The *urnaks

WoW goes Kung-Fu Panda

2011-10-22T12:43:00.002+02:00

By now I suppose all WoW fans have read the news about the new expansion, so no need to paste here details. I feel Blizzard is hammering the nails on WoW's coffin, at least in the western market. Pandarens were always a little joke in WoW universe, and now become a playable race and theme for a expansion. Very, very disappointing.
You've been running around Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, then Outland and Northrend, thwarting the plans of the big baddies, following a good chained history and then... everything goes to a halt and something new is introduced, disrupting totally the chain. By that time Deathwing will be just a dead husk, but what about of the threats still looming around? Old Gods, Burning Legion... they aren't going to kick back and relax while we're in Pandaria learning kung-fu!
WoW subscribers have been going down since Cata was released. Almost everyone felt the expansion didn't bring anything really new that was worth to keep playing the game and went away looking for greener pastures. In this case it seems Blizzard considers american and european markets dry and looks to attract a raising market like the asian and specially the chinese, focusing the entire expansion on chinese lore. Will it work there? Probably. Previous expansions, specially Wrath of the Lich King were hard to be introduced there. Chinese specially find undead and skeletons very disgusting, a taboo. So an entire expansion based on creatures they dislike wasn't going to work (Blizzard had to change several mob models for the chinese version). So they're now fully betting on the chinese market with something they like. I wouldn't be surprised if after Mists of Pandaria we get Sands of Arabia or Snows of Caucasus as the new expansion.
But at least, one good new (and also a good hook to keep playing): if you commit to one year of WoW gameplay you get Diablo III for free. A good marketing trick to secure player base.

Facing the end of Cataclysm?

2011-08-17T17:18:00.000+02:00

Things start to catch speed. In two days we've had some news that will impact the game heavily.
Yesterday was turning threat into a non-issue for tanks. Hit hard from the begining and don't fear to lose aggro as the fight goes on. On one hand it's a good idea: dps usually outgear tanks quickly, or if not, the dps ramps up faster than threat. That makes a lesser geared tank struggle to keep mobs on him and end loathing the tanking role (as it happened with my warrior duign WotLK). While this means tanking will be easier (and hope more people decides to queue as tanks) we still have to see what Blizzard intends to do. They want tanks to be more active without having to worry about losing aggro, or "more fun" as they say. Right now as tank you have to take care of: aggro, moving mobs, interrupts (or at least be in the interrupt rotation), catching adds or perform special actions (like intercepting some beam, activate any machinery, etc). Even decursing yourself is in your to-do list. Taking aggro management out of the list already leaves tanks with several thigs to perform or take care of. Adding more things may end backfiring and make tanks life more miserable.
The second thing has been announced not long ago: next expansion will bring the Deathwing raid. The aquatic raid of the Abyssal Maw has been discarded because they say wasn't convincing enough and story wasn't fitting. There are two big implications here: first is this will leave a big unfinished story: after all the struggle in Vashj'ir and the Throne of the Tides we won't know how things will end for Neptulon and Ozumat. Again Blizz will be the king of unfinished plots. The second and most important is this can mark the end of the Cataclysm expansion. By october/november this patch will be most likely out in the streets, so the Cataclysm expansion will be done in just one year instead of the typical two years lifespan. Of course some extra patches can be released after (like Ruby Sanctuary on WotLK) but the expansion plot will be finished. Now there are two ways: either we'll be one year grinding old content/extra patches with no determining content or Cataclysm will be the shortest lived expnsion with just one year + the time it takes to get next expansion finished. There's a third way also, let me get my tin foil hat: Cataclysm is finishes after a year and then we get the expansion 4B: Mists of Pandaria. After the storm that created the announcement of the trademarking of the name within the videogame category and all the speculation wether this would be the next expansion or just a stand-alone videogame, today's announcement of the Deathwing raid could mean we get done with Cataclysm and then we move to Pandaria until the next "official" expansion (I think next one was the Emerald Dream one) is relased next year. This would also address the only 5 new levels that Cata brought, so we can set foot on the Emerald Dream (or whatever is next) as level 90.
Anyway, ditching out the Abyssal Maw so fast and with that vague explanation and announcing the final showdown with Deathwing is worrying. Another sign of the end was hinted by Shintar some days ago when she wrote about how disappointing were the Molten Front story-wise. I felt the same, after that long and boring grind you expect some epic ending and you just get a letter with a mount. Maybe they ditched the grand finale due to the same reasons they did with Abyssal Maw: Cataclysm is facing its end and they have no time to add other content.
WoW is showing his age and Blizzard acknowledged also that they've lost almost one million subscribers in the last 6 months. Adding more content is not enough anymore to retain people, specially when you've been playing since first days. No matter how many dungeons, raids or dailies you add. It's all the same. Bigger weapons, shinier armours, different colour cloaks, but it's the same. If WoW really wants to keep being MMO #1 needs to add something entirely new.

