Cataclysmic Week

No, the week was not a catastrophe for Hine.
Ironic, that Azeroth's loss has been our gain.
Regardless, the past week has been one of entering new territory, seeing it, and conquering it (and being conquered, over and over).

No, I didn't blog this week, the first week of Cataclysm, I played the game.
A lot.
I will plan to write a bit about leveling a DK in the near future. Suffice it to say for now that
1) leveling as Frost works like a charm. I'm sure it would generally be just fine as Unholy, less so as Blood but still feasible.
2) While predictions were as low as 9 hours for leveling to 85, without the benefit of being in the beta, a more reasonable estimate for most folks is probably in the ballpark of 20-24 hours. With rest and less bottlenecking it may be shorter.

I did, however, post in various forums about my experiences. So, I decided to paste a few of them here to give you a few reflections on the Cataclysm experience so far.

WARNING: There are some very minor spoilers in here. I'll try to keep them to somewhat of a minimum, or at least cryptic, but if you don't want to know anything about what's ahead, don't read. :)

On the question of How goes the leveling? (late Tuesday):
"I did NOT get any server firsts, as my lack of beta access clearly bit me in the butt from the start. The bottleneck quests in Hyjal quickly became a nightmare as dozens camped specific spawns, and then in Deepholme, when I simply couldn't figure out a few quests. In any case, once I relaxed I had a good time, hit 85 4th for DKs on the server and messed around with professions. Made about 18k from mining so far, hope to finish up about 30-40k more before I start my own JC leveling.
The zones are beautiful, and I thought the questing in Uldum was superb. TwiHi wasn't as bad as many said (in terms of mobs hitting hard) and almost all of my gear was replaced by 85 (only things left are helm and Shadowmourne). Awesome trinkets from quests. I though Hyjal was too bottlenecked for release, and Vashj is pretty but slow and too distracted (side quests all over). As good as it is, Uldum could be renamed 'cut scene zone.'


I've done almost all the 5-mans and they're a blast.


Hope you're all having fun. Good night!"

And:
"Cindermaul was an example of a quest that should never, never, never be repeated.



I was stuck for 45 min on that one despite the fact that I was in a 5-man the whole time.


We got fed up of being ganked by hordies after the first 5 min and enjoyed killing the 'top' guild over and over and over after that.

By the way, on that and several like it, aoe does not tag the mob. After we finally figured it out, I macroed the mob name and howling blasted like a mother and got that one and the next pretty fast."


On the guild leveling issues:
"Fun in't it?



We had our guild xp reset several times, so we've made level 2 at least three times, only to get it put back to 1. ;("
 
 
On the difficulty of Cataclysm heroics:
"Pugging can be pretty rough. I don't think I've fully completed a heroic in a full pug. It can certainly be frustrating to spend 2-4 hours wiping over and over on a 5 man boss!



This is where we say be careful what we ask for!
We asked for more difficult content. We asked for cc to count. We asked for non-faceroll challenges, and here we go.
Even the lowest level of multiplayer content is now challenging. In current gear. It will be faceroll easy very soon for raiders.
OTOH, I personally have found them quite refreshing and enjoyable. I've heard and even said a few times that many of the 5-man bosses actually have raid-like mechanics and require players to actually utilize raid-like strategies and awareness. It's been great learning these. I've completed almost all of them on heroic now - as I said, always with at least one guildie with me - and it's been a blast.
If you do have trouble with a specific fight and don't want to read forums or wikis, feel free to post and I'll help when I can."
 
On the 'New Healing' (in which the OP expressed frustration in general but also that dps that don't self-heal may not get heals from him/her):
"Early early early.



I've already notice regular 5-mans getting easier. I think it will be a pretty fast progression to heroics being easymode too.


Just like dps, where so far I'm barely cracking 10k in 5-mans (and no dps I've been with has). Our crit is horrid, we aren't hit capped, etc. These things will ramp up really really quickly and at least in 5-mans, mana will be less of an issue fast. In raids? It will/should (I hope) take a little more time.
As a dps, I have to take issue with your assessment though. You obviously have to triage, but forcing dps to self heal - except in emergencies - is a waste of our resources. My self heal is a rather weak death strike. Even 'per mana' your heals are far far more efficient. My assessment would be: don't try to keep dps topped off (try to keep them alive) If they pull aggro or don't avoid damage they should be avoiding - then let them die. Of course, if you're oom, then of course you have to self heal and tank heal first, but don't simply refuse to heal dps if they 'aren't' self-healing...."
 
and
 
"I know Xxxx wasn't saying he wouldn't heal dps.



And I'm not advocating healing stupid.


Just tonight, while healing Throne (on my shammy), the same hunter stood in green three times.


I didn't heal him the third time.


Yes, healers are having to smite/shock/whatever to have the best mana management right now. And it's hard.


So dps need to not make it more difficult.


I should leave it at that, but I won't.


Saying dps self-healing is the cutting edge? Not really. You know that I do what I can to mitigate damage. Like knowing when to ams and running out, etc. But a Death Strike, just one, fucks me for the rest of the fight by throwing off rune pairs. It's a really really crappy heal, and it's going to make the whole fight last longer (oooh, and require more healing/mana from the healers) because my dps will drop significantly. That's the opposite of the current game mechanics that require a healer to dps to be effective. If I self heal, I'm drastically decreasing my effectiveness over the fight.


Does that mean you won't see DS on my logs? By no means. I'm well aware of the correct order of things. If the whole group is low and about to die, healer self-heal, then tank, then dps. SO I'll bandage, DS, or whatever I can. Don't worry. And of course I'm well aware of dead dps don't. So I prefer to dps by staying alive, just that self-healing is really truly only an emergency thing to do for dps, while dps is part of the current plan for healers."

On our log of Blackrock raid (we did kill the Tol Barad boss earlier):
"I looked over the logs last night and quickly noted a few things:



1) dps is decent. Could be a little better but already on target.


2) Players in general lasted reasonably long into the encounter, particular in the latter half of our 23 recorded attempts, but at that point healers often tended to be the first to die. Not sure what to think of that.


3) Interrupts of the arcane dude are crucial and we did much better on that. However, every dps that can interrupt, should. I saw zero interrupts from one of our shammies.


4) I personally took a lot of damage (behind the tanks), but I lasted long enough, often to tank a boss for a few seconds and had only one bad death in the last 10 attempts. But I will still look at taking less damage.


5) I think we can still do better with that aoe fire attack from magnotron - trying to keep him still and all players finding the safe 'lanes' to sit in.


side note: I love the trinket (I got the boe epic Fury of Angerforge), but until it's fixed it's probably not better than the blue trink I had before. Even going back to dual-wielding didn't seem to help much. I commented on wowhead about this under 'Hirohubris.'"

All in all, a fantastic week!
More to follow. ;)

Another blogger alt post

Apparently, 'every Wow blogger on the planet has an alt post' (see comments) so I wouldn't want to disappoint! :)

With my guild taking a break from raiding the last couple weeks, there hasn't been a lot going on from an organizational standpoint.

So, what does one do?

Of course, I have spent a little time familiarizing myself with my leveling (frost) spec and am fairly comfortable with it, so I feel reasonably ready to run with it in less than a week. :) I have some 23 quests ready to turn in the moment we log in with the new level cap. I have my mats, my gold, my mounts, and my mojo.

So, what to do for the next week(s)?

A number of my guildies are running their mains through the lowbie zones doing loremaster-type quests, which are fairly easy to do at this point.

