They see me Trollin'

A Winrar is RTZS

2008-03-21T01:21:00.003-04:00

Quick note, we downed Archimonde.

Wait, what? Quick note? Pssh-a.

BOOYAH. We downed the final boss in one of the two final instances Of. The. Game. (Don't squash my hopes and dreams, 2.4 isn't out yet.) Tier 6 helms were passed around (2xProtector [War/Sha/Hunt], and the crappy bow dropped. Oh, and the pretty little healing Off Hand that no one important wants. = /

I'd love to be able to post a big, long, introspective explanation on how this is a crowning moment for any guild and that I'm in one that got this far is beyond amazing, but I'm still in shock.

Sad Times, my friends.

2008-03-19T00:21:00.002-04:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=asf8WIi3POP8&refer=home

Arthur C. Clarke, the U.K. science- fiction writer and futurist visionary best known for the novel adapted for the film ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' has died. He was 90.

Clarke died in his adopted home country of Sri Lanka early today from respiratory complications, according to a statement from his office there. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades of his life and was confined to a wheelchair. Clarke had lived in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, since 1956 and held citizenship there.

A sad two weeks for all readers, especially those of the science fiction/fantasy genre. We've lost now two great minds in a very short span.

Arthur C. Clarke will be missed.

Embrace the Shadows: The First Choice

2008-02-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

Embrace the Shadows will be a guide of sorts through creating, levelling, and playing a Shadow Priest. I'll be making the assumption that you are not making your new character on a server with higher levelled mains, so I won't go into twinking or AHing expensive gear. (Talk to Og for that. =P ).

The first choice you'll be facing on your quest to become one of the darkened few will be that of race. Now, obviously, I'm going to tell you to choose Troll. Best dance, best jokes, best language, etc. We're amazing, I know. =P

To be honest, of all classes, choice of race matters most for Priests. This is because in addition to racial abilities shared by all members of a given race, priests have class racials. Now, between that and the hybrid nature of the priest class, each race needs a bit of an introduction.

Alliance (BOO!)-
Human - Humans have pretty lackluster class racials. Feedback is a short-duration personal buff that burns mana from attackers who hit the priest with spells and Desperate Prayer is a self-only instant cast heal on a ten minute cooldown. The Human racials however, are pretty good for PvE healing priests, specifically The Human Spirit which passively increases Spirit by 5%. Diplomacy is also nice, increasing reputation gain by 10% which makes the hardcore TBC rep grinds slightly less daunting. For Shadow Priests, Humans are a subpar choice for race. Desperate Prayer is a Holy Spell and therefore not castable in Shadowform, and Feedback is generally bad for all types of priests, although the shadow damage component is somewhat nice for it's ability to proc Shadow Weaving and Blackout on the spellcaster who hit you. If you have to be Alliance, I'd suggest a different race.
Dwarf - Prior to TBC, Dwarves were the race for a PvE healing priest. While they share Desperate Prayer with the Humans, Fear Ward was what made Dwarves so sought after. However, in patch 2.3, Fear Ward was changed to a trainable priest spell and in it's place Dwarves were given Chastise, a Holy Spell that incapacitates the target for 2 seconds. Dwarven Stoneform, shared by all Dwarves, is a strong spell for PvP. It removes all poisons, diseases, and bleeds and makes the dwarf immune to them for 8 seconds. For a PvP Shadow Priest, Dwarves would be a solid choice, but for PvE, there are better.
Draenei - Draenei are one of my recommended races for a PvE Shadowpriest. This is because of two things. First, they have a 1% hit aura with spells which lowers the need for hit rating even further. More importantly though is one of their class racials, Symbol of Hope, which returns about 1000 mana to everyone in your party over 15 seconds. With those two racials, Draenei are a solid choice for casual raiding. Not having to aim for gear with lots of hit rating on it and being able to supplement a low +dmg Vampiric Touch with SoH make draenei very strong at early raid gear levels. In addition to SoH and the hit aura, Draenei get Gift of the Naaru, a free renew on a 3 minute cooldown, and Chastise, which they share with the dwarves.
Night Elf - I never thought I'd say this, but I'm recommending that new PvE Shadow Priests who plan on raiding end game content choose Night Elves. At the Tier 6 level (and even late Tier 5), a Night Elf shadow priest will always out damage any of the other alliance races because of their once worthless class racial, Starshards. Starshards previous to patch 2.3 was a joke. A channeled Arcane spell that did barely any damage, its only use was to draw an Interrupt to allow a PvP priest to cast Shadow/Holy spells safely. After the patch however, Starshards has been changed to an instant cast DoT with a 15 second duration and a 30 second cooldown. This free damage alone is worth more from a pure PvE standpoint than any of the other race's spells. Not to mention Shadowmeld, the Night Elf racial which allows for stationary stealth, which is amazing for people who find themselves going AFK frequently in dangerous areas. All these points actually completely overshadow the new and improved Elune's Grace, which lowers chance to be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 20% (Previously, this was an increased chance to dodge, which let Warriors go to town on Night Elf priests).

