Artisan Achiever

Dying Genres

2012-01-27T16:59:00.001-08:00

Years ago I told my 10 year old son the John Woo film “Broken Arrow” had a namesake in a 1950 film, too.

I said, “Jeff Chandler was the first actor nominated for an Oscar for playing an Indian in a western.”

He replied dully, “A western what?”

We immediately rented Magnificent Seven and other great westerns so we could fill this desperate gap.

(later he graduated to Seven Samurai)

Ultraxion 10-man Guide

2012-01-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

The Encounter

The three abilities to pay attention to:

•Player Defensive Ability: Heroic Will - Ultraxion will pull the entire raid into the Twilight realm. However, this also grants everyone a special, encounter-specific ability called Heroic Will. By default, this appears as a small icon in the middle of your screen. It makes you leave the Twilight realm for 5 seconds.

•Active Boss ability: Hour of Twilight (every 45 seconds) - Ultraxion casts this, everyone in the Twilight realm takes 300,000 unresistable Shadow damage. 2 players have to stay behind and get hit by it, or Ultraxion kills everyone. Everyone but two players uses Heroic Will to survive.

•Active Boss ability: Fading Light is cast on the tank and one other raid member. When the debuff fades, if you're in the Twilight Realm, you die. The targeted players use Heroic Will to survive.

Also:

•Passive Boss ability: Unstable Monstrosity causes him to do a large amount of shadow damage split between everyone in the twilight realm. He starts out casting this every 6 seconds, but as time goes on, he casts it more and more frequently.

•Passive Boss ability: Twilight Burst. This does a rapidly increasing amount of shadow damage to the entire raid when there is no one in melee range.

•Boss Enrage: Twilight Eruption. After 6 minutes, he explodes, instantly wiping the raid. That means Ultraxion has a hard, 6-minute enrage timer.

What you need to know:

•TANKS: At the start Thrall will cast Last Defender of Azeroth on the tanks, which lowers the CDs of their major defensive abilities by 50%, and doubles their duration.

•HEALERS: The aspects will summon various crystals that healers can click to gain a specific buff. Once a healer has activated a crystal, they have that buff for the rest of the fight and cannot take a different buff. One of each crystal will spawn:
- 1.5 minutes into fight: The red crystal spawn about a minute and a half into the fight, their buff will increase all healing done by 100%.
- 2.5 minutes into fight: the green crystal spawn, and will cause all of your healing spells to heal the same amount again, split across the entire raid – basically an AOE healing buff.
- 3.5 minutes into fight: The blue crystal spawn a minute after the green and will reduce the mana cost of all spells by 75% while increasing spell haste by 100%.

•EVERYONE: 5 minutes into the fight -- so one minute before the enrage timer -- Nozdormu will buff the entire raid with Timeloop. With this active, if something would kill you, you get healed to full instead, but you lose the buff when that happens.

Raid Strat

•Everyone should stand grouped up directly in front of him, just inside of melee range.

•When the boss uses Fading Light, tanks should swap, and the two people affected by Fading Light should use Heroic Will when it's just about to expire to keep from dying. It’s important to see that the DOT does nothing till it expires. It ticks for 7 seconds, then boom. To avoid the boom, use HW about 3 seconds before it expires. Use HW too early and it won't protect you from the boom.

•When he casts Hour of Twilight,

- Everyone but the tank with aggro and one other player should use Heroic Will to escape
- The tank that stays behind needs to use some form of survival CD to stay alive.
- Boss will cast Hour of Twilight every 45 seconds, so make sure you assign things appropriately.

•The fight goes like this:

(1) Hour of Twilight boss cast bar appears and gets halfway through cast:
--- Roker stays in …everyone else uses HW
(2) Fading Light DOT appears on two players and ticks from 7 down to 3 seconds:
--- Roker+1 get Fading Light, Winter taunts and stays in, Roker uses HW,
--- The +1 raider uses HW
(3) Fading Light DOT appears on two players and ticks from 7 down to 3 seconds:
--- Winter+1 get Fading Light, Roker taunts and stays in, Winter uses HW,
--- The +1 raider uses HW

The fight repeats identically these three steps every 45 seconds the entire encounter

•NOTE: You can alternate tanks to soak HOT, but the tank who just used HW to survive FL should not be the one to soak HOT, since he cannot hold threat for the first ten seconds after HW.

•As for the healer buffs, remember that each healer can only have one crystal, so just assign them ahead of time based on what classes you have and what their healing assignments are. Due to the nature of the buffs, there isn't a real specific priority for who should get what buff. They all roughly work out to be a 100% increase in healing done in their own little ways.

Bear Strat for Soaking Hour of Twilight:
Use this every time:
•Barkskin -20% damage for 12 s (1 minute CD, down to 30 seconds in this fight)
…and Alternate these two:
•Frenzied Regen … +30% health (3 min CD) (down to 90 seconds)
•Survival Instincts … -50% damage taken (3 min CD, down to 90 seconds)

This guide was created after multiple attempts last week, personal observation combined with the adapted sections of text of the 25-man tankspot video.

Thanks
Winter

Glory Drakes

2012-01-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

_____________________________________________________________________
Glory of the ULDUAR Raider (10) (Tracker site and fight tips). (Updated: January 15th)

Last night: Drakes earned by Trianua Lupuslatro Caisman Winterherz
Previously: janamaria wrarlfin kirune and several winters
Almost done: 6 folks need Yogg and Razorscale only - We'll do that tonight at 7 server
Almost almost done: 2 folks need kologarn only: Bohicaa and guest lulzheroism - next week
In progress: Azorin, Kyndrea and Waral
Next Run: Sunday Jan 22nd, 7pm server.
Time to complete: : 4 hours (14 bosses)
Drake: Rusted Proto-drake;
Achievements: Yogg+0 Achievement; plus 59 Possible Achievements (15 minimum)
Title: Starcaller Title;
Quests: Celestial Planetarium;
Event: Dalaran Event;
Transmog Guide: Ulduar Loot;

_____________________________________________________________________
Glory of the ICECROWN Raider (10) (Tracker site and fight tips). (Updated: January 13th)

Last night: Drakes earned by Bohicaa Moorigan Winterherz
Previously: Hâtred Cerridwenn Wickedwanda Lupuslatro Caisman Strikepoint and several winters
Almost done: 6 folks need Sindragosa and Lich King only - We'll do that Friday at 7 server
In progress: Azorin, Raiylin, Bronhann and Waral
Next Run: Friday Jan 20th, 7pm server.
Time to complete: : two lockouts; 4 hours each (13 bosses)
Drake: Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher;
Achievements: 20 Possible Achievements (16 minimum)
Title: Bane of the Fallen King; ...of the Ashen Verdict;
Quests: Ashen Band Rings;
Reputation: Ashen Verdict;
Event: Dalaran Event;
Transmog Guide: Icecrown Citadel Loot;

_____________________________________________________________________
All Glory Mounts

(200) Red Proto-Drake from Glory of the Hero (5 Player)...38 5-man tricks
(200) Plagued Proto-Drake (No longer available) from Glory of the Raider (10 player)...Clear Naxx/OS/EOE with 16 tricks
(213) Black Proto-Drake (No longer available) from Glory of the Raider (25 player)...Clear Naxx/OS/EOE with 16 tricks
(226) Rusted Proto-Drake from Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player)...Clear Ulduar one trick each (13)
(239) Ironbound Proto-Drake from Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player)...Clear Ulduar one trick each (13)
(251) Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher from Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10 player)...first 12 on heroic, plus one trick each
(264) Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher from Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player)...first 12 on heroic, plus one trick each
(346) Volcanic Stone Drake from Glory of the Cataclysm Hero (5 player)...28 5-man tricks
(359) Dark Phoenix from GUILD Glory of the Cataclysm Raider (10 or 25 player)...Clear BWD/BOT/Tof4W in a guild group
(359) Drake of the East Wind from Glory of the Cataclysm Raider (10 or 25 player)...BWD/BOT/Tof4W all 12 on heroic, plus one trick each
(378) Corrupted Firehawk from Glory of the Firelands Raider (10 or 25 player)...Firelands first 6 on heroic, plus one trick each
(397) Twilight Harbinger from Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider (10 or 25 player)...Dragon Soul all 8 on heroic, plus one trick each

Cat People Are Weird

2012-01-06T09:59:00.001-08:00

In all my favorite science fiction alien races often have familiars or pets.... We humans with our dogs *and* cats must be bizarre in this pattern. I can't imagine wandering a distant moon's tundra coming upon an alien village wherein there are dapper aliens with small delicate fastidious pets and burly aliens with rambunctious energetic pets. How would ever be able to make generalizations about aliens with such inconsistencies? Infinite variety of life indeed.... If I can't immediately categorize and pigeonhole what I find on an alien moon then I can't be bothered to go exploring at all. I'd rather stay home and sort vintage postage stamps. Stamps that can be neatly ordered to match what I see in the catalog with no surprises.

What Problems do Macros Solve?

2011-12-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

A Game with a Shell, yay~!

We're going to sneak up on using macros by reminding ourselves of the bigger picture and what problems we're trying to solve. As we play we have much to do and we have much to think about. Check it out:

• Lots of buttons with commands on them (over 50 can be available at once)
• Lots of more commands that don't have buttons (/sit /say /sleep, etc)
• Lots of things to look at (boss, adds, players, heads-up displays and raid frames, etc)
• Lots of environment changes (void zones, spikes, crashes, cone attacks and moving walls of death)
• Lots of things to select that are friendly or unfriendly
• Character control includes running, strafing, turning, swimming, flying, jumping in a 2D or 3D space
• Camera control for panning and zooming

The ONLY tool you have in order to execute any of these actions is your mouse or your keyboard.

Eek! All my abililties have a cooldown!
Notice also that any time you click an ability, normally you have 1.5 seconds after selecting a skill to analyze, prepare and execute your next command action. This is the global cool-down (GCD) and most commands have this cool-down.

Almost all keypresses tranlate to interactions with the environment. The environment is maintained by the server. GCD exists to keep your battle command communication with the server to small snippets that have a decent space of time between them. One and a half seconds is arguably plenty of time for this purpose and there are situations that seasoned players will recognize where this is shortened to as little as one second.

The First Playstyle

The most rudimentary play style uses the mouse only. In this play-style, you:

• use the mouse for movement
• use the mouse target things
• use the mouse to select actions from the command bars

This style places you at a skill level where you can get everything you need done. Can this be done infinitely fast? No. The method leads your eyes away from the environment and it’s prone to clicking errors. My claim is that trying to execute this play-style to time between each GCD is a real challenge.

The Second Playstyle

The next play style uses the keyboard with a mouse. In this play-style, you:

• use the mouse or keyboard for movement
• use the mouse or keyboard to target things
• use the keyboard to select actions from the command bars

This style places you at a more advanced skill level where you can get everything you need done while not leading your eyes away from the environment and it’s not prone to clicking errors. Arguably it’s faster to shoot a pinky out and press a key than it is to sweep the mouse to the button. By way of comparison note your speed while typing a note using real fingers on a keyboard versus trying to use a mouse to point and click on a virtual keyboard. The potential for using the keys is much greater, and ironically enough, still takes practice. Anyone who fiddles with changing their play-style will attest to the time that it takes to learn the new muscle memory.

Let's Play with Keybindings

Let’s say you have elected to use a keyboard perform actions. You’ve moved the mouse, clicked the target and note that you now use the keyboard equivalent to issue the command. You have a *lot* of commands. You now eyeball the number row and line up your commands on keys 1 through 12 (equals) and you’re good to go. But you have all those other bars that you can’t access with a keyboard. Or can you?

Bring up the game menu and select keybindings. This interface allows you to assign keypresses to default actions. Note that you already have keyboard shortcuts (keybinds) for the most basic game control: C for character, N for talents… Find the action bar you want to address and use keypresses such as ALT-1 or ALT-2 in order to access that second command bar (that had no keybinding until you came along).

Before you get too far into that option however, note that you do have another thingy to play with, Macros.

Let's Play with Macros

At its most basic, a macro let’s one button do two or more things. The thought of writing macros can cause chills, trigger math phobia or bring back coding nightmares for even the most seasoned of geeks. The uninitiated masses ask “why use a macro to cast two commands when I can just put the two commands next to each other on my bar?”

The answer lies in the fact that you have 5 fingers and fifty things you could do and about 1.5 seconds to decide what to do next and then move your mouse to do it.

Think about the possibilities:

• Select or mark a target or a target of target
• Melee / autoshot
• AOE, cleave or single target ATTACK 1,2 or 3…. That may or may not leave DOTs
• Finishing move
• AOE or single target HEAL 1,2 or 3…. That may or may not leave DOTs
• AOE or single target TAUNT 1 or 2
• Damage mitigation / Self heal / Aggro dump CD 1, 2 or 3
• Pet attack 1,2 or 3, summon or sacrifice
• Short or long interrupt 1 or 2
• Use Trinket 1, 2, or gear-on-use
• Use a 25 second potion
• Use a class ability (fade, camouflage, bear form, blink, heroic leap, etc)
• Use a racial ability (escape artist, berserking, dark flight)
• Cast buff 1,2 or 3 on yourself or others
• …

…the list goes on.

Macros Already Consider One Spell per Keyclick

Macros are for building buttons that use abilities in order or conditionally. Macros take a gameplay that would normally be, say, press 1, press 2, press 3 and turn it into press 1, 1, 1 (and three different spells go off).

Astute observers will note that there are a very few abilities that do not trigger the global cooldown. Silencing shot, barkskin, counterspell, dark command, inner focus, intercept, etc …. It’s very convenient to embed spells that are off GCD towards the end of a macro so that they can be cast more quickly or even without thought.

