War(craft) of the Worlds

Moving day!

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Tue, 10 May 2011 08:06:00 +0000

I have decided, after much thought, to move my blog! Please update your blogrolls and feed readers accordingly!

http://warcraftoftheworlds.wordpress.com

I've been pondering the move to wordpress for a while, and while blogger.com has been great for me this past year, I think wordpress will offer some extra customizability that I think will really make my blog even better, and look more like I want it to. Hopefully you'll all continue to read along for my future nonsensical garbage.

T12 Set Previews

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 07 May 2011 03:45:00 +0000

First off, most of the visuals that i've seen are pretty horrid. The rogue one is probably the coolest of the previewed. The hunter one is utter shit on a stick (Piratestalker? wtf). Pally, Mage, and Priest all look almost the same except for the helmets. Very much unimpressed there. The fire theme is cool and all, but ugh. The DK tier isn't half bad. The helmet is halfway decent, and they actually look different from the rest. But I didn't start writing this to write about the looks of the gear. That's cosmetic (well duh), and secondary to what really matters.. STATS AND BONUSES.

Tier 12 set bonuses are sexy. Except maybe the resto shaman bonus. (Poor shammies). Let me start with the class I am maining right now - Death Knight.

Blood 2 Pieces - Your melee attacks cause Burning Blood on your target, which deals 800 Fire damage every 2 for 6 sec and causes your abilities to behave as if you had 2 diseases present on the target.
Blood 4 Pieces - Your Dancing Rune Weapon grants 15% additional parry chance.

Frost/Unholy 2 Pieces - Your Horn of Winter ability also grants you 3 runic power every 5 sec for 2 min.
Frost/Unholy 4 Pieces - Your critical strikes with melee abilities deal 15% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.

One of my guildies brought up an interesting point with the 2p bonus. The burning blood ability makes other abilities act like there are "2 diseases on the target"... so does it stack with the other diseases, making things hit even harder? /ponders. I dunno... Also, the wording makes it sound like *every* melee swing puts the burning blood buff on the target. Is it only white hits? Abilities and melee? Does it stack, or just refresh every swing? If so, how will it deal any damage at all, because you're consistently refreshing the DoT.. I'll need more information, but the 2p bonus is pretty promising, and a bit confusing. I had always been under the impression that Blizz wanted to kill diseaseless tanking (which is partly why they rolled Scarlet Fever into Blood Plague for tanks, imo). As far as the 4-piece tanking bonus goes... there's nothing confusing or negative about it. 15% additional parry chance, every 90 seconds. Fuck yes.

Now for the DPS versions. The 2p version is... strange, to me. It's probably better suited to unholy than frost. Frost strike has a relatively low priority in frost's rotation, both for DW and 2h, so i'm not sure what's going to happen there. Obliterate hits harder, and theorycrafting these days even shows that it's worth waiting a couple seconds for an obliterate on killing machine procs over hitting frost strike. Unholy also prioritizes death coil a bit lower last I checked, but it's not *as* far down as frost strikes are for frost. DC's are great for unholy because they're used for the empowered ghoul, and unholy blight stacking. The 4p bonus is, again, just pretty awesome. 15% of extra crit damage, as fire damage, off melee abilities... which means it won't affect diseases, icy touch, howling blast, or death coil.

All in all, i'm stoked to see Blizz trying to do new shit with their set bonuses. So many of them have been just very meh. Some have been good (bear T10), some have been not so good (bear T11), but it's long overdue for some fresh ideas. I'm glad to see it comin from Blizz nowadays.

The Year in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sun, 01 May 2011 03:45:00 +0000

Holy shit, i've been blogging for a year. I can hardly believe it. Looking back at the time since I first started blogging, I kind of find myself questioning what the hell i've been doing on here. Honestly, I am not really trying to *take* this blog anywhere. I just like having a place to ramble whenever the mood strikes me. The inspiration comes more often than others, which is why i've never tried to align myself with any kind of writing schedule. I can't force the word vomit that makes up my blog, and to try to do so would be... silly. For that same reason I sometimes have issues coming up with a topic to write for mmoreporter.com, but i've managed to never miss a deadline there, so take that as you will. There's always something worth talking about, but editorialziing like I do there doesn't exactly fit into.... whatever my theme for this blog is.

I write this blog for myself. I love it when people comment on my blog, or retweet my twitter announcements, or tell me what a good post they think I wrote, or whatever, but that isn't the big deal behind this blog. I don't feel like I owe my readership a post every day, or three times a week, or whatever. If it got to the point where I felt like I *had* to write here on a regular basis, to live up to some weird expectations, i'd probably give it up. I like babbling. If you've read this blog for any amount of time you know that. Hell, i'm babbling right now, for two paragraphs, without much real sentence structure. Such is life, and such is the life of my blog. This is a lot more stream of consciousness than it was probably intended to be when I first started writing a year ago, but it's the life this blog has evolved into, and i'd be silly to go against it.

So, as of April 23rd, this blog has existed for a year. I'm sure a lot of people do this big introspective post for their one year anniversary, but I don't do things a lot of people do... usually. I do what I want (it's a lot funnier if you picture that last line in Cartman's voice... damn my brain for leeching what's on the tv right now). Anyway, if you've been following me for the whole year... holy shit what are you still doing here? :D But thanks! And if you're a new reader... well thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I entertain you with my nonsensical jibberjabber, but if not it's cool too. I don't always ramble this much about nothing... just most of the time.

Also, I use way too many elipses. Sorry.

Progression!

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 04:51:00 +0000

So, you may or may not notice (if you're reading this by a feeder, you should go to my actual page!) that I have a new header image. It's a giant, dead, 2-headed ogre... That's right motha fuckaz! We killed Cho'gall! Officially bringing *Stands In Bad* to 10/12 in normal modes.

In case you couldn't tell, i'm exceedingly happy about this. Cho'gall has been a cock-block for us for over a month now. So much so that we actually had to take a couple weeks away from plugging at him to clear our collective heads out. For a guild that's not a bunch of hardcore raiders, going in 2 weeks in a row and doing nothing for a day but throw ourselves against a wall of ogre.... it gets tiring. People make sloppy mistakes, they get burned out, they lose focus, they get irritable. It's really a difficult time for me, as a raid leader, to find out how to deal with 10 people who are so sick of the same shit... and really, I can't blame them. I was getting sick of doing the same boss. It's times like this that make me realize I am not the type to be in a real hardcore progression guild. I can only imagine how long the server firsters threw themselves at some bosses just for the sake of being... server first.

I don't have that kind of sanity. I like raiding 6 hours a week and not having to stress about whether i've got the mats for flasks or gold for repairs until tuesday. But all of that aside, we hadn't had a lot of real "failures" as far as our raiding progress goes. We had never spent more than a week or two on a boss once we went at him full tilt, so Cho'gall was especially frustrating to me, as raid leader. Aside from the fact that it is, expectedly, a much more difficult fight than any of the others we'd faced previously... it just felt like we would take 2 steps forward, than 2 steps back. We would make good, REAL progress, and then we'd slink backwards when we didn't kill him that time.

So, we took our 2 weeks away from him. Last week was our first time back, but we were running a bit slow on time, so we only had 30 minutes to chip away at him. Turns out those 30 minutes were just enough, really, for us to get angry at him again. Angry, but purposed. In the 3 or 4 attempts we threw at him last week, we got him to phase two, all but one time... A very good sign. So for THIS week we decided, on the surprisingly good advice of one of the guildies, to dedicate a two-hour block to JUST working on Cho'gall, and come hell or high water, when that 2 hours was up, we'd move on. After 2 hours of REALLY solid work, apparently there is something magical about the raid leader saying "This is our last shot before moving on" because i'll be damned if we didn't execute like a very angry, very FOCUSED, group. I haven't seen us that cohesive in a while. Sure there were miscues, but everything was just on. And we brought the fucker down.

Yeah... I'm proud of my group for that. Not just the other 9 people who finally managed to get us the kill, but everyone else who put in the work on chipping away at him for the last 5 or 6 weeks since we first stepped into his room. Every raider on my roster had a hand in it, whether they were there for the final result or not. So, let me just say thanks to all of you. Well deserved victory.

Pugging, Hostility, and Silliness

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:19:00 +0000

I have been working on my death knight, a lot, lately. "Surprise, surprise" you might say... "Another alt"... Well yes, but it's not like that. I'm actually putting VERY serious consideration into making this alt my main. "¿Que?"... You heard me right folks. No this isn't going to be another rampaging post about how bad bears are, cause that's not the case at all. I still have a lot of fun with my bear, BUT, I think they are lacking heavily in the AoE department. Now, in 5-mans I can generally make up for that with the fact that i'm geared to the teeth, and most people in heroics... well... aren't...

Druids are bad at AoE threat. The worst, among the 4 tank specs. Pallies have always been kings, and that's fine. Now, Warriors have come to join the, adding some amazing mobility to the mix as well. Blood & Thunder (which spreads Rend to every target it hits when it's on one target), Thunderclap, Shockwave, lololol, heroic leap, and i'm sure there's something i'm forgetting. DKs as well, have pretty good AoE threat between Death and Decay and Blood Boil all over the place, not to mention all the disease spreads, and heart strike which hits 3 targets just off the cuff (although, admittedly, it shares a rune-cost with Blood Boil).

Bears, on the other hand, have 2.5 aoe abilities. There's thrash and swipe, both of which are on 6 second cooldowns, and there's Maul which i only consider half an aoe ability because it hits 2 targets, the 2nd one for half damage... Bleh. Now, in patch 4.1, they are buffing the damage of thrash and swipe, but lowering it's threat modifiers to compensate... wait what? I have to thrash, swipe, and maul just to keep threat on a few targets, just to outdo my pally offtank's consecrate/hammer of righteousness. And THAT doesn't even always work out well. He still manages to outaggro me pretty consistently in multi-target situations.

