Standing in the Back

Back to Playing

2009-02-17T12:17:00.002-05:00

So after many months of morning sickness and extreme work-related tiredness, it appears I'm back to playing WoW. Fozec and I hit level 80 this past weekend after a whirlwind leveling process. Foz is a slavedriver, to be sure.

There's been a lot that's gone on since I last posted. My guild is in the process of shutting down. Basically recruiting for 25-mans on an rp server in a Wrath environment proved to be too much. A lot of people have already found new homes. There's still a small group that logs in under the Ascent name, though.

In the near future our plans are to form a new guild to do 10-mans a couple of times a week. I say that but we've already done 14/15 of Naxx and 0D Sarth in the 3 days we've been level 80. I've also accumulated 54 heroic badges, if that tells you anything. I wasn't kidding about Foz and his whip.

The reason I've been able to start playing again is because my doctor pulled me out of work. Being preggers with 2 boys takes a lot out of you apparently. Sleeping in and taking naps lets me behave more like a normal person. :)

I've updated my equipment wish list to reflect what I can hope to attain given the items I have access to. I'm not sure how I feel about the PvP 25-man raid items. I know SC has plenty of Horde groups that go. I'm just not sure that's something I want to get into. /sceered

Oh, and one last thing... I levelled cooking. Yes, I was stunned at the thought, too, but Critter Bites were calling me. I've also done pretty well with my JC and alch professions.

2008-11-19T09:16:00.002-05:00

More quiet from me, unfortunately. I haven't been able to play much due to feeling really tired and queasy a lot now. It's embarassing to still be level 71 on my main, while it seems like everyone else is getting ready for 10-mans. What makes things worse is I'm holding Fozec back, too, due to our "play together" pact.

All of that being said, I've enjoyed the new content I have seen. Everyone has been polite when it comes to waiting on respawns for the most part. I'd say 9 times out of 10 people will just stand in a line, waiting their turn at something.

Fozec got his belf DK to level 65 in a few days, so we took my hunter out for a spin. I missed playing her and it was pretty hilarous being one of the few non-DK in Outlands. I'm killing my way through Nagrand at the moment and that's one of my favorite zones. The only downside was the +480 queue on Shadow Council. Scarlet Crusade had zero queue that I've seen.

The Night Before Wrath

2008-11-12T07:48:00.003-05:00

I've been quiet lately. This has been partly because we only got our interwebs back for real on Monday evening. Then yesterday, when we had all evening to enjoy the Wrath preamble, the servers were down. It's hard to talk about playing when you can't.

There's also been some other stuff brewing. For one, Fozec and I have decided to go casual for the expansion. We've given our friend (and GM) a week to mull it over. He's trying to decide what he wants to do. It appears he's up for continuing the 25-man thing, but nautrally 5 people are planning on going DK. lol

The reason we've decided to go casual (after almost 3 years of raiding) is because we've decided to start a family. :)

So the plan is for Fozec to reroll a belf DK so we have an option to play with my Draenei hunter, and casually work on our current mains - warrior/paladin. That will allow us to play whatever we feel like at the time.

No Interwebs

2008-11-10T08:44:00.002-05:00

The internet hates us. Ok, more specifically, AT&T DSL is the suck. We've been without internet at home since Thursday evening. Every few hours Fozec calls the 1-800 number to laugh at the latest "Your coverage should return by XX" time. Yesterday they just gave up even updating the recording, so all day we were told we'd have service back by 9:30am.

Fozec has considered switching to cable but we doubt they'd be speedy enough to install it by Wrath. We haven't seen a single truck in our neighborhood, nor any signs of an astroid impact or severed cables laying across the road.

If we don't have internet, there's no real reason to take off work for WoW, either.

Great timing.

I Am Not Dead

2008-11-05T14:32:00.002-05:00

Srsly, I have not croaked, even though I wanted to. Suffice it to say that things were bad enough I opted to stay at home and hold the couch down yesterday. Of course I made a miraclulous recovery by this morning so the peeps at work think I am a liar. Punks.

I don't have much in the way of WoW news. I am continuing to pretend that everything is just peachy in paladin land. If someone starts to say anything about a nerf, I just stick my fingers in my ears and hum. Loudly.

I have also decided that Blizz needs to start offering mailbox insurance. Basically for like $1 more per month, the crap in your mailbox will never expire. You can still only see a limited number of pages, so you'll have to clean stuff out to get to old things, but having 20 stacks of leather go poof because I forgot to log in on a char for a few months would be gone.

It sucks when that happens. More than once. :(

Achievements, aka 1 Man Raiding

2008-10-30T08:48:00.002-04:00

It's been quiet around these parts due to an onslaught of "Omg, you need to do this yesterday!" at work. QQ I say. Things are pretty much back to normal for a few days at least.

Anyways... Fozec has been helping me get my "I am Hallowed, kneel before me peon!" achievement title. A bat costume last night put me over the top. Sinister Squashling became mine this year after many attempts full of fail last year. Yay!

It amazes me how many people just love them some achievements. I see bodies strewn across the ground below the Scryer tier, full T6 running around Desolace to get that last map reveal, and tons of I'll-let-you-kill-me-if-I-can-kill-you duels.

