in VoA . . . I got to heal on Marrowgar, Lady D and the Loot (Gun) ship, and did damned well, according to WoL parses. I went Enhancement on Saurfang after winning an axe (see below) and I am not so disappointed in my damage output anymore.
3. Two RNG (Random Number Generator) wins this week: One, in VoA-10, was a new mount: the Grand Black War Mammoth. Rare drop, rare mount, and it is one of three mounts in the entire game that carry more than one person. I've been playing Taxi for Jameece's characters hauling them around and assisting them when I'm not raiding or running Narty. The other win was in a random daily dungeon . . . a "Battered Hilt" dropped and I won it. That Hilt starts a 15 step 3 dungeon quest chain to reforge an ancient sword that results in a weapon as good as any that drop from ICC-10 (Item Level 251). Until then I had no iLevel 251 weapons on my character's Enhancement set, so this was a big win for me.
Combining these two RNG wins with the win of the rare drake last week, I have to say that my Loot Karma has been quite strong. What goes around, really does come around.
I also added a neat new item to my Enhancement set: the Shammy helm that is dropped by Onyxia. I've had that damned thing forever but I was afraid to break a set bonus by using it. Now with the Tier 10 piece breaking the 4 piece set bonus, no reason not to add the helm. It's T9.5 (iLevel 245) -- an uprated T2 helm with improved stats. As a result, my Ghetto-Sim DPS (Ghetto-Sim is what I call a five-minute attack run on a Heroic training dummy with all cooldowns popped in the first second (Heroism, Feral Spirits, Fire Elemental Totem, trinkets popped, etc) but no raid buffs. It went from just over 4k to 5k after all changes. I've also tweaked the combat priority queue a bit as well in preparation for 2 pc T10. Finally, on Saurfang, last week I was pulling just over 4k with my old gear and combat priority queue and fully raid-buffed. This week, with full buffs and the two new weapons (the axe minus its enchant) but no T10 or Ony helm, I was just over 5k on the same boss. I expect 6k on Saurfang next week.
4. Operation: Healbot -- Nartyros is on the verge of heading to Outland (level 57) -- heirloom gear rules. I'm really enjoying the Balance play style as much as I do Resto. Ph33r teh B00mCh1kkin!!
Friday, May 21, 2010
Quick post . . .
ICC 10 last night; was relegated to melee DPS duty AGAIN for most of the night. This was a better run than last week's 25 man Wipe-A-Palooza™ but not much. Perhaps the 25 man on Sunday will be better. Maybe the Shield of Awesomeness will drop off Marrowgar . . . and maybe I'll get to heal the whole run.
My DPS performance is not what I'd like to see . . . I think it's a matter of not having a shred of Tier 10 gear in my DPS set. T9 set bonuses FTL. It's almost enough to make me respec elemental.
Outcasts may be going to focus on 25 man two nights a week until we get the Litch King down.
On the Operation: Healbot front -- Lodi Dodi, Narty Hit 40 last night. Now he has Moonkin and Dire Bear Forms and he hits hard. Actually he's at 42 and dual-specialized at the moment. Dungeon leveling for the win . . . .
My DPS performance is not what I'd like to see . . . I think it's a matter of not having a shred of Tier 10 gear in my DPS set. T9 set bonuses FTL. It's almost enough to make me respec elemental.
Outcasts may be going to focus on 25 man two nights a week until we get the Litch King down.
On the Operation: Healbot front -- Lodi Dodi, Narty Hit 40 last night. Now he has Moonkin and Dire Bear Forms and he hits hard. Actually he's at 42 and dual-specialized at the moment. Dungeon leveling for the win . . . .
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Assorted Stuff
1. Twitter -- You can find me there @rostorero.
2. Operation: Healbot -- The mid-30s levels in WoW, like the same age in years, can be a doldrums. At least it was for me in real life. Narty is right in the middle of this zone, but he is passing rapidly through it because I've decided to do more of my leveling in random dungeons as opposed to my usual model (solo questing). With a pure healer -- like the priest I plan to level -- I expect that after level 15 I'll be able to do almost all of my leveling in dungeons. The paladin will be a lot easier to solo in my usual manner because the main melee damage dealing specialization is like that of my shaman characters.
At level 40, things get interesting for the various character classes: Enhancement Shaman get two of their big signature spells -- Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon -- at around 40, and after 40 Shaman can wear mail armor. Hunters get mail armor at 40, Warriors and Paladins get plate armor at that time as well. Druids get class signature Moonkin Form (for damage dealing, looks like an owlbear -- it's often called "Boomkin" form because of the hard hitting damage spells it casts), Tree of Life Form ("tree form" or "celery stalk" in WoWspeak) for healing and Dire Bear form for tanking.
Narty should hit 40 tomorrow. On the other hand, ICC-10 happens tomorrow for Tyrantos.
2. Operation: Healbot -- The mid-30s levels in WoW, like the same age in years, can be a doldrums. At least it was for me in real life. Narty is right in the middle of this zone, but he is passing rapidly through it because I've decided to do more of my leveling in random dungeons as opposed to my usual model (solo questing). With a pure healer -- like the priest I plan to level -- I expect that after level 15 I'll be able to do almost all of my leveling in dungeons. The paladin will be a lot easier to solo in my usual manner because the main melee damage dealing specialization is like that of my shaman characters.
