Well, after trying to get runs into Utgarde Pinnacle for what seems like ages, I finally got in there twice in the last week and last night it happened, the phat lootz that I've been waiting for dropped:
Red Sword of Courage.
If you run Naxx regularly or are getting drops in Ulduar already, then you are thinking, "Phhht."
For you others I would like to take this opportunity to say ....
"EAT IT!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
That is all.
On a more interesting note, there have been some major changes to encounters in Ulduar. It seems as if it was tuned a little too hard for most players so alot of the encounters are getting nerfed a bit. See this WoWInsider article for more.
Cheers.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Info Regarding Ulduar Fights
Both from maintankadin, but slightly different focus on each.
Very Concise Raid Strats.
In-depth Strats Focusing on Tanking.
That is all for now.
Very Concise Raid Strats.
In-depth Strats Focusing on Tanking.
That is all for now.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Move Successful and other changes
Well, Knales made his move from Norgannon to Fenris successfully. The move was completed late last Wednesday night and I immediately ran a PUG heroic Violet Hold, and that went well.
That Friday night I ran 25 man Naxx with my new guild and that was a success, however we had to PUG in at least 8 people so that made things a little slow and slightly less organized than I think the leadership would have liked. I picked up 2 tanking pieces in there, which I was very happy about. Gauntlets of the Disobediant, from Noth the Plaguebringer and Bindings of the Hapless Prey from Maexxna.
I have also made some significant changes to my UI in anticipation of more raiding. Normally I run without any changes to my base Blizzard UI, just additions really. Now things are different.
When running 5 mans I use Healbot to keep up on buffs both for my party members and for myself. I currently have 4 self-buffs I need to reapply everytime we wipe.
In a raid however, this can get a little too screen-filling. Plus I would really like to be able to change what I do and do not see on my screen a bit more. So I've made 2 major additions.
X-perl changes the way you see almost everything on your screen, but it does not mess with your action bars. It gives you much more flexibility to deliver more information, in a more precise manner to yourself. I am really liking it alot.
The second change I've made is for my action bars. I have added Dominos. This basically scrubbs away the Blizzard bars and makes way for nearly complete customization of your bars.
Both of these addons will require to play around and experiment extensively before you get what you want, but as you play with them they will help you to define what exactly you are looking for in action bar and unit frames addons.
I am still not sold entirely on either of them. There are still a few things that I want to change, but I think with some more tweaking I can get there with these 2 addons.
I am still using Healbot for my buffs, which is gonna blow when I raid, but I am going to be giving Pallypower a test run this week at some point. The biggest problem with PP is that it does not support Seals or Auras, which is something that I can get healbot to keep track of.
If anyone out there has any suggestions as to where to go with these addons or if I should try something new and exciting, please let me know.
Cheers.
That Friday night I ran 25 man Naxx with my new guild and that was a success, however we had to PUG in at least 8 people so that made things a little slow and slightly less organized than I think the leadership would have liked. I picked up 2 tanking pieces in there, which I was very happy about. Gauntlets of the Disobediant, from Noth the Plaguebringer and Bindings of the Hapless Prey from Maexxna.
I have also made some significant changes to my UI in anticipation of more raiding. Normally I run without any changes to my base Blizzard UI, just additions really. Now things are different.
When running 5 mans I use Healbot to keep up on buffs both for my party members and for myself. I currently have 4 self-buffs I need to reapply everytime we wipe.
In a raid however, this can get a little too screen-filling. Plus I would really like to be able to change what I do and do not see on my screen a bit more. So I've made 2 major additions.
X-perl changes the way you see almost everything on your screen, but it does not mess with your action bars. It gives you much more flexibility to deliver more information, in a more precise manner to yourself. I am really liking it alot.
The second change I've made is for my action bars. I have added Dominos. This basically scrubbs away the Blizzard bars and makes way for nearly complete customization of your bars.
Both of these addons will require to play around and experiment extensively before you get what you want, but as you play with them they will help you to define what exactly you are looking for in action bar and unit frames addons.
I am still not sold entirely on either of them. There are still a few things that I want to change, but I think with some more tweaking I can get there with these 2 addons.