It's like Blizz has set up this world-wide raid, but instead of bosses for phat lewts, you're completing fancy quests for titles/pets/mounts. This is the new raiding scene and you don't even need an instance. There's no reset timers, and you can solo them at your own pace. Achievements are another tier of end game, besides 10-mans, 25-mans, and PvP. The nice thing is they overlap, too.

For me, though, I don't feel a huge draw to doing them. To be honest, I wouldn't have finished the Hallows End ones if Fozec hadn't set that as a goal for me. He logged in with my char and ran me around to Trick-or-Treat, for example. I think it would be different if the points could be turned in for something. I am lewt driven. Titles, ugly mounts/pets, and tabards are not motivators for me. I have all of 5 pets on Valyre, carefully selected over time. Same with my 2 epic flier mounts and 2 ground mounts. I am picky.

Why, Hello There!

2008-10-27T09:43:00.002-04:00

First off, sorry for the afk. I had some top secret bizns to take care of.

So what's happened since we last chatted? A heck of a lot, I tell you. To start things off, we totally cleared SWP in about 6 hrs last week, leaving Sun/Mon available for total goofing off. AND KJ dropped the pally chest. I can has total rusted Chevy look now.

I also have been using my formerly dps shield with great success. It even matches better with the whole tetanus motif I've got going on. Excellent!

I also FINALLY got my zhevra mount from the RAF program. Man are those peeps stingy with the lewts. Naturally, like with everything else in WoW, there is a downside. This mount has... major junk in the trunk. I didn't know horse-type things could, but this one does. Horizontal stripes are not helping, either.

We finished off the weekend with various Hallows End achievements. I have the two old content pumpkin lewting ones and I need a squashling, but otherwise I think we've done them all.

Yes, this means I was in AV last night, pwn'ing on the healing meters to get the GNERD rage achievement. Fozec and I totally PvE'd the place down. I didn't even remember to put on my PvP trinket and he was prot in defensive stance the whole time. lawlnubs

Opinionated

2008-10-22T10:12:00.003-04:00

I am the type of person that nearly always has an opinion. Once I've formed one, I usually feel pretty strongly about it. That doesn't mean I'm locked in my viewpoint - reason does have an effect on me - but if I think I'm right, I can be stubborn.

I was reading Banana Shoulders' post this morning about the new pally patch stuff and pretty much commented all over the place. I guess my stance on Bacon is you're kinda dumb not to take it. Does this mean it's awesome for every single fight ever created in the history of WoW? I doubt it. But any fight where there's an OT or second tank, the benefit in healing and mana usage is awesome compared to even Flash. A few posts ago I put up numbers backing this up on the KJ fight.

I also have witnessed first hand the result if you don't take the judgment range extending talent. Do you plan on running up to the boss, dodging a cleave, and judging every 20 sec? Or is the plan to just ignore judging altogether? It boggles my mind that you wouldn't want 10% haste. This is an amount I can visually see the difference of. This is the same as 157 haste rating or picking up 5 item level +141 haste items. FIVE! This is awesome for me with T6, imagine how great this is for other tiers that don't have access to the quality haste items. What is the issue here?

Instead there's all this "Imp Lay on Hands is so awesome" crap. Really? A 50% armor bonus on a tank every 18 min for 15 sec is better? First, if you've already beaten a boss, it's obvious that you don't actually need the armor buff to win. Secondly, if you're working on progression, is your guild going to wait for your CD to be up for the next attempt? The key to your victory is this talent? I think not.

The other issue with LoH is how much Holy Shock has improved. If I need an emergency heal, am I going to use a spell that I don't have in a normal rotation or will I go with the one I'm using every minute or so? Your target doesn't need to be at 100% hp. They just need to live, and that means using you can cast the fastest.

What LoH REALLY has become is an emergency mana battery. You grab the 2 LoH glyphs and now you have 1080 mana** you didn't before. The irony here is if you're using LoH on a non-prot tank, you're throwing the mana granting portion in the trash.

** There are a couple of nebulous things about the whole LoH/glyph situation I'll probably need to play test. For one, back in the day you could cast LoH on yourself and end up with the bonus mana. If this is still true, then you'd get 2.1k mana back if you cast it on yourself. Also, the Divinity glyph says "Use: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target." If you cast it on a warrior, do you still get mana returned to you? I believe so, but I can't recall for sure.

Better Late Than Never!

2008-10-21T13:49:00.003-04:00

Whelp, we did it. Burning Crusade is beaten. The world is a safer place (until respawns on Wednesday). Yes, we defeated Kil'jaeden. Yes, it was after a major nerf. Yes, it still felt awesome. :D

Here are some fun pictures for you to enjoy...

Click the last one for a wide-screenie.

We Can Has Practice

2008-10-20T08:25:00.003-04:00

We spent all of last night learning the Kil'jaeden fight. Our best attempt got him to below 25% and into the last phase. We'll be in there again tonight, seeing if we can manage a win. It's a tough fight, but doable.

What this has really done, though, is give me a chance to iron out my spell selection. Also, WWS is working again! Yay!