At level 40, things get interesting for the various character classes: Enhancement Shaman get two of their big signature spells -- Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon -- at around 40, and after 40 Shaman can wear mail armor. Hunters get mail armor at 40, Warriors and Paladins get plate armor at that time as well. Druids get class signature Moonkin Form (for damage dealing, looks like an owlbear -- it's often called "Boomkin" form because of the hard hitting damage spells it casts), Tree of Life Form ("tree form" or "celery stalk" in WoWspeak) for healing and Dire Bear form for tanking.
Narty should hit 40 tomorrow. On the other hand, ICC-10 happens tomorrow for Tyrantos.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Of Emblems, Loot Karma, or the RNG's a B*$%h
Tuesday is Raid Lockout Reset Day in WoW. What this means is that all the raid dungeons in the game reset. The dead bosses respawn once again from their weekly dirt naps and await you and your 9, or 24, or 39 friends' displeasure. On Tuesdays, Outcasts (my guild) does the weekly raid quest -- kill a boss in a selected dungeon such as one of the four in Ulduar's Forecourt, a first-in-a-wing boss in Naxx, Sarthiron (a nasty black dragon in Obsidian Sanctum) or Malygos (nasty blue dragon in Eye of Eternity) -- and 10 and 25 man Vault of Archavon.
This week it was the lead boss of Naxx spider wing's turn to be pwned, which was easy for raiders as overgeared as us (Naxx drops entry-level epic gear / Tier 7 equivalent, virtually all of us were in Tier 10 raid armor.
In other words, we ROFLstomped him.
Why? because this is part of a quest that awards five Emblems of Frost and five Emblems of Triumph. These Emblems can be traded for gear; Triumphs for Tier 9 and Frost for Tier 10. It takes over 400 "Frosties" to buy a 5-piece set of Tier 10 armor.
Fortunately, two Emblems of Frost are awarded for defeating one of the four bosses in VoA (all bosses in Icecrown Citadel drop two as well) and two EoFs can be earned each day for completing a random heroic dungeon. Finally, an additional five EoF can be earned by completing a weekly raid quest inside ICC.
So, last week I did seven random heroic dungeons (14 Frosties), VoA-10 and VoA-25 raids (2 each, or 4), ICC-10 and ICC-25 raids (dropped 5 of the bosses in each, two per boss, 20 Frosties) and the associated quests (an additional 10), as well as the weekly Tier 7 / 8 raid (5 Frosties).
That's 53 Emblems of Frost last week.
To put this in perspective: 60 Emblems each for shoulders and gloves, 95 each for legs, chest and helm.
To make things a bit easier, the gloves and legs drop in VoA off Toravon, so it is possible to get a two piece Tier 10 set bonus without ever seeing the inside of ICC.
Tuesday morning, I had finally accumulated enough EoFs to buy
Frost Witch"s Headpiece. Two gems and an enchant later, I was rocking 4 pieces of Tier 10.The beauty of the Tier 10 4 pc bonus is that it provides a nice buff to the spell I cast about 70% of the time for healing -- Chain Heal. However, that bonus comes at a cost: I had to replace Lightning-Infused Leggings with Frost Witch"s Legguards.
Those Lightning Infused Leggings are the very best pants available for the role I play and my class because they have a stat that shaman like mine need -- Spell Haste. Shaman are the fat kids of WoW healers: we can barely heal on the move because of the long cast time of almost all of our healing spells as matters stand, so whenever we cast, we need Haste to speed up our healing. The Frost Witch's Legguards have no Haste on them (but they have 2 sockets so 40 Haste can be added to the pants). Not to mention that the Lightning Infused Leggings have +100 Haste and three gem sockets that with the right gems can add another 60 Haste. The addition of the Tier 10 helm added back a net of 80, so the net loss is +40 (T10 pants) - 160 (LIL) +80 (T10 Helm) or about 40 Haste.
So, to get back the haste, in about three weeks I'm going to replace the last Tier 9 piece (chest) with the Tier 10 chest and replace the Tier 10 legs with the Lightning Infused Leggings. That way I have the 4-piece Tier 10 bonus and some pants with haste on them.
Haste is good.
Loot Karma: As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn't win anything in ICC on Thursday or Sunday nights. One of my guildies has been waiting for three months for a particular trinket to drop in ICC for his warlock.
At times WoW's RNG (Random Number Generator) is a bitch.
Then on Monday I got into a 25-man Obsidian Sanctum raid where we decided try one of the Hard Modes for that raid. If you drop Sarthiron in this hard mode, an Obsidian Drake mount drops for the raid to roll on.
Sarth got his dirt nap after three tries . . . and the drake dropped. That's in the pic above.
My /roll 100 (basically a command to roll 1d100 in the raid chat channel) was 95. In 25 man raids, 90% or more is usually needed to win loot . . . so I won
Karma baby!
Now I wonder what kind of bad karma one of my guild's officers incurred to get his WoW account hacked. Losing his own stuff it took a lot of play time to get is bad. Losing everything in the guild's bank -- as an officer in the guild he had total access to the entire guild bank -- thousands of gold in cash as well as valuable crafting materials, plans, bind-on-equip gear for lower level characters, glyphs, herbs, minerals, gems, raiding consumables . . . .
Friday, May 7, 2010
Okay, folks . . .
1. Now that the Teabaggers have finally figured out what the term really means . . . they say it is a slur! I refer them to the phrase "hoist by one's own petard."
2. I love how the localRepublican political vermin are crawling into the light of day . . . and nary can the term "Republican" be seen! They're all "conservatives" now. Like that carpet-bagging fetid pile of dingo's kidneys asshat Richard Pombo, who mis-represented my old congressional district a decade ago before getting punted like a demented gnome in 2008. I guess it takes more than a wee dram of, you know, political courage, to run on the brand so soiled and defiled by Shrub the Younger.