Let me reiterate that. They're taking the bear's weakest aoe ability (swipe), cutting it's cooldown in half (3s down from 6), and buffing it's damage... but to counteract the damage buff, they're lowering it's threat modifier. They're also taking our stronger (but still not that strong) other aoe ability (thrash), and buffing it's damage while lowering it's threat modifier. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. If we're struggling on aoe situations, why would they only give us what equates to a cooldown change on our weakest ability? Will it help? Sure, it will help some... but not to the extent that I think Blizzard is hoping it will.

Ah well. Aside from all this, in the process of gearing up, i've been pugging quite a bit to get some heroics out of the way... and much to my surprise i've had a pretty good time of it! I've run across people of all skill levels, good bad, and in between, but the REALLY shocking part is just how NICE everyone's been. And the fact that i've not had anybody leave any of my groups... Well no that's not true. Had a couple people go offline in a VP run I was in, but that wasn't becaues of any failures or anything. I even tanked Stonecore and the healers was like "WTB a group who doesn't fail on Ozruk"... well of course i'd learned that shit the *hard way* when Cata was new so I told him I knew how to tank it... and sure enough I didn't fail on it. He was like "Holy fuck i'm impressed"... Then of course, I go in and fail on the last boss by letting her drop a rock on my nose... sigh. Oh well, we all laughed about it, came in and kicked her ass a few minutes later.

Maybe this LFG call-to-arms shit won't be terrible... of course, i'm only gonna be tanking so i'm coming from a biased perspective. I totally meant to have a picture of my DK to put here, but I don't... So sue me.

I swear i'm not dead!

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 06:37:00 +0000

But, somehow I doubt you thought I was dead. Anyway... I've not blogged over the last month because i've been wholly and completely absorbed into Dragon Age. Now, I haven't been (completely) ignoring WoW... but I haven't played it as much as I had been. So i'll give a brief rundown on what's been going on with myself in-game.

SiB is still recruiting. A tank, and maybe another healer. I *think* we are okay on DPS, but don't let that sway you. We will take pretty much anything, and please keep in mind that joining us doesn't guarantee a raid spot.. Feel free to go to standsinbad.com to read up on our guild if you're interested.

SiB is now 8/12. With my guild downing Chimeron this past raid week, we are officially 9 of 12 normal mode now. Al'akir, Cho'gall and Nef are all we have left... and we have a lot of work to do before we manage the end bosses, from the way I understand it. We threw ourselves at Cho'gall for a couple weeks with... frustrating results. We had a few attempts go really well, but just not enough to take it to the end. I think the best thing for our raid right now is to not look at him for a week or two and turn our attention elsewhere. Nef, from what the other raid leader tells me, is not going to be happening anytime soon. A frost mage would be killer to have for that fight, i'm told, so if THAT is you, also feel free to let us know!

I have been alting more... of course. I've spent some time alternating between a rogue (Ketojan) and a shaman (Shocktogon). I don't know what drives me to play all these alts, because it's not like i'm going to do any raiding on them... My raider is my bear, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, cause I enjoy tanking. I think DPSing (these days) is more stressful than tanking, because there's a lot more to generally have to watch out for. I've done some DPSing on my druid on the single-tank raid bosses (Atramedes, dragon twins. and our Al'Akir attempts), and... Well I kinda failed at the twins, and had a few issues with Atra (but to be fair, i'd only done Atra once before, our first time seeing him).

Chimaeron is a fun fight, by the way. Harrowing, coming from someone who watches his health bar like a freak of nature. Our healing team is a bunch of goddamn superheroes too. Atramades is a harder fight, imo... but my healers might argue that point. Conclave is stupifyingly easy. Like.. We'd never seen them before, and killed them in ~4-5 pulls. WTF. Al'akir is way too random for my tastes. SO much going on.

Oh.. I also built a new computer, and i've taken to recording some of our raid videos. I have an x-fire channel that you can check out here. I might move to a youtube channel, because I know not everybody can access xfire from work... We shall see, though. Anyway... I think that's it for me. I promise not to take another month off from the blog. I hope not TOO many people have stopped following me for fear of lack of updates.

Stands In Bad is recruiting!

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:39:00 +0000

I don't usually tout stuff about my guild, but i'm going to follow my GM's lead. You should read the post of hers that I linked, because she words things well... And her blog is just fucking awesome.

So... Who are we?

Stands In Bad is a casual/progressive raiding guild that exists Alliance side on the US - Azgalor server. We've only been in existence since July of 2010, but since then we've been kicking ass at our own pace. Currently we are 5/12 in normal mode raiding, after only 3 weeks of raiding. We focus solely on 10 mans (because 25 mans are like herding goddamn cats, and i'm not up for that), and we are looking for people to fill out our just-forming second 10-man group. We are a very mature, open-minded group of people. Racist, sexist, sexual orientation-...ists.... (what do you call them?) Are *not* welcome. We welcome all types in our guild, so all types should FEEL welcome.

What do we need?

Well, as I said, we are filling out a just-starting second 10-man group. We basically have *Exactly* 20 people, but are looking for a couple backups and alternators. If you can only raid every other week, or have no issues sitting out semi-regularly, then we might be worth looking for. We're welcoming all classes, but we currently have no rogues, mages, or boomkins. Any kind of hybrid (tank/dps, dps/heals, tank/heals) is also welcome!

When do we raid?

Wednesday and Thursday evening, at 7-10 pm Central (our server time).

What's expected of you?

While we're not a "hardcore" raiding guild, we do ask you to do your best when you come along for a raid. If you sign up, you're expected to be fully gemmed and enchanted. When I lead raids, I always check gear before I post the final roster. While we do raid "seriously", we also have a lot of fun with it too.

Are you interested? Sound like we might be your cup of tea? Drop an email to Amber, our GM, at endingfire@gmail.com, make sure you include a link to your toon's armory and such. If you can use full words while typing instead of "text speak" it's a bonus! We don't have an official "raid applicant" form for you to fill out, so just tell us a bit about yourself. I'd also recommend reading this first, as it is our guild's charter. Look forward to hearing from you!

ARGH! Sorry folks, I had the wrong email address listed. NOW i've got the correct one. Sorry.. /headdesk

Raid level gear for Da Bears

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:26:00 +0000

As you can assume, I don't mean this for the football team... This is going to be the gear you want to look for in normal mode raids. Obviously the heroic versions are comparable if you're doing heroics, but if you're in that point of raiding, you probably don't need me to tell you what gear to look for, who it drops off of, and I'll even mark your "best in slot" with an asterisk, then give a brief explanation afterwords. It should be noted that i'm leaving out crafter-only slot items (engineering head-slots and etc)

Chest

Assassin's Chestplate - Leatherworking

Morrie's Waywalker Wrap - Random drop*

Sark of the Unwatched - Atramedes*

Stormrider's Raiment - Tier 11

Haste is a bad stat for bears, plain and simple. And the 2-piece T11 bonus is really pretty crummy, which is a shame cause the 4-piece bonus is nice... and expertise isn't a bad stat. Have to wonder what Blizz was doing with this tier. The LW crafted piece is nice, but it's lack of gem socket (Compared to the *two* sockets the other pieces have) REALLY hold it back.

Feet

Storm Rider's Boots - Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Treads of Fleeting Joy - Valor Point Vendor

There's really no "best in slot" between these two. They both have haste, which is blah, but can be reforged off. The Storm Rider's Boots have a better secondary stat in mastery, but the socket bonus is meh (only 10 mastery. Better socketing for agi/stam or stam really). The VP boots have a better socket bonus (10 agi), but crit being it's other green stat is kind of eh. Personally, I think the boots Halfus drops are better, but JUST barely, and too close to call.

Gloves

Double Attack Handguards - Chimaeron*

Liar's Handwraps/Stormbolt Gloves - Dragonmaw Clan/Wildhammer Clan (H/A)

Stormrider's Grips - Tier 11

Again, the tier 11 is kind of blah, green-stat wise. Expertise and Mastery, offered by the Double Attack Handguards make a tasty combination, but the rep gloves are by far the easiest to come across in this list.

Head

Membrane of C'thun - Cho'gall

Tsanga's Helm - BoE zone drop in Bastion of Twilight*

Stormrider's Headpiece - Tier 11

Tsanga's just barely edges out the T11 piece, because crit and mastery are valued higher than hit or expertise. Haste brings down the Membrane, and giving haste to the socket bonus really drags this way under the other two pieces. 30 agi is a damn sexy socket bonus, and both the t11, and Tsanga's have, so you could really go either way.

Legs

Aberration's Leggings - Maloriak

Stormrider's Legguards - Tier 11*

I'm quite disappointed to only see TWO pieces of 359 legs even viable for bears. Tier 11 is a CLEAR winner between these two pieces as well. Farm Baradin's Hold for them, because they're really just worth it. Good sockets, good bonus, good stats, easily obtainable.

Shoulders

Poison Protocol Pauldrons - Omnotron Defense System*

Stormrider's Spaulders - Tier 11

The tier 11 has a decent (at best) socket bonus... but it just doesn't outweigh all that nasty haste it has on it.

Belt

Belt of Nefarious Whispers - Leatherworking

Dispersing Belt - Twilight Ascendant Council

This is a tough call. The Dispersing Belt has a socket, whereas the crafted belt doesn't, but the crafted belt has better secondary stats. Take whichever one you like, really.

Bracers

Parasitic Bands - Magmaw

Well.... these are the only 359 leather agility wrists.... Guess what your BiS is? (Ugh.. i'm pretty disgusted about that, honestly). At least they're good statistically.

Neck

Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace - BoE world drop

Necklace of Strife - Valiona & Theralion

There's almost no statistical difference between the two. DRFN edges out the other by way of having more mastery, but it's REALLY a tossup, because you can reforge more off of the Necklace of Strife into dodge.