Right now I'm sporting the following rotation:
1) Seal of Wisdom/Judge (while I'm running to get into position)
2) Beacon of Light on the OT
3) Flash (bulk of my heals)
4) Occasional Shock
5) Reapply Judge (20 sec)/Bacon (60 sec)

I'm keep the OT as my target and use quartz to watch his bacon time. I make the boss my focus and use Pitbull's filtered buffs to show my Judgment time. I've keybound Bacon (2), Seal of Wis (3), /cast [target=focus] Judgment of Light (4), and /targetlasttarget (5). Flash, Shock, and Light are mouse button bound.

My job on Kil'jaeden is raid healing + OT healing. I have picked Flash as my primary heal because it lets me hop around the raid quickly. I'm keeping people from dying until a a bigger heal lands. This very speedy healing also means I tend to get higher effective healing, which results in more hp directed at the OT. Also, due to our locked-in positioning, Bacon means I can heal the OT even when he's not within 40 yds of me.

On our best attempt, Z and I topped the healing meters. To be fair, though, this isn't a good chain heal fight. In fact, I think due to our spread-out-ness, Shammies can't use it at all. And if you have to resort to direct heals, it's hard to beat a pally.

Since WWS has recovered, I wanted to do some before/after spell comparisons. The following values are average amount healed per cast/mana cost. The larger the number, the better.

Flash - Before: 2180hp/180mana = 12.1 hp/mana (with old LotLB)
After: 2573hp/206mana = 12.5 hp/mana (with new LoSR)

Light - Before: 3879hp/546mana = 7.1 hp/mana (both with LoAbsTruth)
After: 6390hp/822mana = 7.8 hp/mana

Bacon - 229330 total eff healing/(13 cast*971 mana)= 18.2 hp/mana

Bacon, it's what's for raiding. :D

Speaking of this spell, WWS (and most likely the combat log) treats it a bit weird. Placing Beacon of Light on someone isn't attributed to a particular healer. Instead, the person just miraculously gains it. The healing, on the other hand, is attributed to the correct healer. So how did I know I cast it 13 times? Well, for one, I knew that for a particular attempt, I only ever cast it on Fozec. Fozec gained the buff 13 times that go-around. But to be sure the other two pallies weren't also buffing him, I had to check the log.

The easiest way to do this is as follows:
1) Pick the attempt
2) Under Browse select Browse Log File
3) For the filter, put in spell="beacon of light" and unit="otherpally'sname" where "otherpally'sname" is the name of another healadin in your raid that could be slapping Bacon on your target

What you're looking for is whether any healing via Bacon is being attributed to your target. If so, you're going to have to figure out how many times. Use the 60 sec duration as a guide. Do this for every paladin and subtract the number from the total times your target got the buff.

If you're sticking it on multiple targets, you should be able to get a history of whom got what by filtering yourself and seeing what healing is attributed to you.

All in all I'm pretty happy with things. Last night it felt as if Judging was something to work in between heals but I didn't feel stressed out like "Omg, do I heal them or do I blow a GCD???" Once my addons were set up so I could see all my timers, things were good.

Thrift Store Gear (Or How to Steal from the DPS)

2008-10-16T16:06:00.005-04:00

So I want to talk about healadin gear. The other night an OH dropped that was originally a dps caster item. I checked its stats out of habit and saw that it had more +spell power than my shield. o.O So I figured I'd take a look and see if there are "new" upgrades for me in Sunwell that I didn't know about.

Tip: When looking up spell power-only items in WoWHead, you need to use the "Spell Damage Item (damage=healing)" filter. The old "Healing Item ("healing>damage)" no longer works because damage = healing = spell power. Here is an example of the filters I use, spell powered items. Also, when I'm linking comparisons below, I'll be comparing what I already have to other items.

I suspect that actual plate pieces won't change much since spell power doesn't have much to do with ret pallies or dps warriors. Doing a quick sample of chests and boots shows I'm most likely right. I imagine resto druids have the same situation. If you're reading this as resto shammy or holy priest, though, I'd recommend checking out your counterpart specs' main gear just to be sure.

This leaves me with the following potential gems in the rough: neck, cloak, rings, trinkets, weapons, and off-hands. I'm only considering PvE versions since there's zero chance of me picking up a PvP item, but they may be available to you.

For necks, an interesting situation has cropped up. I call it The Battle of the JC Necks! The healer JC neck is still quite good, providing haste, healing, and mp5. The formerly dps neck has become very viable with crit, haste, and healing. The question becomes "Do I want 25 crit or 10 mp5?" Also, with the extremely low drop rate of these patterns (we've had 1 Ammy of Flowing Life evah), this new pattern may open up other chances to get a neck upgrade.

Next up are cloaks. The Tattered Cape of Antonidas, a formerly dps item off Kil'jaeden is looking mighty pretty. It has the potential of +18 spell power over my current back warmer.

It doesn't look like rings have changed much since the last thing healers want to do is sacrifice +healing for hit. I currently have Band of Lucent Beams and Blessed Band of Karabor.