I guess he was a Rethug before being a Rethug was un-cool, right? As though filing the serial number off a gun changes its ability to kill . . . .
3. Second ICC 10 run yesterday for Tyrantos. Nice belt and bracers for his Enhancement spec dropped but nothing for his healbot set that he did not already have. Raid is going "Splat" on Rotface. Just need better execution on this guy. Still 5/12 ICC-10 Regular. Hope to Odin I can make the 25 on Sunday-day-day. Doing Mom's day stuffs tonight with Jameece, her mom and a friend.
4. Been watching some TV on DVD -- to wit: Babylon 5, Season 2. Two episodes to go, and it is as awesome now as it was when I first saw it in reruns on SciFi (the current designator for the network, "SciFy" makes me sick, BTW) almost a decade ago. It's a LotR-class epic space opera, the best damn SF show made in the 1990s, and outside of Star Trek TOS, is the best-of-all-time SF TV series not created by Joss Wheadon. Firefly is just as good or better in terms of acting, writing and effects; it takes the honors for the decade just passed with only token competition from Stargate . . . but Firefly never got the chance to tell this kind of story . . . if that was ever Joss' intent.
Thank Odin for Hulu.com and the WB's streaming of all five seasons.
2. I love how the local
I guess he was a Rethug before being a Rethug was un-cool, right? As though filing the serial number off a gun changes its ability to kill . . . .
3. Second ICC 10 run yesterday for Tyrantos. Nice belt and bracers for his Enhancement spec dropped but nothing for his healbot set that he did not already have. Raid is going "Splat" on Rotface. Just need better execution on this guy. Still 5/12 ICC-10 Regular. Hope to Odin I can make the 25 on Sunday-day-day. Doing Mom's day stuffs tonight with Jameece, her mom and a friend.
4. Been watching some TV on DVD -- to wit: Babylon 5, Season 2. Two episodes to go, and it is as awesome now as it was when I first saw it in reruns on SciFi (the current designator for the network, "SciFy" makes me sick, BTW) almost a decade ago. It's a LotR-class epic space opera, the best damn SF show made in the 1990s, and outside of Star Trek TOS, is the best-of-all-time SF TV series not created by Joss Wheadon. Firefly is just as good or better in terms of acting, writing and effects; it takes the honors for the decade just passed with only token competition from Stargate . . . but Firefly never got the chance to tell this kind of story . . . if that was ever Joss' intent.
Thank Odin for Hulu.com and the WB's streaming of all five seasons.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Belated Birthday Bloggery 2009-11-09
1. Happy Birthday Michelle! You aren't getting older . . . I am:)
2. Happy Birthday to Meece's son, Sean! Get that nelf drood leveled!
3. And, finally, Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps, founded 11-10-1775. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt:
It's been awhile since I last blogged, this has mostly been due to a need for renewed focus at work, and an attempt to focus on raiding in WoW. Well, the later focus has crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.
Meece and I are out of Eclipsed -- the guild broke up like a gigging rock band -- and are now in a new, far more casual family / social leveling guild called Kilrogg Fighters. I'm taking a breather from raiding to level a brand-spanking-new Draenei Shaman. While I have the option of moving and / or faction changing another toon from, say, Kul Tiras, over here, the total cost of doing that all at once is Too Damn Much Money™ right now. Tyrantos is now Level 35 or so after slightly less than a week of spending every second of WoW-playing since creation playing him. The /played timer shows just over 2 days playtime spread over that period . . . so I'm leveling fast.
My secret? Tyrtrinos the death knight has access to the necessary resources to buy two "bind on account" Heirloom items that give bonii to earned experience for good old Tyrantos. The items scale with level, so they will be useful all the way to Level 80.
2. Happy Birthday to Meece's son, Sean! Get that nelf drood leveled!
3. And, finally, Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps, founded 11-10-1775. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt:
“The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”
It's been awhile since I last blogged, this has mostly been due to a need for renewed focus at work, and an attempt to focus on raiding in WoW. Well, the later focus has crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.
Meece and I are out of Eclipsed -- the guild broke up like a gigging rock band -- and are now in a new, far more casual family / social leveling guild called Kilrogg Fighters. I'm taking a breather from raiding to level a brand-spanking-new Draenei Shaman. While I have the option of moving and / or faction changing another toon from, say, Kul Tiras, over here, the total cost of doing that all at once is Too Damn Much Money™ right now. Tyrantos is now Level 35 or so after slightly less than a week of spending every second of WoW-playing since creation playing him. The /played timer shows just over 2 days playtime spread over that period . . . so I'm leveling fast.
My secret? Tyrtrinos the death knight has access to the necessary resources to buy two "bind on account" Heirloom items that give bonii to earned experience for good old Tyrantos. The items scale with level, so they will be useful all the way to Level 80.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Bloggery 2009-10-22
1. Pics of Parker from his visit last weekend, as well as Photographic Proof™ of the literary awesomeness of one Seanan Mcguire -- her book, featured on the new paperback rack in the front of the Arden Faire Barnes and Noble.
Oh, and the book itself, Rosemary and Rue, is a terrific read. Rosemary and Rue is to urban fantasy as Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor (another great book, by the way) is to military space opera: a sharp, witty, very well written first novel with great plotting, crisp dialog, intelligent world-building that will gain a vast following. I think that, like Lois, Seanan's work is award-worthy. I foresee Hugos and / or Nebulas joining the Pegasus awards on her mantle.