Little bits of awesomeness

2011-07-07T17:58:00.000+02:00

Usually when you talk about some epics moments in WoW people expects to be about downing some complicated raid boss. But even in lesser grade runs some people may shine very brightly. Allow me then brag a bit about my druid, Lorathiel, who proved to be the star on yesterday's Throne of the Tides heroic PUG run.
Since Cata the druid hasn't been one of my most played chars, even I really like druids due to their versatility. After doing the Hyjal/Molten Front quests I went to Deepholm to get exalted with Therazane, only to find out I was 100 rep points short, so I decided to join a PUG as dps, as usually.
The run was ok but there where two times where we faced a sure wipe if it hadn't been by my awesome druid (boldly bragging here).
First and most important was the Erunak fight. It's been a long time since I saw a PUG go for this boss without anyone asking for it (and usually people demanded a fast run and avoided him). I don't know what went wrong but suddenly the tank (a dk) died. And I don't know what happened to me but I hit automatically bear form and took on the boss, who was still controlled by the Evil One. Let me say you something first: I've never played bear tank, aside in solo quests where I needed it, and my feral spec doesn't include the needed tank skills. And on top of that the abilities buttons somewhat confuse me. I can't tell the difference of Bash from Swipe, or the taunt from the demoralizing roar (I also play with tooltips disabled during combat), so I just went bear and aggroed the boss, pressing whatever was available (ok, I know the Lacerate and Mangle buttons, and that one that autoheals you based on your rage). The thing is I was doing ok and until the octopus didn't detach from Erunak I didn't remember a key ability in druids: battle ress. So when I remembered I could ress the tank and the situation was safe enough I get him up and the healer (who did a superb job keeping me alive) put him in shape to continue the tanking, although boss was almost dead. I really felt proud of my actuation.
The second time wasn't so spectacular. On the mini-gauntlet to Neptulon, towards the end when the door was already open everybody starting blowing up and died except me. Even the hunter who ran in with me died in the end due to the tiny elementals who were still alive. And thinking they were already dead I was in caster form ready to ress people, when they came after me. Luckily they were finished quickly and could start ressing the party.
Things like that make me love the game again when I think all it's back to the boring daily grind of dailies/pug runs.

The counterattack!

2011-06-30T20:22:00.000+02:00

So Rage of the Firelands is here (for those who're not aware it's the official name of the patch 4.2), but I don't want to comment about the goodies and nerfs of the patch. Since the release day (for us europeans was yesterday wednesday) I've seen this upon opening the Curse client to update my addons:

You may say... what's wrong with it? We've seen Rift anounces on Curse client before. The thing is since yesterday the Curse client only plays the Rift ad, at least for me. No matter when I launch the client, looking for more updates (still missing some important ones), the ad is always the same. And never before I've seen this with the embedded ads. I'm tired of seeing these tables/stools for laptops, that wave/current generator... but when launching the client several times at different times the ad usually changed. Not now.
So... what's the fuzz about, you may ask. Right, there're no laws against it and I'm pretty sure Rift creators have spent a huge and obscene quantity of money to place this ad during the days when Curse client is most launched, the patch days, specially if it brings new content. Expect to still see that ad in the coming days. But I'd like to ask your (and hence the reason of the post)... do you think it's a clever strategy to place your product during the days where tons of people are going to use the competence's product? Of course it's an opportunity to reach a bigger audience, but I'd say anyone "pro" enough to use addons (and specially an addon manager) has heard before about Rift or any other MMO that tries to get its piece of the cake.
Doers it really pay back? The people who launches the Curse client today wants to play WoW and dedicate enough time and efforts to taste the Firelands as deep as possible, They won't dedicate that time to test another MMO... and I'd dare to add, one that's so simmilar to WoW.
In our days, commercials (in all kind of media) must stand out in order for people to pay enough attention to them. And that attention doesn't fully translate into success (read they sell more than before). I'm pretty sure you all remember tv commercials of any product that were really innovative, different, funny or beautiful enough (otherwise you wouldn't remember them) but that didn't compel you to buy the product announced.
And the last point... insistence usually ends in backslash. I don't know you, but I'm tired of seeing always the same animation. And this is working heavily against testing Rift or become a regular player. If at least they offered different animations everytime I launch the Curse client...