Here's kind of a weird mix of off-hands and shields. In theory I don't have to lug around a car door, you know. So... First off, if I switch to my dps shield, I'll gain +8 spell power and loose -7 crit. That's like +14 healing pre patch. Sold! If I wanted to go for mp5 over crit, then I should get the shield off M'uru. If I want to swap haste for crit, then I need to get the Heart of the Pit off Brutallus. It has +10 haste, +2 spell power, and -9 mp5 compared to the dagger book off Twins now. I guess I'm glad I passed that sucker to Z. >:)

Comparing weapons is kind of tricky because Crystal Spire of Karabor has this whole "if your target has less than 50% health, you'll heal an extra 200" component. Also, I included the uber spell power dagger even though pallies are the only healers that can't use them, yet we're the only ones that could use the crit. /headdesk I think ultimately, though, the Hammer of Sanctification is still more viable because of its blue gem slot. Honestly, between you and me, I'd only upgrade to the one off Kil'jaeden if I was just bored with the look of my current one. There, now you know how I really pick out lewts. lol

So I hope I've inspired you to check out your friendly-until-they-find-out-you're-gonna-take-their-stuff neighbors and see if anything new has popped up on the gear scene!

Bonus Post

2008-10-16T09:27:00.004-04:00

I wasn't expecting to get to post about M'uru. Rather than make you read a giant wall of text, I've separated out some new patch stuff I wanted to cover.

First off there's the new spellpower/healing spells situation. With full raid buffs, I sport +1550 healing, down from the previously +2700. These are just points of reference, as we all know, but interesting none the less. I've also gone from about 12k mana to over 13k and gained 1k hp from somewhere to clear the 11k mark. I approve these changes.

I was hoping for some WWS lovings this morning but I'm not seeing a link. I'll just have to go over the individual spell changes later when I can has math.

I picked up the two Lay on Hands glyphs last night, plus the BoWis one. I haven't been able to find a 3rd minor glyph I consider worthwhile. What this does is sets up Lay on Hands as another way for me to mana regen. I plan to add it to my mana regen macro.

In general I don't have a good feel for my mana usage yet. This whole no downranking thing is throwing me off. Normally I use 3 spells, Flash and 2 ranks of Light. What this does is covers the normal chunks of damage I see: 2k, 3k, and +4k. My 3k button has been converted to Holy Shock on a 6 sec CD. So if my HS is on CD, that leaves me to decide between Flash or max Light. This isn't something my brain can process automatically yet. I kept finding myself stuck while I decided. lol

Also, one thing to keep in mind is I believe bacon is currently bugged. It's only working on people in the same 5-man group, rather than raid wide. I'm also pretty sure that the 100yds is operating more like 10yds-20yds. This means for now we're piling all of our tanks into one group. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a blue post saying this is indeed a bug, but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to operate like this.

Grid, Pitbull, some of DBM, Prat3, Click2Cast, Quartz, and Bartender4 were the only addons I could get to work properly for last night's raid. Those are the essentials, though, so I did ok. Paladins need a bacon monitor, kind of like what Priests have with PoM. I don't want to have to stay targeted on someone forever just so I can tell how much time is left on it.

I also tried to set up some focus macros for Seal of Wis and Judgement. The idea was I could set up the boss as my focus and refresh seals whenever. Unfortunately it kept making my focus my target, thus messing up my bacon monitoring. Here's what I've been trying to use:

Macro 1
/cast [target=focus] Seal of Wisdom

Macro 2
/cast [target=focus] Judgment of Light

As soon as I cast Macro 1, my focus is now my target. I guess I should add in /targetlasttarget. I can set up Quartz to show me the duration of the judgment on the mob.

Edit: P.S. Like a few of you have told me, my issue with my macro is that seal is cast on me, not on a mob. Such noobishness will be corrected before this evenings raid. Thanks!

We (Almost) Won The Game!

2008-10-16T08:11:00.004-04:00

Last night we were full of patch goodness. The server crashed once before the raid started but was solid from then on out. We didn't have what you'd call an ideal raid comp (10 healers, 7 shamans, 1 Warlock) but we figured why not have fun testing out our new found powers.

Holy crap has 3.0.2 changed Sunwell. The first thing we noticed was the mob packs have lost their umph. What used to be a 40% chance of wipe unless we had tons of CC has now become an AoE-fest. Slap some tanks on them and burn em to the ground. Hunters were volly-gasiming all over the place, pulling in 2k crits per mob. Tanks' threat was through the roof. Millions of healers meant it was hard to even get one in.

Long story short, we cleared the first 4 bosses in 1.5 hrs when it used to take ~6hrs. On Kalecogs we had some problems with too much dps on the dragon. Brutallus was a joke and died in about 2 minutes - with 10 healers in the raid (normally can only take 7 or you don't have enough dps). Felmyst took three tries due to some air phase breath calling rustiness. Fozec totally picked up the Shield of Cathedral Windows!! Twins took 2 attempts because of a "My dad was talking to me, sorry." wipe. lol The dagger book of awesomeness dropped. I passed it to Z, another healadin. I'm holding out for the shoulders/chest first.

We cleared us some trash and said hello to M'uru. We had some solid whacks at him with a few phase 2 wipes. On the last attempt of the evening (due to time constraints) we downed both the cosmic windchime and his bluberry counterpart. Woot! We can has your lewts! We're the first Horde guild on SC to down them. You can see a group-shot screenie here.