That sounded pretty boring to me. On the other hand, leveling or running lower-level characters through Azeroth wasn't all that appealing either.

I'll admit, I still wasn't sold on the idea of 'merely' changing old Azeroth and making it 'new.' Adding a few zones, letting us level to 85 instead of 90, along with new raids, still seems/seemed like an expansion-lite.

I was pleasantly surprised then, when I decided to do a little questing on my slowly-leveling level 40ish mage. As apparently everyone already knows, a few things have changed! LOLAS (as in, laugh out loud at self). My little mage had been spending time in the lush Stranglethorn vale merrily frostbolting stray gorillas. I logged in (finally) to discover that most of her quests were gone, and the few that remained were gray. She had a new quest to report to Western Plaguelands. WPL! You know, that place you never really had to go any more, because more accessible zones were more than adequate to allow you to level to 58 and on to Outlands? Hmm, after a little hemming and hawing, Hinetapeka got on Filly, her newly-epic mount, made her way to Chillwind Camp, and it was ON!

Yes, as has been oft-repeated, the questing is quite linear. In WPL alone, each hub has only a few quests, with maybe 3-4 quests and 2-3 follow up quests, then it's off to another hub nearby. There is often a flight path available, or even a 'free' horse or carriage to take you to your next hub. And in many of these places, your actions seem to change things (yay for phasing, something I lauded way back at LK release, and which Blizzard is understandably making more use of). The quests, while linear, facilitate storytelling in a much more cogent manner, and it at least gives the feel of accomplishing something (as opposed to those level 40 skellies simply respawning 60 seconds after you 'cleared the road' by killing 12 of them). At least for me, for now, what it lacks in 'freedom,' it makes up for in clarity, simplicity, and quality.

During the Thanksgiving weekend, my 10 year old son complained that he wanted a flying mount. To which I replied that he'd never leveled a character high enough to do so (except starting DKs on my account). So, I issued him a challenge. If he leveled an Alliance character on my main server past 10, I'd help him with leveling, and if/when he got to 60, I'd buy any and all mounts he wanted. So, he started a hunter and quickly exclaimed how the human starting area was so different. Inspired by Tamarind and Oddly's posts about priests, I finally caved and started my very first priest ever. I quickly leveled to 10 - the Draenei area appeares completely unchanged to me - and travelled to Stormwind. From there on, I had the opportunity to see not only the 'new' Azeroth, but this 'new' Azeroth, through 'new' eyes; my son's. We quested together and did his very first 5-man instances together. It was a blast to have him exclaim every few seconds at how fun it was. He aquitted himself reasonably well, too, finishing higher than at least one other dps in every run we did. Sure, he needed to be informed that one does NOT need on spirit cloth as a hunter, and that he had to target the mob that the tank was hitting, but he picked it up quickly! ;) I had chosen the holy tree for starters and so enjoyed the oom-ness that is lowbie healing. We even had a boss fight that we barely survived when the tank pulled extra mobs, died, then the other two dps died, but my son finished off the boss and the final add with 10% health while I squeaked out the last few bubbles and renews to keep us alive. Wow! That was, indeed, fun! And while I'm sure Cataclysm will put somewhat of a damper on our tandem leveling, he's parading proudly around Stormwind on his proud level 20 steeds. I look forward to seeing him soar in Outlands and Northrend as well. :)

While Azeroth is still Azeroth, the sundering changed things for us. Cosmetically yes, but more fundamentally in how we interact with the world, quest, tell/receive stories, and progress through content. And while I'm still a little concerned about the feeling of not 'getting enough new content,' I'm entirely on board with how it's being delivered to us!

Cataclysm is almost here!!!

Putting my money where my mouth is; the Shattering

After my last post, I kept thinking about different gamepads. Logitech's G13 is consistently lauded as superior to the Nostromo/Belkin n52, and claims to support Apple products these days. Since I posted that the lull before the expansion was a good time to try something new, I thought I might follow my own advice and give the G13 a try. It will run you $70-80 US, so it's not cheap, but has a plethora of programmable options to expand your gameplay.

Why the Shattering in the title?
Try it and find out! Regardless if you've been using your traditional keyboard or something else, any time you change the layout of keys/buttons/etc, you'll find it takes some time to adjust.
Just like shooting free throws, a small change in biomechanics can take quite a while to adjust.
It may feel like everything you knew before, those effortless run-jump-spin-strike abilities, all of it is just gone. Just like our old Azeroth will be tomorrow.

My most vivid memory of this, strangely, comes from bowling, an activity I do less than once a year. When I was a child, my family went bowling with my uncle's family. My uncle bowled semi-professionally at the time. I was a kid, of course, and my parents had shown me the basics of bowling but I really didn't know what I was doing. I usually bowled about a 120-140. My uncle took one look at my 'form' and started correcting my walk up, my swing, everything. I tried doing what he told me to, and I was horrible! Of course, his corrections were, in fact, correct, and as I practiced them, I eventually got better.

So, over the weekend I messed around with the G13, trying some different key combinations and just trying to get used to it. It was actually very frustrating, because I didn't know where my abilities were! I felt like such a noob and had to force myself to find the keys on the gamepad rather than resorting to clicking with my mouse, but I did get to the point eventually where I could at least stand behind a dummy and feel comfortable. In fact, the biggest change made me the most comfortable dpsing. That is, I'm trying to use the little thumbstick to move around instead of using keys. If you can move with your thumb, it frees up 4 keys in the middle of the keypad that can then constitute some of your most-used attacks. It feels great Scourge Striking from the 'rest' position, instead of having to constantly move my hands up to the number row to do my attacks.

The keypad is very easy to program. At it's most basic, you can just click on any G-key and then hit a key on your regular keyboard and you're set. I just translated my keybindings from before to the G13 (for example, the G1 key is set to 'H', my Dark Transformation). For how to set up and run the G13 in Wow, Gravity at pwnwear.com has a couple of superb threads on the topic, so head over there and search for 'G13' if you're interested!

I'm feeling a bit Shattered, but if I can stick with it, I think in the long run I'll be very happy with the results.

On a side note, I'm excited for tomorrow, and the next few weeks!
Yes, there will be turkey in a few days, but I can't help but anticipate the case of Monsters I'll be imbibing as of December 7 just as much. :)

Twilight of the Lich King

The eponymous (heroic) Lich King is quite the bugger, even if pugs are defeating his lesser non-heroic doppelganger daily.

Still, there's really not much left to do for the 1000+ guilds that have been raiding Icecrown for many many months now, and that have completed all but the most difficult of encounters available.

What is there to occupy our time?

This week is the last my guild will raid until we're all 'fresh' new level 85 characters, ready for the new challenges the Cataclysm will bring us.

We've been essentially messing around with achievements, battling the ennui and lack of focus rampant in Wow raids these days (nights).

Sure, a while back I posted our server-first Grand Crusader, which was still somewhat of a challenge even if it was a tier old.

Sure, we 'Observed' the Fall of Algalon and accomplished the mount-related Ulduar achievements, even if they were two tiers old.

But one achievement had still eluded the vast majority of guilds out there, hanging out like the lowest yet heretofore unobtained fruit on the Forbidden Tree: the Immortal! Yes, random pugs have been doing Undying on various alts (I have that title from the one and only attempt I made on my at-the-time terribly undergeared resto shammy), but the Immortal has been foiling guilds for almost two full years. The guild I raided with two years ago was able to accomplish all the achievements in Naxx25 prior to the release of Ulduar save one: the Immortal. On our very last week prior to Ulduar, we had made it through every boss without a single death to Sapphiron. And, wouldn't you know it, we were at about 50% when my mouse died, shortly followed by the agonized cries of 25 raiders when Hine expired prematurely.