However, despite this efficiency no macro can get around the requirement that there is one shot per key press.

Macros Already Consider Shot Queuing

The interface allows you to queue the next shot after the last shot has started. There are conditions around this and also timing to think about but it basically reinforces the idea that button-mashing is good. The most effective button mashing is a strategy in which a single button casts two or three spells in a row over and over again when mashed. The GCD is designed specifically to prevent more than one spell going off in the allotted timespan. Shot queuing addresses a problem of reaction times and latency that can lengthen the time *between* GCDs.

Imagine on a 2 minute boss fight. During this fight you are a non-descript caster type and the most basic rotation will be made up of spells on keys 1 and 2. Let’s say you want to do 1,1,1,1,2 over and over again. 1 is instant and a 2 second channel. You use up 8 seconds per rotation (four times GCD plus two).

Theoretically you should have enough time to be doing this rotation 15 times in a two minute fight. Combat logs however show that you are only getting through 13 rotations. This is an indication of server communication lag (latency) and your personal physical reaction time. Shot queuing helps by allowing you to mash 1 several times in a row to queue the next shot before the interface has even shown you whether it’s ready to go.

In other words, without shot queuing we are waiting around for the UI to say that the previous shot is complete and then we take time to react to that. Macros can sometimes be used to take advantage of shot queuing, especially if the macro is mashable.

Your Macros Should Consider “It’s Shot Priority not Rotation”

The counter balance to shot queuing is that there has been a gradual change over the last few years away from set rotations like “1,1,1,1,2” above. Anyone still stuck in the “rotation” mentality is going to abuse macros to the point of worsening their output, not improving it. The new model is “priority” .   An example of “priority” is to say:

For EVERY shot choice I answer these three (example) questions:
• My most important ability is 1. It has a 6 second CD. Can I hit it?
• If I can’t do 1, then I should do 2, which is a 15 second DOT, is it still there?
• If can’t do 1, and 2 is applied, then do 3, an instant attack.

These three abilities as described do not lend themselves to being macro’d in a sequence. You might make a macro to get them all onto a single key, but that would be it.

Macros for Reducing Buttons

Think of making macros as if you were making buttons. You have a button for drinking. You made that button by dragging your water to your command bar. Let’s make a macro for it and drag that to the bar. It will work the same. Open the game menu and select “Macros.” Select a macro and type:

   /use highland spring water

Click save and now drag the macro over to the command bar. Assuming you have highland spring water in your bag this macro will use it.

It’s possible to use modifiers keys to issue different commands too. Recall that Dungeon Finder is used by pressing the I key. Raid Finder is used by pressing the control and the I key. This one key is changed to having two functions by pressing the modifier key.

You can change the drink command to only be used in a particular modifier key combination:

   /use [mod:shift] highland spring water

To drink now requires holding the shift key while the command is selected. From this we learn that a macro can hold more than one command. Let’s eat if we hold the control and drink if we hold the shift key. Change the macro to look like this:

   /use [mod:shift] highland spring water
   /use [mod:ctrl] roasted beef

Note that the macro does nothing if neither modifier key is pressed. How do we make a command for that? The conditional for that is nomod, like this:

   /use [nomod] Conjured Mana Cakes
   /use [mod:shift] highland spring water
   /use [mod:ctrl] roasted beef

Drag this to the command bar and we now have a single button that does three different things.

In this example you have seen that the macro can do basic things conditionally. That’s in fact what goes in the brackets—the conditions under which a command should be executed.

Note that you could accomplish the same thing without macros by dragging individual usable items from the bag to three different command bars and then using key bindings to assign them such as “7”, “control 7” and “shift 7”

Macros for Sequencing Commands

You can think of making certain macros as if you were making a list of things to do in a sequence. Let’s say you are a DPS DK and open a trash fight the same way every time: apply diseases and spread them. This takes three GCD’s. You could start off by designing a single button like the one above. Select a macro and type:

   /cast [nomod] Icy Touch
   /cast [mod: shift] Plague Strike
   /cast [mod: ctrl] Pestilence

…this is ok – you have turned three buttons into one. But it’s a bit fumbly since you have to press the key once, then again while holding shift and then again holding control.

Instead we wish to cast them in a mashable sequence. Select a macro and type:

/castsequence Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence

Note that this particular sequence is only practical for mashing in order to get from the beginning to the end of the list once. You would stop mashing this after pestilence was cast. This is because this is a macro to quickly apply and spread DOTs.

We want this to work only if there are no other keys pressed:

/castsequence [nomod] Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence

If we change targets suddenly, we want to start over:

/castsequence [nomod] reset=tar Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence

If we stop casting after the second spell, because we want to NOT spread the disease, we have the script just wait no more than 4 seconds and have it start over:

/castsequence [nomod] reset=4/tar Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence

If we drag this macro over to the bar we notice that as it goes through the sequence of spells that the button displays a question mark.   This is not very informative so we add a new first line to see the button icons change as the spells are queued up:

#showtooltip
/castsequence [nomod] reset=4/tar Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence

Remember there is the rule about one shot per keypress. To see this button in full glory it has to be pressed three times in a row.

Macros and Your Cast Bar Layout

We’ve discussed above that macros can solve two problems:

• Cast a few things in a row
• Make a single button have more than one cast (depending on modifier keys)

In reality, the left hand hovers near the 1 through 5 keys, this leaves the pinky available to give you Shift-1 through Shift-5…. The thumb lingers near the space bar and alt-key. That gives you Alt-1 through Alt-5.

NOMOD:
1-taunt (dark command)
2-cleave (heart strike)
3-aoe (blood boil)
4-single1, single2 (blood strike, rune strike)
5-dot1,dot2,spread (IT, PS, Pest)
6-mitigate (bone shield)
7-self-heal (Mark of Blood)
…
10-battle-rez (Raise Ally)
11-self-heal (Sacrifice Pet)
12-raid buff (Horn of Winter)

ALT:
1-short interrupt (mind freeze)
2-aoe-taunt (DnD)
3-range-taunt, insta-dot, spread (grip, outbreak, pestilence)
4-defensive CD1 (Icebound Fort)
5-defensive CD2 (Hungering Cold)

SHIFT:
1-long interrupt (strangulate)
2-summon pet
3-Racial ()
4-defensive CD3 (DRW)
5-defensive CD4 (AMS)

MACROs and a typical fight

• I walk up near a pull. Press 6 for bone shield.
• Press 12 (the equals key) for a Horn for a buff and a little runic power.
• Alt-2 to get a targeting reticle to lay DnD. Mouse moves quietly to place it
• About 2 seconds pass to restore blood runes.
• Mash Alt-3 to grip, outbreak and pestilence quickly.
• Right pinky shoots out to 10keypad-1 to apply “skull” to current target
• More mobs come in range and I Mash 2 to heart strike to cleave.
• Mash 4 to get a blood strike out and a rune strike.
• Tab and mash 4 some more. Note that blood shield is running.
• Note whether anything has proc’d such as a Blood Boil, Press 3.
• Time to evaluate shot priorities...
• Are diseases still out? If not mash 5, to apply IT, PS, and possible Pest
• Am I rune locked? Use any of available 2, 3 or 4 to get damage out and build threat.
• Is my health low? Refresh 6 (bone shield), Mash 7 for a 10% self-heal (Mark of Blood)
• Have I lost agro? Alt-2 for DnD or Alt-3 to Grip or press 1 to taunt (dark command)
• Do I need to battle rez someone? Stockpile runic power

This leaves right hand to operate Mouse, hover over movement arrow keys, adjust camera or target. With practice you memorize the key locations and functions and it’s as simple as typing a letter without looking down.

Advanced Macros

There is of course a whole entire programming language underlying the interface to the game's controls. The /RUN and /SCRIPT commands bridge you into the LUA scripting language for more advanced examples like this:

PET SUMMONING ...random pet summoned

/run CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))

GRAB MAILBOX CASH ...spammable on an open mailbox window in order to clean it out of cash.

/script CheckInbox() for m = GetInboxNumItems(), 1, -1 do TakeInboxMoney( m ) end

GRAB MAILBOX ITEMS ...spammable on an open mailbox window in order to clean it out of items.

/script CheckInbox() for m = GetInboxNumItems(), 1, -1 do TakeInboxItem( m ) end

For more info Google "LUA"-winter

What Problems do Add-ons Solve?

2011-12-27T14:49:00.001-08:00

MANAGING ADD-ONS

How do I turn addons on and off without logging out? Addon Control Panel
Is there a way to update all addons at once while the game is not running? Curse Client

BOSSES - Get Ready!

How do I know whether I did Baradin Hold on my alt this week? RaidID
How do I know what bosses to look for loot? AtlasLoot
How can I customize Raid Frames to show buffs/debuff/health and assign spells? X-Perl, Healbot or Grid
What's the most compact indicator for cleansing, curing, decursing? Decursive
Are there any tools to speed up marking mobs? Keybind your 10-key to raid marks or use Quickmark
How do I know when someone in my group has not eaten or flasked before a pull? BigBrother

BOSSES - Pulled!

How do I get an urgent heads up display for the buffs/debuffs on me or my target? Power Auras
How do I get in-fight tips and alerts on fight mechanics? Deadly Boss Mods
Is there a better way to lay out the floating battle text? Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
Are there any helpers to better warn me about threat and aggro? Omen
How do I tell how I am performing in a raid fight? Skada or Recount
Is there any help for watching and timing crowd control (CC)? OmniCC

SOCIAL

How can I manage whispers the same way I manage Instant Messages? Wow Instant Messenger
How do I cut down on trade spam? Badboy
How do I find out more about the pets and mounts I am missing? CollectMe
How do I know quickly whether my own or someone else's gear is ready? TenTonHammer's PlayerScore
How do I color-code chatnames to show class, shorten channel names and use smaller fonts? Chatter

QUESTING & MAPPING & ACHIEVEMENTS

How can I change the big map to show quest drop locations, unexplored and advanced pathing? Carbonite
How do I know in a mouse-over whether I loved-that-critter/snowflaked-that-class/feathered that rogue? Overachiever
How do I know whether there is a Rare in the vicinity that I might want to tame or kill? Silverdragon
Is there a way to see in-game comments from other users' tips on quests? Lightheaded
How do I find the quest givers for uncompleted quests in a zone? QuestCompletist
How do I manage the ridiculous amount of tiny buttons on my minimap frame? Minimap Button Frame
CRAFTING
How can I tell what recipes I am missing and where to get them? Ackis Recipe List
How can I tell at a glance which in a list of my recipes is profitable? Advanced trade Skill Windows
How can I simplify the AH listing process? Auctioneer
How can I shop the AH and know that I am getting the best price? Auctionator
How do I know what the total value of my auctions running? Auction Profit
How can I make the crafting windows a little more roomy? Doublewide for Tradeskills
How do I know what an item will likely disenchant to? Enchantrix (comes with Auctioneer)

MANAGING TOONS and INVENTORY

How do I tell anything about my alts when I am not on them? Altoholic
How do show all my bags as one giant searchable bag? ArkInventory or Bagnon
How can I make partial or full gear collections easily equippable? Outfitter
How can I get more information in Item Tooltips, like last-seen AH pricing? Informant (comes with Auctioneer)
How do I re-arrange and re-size the bars and turn off the dragonframe? Bartender

What more could you want?

2011-12-15T11:01:00.000-08:00

I do love the benefits and grace that life has given me. If I were born at another age perhaps I would stare blankly at the sunset as I wipe mastadon blood from my chin, tossing the bone aside. Perhaps I would be snug in my pod navigating my explorer with merely well-ordered thoughts born of advanced brain cells and evolved discipline. But no....I am born in this age. This age is just right. We are a youthful race caught between the clear vision of our violent history and overwhelming responsibility to our fluid future. We are to be envied by the other races of the universe, even as they are as yet unknown to us. More than ever before we practice who we are to become through technology. In it we make mistakes, learn and tune. We've done this for eons with whatever medium we the world affords us -- rock, ground pigments, quills, pens, whatever will release the pent up pressure of human imagination and creativity. So we play.

Guide: Looking for Raid (LFR) for 4.3 Dragon Soul

2011-12-08T18:29:00.001-08:00

ABOUT LFR

At this writing Dragon Soul is the leading raid content for patch 4.3 released November 29th, 2011 This is an 8-boss raid for 10 and 25 man teams. The raid comes in two wings, four boss encounters per wing. The Dragon Soul itself is a weapon that we’ve been spending time in the new Twilight 5-mans acquiring and protecting. The second wing ends with the demise of Deathwing and the end of The Cataclysm.

The raid is available in three difficulties:
* Looking For Raid (LFR)
* Normal
* Heroic

Today we discuss the merits and benefits of the LFR version of this raid.

WHAT’S THIS GUIDE FOR?

The reason the guide is being posted is that every player in our guild can work towards accessing the Dragon Soul raid through LFR, regardless of what raid group they are in or whether they raid at all.

As of this writing, my observation is:
* Group 1 uses raid time to finish up Firelands content and does LFR during off-hours.
* Group 2 is short a few players at the moment, so they using raid time to use LFR in a guild group of 8 or 9.
* Anyone not in a raid schedule is using LFR when they can, alone or in small groups.

The guild officially raids six hours a week in teams but we’re learning that LFR is a game-changer. Everyone is jumping in as soon as they can.

WHAT DO I GET OUT OF LFR?