2. Weekend WoW: Another weekend, another FAIL Naxx-25, aka, the Floating 1d4 of FAILBOTTERY. Fresh run, started in Construct Quarter. Patchwerk, Grobbulus and Gluth were all one-shotted. I got my hopes up . . . then we hit Thaddius, aka the "White Death Knights Can't Jump" boss. This time I made the jump (about a quarter of the raid didn't) because I tried a couple of tricks to boost my Run speed. but the raid's damage output was far too low to take Thadd down before he enraged and hard wipes the raid. About 1/3 of the raid was not even geared for Naxx-10. One guy had mostly green (low level) gear from the lower end zones of Northrend.
Consensus on being geared enough for Naxx-10 is to have all or almost all Rare ("blue") gear at Item Level 187 - 200. This gear can be obtained through quests rewards, through faction reputation rewards, from crafters and from dungeon loot drops in heroic-mode dungeons. New level 80 toons have little business in Naxx unless they have the gear to survive.
I still managed to get enough heroic dungeon runs in to score my second piece of T8 with badges. The loot from heroic dungeons -- with one exception, namely Heroic Trial of the Champion -- no longer provides me with gear upgrades. The badges, on the other hand, can still buy some upgrades. However, the Emblems of Conquest that drop in heroics and pre-3.2 raids no longer buy me gear upgrades. The higher-level Emblems of Triumph are what buys the Tier 9+ and associated upgrades. I can trade the EoC's down in level, save them to buy other things, just no gear upgrades. I'm five Emblems away from my third pirce of Tier 9.
Oh, and the book itself, Rosemary and Rue, is a terrific read. Rosemary and Rue is to urban fantasy as Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor (another great book, by the way) is to military space opera: a sharp, witty, very well written first novel with great plotting, crisp dialog, intelligent world-building that will gain a vast following. I think that, like Lois, Seanan's work is award-worthy. I foresee Hugos and / or Nebulas joining the Pegasus awards on her mantle.
2. Weekend WoW: Another weekend, another FAIL Naxx-25, aka, the Floating 1d4 of FAILBOTTERY. Fresh run, started in Construct Quarter. Patchwerk, Grobbulus and Gluth were all one-shotted. I got my hopes up . . . then we hit Thaddius, aka the "White Death Knights Can't Jump" boss. This time I made the jump (about a quarter of the raid didn't) because I tried a couple of tricks to boost my Run speed. but the raid's damage output was far too low to take Thadd down before he enraged and hard wipes the raid. About 1/3 of the raid was not even geared for Naxx-10. One guy had mostly green (low level) gear from the lower end zones of Northrend.
Consensus on being geared enough for Naxx-10 is to have all or almost all Rare ("blue") gear at Item Level 187 - 200. This gear can be obtained through quests rewards, through faction reputation rewards, from crafters and from dungeon loot drops in heroic-mode dungeons. New level 80 toons have little business in Naxx unless they have the gear to survive.
I still managed to get enough heroic dungeon runs in to score my second piece of T8 with badges. The loot from heroic dungeons -- with one exception, namely Heroic Trial of the Champion -- no longer provides me with gear upgrades. The badges, on the other hand, can still buy some upgrades. However, the Emblems of Conquest that drop in heroics and pre-3.2 raids no longer buy me gear upgrades. The higher-level Emblems of Triumph are what buys the Tier 9+ and associated upgrades. I can trade the EoC's down in level, save them to buy other things, just no gear upgrades. I'm five Emblems away from my third pirce of Tier 9.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Bloggery 2009-10-15: Journal of the Plague (years)
With NO APOLOGIES whatsoever to Norman Spinrad's awesome novella from the 80s about AIDS.
I'm finally (two weeks later) feeling almost back to normal.
I've been passing the time -- when up to it -- playing WoW. Getting out of Clothing Discouraged and into Eclipsed was a blessing in disguise. Three *scheduled* raids a week, and this week we had a couple of Good Ones: Trial of the Crusader-10 and -25. I've tried TotC-10 once with CD and we wiped like a 12-pack of Charmin rolls on the first boss.
Not this time, bunky! While we were only able to down the first 3 bosses in 25-man (Beasts, Lord Jaraxxus, Faction Champs), we were able to finish 10-man (Twin Val'kyrs, Anub'arak). Then we did 10-man Ulduar and managed to buzzsaw our way through Flame Leviathan, XT-2000 Deconstructor, Ignis, Razorscale, Kologarm, Auriaya, and the Assembly of Iron. We went bounce off Thorim. Left are Hodir, Freya, Thorim, General Vezax, Mirimon, Yogg-Saron and Algalon. As dessert I managed to get into a no-fail Naxx-10 PuG, and dropped Gluth and Thaddius to finish Constuct Quarter (and this time I made the jump!), Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. I am missing one boss -- Instructor Razuvious, in Military Quarter -- from my personal Full Naxx Clear.
New additions to my gear include a ring and boots from Ulduar-10. With the emblems from here (3 per boss dropped) I got my Tier 9 gloves. Now I have 2-piece set bonii for Tier 8 and 9 -- nice because the bonii do not overwrite one another. My "gear score" is in the mid-2400s, good enough to pug Ulduar once I know all the fights.
That's the problem: reading about the fight strategies is not enough for me. I need to actually fight the boss in my assigned role, to really understand the strategy . . . and for many groups, this does not work because they do not want to take the time to teach you the fights (and I had a very bitter experience with this on Marty in Naxx back in April . . .).