We went and took a peek at Kil'jaeden. He is scary. I do have to share a quick picture for you guys. This is me and one of our mages looking down over the edge of Kil'jaeden's room, looking at the girl in the bubble.

Patchiness with a Chance of "Oh, Crap"

2008-10-15T09:32:00.002-04:00

Last night was an exercise in "Wtf Win Vista? Srsly? Really? You HAVE to move my entire WoW folder system before you'll aknowledge the patch?"

Answer: "Yes."

I thought I'd be saving a ton of time downloading the patch ahead of time from a mirror site but in the end it took an hour or so for Vista to be happy with where exactly my WoW stuff resides. Apparently it MUST be public or the world will get sucked into a black hole.

I spent the file moving time updating my addons. I have a few that have been around since the age of the dinosaurs, but the rest needed some newer versions. What I soon found out was I wasted my time. None of the shiny "3.0.2 Ready!" onces worked except Prat 3.0.

When I finally logged in around 8pm EST, I was slammed with JC requests. Apparently every shaman has to redo all of their orange gems. For our enhancement, that meant 11 of those bebes. Resto just needed 4.

I respected to this, taking imp conc aura , BoWis, and BoKings. Our ret has imp might so we're good to go in that department. We're just lacking a prot for imp devo. Zhain also took kings so we're covered. Once Wrath hits Brysan will take over that duty, freeing us up for moar crit!

Zhain's alt is now a 375 Inscriber, too. She mailed out a ton of glyphs for everyone. I can has Glyph of Holy Light!

We also attempted a Heroic Magister's Terrace. I had 0 healing addons and threw together some mouse-over macros just so I'd have something. I assigned Flash, Light, Holy Shock, and Cleanse to keybinds. I slapped Bacon and Rez on my quickbars. I also had my mana regen macro in there somewhere. Short spell rotation is short.

On the first boss, there was a miscommunication. One person thought we were starting the fight and the rest of us didn't. Would you believe me if I told you we beat that boss with 4 of us standing outside of the room? Whelp, that's exactly what we did. The key was the one inside was a retadin and was able to self-heal. I covered everyone in the hall. It was good times. lol

We had made it as far as the mana worms when the world server bit the dust. By the time it came back up it was my bedtime.

My +healing with 0 talents was 1190. I didn't check again after I got my points in order (and used the right libram). I'll have to get back to you what I look like with full raid buffs, etc.

My plan, assuming the servers have calmed down, is to compare my WWS from tonight's raid to a previous one and give you guys the details on what's changed healing spell-wise.

In other news, I've been thinking about Bacon Hand of Sacrifice, imp Righteous Fury, and Imp Devo Aura. My idea is to use HoSac on a tank during a particularily bad part of spike damage, like stomps on Brutallus. I'd stick Bacon on myself, plus imp RF, to help heal through it. If I'm already going that deep in Prot, I might as well get imp devo aura and increase healing on the tanks by +3%. Granted, I won't have enough points for all this until level 80.

My concern here, though, is the fairly high chance I wouldn't survive the damage. On our last Brutallus kill Fozec took 5 stomps and Tahra ate 6. For the first 12 sec of a stomp, Fozec took 54,473 dmg, excluding the AoE breath stuff. He also dodged/parried 4 sets of attacks (MH/OH). HoSac + Imp RF would transfer about 13k damage to me. Bacon + Flash would heal me for about 17,600 in that time, so it would be close.

What I'll probably do is try a light version of the idea out sometime in a 5-man or something. I'd just BoSac the tank, Bacon myself, and see how it goes. I'll have bubble/Lay on Hands ready just in case.

I Need A Druid!

2008-10-14T10:23:00.003-04:00

So today BRK posted a MC Corehound how-to. The bottom line? I need a resto druid healer to nab me an orange dog. Unfortunately my hunter is Alliance and I don't know anyone, druid or otherwise. Perhaps if I played her more than once every 3 months, I would have some buddies.

I think I'd rather just work on her levels anyways, and get her to 70. I haven't changed my mind about getting her a black bird pet, either. I'm still happy with the white lion.

Plan 2
I have a hunter Horde side that just happens to be where Fozec's old druid lives. What I'd need to do is dump our RAF levels on her, going from level 34 to 56, which is the max our other alts are sitting at. If we levelled them to 60 then she'd also be level 60. That would probably take an evening, maybe two? From there I'd need to get 2 more levels since that's what's running around MC.

My plans for her also include getting her some new hair and changing her name (Alurial) to my mage's nombre, Naisis. This also means probably deleting my level 60 mage. >.< Do I really want to spend money to change the name of a character I don't intend to play just to avoid the pain of deleting a level 60? Mebe...

So, I'm thinking giant orange dawg is the way to go on my belf hunter. That plus the other changes would make her lots of fun again I think. Plus with the new pet slots, I can keep Eddie and remember all the fun times we've had when he was OP.

Plan 3
If I'm for instant gratification (which I totally am), I could instead pick up the Kurken (lvl 12 white 2-headed dawg). He's over in Drainy land, so I'd need to figure out a way to get there with my belf self or go easy mode and nab one on my Draenei. Originally that was my plan until I realized you could get a real MCCH.

/torn

BlizzCon Downed!

