Glyph of Innervate - Innervate now grants the caster 45% of his or her base mana pool over 10 sec in addition to the normal effects of Innervate.
Is this a boost or a nerf? I did some math this morning, but didn't get all the factors right... (note to self: no math before 8 am)
As it stands right now, it seems to give roughly over 2500 mana to the druid if they cast it on some one else. I know that seems low, but I checked the logs of my comrade in branches over three fights (two Mimiron and one Iron Council). Hardly empirical but since I don't have the glyph it's the best I could come up with.
Does this mean that the return will be like 1500 over 10 secs? If so, ewwww.
In unrelated news... OMG Peggle Warcraft edition!!
Download it. You know you want to. I wish I could upgrade my Deluxe Edition to a Warcraft Expansion :)
Wednesday, July 8
Monday, July 6
Where do you stand?
We all know we have certain places we need to stand during boss fights, but what about during trash?
See, a lot of trash either throws out cone and aoe effects which tend to rip through the raid has they crowd around each other.
But what if there are other places to stand?
Maybe its the trash tedium getting to me, but I tried to find different places to stand. Of course, it doesn't always work out well for me. I get teased every raid for being in front of the trash leading to IC. "There's a warm spot up near me," says the MT. Yes, I took some fire damage and died rather quickly.
The goal of my placement hunting is to just be away from everyone else. I don't like clumping in a group while folks are frozen in place yet zapping the heck out of us. Or, eating hurricanes. I'd rather give them than receive them.
Of course, sometimes its helpful to be close to others, especially when the raid damage is unavoidable. At that time, you want to clump with others for the aoe heals. But when the damage can be avoided, why put yourself in harms way?
Take Ignis for example.
I am the tree in the foreground. The picture is small, but notice how the bulk of the ranged are in a nice little group in the center with just me and a hunter away from the group. If I am the target of those tornadoes, it will make a straight line to me, but won't hit everyone else. I will just shapeshift to travel form, run straight up the ramp and no one is pwnd. If you choose to stay in that little group over there, make sure you run in a straight line behind you so that folks can scatter away to the sides. Otherwise, its just going to be a lot of bouncy bouncy.
Being away from others is easier as a healer. As long as you are close to the tanks and the bulk of the other raiders, you don't need to be right up in them.
Again, off to the side.
Here, I made use of a water walking potion. I stand on the pool, away from everyone else. If I do end up taking damage, thus falling in the water, I just stay in there. Being in the water a little won't stop my heals. If I get concerned about a hurricane, I move up to the land, but still away from the bulk of the fighting. By the way, being on the pool also works well when I have to CC the drake on this particular trash because I can pull him away from the DKs and Pally aoes.
Just about any trash has places I can stand that aren't in the line of fire. Hodir's trash is rough because of the narrow hallway. Mimiron's trash has me sometimes hugging a wall.
Also, I make sure I have a good camera distance and angle. Mine is constantly set beyond the standard maximum out of habit, which ends up being helpful when trying to see where I am standing in relation to all the bad stuff. I tend to angle it 3/4 style or even directly top down.
So, where do you like to stand during trash pulls?
See, a lot of trash either throws out cone and aoe effects which tend to rip through the raid has they crowd around each other.
But what if there are other places to stand?
Maybe its the trash tedium getting to me, but I tried to find different places to stand. Of course, it doesn't always work out well for me. I get teased every raid for being in front of the trash leading to IC. "There's a warm spot up near me," says the MT. Yes, I took some fire damage and died rather quickly.
The goal of my placement hunting is to just be away from everyone else. I don't like clumping in a group while folks are frozen in place yet zapping the heck out of us. Or, eating hurricanes. I'd rather give them than receive them.
Of course, sometimes its helpful to be close to others, especially when the raid damage is unavoidable. At that time, you want to clump with others for the aoe heals. But when the damage can be avoided, why put yourself in harms way?
Take Ignis for example.
I am the tree in the foreground. The picture is small, but notice how the bulk of the ranged are in a nice little group in the center with just me and a hunter away from the group. If I am the target of those tornadoes, it will make a straight line to me, but won't hit everyone else. I will just shapeshift to travel form, run straight up the ramp and no one is pwnd. If you choose to stay in that little group over there, make sure you run in a straight line behind you so that folks can scatter away to the sides. Otherwise, its just going to be a lot of bouncy bouncy.
Being away from others is easier as a healer. As long as you are close to the tanks and the bulk of the other raiders, you don't need to be right up in them.
Again, off to the side.
Here, I made use of a water walking potion. I stand on the pool, away from everyone else. If I do end up taking damage, thus falling in the water, I just stay in there. Being in the water a little won't stop my heals. If I get concerned about a hurricane, I move up to the land, but still away from the bulk of the fighting. By the way, being on the pool also works well when I have to CC the drake on this particular trash because I can pull him away from the DKs and Pally aoes.
Just about any trash has places I can stand that aren't in the line of fire. Hodir's trash is rough because of the narrow hallway. Mimiron's trash has me sometimes hugging a wall.
Also, I make sure I have a good camera distance and angle. Mine is constantly set beyond the standard maximum out of habit, which ends up being helpful when trying to see where I am standing in relation to all the bad stuff. I tend to angle it 3/4 style or even directly top down.
So, where do you like to stand during trash pulls?
Sunday, July 5
Flex for me baby!
So, I totally was going to make a resto post today, considering lately my posts have been anything BUT resto stuff.
Then, this afternoon, my boyfriend got a new pet on his alt:
And now, I am truly a gamer girlfriend because I got so excited for him, I made him take a photo-op :)
Grats Dhoom!
Then, this afternoon, my boyfriend got a new pet on his alt:
And now, I am truly a gamer girlfriend because I got so excited for him, I made him take a photo-op :)
Grats Dhoom!
Saturday, July 4
Humor in WoW
While trolling Blog Azeroth for blog stuff, I ran across the latest Shared Topic idea. My take:
Does it work to add pop culture and outside-the-game references in a video game? I think so, but it depends on how it is done.
Take Tabula Rasa for instance. This futuristic, sci-fi MMO interjected a fair bit of product placement in the form of Dell computers at all the terminals. Seriously? Our planet was wiped out by space critters and machines but Dell remained as our tech source? This ruined a little of the game for me; this small non-lore reference didn't really need to be done.
WoW is steeped in pop culture, and in many cases its fantastic. I totally got giddy when I saw the hatch reference from Lost in Shalozar Basin (crap, does this explain why we couldn't visit Northrend 'till now?) or Linken's quest line in U-Crater (that boomerang stayed in my bags for as long as I could).
DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!
Things get a little weird when you see them in boss fights, though I think what makes the Mimiron fight so much fun is his emotes:
Not only does that fight toss in some fun and levity, but also a Voltron reference, which my 6 year old self can't resist. Of course, I tend to stop listening to them as my grid lights up with Napalm and Plasma Blast icons. At least I know when someone has died early!
Spending a lot of time working out strats and wiping on bosses gets old, so for me, some interjection of fun into a raid helps lessen the pain a bit. Sometimes, these references are an icebreaker on a raid. More than once, we have had raiders say "I do not think it means what you think it means." or, "Kill the one in the dress!" which gets folks laughing and breaks the tension.
In fact, the game is full of what is referred to as Easter Eggs (click to see 12 pages of 'em) which the designers have added numerous references to everything from classic literature to movie characters and the list keeps growing. I like the subtle references (read: anything in Undercity) and sometimes the not so subtle ones (Chasing A-Me)
Am I in the game or not?
Unlike some other games, WoW never really went out of it's way to be immersive. The sense of wonder and awe kind of get lost when you are fighting mobs that hold a cartoonish quality.
WoW has strayed a bit from the original idea- putting yourself inside a real-time strategy game- to taking a little bit of our RL world inside our game world. It flows back and forth, as well.
The books Arthas: Rise of the Lich King and Day of the Dragon are rather popular. I poured over the compilation book which featured the story of how Kara was formed. It was kind of cool reading the back story based on the place I spent my nights online. Then again, I also enjoyed the Myst books as well. This flow between the game world and the so-called real world intensifies and enriches my game.
I will argue that while the fun and humor in the game is a nice change of pace from the Hack n Slash, some of it does go a bit overboard. He Feeds on Your Tears and I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning names are just silly. I do worry about the time and energy spent into coming up with achievement names.
Blizzard intends to keep the light-hearted humor coming, and I hope it doesn't degrade to cheese too much.
Does it work to add pop culture and outside-the-game references in a video game? I think so, but it depends on how it is done.
Take Tabula Rasa for instance. This futuristic, sci-fi MMO interjected a fair bit of product placement in the form of Dell computers at all the terminals. Seriously? Our planet was wiped out by space critters and machines but Dell remained as our tech source? This ruined a little of the game for me; this small non-lore reference didn't really need to be done.
WoW is steeped in pop culture, and in many cases its fantastic. I totally got giddy when I saw the hatch reference from Lost in Shalozar Basin (crap, does this explain why we couldn't visit Northrend 'till now?) or Linken's quest line in U-Crater (that boomerang stayed in my bags for as long as I could).
DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!
Things get a little weird when you see them in boss fights, though I think what makes the Mimiron fight so much fun is his emotes:
"Gaze upon its magnificence! Bask in its glorious, um, glory! I present you... V-07-TR-0N!"
MEDIC!
Not only does that fight toss in some fun and levity, but also a Voltron reference, which my 6 year old self can't resist. Of course, I tend to stop listening to them as my grid lights up with Napalm and Plasma Blast icons. At least I know when someone has died early!
Spending a lot of time working out strats and wiping on bosses gets old, so for me, some interjection of fun into a raid helps lessen the pain a bit. Sometimes, these references are an icebreaker on a raid. More than once, we have had raiders say "I do not think it means what you think it means." or, "Kill the one in the dress!" which gets folks laughing and breaks the tension.
In fact, the game is full of what is referred to as Easter Eggs (click to see 12 pages of 'em) which the designers have added numerous references to everything from classic literature to movie characters and the list keeps growing. I like the subtle references (read: anything in Undercity) and sometimes the not so subtle ones (Chasing A-Me)
Am I in the game or not?
Unlike some other games, WoW never really went out of it's way to be immersive. The sense of wonder and awe kind of get lost when you are fighting mobs that hold a cartoonish quality.
WoW has strayed a bit from the original idea- putting yourself inside a real-time strategy game- to taking a little bit of our RL world inside our game world. It flows back and forth, as well.
The books Arthas: Rise of the Lich King and Day of the Dragon are rather popular. I poured over the compilation book which featured the story of how Kara was formed. It was kind of cool reading the back story based on the place I spent my nights online. Then again, I also enjoyed the Myst books as well. This flow between the game world and the so-called real world intensifies and enriches my game.
I will argue that while the fun and humor in the game is a nice change of pace from the Hack n Slash, some of it does go a bit overboard. He Feeds on Your Tears and I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning names are just silly. I do worry about the time and energy spent into coming up with achievement names.
Blizzard intends to keep the light-hearted humor coming, and I hope it doesn't degrade to cheese too much.
You can make s'mores on that thing
What would be a 4th of July without restos purposely setting themselves on fire? Now, which way is the fireworks display?I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday. I hope no one accidentally let some firecrackers whiz by their kid's heads or let your dad teach you how to set off bottle rockets in your hands. Sigh. Never mind, that was my childhood lol.
Friday, July 3
You'd think vacation means I'd get stuff done
I work just a few hours a week, and school is out, so much of my time is spent online now.
I should be doing my dailies. I mean, there are Champion Seals to get, two more baby crocs to find, and more JC tokens to stock up on.
What am I doing instead?
Making Circles.
DM
Croc Circle, get it?
I am working on my rep. I just need a few more before I get the Exalted title so I have been working on Steamwheedle and ZG. Only, I get twitchy and can only do them for short periods before I move on to something else.
Don't inspect me
My brother found me in the bank the other day. He was baffled that I wasn't wearing two pieces of t8 gear.
Instead of ranting and raving, I just instead mentioned that our rng has been favoring the Paladin, Priest, Warlock crowd and my hat is about the same as the t8 so no need to get it. I am not a huge fan of pugs so I haven't been doing VoA (not to mention we make a guild run each week on 25 man).
I probably have no real excuse for not wearing it, but I have reach some Zen-like acceptance that I may or may not get all the pieces. Besides, Spark of Hope is all I am really after lately, especially since another healer has it /shake fist.
So, back to ZG I go and maybe I can snag some more idols and coins.
I should be doing my dailies. I mean, there are Champion Seals to get, two more baby crocs to find, and more JC tokens to stock up on.
What am I doing instead?
Making Circles.
DM
Croc Circle, get it?
I am working on my rep. I just need a few more before I get the Exalted title so I have been working on Steamwheedle and ZG. Only, I get twitchy and can only do them for short periods before I move on to something else.
Don't inspect me
My brother found me in the bank the other day. He was baffled that I wasn't wearing two pieces of t8 gear.
Instead of ranting and raving, I just instead mentioned that our rng has been favoring the Paladin, Priest, Warlock crowd and my hat is about the same as the t8 so no need to get it. I am not a huge fan of pugs so I haven't been doing VoA (not to mention we make a guild run each week on 25 man).
I probably have no real excuse for not wearing it, but I have reach some Zen-like acceptance that I may or may not get all the pieces. Besides, Spark of Hope is all I am really after lately, especially since another healer has it /shake fist.
So, back to ZG I go and maybe I can snag some more idols and coins.
Such Frustration. Or, I'm a noob!
Nothing special here. Just been working on getting the comments enabled on my blog.
It has been a to-do thing for a while, but now that I am actually trying to work on it, the project has been pretty fruitless.
Enabled things on the Dashboard. Compared my code with a friend's. Tried some tips on Blogger Buster. Tried some tips on Blog Azeroth.
Nothing seemed to work.
Then, lo and behold!
I finally found the box that wasn't working properly. Sheesh. Only took a few hours of hunting, code tweaking, blah blah.
All I needed to do was enable some small little box in my template.
I can roll hots like there is no tomorrow, but figure out my blog? Newb.
(Thank you Keeva and Ashimbo for pointing out my glaring error which made me get off my arse and get it fixed)
It has been a to-do thing for a while, but now that I am actually trying to work on it, the project has been pretty fruitless.
Enabled things on the Dashboard. Compared my code with a friend's. Tried some tips on Blogger Buster. Tried some tips on Blog Azeroth.
Nothing seemed to work.
Then, lo and behold!
I finally found the box that wasn't working properly. Sheesh. Only took a few hours of hunting, code tweaking, blah blah.
All I needed to do was enable some small little box in my template.
I can roll hots like there is no tomorrow, but figure out my blog? Newb.
(Thank you Keeva and Ashimbo for pointing out my glaring error which made me get off my arse and get it fixed)
Thursday, July 2
hardcore, casualcore, softcore, whatever.
It's not your fault.
Being casual is not killing WoW. Being hardcore is not either. Neither is being a pvper beast, habitual farmer, 5 man junkie, or alt fanatic. How you play the game has about the same impact on how Blizz designs and treats the game as much as the next guy.
See, the debate was posed on a more than a few blogs, notably Tree Bark Jacket and Jacemora between casuals and hardcore.