Ring

Hornet-Sting Band - Valor Point vendor (new in patch 4.0.6)

Gilnean Ring of Ruination - BoE world drop

Lightning Conductor Band - Omnotron Defense System*

Signet of the Elder Council - Earthen Ring Revered*

You can kind of go any way with these three. I starred the two that I did because they kind of have the best combination of stats, overall. Mastery, Crit, and Hit. Haste on the rep ring, of course, will be reforged into oblivion.

Weapons

Malevolence - Halfus Wyrmbreaker*

Vicious Gladiator's Pike - PvP

Vicious Gladiator's Staff - PvP

I'm not one to advocate pvp gear in pve content, but there's really SO few choices for 359 gear. Again, i'm completely disgusted at the lack of options. Obviously, if you can get the drop from Halfus, have at it. Shame that resilience can't be reforged off of gear.

Trinkets (i'm going to rank these in order from best to worst IMO)

Symbiotic Worm - Magmaw

Vial of Stolen Memories - Valiona & Theralion

Bedrock Talisman - Valor Point vendor

DMC Earthquake - Stones deck

Mirror of Broken Images - Baradin's Wardens/Hellscream's Reach exalted

Hoo boy.. Trinkets are a bit more titchy than other slots, so let me give a brief rundown of why I ranked these like I did. I'm like trinkets with stamina on them for tanks. I'm also a big fan of passive or proc trinkets, over on-use trinkets. (Thus, Symbiotic Worm > Vial of Stolen Memories). Bedrock Talisman seems a bit underbudget with the bonus armor it grants, but the dodge proc is pretty nice. The Darkmoon card has a really nice dodge bonus, but an on-use battlemaster's trinket? And ONLY 11.5k health, at that? Really? Not worth the cash. Mirror of Broken Images will take a long time to grind, it gives mastery, which isn't bad, but not as good as dodge, and offers a spell-resist usage that's situational at best. It really isn't worth the time, or BH/HR marks, you'd spend on it.

Also, don't forget that my guild, Stands in Bad, is recruiting! See my previous post for details.

20 days... maybe?

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:46:00 +0000

Well, I really don't have a whole lot of other stuff to post, and my friend SpellboundSaga decided to come up with a new "20 days of..." blogging challenge. I kinda failed my last one... miserably... but it was all Cataclysm's fault! Anyway, the entire list for *her* 20 day... thingy... can be found here, and I think i'm going to attempt to try this one. So with that...

Day 1 - Introduce Yourself

I've never been much for giving a *lot* of personal details online, but I suppose people could probably find enough about me based on what I have given out, so whatever. Anyway, my name is Chris, i'm 29 years old and I live in a moderate-sized city in middle Tennessee.

As you may or may not have noticed, my main toon is a druid. Feral druid, tankish by nature. I've gone through so many "mains" in my time playing, but this one has really stuck with me for a lot. I've even become a pretty good raiding tank, which is something I didn't think I would see myself doing a year ago.

I've been playing WoW for about 2 1/2 years, but only been blogging for... a little under a year. Since I started blogging, i've come across an AMAZING community of fellow bloggers and twitter folks, an awesome guild that I can call home, and found myself generally having a lot more fun in game than I had in a while. I didn't even realize I wasn't enjoying the game as much, until I started enjoying it more... if that makes sense? Anyway...

Aside from my current main, i've been a long-standing altaholic. I've levelled something like 10 toons to level 80, and not all of them even exist anymore. Right now, my "primary alt" is a priest. I actually healed my first heroic on him a few days ago, and that went okay... Did another one earlier today, and that ended up going not so well, but we all have good and bad days I suppose.

I'm rambling now, and i'm sure that you all don't want to know much about the IRL me. I'm not that interesting really. ;)

Raiding commences

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 05:37:00 +0000

So... SiB took it's first turn back to raiding this week. I seriously think that's the most fun i've had spending basically 6 hours dying (over 2 nights) ever. Don't get me wrong, we weren't completely unsuccessful. We downed Magmaw on the first night, after... 4 tries I think? And then we spent the rest of the first night working out the kinks on Omnitron Defense System. We came back on the 2nd night and wiped for another few tries, before finally taking them down. Holy donkey fucks these fights are intense. Magmaw isn't terribly difficult, just took a few tries to perfect what was going on. Omnitron, again, isn't really TECHNICALLY difficult... there is just a SHIT TON going on, and the healers are pretty much in a state of panic for the entire fight. There's a brief bit of the ODS killshot video here. It's taken from the point of view of my dead GM on her death knigget (...say that with a french accent).

Aside from raiding (since that really only took up a small portion of my in-game time), i've been spending a lot of time on my priest doing Archaeology. At first I wasn't really a huge fan of it. I gave it a brief shot a week ago, or something like that and got bored with it REALLY quickly. So, at the time I gave it up as a bad job, but something got me back into it... I don't even remember what it was. I think it was the amusment I was getting from one of my guildies' inability to find Tyrande's Favorite Doll... so I told myself that I bet I could level arch from the ground up and find the trinket before him. Well, today my archaeology hit... 418 I think? I'm pretty sure I need to be 450 before the good stuff will have a chance to come up. Last I heard there's still no luck with the trinket for my guildie, so I do have a chance to catch it before him still. we'll see.

That's pretty much how I spent my time this past week. It felt good to get back into raiding. I leave you with a couple killshots. Expect more info when we down Halfus and Valiona & Theralion next week.

More babbling

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:16:00 +0000

So i've been neglecting my blog... apologies everybody. I have no intention of stopping blogging, I just haven't had much jump out at me as something that OMG I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS in the last month.

I guess, what i'll do is talk about what i've been doing in game lately. I've not been playing my fuzzbutt as much. Not because I don't like playing him anymore, but more or less he's well geared enough in my mind and we haven't started raiding yet. It was my decision to wait till the last week of January to start our official raiding, and i'm not entirely sure *why* i picked that date... I just kinda did. I figured that it would give everyone who wanted to more than enough time to get themselves "acceptably" geared for raiding, as well as give them time to look over fight strategies and... well... decide on where the fuck we're going first.

I put a post in my guild forums asking all the raiders where they wanted to go first, between the 3 raids (Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, or Throne of the Four Winds), and it has ended up being a 3 way tie between them... go figure. After that, I asked twitter. I think I may have done that too early, because now I don't remember what most people said... go me. I think it was a lot of Bastion of Twilight, but we'll see lol. (I'll take any opinions in comments as well, so feel free to tell me what you think we should do first ;D)

So... if i've not been playing my druid, what have i been playing? One of my other cadre of 80s? Oh no no, because that would be silly. No, i've actually been playing the absolute *shit* out of my priest... who is now level 85 (that makes a 10th toon over level 80...geeeeeeez. Only my 2nd 85 though). Anyway... After trying to play a priest several times over my wow career, I was finally successful with one, and I think it might end up being my secondary main once the new patch comes through and they fix shadow priest dps. Shadow is pretty fun, and I only died a couple times while levelling to non pvp-related things.

My priest is a female worgen, and I must say... after 85 levels of looking at that model, i'm pretty disappointed in the way they look. The female worgen models look *terrible* to me. Especially after having race changed my druid to a male worgen, which look incredibly badass. I think I might race change or re-customize my priest. Don't know just yet.

I feel like i've kinda been babbling on this post. Hell it's been sitting in my unfinished listing for almost a week. Oh well, I still have a normal subscriber base, so no one's left me yet ;D Thanks for hanging with me all. In other news, SiB raiding starts wednesday and i'm disturbingly excited about it. I should've had us start a week or two ago. Oh well. No excuses now, for people not being ready. I guess that's all for this post.

ALL OF THE ALTS

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 05:06:00 +0000

Fuck.. I hit publish on accident... If you're seeing a blank post, my apologies.

Anyway.. Lately i've been reading a lot of the backlog of Hyperbole and a Half... I literally can't be upset at anything when I read her shit, but I digress. That's what inspired the title of this blogpost. I actually had some more useful-type shit slated to post, but I had a lot of brain stagnation that kept me from fleshing it out properly... I still plan on writing it, I just need to unfog my brain. Not sleeping on a regular schedule will really screw with me.

So, i've been doing a lot of alting lately. I haven't been able to stabilize my schedule to the point of where I can run heroics with my guildies as much as I like. Working overnights sucks you guys.. argh. anyway. I can't even decide on one alt to play over the others, but right now it's mostly been my priest. I levelled as disc until I hit.... 32? I think that's what level you get Shadow Word: Death, and that seemed like a great time to dual spec (bwahaha only 10 gold now) shadow, and try it out.

So, I had a kind of vague idea of what I was going to post, but a discussion JUST popped up on twitter that gave me something a little more interesting to talk about. I want to thank Oestrus (who blogs on World of Matticus and Divine Aegis) for the idea. Inititally her and I had discussed something else, but we had a brief discussion on twitter about whether 10-man and 25-man raids should be held on the same progression chart. She said they should, and I said they shouldn't.. Here's how the conversation went.

Oestrus (to twitter at large): At risk of sounding elitist, I really, really don't like that 10/25 mans make no difference in terms of progression.

Me: How come?

O: I just feel they should be seperate. Maybe it's just old habits dying hard. *shrug*

Me: Eh. I disagree. There are points where 10s are more difficult than 25s, and vice versa. Makes sense to me /shrug.

O: I don't mean it as an insult to 10s, quite the opposite. They should be judged on their merits and we on ours. If I were working my butt off in a 10 man guild I wouldn't want to be competing against 25-man folks.

Me: Oh no, I wasn't taking it as an insult from you. But if they're seperate there will always be those who feel that 10s are inferior than 25s for whatever ludicrous reason.

O: I did 10-man hard modes in ICC for a time. It is work, absolutely. I hated being made to feel less than.