I am still using Healbot for my buffs, which is gonna blow when I raid, but I am going to be giving Pallypower a test run this week at some point. The biggest problem with PP is that it does not support Seals or Auras, which is something that I can get healbot to keep track of.
If anyone out there has any suggestions as to where to go with these addons or if I should try something new and exciting, please let me know.
Cheers.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Moving
It's official. I am moving my main, Knales, the paladin tank from Norgannon to Fenris. I have a RL friend there who is in a guild that needs tanks and they raid regularly, so I'm moving.
I've been agonizing over this decision for weeks now, but finally it came down to one question: Where would I have the most fun?
My answer to that had to do with raiding, not being the only tank around and mostly just being able to get stuff that I want to do done. Plus I have spent some time with the guild that I will be moving to, and they are a shit-ton of fun to play with. Even if you're just on guild chat it's good times.
Of course, there are a number of people I will miss on Norgannon. People from my guild and players from our allied guild. I've only been with my still current guild for a little over 3 months, and while I have run up to raid leader and high level officer in that time, I think they'll get by without my tanking skills -- after all there are tanks a plenty out there. Plus I want to just throw an idea out to my guild leader -- throw some tanking leather on your druid and get in there, I bet you'd make a great tank!
So tonight after the scheduled Obsidian Sanctum run (Sarth+0) I will be hitting the transfer button. I have already cleared out my bank character, leaving some gold and items for my 73 hunter who will be remaining behind for the foreseeable future.
I want to end this with a fond farewell to someone else I will miss -- Big Red Kitty. He has decided to re-dedicate himself to his wife and family and while I applaud that decision, I will miss his good cheer and fun posts. Reading his farewell post got me a little misty thinking about my own 7 month old daughter (I hope my play time is balanced with my family time, but only time will tell I suppose).
I've been agonizing over this decision for weeks now, but finally it came down to one question: Where would I have the most fun?
My answer to that had to do with raiding, not being the only tank around and mostly just being able to get stuff that I want to do done. Plus I have spent some time with the guild that I will be moving to, and they are a shit-ton of fun to play with. Even if you're just on guild chat it's good times.
Of course, there are a number of people I will miss on Norgannon. People from my guild and players from our allied guild. I've only been with my still current guild for a little over 3 months, and while I have run up to raid leader and high level officer in that time, I think they'll get by without my tanking skills -- after all there are tanks a plenty out there. Plus I want to just throw an idea out to my guild leader -- throw some tanking leather on your druid and get in there, I bet you'd make a great tank!
So tonight after the scheduled Obsidian Sanctum run (Sarth+0) I will be hitting the transfer button. I have already cleared out my bank character, leaving some gold and items for my 73 hunter who will be remaining behind for the foreseeable future.
I want to end this with a fond farewell to someone else I will miss -- Big Red Kitty. He has decided to re-dedicate himself to his wife and family and while I applaud that decision, I will miss his good cheer and fun posts. Reading his farewell post got me a little misty thinking about my own 7 month old daughter (I hope my play time is balanced with my family time, but only time will tell I suppose).
Thursday, March 26, 2009
WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN!
This site is the win-ing-est! You gotta check it out. Please please please -- just do it. You'll love yourself more for having done so -- and not in a dirty way ... mostly.
WoW Bash.
DO IT.
WoW Bash.
DO IT.
Monday, March 23, 2009
I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore!
Well, I'm not that mad. Although it IS interesting to note that what this guy is saying holds true today, even the Russians are a problem again, albeit not quite what they were in the early eighties.
Anyhoooo. Yes, I'm a little bit pissed. I'm angry at the people I play with in the game. This is a social game and sometimes people step on other people's toes, I get that, but I'm tired of my current situation in-game.
I am a tank, I am currently my guild's only heroic/raid geared tank. I am one of two geared tanks in our guild alliance. This means that for raids the both of us must have 100% attendance for things to happen. It also means that if I want to run 5 man heroics all I need to do is find a healer and we can pretty much get it on. However, that also means that if I'm not the in mood to wait around for someone and I decide to just get something started -- I am the focus of bad feelings because someone gets left out. It also means that if you whisper me about running something and I'm getting whispers from 10 other people, you might get missed and so you miss that run as well.
This I find bothersome.