Being in a guild that's somewhat in between, I find it hard to choose a side (not between them, but in the debate as a whole). I have never really cared too much. I have only been in a top guild once and the schedule was too demanding. I have been in a "casual" guild and there wasn't enough action. Hence, my participation in a casual-core guild (my brother's term, not mine) where I can have that balance of both. If I need to step away for a few days because of classes, my guild will let me. If I want to raid every night of the week, someone in the guild has posted a raid or I can form my own.
However, what makes someone a casual, at least for our guild, is someone who would prefer to not raid at all or raids so occasionally it ends up being more headache and work for them to try to fit into our rotation. Taking this definition further, let's look at the state of the raider right now.
Because Blizzard has put in parallel progression, being in a 10 man guild is not long considered casual. Period. Done. 10 man guilds all over are busting out progression just like 25 man guilds. So, what makes them casual? The fact that they are happiest as a smaller guild? That they choose to not merge with another guild or leave for a larger guild entirely? Their gear ilevel is not the same as others--which I argue hard mode 10 man is higher ilevel that regular 25 man and the item levels and itemization are very similar in many cases--or they don't have legendaries?
Casual:
1. Occurring by chance.
2. a. Occurring at irregular or infrequent intervals; occasional
b. Unpremeditated; offhand
This is not to say those who play casually don't care what they do inside the game. Raiding casually does not have to mean flippant or ambivalent raiding and playing.
I want it all!
I disagree that WoW should be accessible to everyone if the reason is entitlement. Just because I pay for the game does not mean I am entitled to everything for that reason. Blizzard has chosen, from the start, to make the game more user friendly that its predecessors and continues to stay competitive in the market because of this choice.
Reminds me of a learning curve chart a friend posted on our guild website last year.
Some games just prefer to have a sharper learning curve than others and that works for them. Other games like to have complicated combat systems, while others have tried other "hooks" to make their games stand out. All of these are choices and those who play the games can either accept or reject those choices. I am not sure I could say because I played a certain game I should expect to see everything the game had to offer. Maybe that's just how I look at things. But that goes back to my oldschool days. Sure, I may have beat the game, but did I get that damned Golden Chocobo? No. Did I try? Yes, but I didn't and does that mean the game was somehow less enjoyable because of it? Not for me and I am ok with that.
Not an island.
What we might want to look at is how we all fit into the larger picture. Putting on my sociologist hat, I can't help but to see our game as a large social system. I mean, I already feel that as gamers we are part of a subculture.
There are over 10 million subscribers all over the world who play this game. And through out this large game, subsections of the social structure play their parts. Blizzard is now not just a developer but also a government managing everything in order to keep where we play fun and enjoyable. They have chosen to pay a nod to each group of folks.
This also means managing a lot more in terms of game mechanics and game design. Holy Dueg! mentioned that WoW is special from other MMO's because it actually takes in a lot of feedback from it's player base. Again, this may be due to the accessibility of its forums and the money they is willing to spend on hiring people who look at forums all day. The fact remains, it does want to listen to the players. Downside to this is when one group gets more attention over another group, tempers flare and jealousy abounds.
"Well, its my 16 bucks a month! I am paying for this service!" I am sorry, but this has grown to be much bigger than you. Yes, Blizzard is providing a service, but each one of us represents a separate section of a population.
All of these changes: mounts, traveling, leveling, gear acquisition, raid access, are all things the designers are doing to enhance the way each player interacts with the game, and ultimately, each other. I am not saying I am on board with all the changes every time. Please believe, the mount change makes me sad as does the ease of which getting gear will be. But looking at it in a different light, I can at least understand why the changes get done.
(Small rant: Don't ever complain about traveling until you have played EVE Online. Seriously. Getting from Minmitar space to Gallante the "safe" way beats anything I have done in WoW.)
In short.
Whether or not you are here for the social aspects of the game, chances are what you do in here affects others around you, thus making you part of the social structure. What Blizzard does also affects not only the game play, but how we feel about as a collective group of people. While you may have the right to get all hot and bothered over something, how you deal with it ripples far wider than you might think.
Being casual is not killing WoW. Being hardcore is not either. Neither is being a pvper beast, habitual farmer, 5 man junkie, or alt fanatic. How you play the game has about the same impact on how Blizz designs and treats the game as much as the next guy.
See, the debate was posed on a more than a few blogs, notably Tree Bark Jacket and Jacemora between casuals and hardcore.
Being in a guild that's somewhat in between, I find it hard to choose a side (not between them, but in the debate as a whole). I have never really cared too much. I have only been in a top guild once and the schedule was too demanding. I have been in a "casual" guild and there wasn't enough action. Hence, my participation in a casual-core guild (my brother's term, not mine) where I can have that balance of both. If I need to step away for a few days because of classes, my guild will let me. If I want to raid every night of the week, someone in the guild has posted a raid or I can form my own.
However, what makes someone a casual, at least for our guild, is someone who would prefer to not raid at all or raids so occasionally it ends up being more headache and work for them to try to fit into our rotation. Taking this definition further, let's look at the state of the raider right now.
Because Blizzard has put in parallel progression, being in a 10 man guild is not long considered casual. Period. Done. 10 man guilds all over are busting out progression just like 25 man guilds. So, what makes them casual? The fact that they are happiest as a smaller guild? That they choose to not merge with another guild or leave for a larger guild entirely? Their gear ilevel is not the same as others--which I argue hard mode 10 man is higher ilevel that regular 25 man and the item levels and itemization are very similar in many cases--or they don't have legendaries?
Casual:
1. Occurring by chance.
2. a. Occurring at irregular or infrequent intervals; occasional
b. Unpremeditated; offhand
This is not to say those who play casually don't care what they do inside the game. Raiding casually does not have to mean flippant or ambivalent raiding and playing.
I want it all!
I disagree that WoW should be accessible to everyone if the reason is entitlement. Just because I pay for the game does not mean I am entitled to everything for that reason. Blizzard has chosen, from the start, to make the game more user friendly that its predecessors and continues to stay competitive in the market because of this choice.
Reminds me of a learning curve chart a friend posted on our guild website last year.
Some games just prefer to have a sharper learning curve than others and that works for them. Other games like to have complicated combat systems, while others have tried other "hooks" to make their games stand out. All of these are choices and those who play the games can either accept or reject those choices. I am not sure I could say because I played a certain game I should expect to see everything the game had to offer. Maybe that's just how I look at things. But that goes back to my oldschool days. Sure, I may have beat the game, but did I get that damned Golden Chocobo? No. Did I try? Yes, but I didn't and does that mean the game was somehow less enjoyable because of it? Not for me and I am ok with that.
Not an island.
What we might want to look at is how we all fit into the larger picture. Putting on my sociologist hat, I can't help but to see our game as a large social system. I mean, I already feel that as gamers we are part of a subculture.
There are over 10 million subscribers all over the world who play this game. And through out this large game, subsections of the social structure play their parts. Blizzard is now not just a developer but also a government managing everything in order to keep where we play fun and enjoyable. They have chosen to pay a nod to each group of folks.
This also means managing a lot more in terms of game mechanics and game design. Holy Dueg! mentioned that WoW is special from other MMO's because it actually takes in a lot of feedback from it's player base. Again, this may be due to the accessibility of its forums and the money they is willing to spend on hiring people who look at forums all day. The fact remains, it does want to listen to the players. Downside to this is when one group gets more attention over another group, tempers flare and jealousy abounds.
"Well, its my 16 bucks a month! I am paying for this service!" I am sorry, but this has grown to be much bigger than you. Yes, Blizzard is providing a service, but each one of us represents a separate section of a population.
All of these changes: mounts, traveling, leveling, gear acquisition, raid access, are all things the designers are doing to enhance the way each player interacts with the game, and ultimately, each other. I am not saying I am on board with all the changes every time. Please believe, the mount change makes me sad as does the ease of which getting gear will be. But looking at it in a different light, I can at least understand why the changes get done.
(Small rant: Don't ever complain about traveling until you have played EVE Online. Seriously. Getting from Minmitar space to Gallante the "safe" way beats anything I have done in WoW.)
In short.
Whether or not you are here for the social aspects of the game, chances are what you do in here affects others around you, thus making you part of the social structure. What Blizzard does also affects not only the game play, but how we feel about as a collective group of people. While you may have the right to get all hot and bothered over something, how you deal with it ripples far wider than you might think.
Wednesday, July 1
I don't want a pony
So, I've always been one to keep a good stock of gems on hand. I never know if the mood will strike me to be generous to those who are looking for a gem badly or when I get a few heroics in for Icy Prisms. When I heard the announcement of epic gems, I cried for a new gem bag. When I saw the mats for said new epic gems, I stared at my lonely bag and wished for something more. I even made posts in the tradeskill forums and the suggestion forums. Yes, it's a QQ but it's difficult to see the other professions get new bags. Please, GC, no need to bring me a pony, but a shiny new bag would be awesome!Ok, this is the last tradeskill-y comment I should be making for a while *crosses fingers*.
I lied. I should also mentioned a PLd an alchemist alt. After the depressing testing done on the PTR regarding prospecting, I decided to make myself a little more self-sufficient. With the cooldown on the transmute, I know many guildies will be badgering our alchemists like they did when the expansion first came out. With my boyfriend not an alchemist anymore, I felt it was time to take matters into my own hands.
Of course, things will settle down after the first few weeks and it won't be such a big deal but what's the point of an army of alts if they can't work like a dog for you?
(How many times can I type the word "bag" in a post? sigh)
Monday, June 29
Just when you thought it was safe to blog...
MMO Champion puts out new info on the PTR.
I mentioned before that I thought it would be neat to have a teleporter out in K3.
Woot!
Other fun things:
I hope this means that Engineers will start feeling the love.
This kinda makes me sad. Sometimes, my maths need be moar gudder, and I can't really get a feel for an upgrade until it has the bells and whistles. Oh well. At least they aren't removing the buyback feature entirely.
I know this info has been floating around for a few days but thought I'd add it here. Apparently, my guild isn't the only guild that has this issue. I thought for sure we would get a GM online to tell us we used up our "oops" tokens and they would cut us off.
The latest builds also added many tweaks to classes and their glyphs. There are too many to put here, so go here for more information.
I mentioned before that I thought it would be neat to have a teleporter out in K3.
Dimensional Folder: K3 - Step through an ultra-safe dimensional fold to teleport to K3 in Northrend.
Woot!
Other fun things:
Jeeves - Requests the presence of Jeeves, the perfect gentleman robot butler, whom will attend to your needs for 10 min. Jeeves can grant bank access to very skilled engineers and perform mundane tasks such as buying, selling, and repairing for anyone.
Mind Amplification Dish - Dismantle and reassembles a helm with a mind amplification dish, allowing you to attempt to engage in mental battle with your enemies and, hopefully, control them. Can be used every 10 min. Changes the appearance of your helm and binds it to you. Only grand master engineers can activate the mind amplification dish.
A Steam-Powered Auctioneer has been added to the Dalaran Like Clockwork engineering shop, allowing access to one's faction Auction House. The Steam-Powered Auctioneer was programmed with a superiority chip, and will only interact with Grand Master engineers.
I hope this means that Engineers will start feeling the love.
Item Buy Back Feature Revised
* The Item Buy Back time will now expire if the player enchants or sockets an item. Players will see a confirmation dialog box now when they attempt to enchant or add gems to an item giving them a last chance to reconsider.
This kinda makes me sad. Sometimes, my maths need be moar gudder, and I can't really get a feel for an upgrade until it has the bells and whistles. Oh well. At least they aren't removing the buyback feature entirely.
New Dungeon Loot Feature
* Players will now be able to trade soulbound items with other raid or group members that were eligible for the loot. This system will work like the Item Buy Back system and allow 2 hours for players to trade an item after it has been looted. Players who choose to enchant or add gems to the item will get one last confirmation before losing the ability to trade the item.
I know this info has been floating around for a few days but thought I'd add it here. Apparently, my guild isn't the only guild that has this issue. I thought for sure we would get a GM online to tell us we used up our "oops" tokens and they would cut us off.
The latest builds also added many tweaks to classes and their glyphs. There are too many to put here, so go here for more information.
Saturday, June 27
3.2 PTR Tradeskilling
More information is coming out in regards to the changes 3.2 will impose on tradeskillers. Of note is the transmutes Alchemists can do for the epic gems.
* Epic Gems transmutations now have a 20 hours cooldown.
* Transmute: Ametrine now requires 1 x Monarch Topaz and 1 x Eternal Shadow
* Transmute: Cardinal Ruby now requires 1 x Scarlet Ruby and 1 x Eternal Fire
* Transmute: Dreadstone now requires 1 x Twilight Opal and 1 x Eternal Shadow
* Transmute: Eye of Zul now requires 3 x Eternal Life
* Transmute: King's Amber now requires 1 x Autumn's Glow and 1 x Eternal Life
* Transmute: Majestic Zircon now requires 1 x Sky Sapphire and 1 x Eternal Air
(Edit on 6.29)
Everything is subject to change, as it seems to change often. I had much different information going from Saturday into Monday.
I had a whole though process going on the gems, as at first it seemed they were placing things more heavily on the Sky Sapphires and Forest Emeralds, but now things are more spread out. Almost all the Eternals seemed to be used and more gems used for the transmutes. Looks like my engi will be pimped out for crystalized extraction.
In addition to these proposed changes, some servers are seeing a spike on the prices of the lower quality gems, presumably for folks stocking up on Icy Prisms. The return on Icy Prisms far outstrips the return on prospecting Saronite if you are looking for Rare quality gems.
As for the new way to get Tokens, Titanium Powder, the results are looking rare so far.
Per Insider Trader:
Some folks are doing some serious testing on the PTR. Out of 940 Titanium ore (geez that's a lot), here are the results of one tester:
Also, a total of 139 Titanium Powder.
This ends up being a rather low percentage of mats yielded (only about 5 percent of the total ore was epic gems). Given the amount of farmers looking for titanium for their own mats or to sell in the AH, we shall see if many of these will end up on the market. Probably will be best to buddy up with an Alchemist in order to get the gems you need.
Seems the new patterns will be purchasable through tokens, just when I thought it was safe to stop doing those dailies, and there are a boat load of them.
For now, there is no cooldown on the Transmutes, but that may or may not change when things go live. It could very well be off a cooldown in order to promote proper testing.
The tradeskill forums are full of rantings and ravings from the Engineering community.
On the PTR, you will not need the goggles to track the clouds and only will need the zapper in your inventory. This is great, as many folks ditched their goggles for better gear. However, wouldn't it be neat to actually make upgraded goggles instead? I have to go with some in the community when they say Ulduar should have been the time when Engineers got a chance at some upgraded patterns. Almost all the other tradeskills got something nifty out of Ulduar (except Jewelcrafting, which I am fine with since I am missing some world drop patterns still) and many of them are BiS, I see no problems with making goggles a potential BiS for those who wish to obtain them.
This is supposed to compensate for the fact that potions will now stack to 20 regardless. I actually use injectors on both my level 80s, though only one of them is actually an engineer. I suspect the potion change is really for pvpers and those who regularly use Potion of Wild Magic, Potion of Speed and other potions in lieu of mana or health. With the changes to mana regen, it is hard to say if the viablity of Mana Potions will increase or not.