Thus it was with some trepidation that our undermanned (19 raiders, but almost all mains) Monday night group entered that vile pyramid in the sky.

Fears which turned to groans when we stood before the Silly Taunt Boss (Razuvious), and our ice mage summoned his pet and it was inexplicably set to aggressive. Sure enough, the botched pull resulted in a clothie getting one-shot and having to run out. Thankfully, the instance can be reset if you run out before killing any bosses.

The second time the pull went reasonably well, but the poor priests, long unaccustomed to the silly mind control mechanic of the fight, missed a taunt and a caster pulled agro, once again resulting in a clothie insta-gib.

Groans and frustrated expletives burst out via Vent, with some questioning the commitment of others, and general dissatisfaction was expressed. The GM asked if we just wanted to give up, but Hine and others said, 'there's no reason we can't do it.' Whereupon I discovered Hine had 'entered to many instances recently' to partake. So, I flew around the carrion fields below Naxxramas, pretending to be one of the elite drakes circling the instance, until, thankfully, the Instructor got his own lesson in Threat and all the clothies survived. Since I still couldn't enter; I had to wait while the 'scary' bosses were challenged next, but the IceTomb Boss and the Swirly Circles of Doom On the Floor Boss were vanquished without incident. I wouldn't say the mood was jubilant. I wouldn't say the mood was expectant. But at least my 18 intrepid colleagues might have started to think, 'maybe we can do this, after all.'

We trudged through the Construct Quarter, where the Big Tank n Spank (dps check? um, check.), the Slime Slobberer, the Doggie, and even the Electric Charge Boss expired without much fanfare. The latter boss elicited some concern, but rather than risk crossing charges, most of the ranged simply spread out and stood unmoving, ignoring the charges and leveling their lethal attacks in an iconoclastic manner.

We sludged through the Arachnid Quarter, where very little resistance indeed was offered by its denizens. The Ubiquitous Beetle's shell was simple to crack, the Widow's candles blew out with a puff, and the Not So Itsy-Bitsy Spider's webs proved little challenge.

Next we finished off the Military Quarter, where Gothik's spawning adds laughably died in pitiful piles of corpse dust, and we rode herd on the Horsies Of Something Supposedly Scary, being careful to not clump up on the One that Chains Lightening in Bad Ways.

With growing confidence, we hastened to the Plague Quarter, killing Goat Head Guy before he ported, Dancer before we crossed the floor more than once, and yes, the Healer Interrupter before he prevented much healing at all.

We battled the killer foes of boredom, lack of focus, and low motivation, and came up.... interested, focused, and motivated enough, if only just.

Not only that, but we defeated the Ledge Boss, the Frogger Boss, and Most importantly of all, the RNG Boss - that final boss that had always managed to fell mice, disconnect tanks or otherwise torpedo the success of so many raids in the past.

We Did It!!!
Of course, just like this tale, the achievement was more than a little anticlimactic, and rather than the typical jubilation at overcoming a difficult challenge as a guild, by far the most prominent emotion was relief.

But, we got 'er done, in these Twilight days and nights of the Lich King. We got 'er done. And I'll wear my Immortal title with pride, no matter when it was obtained.

Death Knight UI/addon 4.0 update

Over a year ago I wrote about the addons any good raiding dps DK needs. Wow, can't believe it was so long ago!

I've actually turned over more than half of my addons, so I thought I'd write a little about them now, realizing that at least some of these are likely to change as their authors may or may not update them for Cataclysm and we're likely to see some new shiny addons come out at that time as well.


I'll copy my format from that previous post and comment on any changes/updates here.


1. Raid Warnings/Events: Still absolutely essential for raiding, despite what some misguided snottydins might tell you. DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) is still the industry standard, but I've converted to BigWigs, as it is less memory-intensive. Both work very well for helping identify important events during a boss fight, and allow some customization of how you want to be alerted (BIG letters on screen? A sound? Both? you got it).

2. Proc Alerts: Blizzard's version is a very nice start, and quite a few bloggers have commented on how visually pleasing their HUD notifications are. As unholy so far, the Dark Transformation and Sudden Doom procs are very easy to identify by their visual alerts. So far, I'm not aware of the in-game system having a Runic Empowerment alert, which would be nice to know so that I could hold off on Death Coils for three seconds (unless runic power is capped and no runes are available). I haven't used Mik's Scrolling Battle Text for a long time: I used Power Auras for a while, but haven't loaded any proc alerts for 4.0 yet. If you prefer auditory alerts, one of these addons still might be best for you. I haven't tested Frost to see if their in-game proc alerts work as well - but I've seen screenies of Rime procs etc that look pretty good, so  you might be able to rely on the default system for now, although a Runic Empowerment alert is even more important for Frost than Unholy.

3. Rune/Disease Watch: I'm still a 'thowback,' although I'm not using Rune Hero any more. It remains as important as ever for you to know which runes are ready to be used, which ones are almost off cooldown, and how much runic power you have. Even more importantly, you need to know how much time is left on diseases so you can ensure they don't fall off. The default Blizzard interface fails hugely here and it's very difficult to use their rune display effectively.

I like DKI Runes, and even though my health bar (when I'm being targetted) superimposes on it, it doesn't cause problems with the rune display and I prefer to have it front and center as you can see from the big screenie below.
You have many options - try a few out and see what you like best. DDR is the very popular choice on Elitist Jerks right now (Docs Debug Runes) but I'm not fond of it at all. DKI Runes has (as you can see) a sword-looking addon that is more compact and well-designed than my old fave Rune Hero, and has a nice disease watcher as well. I was a BIG fan of Acherus Runes, but it hasn't been updated and doesn't work for 4.0. One advantage of DDR over DKI is it has a nice obvious display of Shadow Infusion stacks (it may be possible to do for DKI as well, I just haven't discovered it yet).

4. Communication: Ventrilo is still the gold standard. It's the one 'addon' not available at Curse.com. (But download is free at several sites). The in-game voice comm is horrible and I don't know of any raiding guilds that use it.

5. Threat Meter: Threat meters are again relevant for 4.0 and I've noticed it's easier to pull a mob/boss than it was before. We don't have any passive threat reduction, and misdirect abilities have been nerfed. Good tanks still hold threat, but as a raider, you're responsible to watch your threat. Omen is by far the most popular threat meter, and the one I still use.

6. Damage Meter: I realize quite a few players/bloggers out there like to demonize meter-watchers, and rightly so in some cases. If you attempt to simply max dps without paying attention to fight mechanics or what your role might be, you're a bad player. But, when your primary role is to dps, why wouldn't you want feedback on how you're doing? As I've mentioned before, the meter gives you instant feedback that you're doing something right - or wrong. I can't tell you how many times I've noted a drop in my dps - and thanks to the meter - realize that after that last wipe I forgot to summon my ghoul, or after changing specs to pick a presence, and so on. Damage meters for bad players? NO. Bad players are bad players. Good players use damage meters. By the way, I've dropped the resource hog Recount and now use Skada. I still prefer the useability of Recount and may go back to it, but for now Skada is what I use.