I join guilds so it's easier to find groups and to have people to be social with. I don't join them so I can feel like I have another job. I join guilds that are casual in the hopes that someday I will find one that has a chilled out relaxed atmosphere, but that also likes to get instance runs and raids going.
My guild has recently created an alliance with another guild -- one that I really like the members of. If I had my druthers we would merge our two guilds but as both guild leaders really like their independence that is not likely to happen. But things are starting to come together a little bit -- we have run Vault of Archavon 10 successfully and PUGed 25 with no problem as well. This coming week we are going to give Obsidian Sanctum a visit and kill Sartharion with his attendant drakes already dead AKA Sarth+0. So things are moving.
But that's not really the problem. The problem is that I feel pressure every time I log on to the game. I feel pressure to make sure that everyone who wants to run something is included. I feel pressure to not show anyone any kind of favoritism. I feel pressure to show up all the time so that I can be someone's meat shield.
Now our guild leader wants to start adding all sorts of leadership roles to the guild roster. This means we would have a tank leader, a paladin leader and a herbalism leader -- along with all the other professions, roles and classes. With our guild being so small, maybe 15-20 actual regular players and a crap load of alts. We only have 5 MAYBE 6 people at 80 who can walk into heroic 5 mans. So this all boils down to people taking on multiple roles.
What will my roles be? Well, currently I am the raid leader. I am also the most experienced tank, but not officially the tank leader -- although the funny thing is that my advice is not taken when I tell people that so-and-so is not ready to tank something. Guess I'm REALLY not the tank leader. And I suppose I could be the alchemy boss, but so could our guild leader.
Really, I don't want any more titles or roles to play. I want to tank in heroics and raids and if I have to organize such things, then so be it. After that I just want to play, and not be bothered with much else. I'm responsible for enough shit at home (7 month old baby) and at work.
All this has lead me to spend more time on the PTR messing about as well as logging into low level alts that no one knows. Which is OK, but doesn't get me into more interesting content. I could honestly care less about the epic items, I just want to play content I haven't seen before and I want to skill up on that stuff.
So what to do, what to do. The extra roles in the guild should not be such a big deal (I would hope) -- just tell them that I'm not interested. The crap dealing with groups and emo kids who don't get their runs ... harder.
What really makes this an issue at all is the fact that there is a casual raiding guild, in which I have RL friends, and who I know are chilled out and cool people -- and they want me. They are running Naxx on a regular basis and they need more tanks. Also I have had a toon running with them for a couple weeks, just to check them out -- DK, of course.
One of their members even offered to pay half of the transfer fee. Ugh.
Of course, if I didn't have at least one person who I really think is a cool person-- a person who I could see really becoming RL friends with, this would all be a non-issue.
Now, I've been in perhaps 15 guilds on 5 or 6 servers so /gquit is not a new thing for me. Nor is transferring. But I've never left one guild for another. Usually a guild will just self-destruct or I'll quit playing that toon for a while and get kicked. So this is all something new for me.
Alrighty, that's all for now. More when I know more.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
New Talent Tree Info from PTR
I am going to focus on 2 changes to the protection tree -- for this current build they are, in my mind the most significant changes (and maybe the only ones for protection? not sure).
Filling out the talent with 32 points in protection we now have Spiritual Attunement -- working much like it used to when bought from trainers.
"A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets' spells. The amount of mana gained is equal to 5/10% of the amount healed."
There is a lot of talk about this move and what it does for all 3 specs. At the moment it is a definite nerf to both Holy and Ret, although Holy can probably get away without it because they aren't receiving many heals from friendly players. Ret however is currently counting on this mechanic to get mana back because of the Seal of the Martyr/Blood self-damage mechanic (this takes a bit to explain -- if you want to know more check out any of a number of the retribution paladin blogs).
I think this is a great move on the developers part -- although it most likely means that they will need to do some extra work in the Retribution tree. It makes sure that when tankadins need mana they will have it.
Speaking of having mana when you need it there is another interesting change in the protection tree. Fully talented at 42 points is Guarded by the Light.
"Reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and gives 50/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Pleas spell is 100% less likely to be dispelled."
Jigajiga-what? Alright. Now this talent used to be insanely useful: Did the same work on spell damage, but lowered the mana cost of the 3 most used tanking spells. Now it gives more uptime to our biggest mana generating spell, Divine Plea.