Moll-E will have a reduced cooldown to compensate for the changes they made to the upgraded Argent Squire. Yes, your little whipping boy will run errands for you including a mailbox and a vendor. While I thought the mailbox was super cool in the beginning of the expansion, I think the squire will dwarf it. I am, however, still grateful to the engineers that do drop a mailbox during a raid :)
They changed the transporter devices to be used from the inventory, much in the same way they changed the Jumper cables several patches ago (CLEAR!), but the sad thing is, they did not add a teleporter in Northrend. K3 seems to make the most sense (close to Dalaran, close to Ulduar and ultimately the instances in Icecrown) but instead, you can buy a tabbard that teleports you the AT area.
It's hard not to be on board with the Engineering community when they say they feel shafted. Some small changes are being debated (haste for gloves for those who wish to forgo the spell power enchantment), but overall what is seriously lacking with the tradeskill is the sense of fun it had in the older days of WoW. I mean, it was kinda funny to use the shrink ray, only to have the whole group get zapped instead! Some risk with the reward was nice.
Of course, everything is still in the testing stages so I may post more later as things come down the pipeline.
* Epic Gems transmutations now have a 20 hours cooldown.
* Transmute: Ametrine now requires 1 x Monarch Topaz and 1 x Eternal Shadow
* Transmute: Cardinal Ruby now requires 1 x Scarlet Ruby and 1 x Eternal Fire
* Transmute: Dreadstone now requires 1 x Twilight Opal and 1 x Eternal Shadow
* Transmute: Eye of Zul now requires 3 x Eternal Life
* Transmute: King's Amber now requires 1 x Autumn's Glow and 1 x Eternal Life
* Transmute: Majestic Zircon now requires 1 x Sky Sapphire and 1 x Eternal Air
(Edit on 6.29)
Everything is subject to change, as it seems to change often. I had much different information going from Saturday into Monday.
I had a whole though process going on the gems, as at first it seemed they were placing things more heavily on the Sky Sapphires and Forest Emeralds, but now things are more spread out. Almost all the Eternals seemed to be used and more gems used for the transmutes. Looks like my engi will be pimped out for crystalized extraction.
In addition to these proposed changes, some servers are seeing a spike on the prices of the lower quality gems, presumably for folks stocking up on Icy Prisms. The return on Icy Prisms far outstrips the return on prospecting Saronite if you are looking for Rare quality gems.
As for the new way to get Tokens, Titanium Powder, the results are looking rare so far.
Per Insider Trader:
Timothy Jones, your friendly neighborhood trainer and merchant will soon offer a quest entitled Titanium Powder. This is repeatable, and not a daily. Ten Titanium Powder can be exchanged for 1 Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token, but as you can see, acquiring enough powder may take you awhile:
* Out of 12 Prospects (60 ore), Kaliope of the Crafter's Tome prospected only 10 powder, enough for one token. That's about 0.83 dust per prospect, although this is a small sample size.
* Ranjurm posted on the Elitist Jerks forums that out of 564 prospects (2820 ore), 417 powder was gained. That's about 0.74 dust per prospect (5 ore).
Some folks are doing some serious testing on the PTR. Out of 940 Titanium ore (geez that's a lot), here are the results of one tester:
| Epic | Rare | Uncommon |
| 49 | 47 | 282 |
| Yellow | Green | Red | Blue | Purple | Orange |
| 7 Kings Amber | 12 Eyes of Zul | 6 Cardinal Ruby | 9 Majestic Zircon | 10 Dreadstone | 5 Ametrine |
| 10 Autumn's Glow | 8 Forest Emeralds | 3 Scarlet Ruby | 8 Sky Sapphires | 5 Twilight Opals | 13 Monarch Topaz |
| 62 Sun Crystals | 42 Dark Jades | 42 Bloodstone | 39 Chalcedony | 45 Shadow Crystal | 52 Huge Citrine |
Also, a total of 139 Titanium Powder.
This ends up being a rather low percentage of mats yielded (only about 5 percent of the total ore was epic gems). Given the amount of farmers looking for titanium for their own mats or to sell in the AH, we shall see if many of these will end up on the market. Probably will be best to buddy up with an Alchemist in order to get the gems you need.
Seems the new patterns will be purchasable through tokens, just when I thought it was safe to stop doing those dailies, and there are a boat load of them.
For now, there is no cooldown on the Transmutes, but that may or may not change when things go live. It could very well be off a cooldown in order to promote proper testing.
The tradeskill forums are full of rantings and ravings from the Engineering community.
On the PTR, you will not need the goggles to track the clouds and only will need the zapper in your inventory. This is great, as many folks ditched their goggles for better gear. However, wouldn't it be neat to actually make upgraded goggles instead? I have to go with some in the community when they say Ulduar should have been the time when Engineers got a chance at some upgraded patterns. Almost all the other tradeskills got something nifty out of Ulduar (except Jewelcrafting, which I am fine with since I am missing some world drop patterns still) and many of them are BiS, I see no problems with making goggles a potential BiS for those who wish to obtain them.
Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers. Quantity produced by recipes for Runic Healing and Mana Injectors has been increased.
This is supposed to compensate for the fact that potions will now stack to 20 regardless. I actually use injectors on both my level 80s, though only one of them is actually an engineer. I suspect the potion change is really for pvpers and those who regularly use Potion of Wild Magic, Potion of Speed and other potions in lieu of mana or health. With the changes to mana regen, it is hard to say if the viablity of Mana Potions will increase or not.
Moll-E will have a reduced cooldown to compensate for the changes they made to the upgraded Argent Squire. Yes, your little whipping boy will run errands for you including a mailbox and a vendor. While I thought the mailbox was super cool in the beginning of the expansion, I think the squire will dwarf it. I am, however, still grateful to the engineers that do drop a mailbox during a raid :)
They changed the transporter devices to be used from the inventory, much in the same way they changed the Jumper cables several patches ago (CLEAR!), but the sad thing is, they did not add a teleporter in Northrend. K3 seems to make the most sense (close to Dalaran, close to Ulduar and ultimately the instances in Icecrown) but instead, you can buy a tabbard that teleports you the AT area.
It's hard not to be on board with the Engineering community when they say they feel shafted. Some small changes are being debated (haste for gloves for those who wish to forgo the spell power enchantment), but overall what is seriously lacking with the tradeskill is the sense of fun it had in the older days of WoW. I mean, it was kinda funny to use the shrink ray, only to have the whole group get zapped instead! Some risk with the reward was nice.
Of course, everything is still in the testing stages so I may post more later as things come down the pipeline.
Roots: Where I came from
I am considered a "old" gamer in many senses of the word. Demographically, yes, I am older but I have also been playing games since I was in gradeschool. How old, you ask? My first game was Frogger, like many others I know.
Lately, I have been getting a strange desire to see the old games I loved so much. In addition, I started to think back to those old games and how they influence how I play my games today.
In part, I blame my dad. We had this old game for the Intellivision called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin in which you would walk around hallways and rooms getting gear and powers to defeat bigger monsters further down the dungeon. It was possible to keep playing this game for ages by not collecting the game ending treasure but to keep going further (255 levels in all). My dad would go on sprees and I sometimes would wake up the next morning with him still playing the game. Resilience, my dad had.
This is what my dad would stare at for hours.
Of course, when NES and SNES came out, my dad found a way to get us one. Thus began the gaming mentality slowly embedded in the brains of my brother and I. Faxanadu and Final Fantasy sparked my love for RPGs, but also the need to "collect" everything.
My brother and I would take turns on the games; one to fight the monsters, the other to look up the abilities and "strats" to defeat them. Without the lovely internet, gaming magazines and long hours of trial and error were what you needed to complete most of these games.
Looking back, I can see where my brother got his min/maxing from. Gameshark and cheat codes started to become his staple, whereas I didn't mind spending hours running in circles hoping for random mobs to appear.
The Final Fantasy series really did it in for me. I remember spending hours collecting all the gear in FFIII (or IV depending on how technical you wish to get) only to have my brother lose the Moogle Charm during an arena match! Or, later, trying to get a Golden Chocobo.
Storylines and unfolding game mechanics highly appealed to me. Suikoden and Chrono Trigger are probably two of most endearing games for me. I loved the concept of what you do in the game affecting the ending, thus encouraging you to play them again to see how it turns out differently.
The journey has been a long one to my WoW days: Nintendo, table top RPG, UO, EQ, DOAC.
So what does all this influence accumulate to? I am considered by my guildies as a Completion-ist. I have a sickness with pet collecting. I am a lootwhore at times. Seeing wolves run off to kill rabbits never gets old for me. I don't mind letting Brann ramble on about dwarves and titans. Every time I do my fishing dailies, I wistfully remember button smashing in order to reel in large fish.
Lately, I have been getting a strange desire to see the old games I loved so much. In addition, I started to think back to those old games and how they influence how I play my games today.
In part, I blame my dad. We had this old game for the Intellivision called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin in which you would walk around hallways and rooms getting gear and powers to defeat bigger monsters further down the dungeon. It was possible to keep playing this game for ages by not collecting the game ending treasure but to keep going further (255 levels in all). My dad would go on sprees and I sometimes would wake up the next morning with him still playing the game. Resilience, my dad had.
This is what my dad would stare at for hours.Of course, when NES and SNES came out, my dad found a way to get us one. Thus began the gaming mentality slowly embedded in the brains of my brother and I. Faxanadu and Final Fantasy sparked my love for RPGs, but also the need to "collect" everything.
My brother and I would take turns on the games; one to fight the monsters, the other to look up the abilities and "strats" to defeat them. Without the lovely internet, gaming magazines and long hours of trial and error were what you needed to complete most of these games.
Looking back, I can see where my brother got his min/maxing from. Gameshark and cheat codes started to become his staple, whereas I didn't mind spending hours running in circles hoping for random mobs to appear.
The Final Fantasy series really did it in for me. I remember spending hours collecting all the gear in FFIII (or IV depending on how technical you wish to get) only to have my brother lose the Moogle Charm during an arena match! Or, later, trying to get a Golden Chocobo.
Storylines and unfolding game mechanics highly appealed to me. Suikoden and Chrono Trigger are probably two of most endearing games for me. I loved the concept of what you do in the game affecting the ending, thus encouraging you to play them again to see how it turns out differently.
The journey has been a long one to my WoW days: Nintendo, table top RPG, UO, EQ, DOAC.
So what does all this influence accumulate to? I am considered by my guildies as a Completion-ist. I have a sickness with pet collecting. I am a lootwhore at times. Seeing wolves run off to kill rabbits never gets old for me. I don't mind letting Brann ramble on about dwarves and titans. Every time I do my fishing dailies, I wistfully remember button smashing in order to reel in large fish.
Friday, June 26
So the MT got some Epics but you got a dumb T-Shirt
A long while back, our guild had some growing pains to say the least. During the lull between BC and WOTLK there was a serious lack of tanks. Our main tanks would log on for raids then promptly be missing for the rest of the week. This led to a huge rash of players building up tank alts who eventually became mains.
All these new mains then led to a bigger problem in the form of drama. They all wanted to be rotated in or out in out considered as a main tank. So while poking through our old forum posts, I found a write up on the state of the back up tank.
I will be honest with you, being a tank has its share of politics. Its not the end of the world, and most every guild I have been in has its share of it. Guilds have their Main Tank(s). These guys are the ones who the guild turns to for direction, movement, and solid beefiness. These guys respond to the situations at hand, and lead the raid into battle accordingly. A lot of things ride on their shoulders, and because of that, a lot of trust is put with them and from them.
Breaking in to be a Main Tank does not happen actively. Over time, things just happen within a guild and they see who they trust. If you are coming into a guild or raid to be a "Main Tank" walk away now because that, in my opinion, should not be a goal. Doing the job right and well is priority.
More realistically, a guild already has their main tanks. What you then are is considered Off tank which could mean second or third string back up. Imagine being the back up QB for a pro football team? The "real quarterback" gets all the glory and face time, and you sit on the sidelines tossing a ball back and forth to keep warm.
Now, a back up tank is an important job as well. The guild has been progressing thus far with their main tanks, but something happens and they aren't there one night. It is the time for you to step in and fill their shoes. This is the crucial moment for you. Not only are you expected (unfairly, probably) to perform just like the main tanks, but you have to do it instantly and usually with little warning. The guild can not hold your hand and they are putting a lot of faith in you to see the raid through. They don't care that you have as many purples as the main tanks (though, mind you if your stats and mitigation are less than superior, be honest about it and the raid will thank you for it). What they do care about it is "Can we trust this guy?"
Yes, the overall theme. Trust. So how do you gain trust?
There are various ways and folks to gain trust with. The healers have to be confident in you to not kill them. It is a stressful job enough making sure everyone stays alive, and the more you can help them achieve that the better. This means knowing the situations at all times, being able to adjust and flow, and communicate with others when shit hits the fan. This might mean mob positioning, keeping a high threat per second ahead of the dps, and/or watching when adds run off and quickly gaining them back. Sometimes, the tank has to eat some damage in order for the whole raid to not take Dragon breath in the face.
The other tanks have to trust you too. After a while, the main tanks have an understanding with each other. They know each others weaknesses and strengths, and know that if something goes wrong the other tank has their back. Now, a member of their little two man team is gone and some new guy is there. You need to keep communication with the other tank and be willing and open to constructive comments made to you. Tank egos are fragile yes, but if you want to come back the next time, set that ego aside and say "yes". In addition, the other tank doesn't know you, so please speak up if there's an ability or mechanic you are sure to be suited for. The main tank may already understand what you are presenting, but if you present yourself respectfully and cautiously, it will go a long way. (Forcing your side may not work)
Raid leaders are also the guys who you need their trust from. They have so many names and people they are working with, and next to the healers, they have to fill the tank role first. Be patient with them. If you keep screaming "Put me in coach", without bending a little their direction, you might get passed over for someone else. Do not give them drama. Do not give them emo QQ over shit. Be as intelligent and thoughtful as possible. Barrage of tells to the raid leaders will quickly get you ignored. A simple statement of availability and interest seems to go better like "Hello. I know you are busy. When you have you have a second, Id like to bring up something". When you get your reply back something like "I know there are other tanks online. I am ready to go and understand the fights. If you need me, I will be around."
If you have worked your way up with building trust with raiders and other leaders, the time your name comes up it will be looked at in a more favorable light. Still keep in mind that most fights need 4 tanks at the very, very most, and usually just need two or three. How you perform and behave in the small windows of time you get with the guild will go to keeping you in the rotation.
All these new mains then led to a bigger problem in the form of drama. They all wanted to be rotated in or out in out considered as a main tank. So while poking through our old forum posts, I found a write up on the state of the back up tank.
I will be honest with you, being a tank has its share of politics. Its not the end of the world, and most every guild I have been in has its share of it. Guilds have their Main Tank(s). These guys are the ones who the guild turns to for direction, movement, and solid beefiness. These guys respond to the situations at hand, and lead the raid into battle accordingly. A lot of things ride on their shoulders, and because of that, a lot of trust is put with them and from them.
Breaking in to be a Main Tank does not happen actively. Over time, things just happen within a guild and they see who they trust. If you are coming into a guild or raid to be a "Main Tank" walk away now because that, in my opinion, should not be a goal. Doing the job right and well is priority.
More realistically, a guild already has their main tanks. What you then are is considered Off tank which could mean second or third string back up. Imagine being the back up QB for a pro football team? The "real quarterback" gets all the glory and face time, and you sit on the sidelines tossing a ball back and forth to keep warm.