Fresh blood

2011-05-17T11:47:00.000+02:00

Our guild has always been small. Since the start people prefered a small guild where everybody knew each other and could playing in good company. Keeping a friendly and nice atmosphere was the key.
This also was the guild's weakest point. Replacing people who stopped playing or moved to other more active guilds was always hard. And when we thought we had some good people they either got tired of the game or worse: once they got enough epics hopped to other guilds, where they wouldn't be accepted unless they had that gear. So tired of being a trampoline for guild-hoppers we decided to shut down recruiting.
Also allying ourselves with other guilds didn't went well. Our alliance with Sempher Fi was good, but once they did a very active recruit campaign no longer needed our help (and also most of the active raiders moved there too. Even I was wondering to move at least one char there at the begining of Wrath). We tried with other guilds during TBC and things were horrible. First runs were great, then suddenly started sending unprepared people, alts lacking gear... so relation was cut.
All of this made us shun the idea of recruiting openly, but the guild was really dying. When you don't even have enough people online to make a full-guild dungeon run, you're in trouble. Action was needed, action that required to take risks and face again possible guild-hoppers or getting troublesome members. With the implantation of the Looking For Guild tool we decided to give it a shoot and test our luck.
I wasn't expecting much from this. First because our reputation as a solid raiding guild was gone and I didn't know if the reputation of a nice guild to stay was still up, since old players in Hellscream are longer gone or already settled in their guilds. We had a decent guild level (15 when we started the LFG experience, 16 right now and soon 17) so this was a good point for us, but I also thought it could bring more bad experiences than good ones, since all unguilded people would be looking for the highest level guild possible just for the perks. So I was expecting to get a lot of low level chars petitions, just for the perks.
So far I'm surprised the exprience has been very positive. Yes, most of the people requesting an invitation are low-mid level. But we've had several requests from 70+ and 80+ players. And the best thing is that people invited is behaving well (so far!). A good portion of them are either alts of experienced players, who are trying a new class or old time players that have returned to WoW and felt lost in a world that has changed completely, not only physically, but also the char specs, the guilds they knew... everything. While most of them are very silent (usually they say hi when logging in and few words more), others have started being very active, talking to old guild members, bringing other alts, running battlegrounds and dungeons. The Guild breathes again, with new blood pumping through its veins, and it's very refreshing to log in and see more than the 3 or 4 habitual players you could find before. It's very nice to see now more than 10 people online at the same time, even if only 3 or 4 are 85s. It's just a matter of time to get enough people ready for high-end instances... and who knows, even raids again.
So thumbs up for the LFG tool. But it still needs several improvements imho. Some of them may be achieved right now by using a plugin called Recruitment Enhancement, but they should be implemented by Blizz:
- Show if the petitioner is online or not. This is very important. I'm tired of going through the list of requesters, clicking the Invite button just to get the message "char not found".
- Add checkboxes to perform mass invitations. Select the desired players and click Invite. Voilà!
- Add a button to send a mail to the character. The Send a Message only sends a whisper, and if the player isn't online (something you don't know unless you check it previously) it's useless.
- Add filters to recruitment, like minimum level, specific achievements, minimum gear level, specific spec (i.e: you need a disco healer, a blood dk, a survival hunter, etc), minimum resilience or honor points, etc. This will help hardcore guilds who look for specfic and experienced players.
I'm sure we'll see some improvements like these soon.