I am not sure this is so great anymore. Sure it gives us the ability to be generating mana like crazy, for ourselves, but I think it may be too much. With Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement I generally have more mana than I know what to do with -- ending many boss fights with full mana. This WILL help tankadins when it comes to trash fights I suppose, when they're not getting healed quite as much, but my experience has shown me that normal unbuffed Divine Plea works just fine.
Of course there is still the reduction to spell damage, which is always nice, but I am of the opinion that this might not be one of those HAVE TO HAVE talents anymore. Testing will prove one way or another. I hope to get on the PTR tonight to get a look at just that.
Cheers.
Filling out the talent with 32 points in protection we now have Spiritual Attunement -- working much like it used to when bought from trainers.
"A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets' spells. The amount of mana gained is equal to 5/10% of the amount healed."
There is a lot of talk about this move and what it does for all 3 specs. At the moment it is a definite nerf to both Holy and Ret, although Holy can probably get away without it because they aren't receiving many heals from friendly players. Ret however is currently counting on this mechanic to get mana back because of the Seal of the Martyr/Blood self-damage mechanic (this takes a bit to explain -- if you want to know more check out any of a number of the retribution paladin blogs).
Eat dirt Archavon!
I think this is a great move on the developers part -- although it most likely means that they will need to do some extra work in the Retribution tree. It makes sure that when tankadins need mana they will have it.
Speaking of having mana when you need it there is another interesting change in the protection tree. Fully talented at 42 points is Guarded by the Light.
"Reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and gives 50/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Pleas spell is 100% less likely to be dispelled."
Jigajiga-what? Alright. Now this talent used to be insanely useful: Did the same work on spell damage, but lowered the mana cost of the 3 most used tanking spells. Now it gives more uptime to our biggest mana generating spell, Divine Plea.
I am not sure this is so great anymore. Sure it gives us the ability to be generating mana like crazy, for ourselves, but I think it may be too much. With Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement I generally have more mana than I know what to do with -- ending many boss fights with full mana. This WILL help tankadins when it comes to trash fights I suppose, when they're not getting healed quite as much, but my experience has shown me that normal unbuffed Divine Plea works just fine.
Of course there is still the reduction to spell damage, which is always nice, but I am of the opinion that this might not be one of those HAVE TO HAVE talents anymore. Testing will prove one way or another. I hope to get on the PTR tonight to get a look at just that.
Cheers.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
First Foray onto the PTR
Well I copied my character, waited the 2 days and finally logged into the PTR.
When I copied my toon he had logged out in Borean Tundra and so I immediately flew over to Coldarra to test out the silencing mechanic newly built into talents deep in the Protection tree.
LOVIN IT! This was great, finally I can pull a caster to me instead of having to use line of sight mechanics or rushing in on them. As I was fighting, I realized that the 3 second silence may not be long enough. I would rather go with a 5 or 6 second silence, but hey, I got something which is better than the nothing we all had before.
While there I ran into my first bug. It's only an animation glitch, but it was more than just annoying.
As you can see, I'm no longer fighting anything, but my arms a oddly akimbo as if I'm dodging or getting ready to slash with my sword or shield. And this effect lasted until I summoned my Red Drake and flew away, but came back again once I set down and fought some elementals also in Borean Tundra.
This was when I noticed the new cooldown on the Hearthstone. It's now only 30 minutes!! Even though I hadn't used it since logging in, as soon as I got to Dalaran and had puttered around there for a few minutes I was shocked to find that I only had 10 minutes until I could hearth again.
Since I was on the PTR and nothing I did would have any permanence I decided to zone into Wintergrasp and spend some of my Stone Keeper's Shards on a Black War Mammoth. While this isn't REALLY PTR type stuff, I took some video of it's glory. Not sure if I'm going to allow myself to buy one on my live server, but hey, it was fun for a little bit.
More PTR goodness to come.
When I copied my toon he had logged out in Borean Tundra and so I immediately flew over to Coldarra to test out the silencing mechanic newly built into talents deep in the Protection tree.
LOVIN IT! This was great, finally I can pull a caster to me instead of having to use line of sight mechanics or rushing in on them. As I was fighting, I realized that the 3 second silence may not be long enough. I would rather go with a 5 or 6 second silence, but hey, I got something which is better than the nothing we all had before.