Now, a back up tank is an important job as well. The guild has been progressing thus far with their main tanks, but something happens and they aren't there one night. It is the time for you to step in and fill their shoes. This is the crucial moment for you. Not only are you expected (unfairly, probably) to perform just like the main tanks, but you have to do it instantly and usually with little warning. The guild can not hold your hand and they are putting a lot of faith in you to see the raid through. They don't care that you have as many purples as the main tanks (though, mind you if your stats and mitigation are less than superior, be honest about it and the raid will thank you for it). What they do care about it is "Can we trust this guy?"
Yes, the overall theme. Trust. So how do you gain trust?
There are various ways and folks to gain trust with. The healers have to be confident in you to not kill them. It is a stressful job enough making sure everyone stays alive, and the more you can help them achieve that the better. This means knowing the situations at all times, being able to adjust and flow, and communicate with others when shit hits the fan. This might mean mob positioning, keeping a high threat per second ahead of the dps, and/or watching when adds run off and quickly gaining them back. Sometimes, the tank has to eat some damage in order for the whole raid to not take Dragon breath in the face.
The other tanks have to trust you too. After a while, the main tanks have an understanding with each other. They know each others weaknesses and strengths, and know that if something goes wrong the other tank has their back. Now, a member of their little two man team is gone and some new guy is there. You need to keep communication with the other tank and be willing and open to constructive comments made to you. Tank egos are fragile yes, but if you want to come back the next time, set that ego aside and say "yes". In addition, the other tank doesn't know you, so please speak up if there's an ability or mechanic you are sure to be suited for. The main tank may already understand what you are presenting, but if you present yourself respectfully and cautiously, it will go a long way. (Forcing your side may not work)
Raid leaders are also the guys who you need their trust from. They have so many names and people they are working with, and next to the healers, they have to fill the tank role first. Be patient with them. If you keep screaming "Put me in coach", without bending a little their direction, you might get passed over for someone else. Do not give them drama. Do not give them emo QQ over shit. Be as intelligent and thoughtful as possible. Barrage of tells to the raid leaders will quickly get you ignored. A simple statement of availability and interest seems to go better like "Hello. I know you are busy. When you have you have a second, Id like to bring up something". When you get your reply back something like "I know there are other tanks online. I am ready to go and understand the fights. If you need me, I will be around."
If you have worked your way up with building trust with raiders and other leaders, the time your name comes up it will be looked at in a more favorable light. Still keep in mind that most fights need 4 tanks at the very, very most, and usually just need two or three. How you perform and behave in the small windows of time you get with the guild will go to keeping you in the rotation.
Let us all take a moment to reflect...
Last night was going very smoothly... at first. Hodir and Freya were nearly one shotted despite newer folks listening to involved strat explanations. We were in good spirits going into our break.
We come back, only to see we are facing Thorim. I think a lot of hearts sank.
I was elected raid leader for the night (yes, we rotate. No supreme leaders in our guild; we are a nice happy collective bunch). I would have preferred Mimiron instead, but I hadn't studied the 25 man strat and I didn't feel I could "wing it" based on just my 10 man experience.
After a couple wipes, tempers flared. The private channel erupted, O chat exploded, and the raid chat was about to implode. Seeing a melt down on the way, I said over vent:
I meant to say "Let's take a moment to get up, breathe, take a break" but somehow my mouth couldn't stop mentioning how much it sucks.
I admit to failing on gaining control over the boss and the raid. Everyone has an opinion on what should be done, what the problems are and what needs to be done to fix them. The problem comes when the raid leader hears/sees 15 different thoughts on what to do and has to filter them and make a choice on how to go forward. So, I made a couple bad calls and we ended the night with very low spirits.
Time for a change up, a breath of fresh life into the raid. In the meantime, bask in the suckiness.
We come back, only to see we are facing Thorim. I think a lot of hearts sank.
I was elected raid leader for the night (yes, we rotate. No supreme leaders in our guild; we are a nice happy collective bunch). I would have preferred Mimiron instead, but I hadn't studied the 25 man strat and I didn't feel I could "wing it" based on just my 10 man experience.
After a couple wipes, tempers flared. The private channel erupted, O chat exploded, and the raid chat was about to implode. Seeing a melt down on the way, I said over vent:
Arena Team. It sucks. We all know it sucks. Staying outside sucks, staying inside sucks. Let's just take a moment to reflect... on the suckiness.
I meant to say "Let's take a moment to get up, breathe, take a break" but somehow my mouth couldn't stop mentioning how much it sucks.
I admit to failing on gaining control over the boss and the raid. Everyone has an opinion on what should be done, what the problems are and what needs to be done to fix them. The problem comes when the raid leader hears/sees 15 different thoughts on what to do and has to filter them and make a choice on how to go forward. So, I made a couple bad calls and we ended the night with very low spirits.
Time for a change up, a breath of fresh life into the raid. In the meantime, bask in the suckiness.
Thursday, June 25
T8 or T9 second look
Rolling Hots Broke down the math and the implications between t8 and t9 sets. Very smart cookie. Basically, Blizz is finding ways to nerf our regen through our gear.
I did find it odd that the socket bonuses for each piece of T9 was more spell power and the bonuses for the pieces are crit based. After reading what we potentially could be losing in the mana regen department, I am now all but given up on the Tier Game.
Yes. I want to take my ball and go home.
In BC, the feral druid set bonus was essential for getting max dps on a raid. For T9, having moonfire dot crits, plus more crit on starfire locks in the Lunar rotation for dps and is seriously worth looking at.
Crits on Rejuv? While I squealed like a little girl on her birthday at the Resto T9 bonus, after reading the stat changes I am not so sure I want to be on board with that. Of course, I am a WoW player and I want the set bonus but I do my job very well right now and I don't regularly run with 2 pieces of T8.
I am another step closer to saying screw it on T8 and try for T9, but now armed with more caution on my stats. My brother is already an Mp5 whore for his resto off set, and while I snickered before, I will be hanging on to my mana regen pieces more tightly now.
**************************************************************
Slightly different direction, one of our DPS switched mains to a Holy Pally. This means we have 8 healers now in our rotation and last night I raided Boomkin again. Largely this was due to the THREE (omg) mages that came plus two holy pallies all craving crit. For the sake of boosting raid dps, it was suggested to me to go dps for the night.
Afterward, I panicked. I asked in Officer Vent if I needed to pay attention to my dps set a little more. Typical replies "Play what you want to play" but I actually find healing easier than dps right now. I don't have rotations as a healer (generally; Hodir is an exception), and I am very comfortable with my role as a healer. My dps set is mainly Ulduar 10 man with some 25 man Naxx stuff, so it lags behind many other full time dpsers. Do I care? Certainly. I like to know I am pulling my weight. Thus, I panicked because my dps set needs lots of love in order to make me feel good with it.
Then, the realization hit me. While we have 8 healers in our rotation, sometimes 9, not all of them can play every night. Healer burnout is still a real threat as we push into harder content, on top of real life and its snags. So, my role as a healer will not be going away just because another healer is on the raids. What this does mean is I will have to carefully on work my dps little more.
I did find it odd that the socket bonuses for each piece of T9 was more spell power and the bonuses for the pieces are crit based. After reading what we potentially could be losing in the mana regen department, I am now all but given up on the Tier Game.
Yes. I want to take my ball and go home.
In BC, the feral druid set bonus was essential for getting max dps on a raid. For T9, having moonfire dot crits, plus more crit on starfire locks in the Lunar rotation for dps and is seriously worth looking at.
Crits on Rejuv? While I squealed like a little girl on her birthday at the Resto T9 bonus, after reading the stat changes I am not so sure I want to be on board with that. Of course, I am a WoW player and I want the set bonus but I do my job very well right now and I don't regularly run with 2 pieces of T8.
I am another step closer to saying screw it on T8 and try for T9, but now armed with more caution on my stats. My brother is already an Mp5 whore for his resto off set, and while I snickered before, I will be hanging on to my mana regen pieces more tightly now.
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Slightly different direction, one of our DPS switched mains to a Holy Pally. This means we have 8 healers now in our rotation and last night I raided Boomkin again. Largely this was due to the THREE (omg) mages that came plus two holy pallies all craving crit. For the sake of boosting raid dps, it was suggested to me to go dps for the night.
Afterward, I panicked. I asked in Officer Vent if I needed to pay attention to my dps set a little more. Typical replies "Play what you want to play" but I actually find healing easier than dps right now. I don't have rotations as a healer (generally; Hodir is an exception), and I am very comfortable with my role as a healer. My dps set is mainly Ulduar 10 man with some 25 man Naxx stuff, so it lags behind many other full time dpsers. Do I care? Certainly. I like to know I am pulling my weight. Thus, I panicked because my dps set needs lots of love in order to make me feel good with it.
Then, the realization hit me. While we have 8 healers in our rotation, sometimes 9, not all of them can play every night. Healer burnout is still a real threat as we push into harder content, on top of real life and its snags. So, my role as a healer will not be going away just because another healer is on the raids. What this does mean is I will have to carefully on work my dps little more.
Wednesday, June 24
Sigh
Took most of the afternoon, but the tweaking to the site is finished. I have gone through several "redos" and maybe I will stick with this one for a while. It's certainly not the cleanest work but will suit me till something else comes along.
Now, Minime and I need a nap
Now, Minime and I need a nap
T8 or T9?
It's still early and who knows when the new instances will come out, but there is a large part of me that wants to say "screw it." Really. Why bother working towards the T8 when T9 is around the corner so soon?
There are many druids that already have their full 4pc set with the happy bonuses. I am not one of them. The EPGP list is full of Deathknights, Druids, Mages, and Rogues. And I, being different, decided to go the route of steady consistant upgrades verses saving my points for the tier pieces. Do I regret it? No. However, I know I probably sound a little bitter about the whole thing and maybe I am, a little.
Before Ulduar came out, I waited until the last moment to grab my last T7 for the 4pc bonus, knowing that it would be super helpful while we learn the fights. Now that we are more settled, I have embraced the role of raid healer, and thus, my healing style had to change rather quickly.
I have two pieces of t8 which I swap out for occasionally for things like hard modes or whenever I know I will be using swiftmend regularly.
I think the biggest problem for me is I don't even want some of the items. My helm from 2D Sarth is almost exactly the same as the T8 helm, down the stats. I just don't see the need to spend emblems or points on an item that is nearly the same.
I'd love to get shoulders as I am wearing some 10 man cloth ones and the same goes for gloves, but that's still only three pieces (I broke down and bought the chest). For these items, skipping t8 and waiting for t9 makes more sense for me.
Or hell, skip going after the bonuses and just mix and match gear like I have currently been doing.
There are many druids that already have their full 4pc set with the happy bonuses. I am not one of them. The EPGP list is full of Deathknights, Druids, Mages, and Rogues. And I, being different, decided to go the route of steady consistant upgrades verses saving my points for the tier pieces. Do I regret it? No. However, I know I probably sound a little bitter about the whole thing and maybe I am, a little.
Before Ulduar came out, I waited until the last moment to grab my last T7 for the 4pc bonus, knowing that it would be super helpful while we learn the fights. Now that we are more settled, I have embraced the role of raid healer, and thus, my healing style had to change rather quickly.
I have two pieces of t8 which I swap out for occasionally for things like hard modes or whenever I know I will be using swiftmend regularly.
I think the biggest problem for me is I don't even want some of the items. My helm from 2D Sarth is almost exactly the same as the T8 helm, down the stats. I just don't see the need to spend emblems or points on an item that is nearly the same.
I'd love to get shoulders as I am wearing some 10 man cloth ones and the same goes for gloves, but that's still only three pieces (I broke down and bought the chest). For these items, skipping t8 and waiting for t9 makes more sense for me.
Or hell, skip going after the bonuses and just mix and match gear like I have currently been doing.
Thursday, June 18
Blue speaks, I drop my jaw.
There are so many things in the PTR patch notes that all I will do is link the MMO champ site, instead of copying the whole thing here.
There is a lot of things going on that don't make sense to me, some things that look great and the rest, well, are the rest. Of course, all is subject to change and so these changes warrant further watching in the weeks to come.
Of note:
I'm scared of the idea that innervate needs to be casted more often, considering they are changing the mana regen on Replenishment. This says to me they are planing some real mana sucking encounters in the months to come.
With the changes to Empowered Touch, a possible Nourish/MT healing spec could look like this which drops GoEM in favor of Nature's Grace and Empowered Touch. Very interesting. I'm sure some resto's out there will be excited but since I've been rocking it on raid heals, I will not be moving my precious points yet. In addition, it seems rather odd to implement this when the T8 focuses on Rejuv based ablities, but would be nice for T7 and who knows what T9 has.
Lastly, I suppose Blizz didn't like the 20k crits on lifebloom. Shame. It's not like it procd Living Seed or anything and usually was overheal. /shake fist.
Kinda ok. The rest of the changes make me feel like Shamans are still under appreciated by blizz. Interesting way to deal with the Shaman's mana regen issues, but perhaps changing the mechanic of Elemental Focus to proc off Damaging and Healing spells. Cuz, you know, it reduces mana cost of both. Sadly, though, the trees are bloated a bit anyway and finding a way for a resto to fit it in seems damn near impossible. However, since Druids and Priests are able to Clearcast, I don't see why shaman can't either. At least the silly little orbs of water don't pop anymore.
Yet another overhaul for DK's with a talent refund to boot. I'd QQ about having to respec my alt every time I play her, but I don't think my DK friends would find it funny.
This seems too good to be true. The poor guy has been sitting in the jungle for several years, watching the allies ride by on their Saber Mounts wishing his boss would give the go ahead to offer the Horde their own special time sink. Of course, I am willing to help the guy out but I fear with all the other things getting pushed to live by Blizz that I won't have time to spend for this. Sad, really.
Faster? Really? Was it that slow to begin with? Sure, I'm cool with it being a blue hat now and I am happy blizz is realizing it needed to have a special ability to go with it, but I would have liked to have seen maybe a chance to proc extra food or something. We spend all that time on the daily, the least they could do is reward us with having to use less mats on our final products. Blizz obviously needs to watch the Food Network more often.
Maybe I will finally finish the Achievements that go with these.
Why do I get the feeling they are going to add the 100 pet achievement? I have over 80 at this point, and I don't even have the special TCG, Blizzcon, or Collector's Edition pets.
So much of this hurts my head and confuses me. I don't understand why they continue to have us purchase items with these emblems, then reduce the ways to get the emblems, make the achievements Feats of Strength, but add a new achievement that rewards you for Collecting combos of said emblems.
OK, back to work before my head assplodes.
There is a lot of things going on that don't make sense to me, some things that look great and the rest, well, are the rest. Of course, all is subject to change and so these changes warrant further watching in the weeks to come.
Of note:
Flight Form: Can now be learned at level 60. Flight speed increased to 150%.
Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient.
Mangle: Ranks 4 and 5 base points reduced by about 11%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
Rake: Ranks 6 and 7 base points on initial and periodic damage reduced by about 7%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
Rip: Ranks 8 and 9 base points and points per combo point reduced by about 6%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
Savage Defense: The animation for gaining this buff will no longer make the bear stand upright
Shred: Ranks 8 and 9 base points reduced by about 10%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
Swipe (Cat): Percent of weapon damage done reduced from 260% to 250%.
Travel Form: Can now be learned at level 16.
Talents
* Balance
o Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.
o Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second. cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.
o Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.