Improving heroic PUG quality

2011-04-20T11:25:00.000+02:00

I know I'm probably late to the discussion, but since the Call to Arms was announced (and I think everybody agrees this won't solve anything) I've been thinking on how to improve the quality of PUGs in heroic mode without reverting to the Wrath style (AoE whacking). It's not easy since the problem is not located in the instance per se, but the players running it. Most people still steps into dungeons (even in normal mode) with the Wrath mentality: tank should grab half the instance and dps burn them down with AoE.
Let's face it: it's very easy for a frehsly dinged 85 to reach the 329 gear level required for the heroic modes. Using quest blues (ilevel 325 and 333), rep gear (333 and 346) and crafted gear (339, it's pvp gear) you can reach the magic number. I'm betting most of annoying players haven't set up foot in a normal dungeon before going for the heroics "for phat lewt". So here're some ideas that would help getting more prepared players:
- You can't run an heroic unless you've completed it in normal mode. This will teach you at least the basics of the instance: pulls, cc, strats... you can even further strengthen this requeriment: if you're healer you need to complete the normal one as healer, if you're tank you must complete it first as tank. This will avoid dps people signing up as tanks to speed up queues. And you can even restrict it more, by demanding running it a certain amount of times in normal mode so you really catch it. Lesser instances (like BRC or TotT) would require to be completed 3 times while higher ones (like GB) 5 times. This will also benefit players in the way of more chances for getting loot, more reputation and more justice points to spend.
- More craftable gear. This was proposed by Tobold. And I think it's only viable if you apply the previous rule, otherwise you'll have the same problem as now: clueless people in heroics. Also more gear means tanks would require less runs to gear up and queues would grow even more. So the idea is to provide key gear at certain ilevel without "trampling" the gear you can get in normal runs (that ranges from ilevel 308 to 333 iirc). Craftable gear should sit at ilevel 325 and be PVE gear, not the ilevel 339 PVP gear we can craft right now. While this helps PVP players not to die in a battleground when an opposing player sneezes, it causes a lot of trouble in PVE, since it helps people reach the 329 gear level easily and then you get players with a lot of stamina but lacking other key stats. While reforging can help a bit, you can't reforge resilience to turn it into something useful for your class.
- Change gear level requeriment and make it progressive. Why ask for 329 to run any heroic when a place like Grim Batol is harder than Black Rock Caverns? Start with 329 or even a bit more for the easiest ones and require 340 for the harder ones.
- Improve the LFD algorhythm so you get some dps class with proper cc. Running an heroic with limited cc may be doable, but not good for the healer's mental health.
These ideas wouldn't only help improve the quality of players in heroics. It would reduce queue times too since all the unprepared people queueing for heroics would be gone, forced to queue for normals. Yet still we need a way to motivate tanks into running PUGs, specially normal , otherwise we could have a tank shortage in normal queues only, as they progress into heroics. And tanking isn't that hard, as pointed out by several of you. The problem is leading, as Calli nailed it. And again, leading isn't difficult, but very frustrating if the people is not willing to follow you.

Holy $#&@!!!

2011-04-18T09:16:00.000+02:00

After seeing this video, you take a look at the current PUG issues and you can only cry in a corner and think about leaving WoW and dedicate your free time to a simpler game.

Hats off to Raegwyn.

Warlock pets with sex: really necessary?

2011-04-15T14:35:00.000+02:00

I've been trying to write for some days something about the current Call to Arms discussion, but so far I haven't got any valid proposal to increase the number of tanks specially in PUG runs, when I saw this announce.
While it says it's something set in the long run, is it really worth dedicating resources to a cosmetic issue when there's a big nasty problem right now in WoW and the proposed solution is clearly not fixing anything?
Well, with a company the size of Blizzard it's doable without hurting other more important developments, but why not dedicate efforts to other cosmetic issues (after all, the gender of a demon pet it's only a cosmetic issue) that would affect all classes and not only warlocks? Several come to my mind:
- Update graphic motor to a newer one, allowing better performance or more details. The new water and sunshafts look great, but WoW appearance feels still the same as 6 years before
- Update old character models (read neither worgen nor goblins) to higher polygon count, making them more detailed
- Update textures to higher definition ones (as an example, check how Elementium Girdle of Pain looks on your character selection screen. It's really a pain of big square pixels)
- Allow models for some height and weight customization, so not every race looks the same
- Allow crafter gear to use different colours (I'm tired of the old Green Iron Shoulders, I want a red or a black version)
- Add the frequently asked Appearance Outfit, so you can have any look (ie, the T3 armour set) while wearing your current gear

Things like that would benefit all players, not just a part. But I must say I'm intrigued how a female voidwalker will look like (a blue blob with boobs? or maybe same model as current but pink coloured?), or a female Infernal (something like Therazane?).
The only things I ever wanted to change in warlock pets are the Felhound (these extra upper arms/tentacles look horrible) and the Felguard (they should equip different weapons and not always the same boring Arcanite Reaper plus also get different colour versions of the demon, they're already ingame).