Me: Oh, I agree but like I said, there are others who will always feel that 10s are inferior to 25s if they're not on the same playing field. Hell some people STILL think 10s are inferior. Whatever to them lol.

That's the end of the conversation but it sparked a little thought process in my mind. For all of Wrath 10 and 25 man raids were judged on a seperate scale of progression, with 25's being the "real progression", such as it was. Prior to Wrath, if there was any difference in the number of people required for a raid, then it was specific to that raid, and they were all in one progression line. For instance Kara was 10-man, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon were 25, Zul'Aman was 10, etc, but they were all in progression, in that order. I think Wrath's way worked much better because splitting 25 man raids into two-10 mans doesn't exactly work out right, nor did joining two 10-mans into a 25-man. However, having two seperate progression lines, one for 10s, one for 25s made things a lot easier. You didn't have to combine raid groups, or split them up to reach different raids if you didn't want to... but at the same time it was still flawed in a way.

As I said before, 10s and 25s always competed with each other. 25 man dropped better loot, and was considered the "real" progression. 10 man raids were just inferior, in spite of (at times) being more difficult in one fashion or another. Mistakes tended to be more... life-threatening. Going without a healer could make some encounters un-survivable... going without a DPS could mean you wouldn't beat the enrage timer, etc. But at the same time, 25s had their own issues. There was less room to run around and avoid things (Especially range-oriented things like malleable goo or defile), and there were usually more "obstacles" (3 valks on the lich king fight) to avoid, but mistakes weren't quite as punishing. You could lose a healer and still have 5-6 more.

My point is, 10s and 25s both had their ups and downs, but 25s were held in a higher regard than 10s, and I don't think that should be the case. As it is, Blizzard has changed their focus, and made it so that neither 10 or 25 mans are ranked any differently. There are no more separate achievements for... say killing a certain raid boss on 10 man and 25 man difficulty... there's just the achievement for killing the boss, and that's it.

So, what do you all think? I'd love some feedback... leave me comments!

Bears, Gems, and Enchants - Oh My!

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:43:00 +0000

I'll warn you, this is going to get a little more theorycrafty than I normally get... but it's all pretty simple napkin math, along with quite a bit of personal opinion.

First thing I want to talk about is gemming. Gone are the days of throwing nothing but stamina in our gear. It's true that we still benefit from stam very well, and that a large health pool is nothing to scoff at, but it isn't the king of the road it used to be. Avoidance is actually a very acceptable way to gem or enchant yourself. I would never say to forsake stamina completely, and I would never say to forsake avoidance completely either. Perhaps I should start the same place that I started.

(Post edit: SIGH!! Some of my numbers were off originally, so i'm fixing them now)

Gem (theory)

Last night I ran heroic deadmines, and picked up these (Heroic VanCleef's Boots), and I was debating which gem I should throw in them. As you can see, it has a yellow socket, with a 10 agility socket bonus.

The way I figured, I had two choices: a 20 Dodge Rating/30 Stam gem that would give me the 10 agility socket bonus, or a 60 stamina gem to completely ignore the socket bonus.

After playing around with a lot of circumstances in my head, I decided to pull out a piece of scratch paper and do some math, in hopes that it would help me decide what I would benefit from more.

1 Agility grants all of these to properly talented, unbuffed druids in bear form:

2.65 attack power

.0034% dodge

.0031% crit chance

1 stamina grants to properly talented, unbuffed druids in bear form:

17.05 health

So, to put this in perspective, my two different gems:

60 stamina gem:

1023 health

or 20 dodge rating/30 stam gem (with 10 agility socket bonus):

.34% dodge

.031% crit chance

511.5 health

26.5 attack power

Now, we can break these stats down a bit more. Keep in mind that agility and stamina are also modified by Mark of the Wild, adding an additional 5% to them, but that's not something we're looking at right now. At level 85 65.12 dodge rating = 1%, so by socketing that dodge rating gem, and getting the 10 agi socket bonus you gain almost a full half-percent of dodge. I think that the dodge/stam gem is the better choice because it just offers more benefit per point of itemization than socketing for pure stamina.

Now then, let's look at another piece where the decision is, in my opinion, significantly harder.

Sly Fox Jerkin, picked up from Guardians of Hyjal with a revered reputation. As you can see, this item has 2 sockets, a red and a blue, with a socket bonus of 20 mastery rating. Now, the blue socket should definitely get a 60 stamina gem, there's no question there... The red socket is the questionable one. The way I see it, you have 3 different options:

60 stamina gem, ignoring the socket bonus.

40 agility gem for the socket bonus.

20 agility/30 stamina gem for the socket bonus.

We'll just look at the red socket, and see what benefit you would get from each gem... We'll take for granted that all of these are considered unbuffed and in bear form.

60 stam = 1021 health

40 agi = 106 attack power, .14% dodge, .12% crit, 20 mastery rating,

20 agi/30 stam = 53 attack power, .07% dodge, .06% crit, 20 mastery rating, 511.5 health.

20 mastery rating (from the socket bonus) comes out to .11 mastery... which really isn't a whole lot. I think this is more of a personal judgement call. After putting the stats in here, I don't necessarily feel like the pure agility gem is a worthwhile call, bringing it down to pure health, or health + avoidance with a smidgen of mastery. I actually feel like the 20 agi/30 stam is the right call to make, but as I said, this is really a much more difficult call to make, and is entirely up to you.

Socket bonuses to avoid +critical strike rating, +haste, and other overly garbage stats like that.

Enchants:

These do NOT include the profession-specific enchants (inscription shoulder enchants, leatherworking bracer enchants, etc)

In cases where there's two listed, they're not necessarily in any order. They're just equally acceptable enchants, or (in the case of the weapon enchants) ones where I would need more information to pick between the two.

Head slot - Arcanum of the Earthen Ring - Earthen Ring - Revered

Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz - Therazane Exalted (Lesser one at honored)

Chest - Peerless Stats or Greater Stamina

Legs - Charscale Leg Armor - Leatherworking

Boots - Earthen Vitality

Bracers - Dodge

Gloves - Greater Expertise or Greater Mastery

Cloak - Protection

Weapon - Mighty Agility or Windwalk

How to bear in Cataclysm: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 05:15:00 +0000

Well! This is part two... getting into the real nitty-gritty... the actual in-dungeon method. If you haven't checked it out, you should see Part 1 first.

So... your dungeon group is put together. Congratulations! Now stop hyperventilating... Relax and take a deep breath. Take a look at your group makeup, and what dungeon you're in. Recognize what your party members can do CC-wise, and if you're unsure ask. If it's a pug, don't be ashamed or afraid to say that you aren't familiar with the instance you're running. (Or that you've never tanked it before, at the very least). You never know what kind of group you're going to come across. If someone in the group says they've done the place before, then don't be afraid to have them mark things for you so you can learn. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to use your cooldowns.. EVEN ON TRASH. Some trash hits as hard as some of the lighter bosses. You're going to take a beating. If you feel threatened start using things... just don't blow them all at once.

Now then. There's two ways to start a pull. You can initiate it, and have CC cast right as you're running in, or have the CC cast before you run in, and pull the mobs off of them. Personally I prefer the 2nd way. The mobs are coming towards you while your enrage is... giving you rage. Mobs heading towards whoever cast the first CC, when they're in range hit thrash/swipe. You should have your kill order setup, and marked with a skull (or whatever mark your group has agreed on to die first).

Now, I won't give you a specific set of things to do to keep aggro on a group of mobs, because it really depends on a LOT of different factors. Biggest thing I can tell you is to keep thrash and swipe on cooldown if there's more than two mobs. If everyone is focusing on your kill order, that should generally be enough, but you need to pay attention to everything. Watch your healer's mana bar, your party's health bar, your healer's mana bar, your target's health bar, omen, your healer's mana bar, the CC'd targets in the back, any patrolling mobs that might be coming too close to you guys, your healer's mana bar... starting to get the picture yet?

When I tank, my eyes are darting all over the damn screen. On trash i'm literally only looking at the actual trash mobs like 1/5 of the time because there is just so much everything else I need to keep an eye on. It takes a LOT of practice to get good at it. I can tell you right now, you WILL FAIL at some point. Don't take it too hard. I still screw up at some point. I know the DPS still screw up. Sometimes extra pulls are made, sometimes you may get too close to a CC'd mob with your swipe/thrash.. Don't panic. Panicking is the worst thing you can do, and can easily spell death for your group.

When your group wipes, take a second to take stock of what happened. What could you have done better? Did a mob get past you somehow? Did you position your combat mobs too close to your CC'd mobs? Was the kill order followed? Did a patrol catch you offguard? All of these things can, will, and DO happen. I have done them all... your guild's main tank has done them all... the main tank of Ensidia has done them all. /shrug. Nobody's perfect, and to expect such from yourself is only going to set yourself up for failure.

Now then... how do you keep aggro on packs of mobs? Thrash and Swipe are going to be your main abilities, but as they both have 6 second cooldowns, obviously they're not the only buttons you'll be hitting. I generally thrash, swipe, and mangle my main target, then start targetting my other targets and hit them with lacerates, hitting thrash and swipe as they come off cooldown, or occasionally mauling (you have that glyphed, right?) if you find yourself near the top end of your rage bar (as a rule, it's usually safe at 60 rage or more). Let the DPS do their work. Tab through your targets and keep an eye on your threat relative to theirs. Watch for errant spell-casts. Use your interrupts whenever you see something to interrupt. Don't be afraid to use your cooldowns. [b]ALWAYS keep an eye on your healer[/b]. Watch your healer's mana bar like a hawk in between pulls, and then...

Congratulations! You now have a big ugly boss staring you in the face. Do you know the mechanics of this boss fight? If not, feel free to ask your guildies/group members if there's anything specific you need to know. Unless your group's committed to going in blind. Make sure your group has completely mana'ed and healed up... make sure they're *ready* (yes there is a difference... sometimes people go afk for a split second, or will alt-tab for something briefly)... and then make the pull. Use your enrage to generate some opening rage, and hit it with your Faerie fire.

