Udder Madness

[Udder Madness] Unicycle Monoped

2012-01-11T15:35:00.000+13:00

[Udder Madness] Code

2012-01-10T09:55:00.010+13:00

[Udder Madness] Good Morning 1

2012-01-10T09:55:00.008+13:00

[Udder Madness] Schröshire Cat

2012-01-10T09:55:00.007+13:00

[Udder Madness] Realisation 1

2012-01-10T09:55:00.006+13:00

[Udder Madness] My Little Emo

2012-01-10T09:55:00.005+13:00

[Udder Madness] Entente Cordial

2012-01-10T09:55:00.004+13:00

[Udder Madness] Non-Sequitur

2012-01-10T09:55:00.003+13:00

[Udder Madness] Spawn of Satan

2012-01-10T09:55:00.002+13:00

[Udder Madness] Telemarketers

2012-01-10T09:55:00.001+13:00

[Fin.] An end to the madness.

2009-10-01T18:00:00.004+13:00

If you are one of the followers of Udder Madness, you may have noticed that my posting this year has been somewhat lacklustre (viz., non-existent since May).

And it is now time to close my WoW-related-blogging doors and move on.

Reading back over what I wrote during the last year, I really liked working on Udder Madness, and am not ashamed to put my name to the posts. The prima blogga experience was interesting and useful, and I found I have a taste for blogging.

So, if you liked Udder Madness, or a part thereof, or whatever-reason-you-have-for-reading-this-farewell-post I hope you will join me at my new blog:

DS Ex Machina: http://ds-ex.blogspot.com

There once was a blogger in WoW
Who played an anthropomorphic cow
His grades they did slip
The fan hit the shit
He's writing other stuff now

NB: Update, the domain http://www.udder-madness.net expires soon.

/Udder Madness out.
/moo.

A Study in Procrastination

2009-10-01T17:59:00.013+13:00

This is a post I started writing quite a while ago and rather than carry it over to the new blog, I decided to quickly just publish it, since it's a) heavily wow-related and b) the only half-way finished draft lined up for UM.

As a student, you often have multiple deadlines at a time. You obtain mild satisfaction from telling other people how you have 4 assignments, 3 presentations, a couple of posters, a dissertation on the life of duckweed on some lake during the two weeks either side of the summer solstice, all of which are due about this time tomorrow. And you haven't been able to start anything on this list because you've had other stuff to catch up on, you had to work 232 hours last week to pay for rent AND food, and you were required to babysit the twins because your mother is a hamster and your sister has just been diagnosed with testicular cancer. And that's not even mentioning the seven exams you have next week, all spread over the course of two-and-a-half days. You're a poor downtrodden bastard who drew the short straw in every deal throughout history, and your lecturers, every member of the opposite sex, the forces of evolution and the universe in general absolutely hate you and conspire against you to make your life the sort of experience trauma surgeons have nightmares about.

The more discerning audience may end up asking tricky questions, with the inevitable result that they find out that you've had at least a month to work on all your assignments, your presentation briefs were given out in July and of course you've know your dissertation topic since the end of last year. If said audience attempts to make some smart remark like "why didn't you start earlier?" then they're obviously not privy to the fundamental rules of procrastination that govern our generation (I can't remember what the designation of this generation is, but I personally like to refer to it as 'Generation XXL').

Rule 1: Chance of Procrastination is Related to Time Left Before Deadline
In fact the relationship between these two quantities of the form P = a*XXXX(t)+c
where P is the chance that procrastination will occur at any given time set aside for a given task
t is the time remaining until the deadline (in some unspecified unit of time)
a and c are arbitrary constants greater than zero
and XXXX was a carefully calculated, eerily accurate formula that has been lost to modernity because the researchers ran out of coffee

Rule Two: Procrastination is Easy: There's Always Other Stuff To Do
Let's take a look at a WoW player (viz. WoW addict), and how they might go about doing an essay:
10:53: "man, that was a late raid last night. Didn't get to bed until 3, no wonder I woke up late. Well, too late to go to my 11 o'clock class now. Might as well have breakfast."
11:47: "nothing on TV, might as well get dressed"
12:01: "what to do... oh hey look, this essay is due next week, better do some research."
12:02: "hmmm, could go to the library, but Google scholar will do just as well, and save me a trip, so I'll have more time to do this essay, right?"
12:04: [You have 13 new messages]
12:29: "Time for lunch!"
12:44: [Beksbaby@MSNdistraction.com says]: "wat u up 2?"
12:58: "hmm, better check auctions and in-game mail before I start this essay"
13:02: "oh man, AV is the daily, I can farm a bit more honor, and get some gold, and we win AV all the time."
14:26: "finally won AV, hasn't been this bad in a while. Guess I'll do my dailies while I'm at it, otherwise I'll never get my epic flying mount"
15:38: "So. Hungry. Need. Food."
16:01: "Oh hey look, 'Blogger And Blood Elf' wrote a new post, better go check it out."
16:23: "THEY'RE DOING WHAT?!?!?! Time to head over to WoWInsider."
16:48: [Beksbaby@stilldistractingu.com says]: "howz ur essay goin?"
16:49: "Oh yeah. The essay. Well, time to cook dinner soon, and then TV and raiding. Guess I'll do it tomorrow."
("){X_x}(")

Rule Three:
Will finish this later.

Quantum Butterflies downs Malygos

2009-05-09T02:45:00.002+12:00

Quantum Butterflies on Aman'Thul have now cleared all normal 10-man content pre-Ulduar.
/cheer.
After an exhilarating 2 1/2 hours of serious encounter progression, in what was for most people their first trip into the Eye of Eternity, we finally downed the Aspect of the Blue Dragonflight.
Each attempt saw us get progressively closer to the kill, as we worked out healing rotations, dps placements and co-ordination and making it to the drake phase alive. We hit his enrage timer multiple times during the third phase, and on the final attempt were left with only two of us alive (myself as a healer and the main tank ^_^). For our troubles I picked up some snazzy Focusing Energy Epaulets which may or may not replace my T7 (breaking my set bonus until I can get the helm, but then I don't really use Holy Light that much), and a mage got Greatstaff of the Nexus.

Being part of a team tackling such a difficult encounter, and seeing our rapid progression was a really cool experience, and I dare say quite a few of us were surprised when we did get him down on the first night.

Great job guys, time to head to bed (have to get up for work in 4.5 hours, ugh).

PS: Damn, forgot to take kill screenshots. But then giant hearts floating in the middle of empty space aren't nearly as impressive as a bunch of naked hordies desecrating a corpse ;).

[Notwow] Udder Madness loves whiteboards

2009-05-06T15:15:00.008+12:00

Well, quite evidently I'm blogging at work. And while this isn't necessarily unusual, I don't really have a lot to do.

Following on from the critical license failures mentioned earlier, I have since been contacted by the Australian-based support with three separate solutions, none of which worked, and the problem has now been escalated to the developers in the UK. Of course, as of posting, it's roughly 3am for those hat-tipping, tea-guzzling chaps over there (hope Ark and Beks got over their jetlag and are happily sleeping), so this application probably won't be working anytime today. Basically turning a planned 10-hour day into a 3-hour day. I should probably just go home.

Instead, here's a PXT of the whiteboard in my office in it's current state (apologies for the terrible quality, my cheap cellphone camera isn't good at dealing with the reflective surface):

This is (hopefully) the solution for the PDE: x'' - 3x' + 2x = 1, with boundary conditions x(0) = 1 and x'(0) = 0, using derivatives of the Laplace transform. Yay, maths. The final answer I got was x(t) = 2 - t - exp(t). It was written on the whiteboard after I was unable to finish the question in a test, and, frustrated, spent an hour completing (and often reworking it).

Yes, sorry, I'm bored. I'm going home. Please remember:

For Great Justice: Arena healing as deep protection.

2009-05-06T14:53:00.002+12:00

Healing as a paladin in Season 6 is proving interesting. As previously mentioned, I find that paladins seem to have a lot less utility than the other healing classes (lack of mobility, drain, cc and instant casts), and particularly vulnerable to lock-outs and mana drains.

Until recently I’ve healed only as deep holy: either 51/20/0 or 49/0/22 (S5 only, since the ret talents were changed in 3.1.0). Recently I’ve looked at other specs, mostly to address the aforementioned issues of utility and mana regen, and since deep Holy gives very little to 2v2 and 3v3 healing. Two alternative specs are popular: ret/holy and deep protection. Of the two

Retribution/Holy (e.g. 32/0/39): has Repentance for control, and infinite mana with Judgements of the Wise, plus trading the Art of Wa r for the loss of Infusion of Light. Additionally it has stun removal, Pursuit of Justice and increased crit %, as well as improved damage output.

Deep Protection (e.g. 19/52/0): infinite mana via a refreshable and undispellable Divine Plea, increased survivability from various stamina bonuses, considerable increases to FoL and HL healing due to increased crit coefficient and a stamina to spellpower conversion (in my mediocre gear I now get 3.7k FoL’s, with 7k crits, and 21k HL crits), as well as a 20 second (!) Hammer of Justice cooldown, and the 3-second silence of Avenger’s Shield (including a daze, and affecting up to 3 targets).

I’m currently trying the deep Prot version, and have to say that it’s interesting and fun to play, a lot more so than deep Holy. The control offered by the 20 second Hammer of Justice cooldowns is impressive, as well as access to Avenger’s Shield. A 6-second stun every 20 seconds is highly entertaining. Against healer/dps we play very aggressively, and mana regeneration is excellent, and means swapping glyphed Seal of Wisdom for the 3-second RNG stun of Seal of Justice for more stunning entertainment (the controlled stun from HoJ is on a separate cooldown to the uncontrolled SoJ stun).

However without the combination of Holy Shock, Divine Favour, and Infusion of Light, double dps does tend to sh#t all over us once Divine Guardian runs out, plus silences/interrupts are even stronger against me without instant heals. Lack of Light’s Grace and Judgements of the Pure also means that healing through Mortal Strike becomes a pain (especially after the stupid damage from a Bladestorm), and the spec requires a dps partner with decent survivability (i.e. a plate-wearer). But overall it’s a lot more pleasant to play than the fairly dull reactivity of deep Holy.

Further thoughts will probably follow as I play the spec more, yet one thing does occur:

The Holy tree is in sad shape when delving deeper into Protection or Retribution can prove more beneficial for 2v2 arena healing.

[Notwow] This post is dedicated to cats

2009-05-06T12:24:00.004+12:00

Because cats are awesome!

This is my parents' cat, Ambra. Isn't she cute?
(Shortly afterwards she reached out with a single claw and scratched my eyelid, it was adorable. I think she still hasn't forgiven me for leaving home.)

A short digression (cats are more important):
So here I am at work. Working. Entering data and configuring the software package that will manage... anyway, I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. Gradually falling asleep, because this part of the job is really f#cking boring, but hey, it's being done. I'd just come back from getting a Cornetto and was making my way through a (now empty) 500ml can of V Black (gogo caffeine), had saved the work I was doing and was recording my progress on paper, when my coworker walks in and says "hey, are you using the software at the moment? I'm getting an error".
Load up application, wait, yep... that doesn't look right:

WTF? We haven't even started testing the software and the license has already expired, not to mention the fact that all the license files were moved to the server two weeks ago. And I've already done almost three hours work in the application today, and the licenses were working fine.

Oh well, guess it gave me something else to do. Currently waiting for tech support to get back to me. May soon be making phone calls to Australia as well. Cats don't have this problem:

Cats > applications.

Early Impressions of Season 6

2009-05-05T17:24:00.003+12:00

There may be readers out there who are interested in the perspective of the enthusiastic but consistently mediocre player, the one who has trouble breaking 1500 rating in every bracket. The perspective of the player who plays with like-minded guildies who are also (for the most part) IRL friends, and bases teams around their characters, rather than the FotM comps. For those readers, this post is for you.

Season 6 is proving to be interesting, at our level (MMR of around 1300 in 2v2 and 3v3) both double dps and healer/dps are popular. I play a healer paladin, partnered with a destruction warlock and a frost death knight in 2v2 and 3v3, and messing around with two more death knights and a resto druid in 5v5 for the points.

I personally like the new system of matches based on MMR (matchmaking rating), even if a lot of people still don’t fully understand it, means we get a much better selection of matches and our win/loss ratio doesn’t look abysmal. Our 3v3 is currently sitting at 15-15 (5-5 during the first week, and 10-10 during the second) so our MMR is exactly where we should be.

Following patch 3.1.0 a few changes to arenas are apparent, even in our brackets:
Paladins appear to be the worst healers now, especially against priests (in Ring of Valor, my mana disappears at the same frightening rate as whatever pillar I happen to be hiding [cowering] behind). Priests live forever, PvE resto druids can tank DKs even when on basically 0 mana and shamans don’t seem to drop below 6k mana.

- Arms warriors are really good again (and Bladestorm does a stupid amount of damage). In combat charge also negates the advantage of 40 yard Judgements.

- Rogues can do scary amounts of burst, as can mages. And with even more control tools between them, they make a similarly formidable combination as in previous seasons; RMP is once again very impressive if coordinated well. The double rogues we’ve seen so far do seem to have a bit of trouble with DoTs and a paladin healer.

- Feral druids make good dps partners with a healer, since in Bear form they can turtle for ages, at least against a DK, and have good control to boot. Oh and somehow we always lose to Moonkin. Like the memorable 3v3 against double Moonkin and a paladin (the AoE damage was too much to heal through, and double Typhoon sucks when you're trying to Holy Light someone).

- Season 6 is shaping up to look a lot like Season 3 and 4, except that hunters, ret paladins and warlocks can do ridiculous damage in very small amounts of time, as can resto shamans and priests. I predict that druids will once again become the dominant healers, giving them a 5th season of being at the top, maybe I should level Beathooven…

My personal experience after healing 50 2v2 and 30 3v3 games so far is that I’m not a big fan of paladin healing, especially compared to playing a resto druid in S3/S4. Lack of mobility and instant heals leaves me feeling very vulnerable to cc/burst on partner vs. double dps, and mana draining against healer/dps.

- Mana can disappear quite quickly when I need to resort to using Holy Light (which is so easy to interrupt/cc), and with BoW and Divine Plea both being dispellable regaining mana is a real pain (especially due to the vulnerability when needing to stop drinking to bring partner back up). Holy Shock crits into instant FoL are still really nice, and the 60 second improved Sacred Shield in the 49/22/0 build is also helpful.

- While my survival against melee is better than either priests’ or shamans’ (and thus I spend a lot less time having to kite than as my BC druid and my DK partner in Frost Presence can absorb a tonne of damage), I can’t exhibit anywhere near as much control or kill-burst as any of the other healing classes.

- Warlock/healadin seems to have serious issues with Arms warriors, death knight/healerdin has issues against drain, druids (resto and feral) and resto shamans. Rogue/mage, properly played, facerolls us regardless of composition.

- The DK and I have played one game that lasted the full 47 minutes (we didn't even know there was a time limit) against a Frost mage and an unkillable T7.5 resto druid (who was outhealing our dps in treeform even when on 200 mana), but was one of the most intense and fun games we've played. We also played against a Resto shaman/Feral druid which we managed to RNG kill during the very last minute. Both of those happened at around 2am, which was mildly irritating, and we could possibly have won both (sooner) if we'd been more awake. Thankfully 3v3 matches don't take long, since healer mana doesn't last nearly as long (more dps to heal through, and less drinking), and we decimated the single double healer (+ Arms warrior) pretty quickly.

- One thing that does annoy me is my inability to decide which stats to stack for PvP healing, since resilience, spellpower, stamina, MP5, crit, int, and haste all seem to be situationally great. Guess I need to do some theorycrafting. Although that probably depends on which spec I’m using (more of this in another post).

My hopes for the next few weeks:

Reach our MMR in 2v2 and 3v3, giving access to some nice rating rewards (relics, Deadly legs and maybe Furious wrists) – our first rating rewards ever, since the one time we hit ~1570 in S4 we didn’t have enough points for anything. Hopefully the DK can pick up an Ironsoul from Ulduar (not being in a 25-man guild does have a serious impact on our chances of doing well).

Introducing Udder Madness 2.0

2009-05-04T12:21:00.004+12:00

Hi again. I’m still alive. /waves.

One thing to note about blogging, especially if you’re focussing on something like WoW, is that the blogger needs to be interested in both the game, and feel that they have something to write about. Blogging can be quite a drain on one’s time, and at some point I lost both interest in the game and the blog, and as my life was undergoing several radical changes I just sort of … stopped writing.

And while I was...AWoL... a number of other renowned (and personal favourite) bloggers also left:
Daniel Howell from BigRedKitty
Megan from Out of Mana
Phaelia from Resto For Life

They're already sorely missed from my reading list, although Daniel Howell's new blog, Brain Needed Space has already been a source of much amusement and entertainment.

Anyway, I’m back in the game now, finally got The Fall of Naxxramas (last saturday) and my arena partners together (to continue our mediocre and unimpressive track record), so I figured I might as well revitalise this blog.

So welcome to Udder Madness 2.0, now at http://www.udder-madness.net.

[Personal] Things you may find when clearing out your room

2009-02-03T19:24:00.004+13:00

- Lego
- Lego Technic
- Lego Technic Fibre Optic
- really terrible photos you took when you were a kid
- various science kits
- a touch-screen chess computer where G1 to G7 don't work
- a miniature Connect Four set, with twink on half the pieces because both sets of pieces it came with are red
- more terrible photos
- somewhere in the vicinity of $1000 worth of stamps, First Day Covers and Collector's Packs
- approximately 15 reams of paper encompassing virtually everything given to me at school and university, over 16 years or so. Ok, 15 reams is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's at least 5.
- error logging notes from the EMI Cologne IT department, stemming from roughly 1990
- a ten day WoW subscription guest pass key: F2Z428-X9XN-V29BEZ-VRGW-CMHEGD (unused at time of writing)
- coloured-in cutouts of trees, people and fire hydrants? WTF?
- 8 rulers and squares. Wait, 9. No, 10.
- a book in which my 6 year old self wrote "18x3=5", either I was mathematically challenged, or I had an insufficient attention span
- pictures of cats, aka pictures of AWESOME
- pictures of turtles and elephants and monkeys and, and, and
- another thousand dollars' worth of consumer electronics (iPod, MP4 player, Walkman, discman, cameras etc) - all in a state somewhere between "working quite eratically" to "totally dead"
- 2 pairs of wooden knitting needles... the metal ones are much better anyway
- about a dozen CDs won from various radio stations
- about $10 worth of old NZ coins, the heavy ones
- my body weight in dust
- 3.5" disks. Discs? Disks.
- massive amounts of random stationery, artefacts of bygone ages (I'm sure that's the Holy Grail from Monty Python)
- more books than I know what to do with

- a cat!

[Personal] Computer-less

2009-02-03T16:40:00.002+13:00

Currently my personal computer needs are met by a battered and worn ASUS EeePC. Well actually they're not, but I don't have anything else.

I had been in the process of buying the parts for a new PC, but then had to place that order on hold due to certain delays: furniture not in the flat, grandmother died, busy with work, that sort of thing. When I contacted the retail store today I got this message.

"We all sold out the CPU AMD 6000 since the order over 3days"

Sucks. And they won't restock for another 2-3 weeks, if not longer.

So the question is: go with some CPU inferior to the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 2000MHz HyperTransport AM2 64Bit? Or wait for them to restock and kick my flatmate off his Mac long enough to do dailies (or just give up on WoW for a while)? Or get the part somewhere else...

Moving Out, AKA Almost Completely Useless Post

2009-01-30T22:49:00.002+13:00

For the second time in my life I am moving house.
The first time occured when I was 5, and involved crossing 11 time zones and both tropics.
This time it's a move of about 20km into town, but leaving the parental supervision unit behind.

So there's been lots of things to get organised; and since I haven't spent a lot of time in-game there hasn't been much material for wow-related posts.

There has, however, been lots of stuff to organise. E.g. last night I spent about four hours working on a forecasting budget, having entered one of my pedantic, nit-picky and perfectionist (i.e. German) moods. Therefore I found out that the New Zealand tax rates have changed, I have no idea how long ago.
Previously I was working on the basis of 19.5% tax in the lowest bracket, but this was clearly at odds with my payslips.
The new brackets are:
$0-$14000: taxed at 13.9%
$14001-$40000: taxed at 22.4%
Which actually leaves me with a bit of extra money. I still end up $1200 short at the end of the year (assuming predictions, prices, and job stability are accurate, which is assuming a bit much), but there's a pay review next week, so there's hope of not ending up horribly in debt by the end of the year. Except for the roughly $40,000NZD that I owe to the government for my tertiary education.

And there are lists to be written, projections to be made. Must organise content insurance etc. All of which is pretty mundane crap that doesn't interest anyone except me (I want to get my stuff insured) and the insurance agents (who will be able to make some nice profit out of me).

Actually, this post really IS a waste of space. So let me share with you a short story from my recent endeavours into the World of Warcraft.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is a story that clearly demonstrates the sheer quantity of stupidity that can be found in the game sometimes. What makes this story different from my other rants about in-game idiocy? Well, the difference is minor. Let's just get to the story, it's a short one.

The Characters:
D~: some random Aman'Thul Hordie
Ephylia: the paladin main of some little-known run-of-the-mill blogger. That would be me.

The Setting:
Doesn't really matter because this story is about a conversation.

Background Detail:
My mage alt had just reached 50 a few minutes ago, and was preparing to grind Enchanting and Tailoring en masse to 350 or so.

Scene One of Two:
[Trade] D~: WTS lots of Netherweave Cloth
*Thinking: Netherweave Cloth would be great for leveling tailoring, and I could then DE stuff to level enchanting*
Ephy to D~: Sure. I'll buy them. How much? And how many have you got?
D~ to Ephy: I have 21 stacks, looking at 3g each.
*Honest quote of my thought process: 21 stacks. Hmmm, so that's like 20 cloth per stack or something. How much gold do I have? 321. Hmmm. If I offer 300 gold I can get a free stack*
Ephy to D~: I'll take em for 300g.
D~ to Ephy: 300g?
*Trying to think again: hmmm. Have I offended him? Let's redo that calculation. Oh gods, I only offered half of what he wants. Well, let's pretend I'm not an idiot and say this as if it's what I meant all along*
Ephy to D~: I meant, I'll buy 300g worth.
D~ to Ephy: huh? There's 21 stacks.
*Huh?*
*Oh*
*Sh!t*
*holysh!twtfwasithinkingican'tbelieveididthisanddeargodit'slatei'mtirednowondermythoughtsaremessedupandWhatTheF*ckWasIThinking???*
Ephy to D~: Oh
Ephy to D~: Sh!t
Ephy to D~: I'm stupid. 63 gold it is.
D~ to Ephy: lol.
D~ to Ephy: I'll COD it.
Ephy to D~: Ok. Sorry about that. It's late.
*Exit Ephylia for bed*

Scene Two of Two: By a Mailbox in Dalaran. The next day.
*Yay. Mail. Must be that Netherweave Cloth. Ohgodsthatwasembarassingquickthinkofsomethingelse.*
*Opens mail item one: 11 stacks of Netherweave Cloth for a 33 gold CoD*
*Opens mail item two: 10 stacks of Netherweave Cloth with 30 gold attached*
*LOL*
*Sends D~ 60 gold*

Three things I'd like to add:
Hopefully I'm going to be starting a BSc (hons) in Applied Mathematics later this year. Wish me luck, because I'm really going to need it.
Scene One above took place at 3 o'clock in the morning. Closer to 4 o'clock in fact. I stop thinking after 2 (yes, I know, the fact that I stopped thinking is really obvious). I have no f*cking idea how I ended up with those numbers.
I'd have done this as a me-vs-brain type post or something, except that would have been really unoriginal, stupidly so and since it's not yet 2am I realise this. Also, quite evidently, no brains were involved on my end of the dialogue.