7. Attack Power gauge: I was VERY pleased with Bleeding Hearts and had a separate post on it previously, but it seems to cause huge lag problems and sometimes seems the culprit in disconnects. It hasn't been updated in a long time and sadly I've had to delete it. Tiny Melee Stats still works but it's not my favorite. I'm still looking for a good option here. In any case, it's very helpful to see how much attack power you have to help with determining when to summon pets. Now that they also get our haste, it would be nice to have a haste indicator as well. I'd love to see a thermometer type gauge like Bleeding Hearts for both stats somewhere on my screen.

8. Others: For the most part, any other addons are for personal preference and won't contribute to your performance as a dps DK.

-MetaHud, one of my long-time favorites, is currently not working in 4.0. *sadface* The HUD you see in my screenie is IceHud, which is fairly similar and not too bad.

-Grid. You don't need this as a dps DK, but I do like to see who's alive during a fight, or be able to quickly find someone to target their target etc. It's essential for healers/raid leaders, not so much for dps DKs.

-OneBag. This addon broke for me, although I think it works for others. I'm now using Bagnon, which also has a feature that lets you see your bank and/or alt's bags/banks.

-Postal. Makes mailing and opening batches of mail much easier, as well as keeping lists of who you've mailed.

-Carbonite. Somewhat dated these days, so I'm not using it any more. Questhelper addons can still be useful, but the in-game map and tracker work quite well for me now.

-Gearscore. I actually used GS lite for a while, now I don't have either turned on.

-SpartanUI. As I posted more recently, the UI mod I use. It also requires Bartender but the download comes preset for SpartanUI. nUI is also very popular and even has a DK skin, but I've tried it and didn't like it. It's not bad - and is very similar in many ways, it's more a matter of preference. These addons preferably clean up space on your UI and are visually pleasing as well. You can make a case for these helping your raid performance by allowing you to be more aware of your surroundings and being able to find your target easier. I used the default UI for many years and it works just fine if that's your preference.

-Bloodhound. A very lightweight addon for helping gathering (which a dps DK IS NOT, but at the moment I'm mining until 85). There's better ones out there, I just don't need them.

-AutoProfitX. There's a dozen small addons that will dump grey items either automatically or put a button in the vendor tab. Nice to not have to click each one to sell individually.

-AuctionLite. I'm not enough of an Auction House mini-game player to get into Auctioneer. AL does what I need. I dont load it for my DK though - just my bank alts.

-Parsing sites: over the past year I've made multiple mentions and uses of these sites. Back on my original post, I was using WMO Online, which is still in operation, although I prefer World of Logs these days.

-Achievement Screenshotter: I had forgotten to add this one back in and was bummed when I looked for screenies from a couple of achievements my guild got over the past few days. It's back now, and screens from all sorts of random achievements will be dumped in my folders over the next few months.
 
And there you go - an update on addons that are useful for raiding dps DKs in late Lich King 4.0! (and a few that don't matter, but make life in Wow easier/better). Enjoy!

It's ... Just ... About ... Time!!!

I finally got a computer that works (I hope I hope), all Wow patches applied, and figured out what what plaguing the first 'dead' laptop I bought - problems with plugins and my Wolfking keyboard. More on that later.

Hine's level 80 gear/spec/gems/reforging are all in, and she's ready to roll! I have spent far too little time becoming accustomed to the changes, so tomorrow's raid should be .... interesting. :)

In any case, I'll give her a shot this week, focusing on getting Hinenuitepo up to speed. Hopefully I can start commenting on what it's looking like as we head into the final month of waiting for Cataclysm, and talk more about what to expect in the next expansion.

In addition, I'll try frost out if/when I have a chance (my second spec is blood tanking at the moment), and put in level 80 talents etc for Hinemanu (hunter) Hinetitama (shammy) and go from there.

Sorry for the long silences, hope you all are doing well, and getting excited for the Cataclysm!

4.01 Please Hold While We Redirect Your Call

1) I spent about 20 minutes on hold with an opthamologist's office yesterday, trying to set up a consult (look up 'lack of pupillary response' and imagine it's you if you want to alarm yourself, yay for interwebs). Finally they come online and tell me they need to get me in right away. Concerning, but hopefully I can get a little assistance with why my vision has been getting worse.

2) I'm in week 2 of teaching some grad courses up in Seattle again. 60+ hours on top of regular work schedule... ouch. Rewarding, but very draining. Will have grading to do next week, but hopefully more time for good stuff like family, rest, and... WoW of course. :)

3) Trying to apply the patch was a joy yesterday. The download was horribly slow and when it says it's done, I get errors. So, no working patch for me yet. I'll keep trying.

4) What I have been able to see so far in theorycrafting sites and brief visits to the PTR is very encouraging. After months of silence, the past month has seen DKs get their game on. Frost still needs some work, but blood tanks are starting to look pretty solid, with some of the standard tank tools yet still maintaining their 'flavor' - the rune strike change looks like just what the Dr ordered. I'm curious as to what the Death Grip glyph might do for them... will it be spammable?

5) My long time love, Unholy, is looking better than ever. The synergy between the ghoul and DK are better, and not just an autoattack bot as it has been. I really love Dark Transformation! I'm a little concerned that it makes up so much of our damage, since it's vulnerable to the dangers of OP pets like BM has been at times for hunters, and at others it doesn't scale well, like the current Blood Queen Lanathiel fight. Still, the rune use, ability to 'roll' diseases (in a different way), pet use, not having to worry about the proccy aspects of Runic Empowerment... all of it looks really good to me! I'll still give Frost looks - in part to see how it works, in part to test it for readers of this blog, but as it stands now, Unholy looks like the bee's knees to me.

Sorry for putting everyone on hold yet again, but we're getting.... so.... very..... close!!!!

I Went to Icecrown and all I got was this Lousy Screenshot

Icecrown is where it's at. Not Dragonblight, which has these little diversionary 'raids,' requiring us to run around a big room and learn one real boss fight. Certainly not that glowing spiraly purpley tower on the edge of the Borean Tundra.

Icecrown is where the Frozen Throne is. The Big Bad Lich King. Frostmourne. Nemesis of all, but particularly so for Death Knights who have experienced the half-life of being in his thrall. So, in the waning days of the second World of Warcraft expansion, it's still where raiders find themselves come time to join with their band of 25 or so plucky adventurers, finding what challenges they may, and overcoming them!

In my case, we've been doing the Glory of the Icecrown Raider achievements, and while a few of them were tricky (the tank swaps of Sindragosa's Buffet in particular), last night we found ourselves with only the Neck Deep in Vile achievement separating us from our mounts of skeletal swiftness. On two previous nights, we'd successfully gotten LK down to 1% before his explosion when a Vile Spirit hit someone. Unfortunately it was too late to keep from killing LK and we failed the achievement. Both times it was too late to wipe and the Lich King died without giving us our due. We were determined not to fail this time, and carefully modifying our kite path to ensure no wayward defiles were dropped in the middle, we managed to defeat him without encountering any Vile Spirits, although we still had to check our logs after the explosion to make sure.

Riding the exhilaration of the moment - and our shiny new mounts - we decided to see if we could accomplish an achievement sweepstakes for the week. We'd only just the previous week killed Anub'Arak in TOGC as a guild for the first time. I know, I know - that is SOOO 2009, but Insomnia had been working on the fight late last year, only to drop it when ICC opened. Now, in better gear the fight is certainly easier, but with better gear also comes more health, which means more healing for Anub in P3. We actually wiped quite a few times in getting that first kill.

We'd already cleared the first 4 bosses in TOGC without the careless mistakes that results in wipes on old content. 50 attempts remaining on Anub. Soulstones were placed on our misdirecting hunters who are so fond of attracting shadowstrikes. And we did what we so rarely have done; focused on our first pull, defeating the Beetle on our first try!