Now from the pull the first thing you need to worry about is positioning the boss. It's a 100% safe bet to put the boss's back to your party members. Unless there are obstacles that prevent that, any melee in your group will thank you for it. If you're unfamiliar with the mechanics of a fight, or if you know there is are knockbacks involved, putting your large butt against a wall is also a good idea. Now the problem with putting your back against a wall is that it will screw up your visibility immensely. There's a large joke running around that all tanks ever see is boss crotch. Rotate your camera around to your side so you can keep an eye on the party. That way any adds that spring up can be controlled quickly.

Once your boss is in melee range, and while your positioning him, it's time to start building threat... I mean, after all... that's your job as a tank, right? You absorb hits, and you build threat to make sure no one ELSE has to eat any of hits. Your FF will give a fair amount of opener threat. Now your highest threat generating ability, as well as your hardest hitting ability, is going to be Mangle. Mangle should be used as soon as it comes off of cooldown, EVERY time it comes off of cooldown. Watch for your berserk proc'd mangles as well... they take priority over everything else. The majority of your button presses are going to be Lacerate. You always want to get lacerate up to 3 stacks, and then Pulverize. Maul can be thrown in as your rage gets higher (again, 60 rage or higher it'll be safe to maul). I personally don't find the bleeds from lacerate hitting hard enough to be worth leaving stacked while Pulverize's buff runs lower. I could be wrong about this, but it's how [i]I, personally[/i] do it.

With all that, this is what your combat priority should be

Faerie Fire (to keep/refresh the debuff) > Demoralizing Roar (to keep/refresh the debuff) > Mangle > Maul (over 60 rage. It's off the GCD so fit it in anywhere really) > Lacerate x3 > Pulverize > Faerie Fire (if the buff isn't in need of refreshing/you're out of rage for some reason)

It's worth noting that you *shouldn't* run out of rage, but if you slip up and maul at the wrong time, you can definitely find yourself with a free global cooldown. Now, as for your defensive cooldowns. You need to learn what your healer can and cannot handle. If you see anything going on, and your health bar is dropping to an uncomfortable level, pop a cooldown. Depending on what's "uncomfortable" for you, should really depend on what cooldown you use. Barkskin is a short cooldown (And it can be used while you're stunned too), so it's a safe bet to use that one first. If, for some reason, you end up REALLY on low health, use another one (frenzied regen or survival instincts)... The worst thing you can do is panic and blow all 3 cooldowns at once. Sure, you'll take very little damage for a period of time, and your heals will pop you up much higher, quicker, but if the shit hits the fan again within 3 minutes, then you're boned.

Have you noticed a recurring theme here? A lot of what's involved in successfully tanking is keeping your head straight, and not spazzing out. Sure, some people can boil it down to a bunch of math and formulas and stat weights and priorities and such... and to a point those are ALL important, but a tanking is a lot more seat-of-your-pants style than DPSing is. Tanks have to be proactive AND reactive, and legitimately, the entire group depends on your ability to perform your job well. Don't expect to be an amazing tank right off the bat, but take the small successes with the failures, and find out what you do well, and where you can improve. Ask your party members or guildies for advice... find a good bear that you know and ask them for tips on what might help with certain encounters or trash pulls that give you headaches.

Feel free to leave me any comments or questions.

How to bear in Cataclysm

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 08:10:00 +0000

So, i've been doing a lot of talk about bears lately... and i'm going to talk about them more now, so deal with it. This is going to be more of a comprehensive "how to" guide for people who want to start bearing it up, but it's mostly focused on the 80-85 experience. To be perfectly honest, bears were relatively weak while levelling BEFORE the swipe cooldown was implemented. I'm not saying it's impossible for bears to tank in low levels now, but things are a lot harder that way... and honestly you'd have a much more difficult time of it. So... First thing I am going to look at is the talent spec. I know I posted about this a few weeks ago, but after having experienced the new content, I feel like I am pretty sure of my talent tree decisions now.

This will be the level 85 talent tree you want to shoot for. I seriously underestimated the importance that Perseverence would have, and I definitely feel that 6% is indeed worthy of 3 of those precious talent points you're given between 80 and 85. You'll notice there's 1 open point here... Not a lot of leeway to go with, I know, but it's better than nothing. I think I am going to put mine in Stampede for a bit of extra threat generation. Personal preference, of course.

This will be the tree you start off with at level 80. You can finally spec into Master Shapeshifter again! I know you've been eyeing it for weeks. Sadly, Master Shapeshifter is really a decent talent, but having it tied to Natural Shapeshifter is absolutely horrible and I hope that Blizz reconsiders it at some point, but nonetheless, your first point at 81 should probably go there.

I didn't specify any minor glyphs because really... there's not much to choose from. I pick Demoralizing Roar for the reduced cooldown, but otherwise you can do whatever. Prime glyphs really offer no customization... pick those 3 because they're the only ones that are of any use in bear form. Major glyphs are a bit more tricky. Maul is a definite must-have. Rebirth is damn nice if you actually get a chance to USE that ability... the 3rd major glyph I used is Frenzied Rengeration. I would rather hang on to my own rage stockpile and have my healer's heals hit harder (unintentional alliteration for the win?), than not be able to keep threat because I was suddenly rage-starved and had more health... your mileage may vary.

Now before you queue up to tank anything in Cataclsym, there's one thing you should do first.Hit... level... 81. Honestly, whoever decided that bears should only have 1 real AOE ability before 81 should be forced to tank Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides at level 80 until they renege... but I digress. Seriously, do yourself a favor and wait till level 81 before even thinking about tanking. Thrash really does make THAT MUCH DIFFERENCE in your ability to tank.

The second thing you want to do is familiarize yourself with your damaging abilities and your offensive/defensive cooldowns. Unlike most times in 70-80 dungeons, you should be ready to use your cooldowns a lot. Especially once you hit 85 and start looking towards heroics, but that's jumping the gun a bit. I'm going to give a brief rundown of your major abilities, and when you should use them.

AOE

Swipe - Low rage cost, low damage, moderate aggro. 6 second cooldown. 360 degree swipe, no target limit. Use judiciously when out of range of CC'd targets (8 yard range)

Thrash - High rage cost, moderate damage + bleed, moderate aggro. 6 second cooldown. Also 360 degree swipe w/no target limit. Best used in conjunction with swipe to ensure solid aggro on groups. (8 yard range)

Demoralizing Roar - Very low rage cost, does no damage, and thus does very little threat as well. Best used in larger groups to reduce the damage you take. Lasts for 30 seconds.

Challenging Roar - Low rage cost, long cooldown (3 minutes baseline, minor glyph reduces by 30s), produces no actual threat, just force-focuses* target's on you for 6 seconds. This is a sort of extreme situational use with patrols and unexpected adds.

Single target -

Mangle - Low rage cost, very high damage, very high aggro, 6 second cooldown. Your bread and butter single target ability. This should forever be on cooldown.

Lacerate - Low rage cost, low/moderate damage + very low damage bleed, no cooldown. Stacks 3 times. Your main filler ability. This has no cooldown other than the GCD, so use it often. It's also a good idea to tab target and lacerate mobs on groups in between swipe/thrash cooldowns. A nice way to keep extra threat, as well as proc rage-free mangles (which i'll get to in a bit)

Pulverize - Low rage cost, moderate/high damage, moderate/high aggro, no cooldown. New ability as of 4.0. Consumes lacerate stacks to increase your crit chance 3% per stack for 10 seconds. For single target boss-type encounters, this is an amazing ability for you. More crits = more Leader of the Pack heals, and more Savage Defense shields, and it does a good bit of damage to boot. I personally use this as soon as my Lacerate is stacked to 3 on bosses because, usually, by that time the buff is about to wear off.

Maul - High rage cost, moderate damage, moderate aggro, 3 second cooldown. Maul is no longer the king of the road that it used to be. I listed it as a single target ability because, baseline, it is. It can be glyphed to hit a 2nd target for 50% damage, and you definitely SHOULD do so, but generally you won't use it much in multi-target situations. This is your excess rage-bleeder ability more than anything else. It's off the GCD so throw it in anytime you're sitting above ~60 rage.

Faerie Fire - No rage cost, low damage, low/moderate aggro, 6 second cooldown. This is one of your only ranged abilities, and gives the target a debuff reducing their armor by 4% per stack (up to 3 stacks). Great way to make line of sight pulls, or tag a target who might be casting off in the distance. This can be talented to instantly stack 3x with one application.

Skull Bash - Low rage cost, zero damage, 1-minute cooldown, unsure of aggro generation but it's a spell interrupt off the GCD! /cheer. Druids have been aching for an actual non-stunning interrupt for who knows how long... 4.0 delivered with this blessed ability, talented down to a 10-second cooldown... there's nothing negative I can say about it. Oh... did I mention it charges too?

Charge - Very low rage cost, zero damage, zero threat generation, immobilizes mob for 4 seconds, 15 second cooldown. Nice way to get a "runs away in fear", or to get a mob chasing after your healer awfully quick. 30 second cooldown is... annoying at times, but more than fair as you shouldn't have to use it TOO much in-combat. This no longer interrupts spell casting like it used to, but we have skull bash for that now.

Bash - Low rage cost, zero damage, unsure of threat generation, 1 minute cooldown (talented to 50 second cooldown). Stuns a mob for 4 (talented up to 5) seconds. Decent secondary spell interrupt, and last-resort crowd control. I believe I remember reading that it would still interrupt a stun-immune mob, but don't quote me on that.

Growl - No rage cost, no damage, taunt* mechanic. Be sure to actually hit a mob after taunting him, or they'll just turn around again.

