A brief look at the crafted PvP blues in WOTLK

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

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

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

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

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.