A few people had mentioned that they thought this hadn't been done by the other guilds on the server, and confirmation arrived in the announcement realm-wide of a realm first achievement! :) Many reading this will scoff, for it is an old achievement, but still one that is undone on the majority of realms. Trade was an interesting place to be afterward, with the mix of "you stupid nooobs, you suck. This server sux. Ally sucks!" along with congratulations from other raiders on the server.

In any case, my screenshot addon was apparently on the fritz, so all I have for you is this haphazard snapshot of the last few achievements, with my drake peeking from behind the window. Sorry.

I went to Icecrown, and all I got was this Lousy Screenshot.

Still, it was a fun night that reminded us of why we do this thing called Wow.

Have a great weekend!

New Post

There has been an almighty ruckus in various forums about the lack of work on DKs in Cataclysm, just in case you haven't noticed!

I can sum the whole thing up thusly: as early Cataclysm changes were being announced, Blue posts indicated Death Knights were getting their rune system reworked, primarily to address our gcd-locked situation. Various DKs in beta have demonstrated - in theorycrafting and in live beta servers - that we're more gcd-locked than ever. In addition, the class mechanics are simply borked. As new builds have rolled out, Death Knights have seen perhaps the fewest changes and the least blue posts in official forums of any class. And Death Knights have gotten very very little in the way of new or fun stuff, compared to most other classes.

Let the QQ begin!!! In fact, one of the very few Ghostcrawler posts addressing Death Knights has been merely to chastise us for QQing, and to tell us to settle down. Thanks for that.

My position throughout has always been; wait and see. Blizzard has always done a good job in the end with class development, and it's inevitable that some classes have to wait while others get worked on first. Is it annoying that we haven't heard much from the devs on our class? Absolutely. Is is poor PR from a company that should know better, to not at least tell us that we'll get fixed? Definitely. It leaves openings for people to insert all kinds of 'the sky is falling' proclamations as is public forums grand tradition to do. And certainly, if Blizzard does indeed think DKs are 'fine' as they are, then I like many others have a variaty of alts waiting in the wings ready to go. I could always level one of those first while waiting for Blizz to realize they need to fix us. I'm still not that worried, though. I have a very hard time believing Blizz thinks DKs are fine, with all the evidence to the contrary.

So, we'll have our day in the sun.

Our pasty white undead flesh could use a little, eventually.





On a side note, my guild's recent achievement-hunting has resulted in very little work on the last remaining hard modes (LK & Halion), but we'll get there eventually. We had a <1% fail on neck deep in vile achievement, the last achieve we need for our 25 man drakes, so I'm sure we'll do that again next week and hopefully soon get back to heroic modes. Halion in particular isn't a terribly tough heroic fight, and Halion has several of the last remaining bis items I need, outside of tokens.

Have a good weekend!

Milestones n fun n stuff

A few of my guildies have been bored recently, so they've been knocking out fishing achievements. One of them unsuccessfully tried about 3000 casts to get the Dark Herring (mine took about 200 casts), but he did get the turtle and also got the Ironforge fish in about 30 casts. I have yet to get the Ogrimmar fish after 3000+ casts, and I've sorta given up. I also lack the fishing derby achievement for the meta, but I'm never online for the contests, so not sure if I'll ever get that one.

In any case, a few other 'milestones' for my Warcraft toons have kept things fun.

I had a 20k fight on my DK, which admittedly isn't that hard on Blood Queen Lanathiel 10 man heroic. It's just that I've never been the first bite in 10 or 25 man before. At the time, recount suggested what would have been a top 50 parse on WOL, but we didn't have anyone parsing combat logs. Still, it was fun so I thought I'd satisfy the 'screenshot or it didn't happen' crowd. ;)

Despite my limited Wow schedule, I've spent a little time here and there leveling two of my alts, my hunter and my warlock. One of my goals is to have them 'Cataclysm ready' by release date, so I've occasionally logged onto them to nudge them in that direction. It seems the best way in general to level quickly is to quest, but if you have limited time, just doing the random 5-man dungeon is very effective, since the mobs give double xp and they usually go very quickly to the 33k dungeon completion xp bonus, along with the emblem. At any rate, I've been working a little extra on my hunter this week to get her to 80, and she's got 1 1/2 bubbles to go! The 'class I'd never play' has made the long journey to 80! Tea party at 7. Next up, gnome warlock does Northrend (he's 75 at the moment). That will make my DKs, shaman, rogue, hunter, and warlock sitting at 80 for now....

Last but certainly not least, my unscheduled raid has managed to run for 1-2 hours each of the past two weeks, accomplishing an achievement or two towards the meta-achievement.... Drakes here I come! Hopefully before Cataclysm anyway. ;) I have a few achievements left, but when I have the drakes, I'll try to remember the screenshot of that too :) Some guildies finally got Bane of the Fallen King this week, but unfortunately I don't spend enough time on 10-mans to try for that, so we'll see what happens in 25-man attempts. It was fun doing some hardmodes in Ulduar with my guild last night, but naturally somewhat anticlimactic. Still, in my first visit to observe Algalon, he did offer us a friendly chat before we punched his phase ticket to nowhere.

Hope you're still enjoying your Wow time, or if not, your hiatus until Cataclysm arrives!

Cataclysm Release Date: Take #3009

I stopped by my local GameStop to get my pre-order in (I'm slow, I know) for Cataclysm and asked what information they had on the release date. They said 'November,' but of course we all know that that may mean something, or nothing.

Ever since Blizzcon last year there has been speculation, and literally dozens, if not hundreds of release date threads on official forums.

"Logic" or "evidence" has been mulled over non-stop, and optimistic predictions of a Spring 2010 release have faded into oblivion amid jeering "LolFails."

Primary arguments have been:
1) looking at the announcement, beta, and release cycles of the game and its two previous expansions. This examination suggests an approximately Oct-November 2010 release.
2) The announcement at Blizzcon last year that said people would be whining about goblins and worgens by the next Blizzcon. This suggested a release date by the end of the summer

In any case, with closed beta well under way, we can say with some confidence that it's unlikely the end of summer scenario is accurate, which leaves us with Q4 predictions, and hopes that nothing occurs to slide the expansion into next year.

I need to plan my time off work, after all.


My guess is 18 November.
It could be 11 November.

Sooner - while surprising, would be ok with me. As long as they can get Death Knights properly put back together after they've ripped the stuffing out of the class.

And I sure hope it's not later. I want my Cata!

What's your take at this point?

But, the Meters!

If you want to get silly and see what currently-geared raiders can do if they don't worry about fight mechanics at all, try running your 277-geared raid through some old content.

We started the night 3 short of a full group, and with Lich King and Halion left, we were left to call the raid early, or do alternate stuff. We did the weekly raid (Patchwerk) and silly melee pulled some hatefuls and died. Still, with live streaming of our parses, several of us were in the top100 on that fight.

Raid still not full. We went to do Toravon, and a good number of us cracked the top50 for our respective classes.

Raid still not full. What the heck, let's clear VOA. So, we hit Archavon, then Koralon, then Emalon. By the time we got to Emalon, we were simply having fun. We grouped the adds on the boss and I saw cleaves, fan of knives, and volleys going off. I kept myself to 'merely' pestilence, and yet the boss died before I could say 'boo.'