So there you have it.

WoW is contains a lot of stupid people, or at least a lot of really dumb-foundingly stupid behaviour.

PS: if it hadn't been so god-damn late, I'd have taken a screenshot. See above for note on not-thinking.

3.0.8 and me

2009-01-23T09:45:00.002+13:00

Well, after cleaning work earlier this week (carpet was still a touch moist) I finally got in a quick WoW-fix last night, downloaded the patch and did some groupy stuff.

So what did 3.0.8 mean for me?

Ephylia is now under 1600 spellpower thanks to the Titansteel Guardian adjustment (i.e. nerf).
And I'm disappointed that Flow of Knowledge give 84 Resilience (was originally spoiled as having 84 crit rating, which made it stupidly good for 25 Wintergrasp marks). But otherwise my Paladin is loving the patch simply for the improvement to Glyph of Holy Light (which is so OP it's getting nerfed, fast). Now I just wish Holy-oriented Plate would start dropping.

My hunter is now a 6/52/5 Marksman (for leveling), which is a really cool spec. Brief testing on Target Dummies showed that I went from a 650-450 Hunter-pet split dps-wise, to 1050-150, which is a decent jump, but does mean I have serious issues with aggro now, maybe get a better pet than the Gorilla? But if both components of Chimera Shot crit, that's a nice 5.5k damage.
Also, apparently Survival post-patch is better than BM pre-patch. Wtf?

My druid is back to Feral, enjoying a nice increase to armor thanks to the changes to Survival of the Fittest. And he can finally use the Sonic Spear I picked up last year sometime (mentioned in this post). Which warranted a respec to a 0/52/9 build. Just because. Seriously, druid with Sonic Spear, my hunter is still silently weeping over that.

Oh yeah, evidence (thanks to Arianwyn, whose computer I hi-jacked, Mew =^..^= ):

It's got a spear! It must be a Hunter.

Lolwhut?!?!?!

/Salute

Ok, Where's the furniture?

2009-01-21T21:53:00.003+13:00

So I came home today after wringing out my brains at work (my role within the project keeps expanding) hoping that after shopping for dinner, cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up after dinner (etc) I could go beat up some target dummies in Org, respec for Chimera Shot, then beat up said target dummies some more, and maybe gain another level (or at least part thereof).
Fat chance.
Come home, wonder why furniture has all been moved. Oh right, you're steam-cleaning the carpet. Come to think of it, this was mentioned about twice a day for the last week, but y'know, I've been stressed. Fine, clean the carpet, clean the furniture too, it does need it, but. Wait. Oh no. You cleaned in the office didn't you? Now the room smells of nasty chemicals (*cough*, *splutter*), the carpet is soaked and there isn't actually room to use the computer. Sigh.
Oh well, maybe tomorrow, since it looks like I'm not moving out this week after all.

Two days without WoW... I'm going to start getting withdrawal symptoms.

My Professions: A Conundrum

2009-01-19T15:00:00.001+13:00

I've been thinking a bit about the professions I've chosen, for my various toons, and come to the conclusion that somewhere along the way I may have made some bad calls.

My totally awesome level 80 paladin is a Jewelcrafter, which is my favourite profession (decent to stupendous profit margins, and really great for customising gear). This I am happy with. Awesome BOP gems and trinkets, and I can collect and customise spec/purpose-specific stuff for all my different roles, so that's nifty too. Damn but I love JC, it's been maxed for a month or so now and will stay that way. That being said, Paladin JCs seem to be pretty ubiquitous: out of the 4 level 80 paladins in my guild/on my friends list, 3 are JCs.

My almost-neglected first-to-70 hunter, whom I dusted off last week and got up to 72 is a Leatherworker. Which is fine and dandy, except I'm not overly excited about Bracer enchants and cheap BOP leg enchants, and can easily get everything I want by sending the mats to Toresh, my personal LWing bi-atch (well if you're not going to blog then you've got to have something to do, might as well make me some pretty stuff). So I'm not entirely sure if it's worth leveling LWing. Initially, while leveling as my first toon, being able to make my gear as I leveled was totally awesome (although admittedly I did kind of stockpile my skinning mats and then burst-leveled LW, making a whole bunch of gear 20 levels too low in the process), but since my current gear won't be replaced frequently (probably not until the PvP blues at 78, and then again with crafted epics at 80)

My druid is Engineering. I have very little idea of how this happened, but he's got 2 sets of BC goggles, which cost me quite a bit to get. Unlike some people I'm not really a big fan of engineering, I tend to always forget about the little gadgets. Of course the portable mailbox, repair bot and vendor will be nice, but one big thing that Engineers can make that is pretty much wasted on druids is ammunition, which would make the profession much better suited to say, a hunter. I could just send the ammo over, but this could lead to certain conflicts of times when mailboxes (for the LWing hunter) aren't handy, and there's the fact that the hunter will probably be well ahead on the leveling curve. And it lacks a certain... elegance ("I'm a nature-loving druid who turns into a bear, my raison d'etre is to provide ammo for my hunter to pew-pew stuff, mostly animals").
Additionally, giving my love of different roles and specs, my druid would benefit a lot more from the ease-of-customisation offered by the bracer and leg enchants available to a LW. And there don't appear to be any Feral engineering goggles in WotLK (or so I hear). Hmmm...

My Death Knight has picked up Inscription, which is a neat profession, even if most of the glyphs are just filling up my bank. Will probably be very useful to support Ephylia's frequent respecs (atm I'm just sticking with my Holy PvP glyphs) and the shoulder enchants will save me grinding Sons of Hodir on yet another toon (I'm currently too lazy to grind it on my main, using PvP Inscriptions instead, since Ephy is too young to have access to the BC stuff).
But one thing I didn't realise that Scribes had access to is the enchantment-specific off-hand. Now a DK isn't really the type to walk around with a puny off-hand, not when she could be wielding a bad-ass zweihander or another axe. And out of all my high-level characters the one who would actually benefit from these offhands would be my (mostly) Restoration/Balance druid. And a DK engineer would look pretty spiffy with some goggles.

And then there's options of just going all out gathering. Since most of the good crafted stuff is now BOE, and equipping fresh 80s, while supporting their enchants, gems and respecs can be quite expensive, this might be a good option. But who would be the best double-gatherer? The Hunter has a pet to fend off random mobs near nodes, as does the DK (if Unholy). The druid has flightform, which is great for quickly jumping between nodes that are close together and getting the edge on other farmers. The paladin has Crusader Aura, but I've already said that she's staying as JC.

So ideally I guess my hunter would be an engineer, my druid would have inscription and the DK be a double gatherer (farming leather to support the crafted gear for hunter/druid). But would I be willing to go through the time, effort and expenditure of leveling these a second time? And would I be willing to also drop and level up the relevant gathering professions (an extremely tedious process, except for skinning). Probably not. If Blizzard gave me the opportunity to swap around professions for dollars I'd actually take them up on it (within reason).
Hmmm...
I guess that I'll just keep gathering and stockpiling mats until I level my current professions out of boredom and for the sake of completeness.

Have you guys got any advice to give me? How are your own professions going, are you happy with the choices you made?

I know my readers are an extremely quiet lot, even my guildies, but c'mon, break down those communication blocks and comment or something.

(Yes, it's a long, quiet, boring day at work, but then most of this was written at home ;)).

From DKs to Zones, with Nostalgia

2009-01-13T23:08:00.001+13:00

I finished the starting questchain on my second DK yesterday, at around 1am (my first DK got transfered to Gun'Drak (US) during the Massive Queues Of Doom phase, and is now busy hitting target dummies - of the 200 gold she was transfered with, she has 3 gold left, the rest was spent on respecs).

So after I'd witnessed the magical cleansing of the Ashbringer and wondered some more about what exactly is buried under Light's Hope Chapel, I was ready to head out into the wide world of damnation.

And so I decided to level Herbalism and Inscription. I know a lot of DKs can't be bothered leveling professions up before proceeding along the road to 80, but Inscription has intrigued me, I love having professions and it's more efficient gathering herbs while leveling through Outlands and Northrend, than doing it after reaching 80.

So far I've spent about 6 hours just messing around and getting Herbalism to 205, so I can fully understand why there's so many profession-less Death Knights wandering around. And while I'd much rather be melting (well bashing-in) face in HFP, I've noticed one thing: I absolutely love being in the old zones with something to do.

Essentially it boils down to one of my fondest WoW memories ever: me playing a Troll Hunter, questing in the Barrens with my faithful Boar, at around 3am after all the other trolls have gone home (and taken Chuck Norris with them). Ah that haunting music of The Barrens, bringing solace to the empty void of my soul. In all seriousness, there is an amazing sense of peace and contentment while quietly slaughtering wildlife in a sleep-deprived state across the rugged and desolate-but-beautiful landscape. Ah good times.

The same nostalgic recollections of tranquility and quiet purpose (DIE BRISTLEBACK! DIE!) followed me through Stonetalon Mountains (my hunter was the only character to level here) and would also have come in Thousand Needles, except that I chose to go to Arathi Highlands instead to pick more flowers.

I'm not sure why I love some zones more than other, in particular the vast expanses almost completely populated by beasts, I guess it's the inner hunter (would be interesting to see what others have to say about this).

On that vein, my top-5 personal favourite zones in WoW (based entirely just on how much I like them):

5: Netherstorm
4: Thousand Needles
3: Winterspring
2: Nagrand
1: The Barrens

That's right, it's all Vanilla or BC. While the Northrend zones look stunning (too stunning for my computer to handle), I still prefer the older ones. One honourary mention must be made: Hellfire Peninsula, for being graphically stunning (especially that sky), and making it really f*cking obvious that we ain't in Kansas no more (double negative, I know).

Anyway, that was the sort of soppy, maudlin', meaningless post I have a tendency to write when I don't get enough sleep and have had a hard day, hope you enjoyed it :P.

Servers back up early, no patch in sight

2009-01-07T07:05:00.003+13:00

I logged into WoW some 20 minutes ago (which would have made it 0945 PST) and didn't need to do any patching.
So, no new items, hunters still do way too much damage and Avenging Wrath still causes Forbearance, and we get to wait in anticipation for another week.

Also, just so this post isn't a complete waste of space, I shall inform you that I had ice cream for breakfast, mmk?

Season 5 Honor and Arena Rewards

2009-01-07T01:00:00.003+13:00

Ok, it's downtime. Patch 3.0.8 may or may not be in the process of currently being installed and all our mail may be missing and hunters are most definitely being nerfed. Anyway, you need something to do. While sleep and the spouse beckon, you nevertheless find yourself... here? Reading this post? o.O
Well, I'd better get on with it then.

This is a list of PvP-oriented items available for purchase through honor and/or arena points (where applicable, PvE sources will also be mentioned).

It's meant to be a comprehensive list of both the set gear (three tiers of 5-piece sets) and miscellaneous items, listing both costs and rating requirements. If, like me, you were overwhelmed by the multitude of items (three different tiers of gear at once) or the variety of different ways of obtaining gear (there are three ways of just getting the blue set), then I hope this post will help you.

I won't cover the level 187 crafted blues (equipable at 78) since I already did that briefly and they're not very interesting.

Savage Gladiator: 200-level blues. NB: The Honor/Arena Point vendor is in the Dalaran Sewers
This gear includes a 5-piece armor set (with the same set bonuses as the epic gear).
It requires no arena rating to purchase.
It can be bought through three ways:
- Honor, and lots of it
- Emblems of Heroism
- A combination of Honor and Arena Points (small amounts of each)
E.g. the Hunter pants can be bought for: 60k Honor OR 45 Emblems of Heroism OR 12k Honour and 350 Arena Points

Head: 60k Honor OR 12k Honor and 350 Arena Points OR 45 Emblems of Heroism
Shoulder: 50k Honor OR 9.6l Honor and 275 Arena Points OR 30 Emblems of Heroism
Chest: 60k Honor OR 12k Honor and 350 Arena Points OR 45 Emblems of Heroism
Hands: 50k Honor OR 7.2k Honor and 200 Arena Points OR 30 Emblems of Heroism
Legs: 60k Honor OR 12k Honor and 350 Arena Points OR 45 Emblems of Heroism

Oh and don't let Wowhead fool you: there are no Savage Gladiator weapons, relics or offhands on the live servers (only the 5-piece set items made it past beta).

Hateful Gladiator: 200-level epics
To me this is the most interesting set. It can be obtained through different ways:
- Pure Honor for the non-set items
- Honor and Arena Points for the set items (require 1600-1800 rating)
- Emblems of Valor for the set items (no rating needed)
- Chest/Hands/Legs drop from normal (10) Vault of Archavon (no rating needed)
Again, don't let Wowhead fool you: there are no Hateful Gladiator weapons, relics or offhands on the live servers
E.g. the Hunter pants can be bought for 45 Emblems of Valor, 12k Honor and 700 Arena Points (requires 1645 rating) or received as a 10-man VOA drop; and the Hunter belt can be purchased for 49.6k Honor

Head: 12k Honor and 700 Arena Points (requires 1735 rating) OR 45 Emblems of Valor
Neck: 38k Honor
Shoulder: 9.6k Honor and 550 Arena Points (requires 1775 rating) OR 30 Emblems of Valor
Back: 38k Honor
Chest: 12k Honor and 700 Arena Points (requires 1675 rating) OR 45 Emblems of Valor OR Drops from Normal Archavon
Wrist: 31.6k Honor
Hands: 7.2k Honor and 400 Arena Points (requires 1615 rating) OR 30 Emblems of Valor OR Drops from Normal Archavon
Waist: 49.6k Honor
Legs: 12k Honor and 700 Arena Points (requires 1645 rating) OR 45 Emblems of Valor OR Drops from Normal Archavon
Feet: 49.6k Honor
Ring: 38k Honor
Trinket: 49.6k Honor

Deadly Gladiator: 213-level Epic
Head: 2250 Arena Points (requires 2090 rating)
Neck: 47.4k Honor (requires 1600 rating)
Shoulder: 1800 Arena Points (requires 2150 rating)
Back: 47.4k Honor (requires 1750 rating)
Chest: 2250 Arena Points (requires 1970 rating) OR Drops from Heroic Archavon
Wrist: 39.4k Honor (requires 1660 rating)
Hands: 1800 Arena Points (requires 1850 rating) OR Drops from Heroic Archavon
Waist: 60.2k Honor (requires 1630 rating)
Legs: 2250 Arena Points (requires 1910 rating) OR Drops from Heroic Archavon
Feet: 60.2k Honor (requires 1720 rating)
Ring: 47.4k Honor (requires 1690 rating)
Trinket (Battlemaster's): 60.2k Honor (requires 1800 rating)
Main-Hand/Slow One-Hand/Caster: 3150 Arena Points (requires 2030 rating)
Two-Hand/Ranged: 4500 Arena Points (requires 2030 rating)
Off-Hand/Fast One-Hand: 1350 Arena Points (requires 2030 rating)
Shield: 2250 Arena Points (requires 2030 rating)
Relic: 1200 Arena Points (requires 2030 rating)

Also Wintergrasp epics have recently been announced for patch 3.0.8 on MMO champion. These are the Titan-Forged pieces: 200-level epics:
Head: 40 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor
Feet: 15 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor
Trinket: 25 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor
The trinkets in particular look pretty awesome. Like really, totally awesome (caster one gives 86 crit with a proc for 590 spellpower, or something like that, which is stupidly good).

NB: with any list this long, errors are sure to creep in. Please report them either through email, or by leaving a comment. Also if you have any further suggestions/requests/criticisms/feedback the same holds true.

New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-01T23:00:00.002+13:00

And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing science and I'm still alive.
I feel fantastic and I'm still alive.

Oh, hi. Miss me? Bet you didn't even realise I was gone.
Yeah I was gone. For quite a while in fact, lurking in the shadows, hiding from forum trolls (not really: two new part-time jobs, christmas, and skipping sleep to get to 80 sort of limited enthusiasm and resources for blogging).

TLDR: because I think some people won't read past the second paragraph, if that, here's the TLDR: this post is not aimed at you.

I was kinda of intending to get one more post out last year, but that kind of didn't eventuate, which isn't really a good way to start a post on resolutions.
But THIS IS SPARTA! Actually, no, it isn't. But it IS 2009, a year that will hopefully herald a few changes in my life regarding those aspects that I'm not particularly happy with. And after completely forgetting about them last night, I spent a chunk of today coming up with a list of resolutions while yawning and sweeping around the house.

My Resolutions for 2009:
1: Make realistic resolutions. To this extent I'll try to avoid absolutes, but rather go for relative improvements (better, more, etc...). Also I'll write this list up on my blog (oh, hey, DONE) and maybe set it as one of starting tabs on Firefox. Maybe. This way I'll have a harder time denying the existence of these resolutions to myself or others.

2: Improve personal fitness. Intentionally vague but something to aim for. Ever since senior year my fitness has gone downhill, not too far, but more than I'd like. The goal is to make it back up that hill (without running out of breath), but even a few steps in the right direction will be an improvement. I went for a jog today, so this is being worked on.

3: Write regular blog posts. Especially considering that three week gap in December. The idea is at least one post a week, unless I die, in which case once every two weeks may be considered sufficient providing consent is received
from the applicable parties.

4: Be nicer to people and have a more positive attitude. Having jerkish-tendencies and being a flagrant lover (and user) of sarcasm, and sometimes being rather impatient, I think I should be nicer to people. Simply because there are a lot of people with disruptive/destructive attitudes on the internet, and the world would probably be a nicer place if I didn't add to all the bad vibes. Besides, it's hard being evil all the time.
Disclaimer: this does not apply to the level 19 'twink' hunter I saw in Orgrimmar, the one who claimed that Strength gave ranged attack power to hunters because when he took off his Legionnaire's Band he lost 4 RAP. For the record: Hunters do not gain Ranged Attack Power from Strength, Huntards do. Thank you.

5: Spend less money on random stuff. Straightforward mostly. I'm not actually that bad in terms of impulse buys, except where food is concerned. Going further would mean I'd be adding up bills and the amount of money lost would depress me, giving me difficulties with number 4 above.

6: Cut back on procrastination. And on that note let's move straight to 7.

7: Cut back on gaming. This does include World of Warcraft (awww), but also addresses all the time lost just playing Flash games, replaying WC3 or Starcraft or mindless days of Tower Defense. I need to find the time to work on the items on this list.

8: Plan my life better, or try to find a more concrete direction that involves around more than "do dailies every day, and at least ten arena matches a week". While true direction can't really be forced (or, imo, shouldn't be), hopefully this will come during the course of the year.

9: Work on my posture, which is gradually resembling that of a geriatric Oran-Utan. Definitely not a good look, and the problems later in life aren't worth it either. The physiotherapist gave me exercises to do years ago, I should do them.

10: Less reading. I have this tendency to leave work carrying chunky novels and not going to sleep (or doing chores, assignments etc) until I've finished them. Taking a break probably isn't a bad idea, and will help with number 11 below. If that means leaving Neal Stephenson's The Confusion partly read, so be it. I can spend the dull moments pondering what happened to Jack Shaftoe. Oh wait, see 6.

11: Better sleeping patterns. Basically, a combination of 7 and 10. No more "lights out when book is finished" and a lot less of the "log into WoW at midnight, play until somewhere between 3 and 5, get up for work/uni at 7 and wonder why I feel like sh!t and end up failing".

12: Refrain from the impulsive "just to piss Person X off" behaviour. An extension of number 4 above, I realise that I have a minor tendency to do (mostly say) stuff designed to either annoy or injure someone, often someone who doesn't like me anyway, but not always.

13: Tidy my room, and darn that big plastic bag of socks-with-holes (and the odd holes-with-sock). Mostly because neither of these was actually done in 2008.

14: Finish things. I have this tendency to leave things unfinished, no matter how interesting/engaging they were quite recently, and move onto things that are perceived as more interesting, and will foreseeably not be finished either. Like all those story ideas in that folder over there, and all the notes to yet more stories that should at least be in that folder or typed up and saved, but are instead integrated into various piles that contribute to the mess in my room (see 13). However, this list is now finished, so that's something at least.

If you've read this far, thanks for showing faith that something interesting is still coming, but since that isn't on the list I'm going to have to disappoint you. If you just skipped to the last paragraph then you deserve as much after my TLDR warning. Anyway, this post was mostly for my own benefit, although it could potentially help others make some belated resolutions (just remember Rule 19: "never forget Rule One"). On the plus side, this is a post and therefore counts towards number 3.

EDIT: you know what idiots do? They set a post about 2009 New Year's resolutions to publish at 23:00 on 01/01/08. That's pretty epic fail right there. I hope your blog readers could cope. And the only reason this paragraph is small is so that it doesn't detract from the impact of the last paragraph. Honest.

LoL Hunter Nerf

2008-12-10T12:43:00.002+13:00

Who didn't see this coming?
The class that solos everything, and does top dps by a large margin on both single-target and aoe pulls, getting nerfed? NOWAI!!!!!1!1!!1!

Inevitably people will QQ their eyes out, but why exactly? Bringing a measure of balance to the game isn't a bad thing. Losing a few % on the damage meters affects them in what way, exactly? It makes grinding while soloing a bit slower, and increases the time to complete instances by a small amount, and possibly alter a few hunter-beats-boss-preventing-wipe moments into wipe-at-1% moments. Oh noes!

And on the other hand, hunters get a bit of PvP-love. This is A Good Thing. Although inevitably some...people... will completely miss the point and say some rubbish like "OMGWTF! u'r nerfing PvE 4 PvP. PvP sux u noobs blizz kthbye" or the equivalent. Hunters are overpowered in PvE and underpowered (crap/almost useless/ waste of arena team slots) in PvP (slight exaggeration for effect on my part) - these are separate issues, they're just getting addressed at the same time.

I look forward to seeing what other people (and by this I mean BRK) have to say about it.

In other news, I've been busy (so busy that I'm only half-way to 80), but I'm still alive. Udder Madness posts will eventuate in the future. In the near future, even. As in: sometime this year. \o/!

[Guide] Northrend Faction Rewards

2008-11-29T22:40:00.002+13:00

Originally the concept for this post came from my desire to take a look at the various faction rewards to plan out gear and rep grinding for my toons. Hopefully you will find it a useful resource for doing something similar.
I'm going to list every item offered by neutral (i.e. not Horde/Alliance-affiliated) quartermasters in order of reputation level required, adding both the item type and what sort of role it would best suit (healer/dps/tank - my opinion), or the relevant profession.
I won't be going over how to get rep with these factions, you can find that information elsewhere and I haven't experienced enough to be able to make good calls on this.
If you notice any errors, please let me know.