2008-10-13T09:14:00.003-04:00

While we didn't actually go to BlizzCon, we did attempt to watch it on DirecTV. That was good times. I'll spare you the details except that our HD channel was messed up and they stopped coverage early both nights. This meant missing the dance contest and the last 45 min of the Video Games Live concert. /glare

It was exceptionally nice to fast forward through the panels we didn't have much interest in (we were watching it from TiVo). Also, even if DTV wasn't going to broadcast it, we still weren't going to go, so like Fozec said, "This was just icing." The behind-the-scenes stuff of Blizz headquarters was really awesome, too. Their offices have to be some of the coolest looking cubicals I've ever seen.

Plenty of people have covered the event in extreme detail, so I'm not about to launch into any of that. All in all, these types of events are really about talking to the players face to face and saying "Yes, we do know what you're upset about. Here's our plans around that." Even if the result is they're not going to be doing whatever tweak you're passionate about, there's a level of satisfaction just knowing the answer.

I came away from this year's event with a renewed sense of "Woot!" about WoW, the patch, and the expansion. I'm also looking forward to using the level 60-70 leveling speed increase on my hunter. I also want to slap some Bacon on peeps and run around like a healing maniac. :D

Pop Quiz Results

2008-10-10T11:17:00.002-04:00

I posted my answers in the comments section of yesterday's quiz just so anyone stumbling across it in the future won't have spoilers on the main page.

One thing I'd like to point out, which Chris mentioned, is if you try to run anywhere you have a high chance of getting stunned. This quiz was put together before that mechanic was put in the game. I would include that as a reason to pick another option.

Don't forget today and tomorrow are BlizzCon. Many sites are doing second-by-second coverage. I have to say last years was pretty fun as far as new info goes. I think they hold back a number of tasty tidbits for the conference.

:D

Healer Pop Quiz

2008-10-09T08:16:00.003-04:00

So last night I ended up chatting with the Raid Lead that I mentioned a few posts ago. We pretty much just went over healer basics like assignments and group comp synergy. While we were talking, I suddenly remembered a healer pop quiz I had made up for my crew many moons ago (when we were doing TK/SSC). I dug it up and sent him a copy but I thought you guys might enjoy it as well.

I'll post the questions today and go over the answers tomorrow. Feel free to post your answers and reasoning in the comments or just scribble them on a scrap of paper for later.

1) A mob AoE's the raid. The mage group 4 and the healing group 5 take heavy damage. What's the healing priority for your shaman, who's also in healing group 5?

a) Yourself, healers, mages
b) Mages, yourself, other healers
c) Healers, mages, yourself
d) The nub tank that pulled the AoE mob over you in the first place

2) A rogue aggro's a mob and takes 5k dmg. It looks like more damage is on the way. Your priest and paladin, assigned to raid healing, are the only ones in range to heal him. What should you do?

a) Priest should cast a HoT while the paladin casts quick, small heals
b) Priest should cast a quick, small heal while the paladin queues a bigger heal
c) Paladin should cast a quick, small heal while the priest queues a bigger heal
d) Rogues aren't meant to be healed

3) The boss is about to transition, his evil friend is counting down the seconds until an aggro-dropping fear, and you're on the verge of a thousand mobs spawning. The tank that your druid and priest are assigned to heal just took a crushing blow for 8k dmg. What should the druid and priest do?

a) Both cast HoT's and queue big heals
b) The priest casts renew and queues up a big heal, the druid continues to spam lifebloom
c) The druid queues a big heal while the priest casts quick, small heals
d) The priest fades and spams binding heal on the tank, the druid eats some popcorn and watches the show

4) The boss transitions, his evil friend drops aggro, and you're surrounded by a thousand freshly spawned mobs. About 0.05 sec later you land a giant crit heal, so you...

a) Laugh at the beatdown you're about to receive, being sure to announce the total damge you took over raid chat when the dust clears
b) Do whatever evasive/defensive actions the Blizz gods give you and stay put
c) Do whatever evasive/defensive actions the Blizz gods gave you and run full speed towards a tank, preferably one with swipe or consecration
d) Yell "Heal Me!!" over vent

5) Your paladin and shaman are the sole assigned healers for the MT on a weekly farmed boss. At the same time your tank takes a hit for 6k, the melee nearby each take 4k dmg. Zomg, what do you do?!?!

a) You continue to heal the tank, relying on the raid healers to cover the melee
b) Your paladin queues a big heal on the tank while your shaman chain heals the melee
c) Your shaman chain heals the melee while your paladin tops the melee off with quick, small heals
d) Your shaman queues a big heal on the tank while your paladin switches to heal the melee

6) It's the same situation as previous question, but you're on a progression boss. You consider your current mana pool for both characters to be reasonable for the amount of the fight that's left. What do you do?

a) You continue to heal the tank, relying on the raid healers to cover the melee
b) Your paladin queues a big heal on the tank while your shaman chain heals the melee
c) Your shaman chain heals the melee while your paladin tops the melee off with quick, small heals
d) Your shaman queues a big heal on the tank while your paladin switches to heal the melee

7) You're saving the world one raid member at a time when you see someone has gotten the sleep debuff on Magtheridon. So you...