Now I'd like to get the guild to run Onyxia's Lair. This is a raid from Original WoW that has been owered up for Level 80. Ony's another draconic loot piñata, or so I am told.
On Sunday I get to see my grandson. Camera in hand, of course. :)
I'm finally (two weeks later) feeling almost back to normal.
I've been passing the time -- when up to it -- playing WoW. Getting out of Clothing Discouraged and into Eclipsed was a blessing in disguise. Three *scheduled* raids a week, and this week we had a couple of Good Ones: Trial of the Crusader-10 and -25. I've tried TotC-10 once with CD and we wiped like a 12-pack of Charmin rolls on the first boss.
Not this time, bunky! While we were only able to down the first 3 bosses in 25-man (Beasts, Lord Jaraxxus, Faction Champs), we were able to finish 10-man (Twin Val'kyrs, Anub'arak). Then we did 10-man Ulduar and managed to buzzsaw our way through Flame Leviathan, XT-2000 Deconstructor, Ignis, Razorscale, Kologarm, Auriaya, and the Assembly of Iron. We went bounce off Thorim. Left are Hodir, Freya, Thorim, General Vezax, Mirimon, Yogg-Saron and Algalon. As dessert I managed to get into a no-fail Naxx-10 PuG, and dropped Gluth and Thaddius to finish Constuct Quarter (and this time I made the jump!), Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. I am missing one boss -- Instructor Razuvious, in Military Quarter -- from my personal Full Naxx Clear.
New additions to my gear include a ring and boots from Ulduar-10. With the emblems from here (3 per boss dropped) I got my Tier 9 gloves. Now I have 2-piece set bonii for Tier 8 and 9 -- nice because the bonii do not overwrite one another. My "gear score" is in the mid-2400s, good enough to pug Ulduar once I know all the fights.
That's the problem: reading about the fight strategies is not enough for me. I need to actually fight the boss in my assigned role, to really understand the strategy . . . and for many groups, this does not work because they do not want to take the time to teach you the fights (and I had a very bitter experience with this on Marty in Naxx back in April . . .).
Now I'd like to get the guild to run Onyxia's Lair. This is a raid from Original WoW that has been owered up for Level 80. Ony's another draconic loot piñata, or so I am told.
On Sunday I get to see my grandson. Camera in hand, of course. :)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The art of magical mail enhancement, or "Pimp My Armor"
No, not with blue pills....note the spelling of the noun in the title.
One of the most interesting aspects of WoW raiding is that raids are in and of themselves, not all that lucrative in terms of gold. Raids really pay off in gear looted. Most gear you get in raids cannot be obtained any other way.
However, once you haul home that Tier 9 chest token and trade it in on the armor piece you want, the question becomes "How to make this nifty piece of gear better?"
WoW has two professions that let you do just that: enchanting and jewel cutting. Just about every piece of gear can be gemmed, enchanted, or both.
Of course, the chants, gems and gem cuts require skill and materials. Materials can be bought or "farmed." Enchanters "farm" most of their own materials by disenchanting unneeded magic items -- a kind of recycling. Gem cuters prospect raw ores for gems.
If you are in a guild, you cn usually find a guildie who can be persuaded / bribed / browbeaten into chanting the gear or cutting that gem if provided the materials without charge. Many chanters will do this for free just to get skill increases; these folks advertise their availability in the Trade channel, WoW's global answer to Mos Eisley Spaceport.
Yes. Trust me. Trade chat is devoted to kids hassling one another. Or to things that belong in other channels, like Looking for Group.
If you are not in a guild, or your guild lacks a chanter or JC, and you prefer to not have brain cells leak out your eyes as you read the drivel in Trade (I always /leave Trade, never stay in it. If I want this level of inane drivel in my downtime fun I'd watch reality TV or pro wrestling), you can pony up gold in the Auction House and buy one use scrolls with the chant or the gem cut you need. Of course, that's a bit spendy -- epic gems run 200-300 gold a pop and top end chants are 200 gold or more each. Figure an average of six gems and eight to eleven gear slots (depending on class) that need chants (head arcanum, shoulder enscription, chest, cloak, pants, boots, bracers, gloves, melee weapon, shield / offhand weapon, ranged weapon).
Expensive? yes. But the other day I saw a guy (not me) get raid-kicked despite having decent base gear -- Tier 7.5 range, not bad stuff, really, but no gems and no chants. Without mail enhancement, you get raid-kicked. Skinny-kid orcs start kick sand in your face and steal your date. Even gnomes look down on you. Gnomes!
Is my gear pimped? Does Kel'Thuzad (the end boss in Naxx) love his kitty cat, Mr. Bigglesworth?
Epic gems...1500 gold. Enchantments, 2000 gold, One shotting Kel'Thurzad? Priceless
Fortunately gold can be gotten. I am one of the engines on the realm's economy. I gather raw materials -- leather from slain beasts and herbs I find in my travels -- and sell them on the auction house to crafters. I then buy crafter's wares, completing the circle. I also do several daily quests every time I log on, each nets me about 14 gold each.
I made about 3k gold this weekend. That's about normal for me.
One of the most interesting aspects of WoW raiding is that raids are in and of themselves, not all that lucrative in terms of gold. Raids really pay off in gear looted. Most gear you get in raids cannot be obtained any other way.
However, once you haul home that Tier 9 chest token and trade it in on the armor piece you want, the question becomes "How to make this nifty piece of gear better?"