Horde (FOR THE HORDE!)
Undead - With Will of the Forsaken, the undead racial which removes fear, charm, and sleep effects, in addition to Devouring Plague, a high-cost DoT that returns health equal to damage dealt, the Forsaken are a strong choice for PvP Shadow Priests. Their other class racial is Touch of Weakness, which is also more PvP-focused. It is a self-buff that causes the first person to attack the priest to take a small amount of shadow damage and be afflicted by a debuff reducing damage caused by 35 for 2 minutes. The damage reduction isn't that great, but the shadow damage component, like Feedback, can proc Shadow Weaving and Blackout.
Blood Elf - Like Draenei for the Alliance, I believe Blood Elf is an moderately good choice for a Kara-level raider. Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf racials) allow for a small burst of free mana every few minutes. For class racials, Blood Elves got kind of gypped. Consume Magic is another possible method for Blood Elves to get some free mana, but it removes a random buff on the priest in exchange for a small amount of mana. Now, if you get lucky and consume a renew with only 1 tick left, then great, but just as likely is consuming your Prayer of Fortitude and losing an expensive buff and gaining not even as much mana as it costs to cast. They also share Touch of Weakness with the Undead. Overall, Blood Elves are a mediocre choice for either PvP or PvE.
Troll - Easily the best race in the game, there is no reason to ever not be a troll. Seriously though, I personally recommend Trolls as the best race for pure PvE Shadow Priests. The key here is the Troll racial, Beserking. Beserking increases haste by up to 30% based on health at the time of casting. A timely Shadow Word: Death can drop your health just long enough to pop Beserking and your trinket for a nice bit of burst on a boss fight. Troll's priest racials aren't amazing for PvE, but are pretty nice defensively for PvP. Shadowgaurd is a shaman's lightning shield, only with shadow damage and therefore chance to proc Shadow Weaving and Blackout (I'd also like to note that on some PvE fights, Shadowgaurd can give you free dps on the boss because AoE spells will proc Shadowgaurd on the boss). Their other priest racial is Hex of Weakness, which is the same debuff as applied by Touch of Weakness, but targettable and which also reduces effectiveness of heals on the target by 20%.

Phew, that was longer than I expected! To wrap it all up, I'll just restate my recommendations for PvP and PvE per faction. In my opinion, Alliance PvPers should choose Dwarf while PvEers should choose Night Elf and Horde PvPers should choose Undead with PvEers choosing Troll. However, I'll be the first to tell you to never choose a race that you'll hate specifically because of powerful racial abilities. You'll never have fun with your priest if you rolled a Night Elf even though you hate the race with a passion just because of a few dps increase in 70 levels and 3 tiers of dungeons.

Blog-roll, please...

2008-02-02T03:07:00.000-05:00

So I recently got my first bit of blog related email and it was from someone I for whom I have a high amount of respect. He made a request of me, and I've decided to go ahead and do it.

This post is some really jury-rigged Javascript/CSS to make a collapsible blogroll work in Blogspot. I understand you funky Wordpress people actually have plugins and whatnot to make blogroll-ing easy, but us Blogspotters have very little other than a straight-up list to work with. The basic list isn't even that nice looking either.

I'll start by saying that I wrote this mainly to keep myself from completely forgetting how to mess with Javascript and CSS. To that end, I ignored a few shortcuts I could probably have made in order to stick with those two methods of showing/hiding content. This led to a messy but workable solution that I'm happy with myself, but could be complex for others to try to adapt. If you're interested in what's going on in that little sidebar and would like to emulate it, you're welcome to read on.

The Idea
A few weeks back I looked at Trollin's Big List O'Blogs and was irritated that I found myself checking and reading tons of blogs every day (sometimes multiple times per day...) and yet on my own blog, I didn't mention any of them. Now obviously, to correct this, I could just link to every single one of the blogs I read. However, I worked at my school for two and a half years building/maintaining a few very intricate ASP-based websites, so I'm a bit of a stickler for clean-looking pages, so a list of blogs a mile long wasn't sounding great to me.

So does that mean I have to exclude some blogs from my blogroll? No, unacceptable. I couldn't bring myself to read a blog, be entertained by it, and not link to it. It's just not in my character.

I noticed that Kestrel has an awesome little category thing going on in his blogroll. He's got little expandable sections for 5-star blogs, priest blogs, druid blogs, etc. I love it. It's the perfect solution to my problem. I can link to all the blogs I read and not have my sidebar be 12 miles long.

However, Kestrel uses Wordpress and that category thing is probably a plugin. Blogspot is not quite hip to the plugin craze, so I'm going to have to come up with something to make it work. I notice Blogspot allows CSS/Javascript in it's little container-based configuration screen (Blogspotters, you know what I'm talking about. Others... be thankful you don't). With that allowance, along comes...

The Brainstorm
CSS has a nifty little attribute that can be attached to absolutely any object called "display". Many of you that have messed with themes and/or skins have probably seen it. It has more than a few uses, but one of them easiest is simply to hide content by changing the display attribute's value to "none". If "display:none" is set, then whatever is inside that object is invisible on the page.

This is the part where it gets confusing so if you don't want to read about my geeky HTML ramblings, skip the rest of this and jump to the "Solution" section a little ways down. For anyone who enjoys HTML and tricking it into doing fun things, please, read on.