a) Demagic that baby asap with both your paladin and priest, just in case it gets resisted
b) Keep on going about your business. There's nothing to see here
c) /poke him until he comes around
d) Whisper him to see if he's just feigning

8) Your druid and shaman are on raid healing. Your priest is healing the MT along with another shaman. Suddenly your priest is killed and all death recovery abilites are still on cooldown. What do you do?

a) Call out over vent that the MT needs heals
b) Heal the MT from either character when you get the chance
c) Call out over vent that your druid is going to cover on the MT, continue raid healing with your shaman
d) Call out over vent that your shaman is going to cover on the MT. Continue raid healing with your druid

9) You're raid healing on a trash pull with your priest and druid. You're healing using normal mana efficient spell selections. Suddenly another paladin's tv show ends and he starts spamming quick heals on everybody. Your overhealing starts climbing since his heals are landing before yours. What's the call?

a) Sit back and let him heal. It's trash, dude.
b) Switch to dps and get a few licks in on the mobs
c) Whisper the guy and explain that he's not really helping anyone with his X-games whack-a-mole
d) Switch to less efficient, quicker heals and beat his punk butt down

10) You look on the healing meter after a raid one night and are supprised to see that you're lower in total healing than the other people with the same class. What's the first step you take?

a) Whisper the raid leader and make sure they know you were DC'd/low fps/cat on fire the entire night
b) Compare your spells and their average amounts to other people with the same class in WWS
c) Chalk it up to healing assignments
d) Pretend it didn't happen

Gift? What Gift?

2008-10-08T08:56:00.004-04:00

As I alluded to in a past Twitter, I gave Fozec something WoW related for our anniversary. A few weeks ago Shelbi at The Bronze Kettle was looking to raise some funds for BlizzCon travel expenses by offering to do character transmorgrifications. I snagged one for Fozec and submitted a screenie of his warrior when he wasn't looking. Being easily distracted by baked goods ftw, I always say.

This was merely the first step in my evil plans. A few days later after some discussion about exactly what enchant Fozec was sporting on his sword, I had an awesome avatar-type drawing of his character (but HUGE, it's like 1050px x 1050px!). From there I printed out two copies on super glossy photo paper.

A quick note here... Our printer is one of those 2,000-in-one jobs where it probably could feed our cats if I could figure out the right buttons to press. The downside is it can only take 8.5"x11" paper max. If you have a cooler printer, though, you can pick up 20"x13" photo paper at Office Max. Imagine the poster possibilities!

Taking the first copy I printed, I cut his character out using an exacto knife (of the razorblade variety). For the second copy I cut out his shield, head, and shoulders. Using sticky foam dots normally reserved for scrapbooking enthusiasts, I placed these cut-out parts on top of the first cut out. What this does is give the picture a 3D quality. The head and shield got a double stack of foam dots under it while the shoulders got a single layer of them.

I wanted to put the whole thing in a frame. The key here is you need to get one that has some depth to it or you're just going to squash your creation back into 2D'ness. I found one with 2 layers of mats separated with foam dots at Hobby Lobby. Yay!

From there I printed out his name, also on photo glossy, and double-sided taped it below his character. I highly recommend picking up the LifeCraft font from dafont.com for any Alliance/Horde characters you want. It also has the new snaky "S" from Wrath. For "Fozec" I replaced the "c" with the Horde symbol turned on its side. I did the same thing on our website for the "c" in "Ascent".

I'll try to put up some finished pictures of the whole thing when I get home but for now you'll just have to make due with this tiny Fozec avatar:

Anniversary

2008-10-07T08:45:00.003-04:00

Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary to Fozec. This orc of my dreams has stuck by me through 3 guilds, numerous alts, and a whole host of non-combat pets. He was there when a hunter ninja'd loot from my rogue in ST, trying to calm my rage. He laughed with me when I got stuck for the 100th time between a hut and wall in Orgrimmar. He ran back with me after the world server hiccupped multiple times, repeatedly transporting our entire guild over top of Tarren Mill, and thus letting us freefall to our deaths.

Fozec's been the driving force behind my fun, showing me MMO's and taking the time to teach me how to play. He was an example of a great healing lead long before it ever occurred to me to pick up the reigns. He's an all-around great guy that men want and women want to be ...or something like that.

Thanks for being my best friend in and out of Azeroth, Fozec. /kiss

P.S. Can I put you on AF while I go make me a sammich? :D

Must Have It

2008-10-06T08:53:00.002-04:00

For the record, it's 100% insane that I still have things to say about WoW and I haven't logged in for about 1.5 weeks.

But I do!

First, while I was clearing out the daily spam from my email this morning, I came across a letter asking me for some raid healing help. Apparently they've been reading my WI articles (and didn't notice the dates :P). Could I be so kind as to chat with them on Vent and answer some questions? Absolutely I would!

I didn't stop writing for WI because I stopped loving being a healing lead. I stopped because I lived in constant fear of someone commenting on how much I sucked/was an idiot/didn't deserve a WoW subscription/etc. When you're writing and you can't bring yourself to read the comments, it's time to stop. :)

So yeah, I told the guy I was available after 8pm EST and to shoot me his Vent info. I did a quick WoWJutsu background check on the guy's guild. They've downed the first two bosses in MH. Tier 6, I know you well... :D

It's looking like our break will continue for another week so we'll start back up right after the patch. During our hiatus, Eternal has downed M'uru and claimed a server first over us. Similarily Ladies of Destiny has downed Twins and is chomping at our heels. Both are Alliance guilds. Grrrrr...