Factions:
The Argent Crusade
Frenzyheart Tribe
The Kalu'ak
The Kirin Tor
Knights of the Ebon Blade (technically not a Northrend faction :P )
The Oracles
The Sons of Hodir
The Wyrmrest Accord

The Argent Crusade
Friendly:
Tabard of the Argent Crusade (75) - Tabard
Honored:
Arcanum of the Fleeting Shadow (80) - Head Enhancement, Shadow resist
Cloak of Holy Extermination (78) - Back, Physical DPS
Special Issue Legplates (78) - Plate Legs, Tanking
Standard Issue Legguards (78) - Plate Legs, Healing
Revered:
Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (80) - Head Enhancement, Tanking
Argent Skeleton Crusher (80) - 2H Mace, Physical DPS
Battle Mender's Helm (80) - Mail, Caster DPS
Design: Guardian's Twilight Opal - Jewelcrafting
Fang-Deflecting Faceguard (80) - Head, Plate, Physical DPS
Purifying Torch (78) - Wand, Healing/Caster DPS
Zombie Sweeper Shotgun (80) - Gun, Physical DPS
Exalted:
Boots of the Neverending Path (80) - Feet, Leather, Tanking/Physical DPS
Helm of Purified Thoughts (80) - Head, Plate, Healing
Polished Regimental Hauberk (80) - Chest, Mail, Physical DPS
Signet of Hopeful Light (80) - Finger, Caster DPS/Healing
Pattern: Brillian Spellthread - Tailoring

Frenzyheart Tribe
Friendly:
Design: Reckless Huge Citrine - Jewelcrafting
Nepeta Leaf - Misc
Roasted Mystery Beast - Misc
Honored:
Revered:
Azure Strappy Pants (78) - Legs, Leather, Physical DPS
Design: Jagged Forest Emerald - Jewelcrafting
Discarded Titanium Legplates (78) - Legs, Plate, Healing
Giant-Sized Gauntlets (78) - Hands, Plate, Tanking
Muddied Crimson Gloves (78) - Hands, Cloth, Healing/Caster DPS
Scavenged Feathery Leggings (78) - Legs, Mail, Healing/Caster DPS
Sparkly Shiny Gloves (78) - Hands, Plate, Healing
Stolen Vrykul Harpoon (78) - Thrown, Tanking/Physical DPS
Disgusting Jar - Non-combat Pet
Exalted:
Frenzyheart Insignia of Fury (70) - Trinket, DPS

The Kalu'ak
Friendly:
Design: Seer's Dark Jade - Jewelcrafting
Freshly-Speared Empreror Salmon (75) - Misc
Honored:
Cuttlefish Scale Breastplate (76) - Chest, Mail, Physical DPS
Cuttlefish Tooth Ringmail (76) - Chest, Mail, Healing/Caster DPS
Ivory-Reinforced Chestguard (76) - Chest, Plate, Tanking
Pattern: Dragonscale Ammo Pouch - Leatherworking
Pigment-Stained Robes (76) - Chest, Cloth, Healing
Turtle-Minders Robes (76) - Chest, Cloth, DPS
Whale-Skin Breastplate (76) - Chest, Leather, Tanking/Physical DPS
Whale-Skin Vest (76) - Chest, Leather, Caster DPS
Whalebone Carapace (76) - Chest, Plate, Physical DPS
Design: Defender's Shadow Crystal - Jewelcrafting
Revered:
Pattern: Trapper's Traveling Pack - Leatherworking
Totemic Purification Rod (78) - 1H Mace, Healing/Caster DPS
Traditional Flensing Knife (78) - Dagger, Physical DPS
Whale-Stick Harpoon (78) - Polearm, Hunter DPS
Exalted:
Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole (70) - Fishing Pole, Fishing
Nurtured Penguin Egg - Non-combat Pet

Kirin Tor
Friendly:
Tabard of the Kirin Tor (75) - Tabard
Honored:
Arcanum of the Flame's Soul (80) - Head Enhancement, Fire resist
Helm of the Majestic Stag (78) - Head, Leather, Caster DPS
Lightblade Rivener (78) - Dagger, Physical DPS
Shroud of Dedicated Research (78) - Back, Healing/Caster DPS
Spaulders of Grounded Lightning (78) - Mail, Shoulder, Physical DPS (PvP)
Revered:
Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (80) - Head Enhancement, Healer/Caster DPS
Flameheart Spell Scalpel (80) - Dagger, Caster DPS
Girdle of the Warrior Magi (80) - Waist, Plate, Healing
Mind-Expanding Leggings (80) - Legs, Leather, Physical DPS/Tanking
Stave of Shrouded Mysteries (80) - Staff, Druid Tanking
Exalted:
Boots of Twinkling Stars (80) - Feet, Mail, Physical DPS
Fireproven Gauntlets (80) - Hands, Plate, Tanking
Ghostflicker Waistband (80) - Waist, Leather, Caster DPS
Robes of Crackling Flame (80) - Chest, Cloth, Caster DPS/Healing
Design: Runed Scarlet Ruby - Jewelcrafting
Pattern: Sapphire Spellthread - Tailoring

Knights of the Ebon Blade
Friendly:
Design: Deadly Huge Citrine - Jewelcrafting
Tabard of the Ebon Blade (75) - Tabard
Honored:
Arcanum of Toxic Warding (80) - Head Enhancement, Nature resist
Dark Soldier Cape (78) - Back, Caster DPS
Pattern: Nerubian Reinforced Quiver - Leatherworking
Toxin-Tempered Sabatons (78) - Feet, Plate, Tanking
Unholy Persuader (78) - Fist Weapon, Physical DPS
Design: Wicked Monarch Topaz - Jewelcrafting
Revered:
Arcanum of Torment (80) - Head Enhancement, Physical DPS
Reaper of Dark Souls (80) - 1H Sword, Physical DPS
Runeblade of Demonstrable Power (80) - 2H Sword, Physical DPS
Spaulders of the Black Arrow (80) - Shoulders, Mail, Physical DPS
Sterile Flesh-handling Gloves (80) - Hands, Cloth, Healing/Caster DPS
Wound-Binders Wristguards (80) - Wrists, Leather, Healing/Caster DPS
Pattern: Abyssal Bag - Tailoring
Exalted:
Belt of Dark Mending (80) - Waist, Cloth, Caster DPS/Healing
Darkheart Chestguard (80) - Chest, Leather, Physical DPS
Death-Inured Sabatons (80) - Feet, Plate, Physical DPS
Kilt of Dark Mercy (80) - Legs, Mail, Healing/Caster DPS
Design: Glowing Twilight Opal - Jewelcrafting

The Oracles
Friendly:
Design: Vivid Dark Jade - Jewelcrafting
Oracle Secret Solution (70) - Misc
Honored:
Slow-Roasted Eel (75) - Misc
Revered:
Design: Sundered Forest Emerald - Jewelcrafting
Fishy Cinch (78) - Waist, Cloth, Healing/Caster DPS
Glimmershell Shoulder Protectors (78) - Shoulders, Plate, Death Knight Tanking
Glitterscale Wrap (78) - Waist, Leather, Physical DPS
Gold Star Pauldrons (78) - Shoulders, Plate, Physical DPS
Sharkjaw Cap (78) - Head, Mail, Caster DPS/Healing
Shinygem Rod (78) - Wand, Caster DPS
Toothslice Helm (78) - Head, Mail, Physical DPS
Mysterious Egg (70) - Non-combat Pet
Exalted:
Oracle Talisman of Absolution (70) - Trinket, DPS

The Sons of Hodir
Friendly:
Honored:
Arcanum of the Frosty Soul (80) - Head Enhancement, Frost resist
Giant Ring Belt (78) - Waist, Mail, Physical DPS
Lesser Inscription of the Axe (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Physical DPS
Lesser Inscription of the Crag (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Healing
Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Tanking
Lesser Inscription of the Storm (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Caster DPS
Pattern: Mammoth Mining Bag - Leatherworking
Spaulders of Frozen Knives (78) - Shoulders, Leather, Physical DPS/Tanking
Revered:
Reigns of the Ice Mammoth (60) - Alliance Mount
Reigns of the Ice Mammoth (60) - Horde Mount
Broken Stalactite (80) - Dagger, Physical DPS
Giant-Friend Kilt (80) - Legs, Leather, Caster DPS
Spaulders of the Giant Lords (80) - Shoulders, Plate, Physical DPS
Stalactite Chopper (80) - 1H Axe, Physical DPS
Exalted:
Greater Inscription of the Axe (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Physical DPS
Greater Inscription of the Crag (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Healing
Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Tanking
Greater Inscription of the Storm (80) - Shoulder Enhancement, Caster DPS
Reigns of the Grand Ice Mammoth (60) - Alliance Mount
Reigns of the Grand Ice Mammoth (60) - Horde Mount
Design: Smooth Autumn's Glow - Jewelcrafting
Pattern: Glacial Bag - Tailoring

The Wyrmrest Accord
Friendly:
Tabard of the Wyrmrest Accord (75) - Tabard
Honored:
Arcanum of the Eclipsed Moon (80) - Head Enhancement, Arcane resist
Bracers of Accorded Courtesy (78) - Wrist, Plate, Healing
Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions (78) - Back, Tanking
Fang of Truth (78) - 1H Sword, Physical DPS
Sash of the Wizened Wyrm (78) - Waist, Cloth, Caster DPS
Revered:
Ancestral Sinew Wristguards (80) - Wrist, Cloth, Healing/Caster DPS
Arcanum of Blissful Mending (80) - Head Enhancement, Healing
Breatplate of the Solemn Council (80) - Chest, Plate, Tanking
Gavel of the Brewing Storm (80) - Mace, Caster DPS
Sabatons of Draconic Vigor (80) - Feet, Plate, Tanking
Pattern: Mysterious Bag - Tailoring
Exalted:
Dragonfriend Bracers (80) - Wrist, Leather, Physical DPS
Grips of Fierce Pronouncements (80) - Hands, Mail, Healing/Caster DPS
Legplates of Bloody Reprisal (80) - Legs, Plate, Physical DPS
Reigns of the Red Drake (70) - Mount
Sandals of Crimson Fury (80) - Feet, Cloth, Caster DPS/Healing
Design: Glimmering Monarch Topaz - Jewelcrafting

NB: I'd suggest that spirit and MP5 are more healer-centric stats, but DPS do need them to some degree, and some items without them are still good upgrades for healers, since the prominence of "Healing/Caster DPS" and "Caster DPS/Healing".
Also: anyone noticed how few of these items have sockets? Grumble...

Best Place to Farm Borean Leather

2008-11-25T19:07:00.004+13:00

Ok for some reason I'm getting a lot of Google hits by people looking for places to farm Borean Leather in Northrend, I'm not quite sure why, since I haven't talked about skinning much, but I'll quickly address it here.
First off, why are you people even searching for this? There are so many things to skin in Northrend. If you'd been looking for Saronite or something, that would've been understandable. Well, I guess Leatherworking takes a lot of leather to level up.

You should be able to get a lot of leather just by leveling through Northrend. If you start in Borean Tundra, right off the bat you can grab leather and Nerubian Chitin from the things skittering around Warsong Hold, as well as Arctic Fur (I'd like to point out that Arctic Fur has a random chance of being skinned off every mob). In fact by the time you leave Borean Tundra, your skinning should be pretty much maxed, owing to the Nerubeans, the odd wolf or Caribou and the plethora of mammoth roaming the Tundra. Since killing the mammoths isn't directly a quest goal, and they travel in packs, it should be easy to kill a bunch and skin them (even Rogues, Shamans and Feral Druids will get AOE in the next big patch). Just stay away from the D.E.H.T.A. if you're on a skinning spree.

If you started in Howling Fjord, then there's Shoveltusks and a few wolves to skin as you quest, but mostly you'll be fighting Humanoids so the pickings for leatherworkers are leaner than the Tundra (much better for cloth though).

Grizzly Hills is also good for skinning, but Sholazar Basin, for those high enough, really stands out for Leatherworkers. Most things can be skinned, and there's also Drakes for Icy Dragonscales. Additionally, in the Basin, the mobs are high enough levels that you won't be skinning scraps.

If you want to try something else, you can get a decent amount of Leatherworking materials from running instances. Violet Hold is good for Icy Dragonscales and Borean Leather, and Azjol'Nerub is great for Nerubian Chitin. Since you'll probably be running stuff with at least two DKs you have a decent chance of being the only skinner, and if you're a Druid or Shaman then the fact that everybody in Northrend is looking for a healer means you'll have an easy time finding groups (tonight during a two hour session there were two groups "LF Healer Utgarde Keep" in Howling Fjord).

I hope that helps all you Skinners who have been directed to Udder Madness.

New Oceanic Realm: Saurfang

2008-11-18T12:40:00.003+13:00

So Blizzard finally admitted that 2000+ queues on all Oceanic servers was kind of silly, and we now have a new server: Saurfang. This goes a way towards disproving the theory that Blizzard hates players and just wants to roll in their money.
I transfered my Death Knight across, leaving my other toons on Aman'Thul so I can do stuff with the guild once the queues go away. Naturally I'm not the only one who thought of this, and Saurfang seems to be about 80% Death Kniggets, coming from a variety of backgrounds, but predominantly Jubei'thos, Frostmourne and Aman'Thul, from what I heard while questing last night.
A further note in Blizzard's favour: transfers were really fast, taking about 2 minutes to appear on Saurfang.
And I have no idea what battlegroup it's in. Obviously I could look it up, but that would involve effort and right now....................................................... (<- that's all I feel like doing, the spaces where my teeth were are really sore).
I'm sure I had other stuff to say, but now I'm gonna take the cotton buds out and go swallow a nurofen.

Update: Saurfang is currently closed to character creation, unless you already have a transfered character there. So this server is pretty much restricted only to those who transfered toons there during the transfer period.
It should open up to toon creation in a few weeks.

Udder Madness: Now with less teeth

2008-11-18T12:33:00.002+13:00

Went to the dentist today, had three teeth removed (16, 26, 35 for the record) in order to make room for orthodontic movement.
Not at all a pleasant experience, and now there's quite a bit of blood and discomfort. Nurofen is awesome, but I like to limit my use of painkillers, we'll see if I can stand it.
Overall this year I'll have spent over 9000 dollars on dental and orthodontic treatment, which is pretty mindboggling.
...
ouch

2000+ (queues, not rating)

2008-11-16T19:35:00.006+13:00

All the Oceanic servers seem to have 1000+ queues, around the clock.
Last night I joined the queue at 9:30ish, by 11:30 I was still in the queue and by 12:30 I'd been disconnected from the server.
And tonight there's a 2112 person queue, and Aman'Thul isn't even listed for transfer, so can't pull the DK off...
After coming home from working 8-12 hours this feels worse than being in overcrowded unstable starting zones.
And explains the complete lack of content for Udder Madness :(.

Apparently getting to 80 should be pretty quick though, judging from the fact that the world first to 80 (a French Warlock) came a couple of days ago, and there's even a level 80 DK now (both European). And TwentyFifthNovember, the merger of the elite gaming guilds SK Gaming and Nihilum, has beaten all the PvE content available. Pretty short expansion, and thanks to queues my mains are still not a single bar over 71, and the DK is lingering at 58.

Oh look, only 154 minutes left in the queue...

EDIT: screenshot fixt.

The Universe Doesn't Want Me to Play

2008-11-15T21:45:00.005+13:00

After working a long day selling stuff to people at Big Boys' Toys yesterday, and my normal library job today, I finally installed Wrath at around 1830 tonight. Then I went to make dinner, and came back to this:
And 15 minutes later:
Seriously. Wtf?
I'm gonna transfer server.
And one more try:
TWO AND A HALF HOUR queue? Jeez. Remind me never to log out again if I do get in.
And Aman'Thul isn't even up for transfers, so can't move a Death Knigget somewhere else. And with the expansion freshly installed I'm really not that interested in playing a <20 alt somewhere else.
Seriously, where are all these characters coming from? Or has Blizzard limited the servers to 500 people in Northrend to keep em stable :S.

Apparently Red Alert 3 is good.

[WOTLK Spoiler] Borean Tundra vs. Howling Fjord?

2008-11-12T23:27:00.002+13:00

NB: If you came here looking for places to farm Borean Leather, go to this post.

So, unlike the jam-packed entry to Outlands, we have two [jam-packed] places to enter the Frozen Wastes of Northrend (in around 24 hours time unless the servers totally blow up):
Howling Fjord:
This place isn't exactly the icy wastes that spring to mind when we think of the frozen North. I mean there's farms and stuff. And also a heavy Alliance presence in the form of a keep that Arthas' abandoned men built, and to a lesser extent, Forsaken waging their own war against the Scourge.
And a humongous keep, smack bang visible as soon as you get off the boat (and a bit of a walk away if you came by zeppelin). In fact there's a nice battle going on all the time, between Alliance, Horde, and the vrykul from Utgaarde Keep.
Beta reports I've read suggest that scenery, music, and, for Alliance, the questlines are better than 'Boring' Tundra, but this is coming from the faction that takes Gnomes seriously, so I'm not sure how much I can trust Alliance opinion ;).
But yes, Utgaarde Keep is the first instance in Northrend, so being near it is a nice plus point to this zone.

Let's take a look at what Borean Tundra has:
Tuskarr live here, and they breed penguins (I just hope they don't look as stupid as the ones you get from polymorph)! That's pretty much win right there.
Also there's Rhinos for all the hunters out there who have an inferiority complex (I will get one for PvP at some point) and there's a lot more opportunity to farm leather for all the leatherworkers out there (leatherworking hunters win). Where else would you expect to get Borean Leather?
Borean Tundra is a bit more what you'd expect that far north, lots of ice and random creatures and random bad guys (a few trolls and scourge and stuff), although it does border on a jungle that's basically Un'goro in the arctic circle: Sholazar Basin (which, apparently, is a really cool place place with Nessingwary and an anti-Nessingwary faction).
And did someone mention Gnomes? There's totally a Gnome airfield there, much easier to get to than the one in Dun Morogh. And it's totally asking for every Hordie within the zone to come trash the place. Totally.
Here's a quote taken from some other place from someone who's been to the Tundra:
"This zone had snowy shorelines with huggable, walrusy Tuskar (Kaplan described them as little Wilford Brimleys, which was the right thing to do), flat frost-burned plains, pockets of evaporating water that looked like a sinister environmental reclamation project, volcanic terrain, an area that was covered with a magical "mist" that I mistook at first for the realm of the dead, a Gnome airfield, and a crashed Necropolis with tons of displaced Scourge milling about."
So basically if you're a Horde Leatherworking Hunter, you deserve a prize, and Borean Tundra is your place to be.

Can't decide? Don't worry, it's pretty simple to get from one to the other: on the back of a giant [riding?] turtle (there's a platform on the back of the turtle - it may or may not be supported by 4 elephants). In all seriousness though, it's a carrot powered turtle... It has a carrot dangling in front of it (for the movespeed bonus?).

Oh yeah. I almost forgot. There's a third place to enter Wrath of the Lich King territory: Acheron the Ebon Hold in Eastern Plaguelands. I'm going to level me a DK (somebody has to).

And for those who want to know where to go at which point, here's a list of the Northrend Zones, together with rough level brackets:
Borean Tundra - 68-72
Howling Fjord - 68-72
Dragonblight - 71-74
Grizzly Hills - 73-75
Zul'Drak - 74-77
Sholazar Basin - 75-78
The Storm Peaks - 76-80
Icecrown - 77-80
Wintergrasp - 77-80 PvP Zone, requires flying mount
9 zones, which by my count is 2 more than TBC.

Man, how messed up was that maintenance?

2008-11-12T22:38:00.002+13:00

So, in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King launching in under 24 hours, Blizzard went ahead and broke the servers during Tuesday maintenance. At least it seems that way.
All the mail got lost in the place that "the cheque is in the mail" letters go to. So there was an emergency extended maintenance that lasted about 10 hours longer than planned, and then we got an in-game mail saying that the lost stuff would be mailed back to us some time during the next few days.
During this period of "we have nfi when the servers will be back up. Lol. Check back in two hours", the forums also went offline, disappearing into the ether together with some stuff I bid on.
And the arena vendors totally broke. A bunch of stuff is free, like the Brutal Gladiator's Hatchet and apparently S2 Priest and Warlock gear. A bunch of S4 weapons lost all rating requirements despite statements saying that this wouldn't happen. And two days after I bought a gem for 800 points (because the arena vendors were meant to disappear during this maintenance) the Brutal Gladiator's Waraxe turns up for 600 points (and no rating requirement).
Forums are now in Read Only mode.
AND I found out that I can get pink wasps outside of RNG luck in Underbog.

BRK does it again

2008-11-09T13:04:00.002+13:00

Well that intrepid dwarf hunter has impressed once again.
In honour of Ezra Chatterton, BRK organised a bull run: a thousand young Tauren on Argent Dawn sacking Stormwind City, and making donations to the Make a Wish foundation.
The server pretty much crapped itself the whole time, and died completely before Stormwind was reached.
End result: complete mayhem, and ALL the servers are now having problems authenticating.
Lol.

EDIT: servers up again.

[Which Pet?] Part 1: Which Pet does the most DPS?

2008-11-08T19:35:00.001+13:00

Welcome to Which Pet? a series of undetermined length and quality, released at sporadic intervals, concerning the Hunter pets of patch 3.x.

Which pet does the most dps? I wasn't sure so I compared a few different pets and their dps output. Here's some results and notes about my method.
Being too lazy to actually get stuff to 70 (I actually leveled a Boar from 48 to 70 in 2.3, almost exclusively in Nagrand, which took aaaaaages), I tamed a bunch of 65 pets and let them loose on a level 60 training dummy. So these numbers aren't representative of anything you should expect, but are solely to compare different pet families.
My current spec is 51/10/0.
Each pet was completely unbuffed (no Hunter's Mark even) except for the 25% Happiness bonus, and was allowed to hit the dummy for a few minutes (long enough to get over 50k damage).
Each pet used only it's focus dump, plus it's special skill (prioritising the special), and in the case of Cunning pets, Wolverine Bite (although I don't think the dummies dodged much). So none of the specials like Rabid etc were used.
The Cunning pets were spec'd thus: link.
The Ferocity pets were spec'd thus: link.
The Tenacity pets were spec'd thus: link (admittedly less than ideal).

Results (rounded to 2 s.f.):
Cunning:
Silithid (X) (65): 270 (62.5% melee, 27.5% FD, 10% Venom Web Spray DoT)
Dragonhawk (65): 290 (66% melee, 22% FD, 8% Fire Breath DoT, 5% Fire Breath DoT)

Ferocity:
Core Hound (X) (66): 300 (70% melee, 21% FD, 9% Lava Breath)
Devilsaur (X) (65): 350 (70% melee, 22% FD, 8% Monstrous Bite)
Wasp (65): 300 (70% melee, 17% FD, 10% Sting)
Cat (65): 320 (67% melee, 20% FD, 7% Rake DoT, 6% Rake) - NB with Longevity, the DoT gets overwritten with 2 seconds left, reducing DPF (damage per focus)
Beathooven in Catform (70): 750 (35% Melee, 25% Mangle, 23% Rip DoT, 14% Rake DoT) - NB: This pet cannot currently be tamed, presumably NWAI (not working as intended). Besides 750 dps on a level 60 target is quite pathetic, since I can probably do twice that as a Moonkin (but Moonkin aren't beasts).