GEAR: Four pieces of gear drop per encounter. The gear is on par with Ragnaros drops and is slightly better than Twilight 5-man content. With eight encounters you get to roll on 32 pieces of 384 gear each week. The gear ranges from weapons, trinkets and even includes tier gear. In my case for the first two weeks I've gotten three pieces of gear off twelve kills.

EXPERIENCE: The LFR version of this raid introduces players to a simplified version of end-game fights. The potential is huge to help players prepare for the normal mode 10-mans central to this guild’s raiding efforts. If you know the basics from LFR well, then it remains to enter 10-mans on Normal to step it up. With a good grounding in LFR, you’ll refine understanding on the normal-mode details and maximize your performance to survive the increased damage, move as needed and increase your output. The relaxed atmosphere in guild LFR’s is also producing team-building and is just plain fun.

WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE BOSSES?

See this post here on this blog.

WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LFR?

As general knowledge about LFR version of Dragon Soul circulates they'll go down in probably 90 minutes flat. Nice way to roll for 384 gear and Tier Gear and 25% of your weekly valor per wing. Here are some random notes:

Fights

* There is virtually no trash.
* Optimally either wing can take around 90 minutes but it can go longer if there are wipes
* For any given week you must defeat the first wing before you can enter the second wing
* There is a full clear achievement for each wing, even on LFR

Tools
* You can “Have Group” summon from anywhere inside
* Look for repairs in the lower temple after the first boss is down.
* Vote kicking starts by right clicking a player menu. If four players initiate a vote-kick then a dialog pops for everyone
* If you kill a boss and then leave, you can go back later in a different group to kill earlier or later bosses
* You have a chance to raid lead, give advice, mark trash, lay raid markers, promote or pass lead
* It helps to show the default raid frame with DPS group off, to show only 8 healers and tanks.
* As far as chat goes, be courteous, don’t involve yourself with trolls. You can decide to talk to folks about exchanging buffs or whisper someone potential gear drops.

Queuing
* Finder queues you automatically when you run low on a role
* On average anywhere from 50 or more people will come and go
* Players can mass exodus at any time but the Finder will re-populate you quickly, so be patient
* if you have killed bosses out of order, you’re prioritized to queue in front of a boss you haven’t killed
* A guild or Pug raid group can queue for LFR. All members will be placed in the same 25-man.

Loot
* No LFR raid supports gathering mats for the rogue legendary
* You can kill bosses as many times a week as you like, but you can gear roll on first kill
* The little dice in the queue screen will tell whose loot you will be able to roll on
* Don't pass on gear you can need, ever, unless you're totally positive you'll never equip it
* You can trade gear to others who were with you at the kill and who were eligible for gear
* If you kill a boss a second time and are force to pass, a litttle window will tease you with what you pass on
* You can get justice per boss, but no valor at all until you kill the last boss.
* Work in LFR has no effect on your availability for normal mode with the guild.

He only needed because he's a dick?
Yes, it's happening already. Right now, LFR folks are gearing. But note that anyone can need, even if they already have the piece. This means that there is a chance that you can need on a piece and then sell it to another eligible player in a trade window. This is not happening right now, but I would expect it to start soon. I can’t speak for the guild, but personally I think this would be a reprehensible practice. Closely related is the tactic of grabbing a piece that you can need on for a friend in your group that can use it. This already happens in 5-mans and is a questionable practice. You should plan to deal having to buy drops from other jackasses if it comes up. I hope it doesn't become common.

HELP! I don’t have the GEAR for LFR?!?

Worse case, your tender fresh level 85 toon can be far, far behind and possible has gear as low as 325. You cannot do any heroics until you hit 329. Search for 333 gear by questing Twilight Highlands and running ONLY Grim Batol, Lost City and Halls of Origination. You cannot enter Twilight Heroics until you reach 355. You cannot enter LFR until you hit 372. Here are your options along the way:
* 346 Gear: Justice Points; Blues from the Original 9 Heroics (requires 329+)
* 353 Gear: Troll Heroics, World Drops
* 359 Gear: World Drops; Crafted; Factions; Justice Points; 4.1 Raids (requires ~346+)
* 365 Gear: Firelands-Dailies, Firelands-Crafted;
* 378 Gear: World Drops; Crafted; Factions; Justice Points; 4.2 Firelands Raid (requires ~359+)
* 397 Gear: World Drops; Crafted; Factions; Valor Points; 4.3 Dragon Soul Raid (requires 372+)

You can of course skip around this list all you want if you have the rep, gold or points. Note that Raid Heroic and LFR modes are either slightly higher or lower ilevel.

Go Get It

Guide: Dragon Soul (LFR)

2011-12-08T18:17:00.001-08:00

ABOUT DRAGON SOUL (LFR)

Your Mission: Arrive in the snowy fields of Dragonblight. Fight your way to Wyrmrest Temple, clear horrible bosses in the pits of despair just outside. Then fly to the top of Wyrmrest Temple to port to the Eye of Eternity to battle the dread stormbinder there. After a rest, you have to return to the top of Wyrmrest Temple and defeat a rogue dragon aspect in order to gain access to the faction’s flying battleship over Dragonblight. Once aboard, you’ll have to dispense with the vicious warmaster there while protecting the structure of the ship. Afterwards, access the ship’s bomb bay below deck. There you will leap into open air and land on Deathwing’s spine. The task is to weaken his armor so that the Dragon Soul can be used to strike him from the sky. He falls, but then emerges from the maelstrom grounded and horribly disfigured. Fight alongside the remaining four dragon aspects to defeat each disfiguration in turn. When the last mutation is dead, and his head properly bludgeoned The Cataclysm is at an end; the dragon aspects diminish and comment that this is the dawn of the age of mortals.

Part 1 - Seige at Wyrmrest Overview (LFR)

The First wing: Morchak (elemental); Yor’sahj (oozes); Zon’ozz (beach ball); Hagara (stormbinder)

Morchok (LFR)
This is an outdoor boss elemental with no adds. Generally a tank and spank, except there are two special abilities:

* Spikes appear and there is massive AOE. Hide behind the spikes.

* Webbing lines connect you to a crystal. Close the gap until your debuff turns blue until it says "can survive explosion". Stay there until it explodes.

Yor'sahj (LFR)
At the bottom of Wyrmrest temple the flight from the right-hand bronze drake leads to the pit with ooze trash and a boss. Arguably the hardest boss, there is a 10 minute enrage timer. The core mechanic here is managing the buffs that the oozes give to each other or to the boss. For example, one buff steals mana, another causes fire bolts, a third hastes by 50%. Obviously, having the fire bolts hasted is bad so kill the haste ooze first. The fight is stack/tank/spank until three big oozes spawn at the edge of the room. Everyone breaks off and kills ONE ooze. Any ooze reaching the boss buffs him with their ability. Kill a single big ooze of the three that spawn according to this priority:

* Purple > Green > Yellow .... Other colors spawn too, but one of these three will always be the priority, (in this order). NOTE WELL: "LFR" order is different than "normal" order! After the ooze is killed stack on boss for AOE output, shells and heals

* Mana void appears after the cobalt blue add reaches the boss. When the Void materializes it is skull no matter what.

* For planning purposes, each color always spawns in the same spot - if it's Purple, then purple is always straight north and slightly to the right, etc…In other words if you know the priority ooze, then you can head in that direction even if you can’t see.

Zon'ozz (LFR)
At the bottom of Wyrmrest temple the flight from the left-hand green drake leads to the pit with tentacle trash and a boss. Generally stack melee and then stack ranged far away. Open the fight with melee out of the way so the “Void of the Unmaking” beach ball heads from boss to range first, then melee can move in. Generally you must toss this beach ball of death back and forth to charge it up. Use it to bust boss' focus and increase his damage taken. With each bounce it charges and you let it hit boss when it’s around 10 (melee ducks in order to get it to hit boss). To charge the ball, you run through it, facing the direction you think it should move.

Hagara (LFR)
At the top of Wyrmrest temple after a flight from the middle red drake, there spawns a port that leads to the Eye of Eternity with the arcane / frost trash and a boss. Generally you have three alternating phases:

* Stack / tank / spank - Tanks must manage focused attacks.

* Barrier up in the center, moving rows of ice spikes: On this frost phase, avoid the barrier in the center, then dps on the run in a circle around the edge while icy spikes of death are tracking behind you. Start this phase by being on the edge and looking around the room looking for where the spikes are radiating to and how fast they are coming. You are one-shot if they touch you.

* Arcane chain lightning: - In arcane phase kill the little add at the edge of the room, then you use chain lightning to your advantage to overload the four poles. Do this by forming a moving chorus line to spread it from post to post. Every LFR I have seen does this by moving clockwise.

We’ve 6-manned this for over 30% so in general there is a lot of easy-to-avoid damage.

Part 2 - Fall of Deathwing Overview (LFR)

The Second Wing: Ultraxion (dragon aspect); Blackhorn (warmaster); Spine of Deathwing; Madness of Deathwing

Ultraxion (LFR)
Ultraxion is a tank and spank with one special attack. This attack is a long uninterruptable cast called Hour of Twilight. To manage this every player has in the lower center of the screen a defensive button for phasing out, to avoid damage. This is not in the environment – it’s an overlay. On LFR tanks are exempt since they must remain unphased to prevent the boss from going kablooey all over the aspects who are channeling the protective barrier. Generally, half way through the cast, use the button to phase out.

Warmaster Blackhorn (LFR)
The players are aboard the faction’s flying warship. For the first phase, players must defend the boat, ward off attackers and shoot down harpooned drakes. Melee can take the boarders, ranged can break off for drakes, but all must stop and stack up on the spot on the deck that indicates a high damage attack to the deck of the ship itself. All stack to take and absorb this attack, which starts as a broad purple swirl. After three waves of attackers, the Warmaster himself is on deck and the swirls continue to appear that still requires players to stack to absorb.

Deathwing’s Spine (LFR)

OVERVIEW: The players are tossed out of the ship’s bomb bay and land on the back of Deathwing. It’s common for this fight to start before people are ready, so be prepared to be ported to the fight if someone starts it right after the warmaster dies. The PURPOSE of the fight is to remove three of Deathwing’s back plates. Removing the plates ends the fight and shows a cut scene of Thrall blasting Deathwing out of the sky. Loot time.

EXECUTION: Let’s walk through this backwards to understand *why* we're doing this:

* To remove the plates there are tendons to cut that hold the plates in place.
* The tendons cannot be seen until the plate is loosened with an explosion.
* For this, there are big elementals that are supposed to appear one at a time and you want to kill these and have them explode right next to the plate.
* To get them to explode you need to kite them through dead oozes in order to charge them up.
* The oozes and an elemental appear if you kill one of the tentacles.

The biggest challenge to this fight in LFR is getting the pugs to not kill more than one tentacle. Therefore the fight goes like this:

* kill ONE tentacle
* pick up the elemental
* drop it to about ~20%
* drag it through dead oozes until it reaches “9” (the power bar is at 90).
* Take the elemental to a plate and take its health down to 0%.
* This explosion causes the plate to pop up exposing the tendon.

You have a limited amount of time to kill the tendon or else the plate collapses again and you have to repeat the process. If a tendon is exposed a second time it is still at whatever lower health you had it at before. Repeat three times and the fight is over.

The Madness of Deathwing (LFR)

Deathwing’s collapse from the sky lands him in the Maelstrom directly and there he sits, mutated and disoriented. Before him, Thrall awaits players and above us the four remaining aspects provide players buffs for the fight to come. The task is to dispense with four platforms where Deathwing’s body is still hanging onto the edge of the Maelstrom, then at 20% attack his head to kill him.

Each of these four platform is under the protection of a Dragon Aspect. As each platform is cleared, the dragon aspect is focused by Deathwing and no longer provides a buff until Deathwing reaches 20% when the buff resumes. Based on the value of the buffs, there is an order which platforms are to be cleared. Here are the choices, left to right:

* RED - Alexstrasza increases maximum health by 20%.
* YELLOW - Nozdormu increases casting and attack speeds by 20%.
* GREEN - Ysera increases healing done by 20%, and gives each player the Dream ability.
* BLUE - Kalecgos increases damage done by 20%.

If you understand the platforms orientation you'll realize that you are standing on the GREEN platform when you port in.

There may be considerable discussion in pugs and LFR as to what the best order is, but for a low DPS group, a pug, it can be describe simply as follows:

* Spatial order: center, left, far left, right
* Numbered left to right order: 3,2,1,4
* Dragon name order: Ysera, Nozdormu, Alexstrasza then Kalecgos
* Color order: Green > Yellow > Red > Blue

All of these methods describe the same order. What can confuse this is referring to the platforms by colors and then placing a conflicting raid markers of another color. /facepalm

Each of the four platforms are identical in their presentation. As each platform is cleared there are smaller adds to attack and that is done in a priority order as well:

* Start on limb
* Switch to Corruption once it spawns
* When Elementium Bolt is cast, all DPS must immediately switch to it regardless of whether Corruption is dead (it takes a few seconds for the bolt to arrive near the platform).
* Once the Corruption is dead, DPS should attack the limb
* Stop limb only to single-target the Blistering Tentacles (if you have no red aspect)
* AoE the Regenerative Blood

NOTE that blistering tentacles can be ignored so long as the red aspect Alexstraza is active and one-shotting them herself. Again you can summarize priority as bolt > corruption > blistering > bloods > limb.

When the four platforms are cleared then Deathwing is at 20% and you must return to the starting platform to deal with Deathwing’s head as he has weakened and slumped forward. All the aspects are clear to assist you and provide buffs, including your handy Dream button that helps resist especially hard attacks. There are two add types spawn here: Fragments which can be AOE’d and Terrors which must be tank traded. At 15%, 10% and 5% Deathwing’s AOE output becomes stronger each time, so for the last 5% be prepared to ignore adds, heal and burn.

