Still Pissed Off or Group Dynamics 101

Some things from the past still piss me off when I think about them.

I still get angry when I think about that priest that stole the mining node out from under me when I was fighting mobs in a cave in Winterspring. I had actually hit the node once, and then was attacked. While I fought them off she came up and clicked away. (slow simmering anger)

I still get mad at the many many times my very first toon wiped in Gnomer because of stupid people and those dwarves with their mines.

And I get mad by road-ragers in PUGs, and that anger stays with me for a couple of days.

Last night I logged on with the express purpose of getting my last two heroic badges so I could purchase my sexy Waistguard of Living Iron. Just two badges, how hard could that be? Well, let me tell you:

Got onto LFG channel and put myself forward as tank for Heroic Gundrak, Utgarde Keep and Nexus, mostly because I am familiar with their heroic bits and pieces. I also asked what the heroic daily was and instead of a reply got an invite. The invite was, in fact, to the daily which was Culling of Stratholme, Caverns of Time. Alright, I know I'm statistical ready for that instance, even though I have never been on a heroic run.


I told the rest of the group that this would be my first heroic run, to which they mentioned that they intended to make it a timed run. Which means that we have to run through the instance as fast as possible in order to get a boss that goes away after ... 25 minutes I think (?). I mentioned that this would, of course, be my first timed run, but that I was up for the challenge -- only thing, "If I start going the wrong way, just ping on the mini-map or yell at me." No one said anything and we traveled to and started the instance.

We got to the first boss, the abomination guy, and things had been going quite smoothly. He was downed and we moved on.

I had been moving quite quickly, not even bothering with any non-elite mobs, as I was told. We turned and rushed to the other side of the instance only we were moving just a little too fast I guess because the new elites had not spawned yet and we passed their spawn point (everyone but one member of the group was following me without question). The last member of our team was waiting for us at the appropriate spawn point for the next set of elites and said so.

I turned us around and run up to him, but BOOM the elites spawned and downed him. We got into the fight and things were totally disorganized at that point. I concede that was partially my fault, but I DID tell them that I might need some direction. Slam slam slam -- full wipe. I wasn't all that bothered, but one of the members just started yelling and yelling calling me a f*cking noob etc, etc, etc. At first I thought, "Ok, he's just got to get that off his chest, then I can re-explain that I had told them I was going to need some help in navigation."

But this guy just kept berating me, and after the third "f*cking noob" I knew I was done with this B.S. I told them that next time they should look for another tank and promptly left the group. I was so angry. I really wanted to get through that instance and prove to myself that I was not only statisically ready (right stam, enough armor, uncrittable), but play-ready as well. I guess I wasn't. Nor was I with the right group.

Sometimes it's all about the group.


As soon as I hearthed back to Dalaran I put myself back into LFG and was immediately invited to an Heroic Gundrak run. I sighed, hoping that I would not need to deal with any grief and accepted the invite. Within 5 minutes we had a full group and within 15 we were zoning in. The run went well. We had some problems as I think some people had never run it on heroic, and perhaps some of our dps was a little low, but we got through it with the minimum of fuss.


And no one called anyone a NOOB.

I got my two badges, and then some, ported back to Dalaran and got my new shiny purple belt. I was just about to port back to Ironforge and gem it up when some friends whispered that they needed a tank in Gruul's Lair for the achievement.

I accepted their invite and summons and we downed Gruul with 17 people and only a few deaths.

Really, it comes down to the group dynamic. When in a group try to be polite, you never know what's going on in the background for any person. And if someone screws up, it should not be that big of a deal, unless, of course they throw blame around and start calling everyone else a f*cking noob.

And seriously. Listen to your groupmates. They will tell you things that you never knew before, or tell you that they really don't know what they are doing, so you can find a more experienced player for that instance or encounter. If you're not listening, how can you know what is going on?

If you're not listening, then when something bad happens, at least some of the blame falls squarely on your shoulders. Really.

My World of Warcraft History

I started playing Warcraft on June 13 2005. I mostly got interested in the game because my roommate was obsessed with Star Wars Galaxies at the time (pre-nerf), and I found the idea of a MMO to be really cool. I really wanted to buy a new computer and it needed to be a Macintosh.

You can't play SWG on a Mac so I looked around for other games that were available (MMO preferred). If you own a Mac, you know that there isn't a whole lot out there. Except World of Warcraft.

I started doing some research, and ended up spending a whole afternoon going through EVERY screenshot that was posted on the official World of Warcraft website. I was hooked.

It took me 3 more weeks to save up the money and finally buy my computer. By the time it arrived I had already read every page to the Brady Games guide to World of Warcraft. I had done all the research I could and decided on a tauren hunter.