WoW has two professions that let you do just that: enchanting and jewel cutting. Just about every piece of gear can be gemmed, enchanted, or both.
Of course, the chants, gems and gem cuts require skill and materials. Materials can be bought or "farmed." Enchanters "farm" most of their own materials by disenchanting unneeded magic items -- a kind of recycling. Gem cuters prospect raw ores for gems.
If you are in a guild, you cn usually find a guildie who can be persuaded / bribed / browbeaten into chanting the gear or cutting that gem if provided the materials without charge. Many chanters will do this for free just to get skill increases; these folks advertise their availability in the Trade channel, WoW's global answer to Mos Eisley Spaceport.
Yes. Trust me. Trade chat is devoted to kids hassling one another. Or to things that belong in other channels, like Looking for Group.
If you are not in a guild, or your guild lacks a chanter or JC, and you prefer to not have brain cells leak out your eyes as you read the drivel in Trade (I always /leave Trade, never stay in it. If I want this level of inane drivel in my downtime fun I'd watch reality TV or pro wrestling), you can pony up gold in the Auction House and buy one use scrolls with the chant or the gem cut you need. Of course, that's a bit spendy -- epic gems run 200-300 gold a pop and top end chants are 200 gold or more each. Figure an average of six gems and eight to eleven gear slots (depending on class) that need chants (head arcanum, shoulder enscription, chest, cloak, pants, boots, bracers, gloves, melee weapon, shield / offhand weapon, ranged weapon).
Expensive? yes. But the other day I saw a guy (not me) get raid-kicked despite having decent base gear -- Tier 7.5 range, not bad stuff, really, but no gems and no chants. Without mail enhancement, you get raid-kicked. Skinny-kid orcs start kick sand in your face and steal your date. Even gnomes look down on you. Gnomes!
Is my gear pimped? Does Kel'Thuzad (the end boss in Naxx) love his kitty cat, Mr. Bigglesworth?
Epic gems...1500 gold. Enchantments, 2000 gold, One shotting Kel'Thurzad? Priceless
Fortunately gold can be gotten. I am one of the engines on the realm's economy. I gather raw materials -- leather from slain beasts and herbs I find in my travels -- and sell them on the auction house to crafters. I then buy crafter's wares, completing the circle. I also do several daily quests every time I log on, each nets me about 14 gold each.
I made about 3k gold this weekend. That's about normal for me.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
This Week in WoW...
In a word, mixed. Very mixed.
I've gotten zero guild invites since Clothisis and I left Clothing Discouraged. Not. One. Clo's now in a guild, but I am hesitant to join a leveling guild when I want to raid. I did try out for a couple pf raiding guilds the other day . . . 25 man Naxx, the bane of my life. EPIC FAIL again. I caused a wipe on Thaddius because I could not make a jump across a chasm to fight the guy. My DPS would have made the difference (< 25 k health left when Thad enraged and hard wiped the raid. . .). I failed the jump . . . seven times!
"Consider your application declined, Tyrtrinos. You are FULL of FAIL!" /kick
PUGs were few and far between this weekend. I managed to get ToC pugged just about every day, and I managed to do 10 and 25 man Obsidian Sanctum (the latter with 1 drake up) with CD's old allies in the guild Section One, If they were recruiting DPS, I'd go there.
Another possibility: bite the bullet in a couple of weeks and spend the $55 to move Martkishar (troll shammy, the one in Gwenny's guild) over to Kilrogg and change his faction to Alliance from Horde. Shammys are IN DEMAND for two reasons: One, they can heal. With the Chain Heal spell, shammys are the best raid healers in the game. Two, shammys have an ability called Heroism. When the shammy hits heroism, the entire raid gets a 45 second increase in attack speed by 1/3. Heroism is an ability needed in many boss fights in places like Naxx.
The other other option is to build Tyr's tanking skills and gear set. My tank gear is only OK. nowhere as good as my dps set. Good tanks are in demand. I'm not sure how "good" I am.
On the WIN side, I did get OS 25 and 10 done and I have been piling up gold and achievements.
I'm now at Exalted reputation with Ironforge and will start working on Exodar reputation ("Exalted Champion of Ironforge") as step 3 in a six step meta-achievement. OS 25 was done with one mini-boss drake up, so I got the "Twilight Vanquisher" achievement. I completed all the holiday insanity for Brewfest and got "Brewmaster". Since my new IF rep now enables me to buy mounts from the dwarves, I bought some epic ram mounts for "Filling Up The Barn"
Oh, and one piece of new dps gear -- Tier 8 chest, with badges. I now have the 2-piece set bonus for Tier 8.
I've gotten zero guild invites since Clothisis and I left Clothing Discouraged. Not. One. Clo's now in a guild, but I am hesitant to join a leveling guild when I want to raid. I did try out for a couple pf raiding guilds the other day . . . 25 man Naxx, the bane of my life. EPIC FAIL again. I caused a wipe on Thaddius because I could not make a jump across a chasm to fight the guy. My DPS would have made the difference (< 25 k health left when Thad enraged and hard wiped the raid. . .). I failed the jump . . . seven times!
"Consider your application declined, Tyrtrinos. You are FULL of FAIL!" /kick
PUGs were few and far between this weekend. I managed to get ToC pugged just about every day, and I managed to do 10 and 25 man Obsidian Sanctum (the latter with 1 drake up) with CD's old allies in the guild Section One, If they were recruiting DPS, I'd go there.