While there I ran into my first bug. It's only an animation glitch, but it was more than just annoying.
As you can see, I'm no longer fighting anything, but my arms a oddly akimbo as if I'm dodging or getting ready to slash with my sword or shield. And this effect lasted until I summoned my Red Drake and flew away, but came back again once I set down and fought some elementals also in Borean Tundra.
This was when I noticed the new cooldown on the Hearthstone. It's now only 30 minutes!! Even though I hadn't used it since logging in, as soon as I got to Dalaran and had puttered around there for a few minutes I was shocked to find that I only had 10 minutes until I could hearth again.
Since I was on the PTR and nothing I did would have any permanence I decided to zone into Wintergrasp and spend some of my Stone Keeper's Shards on a Black War Mammoth. While this isn't REALLY PTR type stuff, I took some video of it's glory. Not sure if I'm going to allow myself to buy one on my live server, but hey, it was fun for a little bit.
More PTR goodness to come.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Public Test Realm-ing
Because I have recently been writing mostly about PUG aggro or personal issues with the game I decided it was time to jump into the PTR for 3.1.
I really want to be able to write about interesting things happening in the game, and although there are still arguments raging about whether or not Reckoning is worth spending points on, or if Pursuit of Justice in the Retribution tree is pointless (hehe) or not -- I feel like those arguments may continue to rage until the end of time. Or at least the end of WoW (shudder).
Also I am not a mathematician (I can hardly balance my checkbook) so I have little interest in trying to write about current theorycrafting -- check out Elitist Jerks for all that.
I want to be able to report on the reality of upcoming changes to the class and most especially to the Protection spec. So I've downloaded the PTR client and have put my toon in the queue for copying to the PTR. That is supposed to take a couple of days, so I won't have anything new to say on this front for a few days.
IF there are any readers out there who would like me to check something specific out on the PTRs and talk about it, please leave a comment and I will do my best to do so.
I am most psyched to play around with the Shield of the Templar talent change. While we are losing +30% damage in that talent to Shield of Righteousness, Avenger's Shield and Holy Shield that damage is being folded into the base damage of all those spells and being replaced with the ability to SILENCE with Avenger's Shield. HOW FRIGGIN COOL IS THAT? Finally. Seriously.
I also heard somewhere that Shield of Righteousness was no longer going to generate a high amount of threat, but as I cann't find the source for that, I would like to hop into the PTR and get the scoop.
Looking at the latest talent calculator on MMO-Champion, it looks like I will be going Holy 3, Prot 55, Ret 13. And that's quite weird at the moment to look at.
I also want to check out the dual spec deal and also I am wondering about mana issues with the changes to Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement. I believe that I will have no problem keeping my mana up, but I would really like to see what's going on.
So, dear reader, look forward to some interesting articles about what's coming up for paladins and tankadins in the 3.1 patch.
Auf wiedersehen!
I really want to be able to write about interesting things happening in the game, and although there are still arguments raging about whether or not Reckoning is worth spending points on, or if Pursuit of Justice in the Retribution tree is pointless (hehe) or not -- I feel like those arguments may continue to rage until the end of time. Or at least the end of WoW (shudder).
Also I am not a mathematician (I can hardly balance my checkbook) so I have little interest in trying to write about current theorycrafting -- check out Elitist Jerks for all that.
I want to be able to report on the reality of upcoming changes to the class and most especially to the Protection spec. So I've downloaded the PTR client and have put my toon in the queue for copying to the PTR. That is supposed to take a couple of days, so I won't have anything new to say on this front for a few days.
IF there are any readers out there who would like me to check something specific out on the PTRs and talk about it, please leave a comment and I will do my best to do so.
I am most psyched to play around with the Shield of the Templar talent change. While we are losing +30% damage in that talent to Shield of Righteousness, Avenger's Shield and Holy Shield that damage is being folded into the base damage of all those spells and being replaced with the ability to SILENCE with Avenger's Shield. HOW FRIGGIN COOL IS THAT? Finally. Seriously.
I also heard somewhere that Shield of Righteousness was no longer going to generate a high amount of threat, but as I cann't find the source for that, I would like to hop into the PTR and get the scoop.