I really liked how huge they were and they didn't look quite as funky as the trolls. (I also found the classic idea of a troll [ew yucky] to make me not want to play that race.) As for hunter, I was really excited about the idea of having a pet to hang out with me.

Gnok was created. I levelled Gnok to around 30 having only gone to one abortive attempt at an instance: Wailing Caverns, and I really didn't want to go through that again. Gnok got to 1000 Needles and I got bored with him. To this day he has only leveled to 40.

The second time around I decided that perhaps I should go with a toon that was a little more normal looking and so I opted for a human. After that I wanted a class that could heal itself and that was very tough = PALADIN. Knales was born (although the spelling of his name has changed a few times over the years because of realm jumping).



I really liked the paladin and leveled him quite quickly to 50 and then got bored. This was in the days when 60 was level cap and, even though I was quite close, I still found it to feel a million miles away. My guild had also blown up and I'd had too many instance runs that were just disasters. At that time I dabbled with other toons, but none that made it past level 20 and none that haven't been deleted.

When the Silithus patch came out, I went back to Knales and finished him off. DING 60. I found some good friends on my server and we started running 60 instances on a regular basis in order to get some good drops.

At that time some of those aforementioned friends decided to experiment with an RP server, so I followed them and created a mage from scratch. Eventually I was in a really good guild and we were all leveling like crazy. Knales jumped to this new server and he was the highest level we had. I got my mage to about level 40 and then got bored again.

This is when the hunter class was re-born for me. I rolled a dwarf hunter and powerleveled him to 40 so I could use him instead of my mage to hang with my friends. By 50 most of them had disappeared, but I had no trouble getting him to 60. Kalel and Knales were constantly getting switched out when the needs of the group matched them (Knales was holy at this time).

Somewhere in here my roommate -- the SWG geek got into WoW, got his own account and wanted to hang with me in-game, but didn't want to level an Alliance toon. We started taurens on a PVP server. I went druid, he went shaman. I ran around with Kreskin in PVP land until he hit the mid-30s and I got bored again.

I went back to my old Alliance server to find that all my old friends had come back, and they were levelling again. Sweetness. I played both my hunter and my pally toons and was starting to get some great gear.

A month later The Burning Crusade came crashing into my life. Honestly my hunter was my first toon to zone into Outland, but that lasted for about 2 hours before I realized I wanted my paladin to really HIT something. Knales came out and I leveled him extremely fast to 70 and was the first in my guild, by far, with a flying mount.

After some time an old friend from my first server re-surfaced and we decided to make Draenai shaman together. Jole was born and he was quickly leveled to 50 before I got a little bored with the leveling grind.

I went back to Knales and was having a lot of fun healing level 70 instances and getting ready for heroics and Kara. Before I could ever run Kara further than Maiden, I had some personal and financial issues and quit the game completely.

Two weeks after Wrath of the Lich King came out I signed back into World of Warcraft, with the expansion in hand. I told myself that I was going to level my hunter first, because of all the fun changes made to that class. That lasted about 3 days, and I decided to try out my paladin again in the Retribution tree.

WOOHOO! Was that fun! But I was still not satisfied. I really wanted to be doing something both useful in groups and interesting to me. I read around on the changes to the different specs and re-rolled to Protection.

This is where I belong. I really have enjoyed protection and I believe I will stick with it -- unless and until I have no options but to respec to Holy in order to be useful at all. At least until dual specs drop. And that's going to be great.

I am an idiot, but it's OK! (3.1 PTR Notes)

The Public Test Realm went live last night apparently. The official 3.1 PTR notes are a little hard to find, as Blizzard doesn't update them all that quickly on their official website.

What I will be discussing is information posted by MMO-Champion. The notes are either directly from the patch notes in the PTR or have been data-mined by MMO-Champion, check out their post here. All of this information is liable and likely to change.

Picture from MMO-Champion

So what's in store for paladins and prot paladins in specific? Well some things we knew about and have been discussed before, like Exorcism working on all mobs but criting on undead and demons. Others are totally new and interesting, here are the new ones:

The reason for the above title is this first point. Auras will persist through death. You know you've done it. You step into and instance and wipe on some boss, then you step back in and buff everyone. 20 minutes later someone whispers you and wonders about your Devotion aura or Retribution aura, or ANY aura at all. You've totally forgotten to turn it back on! In fact, I did this just last night in a Heroic Halls of Stone run. I tanked a boss without any aura on, and while it did seem a little harder we made it though. The other paladin in the group whispered me about it afterward -- oops how embarrassing.