After the carnage and boss body parts settled to the ground, we examined the meters.
It was a good laugh on an off night.
We had three raiders finish as the top dps in the world on WOL for their class on the Emalon fight, with Massakur the furious warrior #1 for any class by over 7,000 dps (he was over 31k for the fight). I was merely around 23rd for unholy DKs. Laughing, I said I'd have to Death & Decay and we should come back next week for the fun of it and flask.
On the night, I was ranked in the top 50 for 4 of the fights, and pretty much every raider cracked the top 200 for their spec, worldwide.

Want to have some fun? Convince your raid lead to take you through some old content and run a log. :)

Fortunately, our raid did fill and we did one of the Lich King achievements. (Hopefully a drake awaits in the near future).

Have a good weekend!

Deforming

... or, Adjorning as Defined in this post I made in April.

Yes, my 'Tard Ten' as I affectionately called it, will no longer have Hine to blame for it's failures.
Unfortunately, the ICC10 I attempted to shepherd on Sat/Sun never really made it past the 'forming' stage, even after months of blood, sweat and tears.
Trying to put together a third primarily guild ICC10 in a 25-man guild is often an excercise in masochism, I've found. New guildies often got absorbed into the more established runs as people left those groups, and the third group only had 4-5 players consistently attending. I never had the same group two nights in a row, and typically pugged 4-5 players. This meant no heroic modes, no additional Lich King kills, no achievements to speak of (and certainly no fancy mount) and lots and lots and lots of wearing my voice out on vent explaining fights to pugees.

I'll be honest, it was almost a relief when a survey of my summer schedule put the inevitable in the demise of the Tard Ten. I'm out of town at least one of the two nights for the next month, and start teaching classes for the university in the next city up the freeway in the fall - of the Fri/Sat/Sun seminar variety. So, if my poor fellow Tards choose to continue the good fight, I won't be there for much of it.

In any case, a few semi-fond recollections in retrospect that some of you may be all-too-familiar with:
-raids that started at best 45 minutes after posted start time due to need to pug players every night.
-5700+ gear score dps that couldn't beat out our tanks for overall damage or top 5000 dps on boss fights(how do they DO that?)
-Plate dps in spell power gear (and not just pallies)
-warlocks that stack hit to 600+ and can't seem to hit their cookie or summoning portal buttons
-lots and lots of players that don't know fights but seem incapable of listening in vent
-healing, tanking, dpsing. Then, healing, er, tanking, no, dpsing, as the raid needed role switches. Several long-suffering guildies never knew that they'd be doing each time they logged in, and logged more time on an alt in an alt spec than playing on their mains.
-gearing up total strangers every week, since most guildies didn't need any gear from ICC10.
-the satisfaction, at times, of seeing a group that's never run together pull off one-shots of semi-difficult fights like putricide, blood queen, and sindragosa.
-the occasional levity of 'night off' raiders whose inebriation or lack of focus was still somehow more amusing than annoying.
-and, of course, the hilarity that was AVR (RIP) in a 'fun run' raid.

So long and thanks for all the fish, guys.
____________________________________________________
A couple of other updates with apologies for lack of screenshots.

My hunter Hinemanu is still gradually leveling on weekends and has crossed the level 60 mark and is happily flying around Hellfire Peninsula. That outlands gear isn't too cartoonish! Oh, wait, it is. :) I'm still enjoying the 'the class I Swore Never to Play.' :P

I hit the 20 shards mark on Shadowfrost shards, so another ~4 weeks and some goodness will hopefully be in my hot little hands (barring an inability to to raid from the hotel room on the road on an upcoming trip. but even so, it won't be too long!). I did manage a few decent parses this past week despite all the top spots being taken by legendary axe wielders. I look forward to re-entering the lists once I have the proper jousting weapon again.

Tiny gold-related comment: is it just me, or has the AH become a rather dry wasteland? I'm feeling lucky these days to make 15g profit on cut gems, and if I list more than 5-6 a day, the listing is inevitably wasted. There's still gold to be made out there, it's just not that much. I suspect that unless you're very determined and very well-organized, the best gold-making strategies the gurus post won't do much for us until Cataclysm drops. That's ok I guess. There's really nothing to spend it on, anyway.

Until next time, have fun out there!
-Hine

Silly Me

1. In which I Poach Myself

2. In which I fail at leveling

1. Due to a couple of my 'regulars' - two of the most dedicated and skilled players - being out of town for the weekend, I logged on Sat evening with some trepidation regarding my still-forming HICC10 group (So-called 'Tard Ten' because it normally has so many hunters and DKs). After 30 minutes, there were 4 of us in group. A mage, who often heals on his pally. A still slightly undergeared rogue alt/main of a former raiding DK in my guild, and a new trial ele shammy, and yours truly. No tank (unless you count me), no actual healers. Well, nothing really. :(  The Tard Ten was a Tard Four.

I made a few half-hearted scans of LFG for potential pugs, but pugging 6 players makes me want to burn my mouse hand off, so I quickly dipped back out and resumed mammoth farming.

One of the other two 'main' guild ten-mans had a few absences (I'll call it the Officer's Club or O-Club) as well, so I got a few whispers from one of their leaders asking me if we were going to get a full group, to which I replied, 'not likely.' He asked if we'd like to help them get their group going, and I, sadly, agreed. They only needed two players. I hopped into their vent channel, and recommended they take the trial to see how she did, and to take one of the other two guys, but one had just logged, and the O-Club said they wanted to only take mains that were raiders, which left the rogue out.

So, yes, I Poached myself and joined the O-Club. I felt dirty about it, too. I abandoned my group... which of course had mostly abandoned me first for other pursuits, and raided with a main-filled group that runs HICC10 every week.

And it felt good.
In that sinful way that eating a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's feels good. Guilty, but oh so yummy.

Their group got the last of the achievements for Glory of the Icecrown Raider and the skeletal mount last week (but is just starting heroic LK), but a few of them wanted an item or two from heroic bosses, and one of their regulars had missed a week and wanted a few achievements. The group was also game for any achievements I or the trial wanted, so on Saturday we ended up doing 5 heroic fights, and 5 fights on normal for the achievements. Perhaps that shouldn't seem such a big deal for someone who has the good fortune to be 8/12 HICC25 and who kills Lich King on 25-man every week, but given my hellacious struggles with the Tard Ten, it was ...  nice. I did end up tanking a number of the fights, which I don't prefer, but it gave Massakur a chance to use his Shadowmourne. On Sunday we worked on heroic Sindragosa, which is still a challenging fight, and then we killed Lich King. I tanked it for the first time, and when soul reaper did our main tank in, managed to survive until the magic 10% win (good job healers on relatively squishy Hine).

I did feel badly about abandoning my group for the weekend, but given that it wasn't much of a group, what can one do? I do plan to still try to put the group together for at least a few more weeks to see if we can get it to work, but at some point I may have to call it a spade and either give myself some more time off on the weekends, or try to join one of the more successful groups. We'll see.

2. I spent a little time with the hunter this weekend. As usual, leveling with a hunter was as easy as spreading whipped cream cheese on a toasted bagel (harder than a knife through hot butter, but easier than spreading those cold butter patties on soft bread). Really, it was fairly fun and mindless play. After killing a couple of those level 60 elite giants in Winterspring (at level 54), I made a trip to Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula to train Master Enchanting. Feeling cocky with my trusty wolf at my side, I grabbed a couple level 60-61 Hellboars and killed/kited them to the guards. I thought, well, that was easy. Maybe I'll come back here a little early.

So I leveled some more, and when I hit 56 I decided to make my home in the Outlands.