I think LoD have relaxed their recruitment standards a bit, but for the longest time you had to have a female character to join. Naturally, with something like that running around your server, you end up with copy cats. The funniest was Gnomes of Destiny. hehe At least females can be any class. I've seen race only guilds go the way of the dodo. See what you're missing not being on an rp server???

The only other MMO I've played is Neverwinter Nights (NWN) and I'm not sure you can call 40 people to a server massive. But one thing I loved and seriously miss were radial menus. You'd click a button on your quickbar and a circle would pop up with all of your different options listed around it in a circle. You could pick an options, starting to form a sort of spiderweb of circles. It was pretty and functional.

Saturday's WI UI plea for Wrath screenies shows an example with the same spirit. I love circles. You can find the original article here that lists out every addon they use. The one that makes it look so striking is TrinityBars2. Want! (And it looks like the addon creator is working on a Wrath version, too).

WoW Helps With School

2008-10-03T09:51:00.002-04:00

I thought this article by LiveScience.com was pretty interesting. Basically kids are gaining reading and math skills, among other things, by playing WoW.

Mish Mash, with a Dash of Ham

2008-10-03T09:02:00.003-04:00

With Healadin Crisis '08 temporarily averted, I'm not sure what else to talk about. I haven't actually logged into the game in a few days, due to our break. I can see Patch 3.0.x putting me right back into the thick of things, so I consider this the calm before the storm.

BRK posted about WoWHead's new item comparison tool and I'm all kinds of excited. THIS is what I've wanted for so long and never understood why it didn't exist. I never look at equipment unless it's to compare to what I already have. In the past this involved spreadsheets and manual data addition (since copy/past of links = suck in Excel). It's also great that you can save a comparison then add to it later while putting around their site. So this is an excellent move, and puts WoWHead a significant step closer to total world domination.

Right now my main focus is getting ready for Anniversary/BlizzCon/Halloween. My B-Day and my Mom's B-Day are also this month. How October became such a flurry of activity is beyond me.

I highly recommend reading BoKings Bacon of Light meets Iron Chef summary from the WoW forums. "They have "Ham" spells that they can use on themselves or others. i.e Ham of Freedom, Ham of Protection"

-20% healing? Plea-se...

2008-10-02T08:17:00.003-04:00

So GC has posted a modification of Divine Plea so healing is only reduced by 20% (instead of 100%) and have made it dispellable (for PvP).

While I consider this a big improvement, I still don't understand the reason to have reduced healing to begin with. Neither Innervate or Shadowfiend reduce healing. From a raid standpoint it makes little sense that you have to step up the heals to compensate, thus using more mana, when you want to get a measly 25% of your mana back.

As the game is now, with alchemy trinkets, albatross trinkets, and mana pots, I can regen about 50% of my 12k mana pool with zero side effects. On the flip side, most of my perception is based on SWP healing where there is barely time to use a GCD during boss fights. If I stop and think about MH/BT, though, I can see it not being so bad. In fact, on some of those fights, I can just stand around, staring at the wall while I mp5 back up.

Also, I need to keep in mind that I normally don't get a shadow priest. With those benefits going raid-wide, I'll see a mana change right there. So, even though the -20% healing seems silly, I don't see it really impacting much of anything. I always have my back-up "PLEASE DON'T DIE!!" yell that signals Fozec to hit his Last Stand. >:P

In other news, with the patch coming out on October 14th, I'm attempting to get the other officers to agree to extending our break until then. Not only does the patch mean new abilities, it brings a 30% hp nerf to all of the ZA/MH/BT/SWP bosses. That's a pretty big deal. The question will be how much of the guild will still be around when that happens. I haven't logged in to see how the mass exodous is going, but I imagine we've lost a number of recent additions.

Checking WoWProgress, we've lost exactly one hunter alt. Hmmm...

Paladin Beta Changes

2008-10-01T09:23:00.003-04:00

Via MMO-Champion:

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9014))
Skills - Holy
Divine Plea changed to : You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec (Old - 10 sec), but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 100%. (Old - 50%)

Talents - Holy
Judgements of the Pure now lasts 1 minute. (Up from 30 seconds)
Infusion of the Light now reduces the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 0.5/1sec. (Down from 1.25/2.5 sec)

Glyph of Flash of Light - Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% (down from 200%) of its inital effect over 15 sec.
Glyph of the Wise - Reduces the mana cost of your Seal of Wisdom spell by 50%.

I'm not sure these were the changes most healadins were expecting. Without seeing all of the raid fights, it's hard to say whether Divine Plea will be useful. In the current game setting, it would not be. If I'm in a situation where I need mana, it's because I've been healing my brains out and need to continue to do just that. This takes the 5SR from Priests/Druids and puts it at a whole new level. Sad.

Instant Lights are gone. I'm not really surprised. They've basically just put the T5 bonus back into the game, but on a limited basis.