Shield of Righteousness now deals 130% of block value + 520 at the highest rank. It no longer causes a high amount of threat. (Previously increased damage by a set amount)
This is what I like to call a nerfing buff. It nerfs our high threat on that spell, but gives us what could turn out to be a crapton more damage, so well, that's more threat built in. We'll have to see how testing goes to know if this changes much or helps immensely.

Blessing of Kings is gone, now a trainable skill and is replaced by: Divinity:Tier 1 protection talent, increases healing done by and to you by 1/2/3/4/5%. This is something nice that Holy pallys can pick up, but that will help out when you need healz, and you always need healz.

Guarded by the Light (Tier 9) now reduces spell damage taken by 3% and gives a 50% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. (Previously reduced the mana cost of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 15%.)
This is a good buff because Divine Plea will make it so if you were ever having trouble with keeping up your mana, now you won't. As usual though, you'll have to remember to hit this button before you're totally out of mana.

I'm not the biggest fan of Divine Plea, it's another thing that I have to remember to hit, but which is not part of my normal tanking arsenal. This is mostly me crying in my beer, but I wish that as a tank I never had to worry about mana generation, only mana management. Slight difference but more than just semantics IMHO.

• Glyph of Exorcism -- Increases damage done by Exorcism by 20%. (Old: Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 2 sec.)

This is a change that I kind of anticipated. When they announced that Exorcism was going to be able to be used against ALL mobs they were going to have to change this glyph somehow, otherwise it would have been too overpowered in PVP.

• Glyph of Divinity -- Your Lay on Hands grants twice as much mana as normal and also grants you as much mana as it grants your target. (Old: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.)

I'm gonna love this. I am often using LoH -- sometimes just to get mana back in a hurry and I really think this is a great buff for anyone using LoH. BUFFALICIOUS!

• Glyph of Lay on Hands -- Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell by 5 min.(Old: Increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%)

I like this too, and with the newly freed up points in the protection tree, perhaps I can shorten the cooldown to, what like 11 minutes? Can be used for every boss fight now. Neato.

• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous *new* -- Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.

This is kinda nice. Just gives HotR a little added utility. 4 targets instead of 3 -- yes please.

Honestly there are so many new and interesting changes in this PTR its hard to really get through them all. I have a feeling that, just like the Wrath beta, there will be lots of interesting stuff at first, and then they'll get changed or nerfed as real players start using and abusing the talents and spells.

Guilds and recruitment

My guild is pretty small. We have around 70 toons, but alot of them are alts or people who don't play very regularly. We have 10 level 80s, but at least 2 are alts, one hasn't played in over a month and one does not group. That leaves 6 players at 80.

So, now that I've been 80 for a while, I'm ready to set my sites on raids, as are a few other of our other members. But with only 6 players that just won't wash unless we PUG the other 4 slots -- something I am loath to do as I have enough trouble with PUGs in heroics, much less a raiding environment.

So we are trying to recruit.

If you've never done so, try to avoid recruiting as much as you can. It kinda blows. If you're posting to trade chat, you probably want to create a macro to make it a bit easier, however you only get 250 characters with which to represent your guild. That limit kills me as I want to say so much about our people and what we are looking for.

We have a really great group of people, players who have been with the game for years, and played with each other for a while as well. We are really tight knit and we want people who are interesting, respectful and who play well to fit in with us. We are not a progression guild, but we do want to progress.

I really think that at this point in the expansion it is hard to recruit people who have not done alot of raiding or who know how to play. Either you're a good player and have been at it a while, in which case you're probably already in a decent guild that raids at least occasionally. Or you are just making it to 80 now and you might be somewhat inexperienced.

Or you're not in a guild because you've been kicked out of your last one because you're a jerk.

Now, I know this is oversimplifying things somewhat, but that's what it feels like when you are recruiting -- everything is stacked against you.

When talking to people about our guild I try to be as honest as I possibly can. I don't want someone signing up for something that we just can't deliver. We had one new member leave us I think because they were told that we were starting raids soon. Well, as I mentioned above, we are at least 4 players away from raiding, and that's only if the 6 we do have are geared and can all play at the same time (a detail that we haven't 100% worked out yet).

All that said, if you are reading this and you are on the Norgannon server or are likely to transfer, and are seeking a guild, check us out at http://elvenfellowship.blogspot.com

Have a nice day.

P.S. Guilds are not only hard to recruit for, they are hard to keep together, with that said, my sincerest condolences to a paladin blogger who I've read for a long time now, Honorshammer, for the demise of his guild.

Boss Video

Ran Heroic Nexus last night with a PUG. It was not the smoothest run, everyone was a bit less uber than they thought they were. All the dps wanted to do the Achievements (which are pretty hard IMHO), but we just couldn't pull it off. Our rogue was convinced that he was the best in game, but he died every single boss fight -- pretty sure that wasn't entirely his fault as I think that the priest was slightly undergeared, but still -- learn to get out of AOE or whirlwind damage.