Thus ends The Cataclysm

LFR Dragon Soul Updates 12/6/2011

2011-12-07T12:19:00.001-08:00

NEW WING AVAILABLE!!

Players yesterday noted that the next wing of DS is now available. First wing must be down at least once to get into the second wing. All the "good" pug players were in the second wing last night and all the first wingers were definitely lower DPS and skill than last week. Be patient. Bad groups dont stay bad for long as a mass exodus of pissed off players just means new ones will come in and will be likely better. P > G > Y !

YOU SHOULD HAVE EPIC EPICS!!
If you have 372 iLevel average, you can be in both wings of DS LFR every week for 8 bosses (32 loot roles on 384 gear including tier, non-tier, trinkets, etc. ) AND 500 valor points, no problem. Also No reason all raiders should not be at least 372 by now, after scouring the new 5-mans. Go get it.

DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO GO WITH??
If you need five mans, let me know I will be happy to chain tank them for you. If you need LFR DS, I will go in vent with you and coach on fights and mock the raid rage nerds. I'm told a party of five can queue for LFR together.

OMG I NEED A GRAPHICS CARD!!
Second wing fights are spectacular but hardware intense.... I will be posting a guide late late tonight.

BLUE POST UPDATE for 12/6 HOTFIXES AND NERFS relevant to LFR:

* Players who have killed the final boss in one of the wings of Dragon soul via Raid Finder will be more likely to enter fresh instances on subsequent Raid Finder instances that week. This should make it easier to kill earlier bosses that they might have missed.

* http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/06/patch-4-3-hotfixes-for-dec-6th-2011/ indicates that there have been some tweaks to make the encounters a little easier, including the oozes being a little easier to kill, smaller boss aggro radius etc.

BLUE POST UPDATE for 12/2 hotfixes relevant to LFR:

* Corrected the looting loopholes that burned Paragon. Bahaha it's a database you fools, everything will eventually be noticed by Blue. Cheat not.

Darkmoon Faire 145 Tickets a Week

2011-12-06T16:12:00.001-08:00

Darkmoon Faire which has sucked beyond all belief for over ten thousand years has been redesigned. Now an island that spawns once a month for a week (Sat Midnight) with dailies and also weekly quests.

YES IT'S 145 TICKETS A MONTH
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/12/06/darkmoon-faire-ticket-clarifications/ reposts a "blue post" which definitively explains how many tickets you can get for each week the faire is up, which is 145. This is enough for most of a mount or a few pets. Note that this requires your full participation in dailies for 7 days. Also you'll need to do dungeons, heroics and battlegrounds to hit that max.

250 EARS?!
Note that the Strongwoman quest for 250 grisly trophies is doable in about 5 or 6 new heroics if you hit a variety that includes shadow trash and mamoroth trash and other generous stretches. Since you can't drag the trophies to your toolbar to watch the count, you can create a one line macro " #showtooltip grisly trophy " which can be dragged to your toolbar. Mousing over this should also provide a quick view of how many you have on Alts if you have the addon for that. You cannot accumulate more than 250.

SEA PONY PET
Note that there are other things to do such as farm a Seahorse-in-a-water-bubble pet (anywhere from a few casts to up to 100 to 250 casts yields this) I've caught this on two toons now. 111 casts and 186 casts. The detail is exquisite and has a pleasant click sound.

JUBLING FROG PET
Also note the obscure quest to get the pet "Jubling" frog which involves beer from the Blackrock Depths 5-man. The beer can also be scalped from the AH. This last quest has been around for years, but is largely unknown. The mechanics for this are odd since the quest giver does NOT give the quest until you have lured her frog from the forest nearby using the requisite beer. The quest is then to give her a beer, and the reward is an egg which takes a week to hatch into the Jubling. The ungrateful wretch wants you to bring her frog back AND give her beer. I know how many dates I have been on like that.

IMBUED CRYSTALS and other dungeon and battleground drops.
Be advised, do NOT spend thousands of gold on the blue dungeon drops from the AH.....These five items such as the Imbued Crystal are verrrry easy to get and do NOT require level appropriate content. Rush into Stockades and get one for free in less than 60 seconds. These can be farmed but you can only enter an instance 5 times an hour and the drop rate is definitely not 100% .... I did the Org dungeon 5 times in about ten minutes and the crystal only dropped the first time. They drop in heroics, but do not pop with loot roll windows - YOU MUST LOOT THE BOSS to get them, or there they sit.... /sadface.

PROFESSIONS REQUIRED TOO
You'll have to have filled in all 6 professions up to a low level at least (two mains, four minors). For example you have to have archeaology up to 75 before you see the quest giver icon over the professor. Note that fishing and archaeology leveling has been greatly accelerated. Fishing for example around 400 skill level used to require 12 catches to level a skill point. It's down around 4 now. Archaeology sites now produce up to 15 fragments up for the 6 or 8 that was typical. The rewards for these quests that can be done one per faire is 5 skill points, cash, tickets, tokens. Generous.

THE GUIDE BOOK??
There are bread crumb quests in the major cities to go to the island. The reward is the guide book. Having the guide in your bag allwos you to get the darklmoon faire drops from dungeons. If you have already done the breadcrumb quest then the only way to get the guide is to ask for it from the information booth. Without this book you will miss at least 90 tickets a week!

winter

Goodbye IOP

2011-11-16T14:30:00.001-08:00

This is an open letter to leaderhsip at the Alliance Guild "Institution of Pain" of the Azuremyst Realm. I spoke to Lia in game this morning and let her know that I was going to go ahead and complete my process for transferring my alliance toons away from the Azuremyst server to the Proudmoore server. I've invested a lot of time and gold into Institution of Pain (IOP) and I have been rewarded richly with trust, friendship and great gameplay. I have nothing to say but good things about IOP and I will miss the people.

The reason I have been considering a server transfer over the last two years is a consistent problem since Icecrown opened up. The east coast server that hosts the Azuremyst realm has a tiny but perceptable lag that I cannot beat. I spent months fiddling with my hunter in progression raiding with Liquidation Division (LD). I had perfect shot selection, did everything right, hit just as hard as other comparable top end hutners of similar specs on the same server. I surmised this using World of Logs comparisons.

However I could not get the shot *density* I wanted. On a 210-second standing fight like Rotface I would squeeze off perhaps 20 of a given ability that had a 6-second CD....and the best hunters would consistently manage 21 or even 22 shots. This was a trend across all shots: slighly more shots in the same amount of time. I was at a complete loss for why.

I used shot queuing with Quartz. I tried having virtually no addons loaded. I tried using a landline connection instead of wirless and I even tried a packet forwarding service that optimized my server communication with larger data frames. The fac that none of this did anything was a sign that the server was just too far away from where I was at the end of the Comcast cable line at the end of 131st street here in Washington.

Other aspects of gameplay within Azuremyst in general have bothered me over the last two years as my schedule became busier and LD began (arguably) to decline from "3rd" to only "top 10", with the loss of key raiders and the shifting of the raid content to 10/25 shared lockouts. The guild literally shrank as the need for 25 raiders of high caliber diminished. Progression shifted to a few key players making their kills in 10 mans first and then bringing knowledge back with alts in 25s where there was a lot whining in general about how 25s sucked and were a waste of time. They were in fact right. All would have been fine if I had been good enough to make it into the primary ten man group, but the fact of the matter is that (server connectivity aside) I'm just not as fast a raider as the college kids half my age.

That's fine. The guild and the game changed and I started looking around after we got our first Nef kill in LD last winter. It was about then that things blew up at work and raiding became irrelevant. I had to save my job. It was clear I could never raid regularly again living on the west coast being in a mostly east coast guild.

I raised alts on the Alliance side of Az and this appealed because I could support them from the horde toons I had, transfer gold, BOAs, etc. I found that the bigger Alliance population raided more and used the AH more. I was happy, bouncing guilds every other month looking for a place to lead raids and make a difference. I finally found that in IOP. I never solved for the ping isssue though and continued to research other top end, west coast-hosted, west-coasted timed servers. I selected Proudmoore because it has the highest "Unique Guild Kills" count for Rag out of all eligible servers: 110 kills. Azuremyst only had 32.

I put three toons on the new server two months ago, selecting

1) my defunct hunter from LD that had not raided in LD as a main since Naxx80
2) an over-powered alliance bank toon that I had leveled out of boredom and
3) a lowbie paladin that might tank someday.

I collapsed these three toons to the Proudmoore Alliance side. I found a compatible raiding guild and now have a raid spot 6 hours a week (using the bank toon as my main, which I find funny as hell).

The schedule is perfect, late in the evening. The server is *incredible*. The lag issue looks to be solved in raids, the number of high end guilds pugging Firelands for alts is off the charts. There are so many LFR requests in Trade there is hardly any room for trolling. I obtained over 50 achievements in two days towards Wrath content pugging out. I'm getting achievements here that I don't have on any other toon--even ones that have over 9000.

So much for the history lesson. I wanted you to know I am happy where I am going and that I am not unhappy with anyone in IOP. There is a core leadership in IOP that I respect. I got to know Lia, Strin and Icky best, and I was constantly looking for feedback from senior leadership on issues and guild direction. I was sorry to have stepped in it with Brew, but that seemed to work out quickly.

I had always been concerned with the members that followed my into IOP from Rise of the Phoenix. I felt like the ones I knew at least should be vouched for and I let everyone know that if there were any problems to keep me in the loop to see if I could help. My closest friends are Fujinarrows and Anpetu and the Grumps. I knew others like vshammy, zee, big a and so on. I was very disappointed that zee crapped the bed on Fuji Sr. over that stupid mount and then left the guild. If I had been there and could have done it, I would have gkicked Zee on the spot, end of story, no drama.

One subtlety with "Fujinarrows" that was disconcerting was that Fuji (the real-life person I now call Fuji Sr) also has an older son (who I now call Fuji Jr.) who spends vast amounts of time running the hunter for his dad. Fuji Jr. seems earnest but I don't know him that well. When I vouched for "Fujinarrows" I was vouching for Fuji Sr., not necessarily Fuji Jr. Although I never had a bad experience with Fuji Jr. I found him energetic and helpful if a little impatient.

It was Fuji Jr who led us last week to a guild first Shannox kill in IOP and he was pretty excellent. We made a good transition in analysing what needed to be fixed on our 1% wipes and Anpetu was happy to step out so that we could triple her DPS with a faster, more experienced player. I have major respect for a player who knows that they need to step aside and can be gracious about it. Despite her low DPS that was some of her best work in staying up late and struggling to learn new fight mechanics. She is really sweet and really fun.

In my absence I think Fuji Sr became really frustrated in the last few weeks with the lack of oomph in IOP. Kon, Strin and I were all largely absent (for good reasons) and it was really hard to get much done. I think when Strin stopped arranging raids then I did too--which is my fault not his. I think around this time I sensed that Fuji Sr started losing his ability for people skills (i can give him a hard time about this I think).

Whatever happened a few days ago between Icky and Fuji Jr .....and then between Icky and Fuji Sr is a mystery to me. It led to a sequence of events that I know: Fuji Sr took Fujinarrows out of guild, Icky demoted me and demoted Anpetu, and then Kon removed Anpetu from the guild. I discussed this with Lia some and she isn't sure what happened either.

I respect Icky tremendously for his skill as a player, interest as a leader in the guild and his even tempered handling of conflict demonstrated often and well. If I had to guess I would trust Icky's judgement and say that whatever problem that he had with Fuji Jr and then with Fuji Sr was probably justified.

Fuji Sr has been itching for a reason to make a change and I suspect did not put his best foot forward with Icky. This is complete speculation. If I am wrong then I owe Fuji an apology. It's hard to watch two people I like not get along.

I was disappointed that icky demoted my DK without talking to me or the three other class leaders in the guild who had me on RealID and could have gotten a ahold of me. If Icky did it becuase he held me accountable for ROTP members like Fuji Sr then I accept that. I did vouch for Fuji Sr.

If Icky did it because I had moved my mage off-server last month without really talking about it with anyone and then didn't log in much anymore, then I would agree he can be frustrated with that as well. It's never easy to see invested resources transition out, as Lia's rightful irritation with Brew demostrates all too well. It's my fault for not discussing more with the class leaders sooner about what was on my mind and my larger mission to find a happy place in the game.

In any event, why icky did what he did is a mystery to me, but I want folks to know that I support him. Removing Anpetu from the guild followed naturally from having Fuji Sr quit the guild. I support that as well. It's uncomfortable but it's the right thing to do.

This is all to say that I moved all my Alliance toons off Azuremyst server this morning for my own reasons not because I was unhappy with IOP. I do not think that IOP could change anything and have me stay. I support Kon and all the leadership efforts of Lia and the new class leaders that were promoted last month along side her. I'm sorry for any drama that the folks I vouched for might have spurred.

As for the remainder of the ROTP folks I knew the two Grumps the best and their son V. I don't have them on RealID although I do have Grumpette on Facebook. I'll probably write Grumpette after this and let her know why I left server. I would encourage her to continue to enjoy IOP. It's active enough for her playstyle and she should bring lots of fun to the table in whatever she does. I hope she has a good home with you guys.

I would not ask for anything in IOP to change and I don't feel the need for explanations. I just want you to know that I appreciate everything. Like everything I do, I hope I made a difference. Take care and keep in touch if you like on Gmail (ctgarry) or use it to ask for a realID connection in game.

Cheers
winter

But I Want a Segmented Cornea Too!