Off I go, setting my hearth in Honor Hold.
Now, to level.
Quick, let's kill some Hellboars.
They went down fairly easily and painlessly, if a bit slowly due to the level difference. My dps dropped precipitously. But still, no problem.
Now what?
OH, YOU MEAN I CAN'T DO ANY QUESTS HERE? What are all those greyed-out quests I see?
:(
Bleh, slow grinding for two levels before I can quest.


Ah, well, back to WPL/EPL for two levels. Then I guess me and my silly, bruised ego can go back to Outland properly ready to kick mob fanny. And quest. :P

Cataclysm plans #1

It's very very early in the development cycle, but enough information has come out on the next expansion, Lich King is dying weekly (so far, only on normal mode), leading me to contemplate the future and start making some plans.

1. Raiding. Yes, PLEASE! Raiding is why I play the game. While there are plenty of fun metagames in Wow, for me the game is primarily about raiding; defeating bosses working as a team with friends/guildies, and increasing my effectiveness at my chosen role.
However, the 'old' pattern of 4 days in 25-mans, and 2 in 10-mans will be a thing of the past (shared lockout), so things will be changing. For now, I plan to raid with my current guild, for sure in my current time slot, and hopefully in 25-mans. My concern is the possibility of one or the other (10 vs 25) raid 'dying,' but I hope it's not so. I suspect many people will raid their main in 25-mans, then 10-mans with their alts. I have neglected most of my other 80 level alts and would have the opportunity to play them more. I'm not certain about this, but I kinda like the idea of having a few nights 'off.' :)

2. Main characters: DUH!!! :) Actually, this is a valid question, as many players do take the time to evaluate their love for their main and consider if they'd prefer to play a different class/role. At this point in the Burning Crusade cycle, I had been raiding on both my warlock and rogue, but was planning to main my rogue (until I got on a DK in the beta, that is). I'm in the position of being able to chose pretty much anything, which is nice. While I don't have 10 characters like some do, I have a tank class in my DK, melee dps in my rogue/DK/shammy, healer in my shammy, caster - shammy/warlock, and I should have ranged dps in my hunter. I could theoretically choose any of them.

BUT NOT TO WORRY! Death Goddess plans to be Death Knight indefinitely. The other characters are fun, and will eventually hit 85, but they will remain side projects/fun diversions.

More significantly I suppose is the tank/dps question. Most of you know by now, though, how much I love dps. I really really love dps up close and personal. While I can tank reasonably well and think it's important to gear and research doing the job when needed, I find I prefer not to. I had to suit up for half of my 10-man raid and the only positive thing I particularly noted about tanking was that on several fights it was much easier for me to raid lead while tanking.

3. Professions: correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it we're getting other goodies, but no new professions. For the purposes of min/maxing raid performance, Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing have served me well. JC in particular is a wonderful raiding profession. It has given the most attack power equivalence in this expansion, but in addition it provides the most flexibility in maximizing all the necessary stats (hit/expertise/arpen/etc). Utilitywise, a case could be made for engineering, but I doubt I'll go that route. Unless something changes, I'll probably stick with BS/JC in Cataclysm, but with a twist. A couple weeks before the expansion, I'll drop Blacksmithing and level mining to max level. I'll stockpile the materials to re-level BS to max. Then as I level Hinenuitepo I'll brake for yellow dots and hopefully collect enough materials to level both professions from 450-500. Maybe even make a little gold on the side.

4. New stuff. I guess I'm a sucker for those. The Path of Archeology sounds fun and I'll throw myself into as much as possible. Worgen - I'll eventually level one from litter-hood, but at this point I think there's an 85% chance I'll switch to it from my Draenei when Blizzard allows it. I have to admit, Wolverine has been my favorite superhero for a long time, and having claws is just too cool. Flying in Azeroth - absofrickinglutely! Guild leveling? Sounds pretty cool to me, and I'll do my part within the time frames I have available. Any other 'new' things stand out for you?

5. Release plans: I really enjoyed my Lich King experience, so I plan to repeat most of it this time around as well. I'll pre-order a collecter's edition upgrade. Our mall EB has a release party, so I'll go to that. I took my then-8 year old son to the last one.  :)  I may take one or more of my kiddos to this one as well so they can see what a nerd I am! I doubt, however, that you'll catch me in a murloc suit. If I can time it right, I'll take a week off from work to play/level as much as possible (my employer requires 45 days notice so it's a bit dicey). Fortunately my spouse is supportive of using vacation time for said purpose. Last time around I leveled with another DK which was an absolute blast. Leveling with him kept me from being server first DK so I had to settle for alliance first on my server, but it was fun regardless. Who needs sleep? If I time my vacation right, we'll see what happens this time around.

So, I'm starting to get excited about the expansion even though it's a ways off and many things can change between now and then.

What about you? What plans do you have?

10 vs 25 man raids in Cataclysm

Bleh. My last post about  AVR - which I still think is a game-changer - was overshadowed by the news that Blizzard plans to start having shared lockouts for 10 and 25-man raids, and will try to tune gear and difficulty to be the same for both raid sizes.

WOW... that's big stuff. I'm sure there's already 50 different blogs about this already, but it can't be ignored, and I've been too busy to read what others have said so far. At any rate, here's some of my thoughts on the planned changes.

I LIKE:
1. The possibility of having 4 days of main raiding, most likely still 25-man raids, and not feeling 'forced' to do 10-mans in addition to that as I do now. Given that most of my guild does 10-mans on heroic, there is some implication that if I don't also do 10-mans I'm not adequately preparing/gearing. I know, the 'really' hard core guilds will still run multiple full 25-man raids (or 10-mans) so they can prepare for world firsts, but even for a 'normal' guild, it's hard to pass up all those badges, practice, and gear. It might be nice to not feel forced to log on for a full raid nearly every night.
2. 10-man guilds don't have to feel like second class citizens.
3. If you really want to, it will be easier for 'hard core raiders' to feel ok about raiding with their real friends as opposed to what happens in 25-mans (inevitably there are people you don't like but you put up with for the sake of the raid/guild).

I DON'T LIKE:
1. It's easier to do 10-man raids. They may tune the difficulty, but I suspect most guilds are likely to pick their 10 best raiders and go for progression. Most guilds, even server top-5 guilds (like mine), tend to have at least 4-5 players that just aren't the caliber of their guildies. One could easily sideline them, form the best team or two, and progress more quickly through 10-man content.
2. Either there will be NO advantages to 25-mans (you can get the same stuff in 10-man) OR 25-mans will still be 'better.' Blizz is trying to walk the line on this one, but I don't buy it. They'll put more gear per player in the bigger raids or allow legendaries only in 25-mans, or different colored mounts, or something. Either way, 25-mans will still be superior, or if too similar disincentivized. Which means....
3. This could spell the death of 25-mans. I didn't raid 40-mans, but I know I would lament the loss of the 25 man raids and have always felt like killing a boss with the larger group to be the more exhilerating experience compared to the smaller 10-man raids. I'm pretty sure Blizz still wants us doing 25-mans, so it will be interesting to see how they make them worthwhile without making them the only Big Boy Raid available.
4. Additionally, there's a lot of other logistical problems. The balance issues will be huge. Homogenization could be an issue. If Blizz wants 10-man raiders to feel they're getting all the buffs, then 25-man raids will be subjected to more and more overlapping buffs and less of a feeling of each player bringing something valuable.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about the proposed changes.
Honestly, I hope they can make all this work, but I also hope they don't kill 25-man raiding - I'd still love to feel good about the 'big' raids and have a reason to keep doing them.