Tenacity:
Gorilla (69): 340 (58% melee, 25% Thunderstomp, 12% FD) - NB: Thunderstomp was only used on one target

So what pet does the best DPS?
The clear winner is the Devilsaur, the 9% increase from Monstrous Bite is just nuts.
Of note is the fact that the Wasp's Sting has an armour debuff component, which will increase hunter dps by quite a bit as well.
The Gorilla's Thunderstomp will quickly become top of the table with 1 extra target, and will go insane with 5-6. Also Gorillas are a lot more awesome than some shrunken anachronism from a giant outdoor Science Fair experiment.
For those that aren't 51+/x/x who want a high-dps pet, Cats will probably be the best choice, and are the most popular pet in the game.
Other pets can be tested if requested, and may synergise better with the Hunter. These are just the five I had on me, plus a couple running around Eversong Woods (testing done in Silvermoon City).

NB: this was a pretty unscientific test, and the results should be considered as a relative comparison only.

So Big (it doesn't fit on the screen)! (It shrunk loooads when tamed :( )

[NZ] I Voted, Did You?

2008-11-08T10:46:00.001+13:00

Voting booths directly next to work, went during morning tea break.
Go on, vote.

Spanking Heroic MgT and Target Dummies

2008-11-04T11:03:00.007+13:00

So I came home from a miserable medsci examination experience and decided that I really needed some WoW time. Once the computer was vacated I jumped on and gamed for a few hours, contrary to all the promises I’d made to myself about taking a break until the end of exams. One reason for this is that I really wanted to test out some new stuff, Darksentinel has been only a Beast Master since the patch (51/10/0 and 50/11/0) and Beathooven has mostly been resto in order to heal random stuff (with a quick stint as Balance to test the new Spell Power changes. I wanted to test out Marksman and Survival, retry Balance and go Feral for the first time since hitting 70. So, prepared to spend a couple hundred gold, I headed to the training dummies. Well, actually first I did a couple of quick BGs, 1 AB and an AV, and concluded that one BM hunter can beat one arcane mage, and can almost beat 2 arcane mages. And ret still does way too much damage. But BM doesn't quite seem to be able to blow stuff up as it seemed to a few days after the patch when I did some druid/hunter arena and gibbed stuff.

First I tested Darksentinel, as the basic BM build he had (50/11/0), with just my current level 68 (69 now) Gorilla pet. Obviously this pet isn’t ideal for dps but then it turned out that a lot of the time he refused to hit the [training] dummy anyway. Oh yeah, here’s a comic about target dummies.

With a pet that refused to hit stuff, BM pulled in at around 700 dps (hunter only), which is pretty pathetic, really (using no cooldowns and only using a simple Steady Shot spam-based rotation).

MM topped out at 850 or so pet-less DPS, opening with Serpent Sting (omg), use Chimera Shot (why is the shot called 'chimera' but the beast is 'chimaera'?) whenever it's up, then spam Steady Shot and if Improved Steady Shot procs, use Arcane Shot (unless Chimera is about to come off cooldown). So probably on par with BM, or slightly ahead, depending on what pet is being used. I think MM scales better with crit than BM, thanks to Marked for Death (and I have a lot of crit, thanks to PvP gear).

SV has a whole bunch of nifty talents such as Lock and Load and some massive boosts to crit chance, but seems lacking in straight-up single-target dps (seriously, Point of No Escape and Sniper Training, how does that work?). It's pet-less dps was around 700, so presumably lower than BM (since the pet will deal less damage). But the mana regen is really sweet, especially when you get Thrill of the Hunt returns from free Lock and Load procs.

I will try to do more testing later (try a different pet, see if it will attack the dummy), although with Wrath only a week away it's not really worth it.

Basically the hunter is a bit meh now (except for Gorilladin grinding), too much PvP gear (10.5k hp, 27% crit, but only 1600 unbuffed AP), or I just really suck at playing the class.

So then it was Beathooven’s turn. First, I tried Balance. Hmmm. So many talents, and then there’s stuff in resto as well. Now how do I effectively rotate Wrath, Starfire, Insect Swarm and Moonfire, all the while taking into account Eclipse procs (which will also be Nature’s Grace procs)? I muddled around a bit, and seemed to do ok and ended up with a dps of 1000-1200, which is basically on par with my hunter (slightly higher, even, pet or no pet), who should be a lot better geared and is also the highest PvE dps class in the game. Hmmm. But after dragging the Moonkin into AV I decided that while it’s a powerful spec, I wanted to try Feral, cos it’s been a few months since I’ve been a proper cat or bear spec. New emphasis on the or, since some talents are pretty much good for only one form, cat or bear. I ended up with a 0/54/7 spec or something similar, focusing heavily on the tanking talents.

After that I spent a good 30 minutes sorting out gear for cat and bear, since I’d picked up a lot of off-spec pieces while resto. I ended up having 14k hp, 33% dodge and 14k armour. Now when I’d last been a bear I had 13.5k hp, 22% dodge and 22k armour, and my items were quite a bit worse. Numerically I actually seemed worse off, but with Protector of the Pack and a full group, my mitigation and avoidance were quite a bit higher (although it’s really annoying, now that stuff is 3 man-able, that you need a full group to have optimal Bear form mitigation).

So, I was a tank. Now to find something to tank. I joined a pug for Gruul with Arianwyn, but it quickly became obvious that this was going to end badly (by the time we had 20 people we only had two healers, one of whom was a Shadow priest, and while I don’t know exactly what tanks are needed for HKM, I’m pretty sure we didn’t have all of them either). Instead I convinced four guildies to run Heroic Magister’s Terrace, something I’ve never done before.

We ended up as retadin, feral tank, rogue, enhance and resto druid. And it turns out that I’m still a pretty terrible tank, especially where casters are involved. In my defense I’ve only tanked a handful of times, and the most recent of those was Durnholde Keep as a 66 bear back in August. Also, Growl was only working around half the time (although 20 yards IS nice). We wiped once on a trash pull where I pulled a pat slightly early so his friends came along, otherwise the massive amounts of dps carried us through (hence the title: more spank than tank), although I did pull off a cool battle res during the gravity distortion phase on Kael. All up it was a lot easier than the runs I’d done on my hunter in normal difficulty, back in the days of 2.3 and 2.4. Oh and just to show that the loot gods don’t reward excellent performances (but rather have their own sense of humour, see: Sonic Spear), the Priestess dropped Commendation of Kael’Thas, and since we didn’t have a mage I got it (anyone else see the article where a mage outrolled a tank on this, shortly after 2.4 came out?).

After the run (which took just over an hour) Darksentinel, still Survival spec, headed out to go see what all the fuss with the scourge is about, and collected some Necrotic Runes for the Paladin-on-a-Stick. No mail dropped, but with S2 shoulders and legs, S3 chestpiece and S4 gloves, it didn’t really matter (plus the non-S4 PvP gear looks a lot better). And that was it for last night (i.e. this morning).

A lot of today was spent killing scourge on Beathooven, healing a retadin tank (including a 4-shadow pull), and then getting down on all fours and doing it bear style. After clearing two spawn areas I ended up with a full 4-piece set of leather, and a full 4-piece set of cloth, plus the trinkets, the Burning Steppes flight path (first time I’ve ever been in that region on any character), and a few bits of Thorium. The leather was really nice and the new druid has 15.3k hp, 16k armour and 32% dodge. A bit of target dummy testing put cat dps at ~500, which is a bit low, but there's a few more buttons to press now that Rake and Tiger's Fury are actually useful, so I'm probably not using an optimal rotation.

The rest of today’s wow-time was spent getting my paladin to 52, tanking the last boss of OHB for a guildie and doing Gorilladin-stylez as Survival. Oh and drooling over BRK’s mammoth movie.

So in conclusion, I think Darksentinel will level as a Beast Master, and Beathooven as a Moonkin. And it's really nice that a lot of abilities that were previously pretty useless are now very useful, even if it does add complexity to my already over-taxed brain (this happens easily). Now I just wish someone would explain Gore to me (WHY? It does less damage than Bite).

Servers have just gone down, so enjoy doing whatever it is that you do during this period (sleeping, probably, you need at least 8 hours a week to survive ;) ).

[Pics] 7000 words on Druids

2008-11-03T09:00:00.000+13:00

Lately I've been posting a lot on Hunters. And, let's face it, post-3.0.2 they're even more awesome than they were before. But let's also face the fact that Druids are really really cool. Especially Tauren druids (cows turning into bears/cats/different cats/storm crows/anthropomorphic rotten broccoli/inflatable giant chickens - what isn't there to love? Except the fact that Tauren druids in cat forms won't close their damn mouths).

Actually this is just an excuse for showing some stuff from my Screenshots folder and pretending people are interested in it. At the time of posting I should be busy attempting to waffle my way through my Medsci 314 (Immunology) exam, for the second time, and probably failing miserably.

Shows how bad Hunters are in arena: they lose to off-spec bears.

Does it get anymore Druidy than this? 4 70 druid helping a 64 through normal Slave Pens. Bullishnek, Ariia and Beathooven are all resto, Meellow respec'd Balance (from resto) just for the sake of this run, Ankka is Feral. At one point everyone but Ankka and myself DC'd. While not a challenge, certainly a lot of fun.

3 inc LM... wtf are you guys doing?
My 2v2 arena partner and I relaxing, for the horde.

Sin'dorei Druid, courtesy of the Dimensional Ripper. Shifting into Moonkin alters what you appear as when you have the 'Transporter Malfunction' debuff, but shifting into anything else removes the debuff entirely. Generally the Tauren armour skins mess up the appearance (e.g. as a female Orc the goggles replace the eyes).

Dwarven Druid: how silly.

Experience to level 70: 2.

Posting e-peen BG score-charts stopped being cool ages ago. But this is a pic from close to 6 months ago, and shows probably the highest dps I've seen in a 40-minute BG. At the time Nutrage was a T6 geared Boomkin, who went around 2-shotting everything.

[Hunter] I want more stable slots

2008-11-01T13:24:00.003+13:00

So, I journeyed into the land of trolls. I figured since I am a troll, I might be able to survive. I did, and made it back here, but I left small parts of my soul and sanity behind. Seriously, the new 'Damage Dealing' forum is insanely busy, and full of annoying people. It takes between 10 and 30 minutes for a post to disappear off the first page. Anyway, I digress.

I made the following post:
I, and pretty much every hunter out there, want more stable slots.
Pets that come to mind that I might want at 80:
1: A Worm, for any 10 man without a warrior (presumable won't happen in 25 mans)
2: A Wolf, for any raid without an AP buff (again probably 10 man)
3: A Gorilla, for AOE grinding, and tanking stuff
4: A Rhino, fo'shizzle
5: A Devilsaur, for raid dps as a 51pt BM
6: A Spirit Beast
7: A Spider or some-such, for non-Beast Mastery, non-drain PvP
8: A Scorpid, for drain PvP (yes I know dispels will now remove the whole stack, but it's still a 50% chance of masking your Viper Sting as dispels currently stand)
9: A Core Hound. White.
10: A cat or something for raid DPS, when I'm not a Devilsaur-taming spec
11: My Elder Mottled Boar, because Hunters are a sentimental bunch

Just looking at raid (10-man) min/maxing I'd foreseeably need to choose between Worm, Wolf, Devilsaur and something else. And for arena if on a given night there's a lot of casters around, a Core Hound might be nice, or an Owl/Silithid/Spider/Chimaera if it's melee-heavy. Sure I could go tame something new, but it'd involve considerable inconvenience in obtaining and possibly leveling a new pet.

Adding more stable slots would not particularly imbalance the game in any way, since it doesn't directly affect Hunter performance. It would act as a gold sink. And it'd make people happy (well, happier, we'll always find stuff to QQ about)

Self explanatory really.
Charge me 200 gold per slot, and I'll buy another 5.
Charge me 1000 gold per slot and I'll still try to buy at least 1 or 2 more.

And on the plus side, I found the ignore button in the forums. Now I just wish there was an "ignore level 1 alt" button.

Shenanigans in Shadow Labs

2008-11-01T09:00:00.001+13:00

Shadow Labyrinth is an interesting instance. I've run it more than any other instance in WoW.

My first 70 was my hunter, Darksentinel, and he'd heard tales of a mythical weapon of great power dropping from a behemoth who resided deep in the Shadow Labyrinth. The creature Murmur was defeated multiple times, but apparently favours only casters with the gear it leaves for its vanquishers. Eventually my hunter decided that this supposed Sonic Spear was merely a tale from the taverns of the Lower City, and (with a reasonably modicum of effort) upgraded his Sha'tari Longsword of the Bandit (from memory 28 Agi, 43 Stam, 56 AP) to a weapon most mighty and fabulous: the Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe. Yet even after this, the Shadow Labyrinth continued to entice the hunter. A Blood-Elven priestess, Arianwyn, sought to become exalted with the elements of Shattrath's Lower City, and he aided her in vanquishing the various orcish minions in the First Room, and, his desire not completely doused by the mighty axe in his hand, he continued to search, in vain, for the legendary Spear.

Following in the footsteps of this hunter, the druid Beathooven chased his own dream in Shadow Labyrinth. Being of a healing and restorative inclination, this young Tauren had heard that one of the most powerful Idols in all of the shattered realms of Outland was in the hands of a demon near the entrance of the Labyrinth: the famed Idol of the Emerald Queen. Much like his troll friend, Beathooven found that despite multiple victories against his demonic adversary he remained with an empty Idol slot - although he did end up with various Hallowed Raiments (and rejoiced in his ability to cast his non-existent Binding Heal with a 30% increased resistance to interruption), and even the Sonic Spear found its way into his hand (his hunter friend was mildly amused).

After numerous attempts (including healing a pick up group while being rather Feral) he even convinced his arena partner, the Warlock Stupidcow, to help him, and with a lot of effort the two managed to defeat all opposition up to and including Ambassador Hellmaw. While once again no Idol dropped, much fun was had.

Close to despair, Beathooven teamed up with several friends and using the most sacred techniques of Right-Click-Player-Portrait-and-Choose-Dungeon-Difficulty, ventured into a heroic version of the same Shadow Labyrinth that had defied him all this time. Although altogether more difficult than its non-heroic equivalent, his powerful allies from the Quantum Butterflies made short work of all the foes in this new Labyrinth and Beathooven was richly rewarded with the Idol of the Emerald Queen - if he'd known that was all it took, he'd have attempted heroism much earlier.

Although seemingly finished with Shadow Labyrinth, Darksentinel returned. After the powers-that-be decreed the presence of 3.0.2, the troll noted that his pets appeared much more powerful than earlier, and wished to test this out. And where better than the instance that had defied his early days at maximum level? With his friends Gurney (the huntery version of Stupicow), and the young, not-quite-70, enhancement shaman Mok at his side, he took his faithful companion LoveMe (once an innocent boar in Durotar) to once again challenge the might of the labyrinth and it's denizens. Despite later learning that LoveMe appeared addicted to the use of Cower, strategical trapping and misdirection, plus the occasional heal from the shaman, the trio downed the much-abused Hellmaw once again. Although afterwards they decided that the next room was not best suited to the abilities of a piggy (possibly ok for a gorilla), and called it a night.

These are my adventures in SLabs.

Shadow Labyrinth: TIME FOR FUN!

[NZ] Midnight release

2008-10-31T16:40:00.003+13:00

EB Games in Lynn Mall (and I assume elsewhere in NZ) are doing a midnight release for WotLK. Although if you haven't pre-ordered you're out of luck, since they've sold out. And they sold out of Collector's Edition copies ages ago (I know this because I went there at around 2pm on the day the CE came out for pre-orders, only to hear "sorry, we just got an email saying we've reached our quota").
There is a very very small chance I will be getting my copy at midnight, although I've got to turn up to work the next day. Either way there won't be a meet and greet like some other bloggers are having, mostly because if you read this and live in Auckland you already know me.

And apparently Gamesman New Lynn is also doing a midnight release.

Since none of this is really content, I'd like to share the following pxt with you:

Bwuh?

Random coincidences

2008-10-29T09:00:00.001+13:00

A long time ago when Ephylia (my paladin) was 37 or so, she went to Razorfen Downs with a group and Amnennar the Coldbringer dropped a plate helm which both she and the warrior rolled Need on. And so did the Enhancement shaman. And yes, the shaman won, and yes, I was slightly pissed off, and apparently the shaman thought it was mail. One of those "I hate pugs" stories.

Anyway, once 3.0.2 hit a few weeks ago, Ephylia, now 42, came out of cryogenic sleep and turned to the Ret side. And after having a lot of fun aoe grinding stuff in Dustwallow Marsh, I decided to see if I could solo RFD. Funnily enough a guildmate of mine, the enhancement shaman Mok, was doing RFD (probably for the achievement) and after I solod the first few pulls he offered to run me through. While I could solo the first few groups, the caster heavy ones were tricky so I welcomed the offer (although it turns out that the new, improved Consecration kills groups faster than a 68 enhancement shaman). And anyway, Amnennar dropped the Icemetal Barbute which Ephylia has been wearing ever since.

So, the enhancement shaman giveth, and the enhancement shaman taketh away. And the guildie cleans up the pugs mess (I'm pretty sure it wasn't Mok who needed plate all those months ago, but I was also sure that EDTA removes confluent cells from the bottom of a petri dish - turns out trypsin dettaches the cells and EDTA prevents them sticking to each other).

I'm still hesitant about trusting pugs though. Once bitten, twice shy.

Damn but I hate clichés, using them is like taking candy from a baby (noisy and rather embarrassing when the mother turns up to see what all the fuss is about).

I Miss WoW

2008-10-28T16:46:00.003+13:00

So, two days of cold turkey, and gods do I miss it.
I haven't actually done all that much study/work: I tidied some of the stuff on my desk (i.e. moved a bit of the mess onto the floor), I did an hour or two of research for my essay, played a couple of Flash games (so sad), and printed off some notes and old exam papers.

Am currently feeling really tired and listless, am unlikely to do any meaningfully productive study today and would like nothing better than to mindlessly mash buttons while working my way through the undead of WPL before the Great Ret Nerfbat hits.

I just know that if I start playing again I'll self-rationalise to the point of convincing myself that I can study for all my papers in the hours of busride before the exam and that that will be sufficient. Since past experience has shown that this only works for stage 1 and 2 papers (and some stage 3 maths), and generally requires some semblance of lecture attendance (which has been sadly lacking on my part for Medsci 314 this semester) I'm just going to wallow in WoW-withdrawal and hope that I eventually get around to studying.

So long, no thanks for all the puns

2008-10-26T23:59:00.002+13:00

Well.
I've decided to take a break from WoW, on the grounds of temporary sanity. My final exams are about a week from now, and since I've so far failed 3 out of the 4 stage 3 bio papers I've done (it's ostentatiously one of my majors), I think it's time I got my a-into-g and did something other than level my paladin and attempt to get the stupid squashling. So the next 2.5 weeks are going to be dedicated very heavily to studying for my exams, and therefore I've decided that a blanket ban on playing World of Warcraft is in order (I'll still read stuff and try to keep moderately up to date with what's happening, e.g. the zombie plague, and hope BRK still does a podcast this week).

Final thoughts on 3.0.2:
The patch is nuts, almost every class and spec feels pretty OP. The last couple of days have seen: me 2-manning the headless horseman, a ret tank do 1.4k dps and still be easy to heal, Selin Fireheart's room cleared in a single pull, Vexallus being 4-manned with a ferocity pet tanking, and also a wipe-less pug'd clear of Kara in a few hours (with quite a few people not having done it before; somehow the hunter managed to not move during Flame Wreath on Shade). And none of these are particularly noteworthy achievements.

The real changes are things like the absolute insanity that is a retribution paladin in both pvp and pve, and the crazy aoe goodness of prot warriors, balance (and resto) druids and hunters of all persuasions. Last week saw Quantum Butterflies clear, for the first time, ZA and also do Kara in 3 hours, while Kryptik (a guild a number of ex-Butterflies defected to for 25-man... whatever it is that 25 men do when they get together for 4 hours at night) downed Lady Vashj, and Ajantis, the premier raiding guild on Aman'Thul, finally downed Kil'Jaeden.

Ultimately 3.0.2 changed a lot of things (no ****), and has totally altered the status quo, balance of power, etc. I approve of a lot of the changes (although what's with Steady Shot not scaling with haste?) and it has definitely made the last two weeks a joy to play, and heralds well for what Wrath will bring.

On that note, a few things I'm looking forward to in Wrath of the Lich King:
- craftable PvP gear (yesplz, make money from leatherworking, kkthx)
- Rhino pets
- what looks to be really nice level of interaction with the overall plot (that Undercity questline looks totally jawesome) - I've always been a bit of a lore-junkie, and, damnit, I should've raided more
- Warcraft 3 Human mission 7: The Culling, aka Stratholme in the Caverns of Time
- 10 man raids all the way up to Icecrown Glacier
- being able to do arena pretty much from the start (as opposed to starting halfway through season 3 on one character, and early in season 4 on the other)
- death knight questlines

Anyway, my last exam is on the 12th of November, giving me all of a day before Wrath hits stores here (I'm hoping my computer can actually run it).

Regrets now that I've finished playing TBC:
- not actually downing a 25-man boss (closest I got was a wipe on Gruul at 1%)
- not trying to kill a Fel Reaver since the patch
- not making it to a 1600 rating in any arena team
- not getting The Hallowed title (Darksentinel has the helm, but not the squashling and Beathooven has neither)
- not getting my paladin to 70 before Judgements of the Wise is nerfed to 15% of base mana (from 33%)
- not getting a Netherdrake
- not replacing Darksentinel's Cloak and Rings (who wants to wear blues going into Northrend)
- not ever entering Mount Hyjal
- knowing that my last activity was logging in this morning to collect a Flimsy Male Gnome [Mask] and Penny Pouch
- various other things that will come to me as I'm trying to remember the factors that lead to variation in antibody recognition sites

So yeah, from now on out I'm going to study and find out what it's like to get 8 hours of sleep a night (as opposed to last night, where I went to sleep around 2 and got woken up just after 6am by my friends' kids). Wish me luck in Project Study (I really don't want to do a 5th year of u-grad) and I'll see you all when Wrath is nigh (although I have some scheduled posts that will appear over the next two weeks).

STOP UDDER MADNESS OUT STOP

/wowquit

/bye

PS: bets are up for how long it will be before I'll start wishing I was playing WoW. My personal bet is on about 8 o'clock tomorrow morning

PPS: I kind of didn't mention anything to my guild so now I'm awol. Oh well, they can check their feeds, and if they don't read this then that's their own fault, right? Anyway, half of them (you) have exams of your own to study for, so stop reading this (to the other half: either get back to work, or find a job).

All Quiet on the Madness Front

2008-10-23T23:02:00.003+13:00

Yeah, I've been a bit slack on the posting front. I've had a couple of tests and essays to do, which have kept me kind of busy.
I have now finished my lectures at undergraduate level (I hope!), and am currently in the very narrow breathing space between the end of lectures, and the start of exams (I believe this space is meant to be devoted to what some call "study"). Having had a less-than-stellar academic record since taking up my alternative life in Azeroth, I do feel that I should focus a bit now, so over the next three weeks WoW will be droppng a bit on the priority list.