The question is, how do you change the display attribute of the links that you are showing and hiding when the reader opens the page and looks at the blogroll? In comes Javascript. Javascript can get kind of crazy (I know as much if not more than most), but it does have it's uses, and I found one. What Javascript lets me do is write a set of instructions that are performed under certain circumstances (a method, or function).

So now I know how I'm going to show/hide links based on category, but how do I set up categories? Well, at the beginning of the whole thing, I decided I was going to stick with HTML/CSS/Javascript for the entire process of getting this blogroll to work. To that end, there's only one place to store information about a tag, and that's in it's class. The class of a tag is a little definition of what kind of information is held inside the tag. For example, the class of the tag that holds your whole sidebar likely has something to do with "sidebar" and your About Me section is probably in a tag with "About" in it's class. Well, in this case, I'm going to make the classes of my link tags be really weird. I'm going to set up shortened versions of my categories and append them on to the end of the class name for the blogroll so that the Javascript can figure out what categories a link is in. I know that was hard to comprehend, I can't really come up with words to explain it very well. It's easier to understand with an example. In my case, I'm dividing my blogs up into class categories, so my "shortened categories" are like "dru" for druid, "pri" for priest, "lock" for warlock, etc. I also used "star" for recommended reading and "misc" for miscellaneous types. An example of the class name I used is "blogroll-pri-star" for a blog about priests that I happen to recommend as a good blog. Each category is divided by a hyphen so that the Javascript can easily search for the category in the class name.

Okay, so all the long-winded geek-babble is over. I apologize to anyone who was interested in my blogroll but didn't need/want to read any of that. With no further ado, I present

The Solution
All the links in my blogroll are contained inside DIV tags. DIVs are standard wrapper tags that I use to attach the display:hidden and class elements as needed. The standard format for any link in my blogroll is:


<div class="blogrolljs-[categories]">
 <a href="[website]">[title of blog]</a>
</div>

For example, my entry for the aforementioned Kestrel's Aerie looks like this:


<div class="blogrolljs-star-pri-hunt-rog">
 <a href="http://kestrelsaerie.us">Kestrel's Aerie</a>
</div>

Note the "[categories]" has been replaced with "star-pri-rog-hunt". This means that it's a Recommended Blog that includes Priests, Rogues, and Hunters. It's possible to append as many categories as you want to one link in this manner and the link will show up in each category.

Now, all those category names mean nothing without the buttons that show each category. This is because it's the buttons that actually define the categories and their "shortened" versions. The top row of my buttons looks like this:


<img src="all.png" title="All Blogs" onclick="changeDiv('blogrolljs','All Blogs')"/>
<img src="star.png" title="Recommended Reading" onclick="changeDiv('star','Recommended Reading')"/>
<img src="misc.png" title="Miscellaneous Blogs" onclick="changeDiv('misc','Miscellaneous Blogs')"/>
<img src="dru.png" title="Druid Blogs" onclick="changeDiv('dru','Druid Blogs')"/>
<img src="hunt.png" title="Hunter Blogs" onclick="changeDiv('hunt','Hunter Blogs')"/>
<img src="mage.png" title="Mage Blogs" onclick="changeDiv('mage','Mage Blogs')"/>

They're all basically images. The src attribute works exactly as normal, you put in the location of your image, self-hosted, imagebucket, blogspot-hosted, however you want. The title attribute is the text that comes up if someone hovers their mouse over the image. The onclick attribute is the Javascript. It points to the method called "changeDiv" that I wrote (and will show in a second). Inside the parentheses are two pieces of information. The first is the shortened version of the category that I used in the class names for the links. This has to be exact, and it doesn't include hyphens or anything. The category linked for the "All" button just tells the method to show all the blogs in a long list. Each of the other category buttons will show only the blogs who's class name contains the category listed. The second piece of information is the title for the category. Basically, what it says at the top of the list after you click on it.

The title is filled in by the Javascript into a special Div that I created to hold it. Basically, after the buttons for the categories but before you start listing blogs, include this Div:


<div id="blogroll-title"></div>

It's just an empty Div that the Javascript will automatically fill with the title based on the title given in the button's link.

Last but not least, the actual Javascript code I whipped up to hide/show the links by category.


<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
 function changeDiv(name,title)
 {
   var d = document.getElementsByTagName('DIV');
   for(var i=0;i<d.length;i++){
     if(d[i].className.indexOf('blogrolljs') != -1){
       if(d[i].className.indexOf(name) != -1){
         d[i].style.display = '';
       }else{
         d[i].style.display = 'none';
       }
     }
   }
   document.getElementById('blogroll-title').innerHTML=title;
 }
-->
</script>

So yeah, that's it. It doesn't look that long (it really isn't), but it does just what it should. It searches through all the Divs on the page, then when it finds a Div that's part of your blog roll it checks to see if it's in the category that's supposed to be shown. If it isn't, it gets hidden. If it is, it gets shown. At the end of the method, it changes the text of the Title Div to be the title that is given to it in the image button.

That about wraps it up. When I was asked to share my blogroll, I didn't originally plan to write this much about it, but I'm a little proud of what I did. More-so since at least one person likes it. =P.