* Restoration
o Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%.
o Improved Barkskin: No longer provides dispel resistance to all effects on the druid, but now reduces the chance your Barkskin is dispelled by an additional 35/70%.
I'm scared of the idea that innervate needs to be casted more often, considering they are changing the mana regen on Replenishment. This says to me they are planing some real mana sucking encounters in the months to come.
With the changes to Empowered Touch, a possible Nourish/MT healing spec could look like this which drops GoEM in favor of Nature's Grace and Empowered Touch. Very interesting. I'm sure some resto's out there will be excited but since I've been rocking it on raid heals, I will not be moving my precious points yet. In addition, it seems rather odd to implement this when the T8 focuses on Rejuv based ablities, but would be nice for T7 and who knows what T9 has.
Lastly, I suppose Blizz didn't like the 20k crits on lifebloom. Shame. It's not like it procd Living Seed or anything and usually was overheal. /shake fist.
Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%
Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.
Kinda ok. The rest of the changes make me feel like Shamans are still under appreciated by blizz. Interesting way to deal with the Shaman's mana regen issues, but perhaps changing the mechanic of Elemental Focus to proc off Damaging and Healing spells. Cuz, you know, it reduces mana cost of both. Sadly, though, the trees are bloated a bit anyway and finding a way for a resto to fit it in seems damn near impossible. However, since Druids and Priests are able to Clearcast, I don't see why shaman can't either. At least the silly little orbs of water don't pop anymore.
Yet another overhaul for DK's with a talent refund to boot. I'd QQ about having to respec my alt every time I play her, but I don't think my DK friends would find it funny.
The ravasaur trainer Mor'vek has returned to Un'Goro and will offer to help Horde players raise and train a Venomhide Ravasaur as a mount... if they can survive the creature's deadly poison.
This seems too good to be true. The poor guy has been sitting in the jungle for several years, watching the allies ride by on their Saber Mounts wishing his boss would give the go ahead to offer the Horde their own special time sink. Of course, I am willing to help the guy out but I fear with all the other things getting pushed to live by Blizz that I won't have time to spend for this. Sad, really.
Chef's Hat is now superior quality and allows the chef to cook faster
Faster? Really? Was it that slow to begin with? Sure, I'm cool with it being a blue hat now and I am happy blizz is realizing it needed to have a special ability to go with it, but I would have liked to have seen maybe a chance to proc extra food or something. We spend all that time on the daily, the least they could do is reward us with having to use less mats on our final products. Blizz obviously needs to watch the Food Network more often.
Toughness (Rank 6) provides more staminaI snicker at this. I already have more Hit points than some of our melee dps, and while the Enhance shaman is looking forward to having more health, I can't wait to for his reaction when he sees that I am still more beefy than he is.
# The Nexus: The Oculus & The Eye of Eternity
* Vehicles (drakes) used in these instances now scale with item level.
Maybe I will finally finish the Achievements that go with these.
Non-Combat Pets: 8 new pets have been added (not including Argent Tournament rewards). Raptor Hatchlings can be found on rare and elite raptors throughout the game world. In addition, an Obsidian Raptor Hatchling can be purchased from Breanni in Dalaran.
Why do I get the feeling they are going to add the 100 pet achievement? I have over 80 at this point, and I don't even have the special TCG, Blizzcon, or Collector's Edition pets.
# Emblem System Changes
* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
* The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
* New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.
So much of this hurts my head and confuses me. I don't understand why they continue to have us purchase items with these emblems, then reduce the ways to get the emblems, make the achievements Feats of Strength, but add a new achievement that rewards you for Collecting combos of said emblems.
OK, back to work before my head assplodes.
Tuesday, June 16
I swear to the gods that there is more QQ going on than usual.
Some folks don't like our strats for bosses. They either mention this in a tell, separate channel or out openly for all the raid to see.
After a while I just got so sick and tired of the complaining, I made a post on our forums in an effort to make the communication more civil and constructive.
I really need to stop doing that though. Every time I make a post to the guild to remind them of things or inform them of how the officers feel about certain subjects, raiders get the "shoot the messenger" syndrome and I am the target.
Example? A conversation involving one of our smart players saying they will "just shut up." That is entirely what we DON'T want people to do. Instead, how about channeling your ideas and energy back to the forums so you aren't feeling frustrated that you aren't being heard, huh?
Another more recent example: in a separate, private channel, a couple people keeping mentioning that they thought of strats weeks before the raid leaders decided to go with them. I didn't know half their ideas and the other half are in this closed channel that no one else can see. Do they expect me to relay the information for them, especially before a pull when I have several other things going? I have no idea, but I certainly can see why they are frustrated. My response? "POST IT!" What folks say either get lost or ignored on a raid but if it's posted, people have time to look, digest, make informed opinions on others ideas.
This guild is not just Officers at the top and everyone else are the minions. I feel a little bad that our raiders are so full of smart ideas but would rather keep it to themselves. I know they probably feel like we don't listen to a damned thing they say, but actually we do! But, if they were trying to keep a raid flowing in a small window of time, I doubt they would be willing to listen to 5 different ideas on a strat right before a pull.
So please, don't ever shut up. Find avenues that your officers are most receptive to, unless of course you raid with assholes and retards or megalomaniacs.
Some folks don't like our strats for bosses. They either mention this in a tell, separate channel or out openly for all the raid to see.
After a while I just got so sick and tired of the complaining, I made a post on our forums in an effort to make the communication more civil and constructive.
I really need to stop doing that though. Every time I make a post to the guild to remind them of things or inform them of how the officers feel about certain subjects, raiders get the "shoot the messenger" syndrome and I am the target.
Example? A conversation involving one of our smart players saying they will "just shut up." That is entirely what we DON'T want people to do. Instead, how about channeling your ideas and energy back to the forums so you aren't feeling frustrated that you aren't being heard, huh?
Another more recent example: in a separate, private channel, a couple people keeping mentioning that they thought of strats weeks before the raid leaders decided to go with them. I didn't know half their ideas and the other half are in this closed channel that no one else can see. Do they expect me to relay the information for them, especially before a pull when I have several other things going? I have no idea, but I certainly can see why they are frustrated. My response? "POST IT!" What folks say either get lost or ignored on a raid but if it's posted, people have time to look, digest, make informed opinions on others ideas.
This guild is not just Officers at the top and everyone else are the minions. I feel a little bad that our raiders are so full of smart ideas but would rather keep it to themselves. I know they probably feel like we don't listen to a damned thing they say, but actually we do! But, if they were trying to keep a raid flowing in a small window of time, I doubt they would be willing to listen to 5 different ideas on a strat right before a pull.
So please, don't ever shut up. Find avenues that your officers are most receptive to, unless of course you raid with assholes and retards or megalomaniacs.
I never thought it would happen...
But I actually went on a raid as a boomkin. We had 8 healers signed up and since we only need to run with 7, the officers were deciding what to do. Alindy (and sometimes Heal Leader) suggested one of the shaman go elem. I half jokingly replied back "Boomkin!" which was immediately approved.
I can't say I was upset at all. I have been getting the DPS itch lately, which has led me to leveling my warlock again (never mind that affliction is viable again, which makes me happy). But to be considered for dps on a raid made me surprised. Granted, my dps is no where close to what it should be, but we all know moonkin provide a number of raid utilities which help everyone else. From the Earth and Moon to Imp Fairy Fire (with 3 percent hit should Rizzoe not be around) and of course the crit buff.
Ulduar is murder on me though. I am not with a Solar rotation, so I prefer to stand in one place and nuke the hell out of things with Starfire. Fights like Hodir just blow.
Regardless, the raid might be seeing more feathers than leaves should we run into a similar situation again.
I can't say I was upset at all. I have been getting the DPS itch lately, which has led me to leveling my warlock again (never mind that affliction is viable again, which makes me happy). But to be considered for dps on a raid made me surprised. Granted, my dps is no where close to what it should be, but we all know moonkin provide a number of raid utilities which help everyone else. From the Earth and Moon to Imp Fairy Fire (with 3 percent hit should Rizzoe not be around) and of course the crit buff.
Ulduar is murder on me though. I am not with a Solar rotation, so I prefer to stand in one place and nuke the hell out of things with Starfire. Fights like Hodir just blow.
Regardless, the raid might be seeing more feathers than leaves should we run into a similar situation again.
Thursday, June 11
Silly UI stuff
After looking around at some other UI's, I decided it was time for a change of pace. See, I have been running with the standard, old, hot bars the blizz gave us a million years ago. I have tried to have different ones, but it was getting frustrating when the hot bar mods couldn't keep up with the shapeshifting bar. Either the bar would be hiding behind something, completely broken, or not save buttons that each shape provided. I gave up for a couple years.
Recently I DL'd Dominos and I must say it's very nice. Granted it's not the best thing out there maybe, and seems similar to Bartender (which my boyfriend uses) but compared to my life before, it rocks. Making things smaller or larger or move it out of the way entirely was cool. In addition, I finally cleaned up what was on my bars. I think I had Regrowth and Rejuv in the same places since I first got the spells, and with Clique+Grid, there was no reason to keep them there anymore. Same goes for a few other spells I have bound to buttons.
Also, I am not sure why I felt it was necessary to have the group up when I would be staring at grid anyway. In fact, it was so bad that Grid overlaped the party frames and was just more clutter. This is what happens when you are stuck in a rut.
The result is a much more steamlined version of the crap I have on my screen. This may seem silly when you consider that Grid is HUGE and therefore engulfs everything. But, considering everything else I have is small, I end up with a lot of open spaces on my screen which goes a long way to situational awarness.
It's funny, I started this post a couple days ago and finally am getting around to actually posting it. In the meantime, I was reading the WoW forums on how someone feels Grid kills situational awarness.
The problem is not the mods, at least not 100 percent. It's a two part issue. First, Blizzard has decided to heed the call of healers who claimed that healing was boring. They don't call it wack-a-mole for nothing. To combat that issue, there are now a ton of things happening at the same time and in the midst of it all, sometimes the healers are asked to move or switch to critical targets (think Slag Pot, Lazer beams, what have you). This requires a high level of not only situational awareness, but maintaining an eye on raid frames at the same time. This leads to the second issue which is the player. Some healers are just not wired for the level of information saturation Blizz has given us. This requires a lot of work on the part of the player to train themselves to move beyond the boxes and listen or look for other things going on.
Old set up:
Lots of crap on my screen, a defunct NeedtoKnow mod sitting off to the side because I didn't have it configured and Grid overlapping party frames.
New set up:
Still could some work, but it's so much better than it was before.
After watching a video of Healbot set up, I have to admit it looks very attractive. Sadly, I can't give up my Grid+Clique set up. I am sure Healbot could keep up with all my hots and boss debuffs I watch for, but I am not in the mood to relearn a whole new raid frames set up.
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Slightly off topic, it's now summer time for me. I am writing this from work. Now it's not a paying job, but I decided to stay on with this agency after my internship was down for the term. It's quiet now (thankfully) leaving me some time to type. Summer also means more time to play around with the blog, my characters, and getting my house cleaned before the rash of company invades us.
Recently I DL'd Dominos and I must say it's very nice. Granted it's not the best thing out there maybe, and seems similar to Bartender (which my boyfriend uses) but compared to my life before, it rocks. Making things smaller or larger or move it out of the way entirely was cool. In addition, I finally cleaned up what was on my bars. I think I had Regrowth and Rejuv in the same places since I first got the spells, and with Clique+Grid, there was no reason to keep them there anymore. Same goes for a few other spells I have bound to buttons.
Also, I am not sure why I felt it was necessary to have the group up when I would be staring at grid anyway. In fact, it was so bad that Grid overlaped the party frames and was just more clutter. This is what happens when you are stuck in a rut.
The result is a much more steamlined version of the crap I have on my screen. This may seem silly when you consider that Grid is HUGE and therefore engulfs everything. But, considering everything else I have is small, I end up with a lot of open spaces on my screen which goes a long way to situational awarness.
It's funny, I started this post a couple days ago and finally am getting around to actually posting it. In the meantime, I was reading the WoW forums on how someone feels Grid kills situational awarness.
The problem is not the mods, at least not 100 percent. It's a two part issue. First, Blizzard has decided to heed the call of healers who claimed that healing was boring. They don't call it wack-a-mole for nothing. To combat that issue, there are now a ton of things happening at the same time and in the midst of it all, sometimes the healers are asked to move or switch to critical targets (think Slag Pot, Lazer beams, what have you). This requires a high level of not only situational awareness, but maintaining an eye on raid frames at the same time. This leads to the second issue which is the player. Some healers are just not wired for the level of information saturation Blizz has given us. This requires a lot of work on the part of the player to train themselves to move beyond the boxes and listen or look for other things going on.
Old set up:
Lots of crap on my screen, a defunct NeedtoKnow mod sitting off to the side because I didn't have it configured and Grid overlapping party frames.
New set up:
Still could some work, but it's so much better than it was before.
After watching a video of Healbot set up, I have to admit it looks very attractive. Sadly, I can't give up my Grid+Clique set up. I am sure Healbot could keep up with all my hots and boss debuffs I watch for, but I am not in the mood to relearn a whole new raid frames set up.
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Slightly off topic, it's now summer time for me. I am writing this from work. Now it's not a paying job, but I decided to stay on with this agency after my internship was down for the term. It's quiet now (thankfully) leaving me some time to type. Summer also means more time to play around with the blog, my characters, and getting my house cleaned before the rash of company invades us.
Friday, June 5
The tank died...
A strange thing happens on our raids. Our main tank dies a lot. Sometimes, he's dead on trash, other times it on the boss. No matter what, he tends to go down.
Believe me, it was kinda funny in Naxx for the last boss in the spider wing. But lately, it's been on several pulls through out the night.
If it's not the main tank, its an OT.
So, here are my theories:
The tanks tend to pull without saying they are pulling. They can not blame the raid for this. They have been known to jabber on vent, presumably while waiting for a pat to come back around, then all of a sudden they run off. If they aren't running off, they are moving to odd places away from the group. I don't just mean for the good reasons like WW or chain lightning, but really, really odd places like around the corner or whatever.
If the tanks aren't running off, the healers are going afk assuming that the other healers will pick up the slack. This becomes a problem when three healers try to rez folks, and three go do whatever leaving one or so left to try to keep up with said running tanks. This leaves more people dieing the cycle repeats itself.
We have long and stressful raids. Thankfully, we don't have anyone who says they have to tinkle or feed their dogs or ask questions over vent that could be done in tells. Those were our SSC days, but something similar is happening here in Ulduar and it's getting to be a chore. Folks tend to lose focus during the trash, which slows our game down which leads to more tired folks by the time we get to our bosses.
I told one of our tanks that I rarely bitched about the kind of job they are doing, as I used to be a tank, but this is a growing trend so I will just propose my solutions (now that I have finished ranting) and see what comes of it.
Tanks need to say something! Anything! "Inc" "Pulling" and preferably a few seconds before they run off so the healers can run WITH them. They know when they are going to pull, as it doesn't take that long to get a sense of when a pat is due to return. If it's a quick pull, add a little urgency to that battlecry. It's not doing anyone any favors if the pull is made without the healers.
Healers need to communicate a little more. Use that healing channel to say you are afk. And, since I am a culprit of this as well, we don't need half our healers to rez people. Keep one person back and the rest can catch up. If it's a major screw up then we can yell at the tanks to slow down in order to get enough people back up and running. One or two dead does not warrant that much attention.