That being said, let's take a look at what I've done since 3.0.2, and include a few thoughts:

- hunters are a lot of fun, as BBB will tell you (seems to have been converted to eing a druid/hunter, which led to an interesting incident with BRK). New pets are totally, udderly awesome. Gorilla aoe grinding (using Thunderstomp and Volley, aka Gorilladin grinding) is bucketloads of fun (and a good source of leather) and should be better now that Smack and Cower no longer turn themselves on. I've created the following macros to aid my mass-slaughter of wildlife in Black Morass and Nagrand:
Macro 1: Turns Thunderstomp off autocast and allows you to gather mobs, target each mob and press it to make Gorilladin tag it
/petautocastoff Thunderstomp
/petattack

Macro 2: Use this once you're ready to start blowing stuff up, may need to press it twice to get Mend Pet to work
/cast [combat] Kill Command
/cast [combat] Bestial Wrath
/cast [combat] Thunderstomp
/petautocaston [combat] Thunderstomp
/cast Mend Pet

Then just Volley everything to death.

- is it just me or do Boars kind of suck now? For a special skill, Gore doesn't seem that awesome, especially compared to the focus-dump Bite which all pets get anyway (or an equivalent thereof)

- arena as BM is very cool. I ditched my Core Hound for a level 67 spider (shock! horror! although there are far too many Core Hounds running around at the moment anyway; no love for Spore Bats? And why no Worms, they're exotic too). A 4 second web on a 28 second cooldown is very nice for keeping people in the right place for Bestial Wrath to rip them up. Teaming up with my old partner Meellow facilitated the gibbing (with extreme prejudice) of various enhancement shamans and the like, and with the new addition Octavio (Stupidcow's retadin) I had the entertaining experience of blowing up a warrior who had ventured up one ramp on our side of Blade's Edge arena before his druid partner got a good view of what was happening. No more lengthy irritating drain games for me!
I will say though, that the white Core Hound is still the coolest looking pet in the game, imo.

- although title-ratings were locked prior to the release of 3.0.2, it was stated by Blizzard that we could continue to acrue arena points right up until the release of Wrath of the Lich King in November. Yet I have received no points for activity this week; possibly they were lost in the various server FAIL! of the last week

- "The Hallowed" is an awesome title, and my druid has avidly been trick or treating all over the world in order to obtain it, but neither the Squashling nor the Helm have made their way into his hands. I do hope he can get them, since "Beathooven Jenkins" is just not the same

- on that note, I'm pretty indifferent to the new Achievement system, since I've done stuff like Trophies and similar in a number of MMO games. The titles are pretty nifty though, although I think the Loremaster will take too much work to be worth it (e.g. another 300 Eastern Kingdoms quests on my hunter), although I may try for it at 80. At the moment the Achievements just seem like a way to keep people spending more time on WoW. But that's what we do, right?

- I'm currently leveling my mage and paladin, both are now at 46 (edit: paladin now 47). Flamedancer has swapped elements from Fire to Frost, and is enjoying her frequent 950 damage Frostbolt crits (although her crit rate against Frozen targets is a lot less than what Shatter should be producing). Ephylia has decided that the incredibly powerful Judgements of the Wise, together with the rather awesomely-named The Art of War make Retribution a much better specialisation than her previous Protection training, and with the buffed Consecration (and ridiculous mana efficiency) she can still down 3-5 opponents insanely quickly

PS: kinda only just sunk in that I'm done with lectures for my degree O.o
PPS: Purple Death is one of the oddest drinks I know of. A fortified wine, it is brewed exclusively in West Auckland and tastes a lot like grape-flavoured bubble gum disolved in cough syrup. Thankfully the bottle, which we've had for about a year now, is finally empty.

[Guide] Getting Your White Core Hound

2008-10-17T11:52:00.007+13:00

White Core Hound? Want it? YES YOU DO!

BigRedKitty calls it the "Puppy Dog of Doom". I call it the only Core Hound that actually looks like a beast (the others look like some sort of demon, and we're definitely not warlocks).

Ok, so a couple of questions have been asked as to how you get it. So here's a guide.

Briefing:
Your target: The Kurken, a level 12 Core Hound on Azuremyst Isle. Wowhead. Petopia. NOTE: It's an EXOTIC pet, so you'll need the 51 pt BM talent (Beast Mastery)to tame it.
Here's a map:

Azuremyst Isle: Now Even More Exotic!

Details: the target lives in a cave (Stillpine Hold) with some deranged Owlkin. It's the object of a quest, so be nice to any level 10-12 draenei running around.Now if you're Alliance, that's all you need to know. Go get it, or go find a real challenge.

If you're Horde things get a bit more tricky.
Firstly, Azuremyst Isle is hostile territory. And there's no direct transport.

On the plus side, you need to be at least 60 to tame the thing in the first place, so at least you won't have a hard time getting there, it will just take a while.

Before you go: STABLE YOUR CURRENT PET, or prepare to abandon it.

How to get there (Horde):
The route is Ashenvale -> Darkshore -> Azuremyst Isle.
More specifically, you need to get to Darkshore, and then head to the Auberdine Docks (it's an Alliance town, and not a problem for a 60+).

Darkshore: Alliance territory

The best way to get to Darkshore is to fly to Zoram'Gar in Ashenvale (from Orgrimar), head a bit east to the road and take it north (the road on the western side of Ashenvale, not the one to Felwood), Splintertree Post also works.

Ashenvale, Horde Flight Paths shown with a *

If you don't have the Zoram'Gar FP or Splintertree Post, head north from the Barrens through the Mor'Shan Rampart and into Ashenvale. And pick up the FP while you're at it. If you don't know where the Barrens are, look up Chuck Norris, or go roll Alliance (although if you don't know where the Barrens are, you won't get the Chuck Norris reference either).

For the Horde: Showing Route from Orgrimar

Ok, you've made it to Auberdine. You're at the docks (which can be found if you ride through the inn). You can't read the signpost that points to Azuremyst Isle (because Orcs can't read), so let's make sure you get on the right boat: the left pier goes to Stormwind, which is some Alliance village or something; the right one goes to Teldrassil, some other Alliance hovel; the middle one goes to Azuremyst Isle, which is still infested with Alliance, but also has one of the coolest pets in the game on it.

Directions: The Blue Thingie is You, the Black Cross is the Docks. Paint Rocks.

Take the boat. Wait for it to cross the water. Get off the boat. Check out that Wowhead map linked above. You're at the docks south of the Exodar. Head north along the road (western side of the isle), but go around the Exodar (hint: the guards are now level 75, I found this out the hard way when I thought I could take a shortcut through).
Keep an eye out for a bunch of hills on your right, if you've reached the bridge to Bloodmyst Isle, it's a bridge too far. Stillpine Hold shouldn't be too hard to find if you keep an eye on your map. The cave entrance is from the south.
Don't kill any Draenei if you're on a PVP server, let them grow into worthy foes. Feel free to kill any gnomes you see.
Enter the cave (Stillpine Hold). Your target is at the back of the cave, by a lake. As you go in, there's a little path on the left that dips down and takes you straight there, but if you miss it you'll get there eventually. Tame it. Hearth out and stomp around Shattrath, or go raid the Exodar.

Now if you want to be manly (or womanly) and you need a MC one, check out It's Gotta Be Orange! on BRK.net. It's an excellent guide.

Personally I really like my white Core Hound. It looks awesome.

Now /shoo and get taming!

EDIT: now with pictures for the illiterate.

Soooo 3.0.2 - initial thoughts

2008-10-15T19:04:00.007+13:00

Well, we finally got in.
And now the whole Bloodlust battlegroup is down for 2 hours for "emergency maintenance".
My thoughts so far? A bit chaotic, but overall awesome.

First of all, I respeced Darksentinel to 51/10/0 Beast Mastery. Then I went to go get me a white Core Hound (got to give my thanks here to Mania's update of petopia, I kinda forgot). On the way I managed to find one of those cool Ghost Sabers in Darkshore (wasn't going to keep her though):And then it was on to Azuremyst Isle. Where I got killed by the guards, because I didn't realise that they're all 75, so I tried to ride straight past the Exodar. While I was doing, that orc hunter I know was flying to Un'goro (people, if you want a Devilsaur and you're Revered or higher with Keepers of Time, take the portal to the Caverns of Time, it's slightly faster than flying from TB or Org, or however else Alliance gets there). Anyway, I found the Kurken, and I now have a white Core Hound:
A brief trip to Warsong Gulch yielded 3 achievements (including Saves the Day), plus a daily I forgot I had. I also found out that ret pallies are pretty nasty at 70.

After this it was time to respec Beathooven to balance and test out the new spell power-based damage on all my healing gear. And yes, it's really nice having 800+ spell power. Although a couple of duels later I decided it really was much more fun kiting people with Core Hounds.

So it was back to Durotar on the avenging Beast Master, really putting Beast Mastery with Bestial Wrath's 1.4 minute cooldown through it's paces. It's awesome. Out of around 20 duels I lost 2, 1 to a well-geared rogue (Dismantle is nuts) and one to a warlock who kited me around the giant rib cage sticking out of the ground by the entrance to Orgrimar. Core hound really messes up Elemental Shamans with Lava Breath. Given the number of ret paladins performing way above their gear level (and never running low on mana), I decided it was time to try another pet: the chimaera. And after a trip to Winterspring (on the way I grabbed an Owl, but then released it again) I ended up with a 2-headed drake with Froststorm Breath. Now the damage on Froststorm Breath is only a few hundred, but the debuff is insane. Combined with Wing Clip, Frost Trap, and Concussive Shot I kited around T5/T6/S3 rogues/feral druids/warriors/enhancement shamans and ret paladins as much as I wanted, especially combined with trinket+Bestial Wrath. In duels at least (not arena), Beast Mastery hunters are extremely hard to beat.

After eating a couple of mages and enjoying a server restart, I decided to try the ret paladin for myself. My ret paladin is level 41, and for the first 10 minutes I tried to get my head around the new system of Hands, Seals and Judgements. And after that things went a bit nuts (once I'd gone back to Org to train a few things that had been changed). I experimented in Dustwallow Marsh, with mobs ranging from 37-39, so there wasn't a lot of challenge 1v1. But after rounding up 6 of the Theramore Deserters, killing them extremely quickly with Consecrate and ending up with both 90% health and mana, I realised that even while levelling, retribution is pretty OP. At one point I went afk for 5 minutes and came back to find I'd been attacked, and there was a corpse next to me waiting to be looted O.o. I was going to test AOE grinding on the murlocs, but decided there was something else I needed to do first.

My rogue alt had a massive supply of herbs to sell, and by this time Kingsblood was selling for 40g/stack. Long story short, within an hour I had amassed 280 gold and cleared some bag space. Also, auctions that have sold but not yet been paid for are now listed on the auction house interface. The point here being, if you have herbs, sell them, if you want to level inscription and don't have a supply, be prepared to fork out quite a bit of gold or go hunting yourself.

And by the time I'd tested both Fire and Frost specs on my mage, it was time for the servers to come down again. Both these specs seem a bit better than before, and some of my +[school]-only damage items have been changed to raw spellpower, making it easy to switch between specs.

Short form summary:
- chaos
- some stuff hard to find, including marks of honour
- achievement system has some really cool stuff, but not enough retroactive achievements
- ret paladins are nuts (especially compared to before)
- BM hunters are nuts (although they were pretty sweet before)
- rogues are nuts (and always were)
- basically everything is nuts, except holy paladins and fury warriors (lol, Titan's Gimp)
- lots of nice changes, but will take a while to get used to
- addons sort of work (not completely) and are showing a lot of error messages, but I'm too lazy to update them
- servers are still down

And here's a picture of Stormwind Harbour, taken on the Proudmoore server while Aman'Thul was down:

And We're In.... Sort of

2008-10-15T09:26:00.005+13:00

Hi.
Me again.
Inside your RSS reader, clogging it up.

And yes, new patch downloaded, and installed.
New login screen (win, /tickle [target=frostwyrm]).
New music (hey it's really cool, a lot better than the BC theme, possibly even better than Legends from WOW classic).

And... Aman'Thul not up. Only Oceanic realm up is Frostmourne.
US realms coming up one at a time though.

So I'm just sitting here listening to the music.

*twiddles thumbs*

Anyway, hopefully next time I'll have some sort of content-based post for y'all.

EDIT: 9:50 am (NZDT) and Stonemaul is up (level 7 rogue) and Nagrand (level 9 shaman), but I don't think the patch affects them much.
In the meantime: new hairstyles!
And about 6 realms just went down again, gutting to those who made it through.

EDIT: 10:17 am, Aman'Thul and The Forgotten Coast are still down. Completed my first achievement ever (Darksentinel @ Nagrand is now a level 10 shaman /moo).

Out Of Space*

2008-10-15T08:24:00.004+13:00

So apprently the patch requires 6.5GB of space to install (I had 4.7 free). What it's doing with that space, I have no clue (6.5GB is a lot, it's more than half what WoW takes up at the moment).
So it was goodbye to the Diablo 2 (1.88GB) and Starcraft (1.2GB) directories.

No idea what I'll be deleting for WOTLK, Windows maybe.

*This post is dedicated to Out Of Mana.

What can we expect tomorrow?

2008-10-14T22:24:00.000+13:00

So servers have gone down tonight, presumably so that 3.0.2 can come out.
Earlier I had the following conversation with Toresh of Hunt This (edited slightly for relevance):

(02:24:03 PM) Toresh: i know what will be happening tomoorw though. in trade"where did my mounts go. and /w me "where u get that pet from"
(02:25:04 PM) darksentinel: lolk
(02:25:22 PM) darksentinel: and also "where's skill [x], it disappeared from my bar"
(02:25:40 PM) darksentinel: "/r your talents got reset"
(02:26:10 PM) Toresh: not going to be a good day at all :D
(02:27:21 PM) darksentinel: bah
(02:27:24 PM) darksentinel: /leave trade
(02:27:28 PM) darksentinel: /leave general
(02:27:31 PM) Toresh: good plan
(02:27:32 PM) darksentinel: /gquit :P
(02:27:38 PM) Toresh: lol

Some things we might expect post-3.0.2:
Chaos.
People asking where their mounts went (hint: spellbook tabs).
People asking where talented spells went (hint: assign talent points).
People leveling inscription like mad (hint: sell herbs).
People running around with devilsaurs, corehounds and all things awesome (hint: get your own BM hunter).
Hunters running around taming everything. Un'goro will be full, and MC will see more activity than it has for ages.
Hunters trying to solo stuff, 'cos you know, they're kinda broken in pve post-patch.
Hunters.
Hunter pets with no talents.
Players with no talents.
QQing.
Me bitching about not getting an arena title.
Really busy trade channels.
Broken add-ons.

What might we not see:
Holy paladins.
Survival hunters.
People who left WoW for Warhammer Online (not really relevant to the patch, but something I talked about today).
Marshal Windsor in Stormwind City.
Various other things we'll suddenly miss.
The alts of all the people playing hunters.

Anyway, good night for now, will post something tomorrow (don't expect much, I'll be too busy playing my hunter and ret paladin).

[Arena]: A Lesson in Humility

2008-10-14T11:01:00.002+13:00

Patch 3.0.2 comes out tomorrow, no surprise.
And arena Season 4 ends at the same time (before the patch turns everything on it's head).

We figured 1600 rating would cut it for a Challenger title, based on Arena Junkies' arena title calculator. Going into this week, our 2v2 was at 1543, and our 3v3 at 1503, so we should've had a decent chance. The key word being should.

We ended up getting facerolled by teams on much lower rating.
We fought a lot of people with S4 gear, especially helms (which require 1700 rating).

Stupidcow and I ended on 1472, after a lot of very hard matches against teams a lot better geared.

Damah, Stupidcow and I ended on 1398 after an hour of pain and suffering. We got to 1546 after a few easy games then plummeted insanely quickly, losing 17-19 points a match. We played almost every pvp-viable class and spec tonight, at a variety of ratings and still got owned (no warriors or boomkin, oddly enough). These were seriously good teams, with extremely well-coordinated cc and very good gear.

Stupid reroll teams getting friends titles.

Highlights of Season 4:
- 2v2 with Damah (elemental shaman) on my resto druid, teams would run around looking for the rogue (can't they see thorns and MotW?)
- any arena with Damah, people seem to assume he's resto
- actually killing things as a Beast Mastery hunter
- after a day of losing to teams in half S4, fighting an Arms warrior wielding Terrok's Quill
- reaching 1560 rating (max peak of our 2v2) while wearing more blues than PvP items
- kiting hunters and frost mages around pillars as a resto druid
- fighting prot paladins ("dude, he just threw his shield at me") and warriors with shields (fought a long game once, where I was hit by my own Entangling Roots three times, gogo Spell Reflection)

Lowlights of Season 4:
- fighting all the rerolled teams messing with our 1500-ish bracket (seriously, S4 helms, wtf?)
- ret paladins with windfury totem
- watching your elemental shaman 2v2 partner run out of mana - you can keep them alive for ages, but you can't kill anything
- rogues
- being kited while playing a hunter
- having pet killed by enhancement shamans
- playing a hunter in general
- watching your warlock partner trying to kill a scorpid so you can drink
- playing warlock/druid against resto shamans and anything else - they have so much mana regen
- binding Abolish Poison to the F4 button

GG and bring on Season 5!

Ode to Lifebloom

2008-10-13T12:34:00.001+13:00

Well, as mentioned all over the place, it's not long until 3.0.2 hits us (all 1.17GB of it).
I’d like to remember the 2.x.x patches with a dedication to one of my favourite spells of The Burning Crusade. It’s slightly shorter than originally intended, but I found I was repeating myself after a while. For reference, the old LB, and the new one.

Lifebloom,
You’re awesome

When I get feared
And the tank’s about to die
Your bloom’s right there
Keeping them alive

Outheal a mage’s burst
And a warlock’s DoTs
Hunters do your worst
Cos I’ve got HoTs

Lifebloom,
You’re awesome

You make me a four-tank healing tree
And OP me in PvP
Seven seconds of health regen
Then a bloom so we’re good to go again

Keep my team alive
While I pillar kite
Heal them while I drink
Out of line-of-sight

Lifebloom,
You’re awesome

My life comes back
With every tick
Dispel my buffs
At your own risk

Totally OOM but I can heal
With the epitome of efficiency
220 mana, is that for real?
Keep healing for all eternity

Lifebloom,
You’re awesome

There, wasn't that cheesy.
Now back to this essay...

What will I be doing once 3.0.2 hits?

2008-10-12T23:03:00.006+13:00

Around 2 days to go until the servers go down in preparation for 3.0.2 (assuming things happen as normal).

Here's what I'll probably be trying on Wednesday and over the subsequent week or so (until my exams come up) - not necessarily stuff you should do, but you could consider some things:

hunter:

buy 2 stable slots run around and tame everything in sight. Including, but not limited to:

gorilla

Winterspring chimaera

core hound (probably get the SMV version, and then try for MC skin if it proves worthwhile)
devilsaur
one of those cats from Darkshore
a new owl (I kinda miss Orly)

try to solo some stuff:

Fel reaver
Gutripper (gave me problems at 67)
target dummy
slave pens
first room of shadow labyrinth

mess around in PvP with Aimed Shot and Readiness

paladin:

spec ret and have fun

druid:

see what moonkin is like with our healing googles and healing mace

bitterly regret not getting the Challenger title

sell herbs to people leveling Inscription (yay, profit)
QQ about:

lifebloom
holy paladins
people in S4 helms (requiring 1700 rating) playing in teams at 1500

EDIT: tried to fix the formating, but it hates me.

[WOTLK Spoiler] So, like, whoah

2008-10-12T14:57:00.007+13:00

Was busily procrastinating, when I came across this [mega SPOILER warning]:

WOW_Wrathgate_1024.avi

That's pretty ****ing epic.

Part of a really awesome questline, and explains a lot of stuff about the Forsaken.

The full questline, courtesy of BlizzPlanet can be found here [more spoilers]:
Alliance version
Horde version
And they're... (author has run out of superlatives, will now resort to 'cool') really frickin gob-smackingly... cool

All I can say (apart from "wow") is that now I'm really looking forward to Wrath, and DKs.

A brief look at the crafted PvP blues in WOTLK

2008-10-12T11:33:00.003+13:00

BRK recently made a post displaying his awesome new blue PvP gear, which has replaced a large chunk of his 70 epics (although he still has his 2-piece Tier-5 bonus, /jealous).

Listed below are the item sets, plus the stats specific to each set (resilience and stamina are ubiquitous):
NB: set name links to the set on wowhead, the helms are linked for mouseover goodness and comparisons.
Eviscerator's Leather (agi, crit, AP) - Rogues, Feral Druids (Eviscerator's Facemask)

Overcast Leather (int, spirit, spellpower) - Resto/Balance Druids (Overcast Headguard)

Stormhide Mail (int, stam, MP5, spellpower) - Resto/Elemental Shamans (Stormhide Crown)

Swiftarrow Mail (agi, int, crit, AP) - Hunters, Enhancement Shamans (Swiftarrow Helm)

Frostsavage Cloth (crit, int, spellpower) - All clothies (note that wowhead lists this set as requiring level 80, while the others require 78) (Frostsavage Cowl)

Ornate Saronite Plate (spellpower, MP5) - Holy Paladins (Ornate Saronite Skullshield)

Savage Saronite Plate (str, crit) - Warriors, Retribution Paladins (Savage Saronite Skullshield)

Since they're made through tailoring/leatherworking/blacksmithing, these items seem really accessible, requiring basic ingredients for each (frostweave cloth, borean leather, or saronite bars respectively) plus one eternal (apparently the new motes). Since the items are BOE they'll really boost profit margins from crafting professions and also provide solid entry-level gear for 80 PvP (and probably represent a few PvE upgrades during questing).

Sadly the gear seems extremely streamlined. While Moonkin now benefit from spirit, I'm not sure that DoT-based Warlocks scale all that well with crit, and there's probably other sub-par itemisation offered by the new gear for other classes/specs I'm less familiar with.

One thing you might notice is the complete lack of sockets on this gear, and the complete lack of hit rating. While the lack of hit on shared healer/dps gear makes sense, not being able to socket for it will mean quite a few resists/misses especially given things like the nerf to the Hunter talent Surefooted (from the BC Surefooted).

Overall though, I very much approve of these items, and will probably be leveling the hunter for the Leatherworking love.

Also, turns out Ghostcrawler is male, and I have no idea why the forums kept refering to him as a "she". Lots of blogs did it too. Man, my world just got turned upside down. That being said, does it really matter?

One Bored Tauren Druid, One Willing Blood Elven Priestess, and Four Servings of Noggenfogger Elixir

2008-10-09T21:58:00.004+13:00

My laptop is back (new mainboard), so now I can profusely spout meaningless statements all over the interwebs.

I like the odd session of RP on our non-RP PvE server. So the other day, after several hours of moderate success in defending the Alterac Mountains from Stormpike incursions (no dwarves shall pillage the treasures of the Frostwolf lands while my leaves remain capable of photosynthesis and restoration), I let myself be ...distracted... by a rather delightful Blood Elven Priestess in the city of Shattrath. Owing to a slight difference in physique (it would appear that the noble Tauren race are rather larger than the delicate, exquisite and refined Sin'Dorei), I imbibed multiple doses of Noggenfogger Elixir (the first three had... undesirable results).
Hence there ensued a plethora of shapeshifting, /emoting, /dancing and other good-natured family-friendly fun, lasting around 10 minutes (by which time the magical juice wore off). No pictures though. /moo.