If you have a WoW-blog and want to copy this, you're welcome to. Just put a little note somewhere that says I made it. That's all I ask.

Also, if you want to use it, but this was too in depth geek-wise and not in depth enough how-to-wise, then please tell me in the comments or in an email and I can write up a "How To: Trollin's Blogroll" post with steps you can follow.

EDIT: Woops! Thanks to Perpetuus Mos Guild for catching my error. I completely forgot to mention that you'll want to put something like:


 <script type="text/javascript">
 <!--
  changeDiv('star','Recommended Reading');
 -->
 </script>

At the end of the blogroll so that when the page loads, it automatically shows one of the categories instead of the whole list.

What's going down

2008-01-23T18:28:00.000-05:00

So, I've been missing for a while, right?

Yeah, my classes this semester are made of fail. Who thought it was a good idea to take Calculus III and Physics II at the same time. Oh wait... /head-wall

Other than that, I've still been playing in game a good bit. I was seriously considering transferring off of Arthas to the point of actually applying to a few guilds on other servers. (Including Kael'thas, which would have apparently put my opposite BBB, which would've been fun.)

But in the end, I decided to stay since my RL friend and I both joined a little guild called Rogues Take Zero Skill. You guys ever seen the World of Roguecraft videos? Yeah, thats the guild I'm in. Awesome, I know. =P

I hit up SSC with them last night actually and full cleared in a little under 4 hours. One-shotted everything except Vashj who died after 1 real wipe and 2 false starts. It was only the guild's second Vashj kill, which is awesome. I need to save me up some DKP so I can nab a Vanquished Defender helm token to get the 2 piece set bonus.

Tonight is TK and Kael attempts. I'll be taking Matt's advice on the Kael'thas fight and spamming SW:P rank 1 on all the weapons to stack Shadow Weaving and Misery.

Looking to the future though, one of the Officers ("Raid Organizers") was talking to me a few days ago and asked if I'd mind switching my main to Boldog since we have plenty of shadow priests and not many warlocks. Now, I have no problem doing this, and I'd actually like to do it if it means we can progress into MH and BT before Sunwell comes out, but Boldog's gear is way less than perfect. I'm gonna need some help getting him geared out for SSC/TK. I want to go Destro, but I think I'm going to have to go Afflic till I can get some more hit gear. Warlocks of the Blogosphere, any of you have any good tips on some +hit gear I can go for in Kara/ZA to get close to the 202 cap? I've not really looked at hit that much on gear since shadow priests need a whopping 76 to cap and I get that on 3 pieces. Also, what have you (I've looked at theorycraft, I'd like some opinions on this one) noticed about hit vs. crit vs. dmg values for destro warlocks?

Phew, that was a ramble-tastic paragraph.

Soulfrost vs. Spellsurge - Teh Maths

2008-01-04T02:55:00.000-05:00

Yay, my first maths post. I like maths.

In this short discussion, I'll math up the difference between the Spellsurge Enchant and the Soulfrost Enchant. Soulfrost gives a bonus of 54 shadow and frost damage, whereas Spellsurge gives each spell you cast a chance to proc an effect that gives 100 mana to everyone in your party over 10 seconds. One of the main points of Spellsurge however, is that the proc rate is listed on the enchant in-game as a 3% chance, however many people on the Elitist Jerks and WoW forums believe that the proc rate is 15%. The one thing that's known, however, is that the internal cooldown for spellsurge is 50 seconds.

I'll be using a typical 10 minute fight as the baseline and for spell cast counts, I'm using the simulator at leulier.com. The main purpose of that simulator is actually to approximate uptime for a warlock's Improved Shadowbolt talent, but since Shadow Priests also do shadow damage (strangely enough), the simulator is designed to build a shadow priest's damage timeline as well. Honestly, it's the best sim I've found for SPriests. It will actually spam MB and SW:D when they're up without breaking a MF that's casting or letting a DoT stay down for longer than it takes to recast.

According to the sim, a Shadow Priest on all-out DPS rotation will, in 10 minutes, cast:

39 Vampiric Touches,
24 Shadow Word: Pains (Shadow Words: Pain?),
72 Mind Blasts,
42 Shadow Word: Deaths, and
112 Mind Flays

For a total of 289 casts.

With Spellsurge at 3%, 289 casts will garner 8.67 (about 9) procs, which, assuming good timing, doesn't hit the internal cooldown at all and can return 900 mana to everyone in your party. At 15%, roughly 43 casts will proc the effect, however with a cooldown of 50 seconds, only 12 procs can possibly occur in 600 seconds, with at most 11 actually being useful since a proc at the very end of the fight isn't all that helpful.

Soulfrost is a bit more complicated, naturally. According to WoWwiki, the coefficients for Shadow Priest spells are as follows:

VT - 100%
SW:P - 146.66%*
MB - 43%
SW:D - 43%
MF - 59%
*The listed coefficient for SW:P is 110%. However, this 110% is split evenly among 6 ticks, so when the Improved SW:P talent is included (adding two more DoT ticks), the total coefficient can be found by taking the old coefficient, dividing it by the normal number of ticks, and multiplying it by the talented number of ticks. 110% / 6 * 8 = 146.66%.