Since I never really got to do Sunwell trash (aside from the entrance) I can only be reminded of The Eye trash as we clear to things like Freya. It was a bitch, had to keep focus or the whole thing started over. Ulduar is not quite that painful, but it is evil and will only get worse (Mimiron, shudder).
Believe me, it was kinda funny in Naxx for the last boss in the spider wing. But lately, it's been on several pulls through out the night.
If it's not the main tank, its an OT.
So, here are my theories:
The tanks tend to pull without saying they are pulling. They can not blame the raid for this. They have been known to jabber on vent, presumably while waiting for a pat to come back around, then all of a sudden they run off. If they aren't running off, they are moving to odd places away from the group. I don't just mean for the good reasons like WW or chain lightning, but really, really odd places like around the corner or whatever.
If the tanks aren't running off, the healers are going afk assuming that the other healers will pick up the slack. This becomes a problem when three healers try to rez folks, and three go do whatever leaving one or so left to try to keep up with said running tanks. This leaves more people dieing the cycle repeats itself.
We have long and stressful raids. Thankfully, we don't have anyone who says they have to tinkle or feed their dogs or ask questions over vent that could be done in tells. Those were our SSC days, but something similar is happening here in Ulduar and it's getting to be a chore. Folks tend to lose focus during the trash, which slows our game down which leads to more tired folks by the time we get to our bosses.
I told one of our tanks that I rarely bitched about the kind of job they are doing, as I used to be a tank, but this is a growing trend so I will just propose my solutions (now that I have finished ranting) and see what comes of it.
Tanks need to say something! Anything! "Inc" "Pulling" and preferably a few seconds before they run off so the healers can run WITH them. They know when they are going to pull, as it doesn't take that long to get a sense of when a pat is due to return. If it's a quick pull, add a little urgency to that battlecry. It's not doing anyone any favors if the pull is made without the healers.
Healers need to communicate a little more. Use that healing channel to say you are afk. And, since I am a culprit of this as well, we don't need half our healers to rez people. Keep one person back and the rest can catch up. If it's a major screw up then we can yell at the tanks to slow down in order to get enough people back up and running. One or two dead does not warrant that much attention.
Since I never really got to do Sunwell trash (aside from the entrance) I can only be reminded of The Eye trash as we clear to things like Freya. It was a bitch, had to keep focus or the whole thing started over. Ulduar is not quite that painful, but it is evil and will only get worse (Mimiron, shudder).
Monday, June 1
Healing Hodir and Iron Council
These two fights are about as easy as they come for me. I don't have to worry about the tank eating an eleven-ty gazzillion hit that may or may not be interrupted. I don't have to worry about the dps too much. All I have to do is roll hots and win the imaginary healing meter game.
First up, Iron Council. I have been lucky to only raid heal for this on 25 man but I have tank healed for 10 man. Here is a typical set of spells as the pull goes off.
Before MD is in: Regrowth, Rejuv, 3 stacks of Lifebloom on MT.
After MD is in: WG a stack of people, begin rejuving everyone on my grid list. WG as soon as its up. Possible swiftmend for those oh crap moments. Repeat.
That's all. I am pretty sure some healer is probably helping because, honestly, it takes me a little while to catch everyone with rejuv. The WG catches those folks I am trying to get to. So far, my system works rather well. Lag is my only problem here. If I lag behind even a little bit, the hots fall behind and my grid starts falling like dominoes.
Hodir took a number of trial and errors. Originally, I used a combination of regrowth, rejuv and nourish to try to keep everyone alive. This probably would have worked had I stuck with it, but I was not happy with the results. Sometimes, with all the ranged standing on the fires, that is the last place I want to be because of ice falling.
I recently got the new Nourish idol, and that same night someone whispered me "Oh, you are MT healing for Hodir, will be nice to use the idol." I replied "Nope. Still going to use Rejuv more than Nourish." Regardless of if I am helping heal the main tank or just concentrate on my group, here is how it goes:
First, I try to manipulate it so melee are in my group. I am evil like that. I hope the shamans don't catch on.
Same as IC, I load the MT with hots before the pull. Once the pull is made, my constant moving begins. I hit everyone in my group with rejuv, even if they aren't taking damage. With revitalize, it's not going to waste. Eventually, someone in my group will get hit with Ice so having the hots on them is proactive. I hit WG every so often to catch the MT and/or other melee.
As soon as frozen blows are announced, I toss lifebloom to everyone in my group. Frozen blows lasts around 10 to 12 seconds (last I checked, I could be wrong) so the bloom hits them in the middle of things giving me time to refresh rejuv, toss WG and swiftmend (to those needed).
Provided no one in my group is caught in ice, this plan works 99 percent of the time. Between revitalize and blooms, I have yet to need to innervate or use a pot despite the constant healing.
If I am healing the MT in all this, much is the same though I do stop moving a little more often to refresh regrowth and toss nourish on the MT. I have only been on MT duty once for this fight so I still have some tweaking to do.
First up, Iron Council. I have been lucky to only raid heal for this on 25 man but I have tank healed for 10 man. Here is a typical set of spells as the pull goes off.
Before MD is in: Regrowth, Rejuv, 3 stacks of Lifebloom on MT.
After MD is in: WG a stack of people, begin rejuving everyone on my grid list. WG as soon as its up. Possible swiftmend for those oh crap moments. Repeat.
That's all. I am pretty sure some healer is probably helping because, honestly, it takes me a little while to catch everyone with rejuv. The WG catches those folks I am trying to get to. So far, my system works rather well. Lag is my only problem here. If I lag behind even a little bit, the hots fall behind and my grid starts falling like dominoes.
Hodir took a number of trial and errors. Originally, I used a combination of regrowth, rejuv and nourish to try to keep everyone alive. This probably would have worked had I stuck with it, but I was not happy with the results. Sometimes, with all the ranged standing on the fires, that is the last place I want to be because of ice falling.
I recently got the new Nourish idol, and that same night someone whispered me "Oh, you are MT healing for Hodir, will be nice to use the idol." I replied "Nope. Still going to use Rejuv more than Nourish." Regardless of if I am helping heal the main tank or just concentrate on my group, here is how it goes:
First, I try to manipulate it so melee are in my group. I am evil like that. I hope the shamans don't catch on.
Same as IC, I load the MT with hots before the pull. Once the pull is made, my constant moving begins. I hit everyone in my group with rejuv, even if they aren't taking damage. With revitalize, it's not going to waste. Eventually, someone in my group will get hit with Ice so having the hots on them is proactive. I hit WG every so often to catch the MT and/or other melee.
As soon as frozen blows are announced, I toss lifebloom to everyone in my group. Frozen blows lasts around 10 to 12 seconds (last I checked, I could be wrong) so the bloom hits them in the middle of things giving me time to refresh rejuv, toss WG and swiftmend (to those needed).
Provided no one in my group is caught in ice, this plan works 99 percent of the time. Between revitalize and blooms, I have yet to need to innervate or use a pot despite the constant healing.
If I am healing the MT in all this, much is the same though I do stop moving a little more often to refresh regrowth and toss nourish on the MT. I have only been on MT duty once for this fight so I still have some tweaking to do.
Wednesday, May 27
Jcing Changes
In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.
At first, I was pretty pissed at blizzard. Now, I'm just mad at the rest of the raiding community.
For those of us who have been Jcers since the start of Burning Crusade, we have seen some small but nifty things come our way. Primatics were a joke in BC so when Wrath came out with the super stat-ed Prismatics (Limit Three) I was pretty happy with it. Then, a strange thing occured that I did not realize was happening. Folks would take Blacksmithing and Jcing together. Not only did you by pass the Meta and Socket bonus requirements, but you were able to plop the gems into Prismatic Sockets and still be full of win.
I suppose I can't blame those folks for wanting to min max as such. But, like those stupid drums for Black Temple and Sunwell, this combination, or at the very least taking up Jewelcrafting alone, seemed like a standard requirement for raiding.
I kept telling people in my guild that Jewelcrafting would suck their souls and to not take it up. So much money spent on one tradeskill. My total cash dumped is enormous, and then there are folks who helped me get a rare but essential pattern (and one player who helped me get each pattern from the Sunwell Island). Total cash spent is easily in the tens of thousands.
I took it up in the beginning to help my guildies. Why pay money in the AH when you can ask me and save some cash? Especially with raw gems purchasable by emblems, all you have to do is spend a few heroics worth of time and energy and BAM, new gem. Ok, maybe that part is a pain the ass, but I have always enjoyed being able to provide a service to the needy in my guild. And, I suppose always having the gem I needed was nice.
Then, despite my pleas and warnings, more and more guildies grabbed the tradeskill. Other guilds did the same. And blizzard responded with a nerf.
Now, a nerf is fine for me. I had been doing things wrong all along and did not use the Dragon's Eye gems to fill socket requirements. I used them just like an enchanter would for their rings or a leatherworker for their bracer enchants. They were an extra bonus for me that no one else had. What I hope is that they change them correctly to be solid colors.
I am sure they had to decide at some point to choose between changing all the JC only gems to the pure colors they represented (sparkling to blue, subtle to red, brillant to yellow) or remove them and force players to start over, with compensation. I personally would have liked to have made them the solid colors and fix sockets accordingly (which wouldn't have been terribly difficult).
Blacksmith/JCers are still edging out in the win column. BS sockets are still going to be prismatic, which means they can still keep those dragon's eye gems and use regular gems to fill their metas.
What I don't understand is the 77 current pages of "This tradeskill is worthless now." Really? Having an extra daily to work on the Horrible Kirin Tor rep must be worthless. Having a cut you want any time is worthless. Having an extra powered gem when you want is not worthless.
In addition, epic gems still haven't come out. Stormjewels are just a taste of whats to come and there is still a light at the end of the tunnel. There are many things that could be better with Jewelcrafting, but this nerf to the Min Maxers is not going to hurt me.
Hell, maybe enough will drop the GD thing so I can go back to selling my gems at a good price :)
At first, I was pretty pissed at blizzard. Now, I'm just mad at the rest of the raiding community.
For those of us who have been Jcers since the start of Burning Crusade, we have seen some small but nifty things come our way. Primatics were a joke in BC so when Wrath came out with the super stat-ed Prismatics (Limit Three) I was pretty happy with it. Then, a strange thing occured that I did not realize was happening. Folks would take Blacksmithing and Jcing together. Not only did you by pass the Meta and Socket bonus requirements, but you were able to plop the gems into Prismatic Sockets and still be full of win.
I suppose I can't blame those folks for wanting to min max as such. But, like those stupid drums for Black Temple and Sunwell, this combination, or at the very least taking up Jewelcrafting alone, seemed like a standard requirement for raiding.
I kept telling people in my guild that Jewelcrafting would suck their souls and to not take it up. So much money spent on one tradeskill. My total cash dumped is enormous, and then there are folks who helped me get a rare but essential pattern (and one player who helped me get each pattern from the Sunwell Island). Total cash spent is easily in the tens of thousands.
I took it up in the beginning to help my guildies. Why pay money in the AH when you can ask me and save some cash? Especially with raw gems purchasable by emblems, all you have to do is spend a few heroics worth of time and energy and BAM, new gem. Ok, maybe that part is a pain the ass, but I have always enjoyed being able to provide a service to the needy in my guild. And, I suppose always having the gem I needed was nice.
Then, despite my pleas and warnings, more and more guildies grabbed the tradeskill. Other guilds did the same. And blizzard responded with a nerf.
Now, a nerf is fine for me. I had been doing things wrong all along and did not use the Dragon's Eye gems to fill socket requirements. I used them just like an enchanter would for their rings or a leatherworker for their bracer enchants. They were an extra bonus for me that no one else had. What I hope is that they change them correctly to be solid colors.
I am sure they had to decide at some point to choose between changing all the JC only gems to the pure colors they represented (sparkling to blue, subtle to red, brillant to yellow) or remove them and force players to start over, with compensation. I personally would have liked to have made them the solid colors and fix sockets accordingly (which wouldn't have been terribly difficult).
Blacksmith/JCers are still edging out in the win column. BS sockets are still going to be prismatic, which means they can still keep those dragon's eye gems and use regular gems to fill their metas.
What I don't understand is the 77 current pages of "This tradeskill is worthless now." Really? Having an extra daily to work on the Horrible Kirin Tor rep must be worthless. Having a cut you want any time is worthless. Having an extra powered gem when you want is not worthless.
In addition, epic gems still haven't come out. Stormjewels are just a taste of whats to come and there is still a light at the end of the tunnel. There are many things that could be better with Jewelcrafting, but this nerf to the Min Maxers is not going to hurt me.
Hell, maybe enough will drop the GD thing so I can go back to selling my gems at a good price :)
Monday, May 25
Fear and Loathing
Fear: Deciding to let go of T7 in favor of other gear choices, and tweaking a talent spec in order to optimize other raiders.
I decided to drop t7 all together. OK, maybe I kept the shoulders because my spirit was a little too low for my taste, but otherwise I am sporting my new Ulduar upgrades. Much to my pleasure, I got Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed last night, which when the blogsphere said Phaelia was getting a peice of gear named in her honor I knew I was going to have it. It's not optimally the best thing I should be wearing at this point, not to mention it was BoE and easily gone in the guild bank... but hell I took it for sentimental reasons.
Again, rawr says my choices lately blow, which reiterates my idea that these gear calculators are guides really. Sometimes, I have to just go with my gut on some things. Having nearly as many hps as our melee dps makes me feel good on those fights that having me taking extra damage (which in Ulduar seems like every fight). I will say that I spent a good several minutes going over my gear and regemming or tweaking until my stats were at a comfortable level. In order to keep my haste and spirit at those levels, I had to take a gem I never thought I'd use- 8 spirit, 8 haste. As much as it pains me to drop some int gems, I needed to make sure my global cooldown could keep up with my personal reaction time. In addition, we have discovered that between me and our other druid, I am better suited for raid healing and therefore need have speed to make sure all my targets have the hots flowing.
Currently, based on gear item levels, I am the third top druid on the server. The other two are sporting 3 peices of t8.5 and I can accept that their guild is a bit more progressed than I am. Competitive? Sure I am, but at the same time I also don't want to sacrifice too much of my own personal goals.
So what did I tweak? I took Revitalize over the weekend in order to test it on our next progression run. It was actually a friend of mine sending me a tell before my next DM Rep Run saying something along the lines of "Hey I could be getting 200 more dps if you specd this." OK, it wasn't quite like that, but he did challenge my perceptions on the talent. The good folks at Dreambound had a nice write up on the math taking Wild Growth into account. After doing some reading, talking with my friend (who also crunches numbers and in general trolls info sites) I decided to give this talent a shot. See, I had it before but thought it sucked hard, regardless of the amount of rejuv I was tossing. Lately, though, with my new full time role as raid healer I had to bite the bullet and say that perhaps there was some value to tweaking my talents. Add in my recent addition of the Wild Growth glyph, and I started seeing some possibilities. It still is pretty marginal as a mana regen talent. However, we run with more DKs and Hunters than any other class. Without rehashing the math already done before, I will say our Deathknights got a nice boost last night. Hodir, especially, was fun as I got lucky and was given our two top DKs as my heal targets. Maybe I should tell my friend to give me the 35 gold for the respec cost, since it pushed him to nearly 9k dps on Hodir with a 560 runic power gain. mmm...