Another possibility: bite the bullet in a couple of weeks and spend the $55 to move Martkishar (troll shammy, the one in Gwenny's guild) over to Kilrogg and change his faction to Alliance from Horde. Shammys are IN DEMAND for two reasons: One, they can heal. With the Chain Heal spell, shammys are the best raid healers in the game. Two, shammys have an ability called Heroism. When the shammy hits heroism, the entire raid gets a 45 second increase in attack speed by 1/3. Heroism is an ability needed in many boss fights in places like Naxx.
The other other option is to build Tyr's tanking skills and gear set. My tank gear is only OK. nowhere as good as my dps set. Good tanks are in demand. I'm not sure how "good" I am.
On the WIN side, I did get OS 25 and 10 done and I have been piling up gold and achievements.
I'm now at Exalted reputation with Ironforge and will start working on Exodar reputation ("Exalted Champion of Ironforge") as step 3 in a six step meta-achievement. OS 25 was done with one mini-boss drake up, so I got the "Twilight Vanquisher" achievement. I completed all the holiday insanity for Brewfest and got "Brewmaster". Since my new IF rep now enables me to buy mounts from the dwarves, I bought some epic ram mounts for "Filling Up The Barn"
Oh, and one piece of new dps gear -- Tier 8 chest, with badges. I now have the 2-piece set bonus for Tier 8.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Weekend WoW: Loot Piñatas Gone Wild
A Good Weekend™
The quest to get Decently Geared™ took some twists and turns this weekend. Ran Naxxramas-10 Regular on Friday night. Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina, Maexxna, Noth the Plaguebringer, Haigan the Unclean and Loatheb -- all enjoying their weekly dirt naps. Of course, I was a "FAIL" once again at the Safety Dance with Haigan. In Military Quarter Instructor Razuvious took us to "The School O' Serial Wipe," thus ending a decent raid. Clothisis, holy healer-type and Girlfriend Supreme, pulled some nice upgrades -- as in "Tier 7 shoulders" off Loatheb. It was FUN helping her determine which Tier 7 shoulders to get. Tier gear is tailored (pun not intended) for a specific specialization. Since Clo's specialization is Holy (healer), all her spells are cast at friendly targets so there is no miss chance and no need for Hit Rating stats on the gear. Were she a Shadow Priest, she'd need Hit Rating to overcome miss chance against bosses. I helped her select the Spellpower / Haste, not Hit Rating / Spellpower model shoulders.
My wow-heroes.com gear score -- an index of gear quality that too many party leaders are using to evaluate people for pickup groups -- is now a comfy 2246. This value is the best among all death knights in Clothing Discouraged and 15th overall in the guild. I am happier and happier with my raw damage output -- 2.5k damage per second when full-up raid buffed with food, elixirs and spells. We have some folks -- warlocks and rogues -- pushing 3.5k dps.
I'm getting there. Now to help Clo get there too. Need to run her through more Heroics and get her some much better gear.
Saturday was the weekly guild progression / wipe-a-thon in Ulduar. Sadly, Clothisis is barely geared for Naxx-10. We are still learning the fights. I missed the guild's dropping Flame Leviathan, XT and Razorscale, but I got in on kills of Kologarn, Auriaya (the Crazy Cat Lady) and Freya on Sunday. Fortunately, the proceeds of Gear Nobody Can Use -- as in "I already have better / and there's no paladin who can use that piece of mana-regeneration plate armor in the party" -- fund the massive repair bills (8 gold per wipe, 25 personal deaths on both runs all weekend, times 10 party members, is a buttload of gold) for the armor repairs from all the wipes.
Sunday morning I went on a timed run through Caverns of Time: Stratholme (aka "More Zombies! More Zombies!) on Heroic mode for a shot at a bronze drake epic flying mount -- and I won it! On Sunday, it seemed like I was beating loot piñatas . The belt I was after for so very long (before I sprung for the badge belt) dropped in Heroic Nexus . . . three straight times this weekend. Ran Trial of the Crusader on regular mode with the guild and got a new epic helm for my secondary specialization armor set, then on Sunday night after Ulduar I ran ToC in Heroic mode with a pickup group (the Looking for Group channel / interface is.my.friend) and scored, you guessed it, Tier 8 shoulders off Eldrac the Pure. The T7.5s I got the other day look better on my toon, but the T8s increase my dps.
I still have one non-epic item in my main spec set: a trinket. My off-spec set can still use rings and trinkets, and I'm still nowhere near defense-capped.
The quest to get Decently Geared™ took some twists and turns this weekend. Ran Naxxramas-10 Regular on Friday night. Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina, Maexxna, Noth the Plaguebringer, Haigan the Unclean and Loatheb -- all enjoying their weekly dirt naps. Of course, I was a "FAIL" once again at the Safety Dance with Haigan. In Military Quarter Instructor Razuvious took us to "The School O' Serial Wipe," thus ending a decent raid. Clothisis, holy healer-type and Girlfriend Supreme, pulled some nice upgrades -- as in "Tier 7 shoulders" off Loatheb. It was FUN helping her determine which Tier 7 shoulders to get. Tier gear is tailored (pun not intended) for a specific specialization. Since Clo's specialization is Holy (healer), all her spells are cast at friendly targets so there is no miss chance and no need for Hit Rating stats on the gear. Were she a Shadow Priest, she'd need Hit Rating to overcome miss chance against bosses. I helped her select the Spellpower / Haste, not Hit Rating / Spellpower model shoulders.