And I tanked

2011-03-31T16:26:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since my last entry. Not much to comment, most of the important WoW news happened outside my game. I've been mainly raising the alts and leveling reputation (got 8 85s at the moment, missing only warlock at 83 and rogue at 81), which is kind of boring, but given the actual PUG status, even going as dps has been a pain and I've shunned pugging heroics. The worst of all is the guild status, with very few people active at the moment and they're also raising alts. A vicious circle, but sometimes we get the chance to break it. Like yesterday.
Finally we got some 85s and decided to try doing an heroic guild run. Our best tank had been AFK for a long time and decided to tank if the run was an all-guildies party. First because I don't have experience tanking heroics (I think I've tanked only BRC normal) so I needed to learn who to cc and the boss strats, so having puggeers whinning and kicking me out. And second because the healer also felt it lacked enough power to keep us alive, so same history. I got my prot pally, the druid went resto and we got an elemental shaman and two hunters ( no idea about the spec :D).
Lady RNG flipped the bird at us with Lost City of the Tol'vir, a place I've done maybe 3 times, one as normal and two as heroic, always as dps. Things started chaotically as we zoned in I informed I got a phone call and one of the hunters pulled the first pack, so as I returned to my chair I got into panic mode directly. Luckily I managed to grab all the mobs. After this start things went pretty smooth and we downed General Husam on first try without much problems.
The first wipe came on the pygmies near the corridor to Lockmaw/Augh, when suddenly a flamebreather appeared of seemingly nowhere and torched the healer. And I was pulling them carefully because I knew it was easy to get extra mobs in that place, but to no avail. At least it was soemthing easily fixable and next time we dealt with the pygmies easily.
Then came the big problem. Lockmaw proved to be very hard for our group. First it was the healer not confident in his role (he compalined about his gear, but I didn't feel he was underpowered), second the low dps, specially from one of the hunters who was pulling very low numbers for an heroic. And the third problem was the crockolisks munching the rest of the party, despite me using all taunts and bubbles to keep them alive and grab the crocs. I felt like a healer watching the party bars, finding who was being attacked and using Righteous Defense, Hand of Reckoning, whatever... even using Word of Glory on who was low on hps.
So we wiped and wiped and wiped, with Lockmaw at 18 or 15%. Finally the shaman decided to go resto and the druid went cat and after a pair more of wipes we managed to kill that damned beast. Unluckily it got late so we didn't have much time left. We reached High Prophet Barim, probably the boss I hate more in this instance and only had a try, that ended after reaching phase two when the healer died.
So even what it seems a poor performance (and by today' standards probably is) at least it gave us some fun (until the repetitive wipes on Lockmaw) and a great dose of experience, at least for me in the tanking business. Even the low dps hunter got a new shiny polearm to help him improve.
Now I hope we get more guild runs so we can keep improving and not having to depend on pugs, even if the first runs are a wipefest.