Here is video from the Anomulous boss fight. This is my first boss video and truthfully I might not do too many more -- my comp lags hugely when recording. Although I will try lowering some of my effects to help that out.

As you can see I'm not the world's best tank. With quick new spawns it takes me a second to tab over and then engage -- perhaps I just don't have the trick of it. If anyone has advice about quicker ways to tab and target, please let me know. Enjoy.

"Tired of wall o text."

Even though this is not all that exciting, it's all I did today before going to work.

I was struggling to get my Unarmed skill up to 400 in order to get that achievement.

Here is some video to that effect.




I love how I can punch with my shield hand.

Can't Not Read

I just read a post, that lead me to two other posts, and they were all very excellent and insightful.

I was not planning on writing again today, but I can't let these posts sit still.

The posts that I will link to are all about why World of Warcraft is successful and why it will be hard to create a killer for the game.

They mention the awesome community both in game (your guild and friends list) and out (all those bloggers and WOWwiki and wowhead etc.).

They mention equipment accessibility: that you can play on a Mac and a Pc and that those computers just don't have to be top of the line to get into the game.

They even mention that Blizzard may just have an unfair advantage because they've been making kick-ass games for over a decade.

Whatever you think is the reason for WoWs success, I think you'll find these articles interesting and informative.

Banana Shoulders.

Leafshine.

Big Bear Butt Blogger.

Please do enjoy.

Ulduar Info

Wow Europe has a new page that gives some background information on the new Ulduar raid zone and also some hints as to what's going to be happening there.

One thing that I find VERY interesting is the vehicular raiding -- using vehicles to take on an entire army just to get into the next section.

I know I'm not a big raider, but the raid content seems kinda fun and I would really like to get in on it at some point.

So, I welcome 3.1 -- bring it.

Getting There

So my guild and I have instituted 2 weekly instance days, Friday and Monday. We are planning on some progression. Woot.

I am very excited by this possibility. It means that we can plan on instance runs every week that get our people leveled and geared -- then those of us who are somewhat geared can ramble on into our heroics of choice and get the gear and badges we need.

We have also started to recruit more, but I think this will be hard. I really like the people in my guild, it is like a little family and, so far, relatively drama free. But the thing is, we ALL move fairly slowly. Here it is 4 months into the expansion and we are just now really starting serious heroics runs. That's pretty slow for alot of people. So while I think the core group of our guild -- which is really only 5-7 people -- will stick it out, it will be hard for us to recruit and then keep people who really want to progress. We need to figure out some way to recruit the right kind of people.

Now, just how do we go about that? Honestly, I am not sure. I think it's important to be honest with people about where we are, how many players we really have and what we intend to do. We just got a new tank the other day, who seems to be as geared as I am (I believe he was a server transfer) and right now he seems content to run PUG heroics. But if it were me, that would get old, and it has (for me). It is my fond wish that he holds on long enough for us to be able to field 2 5-man heroics teams and then start to really build that into a nice 10-man raid team.

I know that we have good players. Our core group is pretty solid, and they all want to do their part. One of our pally tanks just respecced to Ret because he wanted to hang our with our core people and not have to pull together his own groups. And that's great. One of our other tanks has set that toon aside and leveled her 70 shadow priest nearly to 80 at this point as well.

What really makes me happy is knowing that a guild I enjoy socially may actually be able to pull off getting some progression done. In the past it's always been the social guilds that have never been able to get organized and the raiding guilds that have never been all that much fun.

How to Figure Out If You're Ready

There are always questions being thrown around forums and in comments sections of blogs about whether or not you are ready for an instance.

For some things, like tanking heroics and raids there are some hard and fast rules. You MUST have 535 defense in order to be uncrittable for heroics and 540 for raids. MUST. But then there are some not so easy to answer questions like, "Is my stamina high enough to tank heroic Utgarde Pinnacle?" Everyone seems to have a different answer to this, based mostly on how hard they think a given instance is.

If you ask me, I don't have any real true answers for you either -- other than what my GM told me. "Give it a try, if you fail then oh well, it's just a game."

He also mentioned to me that there were sites out there that help to rate your gear and you'll get an idea of where you should be instancing and where you should be getting your gear. Imba is one, but I'm not sure it's the best. So far, my favorite is WoW Heroes.

It's got me rated as yellow for Naxx 10, which I believe means I could tank it, but that it wouldn't be EASY. And that Eye of Eternity 10 I am just not ready for at all. Which I would totally agree with.

Now I would not say that this site -- or any others like it are the end all be all. You have to understand that they are built on certain parameters which you may or may not agree with (most I think do) and the numbers are based on your current Armory set. Which, hopefully you know is itself based on what you were wearing when you logged out of the game (with some updating exceptions).