Extra Damage over course of 10 minute battle:
VT - 54 * 100% * 39 casts = 2106 damage
SW:P - 54 * 146.66% * 24 casts = 1901 damage
MB - 54 * 43% * 72 casts = 1672 damage
SW:D - 54 * 43% * 42 casts = 975 damage
MF - 54 * 59% * 112 casts = 3568 damage

For a total of 9247 extra damage from Soulfrost alone. At VT's 5%, that's an extra 462 mana for everyone in your party.

Now, according to the maths, Spellsurge is the better enchant for a good mana battery (hint hint, =P), returning (at the 3% rate) 900 mana, almost twice as much as Soulfrost alone. However, I have a few problems with the Spellsurge numbers. That is, Spellsurge is a chance. There's no gaurantee that it will proc even relatively close to the end of the 50 second internal cooldown. The cooldown forces the enchant to not re-occur for at least 50 seconds. After the 50 second cooldown is up, there is a chance that your spells will proc the effect again. If the 3% chance is true, there is actually a 20% chance that the effect won't even proc again in the next 50 seconds.

Soulfrost, on the other hand, while will not only return 462 extra mana to everyone in the party, but also increase the total amount of damage done by OVER NINE THOUSAND. Which is utterly rad.

However, there is actually a compromise. According to some very reputable sources, you can configure CasterWeaponSwap to recognize and swap weapons for Spellsurge procs. Now this is pretty amazing. What this means is that you can have two weapons, one with Spellsurge and one with Soulfrost and the mod will automatically switch to the Soulfrost weapon as soon as Spellsurge procs and then swap back to the Spellsurge weapon when the CD is up, repeating ad infinitum. I haven't actually tried it because I just found out this was possible, but I'm going to go ahead and download and install this mod now and check it out. According to Shadowpriest.com and Elitist Jerk forum-goers, it's worth it if you have another weapon lying around, and I have a Mindblade in my bank that I just upgraded, so... =P

Thanks for checking out my first Maths post. Depending, I might actually post more. =P

Post About No Posts

2007-12-29T16:20:00.000-05:00

So, I kinda cursed myself when I started the blog, I must've.

Our guild kinda broke down a few weeks ago. We'd already not been raiding much because 80% of the guild is in college and it was the finals run-up time, so some people were annoyed, me included, a bit.

Long story short, we lost all three of our warrior main tanks, two of our main raid healers, and three dps in one week.

>.<

We won't be raiding for a while. The higher-ups are apparently making a big recruitment push, but I've seen nothing of the sort beyond a casual "if you see someont good, ask them to join".

I'm confused as to what I want to do. I transferred to Arthas and joined the guild pretty much because I had a few RL friends in it, but I only considered it because they were actually progressing in PvE content as opposed to every guild on Kalecgos. In two months after I ST'd over, we got guild first kills of Lurker, Tidewalker, Karathress, Leotheras, and Al'ar, but since we killed Al'ar, we haven't raided more than twice.

I don't know what I should do. Should I get my RL friends and go look for another progressing guild on Arthas and/or another server. Should I rough it out and hope we get enough people eventually to do something?

At the moment, I think I'm going to be overly optimistic and wait till after the first week of classes for college and see if some of the officers start doing their jobs.

Merry Blizzard Christmas!

2007-12-25T03:01:00.000-05:00

It's 3am, midnight PST. So Happy Winter's Veil Everyone!

Don't forget to get your presents from Great(-)father Winter in Orgrimmar/Ironforge tomorrow.

Oh, and http://xkcd.com/361/

Linkseseses

2007-12-24T15:20:00.000-05:00

So it's Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

On that note, there wasn't much to do today while waiting for festivities to begin, so I was cruising the Priest Forums and came across a link to MaxDPS.com. It's a site being built to analyze raiding gear and specs to maximize your characters DPS in PvE. His Shadow Priest Page is really, really nice. I saw some things I knew (Haste and Crit are worthless for priests) and some things I didn't (Ignoring that, Crit is twice as useful as haste, when you get to the point where you have to choose).

Right now there are only a handful of classes and specs to choose from. Fire Mage, Afflic Lock, Shadow Priest, Enhance Shammy, Fury or Arms Warrior, and Ret Pally. For Afflic Locks and Shadow Priests at least, I found the info very very helpful. I'm hoping some of you readers who play other classes that are available could check them out and get back to me.

There are a boatload of options available to each spec's page for talent choices and auras available, but there are a few missing. The whole page is still under construction though, so I fully believe that when MaxDPS is finished, it will a peerless* source of theorycrafting goodness.

There were two things I found indispensably useful: The stat ratings and the gear recommendations.

The stat ratings are just a list of all your classes relevant stats (spell hit, spell crit, spell dmg, haste, hit, crit, expertise, what have you) and an number for about how much of a dps increase you would see for getting 10 more points of it. For example, the SPriest page shows me that if I gain 10 crit rating, I can expect a dps increase of about 0.99 whereas if I gain 10 spell damage I can expect an increase of about 4.86 dps.