Sometimes WoWlife is good

2011-01-31T16:28:00.001+01:00

Since my last entry I was thinking about a new post showing more discontent with the actual expansion. Several things weren't feeling quite right. Maybe we were too used to Wrath and its various loot-farms, the possibility to carry an undergeared char into heroics so he could get some decent gear, the possibility to get decent gear crafted thanks to Frozen Orbs... I hadn't feel this way before, even during Bruning Crusade. But I couldn't find a solid point to blame at all. Everytime I thought "oh, but X sucks" I saw that maybe that wasn't right and there was another thing that made me feel that X was sucking but that wasn't really true. And that other thing wasn't sucking too per-se. So everything looked like a vicious circle while I was feeling more tired of the game every day that passed. Maybe I was reaching the endlife of WoW, I've been playing almost since it was released and during this time I've seen a ton of people leaving because the game wasn't fun anymore for them.
Since Cata was released I've been busy mainly leveling my chars. Right now I've seven chars at 85, so the leveling process is boring as hell. Been there, done that... seven times before, and will do at least three times more. Not what I'd call exciting.
Dungeons were mainly a problem. In normal mode I've done all of them except Grim Batol at least once, mostly as dps except one BRC tanking and one VP healing. At level 85 the gear you may get there is mostly useless compared to your quest and crafted blues, and after experiencing how stressing healing can be I refused to pug as healer or even tank. I could go as dps at least, but having to wait 20 minutes for it? No way. So I did some dailies with two or three chars and dedicated some time to leveling or completing quests in Twilight Highlands and Baradin Peninsula with these main characters (warrior, paladin, mage). Heroics were totally out of scope. I only tried one, was a semipug and we couldn't get the second boss down and it took a long time to get there. And reading the horror stories in posts and comments (nab tanks not using cc, gogogoers, dps standing in fire, 3 hours to complete an heroic...) well, that didn't help much to cheer me up. To make things worse our guild has returned to the usual few people logged in, maybe even less than normal, so getting a guild run was as difficult as winning the Euromillions. Things weren't looking good...
But sometimes you get pleasant surprises and life performs a 180º turn, making you love the game again.
It started in Twilight Highlands while I was doing the dailies with my warrior. A retri paladin asked me to join forces to down Warlord Halthar (whom I can down easily with the warrior and paladin alone) and asked me why I wasn't wearing the Crucible of Carnage sword, better that the weapons I was using (the Axe of Earthly Sundering and the Obsidium Executioner). I told him that I didn't like pugging right now and prefered to get some guildies to do it. As we finished the dailies someone was asking for people for CoC and he encouraged me to join them. Oh well... I could try...
I asked and got the invite, they told me they needed just a random, so I thought I'd stay as fury. In fact I ended being the tank after some role-changing before starting. Warrior tank.. something I hadn't played for quite a long time (I think last time was an ICC rep run) and a role I never found comfortable with, due to weak aoe-aggro generation. But we weren't in Wrath anymore and this was a Ring of Blood style fight, so it should be ok. I only had seen some fights from afar, so I was mostly clueless, but mobs weren't that complicated. Mostly tank and spank. Kite the cadaver like Grobbulus, grab the adds on the worgen boss and be careful with fire on the ground on the last boss. My aggro generation was a bit short sometimes, but nothing a good old taunt couldn't fix. We finished the bosses and I got a shiny new sword and two achievements.
Then a pally guildie logged in and asked for some heroics. Since he was tanking (and he's good at it and has good gear) I joined as dps, ready to cope with any wipe-fest. It was now or never.
We good a group pretty fast (having a tank on your side ensures an instant run) and Lady RNG assigned us Blackrock Caverns. One frost dk, one balance druid and a healer priest... suspiciously in shadowform. Before we couldn't finish greeting eachother the priest dropped the group. Surely a smartass trying to get a free ride as dps. Bon voyage. We got a replacement immediately, a resto druid. Looking at the group I was fearing the worst since our cc was limited. Druids could use entangling roots, but we didn't have anything to put a caster out of play. That meant we had to deal with them first and quickly before the melee freed from the roots. The dark shadow of wipefest was looming upon us...
How wrong I was. The group ended being awesome. The best pug in a very long time, even on Wrath times where you could thrash an heroic in 10 minutes or less. Not even we finished the random dungeon and the next one (Halls of Origination) but we managed to score several achievements. I think we wiped only 3 times, one of them at the hands of BRC last boss and was a mutual kill. Not even we had to do things a bit Wrath-style due to the limited cc but we also managed to get some impressive performance in dire situations. At Karsh Steelbender my colleague pulled the boss while pulling the first fire elemental. A wipe was called but the group pressed the pedal on and decided to kill the add while the boss was being tanked too. During the fight I died and was battleressed. First elemental was downed and we pulled the second one while the healer did wonders to keep everybody alive, specially the tank. We dispatched the second elemental and then proceeded to kill the boss and also get the achievement for having more than 15 stacks of Superheated Quicksilver Armor. On the last boss, Ascendant Lord Obsidius, we also decided to complicate our lives to get the Ascendant Descending achievement. The balance druid kited the adds while the frost dk and me made all we could to slow them down and dps the boss. I never thought we'd made it but we managed to kill the boss (and he killed us too at the same time) and get the achievement.
Excited by the triumphs earned in BRC we queued again and got Halls of Origination, where we also got some achievements despite our non-ideal composition. But as someone in the group said, "brains > gear". Couldn't agree more. If getting the runs done in a reasonable time was already a great goal for me, pulling all these achievements: Too Hot to Handle, Ascendant Descending, I HateThat Song, Straw That Broke the Camel's Back, Sun of a.... was totally awesome. Knowing your class and how can interact with others was the key (aside some good gear worn by the healer and the tank :) ), and I was happy again and enjoying my main character. The only downside was the loot. A lot of leather and caster gear dropped, making the balance and the resto druid very happy (and they truly deserved it!). I ended with a shield for my offspec and a Chaos Orb, but the joy was better than any loot.
If all heroic runs were half the good these were, I'd be more than happy.

Vashj'ir? No, thanks!

2011-01-14T16:32:00.000+01:00

After bringing my 6th character to 85 one thing I can say for sure: Vashj'ir contains several flaws that affect people who are leveling and decided to choose that area as starting zone. And it's not because it's an underwater area with a full 3D environment (the so-called Oculus-effect). Let's get to the points!

1. Excesive long intrduction/arrival quest. If you want to start in Hyjal you just speak to a Hyjal Guardian who teleports you to Moonglade and there you take a short flight to the starting point, witnessing the return of Ragnaros meanwhile. To go to Vashj'ir you talk to a shaman that tells you te get on a boat. And here starts the problem. The boat is located in the same dock as the Northrend boat, so the instroduction is phased. But instead of arriving at the dock and finding the boat waiting for you, you have to wait for it to arrive. And it's a long time until the phased action begins (with the soldiers gathering up and talking) and then the whole boat trip, which is not that long, but after all the time listening to the soldiers while waiting for the boat you are already fed up with all that inactivity.
Didn't Trial of the Crusader teach anything to Blizzard? Longs introductions containing lore are ok the first time. But when you're leveling your second or third alt you wish you could skip it. By the fourth you're totally fed up with it. Could we avoid at least the soldiers gabbing and just find the boat once we head to the dock?