2011-11-02T17:32:00.001-07:00

So I was talking to a partner today…If Wegrzynowski is pronounced Werzenowski then why not spell it that way? Apparently there is no one in the world who has ever said “Werzenowski” on a webpage. this partner could be the first. Once you have it rolling off, it is fun to say. Like Boo in Monsters, Inc when she keeps saying Mikewizowski like it’s all one word. There is a concept. Polish monsters. Why only one eye? Is there a genetic advantage to having an eye that big? What allows him to forego binocular vision? Is there something about having an eye that big that allows depth perception anyway? Perhaps a segmented cornea that supports multiple optic nerves.

Why you dont Trick or Treat at work....

2011-10-28T16:47:00.001-07:00

Halloween’s here. Surprise! Trips to the seventh circle of hell for everyone! Germ Units are free to touch everything! At work?!

Best moment: Gabe and his shorter-than-the-filing cabinet (and therefore invisible) munchkin come by. The boy bounced around the corner into my cube, nose-to-nose with me, surprised to the point of his bursting into hysterics. His father soothes him by standing in my cube (while I am working on a requirements document) for two minutes oohhing and ahhing over sugar treats as his son bellows in his face at 97 decibels. Somehow this is damaging my calm.

Soon, all looks to be good …. but when the boy spots me eye-balling him, his fragile grip on security is broken and the wailing begins again. “Happy Halloween!” I say, as he wanders off, with his head spinning 360 degrees and mumbling about demons. I hear him repeat the entire ordeal in the next aisle, near Crystal’s cube. Someone needs a nap. I wonder vaguely if it’s legal yet to dart your children.

Is it 5 yet?

Mix it up (was re: why do I hate tanking heroics?)

2011-02-18T15:11:00.000-08:00

Without a lot of shift in core design values, there could be some effort on Blizzard's part to get more players into dungeons and out of queues:

* Allow X number of extra players into dungeons. Introduce new dungeons (or re-balance existing ones) that use up more DPS from the queues every time a tank and healer are selected, since 6 are required not 5. In other words, even allowing one extra player would use up DPS 33% faster than current schema. This of course stresses healers and tanks, which could countered by allowing the tank and healer to enjoy a zone buff that applies to their role only.

* Introduce new dungeons with encounters that are agnostic to players traditional class roles by leveraging in-dungeon "vehicles" or other mechanics. You can bend the model without breaking it and use more DPS from the queue if all the encounters in a dungeon were designed this way. I can think of a few fights that are already designed like this to toss out traditional roles, such as:
- the vehicles against Flame Leviathan (Ulduar)
- classed drakes on last boss in (Oculus)
- off-tank for adds on Foe Reaper 5000 (Deadmines)
- tankless boss "Cookie" (Deadmines)
- tankless boss council in (Magister's Terrace)
- Champions fight in TOC10
If an entire dungeon were designed like this, then DPS don't have to wait--they just have to learn how to heal and tank with their vehicles or other special mechanics.

* another option is to leverage the design philosophy around some of the solo zone quests that involved NPCs filling the non-dps roles on overpowered targets that would have otherwise overwhelmed the questor.

* allow NPC's to be selected for the missing roles.

Ulduar drakes...So What?

2011-01-28T16:16:00.001-08:00

I cannot tell you how much last night's work in Ulduar satisfied me. We did a staggering 30+ achievements counting first time clears. The place was long, the achievements obnoxious, and we wiped more than we should have, because (let's be honest) the achievements were underestimated.

It's a testimony to the fact that being over-geared "will still not fix stupid". Ulduar is easy mode. Doing its achievements is not. From our first wipe on Orbituary, it was a sign--it's fight mechanics that make this game great. So we work at identifying problems and solving them so next attempts are better. In fact all of us worked through disagreements, complicated directions, stern feedback and adapted on the fly to make every next attempt a better one.

My message to my fellow raiders last night and to any raider really is: Bring analysis, adaptability, willing contribution, along with matching class performance and you'll be an asset to any raid this guild throws. Combine this with your leadership skills and you can form any of your own raids and deliver. For every one of us who listened and contributed in vent, made adjustments, took a deep breath, paid the repair bill and tried again--your drakes and titles are well earned.

Why come back to WoW?

2011-01-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

If you are thinking of returning to World of Warcraft, a lot has changed. This might be just the thing for you.

Burning Crusade and Wrath content and the two continents they introduced are vacant of players -- the zones are only for stopover points as you go from 58-67 and 68-80, respectively. With Cataclysm, six new zones for 80-85 were introduced and placed within the old world (either opening inaccessible areas or adding peninsulas), where you can fly now. To top it off, the 1400 or so quests that existed for all 1-60 players have been literally replaced, on top of most of the zone topography being changed, flight paths and graveyards added. This is literally a new game and the design philosophy in all new quests eliminates the game’s “grindy” feel and ridiculous running around. Questing is fun, humorous, challenging and flows well.

We’re enjoying seven new 5-man dungeons that can be done from 81-85 – all have heroic versions at 85 and also two more low instances Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep have heroic mode at 85. All the new dungeons have been tuned to require crowd control and careful marking – thus returning to classic feel of things being generally just really hard—very fun (since Wrath was just a faceroll, for the most part and everyone and their uncle took all the high end content at a dead run). I played for three or four hours last night and only killed 6 heroic bosses. The boss fights are hard, but oddly not gear-dependent, instead requiring you to puzzle out how to not get killed by a strike that hits you for three times your health, or how to manage all the interrupts that are required. It’s not wise to do heroics now without being in a voicechat session.

Achievements have been expanded to include guild achievements and subsequent guild perks to go with. New fights, quests, pets, mounts, professions, races, spells and abilities, talent trees, class combinations, etc… I will be busy for quite some time. 

Druid Love

2011-01-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

Apart from the Cat 101 article a few months back, Shifting Perspectives has not covered feral in near the depths that it has covered Balance or Resto lately, and frankly I have learned to look elsewhere for feral articles.

Random questions I have:
* There are some damage output nerfs for us bears coming in Path 4.06 that should probably be discussed.
* What's the best weapon enchant for bear and cat that does or doesn't require a maelstrom crystal for a material?
* The change in the metas for 3 reds isn't that great when stacking stamina, what's the consensus around gemming in the face of this?
* For progression raiding is it better to stack for stamina or mitigation or threat gen right now?
* What's the best way to research Throne of the Four Winds loot tables, since none of the BIS lists include T4W loot because the stats aren't determinable in tools such as Wowhead?
* When is it preferable to take a str/dodge piece over an agi/mastery piece?
* How do I weight mastery against other stats in min-maxing mitigation?
* Why do the raid epics only barely beat reputation epics, if at all?

Resources found include the daily druid and the fluid druid. What else?

Acheivements While You Wait

2010-11-13T16:04:00.000-08:00

INTRODUCTION
Have you filled in all the achievements that you can on your cataclysm main? Do you care? For those of us who do not go outside, we do. We love achievements and there are a few in the guild who are dedicated/bored/crazy enough to keep getting more, when more doesn't seem possible.

What's here What I include here is a select list - not every acheivement. When you level, quest, explore every zone, do every dungeon, get a haircut, do all the holidays, go to raid and even PVP a little, then you can probably get to 3000 or 4000 points easily enough by level-capping, without paying attention. This post is more about going the extra mile without going Insane.

Add-ons First and foremost, you absolutely must get the add-on Addon Control Panel. This add-on adds a menu entry to the escape menu that allows you to group all other add-ons into profiles, selectively check and uncheck what you like, hit "reload" and presto, you've just saved 5 minutes of re-logging and endless fiddling. I have 4 or 5 standard profiles myself, that I load on any character several times a day:
- "crafting/AH" - stuff like AckisRecipe, Auctioneer, Double-wide, etc
- "raid" - essentials only: Recount, OMEN, DBM, Healbot, Bartender, etc
- "quest" - Carbonite, SilverDragon, Everyquest, Lightheaded, Overachiever, etc
- "PVP" - again, essentials only
Certain add-ons with zillions of little dependency components (think DBM) are rolled up into a single checkmark. Selections you make for a character stick and do not change until you either change it in the old-fashioned way or here in ACP.

What about cataclysm? Do these achievements now make a difference there? - Very few achievements ever get retired. When they do, they move to Feats of Strength and their points are stripped. Examples are: Weapon Skills and, soon, 2500Emblematic. No doubt, Cataclysm is a game-changer. The culture of achievements is just something that, since its introduction in October, 2008, has won the hearts of a majority of players. Cataclysm will elevate this to a whole new level. The game introduces only five new levels but includes a massive amount of new content (over 4000 new quests) (over 400 new player achievements) (over 200 guild achievements). Guild-achievements will help players focus on using their personal skill-set to contribute to guild rewards. Here is an exhaustive article on Project CWAL that illustrates how our little achievement monkeys in the guild will get to scratch their itch. Bottom line, what has been so far an individual's culture, will have added to it a community culture under the guild achievements. For example, there is a guild achievement for having one of every crafting profession maxed. If you know that you were one of the first to contribute to that, then it's that much more rewarding.

Feats of Strength - I guess lots of them are still possible...Look for Realm Firsts next month to include profession-maxed, for example. Farm for the Red Qiraji battle tank. Obtain BOA pets or mounts from Blizzard or from conference/promotional codes. Log in on WoW anniversaries, etc. Participate in phased or timed world events that will never repeat. However, none of them provide points and there are some seriously difficult ones mixed in with the inane. Getting a BOA for logging in on Anniversary week gets you the same recognition as having done the tremendous and grueling quest-line and raids necessary for the title Hand of Adal (effectively one of the very rare masters of Tier-5 content). These two things simply don't carry the same weight. Because of this I think the list is not really part of the equation in most achiever's minds, either emotionally or otherwise.

Let's get started:

GENERAL
Most general achievements are simple enough and come in the course of regular gameplay. Let's talk about some of the more involved ones:

WELL READ / KEYMASTER / "SQUIRRELS" / "PESTS" - oddly enough these are nicely dovetailed, since they all involve running around a lot. Make a map or at least an ordered zone list, work out what books, keys and critters are where. While you're at it, consider rare pools that you might need to stop by for fishing achievements. There are not many add-ons that can help here, except Overachiever which validates in a mouse-over tool-tip whether or not you have already "/love" or killed a critter or read a book or fished a pool. These simply takes some research and time. Wowhead comments, WowWiki lists, a few add-ons - all very helpful.

GREEDY / NEEDY - as painful as it might be, continue to run heroics and greed (not disenchant) everything. Most runs will tolerate you requesting to need ONE drop, during the run, if you are quick with the "mind if I take that?" and waiting 15 seconds to see people's responses. If you do this three of four times a day, you'll get the achievement soon enough.

25 TABARDS - consider the list of the 25 most common tabards, not all of which require a reputation: the guild tabard; the Scarlet Monastery tabard loot; an Aldor/Scryer tabard; five BC dungeon faction tabards; six BC farmed factions (e.g. Sporeggar); the L70 Illidari qroup quest in Shadowmoon Valley; four Wrath dungeon rep tabards; The Summer Festival Event tabard; four simple PVP tabards; and the Explorer Tabard. FURTHER OPTIONS INCLUDE: the rare Zul-Gurub tabard drop; the Defilers tabard (Arathi Basin); the 300 Arena matches won tabard; and at least a half-dozen trading card game tabards.

75 PETS - If you're sitting around 50 or 60 pets, this is a matter of getting (at least temporarily) a pet add-on such as Collectme that points out which pets you do not have and where to get them. You could lurk in the auction house, farm for argent tournament tokens or buy pets from Blizzard or even from eBay. There are a few fun ones to get from quests - look up Miniwing; Worg Pup; Smolderweb; Westfall; OOX (all quest rewards); or perhaps Sprite Darter (a 15 to 45 minute farm in Feralas) At the end of the day there are more than 140 pets in the game today and if you have a lot but don't have 75 of them (76 with the achievement's reward) then you don't have very many at all!

QUESTING
It's interesting to consider play styles and realize that the questing category at the moment with its 47 achievements is probably going to be the only category that you will ever achieve 100% in. That would be a fun milestone to hit before Cataclysm. Woot. It (almost) goes without saying turn off all the silly polling, quest-helping, mapping, memory hogs when you are raiding. Do it best with Addon Control Panel, an add-on discussed earlier in this article. Heaven help you if you have a lot of these left--my heart goes out to you.

Let's take a deeper dive into add-ons first:

LIGHTHEADED - Quite simply, the single most awesome add-on ever. It adds a window off to the side and imports Wowhead user comments about your selected quest and how to do it. Incredibly, if you click on a comment's stated coordinate, add-ons like Tomtom or Carbonite will place a mark on the world map and set an arrow in that direction. Wowhead comments do occasionally mention whether a quest counts towards Loremaster for a particular continent. Important time saver. Massive convenience.

EVERYQUEST reconciles with the Blizzard APIs any quests you have not completed and then highlights on the world map where quest givers are standing that you will need to visit. It also brings up a zone by zone list of every quest you have never done (type /everyquest). Clicking on the list opens Lighthearted and the quest pane and gives an idea from that standpoint where to get started. NOTE that EQ does *not* thread things in a way to guarantee it's highlighting a quest giver that is ready to give you a quest. More often than not, you haven't done a pre-requisite -- but at least you know the quest giver is there. Woot.

CARBONITE (for the purpose of mapping) or TOMTOM - This takes a highlighter to your world map and shows you clearly where all the areas are that give what you need for a quest, provides arrows, waypoints, auto turn-in and quest add-on integration and other stuff. Note that Carbonite may not highlight the world map when EQ is installed UNTIL you zone or reload (a battle over layering). TOMTOM is actually the recommended mapping/coordinate system to pair with EQ. Your mileage may vary. Hold the ALT key when pressing your map button to bypass mapping add-ons and double-check the in-game quest helper comments and mapping.