Loathing: Um, the prospect of tackling Thorim and Mimiron in the comming weeks. Shudder.
Have a safe Memorial Day. My brother will be BBQing while I tell him how I obliterated one of his healers in VoA. (What's the point of being a big sister if I can't call bragging rights?)
I decided to drop t7 all together. OK, maybe I kept the shoulders because my spirit was a little too low for my taste, but otherwise I am sporting my new Ulduar upgrades. Much to my pleasure, I got Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed last night, which when the blogsphere said Phaelia was getting a peice of gear named in her honor I knew I was going to have it. It's not optimally the best thing I should be wearing at this point, not to mention it was BoE and easily gone in the guild bank... but hell I took it for sentimental reasons.
Again, rawr says my choices lately blow, which reiterates my idea that these gear calculators are guides really. Sometimes, I have to just go with my gut on some things. Having nearly as many hps as our melee dps makes me feel good on those fights that having me taking extra damage (which in Ulduar seems like every fight). I will say that I spent a good several minutes going over my gear and regemming or tweaking until my stats were at a comfortable level. In order to keep my haste and spirit at those levels, I had to take a gem I never thought I'd use- 8 spirit, 8 haste. As much as it pains me to drop some int gems, I needed to make sure my global cooldown could keep up with my personal reaction time. In addition, we have discovered that between me and our other druid, I am better suited for raid healing and therefore need have speed to make sure all my targets have the hots flowing.
Currently, based on gear item levels, I am the third top druid on the server. The other two are sporting 3 peices of t8.5 and I can accept that their guild is a bit more progressed than I am. Competitive? Sure I am, but at the same time I also don't want to sacrifice too much of my own personal goals.
So what did I tweak? I took Revitalize over the weekend in order to test it on our next progression run. It was actually a friend of mine sending me a tell before my next DM Rep Run saying something along the lines of "Hey I could be getting 200 more dps if you specd this." OK, it wasn't quite like that, but he did challenge my perceptions on the talent. The good folks at Dreambound had a nice write up on the math taking Wild Growth into account. After doing some reading, talking with my friend (who also crunches numbers and in general trolls info sites) I decided to give this talent a shot. See, I had it before but thought it sucked hard, regardless of the amount of rejuv I was tossing. Lately, though, with my new full time role as raid healer I had to bite the bullet and say that perhaps there was some value to tweaking my talents. Add in my recent addition of the Wild Growth glyph, and I started seeing some possibilities. It still is pretty marginal as a mana regen talent. However, we run with more DKs and Hunters than any other class. Without rehashing the math already done before, I will say our Deathknights got a nice boost last night. Hodir, especially, was fun as I got lucky and was given our two top DKs as my heal targets. Maybe I should tell my friend to give me the 35 gold for the respec cost, since it pushed him to nearly 9k dps on Hodir with a 560 runic power gain. mmm...
Loathing: Um, the prospect of tackling Thorim and Mimiron in the comming weeks. Shudder.
Have a safe Memorial Day. My brother will be BBQing while I tell him how I obliterated one of his healers in VoA. (What's the point of being a big sister if I can't call bragging rights?)
Wednesday, May 20
Set bonuses, patches, nerfs
Sometimes having a set bonus on the gear can be a crutch. So much is dependant on having two or all four peices of a certain gear that once you finally get them you are loathed to break up the set.
The druid t7 bonus is a boost to Nourish. This has been amazing for things like MT healing or any other targets that need quick direct heals, but I also know there are druids out there that aren't using the full set anymore.
So when the Mantle of the Preserver dropped from 10 man Ulduar last night and I saw it had more spellpower/crit than my T7, I was torn. Do I break up my set or do I take the shoulders (I was the only one who wanted them). Sure enough, I decided to break the set. It sucked and that's when I thought "I'm going to have to break the set anyway for the t8, might as well start picking up what I think will work."
Rawr says I made the wrong choice, ratings busters says they are close, and I'm waiting for some test runs to see how it actually will play out.
I suppose this wouldn't be so difficult if my role was a bit more defined. I have now proven that I can raid heal and tank heal, which leads me to tough choices about my gear.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Patch notes:
# Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
# Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.
For some reason I thought this went live already, but officially now it has. This is an important change to innervate, as I have already commented on, and maybe now I can drop the glyph to grab the Wild Growth Glyph.
Not sure how I feel about the boomkin change. I don't have a lot of spirit on my gear but maybe upper end, full time nukers will see some boost to their dps.
Ulduar was nerfed again on several different difficulty levels. I find it interesting that the World First XT hard mode kill happened after the nerfs went in... Oh silly Blizzard.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
With those many changes, our 10 man last night was the smoothest run to date, with us clearing to Hodir in two hours. After banging our heads against the 25 man version and with the nerfs, I swear 10 man seemed like a much more relaxed adventure. I look forward to more progression.
There are rumblings of just doing 10 man all the time and saying screw it to the 25 man version. I'd rather not, but I understand the temptation. It's like herding sheep sometimes to get all 25 people to do what is needed, the healing is stressful, and the dps have to carry other dps.
All we have to do is look back to our Kara days and remind ourselves why focusing on 10 man raids is teh suck. Heck, even the cluster that was two ZAs. The drama was insane and cycling in folks to make sure there wasn't an A team and B team mentality forced some to quit and others to just merely want to fall off a cliff. We have 15 or so core raiders, which would either leave folks on the sidelines, or vie for attention from the raid leaders. In addition, getting the healers situated is also a pain.
In addition, unless we do 10 man hard modes, the item levels and significance of the upgrades is marginal between 10 and 25 man versions. Sometimes the itemization is a little different, but I hear more and more folks saying they are waiting for large upgrades and not small ones, which 10 man doesn't provide for us at this point.
I've already spent points on a staff and ring, dropping me below the other healers when it comes time for the T8 to drop. Others are still sporting player made items and are hogging their points for a shot at a certain item (this I can get behind, as they got screwed on RNG in Naxx and are seeing Ulduar as a chance for a very important upgrade).
I have no problems spending my points. I know t8 will drop for me eventually, and I'd rather have steady increases to performance than rely on one large one. In addition, the Ulduar drops have more HP than naxx versions (at least the items that I picked up) which in turn means more survivability. Can't do jack when you are dead.
It is all a personal choice, and I can't begrudge folks on their decisions.
The druid t7 bonus is a boost to Nourish. This has been amazing for things like MT healing or any other targets that need quick direct heals, but I also know there are druids out there that aren't using the full set anymore.
So when the Mantle of the Preserver dropped from 10 man Ulduar last night and I saw it had more spellpower/crit than my T7, I was torn. Do I break up my set or do I take the shoulders (I was the only one who wanted them). Sure enough, I decided to break the set. It sucked and that's when I thought "I'm going to have to break the set anyway for the t8, might as well start picking up what I think will work."
Rawr says I made the wrong choice, ratings busters says they are close, and I'm waiting for some test runs to see how it actually will play out.
I suppose this wouldn't be so difficult if my role was a bit more defined. I have now proven that I can raid heal and tank heal, which leads me to tough choices about my gear.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Patch notes:
# Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
# Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.
For some reason I thought this went live already, but officially now it has. This is an important change to innervate, as I have already commented on, and maybe now I can drop the glyph to grab the Wild Growth Glyph.
Not sure how I feel about the boomkin change. I don't have a lot of spirit on my gear but maybe upper end, full time nukers will see some boost to their dps.
Ulduar was nerfed again on several different difficulty levels. I find it interesting that the World First XT hard mode kill happened after the nerfs went in... Oh silly Blizzard.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
With those many changes, our 10 man last night was the smoothest run to date, with us clearing to Hodir in two hours. After banging our heads against the 25 man version and with the nerfs, I swear 10 man seemed like a much more relaxed adventure. I look forward to more progression.
There are rumblings of just doing 10 man all the time and saying screw it to the 25 man version. I'd rather not, but I understand the temptation. It's like herding sheep sometimes to get all 25 people to do what is needed, the healing is stressful, and the dps have to carry other dps.
All we have to do is look back to our Kara days and remind ourselves why focusing on 10 man raids is teh suck. Heck, even the cluster that was two ZAs. The drama was insane and cycling in folks to make sure there wasn't an A team and B team mentality forced some to quit and others to just merely want to fall off a cliff. We have 15 or so core raiders, which would either leave folks on the sidelines, or vie for attention from the raid leaders. In addition, getting the healers situated is also a pain.
In addition, unless we do 10 man hard modes, the item levels and significance of the upgrades is marginal between 10 and 25 man versions. Sometimes the itemization is a little different, but I hear more and more folks saying they are waiting for large upgrades and not small ones, which 10 man doesn't provide for us at this point.
I've already spent points on a staff and ring, dropping me below the other healers when it comes time for the T8 to drop. Others are still sporting player made items and are hogging their points for a shot at a certain item (this I can get behind, as they got screwed on RNG in Naxx and are seeing Ulduar as a chance for a very important upgrade).
I have no problems spending my points. I know t8 will drop for me eventually, and I'd rather have steady increases to performance than rely on one large one. In addition, the Ulduar drops have more HP than naxx versions (at least the items that I picked up) which in turn means more survivability. Can't do jack when you are dead.
It is all a personal choice, and I can't begrudge folks on their decisions.
Sunday, May 17
Will the real Kir, please stand up
Ambrosine of I Like Bubbles mentioned being identified by the characters you play. After playing MMOs for so long I tend to echo the sentiments she makes about being known for the character you play the longest.
Never had I had so many alts as I do in WoW. Well, the other game I've played longer is EQ and to be honest, leveling a new character kinda sucked, even with items not being bound to a certain character (read: my Monk got a Fungi tunic and my Ranger had a full set of some uber something I don't remember anymore-- all before level 10).
Wow makes it so easy to just roll up a new character and get going, even with crappy newbie gear. My allotted character list is full, both with horde and alli characters.
Regardless of my characters, I'm still called Kir with the occasional naming of the character I happen to be on. Same goes for my guildmates. I still call Jerke, Sumnor, even though he hasn't played his mage since last summer.
This extends to Real Life aswell. I use game names and real life names interchangeably, and sometimes it's just more comfortable for me to use the game name instead. For others, they are more used to real life names, and often times you will hear a name or two on vent.
All of this makes this a blurring of realities in a way. Sure, EQ was highly immersive for me, but Warcraft has moved beyond and made the game uniquely special on its own.
I wrote a paper for Sociology that explains why being a gamer is part of being in a subculture. Parts of this is not exclusive to WoW however. Phrases like training, camping, agro, mobs, and the like have been part of gaming for more than a decade, and are ingrained into our language. I argue that this is not merely slang, but a separate language for us. One thing that truly makes me feel like we are part of a subculture is that our language is being adopted by the main stream. How often have you heard the word Epic to mean something truly awesome? I'm sure it can be argued differently, but as a gamer, I feel it has something to do with the millions and millions of players of MMOs of all generas influencing our pop culture.
I think I digressed a little.
For some, WoW is just a game and a social life killer. For the rest of us, it's a place to hang with friends both close and far. We get to know personalities (sometimes so well, we can spot imposters), quirks, failings and strengths. Sometimes, its like being with co-workers who you love or hate, and other times its like being in one big family (who you also love or hate)
Never had I had so many alts as I do in WoW. Well, the other game I've played longer is EQ and to be honest, leveling a new character kinda sucked, even with items not being bound to a certain character (read: my Monk got a Fungi tunic and my Ranger had a full set of some uber something I don't remember anymore-- all before level 10).
Wow makes it so easy to just roll up a new character and get going, even with crappy newbie gear. My allotted character list is full, both with horde and alli characters.
Regardless of my characters, I'm still called Kir with the occasional naming of the character I happen to be on. Same goes for my guildmates. I still call Jerke, Sumnor, even though he hasn't played his mage since last summer.
This extends to Real Life aswell. I use game names and real life names interchangeably, and sometimes it's just more comfortable for me to use the game name instead. For others, they are more used to real life names, and often times you will hear a name or two on vent.
All of this makes this a blurring of realities in a way. Sure, EQ was highly immersive for me, but Warcraft has moved beyond and made the game uniquely special on its own.
I wrote a paper for Sociology that explains why being a gamer is part of being in a subculture. Parts of this is not exclusive to WoW however. Phrases like training, camping, agro, mobs, and the like have been part of gaming for more than a decade, and are ingrained into our language. I argue that this is not merely slang, but a separate language for us. One thing that truly makes me feel like we are part of a subculture is that our language is being adopted by the main stream. How often have you heard the word Epic to mean something truly awesome? I'm sure it can be argued differently, but as a gamer, I feel it has something to do with the millions and millions of players of MMOs of all generas influencing our pop culture.
I think I digressed a little.
For some, WoW is just a game and a social life killer. For the rest of us, it's a place to hang with friends both close and far. We get to know personalities (sometimes so well, we can spot imposters), quirks, failings and strengths. Sometimes, its like being with co-workers who you love or hate, and other times its like being in one big family (who you also love or hate)
Thursday, May 14
Insomnia
Finally, we are feeling like we are making some progress in Ulduar. On 10 man, we killed Hodir which was awesome (I actually was in Moonkin form since we had extra healers) and for 25 man we tried Cat lady (Honestly, some of these names are hard for me to spell so they get nicknames).
Spent a ton of points on a new staff Rapture. Sure, a main hand and off hand are a better combo, but it had leaves and stuff... obviously a druid weapon. Sadly, all the haste I worked hard on got shot to hell, but I regemmed some haste gems.
We got our first pattern to drop- a blacksmithy one that went to our dps warrior. And my friend got two upgrades (a weapon which he can now stop bitching about, and a sigil)
All in all a good couple nights, with tonight on the way as well.
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I have decided to stop being so grumpy at folks. Some of it had to do with a manipulation of vent (cryptic I know, but that's all I have to say), and a small chat with one of our healers. Turns out the healer is using the old click to target then heal method, which is what I used to do before the beauty of mods. This explains the low healing per second. Also explains why this person is better for single target or low impact raid healing. And the massive use of WG before it got nerfed. Basically, I understand a lot more what this person is up against as far as reaction times. I'm not so grumpy anymore.
Ugh, I lied. One small rant. If you get invited to the raid, start heading to the zone. If you have to afk, try to afk INSIDE the zone so that way when you are back, you are more ready to go than if you were dinking around in Dalaran. When you do get back, and the raid has started, don't say over vent with an incredulous voice "You guys already started?!" Yes, we started. It's 5:01 and the raids start at 5:00. Sometimes the raid is late, but not because we are waiting on you.
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Off topic- I have a small case of insomnia. Actually, I got up this morning to deal with the cats and when I tried to go back to bed, had a small pain that nagged me to stay awake. Sucks more when we stayed up way too late and I have work today. Just when I'm trying to get more sleep lately, today it's about 6 hours.
Spent a ton of points on a new staff Rapture. Sure, a main hand and off hand are a better combo, but it had leaves and stuff... obviously a druid weapon. Sadly, all the haste I worked hard on got shot to hell, but I regemmed some haste gems.