Looking at the latest talent calculator on MMO-Champion, it looks like I will be going Holy 3, Prot 55, Ret 13. And that's quite weird at the moment to look at.
I also want to check out the dual spec deal and also I am wondering about mana issues with the changes to Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement. I believe that I will have no problem keeping my mana up, but I would really like to see what's going on.
So, dear reader, look forward to some interesting articles about what's coming up for paladins and tankadins in the 3.1 patch.
Auf wiedersehen!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Busy busy busy
In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty busy right now and have had trouble writing.
Work is keeping me quite busy. Home is always busy with 6 month old baby, girlfriend, dog and various other things. And then there's Warcraft.
As it stands I am on a streak of trying to run as many heroics as I can as often as I can. So on the nights that I know I have more than a few hours, I try to run at least 2 heroics. Alot of the time, unless it's scheduled ahead of time that means trying to put together a PUG, which can be great or insanely awful at any given moment.
Plus I have just been elected as the raid leader for our guild, so I have to work very closely with the raid leader of our allied guild, Remains of the Fallen in order to get some stuff done. And that takes up time.
Along with the scheduling of the raids and deciding composition numbers from each guild -- here's hoping we can keep it to 5/5 -- there are the gear/experience/skill factors with the membership of my guild.
I am totally sure and confident of 3 of our players. 100%. No worries. At all.
One of those is me, and yeah, I guess there is some hesitation for me on new content, but I know I'm geared and I have the right skills to figure most fights out (given that I've done some research).
And there are really some bright stars that are rising quickly in our guild, both in skill and gear (there experience is usually not something I worry too much about in the beginning).
Anyhoooo. So I might not be writing as much as I'd like, or you my dear reader(s).
Cheers.
Work is keeping me quite busy. Home is always busy with 6 month old baby, girlfriend, dog and various other things. And then there's Warcraft.
As it stands I am on a streak of trying to run as many heroics as I can as often as I can. So on the nights that I know I have more than a few hours, I try to run at least 2 heroics. Alot of the time, unless it's scheduled ahead of time that means trying to put together a PUG, which can be great or insanely awful at any given moment.
Plus I have just been elected as the raid leader for our guild, so I have to work very closely with the raid leader of our allied guild, Remains of the Fallen in order to get some stuff done. And that takes up time.
Along with the scheduling of the raids and deciding composition numbers from each guild -- here's hoping we can keep it to 5/5 -- there are the gear/experience/skill factors with the membership of my guild.
I am totally sure and confident of 3 of our players. 100%. No worries. At all.
One of those is me, and yeah, I guess there is some hesitation for me on new content, but I know I'm geared and I have the right skills to figure most fights out (given that I've done some research).
And there are really some bright stars that are rising quickly in our guild, both in skill and gear (there experience is usually not something I worry too much about in the beginning).
Anyhoooo. So I might not be writing as much as I'd like, or you my dear reader(s).
Cheers.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Not Warcraft or Paladin related in any way!
This is my daughter, Dune. She's so cute it's painful to look at sometimes.
I will most likely write something Warcraft related later.
This just needed to be added.
I will most likely write something Warcraft related later.
This just needed to be added.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
This is Easy. Fail.
"But this is easy."
How many times have I heard that from a dpser?
Yeah sure it's easy for you, you just have to stand there and hit your buttons and what? Not pay attention to threat meters, not pay attention to incoming adds, not pay attention to the healers mana, not pay attention to the tank moving the mob.
Argh, this subject makes me so angry. When someone comes into a group and just assumes that whatever they are doing will be easy and they can proceed with no cares in the world.
When grouping it is important to remember that there are 4 other people in the group with you. They all have differing levels of gear, experience and skill -- all three of which are insanely important in how "easy" anything is.
I can't tell you how many times I have run with a PUG in an heroic and someone keeps saying that this should be a breeze and that, "any 80 will have 1300 dps." Then, when I remind them that people are always leveling alts or new toons they take a step back and I can hear them gulp a little.
Yeah, we might have some under-prepared members of our group -- people who aren't geared enough or don't have any idea how to deal with the first boss in heroic gundrak or just aren't very good at their class.
You just don't know until you hit that first boss.