Quest Achievement Targets:

1000/2000/3000 QUEST COMPLETE (Title: Seeker) - This is straight-forward enough and should be part of you getting Loremaster. If you find that Loremaster was not enough, then don't forget that holiday drudgery like candy buckets and moonstones DO count towards your Seeker title! As I mentioned, use add-ons like Everyquest in combination with Tom-tom for quick access to all your uncompleted quests. NOTE WELL that Loremaster alone still leaves hundreds and hundreds of quests uncompleted that you can still do to push forward. Consider more involved efforts like raid and dungeon quests. Have you opened the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj or done all that leads to the title, "The Hand of A'dal"? While the achievements for these may be closed, the quests are all still there.

BLOOD AND ANGUISH; GURU OF DRAKURU; NESINGWARY; BOMBS AWAY Threaded quest-based achievements such as these and many others are simple to each complete in an afternoon or less. They are often engaging and filled with great lore and refreshing, off-beat challenges

Bloodsail Admiral (BSA) Special mention for BSA is warranted. While this is a feat of strength and therefore an achievement without "points" (unclean thing, eww), you must be aware that getting Bloodsail Admiral *before* you get Loremaster will make your life harder pursuing LM. You can shorten the time to getting both LM and BSA, by doing LM first and considering the goblins of Tanaris, which when killed or helped do not affect Bloodsail rep, but DO affect the four Goblin reputations.

EXPLORATION
I have to admit, the add-on Carbonite is large and takes up memory and can slow performance. Worse, it is partially incompatible with Everyquest. However, using just Carbonite does provide an unsurpassed facility for showing the fog of war correctly so that you know exactly where to go to get all the regions explored for a zone. Turn it on when you need it. There is little else involved in 66 out of 70 exploration achievements other than this: watch a movie and wander around with the Carbonite map up. Smart achievers however will not miss the opportunity to plan better and do at the same time other zone based tasks like "Squirrels," "Keymaster," "Fishing Nodes" and obscure, hard-to-get-to old world dungeons.

NORTHERN EXPOSURE; MEDIUM RARE - To make a complete list of each continent for this requires quite a bit of research and lurking as you check and follow known pathing. Finding at least one of the silver-crested elites in each of Northrend and Outlands (finding and killing the first one is an achievement) is easy enough if you quest or explore with an add-on such as Silver Dragon. The rare will never be found if you don't spend time in the zones! It's almost impossible to do Loremaster without running into at least one of these.

PVP
A special note about PVP and those of you without much done or who "don't like PVP": A lot can be accomplished part-time and without any sort of serious PVP gear at all. Big venues like Alterac Valley are 40-man and can afford a lot of distance and anonymity for the beginner or the undergeared or the uninterested--especially if you are a ranged DPS or a healer. Simply stand in back and do your job. Even do it in full raid gear. And if you are killed, it's a time-suck, yes--but not a gold-suck--since damage from other players is not repair cost. Your attitude towards PVP has lots of possibilities from "zone defense" (AB, EotS) to "king of the hill" (WSG) to "task-based" (WG, AV) and even just running interesting vehicles (WG, IoC, SotA)

FREEDOM OF THE HORDE; CALL IN THE CALVARY - At the very least you MUST spend time in Wintergrasp or Alterac Valley... or perhaps time in winning matches of Warsong Gulch. However you do it, gather honor points and spend them on two basics: a PVP trinket and a PVP mount. These are two of the simplest PVP achievements that almost anyone should be able to muster.

DAMAGE CONTROL - Best done in protracted, lengthy battles such as AV, this simply entails doing what you do best--your job! 300,000 heals or damage can go by quickly now that we are level 80. Much easier these past two years, than at level 70.

FOR THE HORDE.... plus the easier WRATH OF THE HORDE - Note that FTH rolls up five achievements! Best done on the weekend - hopefully with the guild and requires some patience and presence of mind and Ventrilo. FTH can be done in parts over several weeks and also note that killing five players in each of four enemy cities is all that is required for WOTH. NOTE WELL: several Cataclysm guild achievements related to this type of activity will have you realize that World PVP like City Raids will be more common in the months to come.

GRIZZLED VETERAN - Spend an afternoon in Grizzly Hills and do each of the nine quests just once and your achievement is in the bag. They are fun and it's a bit thrilling to run around a questing zone force-PVP-flagged because you are holding the quest. See if you can get the drop on someone and you just might surprise yourself!

GURUBASHI - This is a free-for-all, king-of-the-hill event that occurs every three hours in mid-Stranglethron Vale. Simply entering the small outdoor, non-instanced arena flags you for free-for-all PVP without asking (yes, Horde will attack you too!). In prepration show up in the area ahead of time, listen for an emote in zone chat from Short John Mithril called out about hearty treasure, run into the arena and spend the uninterrupted eight-second cast time looting it, and DONE. Depending on how you like to PVP you might enjoy 20 other players at once vying for this at 9 pm on a Saturday or the off-chance that there is simply no one to compete with at 6 am on a Sunday morning! Do it 10 times and get another achievement. If you can cooperate with guild-members and take turns ("I'll get it this time, you get it next time," etc) that would help--or just drop the other show and take your Arena team down there, ha-ha.

GRIM REAPER; KNOW THY ENEMY; MAKE LOVE NOT WARCRAFT; DUEL-LICIOUS and more - all these seem simple enough and are in the normal course of a PVP-lifestyle. Note that DUEL-LICIOUS can be accomplished by dueling another mounted player in the Argent Tournament grounds - which itself is another achievement if you win.

DUNGEONS & RAIDS
Listen, here's the skinny on this: 40% of the games achievements are bound to group activities--raids and dungeons. Taking a look at the Cataclysm Guild achievements just reminds us that group activities will be recognized and rewarded. Make plans, ask for help, be patient enough to find good groups and go forth and achieve! Specific to Wrath and prior content:

CLASSIC 5-mans - normal versions are all solo'd easily enough and can provide some interesting quiet time in old familiar content as you handily blast your way through old mobs like tissue paper. Take care to pick up keys in Stratholme; Scholomance; Dire Maul; Gnomeregan. Take care to read all the books in Strat and Scholo and SM (for the WELL-READ achievement).

BURNING CRUSADE 5-mans - normal versions are solo-able as any well-geared L80 toon. Heroics still required honored with the local faction. Before you're honored, pay attention to reputation as you either quest in the associated zones or repeat these instances on normal until you are honored. ONCE you are honored with the local faction, you should really switch to heroic, where, if you are ICC-geared you should still be soloing.
- Keepers of Time - Getting the two Keepers of Time instances completed with as little effort as possible "Escape from Durnholde" and "Black Morass" at KoT-neutral is as simple as following the introductory questline (a 6 minute guided tour) and completing each one ONCE, purchasing the Heroic Key, followed by completing each one again ONCE--that is all that is required.
- Hard BC Instances - The last three dungeons in the original BC (Shattered Halls, Arcatraz and Shadowlabs) required access keys--these can be fun to obtain, even if they don't "count" for anything, but can be skipped if you have someone else let you in or the lock is picked
- Magister's Terrace - This is a rewarding way to accumulate Shattered Sun reputation on Normal or Heroic. Note that the phoenix pet drops on normal only. The Hawkstrider mount drops on heroic only. Heroic is inaccessible until a quest is completed with the normal mode instance.

WRATH 5-mans - surely you've done them all by now. Doing them on Heroic once will grant you regular and heroic achievements in the same run. How about those tricks? Got your red drake? Many guildies are still willing to group up 2,3,4 or even 5 in order to control the attempts on the 38 GLORY OF THE HERO tricks required for your red proto-drake. Try some of the new non-glory tricks introduced with Frozen Halls instances like Pit of Saron.

CLASSIC or BURNING CRUSADE RAIDS - This takes patience, start or join your own group. Save Sunwell for a guild run - I have never seen a PUG successful at it. For the rest, knowing the fights helps, but arguably not required for the easier instances such as ZG, ZA, Kara and so on. Most all of these other raids can be short-manned with half the normal required bodies or less (do Mag and Gruul or Molten Core with 6 or 7 players, for example). NOTE WELL that some of these raids have reputation that can and should be farmed (Zandalar, Brood, Ashtongue, etc) and that some bosses have rare drops or are in the path for Legendary Weapons. Did you know that doing the 3rd boss in Molten Core on a quest leads to a BOE epic cooking recipe that has sold on the AH for as much as 20,000 gold? A stack of 10 bijous of any color can fetch up to 250 gold? What can you do with Scarabs? If you are a proud achievement wh$#! then you know these things and are never bored!

WRATH RAIDS - There are a monstrous amount of achievements here - almost five dozen alone in *each* of the modes of Ulduar--yet only a handful are required for the drake. In general clear any Wrath raid once for an achievement, clear them again doing tricks along the way for more achievemnts; clear them yet again, short-manning it (8/10 or 20/25) for *more*, clear them on 10 or 25, on normal or heroic... Get titles, reputation, rare mounts, rare epic recipes from Ulduar or TOC that still bring pride or gold.

PROFESSIONS
No doubt you have worked out primary professions. No player who considers himself at least a little serious about a fulfilling play experience has passed up the opportunity to take advantage of the unending benefits of having two primary professions - either gathering or crafting or a combination. Personally I am a crafter--on all my toons. I make enough crafting to pay gatherers for their time. I am glad the achievements don't motivate to imbalance this freedom of choice..... On the other hand, the secondary profession achievements are designed to reward for your considerable efforts in exploring your other professional opportunities.

COOKING - If you like food buffs and haven't sold all your raw materials gathered in the course of questing and dailies, surely you have begun collecting the useful recipes.
- COOK WHAT YOU LEARN - ALL the cooking achievements boil down to two things: learn them and cook them. The add-on called Overachiever, will modify your cooking recipe list to indicate which ones you have cooked for "cook everything once" achievements. AckisRecipelist will help you scan your professions and make a workable list of missing recipes--and where to get them. Bottom line you'll have to train for some, either run around to NPCs, do a few quests or haunt the AH to get more, since to get to 160 recipes you'll need BOE recipes from the Alliance side.
- THE CHOPS The hardest recipe? It's optional but very interesting. That would be the "Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops" recipe from the epic questline to open the Gates of Ahn-Qiraj. On one of the optional branches of this quest line you are sent on a quest into a level 60 raid Molten Core, which can be 5-manned now! At the end of almost a dozen quests you are given the BOE epic recipe (it really is purple) and must decide to auction it for 20,000 gold or learn it. It's possible at this writing for Horde players to learn 168 recipes (169 if you're a rogue). Your target to learn 160 recipes is doable without this effort. So the epic may be sold or skipped, if you are so inclined.
- DUE DILIGENCE In order to get past cooking 415, you will have to do dailies in Dalaran. For Dalaran do yourself a favor: cook a stack or two of Rhino dogs and keep a stack of chilled meat with you at all times. The daily drudgery of these 5 random quests is made easier by having the mats ready to go for stews or picnic baskets. In order to get a complete set of Outland cooking achievements you'll have to do the Lower City cooking daily--keep handy these: cooked Mok'nathal shortribs, Crunchy Serpent, Warp Burgers, Roast Clefthoof, etc to help out. Note that the Ribs and Serpent come from a quest reward in Blade's Edge Mountains.

FISHING - Ok, let me just get this out of my system: it's not fishing, it's angling, and in WoW it sucks.
- Minor rant...First: In real-life I can hit a basketball with a lure at 25 yards while on the other hand, in-game my first or my 10,000th cast yield the same crappy accuracy against targets like pools, regardless of my so-called fishing skill. That's just poor implementation. Second: only 104 fishing derbies are won each year, which means the maximum number of players per faction/server with the "Salty" title is 104. On our server, in all, we have thousands of "Chef" titles and less than 150 or so "Salty" titles. Totally imbalanced from a role-play standpoint since cooking is not easier than fishing by a factor of 10 by any means.
- DAILIES Regardless of my rant, due diligence and patience of a saint here will grant you a majority of the basic achievements here. The perfect time for Coins is parked in a heroics queue. The perfect time for Old Crafty is when you're on the Shattrath fishing daily called "Crocolisks in the City". The perfect time for Pinchy farming is when you have the Shattrath fishing daily called "Blackfin Darter." In general use the website El's Extreme Anglin' in combination with Wowhead zone drop notes for particular fish to research locations for rare pools and the achievement, "The One that Got Away."
- RAID FISHING - the arduous travelling quest for Zul'Gurub will be impossible very soon. Also solo-able, the Serpentshrine Cavern achievement in fact, must be solo'd, as only one player in the group will get credit.

FIRST AID - Many classes find any effort to get these few achievements seriously useless. If you can heal, what's the point? It's a waste of time and materials to skill up to a point where you can craft 500 of the high-end bandages. Not only that, but these bandages barely put a dent in the health deficit of a low-health, level-capped toon with 30,000 health or even double for some classes who are raid-ready. Get the basics done- "TRIAGE" and think about how much you want the others.

ARCHAEOLOGY - I can't resist mentioning that a new secondary profession is being introduced in Cataclysm in a few weeks and that you can read up on how to do it now and what the benefits entail. It does NOT prevent you from still taking your two main professions and should be quite fun with lots of Indiana Jones references.

GOLD / TIME / CASH SINKS
As shameful as it is, there are achievements that can be bought. The achievement simply becomes a testimony to just how much of slave you are to the desire to do something completely useless like pay 1200g for a 22-slot bag--just to hear the achievement sound and see the flash of achievement banner light up.