*I should clarify the difference between a taunt mechanic and a forced-focus briefly. Challenging Roar forces the target(s) to focus on you, but does absolutely nothing to the threat table. If you don't hit them in that 6 second time span, they'll go back to whomever they were looking at before. Growl on the other hand is an actual taunt. It will put your name on top of the aggro list just above whomever had current aggro.

Cooldowns - (both offensive, defensive, and otherwise)

Frenzied Regeneration - 3 minute cooldown. Baseline, it increases health by 30%, and converts 10 rage/second into health for 20 seconds. Glyphed, instead of converting your rage into health, it increases the effectiveness of all heals on you by 30%. I personally went with the glyph, because I like keeping my rage to actually generate threat on the mob(s). Feel free to try it either way and see which you prefer though.

Survival Instincts - 3 minute cooldown. Reduces damage taken by 50% for 12s. Basic shield wall like all classes have now.

Barkskin - 1 minute cooldown. Reduces damage taken by 20% for 10s. This should be used OFTEN. 20% makes a huge difference... and at a 1 minute cooldown, can you really afford to NOT use this all the goddamn time?

Enrage - 1 minute cooldown. Instantly gives 20 rage (talented to 32), and generates 10 more over 10s. Best used in between pulls, but you need to be careful as this makes you take 10% MORE physical damage while it's active.

Berserk - 3 minute cooldown. When I mentioned "otherwise" under the cooldowns part, I was referring to this. This is an offensive cooldown, with an added benefit of a random proc when you don't use it. When lacerate deals damage to a mob, it has a chance to refresh the cooldown of mangle, and make it rage free... that's a berserk proc. But, when you USE berserk, it makes your mangle have no cooldown, and it also makes it a 3-person cleave for 15 (glyphed to 20) seconds. Great way for insanely high threat at the start of a fight.

Take a minute and go to some older, yet semi-challenging content, to play around with your abilities and get a feel for how your cooldowns work. Perfect place to do that would be BC dungeons. Go try and solo Hellfire Ramparts or Sethekk Halls... or if you're up for a challenge, try turning them up to heroic, provided you have the respective keys. I've found that soloing these have given me a real great way to learn what kind of damage I can handle, when to pop my cooldowns, how much healing I can take from Leader of the Pack, and what kind of mechanics to learn to watch out for... maybe that's just me though.

Next thing I want to look at is gear. I'm hardly a theorycrafting expert, and ElitistJerks tends to make my head hurt when I go read through it, but this is basically how I feel about gear right now.

Agility and Stamina are king... Strength also gives us 2 AP per 1 point, but strength gear is generally saved for plate wearers. Parry is a useless stat for us so try to avoid it, unless the piece is SUCH a significant upgrade as outweigh useless stats... AND unless no one else really wants it. Poorly itemized upgrades for you do not give you priority over someone's offspec... please don't be a dick about your gear.

As far as "green stats" go, I don't have specific weights, but I figure it will be something on the order of: Dodge >= Mastery > Hit/Expertise > Crit > Haste

Other stats like resilience or parry give us zero benefit from a tanking perspective, so they have very little business being on any gear we pick up.

There has been discussion in some camps about taking Strength items with dodge rating (cloaks, rings, and necklaces primarily), but this will still end up coming farther behind taking an agility item without dodge rating. Here are a couple images to prove my point... taken with my very own bear, completely unbuffed, in bear form.

Now, as you can see in the first image, I picked up a strength ring with dodge rating on it, and in the second shot I have an agility ring with no dodge rating. Both rings are the same item level... they even came from the same reputation faction, so they're even budgeted comparably. Yet, the agility one comes out with more dodge, and it can even be reforged with the excess hit rating into more dodge rating. So unless the item is a MAJOR upgrade for you, then there's no reason to pick strength items over agility items.

Now that you've got a basic handle on your abilities and what they do, grabbed yourself some gear to work with... and you've made it to at least level 81 (you HAVE made it to 81, haven't you?) it's time... Press that random dungeon finder! Better yet, ask some guildies if they want to run with you. Guildies tend to be a lot more forgiving if they know you're just learning.

"Your dungeon group has been found!" /flail OGAWD WHAT DO I DO!

Well... Part two will get into that! I'm breaking this up for the sake of walls of text critting you for 800 million overkill.

Trinkets yes, pretty trinkets! (BRAWWK-K!!)

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:22:00 +0000

Pre raiding trinkets are something i've been REALLY hesitant to mention up to this point. Now that my druid is level 85 (2nd in my guild... not to bad in my opinion) i've found myself in a position where I need to start looking seriously at trinkets I can grab.

Problem is, they're pretty damn scant. Any of you who tanked in Wrath... feel free to sigh and nod knowingly. So, without further ado...

Your Pre-raid trinket list

Be warned, unlike my previous lists, I included profession-specific ones here.

[Heart of Thunder] Static Armor, with a Battlemaster-style on use health increase. Never been a fan of tanks using battlemaster trinkets, but the armor is quite nice. This is actually the one that I picked up earlier from Heroic Vortex Pinnacle.

[Leaden Despair] Your standard high stamina tanking trinket, with a nice little proc when you get below 35% health. I will be farming for this one as a backup. It drops from Heroic Stonecore.

[Porcelain Crab] A great passive dodge increase (4.37% at level 85) makes this worthwhile by itself, but the added benefit of proccing a HUGE mastery bonus is amazing. I am curious what the up-time on that proc is, because it could raise or lower the value of this trinket pretty dramatically. Drops from Heroic Throne of the Tides.

[Darkmoon Card: Earthquake] Unless you literally have money BURNING HOLES in your bank alt's bank account, you probably won't be coming across this anytime soon... and honestly, I don't feel it's worth the monetary cost it'll inevitably generate. Dodge (albeit a nice amount of dodge) and a battlemaster's health increase? It seems a bit underbudget for an ilvl 359 epic.

[Figurine: Earthen Guardian] Jewelcrafting only. If you're a JC, there's absolutely no reason you should bypass this. A large stam bonus, plus a huge on-use dodge cooldown... Amazing, and possibly even overbudget for an i346 blue.

[Lifebound Alchemist Stone] Alchemy only. A large amount of stam, a blue gem socket, and a great mastery increase??? If you're an alchemist bear, there's no reason to bypass this. Truly fits the i359 epic.

Welps.... that's really all there is. There are a lot of other....iffy trinkets bears could take with obscene amounts of agility and mastery... and I guess to a point it's really situational. I think taking legit tanking trinkets would be far more benefit in the long run, because heroics are [b]scary[/b] right now... I can only imagine what raids are going to be like.

In which I don't just put my foot in my mouth...

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 08:49:00 +0000

I inhaled the entire damn thing.

So... you may've noticed me rampaging like a madman earlier. Yeah, I kinda went off on twitter, I went off in my blog... and that's what it's here for, but I still think I over did it.

I played my paladin for a couple hours, got her up to 81 and then while doing some more questing I ran into an asshole who just kept corpse camping me... fuck that, I logged back into my druid. Deepholm is a REALLY fun zone by the way. Amazing for herbing as well... holy crap I found a ton of herbs there. Anyway... I decided "what the hell.. My druid's farther along than my pally.. Might as well take him to 85 first... and if i'm gonna do that, i'm going to see if maybe there is something that *I'M* doing wrong"...

/g Anybody want to do a dungeon?

5 minutes later i'm in a group full of guildies, and off we go... Throne of the Tides. Hrmm... I think I remember how this goes. (hops in vent anyway... none of the people I was queued with are in there, but others are so whatevs)

(~30 minutes later) Well shit... that was smooth. What the hell was I doing differently? Hrmm...

warlock in party: Wanna do BRC? There's a something in there I want.

me: Sure why not.

(another ~30 minutes later) Fuck.. that was clean. What the hell's different?

*queue up vent* PANZERKIN! I'm not running dungeons with you anymore. You're too much of an aggro whore.

panzerkin (in vent): Yeah.. probably. What makes you say that?

me: Cause I just did 2 dungeons with other guildies and had almost ZERO AGGRO ISSUES YOU MOONKIN WHORE.

panzerkin: Heh.. Yeah... It could be just me.

*Cue me second guessing my rant from earlier while I go back to questing in Deepholm*

(hour-ish? later) Another guildie whisperes me: "You done Stonecore yet?"

me: "Yep"

him: "Want to go again? They have (some other item) I kinda want."

me: "Sure... see who else in guild wants to go"

(2o minutes later group is put together.... 45 minutes after THAT we're done)

Well fuck.. Yeah I lost aggro a couple times, but I didn't feel like the helpless little scrub-sauce I was this morning. I had to work harder than I am used to, and I had to pay a lot more attention... but it really wasn't too bad.

So yeah. Anyone I might've offended or acted overly snarky towards on twitter... if you're reading this, I apologize. Bears might need a little help... but I think I needed more help this morning. I needed to take more control of the DPS and, I needed to take more control of how I was tanking. I'm a good tank, but there's still a lot of that WotLK mindset rampaging around in my brain... need to work on that, but I think i'm on my way.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a size-12 I need to remove from my esophogus.

Rage Against the Fuzzy Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:28:00 +0000

I'm mad as hell.

Why?

Because druid tanks are fucking BROKEN right now.

How?

Let me give you a little clue.

I've done... I levelled my bear to 82. I refused to tank anything with him until 81 because of the nerf to swipe's damage, thinking that Thrash would at least put all right with the world. Dinged 81, got a guild group together to do the first couple dungeons I could find... Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns.

First off.. holy shit these dungeons are AMAZING. Secondly... THRASH IS ALMOST AS FUCKING USELESS AS SWIPE RIGHT NOW.

It hits each target for around 600, and ticks for another ~500 every couple seconds for 6 seconds.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS LIMP DICK NONSENSE?

(Okay Chris... breathe... breathe.........)