So go on out there check out Wow Heroes, and read around on forums and such to find out just what's going on.

Comments on Dual Specs

Ok so I am really excited about dual specing. I would really like the ability to tank an instance OR heal it depending on what is needed, and I REALLY hate the idea of paying for respecs as they stand now.

I must say I think that one part of Blizzard's plan regarding dual specs is sorely lacking.
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
This, to me, is bogus. Come on -- one of the greatest thing about having 2 specs is that you can switch in-between -- you can have a dps spec for leveling and another for instancing. Why oh why is it so hard to find healers? In my opinion it's that they don't want the hassle of trying to down mobs while soloing on a healing spec. This is true at max level, which this rule is fine for, but is incredibly true when it comes to leveling! Especially now that we have 10 newish and still somewhat fresh levels that people are putting mains and alts through, they want to do instance runs and its incredibly hard to find healers because they are all speced into dps roles. I think this rule needs to be changed. No ifs, ands or buts.

Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.
This sounds good at first blush. Alright, I'm willing to pay for this service, it doesn't need to be free for all. But wait a second. How much will I have to shell out? There has already been a troll post on the WoW forums about some crazy 5k gold shell out, to which a Blizzard employee never did say whether or not it was true. If it is indeed something around 5k I am against that. While I know that is not hard to get money of any kind in Wrath, unless it's higher than say 10k gold, I still think that 5k will make it hard for a lot of players to be able to get this going. It took me about 2 weeks of focused saving of gold in order to come up with the 5k I needed to get my epic flying training (just never got around to it in TBC). While that isn't game killing, it does tend to crimp my "fun gaming" time. 1k gold might be alright, but I just don't want to see this being some crazy huge gold sink. No thank you.

Well, really that's all I have to say about this right now. I think all the other details given are pretty neat and cool. Scribes will be happy to have something truly indispensable for customers, and it's something that can be done without a scribe's assistance in a city, so that's cool by me.

All in all, sounds good, I just hope that it's not too expensive to set up and that they make it available to at least level .... 60s or something.

Cheers.

Dual Spec Information

Really ... enuff said.

Here's the link. Enjoy.

Open Letter to DPS

Dear DPS,

I am a tank, I get hit hard and I do it so that you can continue to kick the crap out of whatever is hitting me. I thank you for hitting it harder and faster than anyone else can.

I do wish, however, that you could all learn the basics of your role. For melee dps there is a great list on DPS Plate that you should read, but I want to focus on macros. Gimme a sec, I'll get to the good stuff.

When I am hitting something and I am focusing its attention on me -- there is a purpose to this. The purpose is to allow you to melt the face of THAT mob. The one that I am hitting. Not the one next to the one that I am hitting.

More often than not, when in a group (mostly PUGs), when pulling more than one mob, I find that I need to keep on eye on what the dps are doing because they are not hitting that which I am. How often is it that a hunter will be targeted on a mob only to pull them off me? Way too often. And why does this happen? No, it is not because I'm not uber enough -- or that hunter is too uber. It is because that hunter (sorry I'm picking on hunters) has targeted a mob mistakenly. You heard me. You are dpsing down something that you should not. Yet.



You should only and always be targeted on what I, the tank, have targeted. Now, some people mark every single mob and have a set and established kill order -- and that can work great, but, as we all know, things are not always working as intended. Things get out of hand -- pats are added, someone dies or there is a runaway with low health -- yeah go ahead and one shot that sonofa .... but what I'm talking about is MOSTLY dps just being sloppy.

What I'm about to show you can make EVERYONE's lives easier -- even yours, you dps machine.

First let me give credit where it is due -- these both came from BRK, a hunter blogger. The original article is here, at WOWInsider.

Ok so macro one. This is the simplest really doesn't need to be put on your hotkeys. Its something that you'll use every time you engage a new tank. You are using this macro to make your tank your "focus."

Are you ready? Here it is:

/focus target

That's it. That's the full extent of your macro.

What this means is that even though you manually target something else, you can always come back easily and re-target your tank. Because that's what this is meant to do. You click on your tank, hit this macro and that character is saved.

Why would you want to target your tank? Well that's where this next little gem comes in.

/assist focus

That's it -- that's all for the second macro. Pretty easy huh? Hotkey this one -- you will use it alot. What this does is automatically set your target to be the same as the target of the tank (if the tank is your focus -- which they would be if you used the previous macro in the beginning of your instance run). So if you fire off that Frostfire blast -- it will hit the same thing that the tank is hitting.