2. Huge area. I get the sensation Vashj'ir was the first designed starting area and looks it got a little out of their hands. Instead of just a single area it consists of 3 areas, not as big as a the rest of Cataclysm areas but still there's a lot of space out there! And much of it it's empty! At least the seahorse has a good speed so moving down there is not a pain in the ass (anyone remembers the Thorim questchain when normal flying was 60%? How I loathed Thorim's tall mountain!).
Also while the rest of Cataclysm areas get it's own diferenciated subzones (even Deepholm!), all Vashj'ir looks the same, except for Scalding Chasm and the Throne of the Tides vortex.

3. Reputation. Right now this is the most painful point for me. If you do all the quests in the area you'll end Friendly with Earthen Ring, while other areas leave you at Revered with its faction. I can't understand why Blizzard puts the Earthen Ring quartermaster in Silver Tide Hollow when most of the Earthen Ring reputation is won in Deephom. Well, the only answer I can find is to avoid having two queartermasters (ER and Therazane) in the same area, but the result is very lame. And it's even worse when you want to get some ER rewards and you started in Mount Hyjal. You must endure all the starting introduction plus several quests until you get the seahorse and can move around (getting only Sea Legs may be good for druids but for the rest is too slow due to Vashj'ir size) and locate the quartermaster. Big design fail, Blizzard!

4. Dungeon. Same as before, getting to the Throne of the Tides is not trivial, like locating Blackrock Caverns and you must do a big amount of quests until you get the quest to go there. Even worse, once there and you start heading to the center of the vortex you'll see the Fatigue bar appearing on screen. First time I saw it I thought I shouldn't go there and maybe the entrance was located elsewhere, so I moved back and let the quest gather dust in the Quest Book.

5. Azshara's veil. This plant only grows in the area. While other "low level" plants like Cinderbloom and Stormvine can be found (specially Cinderbloom) in other areas, alchemists must go to Vashj'ir yes or yes. Even if it's an underwater plant there're places with water out there (Mount Hyjal pool where Tortolla's eggs are located, Twilight Highlands coast...) I have no problem with exclusive area herbs as long as they're not starting herbs. And if you add the grinding madness things are even worse. While the initial madness has rushed off, now comes the daily grind ninjaing. Same as for ore, but at least you can get obsidium ore in several places. So if you really need Azshara Veil to level up your skill or to produce specific pots you're screwed. Go back to point number 2.

6. Poor lore. While in Mount Hyjal you get tons of info about the Ancients, Vashj'ir only offers some bits of naga lore and how they teamed up with the Old Gods minions. The battlemaiden quests are good, but until you get them you must do a ton of quests before.

Basically these are the points why I don't recommend leveling your char in Vashj'ir. But don't get me wrong, I think the area is beautiful (I'm scuba-diver, so I enjoy it specially) although a bit repetitive, the quests are good (the Jaws hunt quest is a laugh, Nespirah and its twin creature have good quests too, etc), offers good leveling loot (as Mount Hyjal), but these design problems are a ballast preventing you from getting a pleasant experience. Solving the long introduction would be a big step, also adding more Earthen Ring rep (it would be ok to reduce it on Deepholm as a counter) would make wonders.

Panic!