The gear recommendations take the stat ratings to another level and rate how much dps a specific piece of gear is worth. It's all divided up into slot and each item tells where you can get it. There are even filters you can mess around with to change what gear shows. Right now, I've got every category except for Tier 6 turned on, that way I can see any gear I have access to.

Essentially, MaxDPS, for anyone who didn't already know, is a theorycrafter's dream website. =P Have Fun!

*I say peerless completely aware of Warcrafter's existence. In my opinion (and experience, I've been playing both for a while now) Warcrafter and MaxDPS have similar but different purposes. The complement each other well. =D

Wooo New Memes!

2007-12-20T23:55:00.000-05:00

Ok, no, not really. I was just lazy and didn't have anything to post since I haven't logged in in like 3 days.

Anyway Zangerfin posed a question I'm going to steal.

He asked what got us hooked on WoW in the first place.

Eek.

It's my friend's fault. I blame him. We were both keeping it in our radar because we played WC3 but he got into the first closed beta, so I got to enjoy the game through his little dwarf pally. (Eww, Ally. I know, right?)

When release rolled around, my friend grabbed a copy for me on his way back from college and we rolled Alliance on Arthas on day 1. My first char was a Night Elf druid, Malfurion was pretty win, so I figured they couldn't be all bad.

Funny story actually, the guild that we all formed on Arthas Alliance is actually mostly the same guild that I'm in now. They moved to Horde long after I rerolled my priest on another server, way before server transfers.

Monday = fail

2007-12-18T03:23:00.000-05:00

Dangit, 1 of the members of my 5v5 didn't show up tonight without leaving any mention of this, and 2 ended up having to go to bed when we eventually figured he wouldn't be coming.

So that means it's time for Feral Druid/Demo Lock 2v2s! YAY!

Only not.

That team is so bad. Dear God. I'm never doing it again.

Ugh.

Not waiting till Monday for 5v5s next week.

PvP

2007-12-13T03:34:00.000-05:00

I dunno, I never really got into PvP before, so I've never really thought about it. Since I ST'd to Arthas I've got 4 of my good RL friends I get to pvp with, and (as for the little bit I've done) it's quite fun.

We've got our little failure 5v5 team to get us all geared a little (none of us ever pvp'd extensively before). We're running at the high 1400's-low 1500's so far since we have a pretty bad class make up and no gear, but we have fun and get around 330-360 points per week. Between that and BG-ing our asses off, we should all have a nice mix of s1 and s3 gear before too long.

(I don't know exactly why I'm posting, I'm really just rambling and using this to record my thoughts.)

((Is that like, the definition of a blog?))

Anyway, PvP-ing on Boldog is way way way more fun than on Delmain. Delmain, with s3 helm and s1 gloves and shoulders along with the pre-BC trinket, actually has the beginning of a pvp set, but still, in 5v5s I get stomped. I should really spec into imp Mana Burn, since I'm assuming thats why I get focus-fired EVERY SINGLE MATCH. It didn't help that until this week I've had my FSW shoulders screaming, "I have no resilience," at the top of their lungs to the entire other team. Boldog, though, has 0 pvp gear and he survives. He has a little more health than Delmain does, but it lasts longer because of Soul Link and Drain Life. Not only that, fear for a lock is actually useful. It's just more fun to live long enough to do something.

On that note, I switched my "PvP Main" to Boldog. I'm going to gear him up first and use him to carry Delmain on a team high enough to get full s3 before I do anything more with him. Honestly, he needs it.

I PvP'd a lot the last couple days and I've got enough points to pick up the s1 dreadweave shoulders tomorrow for Boldog. After that I'm going to try to save up and grab the s1 felweave gloves before 5v5ing on Monday night. Tuesday will see me with enough points for the s3 dreadweave robe, and then I've just gotta save up enough points for the s1 felweave leggings and I'll have both 2 piece bonuses and a boatload of health and resilience.

Plus, I'll look hilarious in the mix of s1, s3, and tier 4. =P

For Delmain, I'm thinking the same kind of thing. I think I'll spec disc for arenas and pick up 2 pieces of DPS arena gear and 3 healing pieces and then off-heal/mana burn/dispel spam my way to a moderately good rating in fives. Because honestly, 2 seconds off PW:S's Weakened Soul is not nearly as useful as another 35 resilience.

Kara ftw, finally

2007-12-09T02:51:00.000-05:00

Oh man, Boldog cleaned up in Kara tonight.

I got him keyed a few weeks ago, but I've been getting him geared and such before I took him in, but tonight we put together an amazing Kara group and after all the undead pulls, I brought Boldog in to finish Curator through Prince. It was amazing. I was last on dps, but thats understandable, I still have a few greens.

Let's see, Nightbane gave me his offhand, and then we went to Curator where I got my Tier 4 gloves. I got kind of screwed because Netherspite dropped the Uni-Mind Headdress because when we got to Prince and I got the Tier 4 Helm from him, I had to DE it.

Seriously, cleaned up.

I've still got three greens and a lvl 60 trinket, but tier gear makes me feel happy. BTW, I think it's funny that, in 7 months of farming Kara on Delmain before STing him, I never even saw a single one of those pieces drop. =X

Happiness!