At the end of the day, all the above is about not pulling aggro off the tank -- because what they are hitting hardest, and therefore aggroing hardest on, is also what you are dpsing on, so there should be no way that you pull aggro off of them. Then, when that one dies, it only takes a split second, most likely faster than tab targeting the next mob, to hit the assist macro and BOOM you are slamming that which your tank is tanking.

I have heard alot about Wrath content and how easy it is, and also how easy it is to AOE tank all of those trash mobs. While this is true, especially when you get to slightly higher end content, when (and I say "when" intentionally) you, as a dpser, pull aggro off the tank and you don't have a Feign Death, or some kind of other aggro wipe, that mob will come at you and if your tank is AFK tanking, or doesn't like you much, it come over to you, not say nice things to you, and not leave you alive to help kill other mobs. You will be dead, and it will definitely be your fault.

So, what have we learned here? Hopefully you've learned one important lesson in HOW to play a dps character (dps what the tank has aggro on) and a few lessons in how to make THAT easier (use those macros or something like them).

Have a good day.

Yours truly,

Tank.

3.0.9 or whatever

Yes I'm aware of the new patch and I've played it a little. My thoughts on this are quite simple.

Woot for the 30 minute seals. That's a great new mechanic and without having ever wanted it in the past, I realize now just how much I should have. It helps to clean up my bars, since I can put them into my Healbot, just like buffs. Now I can move stuff around and not have to worry about those darn seals any more.

Boo hiss for the Divine Plea nerf. It doesn't affect me much -- I'm not Holy and I don't normally run with Holy paladins, but any nerf is no fun. I agree with Siha over at Banana Shoulders -- it's too soon and not well thought out.

Cough-Cough, Argh, Ugh

Yeah, I've been sick. My daughter got a bug while over at a friend's house and brought it back to our place.

I have lain in bed for most of the last 3 days. LOTS of sleep. In that vein I have not been WoWing much either. I will have something posted later today or tomorrow and intend to keep up the posts from then on -- unless I'm stricken by some other nasty bug. Tired of being sick.

Quick note though. One of the tankadins that I was neck and neck with as far as gear goes has retired his shield for a while and picked up a 2 hander. He re-rolled Retribution, and while I'm sad to see him switch, it seems like a better move for him. He really wanted to contribute to guild runs without getting onto his rogue.

Downside: Now we only have 2 players specced to tanking and one of them is not def capped and has been leveling their shadow priest. That kinda means I'm the main tank in our guild now, which on one level is great, means I will be in demand, but on another level, means that I will be in demand. I do play almost every day, but I'm just not always available what with the baby and girlfriend aggro and such. Oh well, I'm sure we'll figure it out -- I'm thinking about trying to institute regular 5 man instance runs. Level 71+ only. That way we can get everyone's alts up and hopefully gear everyone to heroic levels. I'm ready to progress in heroics and I think except for a mage and maybe a lock, that's it.

We'll see how things work out.

Cheers.

My Thoughts on 3.1 Patch Notes

I dunno. I'm gonna side with BRK on this one. Even though he's mostly talking about his hunter changes -- I think that a good bit of this stuff is going to end up on the cutting room floor. You know, somewhere ON THE GROUND in Ghostcrawler's office. Here we go:

Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

Alright. Finally, yes this is pretty exciting and I really don't think this is going to change. What is up for debate, however, is whether or not that ability will boost stats by 2%, 10% or something in between. Some believe "we'll get the 10% BoK baseline, it's the only way this would even remotely make sense." I'm not so sure. I actually think that we are going to automagically get BoK for 2% and then it can be talented up to 10% -- and those talent points will be in the first tier of protection (although, really they could go easily into any of the trees).

Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Sshah. As if. This will never stand. Even if the intent behind this change lasts there will definitely be some kind if nerf to this. With the Glyph and a little skill (really miniscule amounts of skill) paladins will be unstoppable in PVP. I have zero doubts in my mind that this will change somehow. I DO think it's a great idea though -- another general purpose ranged spell is wonderful. I just don't think it will make it through testing without some nerf bombs.

Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

I think that this silence effect is pretty awesome. I was just saying how paladins would give their mommas away for a chance to deal with casters -- and this does it. This will make it much easier to deal with casters on PVE pulls, but also taking down that annoying warlock who just eats your brains and there's nothing you can do about it. Folding in the extra damage will be nice, but since most of us have it already, it shouldn't change much.

Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

Does this actually mean that they are freeing up more points in the prot tree for some new talents? I truly do not know the answer to this. If you do, let me know. It does not say that the effects are changed, just less ranks. So, I guess I'm all for this one.

Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

This one also seems to be a little lacking in true details. So if I put max points into this talent what procs the refresh? Does just having DP up mean that it's never going to end? It'll just keep on going? I'm not sure I totally understand this one, but if it means more mana regeneration I'm all for that. It will make a huge difference for non-main (offtanks or just someone who is trying to dps a bit) tanks in PVE and it will mean that prot pvpers will feel a bit better about their insanely low MP.

Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

This feels like a mostly PVP talent change. This means we'll have our awesome stun available to us, with talents every 10 seconds. I must say this also feels a little overpowered. With the Exorcism change and now this, ALONG with the Shield of the Templar silencing effect -- we'll be able to stand tall against casters -- they will run in fear from our holy might. I think this will also get herded into the ole nerf pen too. It's just a bit much all told.

Truly I think that these changes are great and I would love to see them get to Live and then stay. I fear this is just not the case though. The Exorcism buff alone will be high on the nerfing target list. If these do manage to make it all the way into the game it will mean a lot more utility for maintankadins, and it will give protection paladins true viability in PVP, something they really never had before -- despite their massive HP.

3.1 New Paladin Stuff

Everyone and their brother, and sister, has already reported on this. Here is the link if you want to check out the original post -- I will have more to say on these changes a bit later.

Have a nice day.

Death Knight-adin

Firstly let me say that I'm an awful blogger. I can't for the life of me remember to take screen shots and screen films. And my posts are regularly wall of text. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that I'm a multimedia producer at my job. I do video and digital photography all the time -- why is it that I can't remember to do that at all while playing? We may never know. On to the post.

Death Knights ARE cool.

I played my DK last night for a while -- he's only level 60, but this is my third DK that I've taken to 60 (I just enjoy the opening quest and the event at the end, I just keep re-rolling). I logged in and really did not want to face the uncertainty of an heroic PUG. Good or bad, I just wasn't in the mood.

So I played my DK -- he's frost spec, but not yet with tanking talents. As I'm going along facemelting, pulling multiple mobs, kicking arse, taking names something begins to occur to me.

Death Knights are the heroic version of Protection and Retribution paladins. Sorta. Having been a paladin for so long I feel I can say this. If you wanted to sit down with paladins of those 2 specs and figure out what they really want out of their class -- you'd get pretty close to the current Death Knights.



One thing that paladins have been wanting for freakin ever has been a ranged spell. Granted that you can spec into Holy Shock, or Avenger's Shield or .... what, Repentance, (does that count?), but there has never been a long range base ability until just a little while ago. Right out of the gate DKs get Death Grip and Icey Touch -- which are pretty awesome and you don't need anything to get them started.

Next up -- a way to deal with freakin' casters. Paladins still cry when they think of trying to tank Scholomance (at level) with all the casters and no way to silence them or get them to shut up or anything. We still have no real way to deal with them -- although we can stun them, we can only do that once a minute and you have to be within melee range -- phht. Along come DKs and they have, again, Death Grip and the juicy Mind Freeze. Casters can now eat my shorts (as a DK).

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there is the runic power and runes mechanic. As long as their health is not too low, a DK can keep fighting, given the right rotation etc, until their player's eyes bleed and their fingers fall off. Paladins, on the other hand can keep going as long as they still have mana -- and mana runs out pretty quickly (unless of course you're dodging and parrying and you've got Blessing of Sanctuary up).

Am I going to stick with my Death Knight and allow my paladin to gather dust? Will this plog be re-named Death Knights Smash! or DKPWNZMOAR?

No. NO. No. I love my paladin and have a hard time leaving him behind to level any of my other toons. Especially because it was soooo hard to level him in the first place. But I must say, DKs are kinda fun, and REALLY don't they have a kind of evil uber paladin feel to them?

Friends are Important

I did something last night that I had told myself I would not do.

I allowed an undergeared dpser to fill a slot in a heroic run.

I had just finished running a guildie through Scholomance (undead ftw) and decided that I wasn't tired enough for bed yet. I realized that the daily heroic was one that I knew very well and was confident in, so I thought that I would put together a group.

There are currently 4 level 80 tanks in my guild, but only 2 have hp over 20k and defense over 530. Me and my friend %*#$)%(. Since about 75 I feel that he and I have had a nice relationship trying to help each other gear up to be the best we can be in tanking situations. Perhaps later on we might become competitive with one another, but that's a ways away.

My friend also has a level 80 rogue alt. He and I often play at the same time, but not often together because who really needs 2 tanks on 5 man content. So when we can and he's not busy tanking something else I invite his dps to whatever I'm doing.

I had decided to run heroic Utgarde Keep and wanted to bring my friend. Without asking about his dps or experience in heroics I sent him an invite which he accepted.

He did immediately tell me that if his dps was not up to par that I could kick him with no hard feelings. I told him in a whisper that I didn't want to do that, but if it became necessary, I would. He didn't know his dps off the top of his head, but I knew him as a good player and someone who tried really hard, and to me that makes a huge difference.