What did you expect?

And for the record, I'm thinking of this spec for 80 druid PvP. Pewpew. Battle chicken. With the spell power changes it should allow reasonable heals, decent dps and the awesome cc potential that make druids so awesome in BC.

Udder-Madness on arena

2008-10-07T10:42:00.004+13:00

If you haven't read WoW Insider's take on PvP (now and in Wrath), go do it now (thanks Toresh for the link, I don't have the time anymore to keep up with all the WoW Insider stuff).
While you're at it, take a look at what Kalgan writes about Blizzard's philosophy of PvP (also linked to from the WoW Insider article).

So I thought I’d write my own thoughts on PvP the way it is at the moment, and the changes Wrath will make to the arena setting.

First, those changes the way I understand them:
-There will be a set of PvP blues that will be obtainable through crafting.
-There will be a set of Arena epics (requiring no rating) that will be obtainable for arena points: the Savage gear (I suppose similar to Season 3 gear available in Season 4, barring Shoulders and Weapons)
-There will be a full set of gear that requires rating from between 1665 and 1850 rating (I think): Hateful gear
-There will be honor-obtainable gear for Bracers, Belt and Boots, Necklace and Rings, set a bit higher than the craftable blues
-There will be a plague of locusts o’er the land (brought by those silly Death Kniggets)

Secondly I want to state where I’m coming from. My hunter (Darksentinel) started arena maybe around 10 weeks in to Season 3, with a resto druid partner (Meellow) and both of us in mostly non-heroic instance blues, needless to say we got steamrolled. But we had a lot of fun, and after dipping as low as 1280 we climbed back up to the mid-1300s and I earned my Waraxe []. We’d pretty much found our niche, hanging with a bunch of other misfits like us (and the occasional Season 3 geared team that really sucked), but not near the bottom. During this period we also started Drunken Hobbits, a 3v3 team with Stupidcow, Damah and Arkanon (3 other guildies with PvP inclinations), but didn’t play regularly due to timetable issues.
Season 4 came out and we upgraded our gear to the reputation blues (so sad), and then hung around just under the 1400 mark. Now Darksentinel is in a mix of Season 1 – Season 3 gear (probably S2 on average) and we’re somewhere between 1400 and 1450.
Towards the end of Season 3 I started levelling my Druid (Beathooven) more seriously, with the aim of seeing how broken restoration actually is at 70 (quite broken, actually), and I hit 70 in the first week of September (well into Season 4). That same week I started Multiboxing, a 2v2 team with Damah (elemental shaman), to start earning points. A few weeks later, Stupidcow (SL/SL Warlock) joined Multiboxing and we’re currently pushing for a title (any title) that we can bear into Northrend with pride – hopefully we’ll make 1600, although for the last 2 weeks we’ve been pretty stable just over 1500. But just having broken the 1500 mark felt like an awesome achievement, since most of the teams had far more experience and significantly better gear (for reference, my druid currently has: Engineering epic goggles, Scryer SSO necklace, S2 shoulders, reputation chestpiece, Karazhan cloth bracers, S2 Mace, questing blue offhand, S3 gloves, S4 belt, reputation legs, Heavy Clefthoof Boots, S2 ring, blue quest ring, PvP blue trinket, Goblin Rocket Launcher – i.e. really crap gear), and I’m kind of being carried by Stupidcow (who is one of the best gamers I’ve had the honour of knowing).

Thirdly: a lot of work seems to be based on balancing PvP against PvE. I’d hesitate to say it can’t be done, but Blizzard keeps trying, and players keep QQing about their perceived discrepancies. While the arguments range both ways from “good PvE gear just involves joining an experienced raid group and taking stuff no one wants” to “damn PvP welfare epics”. My druid has been in both situations: a week after turning 70, I healed a part of lower Kara and Maiden dropped her mace, which should have been a significant upgrade over anything else I would normally have had at that point, except I already had the S2 mace.

The actual point I want to make here is rather simple: I want to gauge myself against other players within the system that Blizzard has set up. I like working hard to earn rewards (which I haven’t yet, and probably won’t), and the rating requirements mean that I have something to strive to. I like the challenge, the intense competition and the satisfaction of slowly increasing my rating through playing well. I find that the gear takes slightly too long to earn (15300 honor takes me about 10 hours to farm all up through AV, more if it requires marks from a battleground Horde don’t win very often (e.g. AB, which often takes 20-30 minutes for a single mark).

Some of my other views on Kalgan's post: the craftable gear idea is awesome. Easily obtainable Savage gear is also nice. And I don’t have a problem with the way Hateful gear is obtained: I like arena. A few people complain that Blizzard are pushing arena too hard, and that they feel forced to do arena in order to get the good gear. This may be the case, but personally, I don’t like raiding and if I so much as want to experience the end-game content in MH, BT and SWP (and being a deep fan of WoW lore I kinda do want to) I first have to spend a lot of time in T4 and T5 instances, working with a guild and forcing my cramped timetable to fit their raiding schedule – it’s the price you have to pay, at least if you want to, you can experience arena at any time.

WOTLK Arena:
So, what class will I play in Season 5 arena? Not sure. Here follow my personal opinions on the different options:
Death Knights: unknown how strong they will be, but definitely an option. Since I haven’t played beta or PTR I don’t really understand their relative power and mechanics enough to comment, but I suspect they’ll be good, if somewhat overplayed.
Druids: given the Lifebloom nerf (and other efficiency decreases), restoration won’t be the powerhouse it was in TBC, even with armoured Treeform, but will still be an incredibly versatile healer with a lot of cc potential. Feral I’ve never been entirely comfortable with from a PvP viewpoint (not enough cc, no drain, not enough burst). Balance is a viable option, but will need to see how it works out, since gear can be a bit finicky.
Hunters: although Wrath has given hunters an almost-ridiculous amount of love, I’m not sure whether I’ll try to push arena seriously with Darksentinel (even though I consider them to be the best drain class with a scorpid pet, especially with new instant cast Aimed Shot). There are 2 main reasons for this: hunters are still incredibly weak at melee range (Disengage notwithstanding) and Crippling Poison+Shadowstep/Hamstring+Intercept combined with my New Zealand lag make some classes a nightmare to play against, and additionally hunters are really easy to LoS. And while I think I play a decent druid, I don’t play a hunter nearly as well as I could.
Mages: I’m not really a fan of mages in arena, although that’s probably because as a resto druid with a warlock partner they don’t offer a lot of challenge (shift out of Shatter combo, LoS+heal and wait for DoTs to finish the job), and don’t really see the appeal. Although, given the decreased mana costs in Wrath they may become more attractive.
Paladins: Stupidcow and I are seriously considering Retribution paladins. They seem to have massive burst, decent survivability and efficiency. We may even run Ret/Ret. From what I’ve heard though, Holy paladins need some serious work before they become viable for anything at all.
Priests: not sure. Discipline/Holy will probably still be nuts, and hopefully Shadow will be both more mana efficient and have more burst.
Rogues: ah the infamous OP class. Seems like they’re even more OP. I might decide to roll a rogue, but doesn’t really seem to suit my playstyle.
Shamans: I love Shamans, all 3 specs. And while resto and elemental may seem more suited to 5s, they should be pretty viable for smaller brackets too, especially with the buffs Enhancement is getting in the patch.
Warlocks: I’ve always found warlocks scary in PvP (at least since hitting 70, before then my BM hunter would eat them with gusto), although more so as a non-BM hunter than as a resto druid, and I suspect that Demonology-heavy locks will be quite nuts in Wrath even if I haven’t heard the verdict on Demonform.
Warriors: yawn. They may be good, but they don’t appeal to me. They’re just too boring in the way they play.

Anyway, I has assignments to do, and rating points to earn. There’ll probably be more PvP commentary from me next week.

EDIT: hopefully fixed some formatting issues.

Gnothing Butt Madness

2008-10-05T18:40:00.010+13:00

EDIT: complete and utter fail on my part.
A recent post on Out of Mana:

I am NOT Mania! I don't even know who Mania is. A maniac, maybe. Mania, definitely not.

A link back to me revealed that the blogger of Udder Madness thought the most recent Gnaked Gnome Race was hosted by BRK and Mania. BIGFROWNIEFACE.

Yep. Complete and udder phail. Zis vut happen when no sleep enuf, aye.

Today was BRK and MEGAN's Gnaked Gnome Race (foshizzle), on Drenden, US.
I took part, missed the tram from IF to SWC and then died about 8 times in STV, twice in Westfall and once in Darkshore. Eventually I made it to Orgrimar.
I took my camera.

Having a penchant for dancing on banks as a naked gnome, I had to try.
This tauren druid tried to play too, but was a bit rough.

So I had to dance by myself. :( (look at that hair!)

Until this hand of A'dal came along and joined the party!

And a bunch of us made it to Thrall.

Anyway, lots of fun. I advocate an Udder Madness version of this. Cows raiding Ironforge (via the zeppelin to Grom'gol or Undercity.

Apparently if I used a logical posting system, life would be easier

2008-10-04T13:07:00.006+13:00

But who wants an easy life?

/begin preamble [EDIT: can't spell "begin" /facepalm [target=player] ]
Anyway. Without a laptop I find I'm falling behind on a bunch of stuff, like reading blogs, writing posts et cetera. I keep meaning to, but generally I find that the places I'm most likely to write well (or rather, lots) are:
- late at night, possibly in bed
- in lectures
- whenever I should be doing assignments/essays/most other duties
On the plus side, the laptop got sent back to ASUS (apparently "ah-zeus") on Wednesday. At least, they told me to leave the laptop outside my front door on Wednesday and the courier would pick it up. So, being a good boy, I placed the laptop in its box inside 2 plastic bags (it was raining) leaning against the front door (reasonably sure it's not visible from the road), and 2 hours later it was gone. Didn't hear a courier, or anyone else though. I'll never see it again, will I?
/end preamble

On a random side note, I got this email from a colleague of mine:
Hi,
In your free time could you please make us a recording of the troggs Wild thing we just want the first verse repeated several times and some animal roaring and teeth gnashing and claws clawing, don’t you just love evening story times

I don't know what it means. Apparently punctuation can be used to both clarify the meaning of chains of words and make them easier to read like totally yeah see what I mean seriously l2punctuate.

EDIT: apparently, I'm meant to be making a recording of the song 'Wild Thing' by The Troggs (some 1960s band, go figure) for an evening storytime at the library next week. Actually if I'd been a bit more awake I might have worked this out, but still, punctuation = win.

Alright, onto some WoW stuff:

- pre-Wrath content patch: 14/10/08 (a month before expansion). No further comments

- honor and marks of honor will no longer reset when the expansion hits. So saving up 75k honor and 100 of each mark might give you a bit of a headstart in 80 PvP.

- Hunter talents changed. Basically, Scatter Shot = 11 points in Survival, Readiness = 21 points in Marksman, Trap Mastery = 41 points in Survival. Readiness in Marksman? ZOMG! See below

- Aimed Shot is now instant cast (and lasts 10 seconds, with a 10 second cooldown). No more 3.5 second cast that resets autoshot and is ridiculously easy to avoid in Blade's Edge Arena. Now it's a 35 yard (41 if talented) Mortal Strike, BAM! Win. Which means a 0/41/20 PvP build could do stuff like: Multishot, Scatter Shot healer, Aimed Shot, Silence healer, Arcane Shot, Readiness, Scatter Shot healer, Aimed Shot, Silence healer, Multishot, Arcane Shot, or something like this. Hunter burst = win.

- Druid tanks are awesome again. Sort of. Swipe has been upgraded (now hits all enemies in a cone in front of you, providing some degree of AOE damage), threat and dps are nuts, and mitigation seems pretty nice too. So nice in fact that apparently they have to nerf them a bit because they're eclipsing other classes in Naxx-10. Oh look, a link to a Big Bear Butt. It's all about feral tanking post-patch. More words on the new, improved, Swipe below (taken from a separate post I never got around to finishing):
With a single word ("done"), Ghostcrawler announced the removal of the 4-target limit to Swipe.
Swipe now hits everything in a cone in front of you.
Enough to keep aggro off healers? Probably.
Enough to keep aggro off mages in AOE pulls? Probably not.
Enough to snap-aggro stuff that spawns behind you? Definitely not.

But, a good change nevertheless.

In BC there is 1 tank that can reliably hold aggro through Warlock and Mage AOE without a massive threat lead: Paladins.
In Wrath we can then add Death Knights to that list. Warriors, having also lost the target limit on Thunderclap, may or may not be able to do this. Druids probably can't generate enough threat from Swipe and Demoralizing Roar to achieve this.

A long long time ago (a few months or so), during the early stages following the announcement of WOTLK , it was stated [can't dig up the link atm, WoWInsider has too many posts] that Paladins would be the AOE tank of choice, with Warriors excelling at bosses, Death Knights being the best at tanking casters and Druids apparently doing whatever dirty job remained. For whatever reason, these niches are beginining to be less clearly defined. And thankfully Druids, being the swiss army knife class, don't seem to be getting penalised for this.

- Resto druids are in fact being looked at, and have had a few fixes. Contrary to what /trade thinks, Blizzard do not in fact hate us all (they just love Rogues more than everybody else). Apart from the fact that they refuse to restore Lifebloom to it's currently broken levels, the changes are really looking good. Naturally, Phaelia @ Resto4Life talks about this, and if you've read this much of my posts, you have no reason not to go read hers.

- Gearing a second character for PvP is such a grind, I can't believe I've got the patience (or for that matter, the time) to do it all again. Still, should pay off. Since we managed to reach 1515 last week, and the 2v2 team ('Multiboxing') has between them gotten 3 upgrades this week - Veteran's Band of Salvation, Guardian's Dreadweave Belt, Vengeful Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves - we should be able to do better this week. Since season 4 finished on the 14th I'm having to get a lot of S2 gear in order to be able to afford as many upgrades as possible. Currently working on the 40 EOTS marks for Vindicator's Kodohide Boots, which, at a 30% win rate, is going to take forever. This whole week seems to have been one long AV grind (around 20k honor).

There's a few other things I want to mention, but in an attempt to create some form of "logical posting system", I'll cover those later. And given the amount of AV and EotS I still need to do, probably a lot later.

In conclusion, I'm at work at the moment, so don't have access to my screenshot folder.
So here's a lolcat.

Isn't it cute? Sharing is caring (except for HIV).

Udder-madness. Caring since 2008.

OMG We Did It!

2008-09-30T21:02:00.004+13:00

One small step for my personal PvP experience, nothing at all of interest to the WoW world (except for the people we beat).
That's right. 1500 rating achieved.

It took some work. What's crazy is, this is on my druid.
At the time we achieved this my druid was really abyssmally geared. 1250 heals, 260 resilience and about 8.5k health (wearing 2 PvP epics, and 4 PvP blues).

Thanks Damah and Stupidcow for taking it this far, let's try to hit 2200! (yeah right).

[Notwow] Quest for Progress

2008-09-28T11:29:00.006+13:00

Has anyone played Progress Quest? It's a little single-player RPG that takes the grinding out of RPGs. Which means that it just runs in the background spouting random RPG-related text to the GUI, with the net effect of looking like Kingdom of Loathing played by a bot.

You start it, it runs. It quests for you, kills stuff, empties bags, buys new gear, and you can watch those little Progress bars... progress. Slowly. And after a while, very slowly. And while this is doubtlessly more interesting than whatever work you're meant to be doing, homework you're procrastinating about, or blog you're trying to read, it's still a bit single-minded (GRIND GRIND GRIND!).

I'm thinking we can do better than this. Hereby introducing Quest for Progress. The non-interactive RPG of the future. It's so futuristic there won't even be a QFP1, but we'll move straight to QFP2. There will be a single player option that can start as soon as your computer loads, and a MMONIRPG (massively multiplayer online non-interactive role-playing game), with over 2 people per server!

This game will be so awesome that if you close it and then load it again later it will extrapolate what would've happened while it was off. No more losing game-time when a tornado takes out some pylons!

Further features (which in fact may or may not be implemented):
- no more spending ages deciding on a class, they're all the same anyway so QFP has the option of assigning you one automatically (defaults to "Village Idiot")
- no more spending ages deciding on a name, QFP has the option of assigning you one automatically (also defaults to "Village Idiot")
- the same goes for race, except that "Village Idiot" is not a race
- better quests: escorts, debaucherie, highland games, marry an heiress, earn a Darwin award, engage in massive public quests
- more realism: QFP will occasionally create an alt for you, and level that one instead (defaults to "other Village Idiot")
- PvP: QFP will include player-versus-player combat (well, QFP-versus-QFP combat)
- NPCs will have names, they may not be very good names, but they will exist
- trophies: QFP will randomly award you completely meaningless things for doing stuff you had no hand in doing (we're basing this on a beaureaucratic model). Other QFP 'players' may or may not view these.
- new hairstyles!
- new dances!
- destructible buildings (actually, no, that won't be happening)
- realm versus realm combat (also a nono, sorry)
- bugs!
- false promises!
- ambiguity!
- lag! (although not sure how we'll do this)
- free beer on fridays! (we are, in fact, working on this. But only on fridays)
- salvation and forgiveness for your sins! (QFP creators hereby forgive you for all sins committed before last summer)
- the wrong release date (next week, honest)
- colons in future titles, because more colon makes everything better!
- and many other things we'll add when we see that they work for other companies (currently considering Google ads)

Quest for Progress 2: we hope you'll join us
Your village called, they want their idiot back

EDIT (not really):
Our lawyers have forced us to add the following disclaimer:
Things QFP might not have (read: probably won't):
- monsters
- graphics
- spells
- items
- a way to install it
- features

[Notwow] Hobos, (vehicle) mechanics, and hubris

2008-09-27T18:08:00.004+12:00

Laptop still broken.
Sort of.
Comes up with random memory failures.
Firefox thinks there's already a copy of Firefox running (which is not responding), and Firefox, being Firefox, thus won't let me start running a new window of Firefox. No Firefox isn't currently running.
The D-Link router at home gives me issues, and I can't 'apt-get' a new internet browser.
I suppose I should try to get ASUS to repair this thing, but there aren't any other verifiable problems with it now, so it probably won't register as broken. Sort of like when your car starts making a funny noise, it makes the noise when you start it, when you drive it, when you wait at red lights, and when you drive through red lights. After a while, it even starts making the noise when the engine isn't running, and, ever so faintly, you can hear the noise disturbing your dreams. Quietly but surely. Like a playground bully from many years ago. But as soon as you take the car to a mechanic it runs completely smoothly. In fact it runs smoother than you've ever heard (or not heard, as the case may be) it run before, since it's a 4th-hand Japanese import you bought from a crazy exchange student during the early 90s. Your mechanic gives you a long look, scratches his head (or her head, as the case may be), charges you $150 for wasting his (her) time and goes back inside after watching you drive off with your teeth tightly clenched. As soon as the door closes behind them, you know what happens? Yep. Your car, ever so gently, starts making that noise again. It gets louder. You know if it persists you will lose sleep, get divorced, and watch your teenaged daughter marry an in-bred hobo from the deep south (i.e. Hamilton) with barely enough intellect to fleece the ACC and WINZ out of sufficient money to finance a coup in Haiti (for reference, a level one troll rogue with Arcane Intellect has sufficient intellect to achieve this). Your grand kids will resemble cane toads going under the lawnmower. You consider going back to that mechanic, since you got a tax return of $263.37 yesterday (true story, the cheque is sitting on my desk, so will only take a day or two to find). But then you notice that even as you think of the mechanic the noise subsides and your petrol indicator has an evil gleam in its bulb. You surrender and drive home. The noise will slowly drive you mad, but if you lay off the coffee your blood pressure won't cause the arteries in your eyes to rupture.

The morale of the story? Buy a German car. They make the same noise, but it comes with a much angrier-sounding accent (people always tell me that when I speak to my parents on the phone it makes me sound angry, although this may just be the fact I'm calling home; I know my mother sounds angry fairly often, but this is because she IS angry). If you can't afford a German car, you now have a hobo-in-law who can teach you how to acquire one, at no additional charge (make sure your immune system can cope with tuberculosis, and be prepared to babysit the grandchildren on Friday nights).

The mechanic in the example above exhibits a fairly common quality (especially where technology is concerned). Think of it as the Midas Touch without the avarice, the anti-kaput, the borked-in-reverse. It's an aura of FIXED! whereby any problem of a particular type (such as car noises) immediately disappears when in close proximity to a particular person (such as a mechanic). Another example of this phenomenon is the photocopier at my work (I work at a library): it will jam, turn off all displays, shred unsaved printed e-tickets, decapitate the customer involved and trigger the fire alarms. Yet if I walk up to it it settles down, if I press a few buttons it starts printing again without fail, and if I croon to it, it plays Greensleeves (needless to say I like that photocopier a lot, I think that over the space of three and a half years it has earned me $4.25 in pay rises, while the computers guarantee my continued employment - although if I lose my job anytime soon just remember: HUBRIS IS A BAD THING).

Then there's the aura of FAIL (broken, borked, kaput, f**ked). Sort of like me and networks. For the life of me I can't set up a network between two objects (single exception: the photocopier at work).
Meellow and I can't get past 1500 rating, no matter what. An Enhancement Shaman will always appear to ruin our dreams.
Zorab will never type an accurately punctuated, formulated and spelled sentence into IRC (instead others will start writing baldly). Nor will he associate the text on a Magic card with what it does, and what he says out loud (Last Gasp does not draw you a card, nor is it legal in the format we're playing).

It is these facts of life you must get used to, and learn to deal with. If you don't want a hobo-in-law, become a mechanic. If you need to do photocopying at Avondale Library, get me to do it (come to me first, unless you have a spare neck). If you're sick of playing magic with rules-lawyers and pedantic nit-picks that take forever to end their turn (they've had a Mountain in their hand for the last three turns, and drawn nothing but land), go find Zorab and have a laugh. Some things you can't change, and some shouldn't be changed anyway.

In other news. Listen to yourself. Like this (courtesy of xkcd):

My only request: make this count for everything: forum posts, /trade chat, blog entries...

If this post wasted your time, I apologise. In future, I'll include adverts. And not just ones for German cars. But thank you for proof reading it.

[This space for hire]

[Insert clever title here]

2008-09-23T12:01:00.004+12:00

If I take a look at the blogs I follow (half a dozen or so), it pretty quickly becomes obvious that in terms of most-recently-updated there is one conspicuously at the bottom of the list. Mine. /facepalm. That being said it's been an eventful week for me:

1) My laptop (one of those cute white Asus Eee things) has died. Something about memory errors and not being able to save stuff or access external data storage (so no backing up files). Fail. This means I’ve lost access to a bunch of stuff (like the internet from any point in the house), and also links to stuff I’ve recently viewed, and a couple of drafts of (let's be honest) drafts of articles.

2) I procrastinated on a 3000 word essay on Euclid's Elements of Geometry. I thought it was due on Thursday, in reality it was due on Monday. I got an extension to Thursday (/win). Today is Thursday and I still haven't finished it... errr, started it (/golfclap).