These achievements originate from Blizzard's blunt goal of taking gold out of the in-game economy. Too much gold means an imbalance of wealth. For example, the crafters and gatherers can become gold-rich off the other players who are not motivated to make gold. The gold sinks provide for mildly useful items sold by non-playing characters in exchange for exorbitant amounts of gold. The gold? Gone forever. This drains the affluent and drives prices in the trading and auction markets down, keeping a broader base of players in reach of these markets.

Ethics and economics of this aside, the good news for us, we get achievements sometimes for taking the bait.

Traveler's Tundra Mammoth The mother of all gold-sinks. With these few weeks left, unless you have 50,000g saved up for Cataclysm by now, don't bother. You will need the gold for crafting professions. Consider this: don't forget the mats that you used for your first Icecrown epic could have been sold on the Auction House for 20,000 gold! That's ONE piece for one of over SIXTEEN gear slots! You NEED your gold for Cataclysm. The value of questing and having a vendor mount is a terrible temptation. Choose wisely.

BUYING REPUTATION or TITLES - There are several factions such as Aldor; Scryer; Sporregar; Zaldalar; Lower City; Sons of Hodir; and so on, that can be purchased with items that are commonly found either in the Auction House or through farming. For example, Zandalar rep can come from breaking Bijous. About 350 Bijous will take you from neutral to exalted. That many Bijous can be obtained for around 5000 gold on our server. Same discussion for Arcane Tomes, at least four different marks (Sargeras, etc), Fel Armaments, Sanguine Hibiscus, Arakkoa Feathers, Relics of Ulduar and so on. Titles like "of the Shattered Sun" can be purchased for flat out gold and provide nothing towards an achievement. Bottom line, it's expensive and it can take weeks of lurking in the Auction House to get enough to make a dent. Arguably the ability to purchase Wrath Dungeon rep (like Argent Crusade) is not a gold sink BUT remember that you could be buying orbs, gems or primordial saronite instead of rep--choose wisely. Remember that only ONE of your toons needs exalted with a BOA enchant vendor such as Sons of Hodir, just mail the chant to your other toons

BUYING PETS Honestly, if this is a gold sink, you're doing it wrong. The problem is that pets are plentiful on the auction house. Do yourself a favor - use an add-on like CollectMe and find out where the ones you are missing can be obtained from vendors on the cheap. Your target is only 75 and should be a minimal effort. MANY pets are quest rewards - do your homework. If you can stand to do Argent Tournament dailies, then buy extra pets to sell and use the money to buy ones you need from the Alliance factions. Don't be a dummy and try and resell the wyrmling that requires sunreaver rep to exalted--silliness, since anyone who can learn it can already buy it themselves. But in general fewer people are farming for these AT pets and they climbing in price and should skyrocket once Cataclysm hits. That said, you must be cautious, an entire flock of new pets is promised in Cataclysm. Be careful how much time or gold you invest in this over the next month.

BUYING MOUNTS Collecting mounts is a bitch, let's face it. Some are very expensive, and the reward for getting 100 mounts is abysmally unimpressive--be prepared. Long-term play, exalted with all home cities, good luck in Utgarde Pinnacle, Oculus, Culling of Stratholme, Halloween, Brewfest, even the original Stratholme, Karazan, Magister's Terrace and so on will get you probably two thirds of the way there. Farming for Netherwing, Shatari Skyguard, Mag'har, Sons of Hodir, Wyrmrest, Cenerion Expedition reps will get you further. Farming for honor mounts in PVP a bit more. You have to do decide how much you want those mounts from the 60 or so stretch to 100. Again, get the Collectme or similar add-on and see exactly where all the mounts you're missing come from. Purchase the Bear and the Armored Wyvern and maybe the Vendor Mount from Dalaran, the Red Drake in Dragonblight, the Mammoth from Wintergrasp. This will be the most consuming achievement you get and arguably the worst to work on right now, in face of an entire flock of new mounts promised in Cataclysm. Be careful how much time or gold you invest in this over the next month.

-EOF

I Look Like My Toon!

2010-03-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

My guild is prancing about in our forums doing the unforgivable... posting real-life pictures of themselves and correlating them to the toons they are known for. It's somewhat illuminating but it's even more disconcerting. Most of us raid and use ventrilo. For my part I have built images in mind of who's who--based on what's evident through the game: voice; play-style; role choice; leadership; coaching; skill. Where you are along the various characteristic scales emerge quickly: aggressiveness, knowledgeability, wit, patience. Somehow the pictures that are emerging sometimes are spot on (consistent with what I would expect) and other times I wonder if we're being spoofed. I have to admit I was tempted to put a fake picture up. I was honest though and posted a fake one along with my real one. What would you do?

How much do you play?

2010-03-12T14:39:00.000-08:00

I had sort of a bit of a tiny metaphorical heart attack this week. I added a monitor from the Blizzard website that reports to me weekly how many hours I play.

The controls not only report how many hours I play, they also offer the option of capping the number of hours. I wanted a few weeks of reports before I pick a target. I am sad and shocked to see the first two weeks reports indicate 65 hours a week. That's playing ... too much.

There are several things that I do instead of play, work and sleep and that is go to church and go to my parents once a week to visit and make them dinner. Perhaps... I ... should... do ... something ... else ... too... Time to pick a target and enter it into the site.

What do I do with all that time? Work on six toons, three of which are striving to either be raiding 25s or should be at least raid-ready.

Hunter - Wintersbow

Raiding Priorities? will continue to raid 25s in group 2 on Fridays as my main raider
Spec? has an unspent offspec for marksman, but I don't know how to play MM and I don't have any "marksman gear" either. Content with Survival for now.
Gear? has a gorgeous raiding set with 6 or 7 pieces from Icecrown (ty LD) and the PS boots. This toon will vacuum up all the frost-emblem-funded Primordial Saronite from all my other toons for the next two weeks to create the PS chest. Also this toon already has gorgeous furious pvp set (maybe make the offspec PVP?).
Professions? has skinning but it's my least favorite skill of the eight that I have maxed. The steady stream of leather and occasional arctic fur helps stave off some expenses. He has leatherworking which is marginally useful as a craft-and-auction gold source. The toon knows all TOC mail and leather recipes, knows one ICC recipe and is working back to find the Ulduar recipes.
Achievements? This is my main achievement junkie toon (because it's raiding 25's and would eventually overtake my priest) and will be chasing some achievements in PVP soon; questing; and doing legacy LFR/LFG targets; going after Valentines Day and Lunar Festival holiday achievements as part of the long haul to this toons violet proto-drake (by Summer Festival if plans work out). The Red Proto-drake should come from just 12 more NR dungeon tricks. In fact three of my toons are in the guild's top 30 achievers, which is interesting only because the Cataclysm game release promises guild benefits/advantages for being a high achiever. I mean to support that, as a de facto "achievement whore".

Priest Winterbearer

Raiding? WB will continue to (try) to do ICC10's regularly, hoping for his first ICC gear, but my schedule is tough.
Spec? This toon heals Holy and also has a solid shadow dps spec. Done fiddling around with Disc. Ugh.
Gear? WB has no triumph emblem or 5-man gear targets left. Will spend triumph emblems on PVP gear now and then on Crusader Orbs for craft-and-auction gold-making. This toon's frost emblems will be spent on primordial saronite for either crafting gear for my hunter or for buying ICC recipes for my hunter's letherworking. I know Thekingkow has them all, but I would like them too. Once that is complete, I will use PS funded by all my non-raiding alts to craft i264 gear for this toon.
Professions? My 4-day tailoring cooldown is still awesome, since the mats that drop anyway in raids and groups allow me to make 600 to 800 gold worth of specialty cloth every 4 days and a plethora of 20 slot bags--so many I don't know what to do with them all. The JC continues to allow me to cut the epic gems (created by my alchemist mage) and also he continues to prospect the purchased saronite ore to create icy prisms that yield random rare and epic gems. But I cannot tell you how irritating it is to have to prospect 16 to 20 times before acquiring enough Chalcedony or Dark jade to make an Icy Prism. Has a solid base of JC designs that covers any red or red/yellow or red/blue epic gem that any of my toons could want.
Achievements? WB is still (despite being idle for so long) a top-50-server achiever. The targets at this point are horrendous grinds, gold sinks, obscure pvp or high end or low end raids that are hard to get into. Since this toon is not raiding 25s, I'm hardly interested in such difficulty.

Death Knight Winterheart

Raiding? WH continues to tank 5's and pug 10's and is dps raid ready, doing the raid weekly too.
Spec? Dual-wield Frost DPS is easy and productive around 4k or 5k depending on where I am. Tanking frost with a 2H has been rewarding, but I continue to struggle to get the DPS up past 2k, while managing the aggro. Figuring out how to do another 1k DPS would really boost threat generation. Have to figure that out. Can't expect to raid tank that way.
Gear? still has lots of dps targets (but no more tank gear targets) from Frozen Halls and from T9 (triumph emblems). This feels slow-going since it's taking time to work two complete sets of gear and this is my third ranked toon.
Professions? WH is my enchanter (invaluable, so I don't have to pay other people) and also holds expensive raid blacksmithing recipes, which I can use to buy 2k worth of mats, make, then sell in AH for 3k for a single item profit of upwards to 1k. This plus high-end chanted vellums make for a good stream of gold. Nice.
Achievements? Will be going after V-Day and Lunar Festival holiday achievements if only to pursue the violet proto-drake. But this toon, only has a mild interest in Achievements. Since it's not a raider and was created at level 55, the time-sink or gold-sink achievements are hard to justify.

Mage Wintermancer

Raiding? Forget raiding - this undead pal is just 80 in the last few weeks--finally after three years of fiddling around. Needless to say she will not raid--just gear for whatever dps spec is the meanest for heroics and stand around making a snotload of procs from potion mastery.
Spec? leveled frost, has an unspent off-spec. Frost was ditched in favor of arcane for its raid potential. Maybe i'll design a spec for raiding and for PVP and lock that in, just in case.
Gear? Needs absolutely everything. I look forward to shooting for emblem targets and Frozen Halls and largely ignoring the gear that drops in early Northrend heroics.
Profession? I am making a massive amount of gold off AH using inscription and alchemy--especially being able to create an epic gem of choice, once a day--saves me tons of money doing this. EXTREMELY valuable toon for the economy among my toons.
Achievements? Will be going after V-Day and Lunar Festival holiday achievements, as she has a passing interest in easy titles, novelty achievements as well as the violet protodrake. Screw the rest.

80 Holy Paladin - is healing and I have to learn to tank. Will be looking to get this toon his first holiday achievements, lol. Wondering about decking this toon out as good as possible and sending him to a new server by himself to look for a good raiding guild that runs at 7 or 8 pm instead of 5:45, so that I am not constantly being late or missing raids.

alliance druid - stopped playing for now, while I help the paladin

Still... this is a lot to do.

Wow Fanboy Toolz Updated

2010-02-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

All security issues aside (since it's presumable that there are no worse issues than any other social networking application), the new WowArmory.com Facebook app (found at http://apps.facebook.com/wow-armory/ ) has only two things wrong with it:

First, you're using Facebook (-5 dkp).... Ha-ha...
Second is you're telling all your "friends" what you are playing and when. And just who is on your friends list?

I don't know about most people, but work friends and a few execs have ended up on my facebook and it's killed my willingness to "cut loose" on there. So, not only will this app make it obvious when we are playing or overplaying an RPG, but even the ridiculous times we are playing will be posted. If we go home sick or take a day for "errands" or stay up uber-late and then auto-post kill or achievements through this API, we're busted. This is not as bad as the RSS feeds for armory "activity" which can also be read anonymously, but still it requires care. At least the RSS feed is almost impossible to connect to a real-life person without prior knowledge. The Facebook app on the other hand leads real-life people straight to your second life personnae.

And trust me, transparency can be bad. For example, a guy in my group got tagged for being on Xbox live when he was supposed to be managing a vendor conference call from home. "Busted" in this case merely meant being called out for not paying 100% attention. His mistake was making his activity transparent on the network and having a nosy director savvy enough to catch him.

From an end-user service standpoint, the Facebook application developers are in an understandable position. The product development work I do in telecommunication products calls for providers like us to offer or at least facilitate this kind of transparency for the sake of "sticking together" and personalization. It's up to the users to protect themselves or to be impervious to the kind of publicity or attention it might garner. Because at the moment, neither the technology itself nor the providers care one whit who ends up red-faced in the end.

Wow.com posts mysterious formula. Proves grinding worthwhile.

2010-01-14T17:44:00.000-08:00

Wow.com suggests that grinding low percentage drops is more worthwhile the more runs you do. While your chances stay the same, your probability goes up on subsequent runs. What in the world does that mean?

They're leveraging the discussion of a static percentage chance of something to happen repeatedly. This is probability. Introduction to probability is more easily taught as a means of counting. You can build up the formula that they described from building on some very simple observations in simple cases. Determining the probability (as a percentage) of a particular outcome means counting it and comparing it to the number of all outcomes.

For simplicity's sake let's say you try twice for an item that has an equal chance of dropping or not dropping. In each run either it drops or it doesn't--each with equal likelihood. After the two runs, there are four ways the runs could have turned it: It didn't drop on either run OR it dropped on the first run only OR it dropped on the second run only OR it dropped on both runs. You can see that in only one out of four of the outcomes the item didn't drop. 1/4 = 25%. Thus it's easy in this case to see that an item that has a 50% chance of dropping will have a 75% probability of dropping at least once given at least two runs. You can add a third run and this would yield 8 possible outcomes (it drops never; it drops on all three; it drops once--three ways to do that, it drops twice--three ways to do that too). In fact this suggests counting the number of outcomes is 2x2x2 or 2^n, where n is the number of runs. And in this case, in at least 7 of these 8 combinations, the item dropped at least once. This is an illustration that probability of a drop goes up when you add runs.