As we got the run together I realized that the other 2 dpsers totally outgeared the instance so was even less worried about my friends output. Though what I did not realize was that the healer was less geared than I was lead to believe -- we were not CCing based on their belief that they could handle me getting hit (I knew I could handle it, but without heals it's another story).

We ended up wiping twice, both times I believe it was the healer just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time (being pushed back by the dragons into a nearby group and dying).

As soon as the first boss died it became clear to me that my friend had never been in this instance on heroic setting, and, in fact, had never been in ANY heroic when he got the Badge of Heroism achievement. At that moment I closed my eyes and hoped that I wouldn't be getting whispers from the other members who had noticed that as well and wanted me to boot him. It didn't happen, I sighed in relief and we moved on.



Throughout the rest of the run I could tell that the others had been there and didn't need explanations for the bosses, so I just whispered my friend instructions. I knew that he had been to Utgarde Keep before and knew the bosses, just not on heroic difficulty. So when I told him about the encounters I made sure to focus on what was different in the fights.

Most of the run was pretty easy, and we finally got to the last boss -- the heroic daily quest target. I told my friend rogue to watch out for the bosses cast bar and to get out of the way whenever he cast anything. Now, perhaps that's not totally needed, maybe it's a bit of an oversimplification, but as he was the only melee class and his dps was hovering near 980 I figured it wouldn't gimp our encounter too badly.

He said he would do his best and I aggroed the boss. Within 30 seconds my friend had hit the floor. In a whisper to me he laughed and apologized, but I told him it was no big deal. He got a battle rez from our druid and we continued into the undead phase with no problems. He promptly got out of Dodge when he needed to and we took our guy down.

In all honesty our healer and one other died during that last part -- but as I saw it happening I Layed on Hands and Avenging Wrathed and with our remaining members we got it done.

No true rogue gear dropped but the epic crossbow did, and because he's a good guy he did not need it, even though I knew that no one else wanted it. He did win the greed roll and I was ecstatic for him. It was a massive upgrade even though it wasn't a main weapon or armor.

As we were leaving some members were discussing running straight over to heroic Utgarde Pinnacle without missing a beat. I was surprised and happy to see that no one really felt my rogue friend was a liability -- and truly I never thought it myself. I decided that I was too tired and that I believed I was not geared for it yet and so we all parted ways.

This whole wall of text is to say that bringing my friend, while not adding a significant boost to dps, made him and I happy and didn't ruin anything for anyone. "Bring the player, not the class (or spec)" is something that we hear a lot lately from Blizzard. I say, "bring who you want, and hope for the best."

Change

A wise man once said, "The only thing that does not change is change itself."

Well, it's true. My last post I was pissed off by lame pug members, but today I must say, that has changed.

I ran heroic Utgarde Keep (no, my sword did not drop) and there were no wipes and no deaths. There whole thing ran rather smoothly. Well, not totally smoothly.

The person who put the group together was a rogue who really wanted a purple crossbow drop. When he invited me to tank he even asked me if I was going to roll for it if it dropped ........... (sigh).
"I'm a paladin." I said. It took that a moment to process but he finally got it.

Then, because he wanted this drop so badly, he turned on master looter and kept it on the whole time. He would not pass leader to me, he would not mark. But, as it turns out, we were somewhat overpowered -- DPS burned all the bosses down in what felt like record time, and I never ever worried about my health bar. Gotta love those awesome big-love heals.

In the end, because the rogue had master looter on and set to Epic level, when the last boss died and a Frozen Orb dropped, the first person to loot got it. We all cried foul and they, graciously, gave it up for a /roll.

The rogue kept talking like it was no big deal, and that he had it under control. The healer and I both agreed that it would have been nice to have let him die at some point -- too bad he never had that much aggro. It wasn't until he said he was going to disenchant what none of us wanted that things went really insane. He looted the pieces, of which there were maybe 2 -- DE'd one of them, and only then found out that he could not DE the other. (sigh).



That's when I put him on /ignore. The instance was over, we didn't have anything else to do, but I seriously just couldn't listen to that j*ck*ss wail and whine anymore.

I added the healer and one of the dpsers to my friends list with their permission. (For whatever reason, I know I don't have to, I always ask people if it's ok for me to add them to my friends list. I think I just want to know that maybe they'll respond if I whisper them later.)

And that was that. It really wasn't all that bad. We got through it in, what seemed like, record time, and nobody had to be rezzed.

I guess the real lesson here is, somewhat similar to weather and baby's attitudes, if you don't like what's happening in your PUG, just wait for the next one, and hopefully you'll like it better.

=)