UI Woe... Nah, now I'm just lazy.

2007-12-07T03:42:00.000-05:00

As "requested" by The Mana Battery Bitch, here's some pics of my crappy UI.

Here's my general UI setup. I had to turn on Pitbull's config mode to get the raid bars to show since I don't have any SS's from raids yet.

And here's a shitty texture I made to go behind the bars:

Yeah. Really shitty, I know. Basically, I had this grand idea for what I'd be doing, and it mutated in my head as I was drawing stuff and kind of got lost in the middle when I was having troubles getting the textures to show up in game. Overall, I'm scrapping the whole "lightning and steel" idea because it's way beyond my ability to work with. I was messing around earlier looking at PS tutorials and I'm pretty sure I'm going to start working on a dual- or tri-color "futuristic" layout. Like grey and dark red or blue in long, solid panels. I dunno, I haven't started on it. Theres a big difference between making a simple but good looking website and a useful WoW UI, so I'm really out of it here.

Here's me shooting skulls at things while I powerlevel my mining:

=P

But yeah, levelling mining is BORING.

UI Woes, Pt II

2007-12-06T03:26:00.000-05:00

So I got the textures thing working and it looks great, with textures that I downloaded. I suck way more than other people at making things look good. It doesn't help that I decided to try something really hard and complex to make.

Lightning in Transparent Glass Tubes? Hard to make look good in the first place. But when it has to be in a weird format with alpha layers built separately? Ugh.

So, I need to completely rethink what I'm doing with this. I've got my UI windows and frames set up in a manner that is conducive to my raiding methods, but it just looks too plain for my tastes.

P.S. - I'm not going to finish that Kara Rant. It was just that, a rant. There's no point in complaining now. =P

Loot and Happiness

2007-12-05T14:41:00.001-05:00

Finally, after months in SSC and TK, loot is mine!

Two in one night even. Good times!

Last week, I managed to funnel one Nether Vortex to our guild tailor, but tonight I got the second for my Belt of Blasting. Then we went on to kill a few bosses, including Leotheras who dropped 2x Gloves of the Vanquished Defender, one of which became my Handgaurds of the Avatar.

All I have to say is... BOOYAH!

I've been waiting for the gloves drop since I started raiding SSC, so they are really really nice. Honestly, the belt was less of a personal desire. I only took the Nether because we charge dkp for them and (in my eyes) it was looking like I was hoarding dkp. I wasn't, simply because I've got FSW and not many upgrades to it exist in SSC and TK and the pieces I needed weren't dropping. But anyway, I took the Vortices so that I'd have something on my "Loot Purchased" list in our dkp table, and naturally, the very next raid has the gloves I've wanted dropping. So I managed to pick up both the 2 Vortices and the t5 Gloves and I'm still #8 of like 35 on our DKP chart. =X

I is happy.

UI Woes

2007-12-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

Textures in WoW are really really really annoying.

Really.

I've been working with Photoshop and eePanels for, oh, 16 hours? 8 hours today and 8 last night. I can not, for the life of me, get these blasted textures to show up.

It all started when I was surfing the Nihilum boards and decided to check out the RebornUI. I got it all set up and thought to myself, you know, I could do this. It'd be cool to roll with a custom UI I built myself.

So I back up my old UI folder and my RebornUI folder and bust out the WoW Ace Updater to grab fresh copies of eePanels, SharedMediaLib, Bartender, Pitbull, and various other addons my new UI will use. I log in, get the video options set and throw everything together in a workable fashion and alt-tab over to 'Shop to draw me up some textures.

As is my way, I start with a test. I drew a Smiley and tried to import it.

Nothing. Blank texture. I can import RebornUI textures fine, so I'm thinking it's the Targa Alpha/Transparency thing. So I go out and read 20 some-odd WoW texture tutorials but still cannot get the stuff to show up.

Now it's gotten to the point that I can't load textures that I know are set up correctly if I even so much as copy and paste them into a new folder. I have absolutely no idea whats going on, but I'm a stubborn priest and I will not stop working at it till I find a solution.

This is my current problem. I hate how amazing XKCD is.

So, you know what's never fun?

2007-12-01T02:53:00.000-05:00

Utter fail-azhan.

So, it's Friday, no 25-man, and one of the non-raiding-but-still-kara-geared tanks in our guild whispered me when I logged on asking if I'd like to "farm Kara for badges".

You know, you'd think that when someone says something like that, it would imply that they've got a good group together and are going to go tear Prince a new one in 2 hours.

No, that would make too much sense. And that's not what we do here in The Relinquished. We make not making sense an art form.

So, quick group breakdown for you all out there in the blagofractal.

Me - Not horribly geared, but better than decent. 1K+ shadow damage unbuffed.
Previously mentioned Tank - As I said, Kara geared. He used to raid with the guild Pre-BC but his new job doesn't allow time for that. He's got a complete Kara/Gruul/Heroic Tank set and tanks really well.