We got our first pattern to drop- a blacksmithy one that went to our dps warrior. And my friend got two upgrades (a weapon which he can now stop bitching about, and a sigil)
All in all a good couple nights, with tonight on the way as well.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I have decided to stop being so grumpy at folks. Some of it had to do with a manipulation of vent (cryptic I know, but that's all I have to say), and a small chat with one of our healers. Turns out the healer is using the old click to target then heal method, which is what I used to do before the beauty of mods. This explains the low healing per second. Also explains why this person is better for single target or low impact raid healing. And the massive use of WG before it got nerfed. Basically, I understand a lot more what this person is up against as far as reaction times. I'm not so grumpy anymore.
Ugh, I lied. One small rant. If you get invited to the raid, start heading to the zone. If you have to afk, try to afk INSIDE the zone so that way when you are back, you are more ready to go than if you were dinking around in Dalaran. When you do get back, and the raid has started, don't say over vent with an incredulous voice "You guys already started?!" Yes, we started. It's 5:01 and the raids start at 5:00. Sometimes the raid is late, but not because we are waiting on you.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Off topic- I have a small case of insomnia. Actually, I got up this morning to deal with the cats and when I tried to go back to bed, had a small pain that nagged me to stay awake. Sucks more when we stayed up way too late and I have work today. Just when I'm trying to get more sleep lately, today it's about 6 hours.
Monday, May 11
Monday, Monday
I wouldn't say I am a min/max-er in the strictest sense. I do see what is an upgrade and weigh it against my current gear- not just piece by piece but if it upsets the over all balance. This was much worse when I was a tank. Literally one new piece had me scrambling to regem everything I had.
I do check out Wowheroes and Be Imba and downloaded Rawr. Often it starts out innocently: I check out what I have, what I could be getting etc, but then move to checking out everyone else is wearing and what they could be wearing. I get a little obsessive.
Rawr is fun, and like everything else, I take it with a grain of salt. When it tells me to gem a certain way or use a certain item, I use my head and not blindly follow it. In addition, sometimes the upgrades are only a few points different which doesn't seem like an upgrade. Now, if it scaled to being a few hundred points different, then it has my attention.
I do wish I had the purified twilight opal pattern and spent a good hour running in a little circle killing mobs hoping it would drop. Lame? Yes, since it's a BoE world drop. The other motivation was to get 10k gold looted. Apparently, I am number 3 in the guild for achievement points and while I didn't care before, someone is looking to take my spot and I can't help but to get competitive. He will eventually out-do me; I am not interested in the drake obtained from the World Event achievements.
Ulduar (I think I spelling it right, for once) is still fun and a little frustrating. I got invited to a coolkids channel, which at times is entertaining and other times is a healing meter-fest. It's kinda funny actually, watching folks compare how they are doing fight by fight. Ranting, ahh ranting. I died early on a boss fight and typed out nasty curse words in all caps in the channel, then blamed it on the sourpuss :) What is nice to see is how those friends can keep in touch during the raid without bugging others. Is it a clique? Probably. I am usually very mindful of the Officer hat I have to wear, and generally will not say things that will compromise it. Except regarding certain folks, and even then I don't mention names. Like, what I am doing right now. Right now, there is a certain raider that has now gotten the reputation of another raider and its not flattering for either of them. What kind of reputation? Well, being as useful as a rock, maybe.
I love my guild mates, I love my guild mates, I love my guild mates. This was my mantra yesterday, healing VH on my priest. Seriously, I wanted to shoot them. (It didn't help that my connection went to shit again and I DCd or lagged a bunch of times. That is not a dungeon you want your healer to be craping out on you. Think we had to start it over 4 times.) One of members kept saying stuff like "You should put your DnD over here to start." or "When I play my deathknight, I tank it like this.." What? I have never seen him play a deathknight. And, even if he has one, where does he find the time to tank? Our tank actually has been tanking for the little 10 man Naxxs that are run, but this know-it-all? He has a tank but not a DK tank. Two totally different ways to play. All night I had to hear about what the tank needed to be doing, what the mage needed to be doing, what the elem shaman needed to be doing. Thank gods he doesn't have the balls to tell me what I should be doing. Towards the end of the run, I turned the volume down on my headset and all became much more enjoyable.
Regarding this know-it-all again, I heard a funny story of him tanking in AN with one of our pally casuals. He said to the casual "I eat the pound because I know Ongora will heal through it." What a freaking douche. /shakes head and sighs I really really hope I was never like that when I tanked. Every time a tank runs out of LoS or eats breath or does anything in anyway to make the healer's life more suck, I think back to my tank days and pray that I was never like that.
I have this odd reputation of being a great healer. What this really means is I'm a sucker and will heal these mor--- Sorry, poor souls through instances when others wont. Sure, I am good at what I do, and there are times where I am not so good. I always seem to kill our raiding MT in a 5 man, and I am not entirely sure why that happens.
I hope folks called their moms for Mother's Day or what ever you do during the holiday.
3 more weeks left in the term and gods, summer can not come soon enough.
I do check out Wowheroes and Be Imba and downloaded Rawr. Often it starts out innocently: I check out what I have, what I could be getting etc, but then move to checking out everyone else is wearing and what they could be wearing. I get a little obsessive.
Rawr is fun, and like everything else, I take it with a grain of salt. When it tells me to gem a certain way or use a certain item, I use my head and not blindly follow it. In addition, sometimes the upgrades are only a few points different which doesn't seem like an upgrade. Now, if it scaled to being a few hundred points different, then it has my attention.
I do wish I had the purified twilight opal pattern and spent a good hour running in a little circle killing mobs hoping it would drop. Lame? Yes, since it's a BoE world drop. The other motivation was to get 10k gold looted. Apparently, I am number 3 in the guild for achievement points and while I didn't care before, someone is looking to take my spot and I can't help but to get competitive. He will eventually out-do me; I am not interested in the drake obtained from the World Event achievements.
Ulduar (I think I spelling it right, for once) is still fun and a little frustrating. I got invited to a coolkids channel, which at times is entertaining and other times is a healing meter-fest. It's kinda funny actually, watching folks compare how they are doing fight by fight. Ranting, ahh ranting. I died early on a boss fight and typed out nasty curse words in all caps in the channel, then blamed it on the sourpuss :) What is nice to see is how those friends can keep in touch during the raid without bugging others. Is it a clique? Probably. I am usually very mindful of the Officer hat I have to wear, and generally will not say things that will compromise it. Except regarding certain folks, and even then I don't mention names. Like, what I am doing right now. Right now, there is a certain raider that has now gotten the reputation of another raider and its not flattering for either of them. What kind of reputation? Well, being as useful as a rock, maybe.
I love my guild mates, I love my guild mates, I love my guild mates. This was my mantra yesterday, healing VH on my priest. Seriously, I wanted to shoot them. (It didn't help that my connection went to shit again and I DCd or lagged a bunch of times. That is not a dungeon you want your healer to be craping out on you. Think we had to start it over 4 times.) One of members kept saying stuff like "You should put your DnD over here to start." or "When I play my deathknight, I tank it like this.." What? I have never seen him play a deathknight. And, even if he has one, where does he find the time to tank? Our tank actually has been tanking for the little 10 man Naxxs that are run, but this know-it-all? He has a tank but not a DK tank. Two totally different ways to play. All night I had to hear about what the tank needed to be doing, what the mage needed to be doing, what the elem shaman needed to be doing. Thank gods he doesn't have the balls to tell me what I should be doing. Towards the end of the run, I turned the volume down on my headset and all became much more enjoyable.
Regarding this know-it-all again, I heard a funny story of him tanking in AN with one of our pally casuals. He said to the casual "I eat the pound because I know Ongora will heal through it." What a freaking douche. /shakes head and sighs I really really hope I was never like that when I tanked. Every time a tank runs out of LoS or eats breath or does anything in anyway to make the healer's life more suck, I think back to my tank days and pray that I was never like that.
I have this odd reputation of being a great healer. What this really means is I'm a sucker and will heal these mor--- Sorry, poor souls through instances when others wont. Sure, I am good at what I do, and there are times where I am not so good. I always seem to kill our raiding MT in a 5 man, and I am not entirely sure why that happens.
I hope folks called their moms for Mother's Day or what ever you do during the holiday.
3 more weeks left in the term and gods, summer can not come soon enough.
Tuesday, May 5
Need... more... rage
Ok, maybe not rage. I've been pretty frustrated the last couple days just fine on my own.
See, Ulduar has been exposing some wonderfully glaring errors in everyone's performance. Not even the healers or tanks are immune to the scrutiny the officers are placing folks under.
It's easy to see problems in DPS. Low hit rating, bad rotation, dieing to fire all show up when you look at the stat meters later that night. When we placed a 3k min dps requirement (so to speak, we aren't evil but we make very strong suggestions), some of our dpser's started to get the attitude of "Well, I can't change things, so I won't sign up for raids period."
This is hurting us, actually, because now instead of being able to cycle in one or two spots, folks aren't signing up for raids at all. Sigh. Bang Head. Little do they know that 2.5dps is being replaced by someone even more casual then they are because we need to fill spots.
Over on the other side of things, we have a unique problem: our tank and healer team is made up of mostly the officer core so when one of them has a bad day (week, month, one is loathe to tell them to step it up. Healers are prima donnas, tanks have fragile egos. I'm a prima donna with a fragile ego left over from my bear days, so imagine trying to tell me anything!
Seriously though, I have found that being respectful and more or less honest when the person is enough to get the ball rolling. Instead of saying "Hey, you sucked last night" doesn't help and yet, people do that all the time across many guilds.
I need to remind myself over and over why I left the guilds who treated me like crap or second rate. What I have learned is:
Get to know the person beyond the game. We have more than one player who is in a wheelchair for various reasons. I remember calling out a player for not moving during the flame wave in Sartharion. I grumbled, battlerez'd them and told them if they did it again I would not battle rez them, like, ever again. Later, someone else told me that the player uses a special device to play WoW and that movements are not as reactive as they would be with a keyboard/mouse set up. Man, did I feel like a chump and went back to the player and apologized for being an ass. This goes way beyond the dumbass dps need to get that last spell off and pray shit doesn't kill them. I didn't bring up my newfound knowledge, but I did, inwardly, have enormous respect for this player and what he has been able to do with his 16 bucks a month. Does he need to get out of fire? Yes, and he knows that and each raid gets better and better.
Of course, not everyone who plays has a physical disability but it is good to find out a little more about people you work with. Some have kids and have to stop the game in order to attend the little ones (I prefer duct tape, but maybe that's why I just have cats), others are naturally slow learners, others have low social skills which draws them to the game in the first place and don't think before they spew out what's in their heads, while others are insanely fantastic people who never say a word in vent or raid chat and won't tell you what's bothering them.
Everyone has a bad day or two, as a leader of anything it is important to take care of your people so they in turn can take care of you.
See, Ulduar has been exposing some wonderfully glaring errors in everyone's performance. Not even the healers or tanks are immune to the scrutiny the officers are placing folks under.
It's easy to see problems in DPS. Low hit rating, bad rotation, dieing to fire all show up when you look at the stat meters later that night. When we placed a 3k min dps requirement (so to speak, we aren't evil but we make very strong suggestions), some of our dpser's started to get the attitude of "Well, I can't change things, so I won't sign up for raids period."
This is hurting us, actually, because now instead of being able to cycle in one or two spots, folks aren't signing up for raids at all. Sigh. Bang Head. Little do they know that 2.5dps is being replaced by someone even more casual then they are because we need to fill spots.
Over on the other side of things, we have a unique problem: our tank and healer team is made up of mostly the officer core so when one of them has a bad day (week, month, one is loathe to tell them to step it up. Healers are prima donnas, tanks have fragile egos. I'm a prima donna with a fragile ego left over from my bear days, so imagine trying to tell me anything!
Seriously though, I have found that being respectful and more or less honest when the person is enough to get the ball rolling. Instead of saying "Hey, you sucked last night" doesn't help and yet, people do that all the time across many guilds.
I need to remind myself over and over why I left the guilds who treated me like crap or second rate. What I have learned is:
Get to know the person beyond the game. We have more than one player who is in a wheelchair for various reasons. I remember calling out a player for not moving during the flame wave in Sartharion. I grumbled, battlerez'd them and told them if they did it again I would not battle rez them, like, ever again. Later, someone else told me that the player uses a special device to play WoW and that movements are not as reactive as they would be with a keyboard/mouse set up. Man, did I feel like a chump and went back to the player and apologized for being an ass. This goes way beyond the dumbass dps need to get that last spell off and pray shit doesn't kill them. I didn't bring up my newfound knowledge, but I did, inwardly, have enormous respect for this player and what he has been able to do with his 16 bucks a month. Does he need to get out of fire? Yes, and he knows that and each raid gets better and better.
Of course, not everyone who plays has a physical disability but it is good to find out a little more about people you work with. Some have kids and have to stop the game in order to attend the little ones (I prefer duct tape, but maybe that's why I just have cats), others are naturally slow learners, others have low social skills which draws them to the game in the first place and don't think before they spew out what's in their heads, while others are insanely fantastic people who never say a word in vent or raid chat and won't tell you what's bothering them.
Everyone has a bad day or two, as a leader of anything it is important to take care of your people so they in turn can take care of you.
Friday, May 1
Changes, Tweaks and Fixes
Which is which? I guess it all depends on your perspective.
The changes to innervate are interesting and so far, I think they aren't horrible.
Innervate: now Causes the target to regenerate mana equal to 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool over 20 sec secs
Druid base mana pool... 3496 which should be approx 786 mana per 1 second to the target.
Not bad, but not great either until you consider that it is a flat rate now and not a Spirit based rate. This is great news for the Pallys and Mages. However, even with the glyph, I am not at a stage where I can toss it around to whichever raider is begging for it at the moment.
Honestly, the shaman totem seems to out perform our ability and makes me think that for now it will be a self casting way of getting mana returns, like a priest's shadowfiend.
Tons of changes to Ulduar which have been a godsend. I am all for making things a challenge, but when I am busting my ass on the first couple boss on 10 man, something is not right.
Post changes, we have made it further in on the 10 mans and I look foward to tackling things in a real 25 man raid. I now worry that with the t8 within sight that I will be so used to my 4p t7 bonus, I wont want to give it up. Oh well, will see it goes once I actually start getting the upgrades.
Oh, and one last thing... Finally got my Fawn!! She is the cutest little thing and makes me smile. Up to 77 pets now and dread the day they add a 100 pet achievement.
The changes to innervate are interesting and so far, I think they aren't horrible.
Innervate: now Causes the target to regenerate mana equal to 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool over 20 sec secs
Druid base mana pool... 3496 which should be approx 786 mana per 1 second to the target.
Not bad, but not great either until you consider that it is a flat rate now and not a Spirit based rate. This is great news for the Pallys and Mages. However, even with the glyph, I am not at a stage where I can toss it around to whichever raider is begging for it at the moment.
Honestly, the shaman totem seems to out perform our ability and makes me think that for now it will be a self casting way of getting mana returns, like a priest's shadowfiend.
Tons of changes to Ulduar which have been a godsend. I am all for making things a challenge, but when I am busting my ass on the first couple boss on 10 man, something is not right.
Post changes, we have made it further in on the 10 mans and I look foward to tackling things in a real 25 man raid. I now worry that with the t8 within sight that I will be so used to my 4p t7 bonus, I wont want to give it up. Oh well, will see it goes once I actually start getting the upgrades.
Oh, and one last thing... Finally got my Fawn!! She is the cutest little thing and makes me smile. Up to 77 pets now and dread the day they add a 100 pet achievement.
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