Just, please please please remember: Unless you're in a guild run or with good friends, you never REALLY know the capabilities of the other people in your PUG. The Armory can't tell you that they're watching Dollhouse on hulu while running heroic Azjol-Nerub.
And there isn't a spell for healing stupid.
How many times have I heard that from a dpser?
Yeah sure it's easy for you, you just have to stand there and hit your buttons and what? Not pay attention to threat meters, not pay attention to incoming adds, not pay attention to the healers mana, not pay attention to the tank moving the mob.
Argh, this subject makes me so angry. When someone comes into a group and just assumes that whatever they are doing will be easy and they can proceed with no cares in the world.
When grouping it is important to remember that there are 4 other people in the group with you. They all have differing levels of gear, experience and skill -- all three of which are insanely important in how "easy" anything is.
I can't tell you how many times I have run with a PUG in an heroic and someone keeps saying that this should be a breeze and that, "any 80 will have 1300 dps." Then, when I remind them that people are always leveling alts or new toons they take a step back and I can hear them gulp a little.
Yeah, we might have some under-prepared members of our group -- people who aren't geared enough or don't have any idea how to deal with the first boss in heroic gundrak or just aren't very good at their class.
You just don't know until you hit that first boss.
Just, please please please remember: Unless you're in a guild run or with good friends, you never REALLY know the capabilities of the other people in your PUG. The Armory can't tell you that they're watching Dollhouse on hulu while running heroic Azjol-Nerub.
And there isn't a spell for healing stupid.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
What? You mean I have a blog to write?
Well things have been pretty slow in my WoW life recently. Not much sweet gear, although unless it's truly friggin awesome I wouldn't post it anyways. Heroics runs have had the same chance to be great or to fail epicly depending on group makeup.
I've also been very busy at work, and that bleeds over into the blog writing.
I keep playing, and when I can't get a group I mostly farm for herbs or do the Hodir daily quests.
Sometimes I kill something randomly just because I want to. This is one such instance (not dungeon).
I really love the models on these guys -- with their toothy grins!
One thing that is happening that I will be excited to see come to fruition, (if it does) is the alliance between my current guild, Elven Fellowship, and our friends over at Remain of the Fallen. We have just created a chat channel in-game that we all share, so that should build relations between the two groups.
My understanding is that they are in much the same place as our guild. We don't have the numbers to really field a 10 man group, we don't want to change our focus to hardcore progression and we don't want to be swallowed up by a large guild just so we can raid. So we're just going to get together with another like-minded group and hope it all works out.
I know that that Remains has some great players, and so have we, we'll just have to see how the two can come together.
On a totally different note, I screamed through a 44 minute Heroic Nexus run last night with a nicely heavy dps group.
I died at the end dragon when she was at 2% because I thought to myself, oh we got this, and then stopped jumping and promptly died. The rest of the group spanked her down so it didn't matter much -- just a slightly higher repair bill.
Oh well that's all for now.
Cheers.
I've also been very busy at work, and that bleeds over into the blog writing.
I keep playing, and when I can't get a group I mostly farm for herbs or do the Hodir daily quests.
Sometimes I kill something randomly just because I want to. This is one such instance (not dungeon).
I really love the models on these guys -- with their toothy grins!
One thing that is happening that I will be excited to see come to fruition, (if it does) is the alliance between my current guild, Elven Fellowship, and our friends over at Remain of the Fallen. We have just created a chat channel in-game that we all share, so that should build relations between the two groups.
My understanding is that they are in much the same place as our guild. We don't have the numbers to really field a 10 man group, we don't want to change our focus to hardcore progression and we don't want to be swallowed up by a large guild just so we can raid. So we're just going to get together with another like-minded group and hope it all works out.
I know that that Remains has some great players, and so have we, we'll just have to see how the two can come together.
On a totally different note, I screamed through a 44 minute Heroic Nexus run last night with a nicely heavy dps group.
I died at the end dragon when she was at 2% because I thought to myself, oh we got this, and then stopped jumping and promptly died. The rest of the group spanked her down so it didn't matter much -- just a slightly higher repair bill.
Oh well that's all for now.
Cheers.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
- 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.)
- 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%)
- Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous *new* -- Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.
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.
Monday, February 23, 2009
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
"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.
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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.
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.
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