3) I borrowed 2,200 gold from the guild bank and got myself Epic flying. And it's pretty damn epic, being able to cross any Outlands zone in 2 minutes. My reasoning for borrowing the gold, rather than earning it first: if I borrow the gold I have motive to pay it back, whereas if I save up the gold I'll keep thinking "meh, expansion soon, can't be bothered farming gold if I can't fly in Northrend anyway and the price might come down", and also doing the Outlands dailies is much faster when you can fly... faster. Also if I die today (e.g. suicide/homocide because of unfinished essays) I will have FLOWN (really, flown, that 60% stuff doesn't cut it). And now I can earn gold from the Swift Flight Form questline, to pay the guild back.

4) I spent $100 (NZ) on a pair of headphones. This was a big deal since previously I tended to spend about $10-$15 on headphones, barring my computer headset ($45). Will spending that much more make the 3.5mm headphone jack last longer (or rather, the bit of cable directly above the jack, which always seems to get damaged over time)? Probably not. Does anyone really care about my buying headphones? Probably not. But the Sennheiser PX100s fit very nicely into a case that the cable wraps around - meaning it doesn't magically get tangled in storage in a way that makes quantum-entanglement look like crochet - and THIS IS A GOOD THING (although I don't really get the analogy... quantum entanglement, crochet, wtf am I thinking?).

5) My credit card seems a bit messed up. After buying a bunch of things and making a large payment onto it all within the last week, my account shows zero activity since the 8th of September, which worries me slightly.

6) My Hunter got the S3 Chestpiece, which put him at 11k health until I came to my sense and swapped in some blue DPS rings. In terms of set gear he has 3x S2, 1x S4 and 1x S3. And a bunch of other S1-S3 gear in most of the remaining slots. Which isn't a big deal to most arena players, but it means I'm generally one of the best geared in BGs and is quite satisfying. And now I get to try to obtain all of that again on the druid, in the space of about 2 weeks (or whenever the content patch comes out and messes with the status quo).

7) I suffered through 2v2 again. By 'suffered' I mean that we played 10 games, going 4-1 for the first 5 and reaching a record rating of ... 1465 (/golfclap2) and then went 1-4 for the second lot of 5 (seemingly having jumped a bracket), so gained a total of about 3 rating points (/facepalm2). It appears that my druid (who has the grand sum of 7k hp, buffed, 8k if I swap in some tanking gear) and his Elemental Shaman partner are actually doing better than the significantly better-geared and much more viable hunter/druid combo. And while I play a mean drain game, we lose to enhancement shamans, a lot, like 80% of the time (on the plus side we win around 75%+ of our drain matchups, people in this bracket haven't heard of Scorpid Poison or Star's Tears). One memorable match we played Hunter/Druid (and by that I mean we played against it). My pet was killed twice, while the opposing Raptor remained untouched, but we still won - something about me resurrecting my pet twice, and managing to drink half a mana bar.

8) With the knowledge that Honour (yes, this is how you spell it, no matter what Blogger, Blizzard or anyone else thinks, 'honor' is for the uneducated :P), Marks and Arena Points will be wiped in the expansion, I cashed in all my marks on the druid and got the Guardians Kodohide Belt at about 2:30am this morning (yay for 4.5 hours sleep), which was a minor upgrade over my level 65 int/spirit/healing green. Now I just need to replace the level 66 green boots (I was using Heavy Clefthoof Boots socketed for 8 Resil, 12 Stam from my tanking set, but they've mysteriously disappeared from my inventory, and they're not in my bank either).

9) I think the current Brewfest is pretty cool. I have downed Coren Direbrew 18 times, with 7 Direbrew Hops, 5 Coins, 4 Stam trinkets, and 2 AP trinkets. And my Hunter has the Remote (slightly faster than flying to Kargath and riding to Blackrock Mountain and then winding our way to BRD... ever so slightly). These trinkets are stupidly easy to get (barring the really weird droprates) considering how good they are, and eventually everyone will end up with a full set long before they have their festive mount. Given the other stuff I have to do (farming honor, and gold) I'm not going to be participating in any of the other Brewfest stuff, especially since I spent way too much time on it last year (and got my faux-engineering goggles, I mean, how could I not? They're hunter loot, right?).

10) Hunters in Wrath are going to be awesome. Hunter pets in Wrath are going to be awesome. I've said this before? Well, repeating it doesn't make it any less true ^_^.
BRK has shown that a Gorilla is an awesome AOE tank with Thunderstomp, if you haven’t seen his latest movie, check it out here. Note that the cooldown on Volley has been removed, AND that you can use Autoshot while channelling it (…wow…, and also wtf?). Combined with Explosive Trap this should allow Hunters to push out some mean AOE DPS, and with a Gorilla all you need is a healer (or a nice T5 set bonus). Awesome, or awesome? I haven’t yet decided.
Given the Guard Dog talents, you no longer need to find your Gorilla Fungus to eat, and apparently they can now also eat bread (possibly even Manna Biscuits, but I’m not sure on that). And whereas before, you had to go out and tame a new pet to learn higher ranks of pet skills, they now learn them automatically.
Given the very high damage that Thunderstomp deals at the moment, I expect a nerf to be forthcoming, but it should still be the best AOE tanking skill. The other good AOE tanking pets are the Bear with Swipe and the Crocolisk with Bad Attitude (which has been changed to have quite a long cooldown). All of these should be able to hold threat through Mend Pet aggro, and probably any other incoming heals – at least at melee range.
And although you’d be missing out on Blood of the Rhino and Spirit Bond plus the various other BM-based pet improvements, you can get any of these pets as Marksman or Survival (Explosive Shot, anyone?). But how do these compare to the Exotic Tenacity pets, which should, strictly speaking, be better than their non-exotic equivalents (otherwise Beast Mastery becomes a 51 point vanity talent)? And the reality is that neither the Rhino nor the Worm are particularly dominating in terms of AOE threat (and if they don’t do AOE threat, then heals will draw aggro on any additional mobs, not fun when soloing and definitely not fun in a party where you pet is tanking). Stampede does some AOE threat (through damage), but not a lot and it has a very long cooldown (for the purposes of tanking) – although it’s still a cool talent in PvP, I can’t wait to use it in Alterac Valley on the Stormpike Bridge, or in Iceblood Tower *evil grin*. Acid Spit is probably the highest threat single-target pet skill there is, but unless you macro it to hit adds (and the cooldown is a bit long to rely on it) it won’t hold threat through heals. I really think that the Exotic tenacity pets should not be outclassed in their main roles (i.e. tanks) by apes from the southern jungles of the Old World. Someone please mention this to the devs.
Overall, however, pet (and Hunter) changes in Wrath of the Lich King are nuts (oh right, repeating myself again). Expect people to QQ when we solo every 2 man quest Northrend has to throw at us (and possibly a lot of the 3 mans as well, and some of the easier bosses in Kara). We might even be able to take on Hogger in Nightmare difficulty (although chances are that a Lightning Enchanted Multishot Hogger will blow up Gorillas pretty fast). On that note, what happened to Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2?

11) This one goes up to 11. And it's almost 11 now and this as-yet unwritten essay is due at 5. /Facepalm.

PS: I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information or links on this page, so if anything is wrong, please let me know.

[Hunter] I love Beastmastery

2008-09-22T10:06:00.006+12:00

Beastmastery is awesome.
I respec'd a few nights ago from 11/41/9 to 41/20/0 to do triple DPS arena. And it's so much more fun being able to just blow up clothies, and rogues, and I believe one warrior as well. And the games were short, none of this "how do I drain a Druid with 600mp5" crap.
Then I spent time running around Legion Hold killing stuff for the sheer fun of blowing it up before it got to me (and additionally Intimidation offers another way of allowing pet to hold threat, in addition to Feign Death and Misdirection).

Then I did some 2v2 arena, and in the lower brackets it's not too bad. Given the massive burst and cc immunity of BIG RED KITTY it gives you a bit more staying power against double dps, and the drain component still seems to be enough to beat healers since I keep my Scorpid pet. And now I only need to respec my druid if I want to maximise performance in raids on all my characters, and solo play is sooooo much more enjoyable (imo) as BM (you can still crit stuff to death in 2-3 shots, but those shots occur 20% faster).

Off course 51/10/0 is even better than 41/20/0. Mmmm.

And one day I might be able to tame my feral druid and have the best of both worlds. /dream on.

So yeah.

Beastmastery is awesome.

I hate assignments.

Warning: Contents May Occur

2008-09-19T21:04:00.009+12:00

Ok, so it's been a few days since I last made a post. And even longer since I made something actually worthy of the title of content. So prepare for quite a random sprouting of stuff. And quite a bit of it.
Why the delay? The usual suspects of an essay, and a test, and some arena to do. And generally having to sort out my future, my education, finding possible solutions to various problems (oil alternatives, fresh water alternatives, and the epic fail that is NZ politics at the moment).

Prepare for a reasonably long post. It was originally so big (well, cluttered), I've added a table of contents. Normally each issue would have a separate post, but I don't want the blog to become cluttered simply because I have a couple of hours I can dedicate to writing, and quite a bit to cover. But, knowing the importance of organising stuff nicely, I've added in sections and subsections.

Also, rather than my own takes on stuff, I'll post quite a few links to other peoples' posts.

Table of Contents:
Section 1: Wrath Stuff

Subsection 1.1: Latest Update (8962) - mostly links
1.1.1: Druid updates
1.1.2: Crafting

Subsection 1.2: Other Stuff
1.2.1: Hunter Pets
1.2.2: Personal Plans in Wrath

Section 2: Not-Wrath Stuff
2.1: Review of the PvP Bible (aka: What Not To Buy)
2.2: Should I finish 'Gearing a Druid Tank'
2.3: My Addons
2.4: Other

Section 1: Wrath Stuff

Subsection 1.1: Latest Update (8962)
So, the newest patch (8962) hit the Beta realms yesterday (or maybe the day before :S), and naturally there are a few changes, many of which I won't discuss, mostly because there's going to be a new patch soon anyway (I hope) and lots of people are bound to have discussed the changes relevant to their class.

1.1.1: Druid updates
Since for me the important question at the moment is what is life going to be like for my druid, I will summarise what I read: bears got buffed, moonkin got rearranged, and trees got nerfed. Oversimplification, but for me this was the essence. Phaelia, in her straightforward manner, did a very useful analysis that can be found over at Resto4Life and she also provides further links for the non-resto changes. The bear changes are quite good, in my opinion, and will probably see me tanking, rather than healing (unless I really like tanking as a Death Knigget, apart from making silly Monty Python references, I don't know what else I'd do with a DK... bite peoples' legs off?) and Runycat takes a good look at them (with innuendo) at Unbearably HoT.

On the note of druids never going oom... my 2v2 (druid/hunter) fought warlock/druid last night. The druid was PvE geared and spec'd, by the time my druid was oom and had used Innervate, the other one was at about 6k/9k mana, despite a masked Viper Sting. Then he ran off, in Treeform, to try to Cyclone my partner and oops... lock died (about the only time I've had an advantage in Ruins of Lose), then it took me another minute to kill the druid, since he'd regen 220 mana a tick, and I had no mana myself (had to save up mana for Aimed Shot+Silencing Shot+burst). Apparently gear != skill, who would've thought?

1.1.2: Crafting
Some more details on WotLK crafting have emerged. Horns at Locksucks did a nice summary a few days ago, and MMO Champion has the details on the 8962 changes. My Hunter, who will likely be my main in Wrath, is currently a leatherworker, and the idea of a LW-only wrist-enhancement, although pretty strong, paled in comparison to the profits that other crafters could make (I didn't sell nearly as many Armorkits in BC as I'd have hoped, mostly made them with a lot of my mats for guildies), but more BoEs seem nice. Hopefully we get some snazzy BoP stuff too, because I wasn't all that impressed by the Ebon Netherscale gear, although the Breastplate was good.

Subsection 1.2: Other Stuff
Couple of other points I want to mention, not directly related to 8962.

1.2.1: Hunter Pets
If you haven't heard/seen/been told yet, hunter pets are the bees' knees in Wrath (foshizzle?). They are sheer awesome. Proof? BRK solos a Fel Reaver (remember those massive screen shakers that would ambush you in HFP?And 3 shot fresh 70s?) and shows off two other pets in this movie.

I spent some time yesterday browsing the Petopia li st of Pet Skills in WotLK, with an eye on possible PvP pets once the pre-Wrath patch hits. While the Core Hound's Lava Breath looks awesome, especially against Paladins and Shamans, the Chimaera's Froststorm Breath is also pretty impressive - with the right talent it should have a cooldown of 7 seconds, and slows by 50% for 5 seconds, which sounds pretty nice, especially if it stacks with Concussive Shot. I very much look forward to using my favourite spec in Arena, Marksman just doesn't do it for me.

1.2.2: Personal Plans in Wrath
So, what am I going to do in Wrath of the Lich King? Well once it comes out I might just level my 42 Paladin to escape the crowding in Northrend and Eastern Plaguelands. Well, maybe. I'm really looking forward to levelling my Hunter as BM (ty 4 da love, Blizz) and getting an earlier start in arena (started 3/4 of the way through Season 3 in BC). My Druid will also be levelled at some point, and will probably end up being a Bear, because at the moment Resto isn't too appealing to me (BC Resto really spoiled me, especially for PvP), and I suppose a Death Knigget is compulsory, especially since I am a big fan of WoW lore (if I wasn't a Hordie, I'd totally play a female gnome DK with pink pigtails, 4lols).

Actually, there's a good chance I'll just take Darksentinel through the Old World, taming everything in sight.

Section 2: Not-Wrath Stuff
Stuff not directly related to the upcoming expansion, and therefore not as interesting...

2.1: Review of the PvP Bible
I bought a guide the other night, the PvP Bible. The site is impressive, the promises were extravagant, the price (I thought) fairly reasonable at $37US (moan, crappy NZ dollar, moan) and I thought it'd give us a nice chance to see 1600 and get that S4 chestpiece (feel free to laugh, or /golfclap). I paid, downloaded it, read it (skimming sections), thought about it, and became slightly pissed off.

The guide is an impressive 237 pages in the form of a 20MB pdf. Over 130 pages (i.e. more than half) are about duels, and to me dueling is a fun pastime to be undertaken outside Orgrimmar or in Gadgetzan. Among its more stellar points are a 4/41/16 Hunter build touted as "the best talent build" (note that the 4 BM points are in Improved Aspect of the Hawk) and the comment that "Warlocks have a tough time against Mages". Now, I don't play a Mage, I don't play a Warlock, but from those people I know who do play them the general sentiment I hear is "the only way a mage will beat a warlock is if the Warlock is AFK, has no pet and has res sickness, and even then you might want a rogue to help". Again, I might be wrong, but I dug up this old WoWInsider post (god, that thing is lols) and it roughly confirms my view.
Now I know the disclaimer on the site states: "The website disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy of the content of this website. Visitors assume the all risk of viewing, reading, using, or relying upon this information. Unless you have otherwise formed an express contract to the contrary with the website, you have no right to rely on any information contained herein as accurate. The website makes no such warranty." (i.e. I'm a sucker for buying it), but I'll briefly list here the things that occured to me just while I was reading it, and only in relation to Hunters in 2v2 and 3v3, and just basic points:
- vs. a Warrior or other melee it is imperative that you keep Wing Clip on them at all times
- a Viper Sting macro (and liberal use thereof) is compulsory for draining
- Frost Trap is vital to aid a partner to kite melee.
- a Scorpid pet is necessary to mask Viper Sting from dispel effects using Scorpid Poison
- a Hunter should use Aspect of the Viper against Healer/DPS, and have two weapons with +30 int enchants macro'd for regen phases
- when Rogues Vanish, be ready to Flare them out.
- using your trinket on Cheap Shot is generally a bad idea, because it will always be followed by Kidney Shot
And this was only some of the really obvious stuff I thought should've been in there. A lot of other errors abounded, such explaining how to tank the Marshals in Vann's/Drek's room in AV, without stressing the importance of despawning them by capping towers (and getting 63 bonus honor). There is one focus macro, but no explanation on how to actually use focus. I could go on, for quite a long time, in fact.
i actually emailed the author of the PvP Bible with a lot of these points and got the following response "Thanks for the feedback. It’s much appreciated. I’m looking to continuously update the guide so you can expect all these points noted." Hmmm...

In other words, for me the PvP Bible was not a lot of help. In fact after reading it, I did arena and lost some rating (although don't blame the PvP Bible for that), and I really feel it doesn't deliver on what it's marketed as (yes, I did read the disclaimer, but I have yet to find the "3 hours of tutorials", although I am notoriously bad at finding things even after I trip over them, like a stepladder at work the other day...).
On the POSITIVE side, I think the guide could be quite good (if a bit overwhelming) to someone new to PvP and arena, who doesn't know their class and really is interested in the correct spell rotation required for a Warlock to beat a Rogue. But between WoWWiki and ArenaJunkies, you can get most of that (and more, and more reliably) for free and you don't even need to brave the WoW Forums.
I'm fully tempted to write my own quick guide to Hunters in Arena. And despite me having around 900 less rating than what the author of the PvP Bible claims he has, I will say that I'm confident that in terms of Huntering my guide will be better than what I downloaded. I'll even email him a copy.
Conclusion: from what I've seen, for anyone with some arena and PvP experience, the PvP Bible is not worth the cost of the bandwidth used to download it, and for everyone else it's not worth the cost of purchasing it and then taking the time to read and learn it.

2.2: Should I Finish 'Gearing a Druid Tank'
Self explanatory, really. This refers to part one of my guide, "New Druid on the Block: Gearing a Bear Tank". Part two, which is in the process of being written, is actually about the items that an adolescent feral tank should consider when beginning tanking.
But. Wrath of the Lich King is what, 8 weeks away? Is anyone intending on hitting 70 as a Druid during this time who wants to tank and won't be dragged through Kara and Heroics to get gear? If there is, let me know, especially if you think continuation of the guide might help you (or them). Otherwise there's a good chance that I'll work more on feeding other teams in BG9 my arena rating, and the guide will go to the same place that New Years' Resolutions go. Yes, my sense of timing is sh*t.

2.3: My Addons
Now, my system resources are limited to whatever Dell sold me in 2003. They're so bad that I ended up buying both an AGP and a PCI-E graphics card before realising that my mobo had, in fact, slots for neither (I do have 3 PCI slots, which don't match the 4 slots cut into the case).
In short, this means that if I run X-PERL unit frames in EOTS, I get about 2 fps. So I can't use a lot of addons. What I do use has been carefully selected:
- Omen. The must-have Threat Meter. To anyone who wants to know if they're winning on threat, this is for you.
- Recount. A nicely detailed dps meter that has around 2^16 other functions (margin of error, 2^17).
- Lootlink. Less commonly used, but I really like this addon. It keeps track of items you've seen and allows you customised searching while in-game. Almost as good as an in-game WoWHead for items. Sort of. As long as it doesn't reset.
- Outfitter. My favourite Addon, helps me keep track of the 5 sets my Druid uses (cat dps, tanking, moonkin, PvE Heal, PvP Resto). And an interesting method of encountering my personal vocabulary of obscenities when it resets.
- Cartographer. Useful for viewing Instance Maps, coords, keeping track of key points and a few other things.
- Cosmos UI. A collection of addons, but currently I only use the 'clock' addon, which shows a big clock (surprise) with tooltip information so I can see how much I've procrastinated/how much sleep I've missed.
- Grid. A recent addition, following the debacle of me trying to use the default UI to heal Kara and BGs. This thing is pretty lightweight (compared to say, the Perl derivatives), very nice and customisable, and Phaelia provides a great tutorial that is pretty much a must-see for any Druid who wants to use Grid to heal.

2.4: Other
Thanks for bearing with me so far. In conclusion, Draenei are awesome (they have the best questline EVER, you learn a new language, get transformed into a beautiful, fast, invisible cat and free some baby Furbolg who are locked in cages - I found this out when Aman'Thul went for it's two-hour maintenance on Tuesday, although three hours later it still wasn't up so I went to bed) and I hate Ruins of Lordaeron (we went something like 15-11 yesterday in 2v2, and we won about 3 of the 12 matches that took place in the Ruins). For now, I'm going to sleep, and I'll reread this post tomorrow, correct all the stupid erorrs that crept in and probably delete large chunks.

If you have any questions, requests, comments, arguments, flames, feel free to comment (a reasonably level of maturity is encouraged) on this post, or send an email to (maturity optional):

Blizzard should do Genetics, aka Hunchbacked Hobo's Decapitator

2008-09-16T14:31:00.004+12:00

So, in the last post I was complaining about how I didn't really like the names that Blizzard use for the latest arena gear sets (Brutal, Hateful, etc... - read the post, it's not long). And I'm sitting here in my biosci lecture (Gene Expression and Gene Transfer), and the names given to some of these genes/proteins are just plain awesome in some cases (a real pain in the arse to remember, though).
Here are a few, a knowledge of German or access to a German translation service might be helpful:
krueppel
knirps
hunchback
piggybac
tagalong
snirp
eve
hobo
snail
and a whole bunch more I can't recall right now (I might have passed 356 last semester if I had remembered them).

But this leads me to how much more awesome the names of the arena would be if Blizzard had a geneticist as head of their naming department, e.g. Hunchbacked Hobo's Decapitator, or Krueppeled Snail's Chain Spaulders.

And yes, I'm bored in this lecture. For those of you wondering, there is some proper content on the way, once these tests/essays/assignments are done.

Emo Gladiator's Carrot of Devastation [+12]

2008-09-15T23:13:00.003+12:00

So I was reading a post on WoWInsider regarding season 5 gear.

And really, who thinks up the names?
Tiered Gear (5-piece)
Season 1: Gladiator - ok, nice.
Season 2: Merciless - yep still good.
Season 3: Vengeful - sounds like you're grasping for names here.
Season 4: Brutal - wtf? Degenerated a bit
Season 5: Hateful - thassabit strong, no?
Quality of their names seems to be getting a) really negative, b) lacking originality somewhat. I mean, how about Emo Gladiator's Razorblade? Or Moderately Angry Gladiator's Pocketknife? Or even Accounting Gladiator's Ledger of Doom... yeah, so Blizzard aren't the only ones lacking in originality, but then, I'm not making the game.
Also, the non-set gear will also be Hateful:
Season 1: General/Marshal's
Season 2: Veteran's
Season 3: Vindicator's
Season 4: Guardian's
Season 5: Hateful Gladiator's - huhwhut?
Personally I think these names are pretty cool, although I'm not sure what a Vindicator actually is (one of those Aldor guys, but what do they do?), but I've always been a fan of the 'Guardian' title. So I don't like this particular change (should it persist).

Anyways,
QQ moar.

In Stores 13.11.08

2008-09-15T19:36:00.000+12:00

"In stores 13.11.08"

Source: wowhead.
Need I say anything else?

And yes, that has been corrected to DMY, because MDY is silly and counter-intuitive.

Personally, I was hoping it'd be a while longer. 8 or 9 weeks won't be enough for me to get my Druid some nice Arena gear and rating, especially with the new content patch messing stuff up.