As far as the other raiding news, I'm happy with gating as Blizzard said, and I imagine all but the most hard core will be able to accept it. And even then, I think that in having to wait for content the 'hard core' will benefit in not simply finishing the content and then being burned out/bored. Kinda like opening ALL your presents on Christmas morning and then finished 30 minutes later. I always preferred opening a few presents a few days before, then some on Xmas eve, then some in the morning, and finishing a few more later with other friends and family.
I'm also ok with multiple shorter raids, could be cool to have locations with different 'feel,' but I also hope they have at least one 'epic' instance in each expansion. I'd prefer 4-6 boss instances to the single room instances we got in Lich King.

MMO-Champion beat me to it

Wow, things have been really busy around here, so thanks to MMO-Champion for making the post I was going to make.

In any case, MMO-Champion recently highlighted a new Add-on that is the NEXT BIG THING for raiding and guilds.

AVR: Augmented Virtual Reality and AVR Encounters, downloadable from wowace or curse.com.

It will be much much abused but can be configured to only accept files from the raid leader etc., and individual scenes can be erased fairly easily.

As mentioned over at MMO, the addon can allow you to put many things on your UI that will help with fights. My guild used it for the first time on Saturday's raid and it was amazing. In combination with other addons like DBM and vamp, it allows you to respond very easily to many fights. On Rotface it shows clearly where the ooze explosion will land. On Putricide where malleable ooze is coming. On Saph, we put circles where each frozen person was to stand. With the separate vamp addon, it will put an arrow on your screen pointing which way to run to the bitee a la quest arrows from questhelper (yay no more missed bites). AMAZING. In my experience, it used very little memory and should be easily implemented without excessive lag even by those with weaker computers. As MMO-champ mentions, the addon uses the Blizz standard API so it's not bannable, but it makes things so easy I can see Blizz trying to disable it in some way.

Of course, giving raid directions is not the only use for this addon.

One of my guildies put a very large phallus on the floor as we were zoning in to ICC, and a female character with girl parts exposed saying 'click my portal' on the portal. Unfortunately, my 10-year old saw it before I was able to figure out how to configure the addon to only allow files from the raid leader. Naturally, such shenanigans can add hilarity to any raid, but just be careful!

All in all, though, it will become part of the sacred canon of raid addons along with DBM, Omen, and Recount! Good stuff!

DKs in Cataclysm; First Look

The inevitable post about the first glimpses of DKs in Cata is here. :)

Meh.

I could leave it at that, but ok ok, let's rant discuss a little more, and damn those rogues for all the cool new shinies they'll be getting.
To see exactly what I'm referencing, you can read the posts about the changes at MMO-Champion.com.

First, the tank change.
I had a long discussion with a friend who really was disappointed with this decision. He really liked being able to tank in all three specs. I think Blizzard worked very hard and made tanks of all three flavors 'viable.' However, it became clear that of course DK theorycrafters would try to find the 'best' tank spec and unholy was not it. Blizz still managed to keep blood and frost somewhat decent, but overall, it was indeed annoying to be selecting a tank spec, working your way down to that juicy talent deep in a tree, and have to spend most of your points on dps abilities. And of course vice versa (speccing dps meant avoiding those 'useless' tanking talents in every tree). So all in all I'm in favor of the change. Blood does indeed have the most unique feel for tanking. If it's not going to be a shield based tank (and I really realllllllly hope they don't create a 'prot' DK talent permitting shields), then self-heals is a pretty cool mechanic. They can really devote the tree to providing some cool tanking talents, and maybe even a couple of different tanking approaches within the tree. Putting more tanking abilities in the tree may also mean that several of them get weaker, since having too many of them available would be overpowered.

Vengeance could be a decent way to handle increasing threat generation for tanks, compared to some of the clunky mechanics we have now.

Ok, what about the other changes?

Rune system changes: meh. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Yes, we have tended to be fairly gcd-bound, pressing keys constantly, so if this change allows us to function with similar mechanics yet be more 'choosy' about the when and where of using abilities, it could be a good thing. I'll reserve judgement.

Outbreak: I like it, but I don't think it offers much. It's kind of a glyph of disease but for openers. I guess it will be nice to be able to apply diseases a little quicker.

Necrotic Strike: Bleh. How is this different from Death Strike again? It's a hot instead of instant heal? I dunno, sounds really boring, and redundant.

Dark Simulacrum: half a thumb up? Could be kind of fun, depending on how it works. It's not clear from the description if the target has to be targetting you, or if the attack is wasted if the incoming spell isn't 'reflectable.' It does just sound like a weak spell reflection (since it doesn't cancel the incoming spell).

I do like change to passive bonuses in trees in general: speccing the majority of our points in a tree get us that 'tree buff,' so unholy and frost dks get damage buffs (this isn't new, but still worth mentioning). It rewards you for committing to the tree that suits your style the most.

It will be interesting to see what they do with presences.

All in all, though, most of this doesn't do much to excite me. I'm hopeful they come up with better as we prepare for the journey to level 85 and beyond.

On Trash

Position 1: Trash doesn't matter! Only boss dps/kills matter!

Position 2: Boss kills = progression. Time spent on trash = less time on progression.

Needless to say, while I hear position 1 frequently, I'm in the position 2 camp.

I'm not recommending gearing/glyphing/spec for aoe/trash (unless you want to use your second spec for it), but I get sick of people losing focus and/or not bringing their 'A' game to trash. My raid has wiped three times in the past two weeks on trash, which is really inexcusable, and a huge waste of time. Wiping aside, killing trash quickly and efficiently has significant benefits for the raid.

So, to that end, I'd like to remind all of us to maintain focus and not be semi-afk during trash. Do your best! And use your cooldowns. That DRW/gargoyle/ghoul will be up when you pull the boss, don't worry. Pull out the stops and perform your very best, during trash AND boss fights alike!

Waiting for Vizzini

On the eve of 3.3, I find myself waiting.....
waiting....
We know about the changes coming tomorrow, so today, I find myself just reflecting on where my DK (and other toons) are at.

Hinenuitepo is ready.

Unfortunately, my guild has banged it's head collectively on P2 of the Lich King encounter for a few weeks now and hasn't gotten him down. Partially this has been poor execution and repeated mistakes by a few people (handling the valkyr and defile - along with infest - on 25-man is no joke), and part of it for us has been the natural attrition that takes place in guilds. We've struggled to field 25 players and often have had to settle for non-ideal comps for the LK encounter. We'll get there soon, I'm confident. We'll recruit who we need, and we do have good people. And there is, of course, that zonewide bufflolol.

In any case, My DK has been able to acquire every item pre-heroic/LK that she needed. She is essentially in best-in-slot gear until we kill the Lich King. In addition, my stocks of consumeables/gems/etc is ready to go: (have well over a 100 fish feasts/spiced mammoth/speed pot/armor pot/strength elixir, 50+flasks, etc).

I'm waiting..... for Vizzini..... (catch the reference?).

Back to the beginning..... Heroic Icecrown represents a fresh start, along with the coming final raid encounters of the Lich King expansion. Looking forward to it!

This weekend I also spent a little more time on my hunter, Hinemanu, burning through her rested experience points. She'll sit on level 38 until next weekend. Here's a shot of her recent progress:

Ding!

In any case, while there's not a lot of excitement going on, there's always things to be done in wow, like a fisherman mending his/her nets after the last trip to sea, and before heading out into rough waters again.

Happy fishing tomorrow!