(Sadly, that's it for people taking this instance seriously at all... =( )

One of our guild's best geared Tanks... specced Fury. wtf?
A geared arcane mage... brought his undergeared rogue alt.
An RL friend of mine brought his resto druid alt, barely Heroic geared. (He healed extremely well, considering)
Our best geared Resto Shaman... specced Elemental and in a mix of S1 and Heroic Epics, pulling aggro on every single fight.
An undergeared feral druid... specced Resto...? Why? With horrible 60 Epics and Greens? Why? I mean, sure, 5 pieces of Tier 2 was nice... a year ago.
A random Resto Shaman someone "grouped with once . . . he was good"
Heroic/Kara geared Hunter... who's player sucks.
Blue-d out Mage. Frost. Ugh. Uggggggh. Especially bad because it was last week I carried this newb through Black Morass to get his key.

On the upside, this was only our group for a little while...

It started off badly enough, I had logged out in Thousand Needles because I was powerlevelling mining (Needs teh epic flyers!) and the summoning stone in Deadwind Pass was being camped by 2 full 10 mans of Allies. Failure. So I had to fly to Ratchet -> Boat to Booty Bay -> Fly to Stonard -> Run to Kara. Normally, I wouldn't complain, but as I said, it was only the beginning.

So we finally get to the instance and make it inside past the 20+ allies at the door. I don't know if I'm spoiled from 25 mans, but generally everyone actually goes to the instances they're in a group to raid. idk, must be something new, because Captain Failure the Mage didn't realize "Run to Kara, everyone, the stone is being camped" meant that he was actually supposed to run to Karazhan himself. So while we're waiting for him to get there, I finally decide I've waited enough and I'm gonna go deal with those allies. Yes, me. In my S3 helm, S1 gloves, and generally horrid PvP gear. Good idea, right?

Well, turns out there was only one ally outside and it was a rogue. I knew it was a rogue because he actually waited for me to go run over to the stone and start the channel while I ask in raid chat for someone to come help summon before jumping me. Ends up there was a reason he didn't go to Kara with his buddies. He's really bad. He didn't even Cloak of Skill my dots off before I killed him. Who does that? Really.

So once we're inside and pulling, the raiding Tank (the one who's Fury, for some reason), decides that everyone being here means we chain pull every pull to Attumen. Going from SSC and TK to wiping on Attumen Trash because someone (I can't even call him the tank, because he was DPS-ing [poorly]) decides to be a dick.

So guess what my repair bill is up to by the time we hit Attumen? If you guessed 12g, you're correct!

Seriously guys, it's Attumen. ATTUMEN. When my old guild took its first baby steps into Kara we didn't wipe on Attumen trash, but there it is, we did twice tonight.

So we get to Attumen and drop him no problem. I'm thinking it's because everyone was actually at full mana with buffs when we started, but maybe that crazy idea is unique to me. Who knows?

So, a little bit of backstory here. There is one. . . one!. . . piece of gear that I would like out of Karazhan. And guess what? It's the Handwraps of Flowing Thought that I've wanted since February when I realized my Jaedenfire Gloves of Annihilation could probably use an upgrade. Being as that I'm a shadow priest and all I need is shadow damage and spell hit, the Handwraps are really the best thing for me through all of Tier 5. I'd been planning to pick up the Avatar gloves anyway, since I'd like the 2-piece bonus from Tier 5 and I'd just about given up on getting my Attumen gloves after raiding Kara every week since the end of February and never seeing them drop once.

So naturally, what drops off Attumen? My gloves. So I /roll. 1. A ONE. DAMNIT.

But even worse... You remember Captain McFail Mage? Yeah, he jumps, /rolls, and gets a 7. Admittedly, it's fully within his bounds to want them. But on the basis that our guild is generally one of friends and we try to be nice to each other, usually, I thought he'd see the point that there were about 10 drops in the rest of the instance that he needs and one that I've been looking for for nine months.

But no, he takes 'em. Well screw me, right, sucks to be unlucky?

The jerk then goes ahead and links his green gloves in raid. "I'd have given them to you, but I was wearing Mixologist's Gloves, I think>".

Is it just me, or should you generally at least try to replace all your greens with at least blues before jumping into Karazhan. I didn't ask to bring Boldog on this Kara run because, even though I just got him keyed, he's still in about half greens.

GUH. This raid isn't looking good, at all.

So on we go. More horror stories about Fury-Tank deciding he needs to chain pull everything so his rage never goes below 20 or something. Moroes went by generally without a hitch, though I went nearly got myself killed twice pulling the adds off healers because Fury-Tank apparently doesn't know how to do anything but MT. More on that later, though.

It's 4am, and I'm tired. So I'll continue ranting tomorrow at some point.

First!

2007-11-30T04:15:00.001-05:00

Man, I hate people that do that.... =P

So, first post?

Yeah, it's 4am, I just got the blog setup the way I like it. I had to take a few new pics of Delmain and Boldog for the sigs, but it was fun. When I logged to get Boldog's pic a friend of mine asked for a quick run through SFK, so that took like 20 minutes, but was extraordinarily fun.

I love AoE.

=P

Back on topic though (if there is one), I'm basically just going to be using this beast of a blog to record (and vent... =P) WoW-related stuffs with the occasional sprinkling of webcomics and random music, my other two loves.

On that note!

See you tomorrow! =P

-Trollin'