Sorry for the disjointed paragraph structure, but I feel the need to emphasize my points more. While my survivability wasn't hit, nor was my threat output on boss mobs, my ability to control TRASH mobs is borderline non-existant. Give you a hint? I'm losing mobs to HEALER AGGRO..

That's right folks. My fellow officer, and AMAZING disc priest buddy is pulling aggro off of my fuzzy broken bear ass.

WHAT... THE... FUCK???

I'm extremely saddened and angry about this. I am legitimately SO mad that i'm transferring a level 80 pally over to level instead of my druid until they can fix goddamn druid tanks. I feel THAT ineffectual right now on trash packs. That's only half the problem. The other half? I genuinely LOVE my druid. He's the closest i've felt to a REAL main since my mage was retired in after Ulduar. I also LOVE tanking. I should NOT have to roll another class JUST to be able to tank 5-mans properly. That shit was supposed to have been put to bed sometime in Burning Crusade.

And another part of me is REALLY pissed that I paid $25 to race change my druid to a worgen, JUST to have him become a borderline-unusable tank.

On an up-note, Cataclysm is fucking AMAZING, and if it weren't for broken druids, I think I would be popping the question any day now.

Dear Blizzard:

Fix bears... Druids, in general, are a very fiercely loyal breed to their class, and I hate feeling like I can't do what the fuck I want to do because you made us WAY too powerful for a few weeks, and then overcorrected. I know you'll probably fix it in the future as more and more people continue bitching, but it's really quite painful to tank right now.

No love,

Broken-hearted bear fan.

Level 85 gear, for the raid-minded bear.

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:49:00 +0000

So, you want to raid on your bear. Well, as you may or may not have seen, I did a list of gear to look for before getting into tanking heroic dungeons. By no means is it completely comprehensive, or a strict baseline of what you NEED TO HAVE before bearing it up in heroics. The same goes for the post to come. It's not 100%, it's not a step by step MUST HAVE THIS OMG OR YOU CAN'T RAID. I'm no Elitist Jerks... and I can't tell you the stat weights and priorities from memory of what we need and when to judge crit over mastery or vice versa.

Here's what I can tell you from my personal experience with bears:

Agility and Stamina are king. I don't think anyone will ever dispute that really.

We need 961 (rounded up) hit rating to be 8% hit capped.

We need 781 (rounded up) expertise to be dodge-capped.

Parry cap is 1682 expertise, so I wouldn't even worry about that.

Hit and Expertise are our biggest threat stats. Do we necessarily have to be capped? Not... necessarily, but we're probably gimping our threat generation the farther from it we are.

Our Mastery is FUCKING AMAZING, even after the nerf. We should probably devour it up. I have no theory to back it up, but I would even suggest reforging all haste into mastery once we're close to the hit/expertise levels we need.

Our Mastery ALSO only procs off of crits so crit rating is going to matter to a point as well.

This list is all heroic dungeon level items or higher (such as crafted/reputation items). You will see a little overlap from my previous list, but only because of item level. I'm also ignoring any resilience gear, as it's generally not as good for raiding as it's item level belies.

This list is set up very similarly to the last one, with a couple additions. After I name an item, i'll list where it's procured from, and it's "green stats". Mastery, haste, crit, hit, expertise are all green stats. All of these items generally have 2 of them in some combination, so it is up to you to decide which ones would be more beneficial to your bear, based on the gear you already have. And so, with that out of the way, on to the list!

Helm

Helm of Numberless Shadows - Heroic Stonecore (Hit/Crit)

Mask of Vines - 2,200 Justice Points (Crit/Haste)

Shoulders

Caridean Epaulets - Heroic Throne of the Tides (Expertise/Haste)

Embrace of the Night - 1,650 Justice Ppoints (Crit/Hit)

Thieving Spaulders - Heroic Shadowfang Keep (Crit/Haste)

Cloaks

Kaleki Cloak - Heroic List City of Tol'vir (Mastery/Hit)

Cloak of Thredd - Heroic Deadmines (Mastery/Crit)

Razor-Edged Cloak - Leatherworking (Mastery/Crit)

Cape of the Brotherhood - Heroic Deadmines (Haste/Hit)

Softwind Cape - Earthen Ring - Revered (Haste/Hit)

Twitching Shadows - Heroic Blackrock Caverns (Crit/Haste)

Chest (There is an epic, ilvl 359 item in here, but don't let the purple fool you)

Vest of Misshapen Hides - Heroic Grim Batol (Mastery/Crit)

Defias Brotherhood Vest - Heroic Deadmines (Mastery/Haste)

Hieroglyphic Vest - Heroic Halls of Origination (Crit/Haste)

Tunic of Shifting Envy - 2,200 Justice Points (Crit/Hit)

Assassin's Chestplate - Leatherworking (Crit/Hit) No gem sockets

Bracers

Double Dealing Bracers - Heroic Shadowfang Keep (Mastery/Crit)

Poison Fang Bracers - Heroic Halls of Origination (Haste/Hit)

Gloves

Sticky Fingers - 1,650 Justice Points (Mastery/Haste)

Gloves Of Haze - Heroic Vortex Pinnacle (Mastery/Crit)

Liar's Handwraps / Stormbolt Gloves - Dragonmaw Clan (H)/Wildhammer Clan (A): Exalted (Crit/Haste)

Belt

Sash of Musing - 1,650 Justice Points (Expertise/Mastery)

Quicksand Belt - Rankahen - Revered (Crit/Hit)

Red Beam Cord - Heroic Halls of Origination (Crit/Haste)

Belt of a Thousand Mouths - ?????? (Crit/Haste) No gem socket

Belt of Nefarious Whispers - Leatherworking (Mastery/Hit) No gem socket

Legs

Leggings of the Burrowing Mole - 2,200 Justice Points (Mastery/Expertise)

Beauty's Chew Toy - Heroic Blackrock Caverns (Haste/Hit)

Boots

Crafty's Gaiters - Heroic Lost City of Tol'vir (Mastery/Haste)

VanCleef's Boots - Heroic Deadmines (Mastery/Haste)

Boots of the Predator - Heroic Shadowfang Keep (Crit/Hit)

(I decided, what the hell, and went ahead to include jewelry/weapons/relics. NOTHING in here should be Profession Specific)

Neck

Brazen Elementium Medallion - Jewelcrafting (Crit/Haste)

Entwined Elementium Choker - Jewelcrafting (Crit/Haste)

Pendant of the Lightless Grotto - Heroic Stonecore (Crit/Mastery) no socket

Mouth of the Earth - Heroic Halls of Origination (Hit/Expertise) no socket

Barnacle Pendant - Heroic Throne of Tides (Haste/Expertise) no socket

Acorn of the Daughter Tree - Guardians of Hyjal: Revered (Crit/Haste) no socket

Amulet of Dull Dreaming - 1,250 Justice Points (Crit/Haste) no socket

Ring

Band of Blades - Jewelcrafting (Crit/Hit)

Elementium Destroyer's Ring - Jewelcrafting (Mastery/Crit)

Skullcracker Ring - Heroic Blackrock Caverns (Crit/Haste) no socket

Terrath's Signet of Balance - Therazane: Revered (Mastery/Hit) no socket

Ring of Blinding Stars - Heroic Halls of Origination (Mastery/Haste) no socket

Ring of Dun Algaz - Heroic Grim Batol (Crit/Hit) no socket

Nautilus Ring - ?????? (Crit/Haste) no socket

Mirage Ring - Heroic Lost City of Tol'Vir (Haste/Hit) no socket

Signet of the Elder Council - Earthen Ring: Exalted (Haste/Mastery) no socket

Relic (Cata is introducing a NOVEL idea of craftable fucking relics... WIN!!!!)

Relic of Arathor - Heroic Shadowfang Keep (Crit/Haste)

Sandshift Relic - Heroic Blackrock Caverns (Crit/Hit)

Silver Inlaid Leaf - Inscription (Crit/Haste)

Weapons (I only went with 2handed weapons, because that's what a druid should fucking use IMO)

Seliza's Spear - Heroic Lost City of Tol'vir (Mastery/Crit)

Elementium Poleaxe - Blacksmithing (Mastery/Crit)

Darkling Staff - Heroic Stonecore (Hit/Mastery)

Mobus' Vile Halberd - Mobus - World raid boss in Vashj'ir. (Haste/Mastery)

Berto's Staff - Heroic Blackrock Caverns (Crit/Haste)

Spear of Trailing Shadows - Baradin's Wardens (A)/Hellscream's Reach (H): Revered (Hit/Haste)

You'll notice I didn't include Trinkets in this list... there's a wee bit of laziness in that, on my end, so I apologize for that. The main problem with trinkets is that some of them provide substantial bonuses (agility stacks, large on-use mastery bonuses, etc) that without knowing a bit more about proc rates, uptimes, and stat-weights I can't make very well informed decisions about trinkets. Sorry about that folks! Hope the rest of this list is very useful to you, and again if you have questions/comments/disputes about anything I listed, feel free to comment!

How to gear your bear @ 85

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 06:27:00 +0000

What is this? Another USEFUL post? God forbid. Well, I figured somewhere in the midst of my "20 days of WoW" challenges, I would throw a nugget of genuinely helpful information... so to Wowhead I went... with lots of items to sort through, and a profiler that refuses to show stats for level 85.... blah. Anyway, here goes. All of these items are acquired either by reputation, crafting, normal mode dungeons, or Justice points... No heroics required (necessarily) for these.

I should note that I am going to leave out jewelry (rings, necks, trinkets) and the idol. Jewelry is going to be bizarre to come across, and idols... well, I assume there won't be many to come across between 80 and 85, so on to the armor...

Here's the basic rundown. I name a slot, and show the items that i've found fit best in that slot pre-heroic dungeons via Wowhead's item comparison. I included JP purchasable items under the assumption that doing a random normal mode dungeon once daily will still net you some JP the first time you do them. All of these items are blue quality, because Blizzard is doing what they can to make epic level items feel much more significant than they did in Wrath (which is perfectly fine by me).