To compare with the at http://www.wow.com/2010/01/13/drop-chance-probability/ website formula, enter 50%, 3 runs and observe the formula predicts 87.5%, which we just illustrated.

What if the drop rate is not 50%? Then you can still count. Let's say the drop rate is a third... In a single run, "doesn't drop" occurs twice as often as "does drop". In other words in a completely random sample of first runs there is (on average) once where it drops and twice where it doesn't. Combine these outcomes with a second run and there are nine combinations of the outcomes of these two runs. Carefully count and realize that five of these nine combinations have it dropping at least once (5/9 = around 55%). You may again compare, enter 33%, 2 runs and observe the formula predicts 55%, which we just illustrated.

Similarly with a 25% drop rate, means a random sample of four "first runs" that on average one is successful and three aren't. Combine that with the second run through means that there are sixteen combinations, and a careful count shows that nine combinations don't have a drop, leaving seven combinations that have at least one drop. Thus, 25% drop rate through two runs means the probability that it drops on at least one of the runs is 7/16 = ~44%. 3 runs would be 37/64 = around 58% and so on, which you can again confirm on the website.

Note that in this particular setup, we are essentially counting all outcomes (1/Droprate)^Runs and subtracting the unsuccessful ones ((1/Droprate)-1)^runs in order to find the number of successful ones. Put these observations together and the resulting notes can be shown to be able to be simplified to the formula stated, 1 - ( ( 1 - droprate ) ^ runs ). which demonstrates the probability of a particular drop emerging from a sequence of runs. Mathematics is filled with formulae that are indeed elegant but often unintuitive. Using some basic counting methods you can see the foundation of the formula put forth on the website is sound.

Is it worth grinding? Yes, because even when your chances stay the same, your probability goes up on subsequent runs. Good job wow.com. Way to feed the mania. :o)

Pre-Raid Gearing after Level 80 in Wrath of the Lich King 3.3

2010-01-12T11:48:00.000-08:00

As always, you should be busy as hell in-game. If your goal is either casual, or pugging 10-Man Wrath Raids or raiding hard-mode leading edge content with the best of the guild, you've got to hit some gear targets. This article assumes that you are fair-to-middlin' player and you have developed skills and instincts, but your toon isn't raiding yet, at least not consistently.

First
For those of you who are brand relatively new 80's in blue gear strictly from heroics--note that Obsidian Sanctum, Archavon and Naxx promise to continue to drop gimmes for little time and effort. Very puggable. Malygos in Eye of Eternity should also be revisited, since you just might find him much easier than you remember (the challenge is finding players who understand how to stack DOTs for phase 3, but I digress). i200 and some i213 purples throughout heroics and in the most basic of 10s and even better in the 25s.

Trial of Champions 5-man Heroic just begs to be farmed for i219 gear. If your main is still scrub or your alts are underpowered, you should be here daily on heroic. Did I mention daily? Daily. Do you wipe a lot? Don't get saved--leave after two tries and learn to pick your group. Also, except for weapon slots, I don't see the value in farming regular ToC, unless you are really struggling in other heroics. There are just too many gear targets beyond regular ToC. Take a look and plan ahead.

Emblem Gear, Frozen Halls and PUG Raids
These are THE main source of gearing for casual or pre-raiders. Grind the new Frozen Halls instances (FH) (heroic if you can swing it) for at least 5 or 6 of your slots at the same time you grind all heroics for emblems for the rest of the slots. Needless to say there is a ton of stuff to get, most is i226 to i245. Note that some slots not covered by Emblem of Triumph are covered very nicely by down-trading your emblems to Emblems of Conquest, but this down-trading should only be down after you run out of EoT gear to buy. Since you can buy T9 directly (all slots) and T8.5 tokens for helm and for chest with 58 EoC each, you could get two different set bonuses -- with at least one 2-piece set bonus in just two or three days of continuous heroic farming. Add to it any must-have trinkets and other i226 boots/belt/bracers, etc. Here is a starter list:
- Random Heroic Daily must be done...daily. This is the only source of Emblems of Frost for many players.
- Koralon (last boss in VoA) still drops Emblems of Triumph (waiting for the new boss still)
- Onyxia
- Frozen Halls (Forge of Souls; Pit of Sauron; Halls of Reflection)
- Random Weekly Raid Boss is a must do, if you are beginning to raid...do it weekly. This is another rich source of Emblems of Frost (5 in the quest reward). This usually involves forming a 10-man party , entering the raid instance and in very short amount of time engaging the target boss in what should be a short easy fight (Patchwerk, Razuvious) and sometimes more complex ones (Juraxxus--which requires you clear Northrend Beasts first)

They all yield Emblems of Triumph and Frozen halls has absolutely the best gear dropped in 5-mans. Doing all these routinely should yield a minimum to 50 to 100 EoT a week. You can get a (i232) T9 2-piece set bonus in as little as three days. Top it off with other EoT gear (i245 necklaces, rings, etc) and you can build a very hefty gear set without much raiding effort. (Yes Onyxia will kick your ass, get out of the flames and don't get tail-swiped into the hatchery). Notice that this tier gear is bought in Icecrown (the ramp to TC10) NOT Dalaran. The three new instances in Frozen Halls are just some of the best fights out there right now.

What do I buy with Emblems of Frost ?
T10 gear is all purchasable in Icecrown Citadel Raid Instance. Gloves and Shoulders are the cheapest at 60 EoF each. Other slots are 95 EoF. Non-set pieces offer options for relics, totems, capes, gloves and chest pieces. So doing nothing but dailies for two months will allow you to buy at least a 2-pc set bonus of tier 10.

Note that EoF will buy you the material from the Icecrown vendor for making non-set i264 crafted gear (from people who have the recipes.) This is primordial saronite (PS), costing 28 EoF and PS will buy you your own recipes for non-set I264 gear for either boots or pants, so that you can craft your own I264 gear.... Perhaps you'll skip buying your own recipes (since it requires Ashen Verdict reputation farming, which requires you be in at least a 10-man raid that can handle Icecrown Citadel trash) and instead just ask someone else to craft it for you. These recipes use PS- either 5 (boots) or 8 (pants). This is an extremely expensive proposition, with each PS costing you all the EoF you made in doing the daily random for two weeks straight. Buying PS from others in trade or AH runs about 2000g on the Azuremyst server--making your boots alone cost at least either two months of EoF from dungeons or 10000g. The pants are even more. No single piece of gear is worth that kind of gold/effort especially for pre-raiders. Even raiders realize that with diligence that many fine i251 (from 10-man) and i264 (from 25-man) will eventually drop for them in Icecrown Citadel.

By way of example, I skipped the i245 orb-crafted gear for my raider from ToC and sure enough, raid loot surpassed it in just a short amount of time. My non-raiding toons are still looking longingly at crafted gear from crusader orbs and primordial saronite. But if they're not raiding, what is over-powered gear for anyway? High-end crafted raid gear remains inaccessible to most casual raiders, as it should it be.

The Punchline
Running around in all-Ulduar gear is certainly sufficient for any pre-raid or pugged content but it simply isn't remarkable anymore. If the T8.5 set bonus or gear stats are not interesting, bite the bullet and just get your T9 gear 4-set bonus--it's 160 EoT, which can arguably be collected in less than a week. An ulduar-gear setup will likely not allow you to do well in the current LD progression raids that grant DKP or get you the gear that goes with it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--obviously with so many options for gear grinding there is no reason for scrubs to be showing up in raids wearing PVP gear. The stamina is wasted, your crit strike rating is so high that you risk threat, and most importantly your sweet stat is often way too low compared to even lesser PVE gear. Learn to compare gear. It's about the right gear, not just iLevel, which is why you occasionally see an epic tank wearing a piece of mail. *Cough* Max

Bottom line is that every week by Monday night you should have done the heroic daily, well, daily and you should be saved to a number of the sixteen raids that are available now--depending on your own progression--Pugged Naxx, Maly, OS--definitely guild VOA10, VOA25, ...hopefully Ony10 ...and if you can swing it, Ony25. As I mentioned, Onyxia drops very sexy gear (i232 and up) and is a nice replacement for pushing out quick 10/25 (think OS).

And you'll note that Heroic ToC, followed by Heroic Frozen Halls and Regular (and Heroic) Onyxia are really the only place to farm for decent weapon slots (1H, 2H, offhand and ranged).

The Next Game Release
Thankfully, release 3.3 switched all 5-mans to yielding EoT, not EoC. The story goes that there will be one more release before WoW 4.0 (Cataclysm) arrives, but that release will not likely change gearing targets--just add places to go get it. Cataclysm is in "family and friends alpha" right now, so that makes me think release to the masses is coming next fall. Notice that today while the gear comes easy in our guild's DKP-free runs and that emblem purchases are far more common. The easy gear just means that the front-line content is harder in order to compensate. As I said, where you looked uber two months ago in Ulduar/ToC mix gear, Icc10/25 has changed that. Two new wings in Icecrown make you look completely scrub and are challenging to even the best geared raiders we have, who are all avg i245 or better. Again this all goes to prove that a successful raider is only 50% gear and the rest is skill and reaction time. "Bring the player not the gear."

Either way, as always, get as much gear filled in on mains (and any of your raid-viable alts if you have time) as fast as you can. Gem, chant and go. Unlike the end of Burning Crusade, the end of this expansion is a very, very busy gearing time in the game for pre-raiders and casual raiders.

This is not an emergency

2009-11-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

Have you ever called 911 for a mildly legitimate reason but it wasn't an emergency? This post is like that. I'm tapping into the gaming pulse, but not really for a valid gaming reason....it's relevant but not quite the metaphorical gaming emergency that everyone in the gaming community should hold still and grab their pants while I blog this out.

I posted a want ad on Craigslist recently. My reasoning was, if I could find a used washing machine for not much hassle or expense, that just needs to be picked up, cleaned up and installed correctly, doesn't it stand to reason that I could find a good woman the same way?

And thus was born my personal ad: "43yo Unattached quiet type seeking the one secretly beautiful, thoughtful, nerdy girl. The thought of you keeps the back of my mind busy when I drive alone or drift off in vendor meetings. When I float at the edge of consciousness waking up, you are the one who comes to mind. You are not a mountain to climb, a pretty face to collect, or a thing to show off. You are a mystery and a treasure...a beautiful, irreverent, funny woman. Out of my league, really, but devoted nonetheless. "

Oh I was in business for sure. I was cooking with gas now. The responses started pouring in. But responses ranged from "Hey Big Boy aim me at HoT4UrBizzLe" to "Yo, sup wiTh da wHaCk ad, yO. Hit me back" ... I was inundated with Spam and Pornlinks and Pictures of Married Women and someone who might have been a yogi or Yoda or Yogi Bear in a dark alley.

I was so disappointed. Obviously, none of these women played WoW.

After a while, the best response I got was:

....."what?"

I'm paraphrasing of course.

And it hit me. I needed to explain my prose. My waxing poetic had melted onto the keyboard and made a mess. I thought really hard about what I wanted and I didn't know for sure. I thought I'd be like David Bowie's Major Tom -- "I'll know it when I see it"...Or something like that.

Being single and unattached for quite some time I have been idly attracted to many different women from many different walks of life. And unknown to them I guess.

For example, I ask "where's the soy sauce" and she flips her hair back and tells me ....pointing..... and I walk away noting briefly that, under thick glasses and messed up hair, the curve of her neck and line of her lips reminded me briefly of Grace Kelly. And then she passes from my mind as I focusing on getting the rest of the groceries, because that is just the level of hope and sleep-deprived attention span that I have.

Another woman speaks to me at length in her used video store while her husband stocks returned tapes. She is on about Jos Whedon and a new show I should watch and I am briefly transported by this person who, it occurs to me after a while, if things were different, I might ask for coffee. But she is so much younger and married and instead I am content to immerse myself with someone who loves great storytellers like I do. And through her attention I discover "Dollhouse". Pale and plump, she is all at once warm, sweet and funny and (at the very least) good at connecting with her customers, but at the same time I know we could have talked for hours. I wonder about going back to the store some time, but I know it wouldn't be the same.

And, no, I'm not an idiot--I will notice the woman with a tiny tattoo, and a barrette pulling back some of her long luxurious black curls, revealing a faintly damp brow as she concentrates on her cool down stretches while she waits for the light to change. Finally she jogs by right in front of our stopped car and this time it's both my own and my teenage son's head that track left like two dogs watching a tennis ball go out of bounds at Wimbledon.

What's really needed is a connection though...trust. A reserved strength. She never curses, but knows how to if she really needs it. And a sense of humor. And as long as I am filling out the form at the dream-girl-o-matic...she should love kisses more than anything...and be playful...and bumps butts as we pass in the hall.....

She might look like Natalie Portman or Miracle Laurie or Maria Bello or Helen Mirren or Judi Dench or Grace Kelly. I don't know, but the character and spirit will be irrepressible, and when she whispers my name in my ear I would do anything for her.

And kisses. Did I mention kisses? I miss those. It's been a while. I hope they haven't changed them. I've been out of commission too long. Some day a girl is going to ask me to do something and I'm not going to know what it is.

I didn't know how to answer the email that asked "what?", so I said, "just be the opposite of me and we'll start off there." I hit send and then panicked. Gawd, I hope she doesn't play Alliance.