/cry

[Hunter] LF4M Utgarde Keep have DPS and Tank

2008-09-15T10:47:00.002+12:00

So. Hunters can have their pets tank. Damn that is awesome. I've tanked stuff (non-heroics) on my hunter using a weird 17/0/44 build and a lot of PvP gear, and having the DPS using Omen, and Blessing of Salvation. But having my pet tank stuff generally resulted in a dead pet. But no longer, with worms having Acid Spit (think Sunder Armor), and some really awesome Tenacity talents, they not only do increased threat, but also are easier to heal, have a taunt (although 3 minute cooldown is a bit harsh) and higher survivability. A chance to have 4 dps in an instance? I sure hope so. Just need to work out how they will tank multiple things, otherwise the healers will /cry. A bear or gorilla might be able to hold threat at melee range, but would still have problems with casters.
Still, even if it requires 5 cc/dps, should provide some interesting flexibility in group composition during the race to 80. Although it will mean Hunters become even more imba in solo content (yes, you can solo Hogger in Hell Difficulty), which will mean that a lot of hunters will have even more difficulty doing well in group situations. QQ.

Blizzard announcement: PvE to PvP transfers enabled

2008-09-12T09:31:00.001+12:00

Hmmm, interesting.
Having played on comfy and safe Aman'Thul for everything over level 20, I've come across quite a few people who, having rolled an alt here with a main on a PvP server, were really happy that they could level in peace, not be ganked etc. Although at times you really wish you were on a PvP server (hello mining node ninjas), being able to quest without having random rogues ambushing you is nice, and means that I can follow my favoured glass cannon approach to gearing a toon while levelling: lots of damage, very little health.
All of which is besides the point. The point is, that the elitist PvP 70s will be pissed off, but other people should be pretty happy. After all, they can now join friends on PvP servers, since the general turn off for PvE people rerolling on PvP is "I don't want to be ganked while levelling my new toon", and a lot of PvP players flatout refuse to play on PvE.
And to all the original PvP players: you now have lots of new people to gank, people with no madskillzkeh. You still have the advantage of a 'lifetime' of experience. There's a reason that Tichondrius is the most most feared server in my battlegroup (it's probably Kalgan, actually).

[Druid] Beathooven in Kara

2008-09-12T08:00:00.002+12:00

So, I was mucking around in the BGs last night when I got asked to join my guild in Kara. Normally we (they) run Kara Fridays and Sundays, and I can't make it, but tonight, being a Thursday I tagged along. Well first I ate, then I joined in time for Moroes.
Now I'd respec'd resto for some Arena on monday, and then decided to try Boomkin, just because (resto is a bit icky for doing SSO dailies). Now I'd tried a Balance spec before, while levelling, but found its dps, efficiency and survivability to be inferior to Feral. But now, wearing about half healing gear, Moonkin was fun! I could crit things for over 3k with Starfire, pull a dps of 500 without critting and heal well without changing gear. Feral, in comparison, would do an average of 400 dps, crit-spiking to 6-700. And my Feral gear is better (and more spec appropriate) than my Balance gear.
Anyway, the end result was that when the muster call came, I was Balance. And the raid needed DPS. After first asking me to bring the Hunter, they agreed to letting me try to BOOM, although if things went wrong I was ready to grab me some Troll to make it all better.
So there I was, Moonkin in the Karazhan Ballroom. With the following ubuffed stats: 642 Spell Damage, 1054 Healing, 17.22% Moonkin-enhanced Spell Crit, 340 Int, 202 Spirit and my godly 12 Hit Rating (yes, 12). And I had no concrete knowledge of rotations or anything (went with Insect Swarm DoT and Starfire for Boss fights, and Wrath/Hurricane for trash).
And it worked fine. In terms of raid buffs I had Gift of the Wild, Arcane Brilliance and Power Word: Fortitude, plus the occasional Ferocious Inspiration and melee Enhancement Shaman buff. We downed Moroes on first attempt (yes, we have occasionally wiped on him), with undergeared Moonkin-boy pulling a respectable (imo) 600 dps. Seriously, Moonkin are awesome.
Wiped once on Maiden, I think because the Mage pulled aggro, the second time she dropped some healing cloth bracers for me.
Opera proved a bit stubborn, yielding Romulo and Julianne - the encounter we've had the least experience with as a guild. The first time we wiped because the Enhancement shaman, who DC'd just outside the door, logged back in and pulled adds onto us (I think). We wiped again because the bear tank on Romulo took slightly too much damage, and before I'd made up my mind to heal him he had died (edit: turns out that one of the healers was trying to top Healing Done by telling the others not to heal the OT, or so I heard...). Incidentally. the mage died quite early the fight, and released before I could combat res him (silly blighter), so I ended up using the battle res on our BM Hunter's pet (not a bad call, since said hunter was the highest DPS in the run, and BMs do like their pets).
So that was Kara, and my new love for the Balance spec. =D. If you haven't done so yet, find some mage cloth, and try it.

PS: anyone got any idea how well Moonkin scale with +crit vs. +spell damage?
PPS: may put Wowhead links in later. Can't be arsed at the moment.

[Druid] New Druid on the Block: Gearing a Bear Tank Part 1

2008-09-11T23:55:00.001+12:00

[Druid] New Druid on the Block: Gearing a Bear Tank Part 1
Overview of Bear Tanking in Regards to Itemisation

EDIT: Due to the proximity of the WotLK release date, I'm not sure whether to actually write part 2, since it seems kind of redundant. LET ME KNOW (by posting a comment) if you want to see Part 2 (items to get in order to become an effective Feral tank, and start tanking the harder 5 mans, and possibly Heroics/Kara). I'm more than happy to write this if there's any interest in it.

Note: this post was turning into a monster, so I decided to break it into pieces. While overall it's meant to be on gearing a tank, and items to pick up at 70 (or before), this installment will cover the stuff to look for on items.

Background:
So, my druid turned 70 on Tuesday afternoon, at about 15:15.
I really want to heal in 2v2 and 3v3 arena, but figure I should also gear a tank, especially since I spend a lot of time in Feral spec.

So I thought I'd quickly document what I'm doing to gear my druid up. I was wrong. This is gonna take a while, lol.

(NB: where ratings, e.g. defense rating, are mentioned here, they will be treated as for a level 70, since the effect of ratings decreases with level).

WARNING: contains numbers, I'll italicise some of the theory (viz., numbers) to make it easier to read.
Intro:
For bear tanks there are a few things you really want from items, basically as much armor, agility and stamina as possible, since bears scale incredibly well with these stats (especially items like Thoriumweave Cloak, since you get a massive armor multiplier in Dire Bear Form).
Tanks need to reduce the damage they take by as much as possible, and make life as easy as possible for healers (healers oom = dead tank). For bear tanking you want a lot of health, a lot of dodge (since this is the only avoidance available to bears) and a LOT of armor (the only mitigation available to bears). Most importantly, however, you want to be uncrittable.

Mitigation vs. Avoidance:
To avoid confusion here, I'm going to use 'mitigation' to mean reducing damage taken, and 'avoidance' to avoid taking damage. E.g. armor is mitigation since it reduces the physical damage you take from attacks by a %, and dodge is avoidance, since when you dodge an attack you take no damage at all. M'kay?

Uncrittable:
(NB: most of the information covered below can be found in WoWWiki.)
A raid boss is treated like a level 73 mob, and will have a crit chance of 5.6% against you, while a heroic boss at level 72 will have a 5.4% crit chance against you. If you can be crit (for double damage), you run the risk of being crit-spiked to death before the healers can react. This is not a good thing.
If you're a Bear tank you MUST have 3/3 Survival of the Fittest, in which you only need 2.6% crit-chance reduction to be uncrittable in raids. Crit-chance reduction is obtained through Defense Rating, and Resilience Rating.
60 points of Defense Rating (and there is a difference between Defense rating, and straight up defense, in that Defense rating converts to defense skill at a decreasing ratio as you level) or 39.4 Resilience Rating to be uncrittable in any and all Raids. You'll need a total of 415 defense skill to achieve the 2.6% (this includes the 350 base defense at level 70), or 156 Defense Rating. Alternatively, you can use 103 Resilience Rating to achieve the same effect.
In essence you want to make sure that (Defense Rating/60) + (Resilience Rating/39.4) >= 2.6. In this case you'll be uncrittable, and this should be the number one priority of all raid tanks (Paladins and Warriors will achieve uncritability in other ways).

Resilience versus Defense:
Resilience, at 39.4 points needed to reduce chance of being crit by 1%, is obviously more efficient than Defense, at 60 points needed to achieve the same effect. However, Defense also increases the chance that you will be missed by an attack and that you will dodge an attack by 1% per 60 rating, thus giving you some avoidance as well (although resilience will give you reduced damage taken from DoTs, a minor effect). NB: Defense skill will also increases your chance to Block or Parry attacks, further increasing mitigation gained from +Defense, but Dire Bear druids don't use shields, and can't parry with their big clumsy paws, so Bears gain a lot less benefit from +Defense than Warriors or Paladins (making Resilience a more viable option for Bears than the plate-wearers).

Thus although Defense Rating is less efficient than Resilience at making us crit immune, it's secondary benefits make it worth more point-for-point if we can get enough to reach the 2.6% mark - despite the fact we don't obtain maximum benefit from Defense.

In conclusion, if you have the options to become crit immune through using defense, go for it. If you're just under the 2.6% uncrittable mark, however, and you need to really squeeze maximum efficiency out of gem slots/enchants, then go for resilience. And be prepared to resocket fairly often as your gear gets upgraded (although feral tanking items from raids are few in number).

Also, don't throw away stuff that has high defense or resilience after you get an upgrade, you never know when those 5 points of defense you can't seem to fit in anywhere can be obtained through a minor downgrade.

Dodge and Agility:
Bears are special. Everyone knows it, even if they won't admit it. In terms of Dodge, Bear Druids (and Kitties) get 1% chance to Dodge for each 14.7 points of Agility which is a better ratio than every other class (Rogues are next at 20 Agi:1% Dodge, Warriors worst at 30:1%, and everyone else is at 25:1%). And then there's Dodge Rating, where Druids, like everyone else, get 1% Dodge for around 19 Dodge Rating. Phoaw. So basically, Agility is more efficient for avoidance than Dodge Rating? And it gives a decent increase to Crit chance (improving both rage generation and threat), plus some small amount of armor? Talk about maximising returns, that's pretty awesome. In essence, Agility >> Dodge Rating if we are forced to make a choice. Which doesn't mean Dodge Rating isn't nice, more mitigation is always welcome, but Agility is just bucketloads better. And it goes well with Blessing of Kings, and leather items with Agility are pretty common (apparently Rogues use Agility for something as well, or so I've heard). Agility is awesome. Remember this.

Stamina:
So as we've seen, Agility is pretty damn awesome for Druid tanks. But we also need a bit of health to survive the hard hits, the crushing blows, and those nasty spellcasters that Blizzard does not give us any mitigation against. None at all. While Warriors get Defensive Stance and more (and even more), and Paladins get a few nifty tricks (such as Spell Warding, and Ardent Defender), Druid tanks must rely on large health pools and hope the healers are both well geared and can maximise their mana efficiency.
So, "large health pools", but how large is large? Quite large, actually. A properly spec'd Feral Druid can make each point of Stamina go a long way, and a properly geared Feral Druid will have a lot of Stamina.
Let's have a look at all the bonuses I can currently think of/remember (bearing in mind that by default, each point of Stamina provides 10 Health).
Dire Bear form - the biggy, and the reason we're writing this. A solid 25%. That's a lot.
Heart of the Wild - another 20% from talents if you put 5/5 points into it, why you would do anything else as a Feral druid is beyond me. This is a key talent.
Survival of the Fittest - remember the discussion on becoming uncrittable above? This talent is the reason we only need to reach 2.6% (rather than the normal 5.6%), which frees up a lot of very difficult itemisation (i.e. having to wear mostly PvP gear for the resilience), and also gives us 3% increased stats.
Tauren racial - gives us another 5%. Since we can't all be cows (it'd be Udder Madness), we'll point out that "those other guys" get 1% dodge.
All in all not bad, giving us a total of around 15 Health (14 if you're purple) for each point of Stamina we have (this is a lot). So Stamina is another stat Bears should stack wherever possible.

Armor:
Armor is the last big stat that really defines the Bear Tank. Dire Bear form grants a massive amount of bonus armor, and the Thick Hide talent boosts this some more. The way I understand it, Thick Hide is applied multiplicatively on top of Dire Bear, so an item giving 100 base armor would yield (100+(100*400%))*110% = 550 Armor to a Bear tank. That's a lot. And if we choose items with a heckuva lot of armor already (Blizzard really gave bears some love in TBC), we start seeing some big numbers. More on this in the items section. (NB: items like Glove Reinforcements do not receive this bonus, and neither do enchants. Only the base armor on the item is considered for the bonus).

Anyway, with some of the numbers and general concepts out of the way, it's time to move on to items that are worth noting for the starting druid tank.
A good guide can be found here, however I'm going to make a list of my own with commentary on items.

At the moment I can't seem to find the time to do any instancing, so my gear is almost entirely crafted, obtained through soloing or one-of group quests.
I've pretty much finished getting items that don't require me to run instances, except for the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, with the Scryer proc (which is completely and totally nuts). In fact if your druid is going to go feral a lot, seriously consider Scryer over Aldor; Scryer prioritises +Defense and Aldor +Dodge on the shoulder enchants, and the Scryer proc for Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve gives +100 Expertise, compared to +100 Dodge from the Aldor proc. As discussed above, while Bears are masters of dodging, they don't really need dodge rating, because Agility is vastly more efficient for us. On the other hand, Expertise can really boost our threat by decreasing the chance our white (rage-generating) and special attacks will hit the target and not be dodged/parried/blocked.

And after that brief tangent on the awesome of SSO necklaces, it will soon be time for me to move onto 5mans and heroics to get the last few upgrades I want for Kara. The items I'm particularly looking at are Thoriumweave Cloak (from Mechanaar), Earthwarden (requires Exalted with Cenarion Expedition), Verdant Gloves (from the pre-raid part of the BT attunement chain, requiring a trip to the Arcatraz). But all of these will be discussed in the next post (or perhaps the one thereafter).

Things to do while waiting for Wrath

2008-09-11T17:18:00.005+12:00

So, you're waiting for Wrath to come out.
You've stopped raiding.
Essentially, you're like this.
And you don't have beta access because you sold it for the price of a new computer (I wish).
So, while doing the dishes, I thought up a few things to do:

- Get epic flying. Finally. (Currently about halfway there).
- Level an alt. Got alts already? LEVEL MOAR ALTS! Level that paladin who's sitting at 61 because you couldn't bear grinding in HFP, even as ret (or alternatively wait for Wrath to come out so you can do play around with ret).
- Grind some arena gear.
- Grind more arena gear.
- Get to 2200 rating so you've got a nice shot at a gladiator title. It will last you a long time, and give you a nice fuzzy feeling as you quest around Northrend.
- Realise that to get 2200 rating, you probably want to get to 1500 first.
- Get back to 1400 rating (omg this week was bad).
- Gear an alt for arena.
- Get an alt epic flying.
- Stack up mats for Inscription. Seriously, grab a hunter alt, grab herbalism and skinning or something, and stock up.
- Bellwether at 4Haelz recommends finding a raiding guild to join in preparation for Wrath content.
- Catch up on sleep. 8 hours sleep a week during maintenance is not enough, especially when they just do rolling restarts.
- Earn some irl money, pay some bills, write an essay, acknowledge your spouse, claim the "missing person" reward your parents are offering... all those things you've been meaning to do but never got around to (because you were too busy sleeping during maintenance).
- Steal somebody's beta access.
- Play Warhammer Online.
- Start a blog.

Some quick points on Wrath

2008-09-11T16:50:00.004+12:00

While I'll probably make a longer post on Wrath later, a few things excite me:
- new hunter pets. Especially the really awesome ones. Well most of them are really awesome. THEY'LL BE ABLE TO HOLD THREAT AGAIN. Can't remember when the last time was that a pet of mine reliably held threat. Mid-60s? A pre-Charge-nerf boar?
But in Wrath, they'll be able to tank, and possibly even tank 5-mans. THAT is exciting. 4 dps, and an off-spec healer doing Utgaarde Keep (or however you spell it)? Yes please. Although how well a Worm can tank without Taunt, or (afaik) any AoE threat abilities, remains to be seen.

Also, wtf, ret paladins. Buffed? Just a bit. That's pretty nuts...

So yeah, those are the updates. Currently working on getting the Druid geared for Arena (oh so slowly, damn honor farming) and the Hunter is sort of floating around farming leather kits for the druid. How exciting.

Also working on a longer post about gearing baby-70 Feral Druids. Vatch dis space.

Edit: really need to find a good way to distinguish between the wowhead links, and the non-wowhead links. Anyone got any ideas?

Flogging a dead horse

2008-09-06T20:13:00.006+12:00

Last night, my guild did Kara. In itself not an unusual occurrence for a Friday night.
I was mucking around in SMV on my druid, and the got into a group for Magister's Terrace (which broke up as 2 people went to do kara, go figure) and then did Isle of Quel'Danas dailies. During this period of about 1-1.5 hours my guild had been doing Shade.
That's quite a few wipes and obviously stuff was going wrong. Eventually someone left to go to sleep and I got called in. Now I had been looking forward to doing a bit of kara on the druid, but if they'd been wiping that often I wasn't sure how much difference I could make. My druid had only been 70 for 3 days or so, and my gear was pretty bad. I could have brought in a comparatively well-geared hunter who has downed Shade and knows the fight, but apparently the guild wanted "more heals", for a total of 3 resto druids and a holy paladin. How much +heals did I have anyway? About 1250 or so in my mostly greens-and-blues, but that left me with about 6.8k health, not quite what you want on Shade when you can't get PW:Fort. So time to swap in the triple-Solid Star of Elune Heavy Clefthoof Vest. A bit better, although the heals did dip.
And then it was off to Moonglade to find out what this "Tree of Life" thing was all about. I had never been resto before. Moonkin from 40-48, and again from 62-64, but otherwise levelling had been solidly Feral. Which is not to say I hadn't healed before: I'd tanked or healed every Outlands instance up to Old Hillsbrad (after which I focussed on levelling) and had done a reasonable job of healing (although my tanking skills leave something to be desired). But I'd never healed as resto, and never healed a raid. Is this undergeared, inexperienced Druid what you want in a fight that you've been wiping in all night (or rather a hunter that brings another 800-1000 dps, plus Snake Traps)?
So all of a sudden I had leaves. And Swiftmend. And no addon for raid healing, so had to just drag health bars all over the UI and hope I knew what I was doing (I didn't).
At least I knew the fight: don't move during Flame Wreath, and shift out of tree during Arcane Explosion, etc... on the other hand I didn't do much. With my crappy gear my Lifeblooms couldn't do much and my Regrowth would always land 0.5 seconds after the Paladin's Flash of Light. It went ok until someone (not me) moved during the second Flame Wreath, after which we called it quits, to general calls of "fuck Shade".
Now I didn't want to go back to questing as Resto (who would?) so I was looking at 60 gold of respecs in less than an hour, just for the sake of a wipe (at least it's not 100g, but I see that coming up soon). So I did a single AV (for once we completely and utterly dominated, to the sum of 630 bonus honor) and then Teleported back to Moonglade to get back in touch with my inner Kitty self.

So basically what I was building up to: if you're going to be wiping on a boss that you know for several hours in a row, why not just skip him? Sure Shade controls the respawns in the Library zone, but if you're not going to down him, wouldn't it be better to move on up and just clear the spawns again on the Sunday run?
I'd say if you wipe three times on a boss, and don't come close to winning at any point, then you should seriously rethink the strategy, the group, and consider calling it quits for a while. Especially when the boss is optional.
And obviously you're doing it wrong. I mean nowadays Kara can be cleared by people in quest blues and greens. Our final Shade attempt had 2 people in full epics (combination of T4 and T5 equivalent), and on average more epics than blues.

Anyway, I have a house that needs to be cleaned on this fine Sunday morning.

404 Errors

2008-09-06T20:09:00.007+12:00

I hate 404 errors. They should be banned.
Alternatively, they should all redirect to some sort of YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. (Actual link).

exdad and lol

2008-09-06T19:43:00.005+12:00

I have just been asked whether 'exdad' is a word that is legal for use in Scrabble. I do not think it is. Wikipedia does not know it. Google only knows it 1400 times. Therefore it is not a word. Arguably we can change this by creating it, using it in a niche that makes it completely indispensable to modern humanity, ..., profit. As such, I present exdad (extremely distressing acronym destruction), which is a term used for acronyms that no longer accurately describe their subject (object).

A prime example of an exdad is the acronym 'lol'. Just to refresh everyone's memory, lol stands for "Laughing Out Loud" (and not "Lots Of Love", "Lay Of [the] Land", "Licentious Orgasm Laws", or simply the word "lol"). It is now used in various contexts, such as "just joking", "haha", "coincidence happens" and "I have no other comment to make". Lol. It has been overused to the point where it has produced the derivative "I lol'd IRL" (I laughed out loud in real life), which is a pretty lol statement if you think about it.

Does this actually bug me? Not at all. What does bug me is the fact that when I think about it, I realise how fucked up my language sometimes has gotten over the last few years. I tend to start a sentence where I make a point with "but yeah,...", I use "lol" a lot, I think "lol" a lot. And irl I must remember to lolirl, not just say "lol". Lol. I frequently type stuff like "lofl", and "loflk", and "loflkwtf?" (the insertion of a random 'f' into run-of-the-mill acronym makes stuff more lofl). And various other idiosyncrasies.

But yeah, one statement I do like is "just for lols" (or "just for luls"). That one sometimes makes me lolirl. Lul.

Edit: final point, use the term 'exdad'. Please. Just for luls.

May Contain Themes, Language and Rattlesnakes. And nuts.

2008-09-06T18:50:00.006+12:00

So, I decided to not log in to WoW, and get around to doing something I've been toying-with-thinking-about for a while. So here it is. You're reading it.

About me:
I'll state the obvious right off the bat. I play World of Warcraft, more than I should. I have a 70 hunter and a 70 druid. I play Magic: The Gathering. I study at college. I have some sort of income-producing employment. I can sort of write English (one day I hope to be able to read it as well).

While I'd love for people to read this, it's also all about getting thoughts out of my head and into some sort of less chaotic format. So all the crazy stuff can make way for more crazy stuff, hopefully eventually giving rise to some sane stuff which will also earn me money. So, expect random crap and WoW stuff. Expect rants. Expect very short posts. Expect me to possibly abandon this project very soon. Expect legumes. Expect men in coats to arrest me for being completely and utterly insane, and a threat to public health, the government, liberty and the nobility of the human spirit, and expect them to call me an idiot for leaving an obvious record.

Additionally I'll leave revision to a minimum, to better be able to demonstrate thought processes. Stuff that's likely to be edited: typos, ambiguities, "you're doing it wrong"-style oopsies, this statement.

And just to be different, I'll attach a 'mood' label to each post. So if I'm feeling pissed off at something, it'll be obvious that I'm not in a sane and steady emotional state (am I ever?).

Anyway, things to do, stuff to see, urine to be expelled from bladder. Everything else should become obvious as the blog grows.

This post was produced in a factory that also handles mathematical formulae.