You'll notice a significant number of options are from the Bloodied Leather crafted set. Not unlike the Eviscerator's set before it, these provide a decent set of stats, and are relatively easily obtainable, but are usually missing a crucial stat such as hit, expertise, or mastery, and instead replace them with Resilience. Sadly, resilience is a garbage stat since we get crit-immunity through talents.

I won't go into great lengths to tell you which stats you need, and which to prioritize over others because I will assume that if you're here, you have a basic idea of how things work. Agility, Stamina, Hit, Expertise, Mastery, Crit are our key stats. Haste isn't bad, but I would never prioritize it over the others.

You may notice on a couple items (mainly the cloaks) that they have strength instead of agility. The reason for this is.... a bit complicated, as Blizzard has said that they want non-plate wearers to go for agility for their AP. The problem is that gear with tanking stats (such as dodge) don't come on items with agility. Will the agility we have give us enough dodge, or will we have to dip into "plate" tanking cloaks/rings/necks? Not entirely sure just yet... I will require some field test to follow up for certain. Anyway, enough rambling... on with the list!

Head
Here is your item comparison.
[Dunwald Winged Helm] and [Shocktrooper Hood] are the same item, only Alliance/Horde (respectively) quest rewards from the Twilight Highlands.
[Bloodied Leather Helm] is a part of the level 85 crafted leatherworking set. It's a starter pvp set, very similar to the Eviscerator's set that could be made at used at level 78.
[Mask of Vines] is purchased for 2,200 justice points.

Shoulders
Here is your item comparison.
[Clandestine Spaulders] drop from the normal mode Lost City of Tol'vir dungeon.
[Bloodied Leather Shoulders] are a part of the same leatherworking set I mentioned earlier.
[Embrace of the Night] is purhcased for 1,650 justice points.

Chest
Here is your item comparison.
[Heiroglyphic Vest] drops from the normal mode Halls of Origination.
[Bloodied Leather Chest] yeah, it's bloodied.. leatherworking... yadda yadda.
[Tunic of Sinking Envy] 2,200 justice points.

Cloak
Here is your item comparison.
[Shade of Death] uhm.... I have no idea where this comes form.. weird.
[Razor-Edged Cloak] is made from Leatherworking.
[Twilight Dragonscale Cloak] is also made from Leatherworking.

Wrist
Here is your item comparison.
[Poison Fang Bracers] drop from normal mode Halls of Origination.
[Bloodied Leather Bracers] more pvp leatherworking gear.

Gloves
Here is your comparison.
[Bloodied Leather Gloves] bloodied... I think you get the pattern by now.
[Sticky Fingers] bought with 1,650 justice points.

Belt
Here is your item comparison.
[Red Beam Cord] is dropped out of the normal mode Halls of Origination.
[Bloodied Leather Belt]
[Sash of Musing] is bought with 1,650 justice points.
[Belt of a Thousand Mouths] there's no location given for this item.

Legs
Here is your item comparison.
[Garona's Finest Leggings] and [Shaw's Finest Leggings] are horde/alliance (respective) quest rewards from Twilight Highlands.
[Bloodied Leather Leggings] second verse, same as the first.
[Leggings of the Burrowing Mole] 2,200 justice points.

Boots
Here is your item comparison.
[Crafty's Gaiters] drop from the Lost City of Tol'vir.
[Bloodied Leather Boots] bloody leatherworkers are going to clean up with up and coming feral druids.

Holy hell that's a lot of stuff, and it's not even ALL of our slots. Feel free to add, question, or dispute any of my choices in the comments. I am always willing to help people out with learning to bear-butt :D

20 Days of World of Warcraft - Day 7

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:05:00 +0000

Day 7, not even a full 12 hours after days 5 and 6 came out... go figure eh? Anyway...

Day 7 - Favorite companion non-combat pet?

Blah. I'm not much of a pet collector. It just isn't my thing really. That being said, if I were made of money, I would buy Moonkin pets for everyone I know because the money goes to charity. If the Lil Ragnaros pet's money went to charity, i'd have that too... Bravo for Blizzard donating money to the Make A Wish foundation. Kudos to that.

On a side note, *Stands In Bad* officially sunsetted their raiding schedule for at least the next month to prepare for Cataclysm... well, not so much prepare for it as today's the last fucking raid lockout before launch, but I digress.

My guild went into Icecrown Citadel, Ruby Sanctum, and Obsidian Sanctum (3 drakes up), over the course of 2 days and just mercilessly destroyed everything. I managed to miss out on the drake from OS3D, yet again... Professor Putricide refused to give me his trinket, yet again... and in spite of that, it was a great time. It was our first time to go into ICC in probably 6 weeks, and it was a lot of fun to go in and just wreck the place. It really gave a feeling of a sense of completion, as well as offered a couple people their Kingslayer titles. One person was a new guildie, and another was a person who just never raided with us that much.

Anyway... Hats off to you, Wrath of the Lich King. Some real fun times were had within your 25 month time span, but it is time to move on... A bit of a bittersweet feeling, really.

20 Days of World of Warcraft - Days 5 & 6

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:27:00 +0000

Crap, I missed wednesday... stupid sinus cold. Oh well. Here's day 5 and 6 together, because 5 is SO short of an answer.

What is the meaning behind your main's name?

Funnily enough, there is absolutely no meaning behind just about any of my toon's names. I just keep hitting randomize until I see something I like. If it's taken, i'll alter it a letter or so while still keeping the same pronunciation.

What is your favorite dungeon, and why?

Wow.. That's a REALLY steep question. There are so many good dungeons and there are so many dungeons I simply wish would bathe in fire... but I digress. My favorite one... right now I think that's a tossup between Deadmines and Magister's Terrace. For lore purposes and such, Deadmines is just amazing. Especially with the overhaul and changes to the dungeon. (I won't spoil it, but if you've not been since the Shattering happened, I STRONGLY suggest doing the quests in Westfall and then going to check it out). But for lore purposes Magister's Terrace is also simply spectacular... even if you overlook the birth of "...just a setback" being there. The dungeons are difficult and long without being game-breakingly annoying. They have the ability to wipe any (at level) group who isn't careful enough. The bosses are very well done, challenging, but still FUN.

I honestly don't think I could pick between the two. Aesthetically, Magister's Terrace wins. For story, Deadmines takes it home. I'm calling an even split between the two of them, personally.

20 Days of World of Warcraft - Day 4

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:44:00 +0000

15 minutes before midnight! STILL COUNTS! >.>

What is your favorite emote and the best situation to use it in?

There's several i've found good uses for. Living on a PvP server I think my favorite one, recently, has become /golfclap. You clap for [target], clearly unimpressed. What does that have to do with being on a PvP server? Well, quite simply there's a fair amount of lowbie ganking going on. I always take time to /sigh at high levels who attack me. And if they fail to kill me in just one shot, then I /golfclap at them, because they're apparently doing SUCH a spectacular job. They're completely pro at PvP... can't you tell?

/flail.

That's one I do a lot IRL. I'm not entirely sure if it's a real emote in-game, but it should be.

There's a lot of IRL flailing going on.

20 Days of World of Warcraft - Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:47:00 +0000

Man.. I should REALLY set an alarm for myself to remember to do this.. Anyway Day 3's question is...

Who is your favorite NPC?

Urgh.. Y'know.. this is a really difficult question for me to answer. There are so many cool characters in WoW's history that have great stories in the lore and what not... but picking just one? Ugh, I dunno.

After thinking about it for a while, I have decided on Algalon the Observer... the FINAL final boss in Ulduar. Why? Several reasons: One, the fight is BAD ASS. Just... simply amazing. Two, his in-game model is stellar. One of the best in my opinion. Three, his speech after defeating him, included below...

"I've seen worlds bathed in The Makers flames. Their denizens fading without so much as whimper. Entire planetary systems born and raised in the time it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart, devoid of emotion of empathy, I have felt.... NOTHING. A million, million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity, had they all loved life as you do..."

Holy shit... I know that the speech may not seem like much just reading it, but hearing the vocalizations is just stunning. Especially at the "I have felt... NOTHING" part. It's just chilling. Also, think about Algalon's story. He is simply a tool of the creators. He has been running around the cosmos for untold countless millenia doing everything the Makers' have asked without questioning his purpose, or the absolute wisdom of the creator's decisions... until now. Until 10 (or 25) lowly humans injure him to the point of actually making him think he could be beaten... make him second guess everything. How would you feel in his situation?

20 Days of Warcraft - Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Achloryn) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 17:36:00 +0000

This had totally slipped my mind... I guess it's a good thing I tend to write my blog posts REALLY early in the morning, eh? Oh well.. Day 2!

What is your favorite race and why?

This is another one I kinda struggled with for a while. First inclination was to say Draenei, but then... no. I just hate the way their male model looks. Their female models look awesome, and the lore behind their class is so great. I really just love their backstory and the interaction with the Legion and all of that.

Overall I kind of settled on a 3-way tie for first though. I just can't decide!

Orc, Troll, Dwarf. I know, seems like an odd combination, but hear me out. The lore behind all three of these races is just amazing. Especially with all the political intrigue going on in Ironforge at the moment, that just makes things a LOT more interesting. The heated arguments between Vol'jin and Garrosh are fucking epic. I started a baby troll last night and brought him through the Echo Isles, and while i'm not going to spoil the quest line.. HOLY SHIT! Anyway... Then the orcs. They've always had a cool story line, and I admit I am a sucker for anything with the Burning Legion so heavily tied in. I flew my baby troll into Orgrimmar last night and HOLY SHIT. I even had a spazz attack over twitter about it. I mean, I had seen screenshots, and heard about it all, but NOTHING prepares you for the real thing like taking that wind rider in from Razor Hill, and zooming your camera all the way in.