My wow-heroes.com gear score -- an index of gear quality that too many party leaders are using to evaluate people for pickup groups -- is now a comfy 2246. This value is the best among all death knights in Clothing Discouraged and 15th overall in the guild. I am happier and happier with my raw damage output -- 2.5k damage per second when full-up raid buffed with food, elixirs and spells. We have some folks -- warlocks and rogues -- pushing 3.5k dps.
I'm getting there. Now to help Clo get there too. Need to run her through more Heroics and get her some much better gear.
Saturday was the weekly guild progression / wipe-a-thon in Ulduar. Sadly, Clothisis is barely geared for Naxx-10. We are still learning the fights. I missed the guild's dropping Flame Leviathan, XT and Razorscale, but I got in on kills of Kologarn, Auriaya (the Crazy Cat Lady) and Freya on Sunday. Fortunately, the proceeds of Gear Nobody Can Use -- as in "I already have better / and there's no paladin who can use that piece of mana-regeneration plate armor in the party" -- fund the massive repair bills (8 gold per wipe, 25 personal deaths on both runs all weekend, times 10 party members, is a buttload of gold) for the armor repairs from all the wipes.
Sunday morning I went on a timed run through Caverns of Time: Stratholme (aka "More Zombies! More Zombies!) on Heroic mode for a shot at a bronze drake epic flying mount -- and I won it! On Sunday, it seemed like I was beating loot piñatas . The belt I was after for so very long (before I sprung for the badge belt) dropped in Heroic Nexus . . . three straight times this weekend. Ran Trial of the Crusader on regular mode with the guild and got a new epic helm for my secondary specialization armor set, then on Sunday night after Ulduar I ran ToC in Heroic mode with a pickup group (the Looking for Group channel / interface is.my.friend) and scored, you guessed it, Tier 8 shoulders off Eldrac the Pure. The T7.5s I got the other day look better on my toon, but the T8s increase my dps.
I still have one non-epic item in my main spec set: a trinket. My off-spec set can still use rings and trinkets, and I'm still nowhere near defense-capped.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Random Bloggery
1. Health milestone was reached today -- I am back under 400 lbs! I weighed in at 397 lbs this afternoon. Me has a happy. Walking and taking the bus really really helps. Walking consumes kilocalories from the food I eat, makes me think at least twice before wanting to go out and get more food, and generates natural endorphins that promote mental health, taking the bus builds up my supply of "cope" for assorted random stimuli.
2. WoW: Scored enough emblems last night to buy my first Tier 7.5 armor piece for Tyrtrinos, Valorous Scourgeborne Shoulderplates. In doing so, I also replaced the PvP trinket I was using with a good one for raiding -- Sphere of Red Dragon"s Blood. That trinket is my last remaining non-epic piece of gear. There's a Naxx run tonight; I hope to get Grim Toll tonight.
(Later) "Tonight" has come and gone -- the Naxx run made it through Arachnid and Plague Quarters. I still suck at the "Safety Dance" but Clothisis -- Meece's toon -- scored for herself some new bracers and, on her first try at 10 man Naxx, her Tier 7 shoulders off Loethab. My haul was a set of boots for my tanking armor set.
2. WoW: Scored enough emblems last night to buy my first Tier 7.5 armor piece for Tyrtrinos, Valorous Scourgeborne Shoulderplates. In doing so, I also replaced the PvP trinket I was using with a good one for raiding -- Sphere of Red Dragon"s Blood. That trinket is my last remaining non-epic piece of gear. There's a Naxx run tonight; I hope to get Grim Toll tonight.
(Later) "Tonight" has come and gone -- the Naxx run made it through Arachnid and Plague Quarters. I still suck at the "Safety Dance" but Clothisis -- Meece's toon -- scored for herself some new bracers and, on her first try at 10 man Naxx, her Tier 7 shoulders off Loethab. My haul was a set of boots for my tanking armor set.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Just some WoW stuff
1. WoW: No Naxx runs so far this week. I've been refocusing on Heroics and Rep gear for upgrades. I am four pieces from having full epic gear. Last night I replaced my 
Icebane Girdle belt with a 
Belt of the Singing Blade with badges and my old chest with a spanking new 
Chestplate of Vicious Potency out of Ulduar. I am less than 100 reputation from replacing 
Gauntlets of Vigilance with some nice nice 
Fireproven Gauntlets. All I need after that is to get my Wyrmrest Accord rep to Exalted for 
Legplates of Bloody Reprisal and score a nice trinket in Naxx or elsewhere, like 
Grim Toll.
I have yet to try the new Trial of the Champion instance or raid yet. I'm probably geared for them, it's just the guild's been focused on progression through Ulduar.
My next project is to get enough gold for dual talent specialization (1k gp) so I can have the talents to perform as a tank.I have about 20% of the gear I need to start tanking, as soon as my current set is to spec I'll start tanking.
Icebane Girdle belt with a Belt of the Singing Blade with badges and my old chest with a spanking new Chestplate of Vicious Potency out of Ulduar. I am less than 100 reputation from replacing Gauntlets of Vigilance with some nice nice Fireproven Gauntlets. All I need after that is to get my Wyrmrest Accord rep to Exalted for Legplates of Bloody Reprisal and score a nice trinket in Naxx or elsewhere, like Grim Toll. I have yet to try the new Trial of the Champion instance or raid yet. I'm probably geared for them, it's just the guild's been focused on progression through Ulduar.
My next project is to get enough gold for dual talent specialization (1k gp) so I can have the talents to perform as a tank.I have about 20% of the gear I need to start tanking, as soon as my current set is to spec I'll start tanking.
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