2011-01-03T13:13:00.001+01:00

The *urnaks family continues leveling up, with 4 chars already at top level (warrior, paladin, priest, mage) and another that will hit it this week (hunter). Professions are also over 500, with Blacksmithing and Alchemy at 525 (plus others like Mining, Herbalism and Cooking). I've also started doing some instances (on normal mode to learn them), mainly as dps (tanked BRC with the paladin and wasn't that bad). But yesterday decided to try healing.
I think next time I'll try shooting myself in the foot. I think it will be less painful.
Other great bloggers have already mentioned healing in instances, like Tam or Shintar and yes, it's that bad. At least right now. The most appropiate word I can find to describe healing dungeons is panic. It won't matter if your level is above the required, or your gear. Or the tank's. You're going to panic from the very first moment. And you'll continue panicking all along the whole run. Welcome to Panic Heals Word. Please don't forget to take your stress pills.
It was supposed to be a Vortex Pinnacle guild run and I decided to switch from dps to healer, but ended being a semi-pug (so no guild rep). Still I decided it was about time to try healing. I brought my disco priest since healing with a disco priest was always kinda relaxed. You shield the tank and you have time to prepare for the worst if tank is starting to get bitch-slapped. That was how it worked. But that's over, baby...
You shield the tank, PoM it, even add a Renew just in case and the tank is prepared to pull. Tank pulls first trash pack, shield lasts 1 second, he gets a magical debuff and his life bar goes from full to 20% in a blink after that first second where the shield lasted. Then comes the Panic and your mind starts to block. If you start casting fast heals you'll run oom and the amount of healing won't bring the tank over 25%. If you cast a powerful and slow heal the tank surely won't survive at that hitpoints level. Panic flows in even greater quantities. In your mind Deathwing's laughs while he tells you with his deep voice "you're f*cked!". Using the right heal at the right time, Blizzard's motto for Cataclysm healing. My hairy balls in a leopard skin thong, I say.
Of course we wipe... on first thrash pull on normal dungeon. Great man, great job! Pugs ask wtf happened. I wish I knew, because I was unleashing all my arsenal and couldn't save the tank (Save the Tank, Save the PUG). I wonder if I could ask a refund for my dualspec and just leave the priest as Shadow...
Take two. Tank pulls again, his life bar plunders but this time I manage to keep him alive... but only for some time, after downing one or two mobs (I couldn't check since I was focused on the tank's damn green bar) he dies again. Panic just bursts out of my ears, flooding my room. Now the dps are also taking damage in big quantities but I manage to keep them up (don't ask me how) and the tank runs back and takes all mobs off the dpsers, saving this pull.
The rest of the run was strangely smooth. Looks like first pull in instances (other people in guild also said the same) are tougher than the rest as a kind of sieve, because it's not normal that first pull just makes you fail as a healer while healing bosses (remember, it's normal dungeon) is almost a laugh, specially the last boss, Asaad.
If finding a tank was hard in Wrath I foresee finding a healer will be even harder in Cataclysm. Or at least find a healer that hasn't gone insane chanting "panic, panic, panic..."

Catathoughts

2010-12-21T17:57:00.000+01:00

Two weeks have passed since the launch of Cata. The *urnaks family has been busy leveling both character and professions, mainly via questing. So far I've only done Blackrock Caverns twice, first as dps and then as tank. And only because they were guildruns with just one pug. I'm not going to go pug-happy, specially with tank and healers until I get the grasp of all the bosses mechanics.
So how have been these two weeks for me? Busy, very busy exploring all the areas and doing all the quests possible (I haven't completed Twilight Highlands quests yet, I tend to reach 85 before finishing all questlines in Uldum). The first days were a nightmare, but that's nothing new. All the world rushing to the same spots, trying to get any ore, herb or quest mob over the rest of people swarming the area. Blizz tweaked some quests so other players could finish the quest even if they didn't kill the mob (Lord Incendius' chest comes to mind), but I think these fixes came late. Right now the amount of zerging has decreased enough to be able to play without much problems. Still some quests are a pain when you're not the one who hits the mob first (Resonating Crystal, a perfect example), but with some patience they're doable.
I have confronted feelings on the new quests. Some are fun and you get enough variety of them not to get bored after 30 minutes of playing. But as a lot of people has pointed out, new areas' quests are too lineal. There's no choice on which questhub you want to do because they're linked. You get only two choices, two questlines that tend to end mixing at the end (Earthen Ring and Therazane lines in Deepholm, Ramkahen and Harrison Jones in Uldum...) so you lose the sensation of an open world and you feel like being back in an old adventure game where you couldn't progress in the game until you solve present puzzle. I don't want to repeat myself, so you can read more about this on a comment I left on this Righteous Orbs post. Blizzard has gone from "this is the world, do as you wish as long as you have the proper level" to "potatoes or salad as first course and you don't get the second until you finish it". Then second course comes and it's only "meat or fish" again.
Speaking about quests, I want to highlight two as the funniest and worst ones:
- Gnomebliteration. Who wouldn't like riding a big ball of fire trampling leper gnomes? Even the amount of gnomes to be killed is a bit high (1000 gnomes!) and takes some time when there're other players doing the same quest, it's just a laugh. And not only that, the preceeding quest has a nice geek reference: Hacking the Wibson refers to the film Hackers where a bunch of computer hackers try to break into a mainframe called Gibson that controls oil carriers. The film is totally forgetable and anyone who knows a bit about computers would point out the amount of mistakes when talking about computers. Any serious hacker just gets mad at it. The only good thing I'd point out is a very young and sexy Angelina Jolie in one of her first films.
- The flapping quests in the second Fire Gate in Hyjal Mount. Just f*cking horrible. Why make a flying control system this way instead of using the everyday flying mechanics. It's ok if they want to make things more interesting by adding inertia to the flight, but controlling the hippogryph can be a real nightmare and hitting the vulture riders very frustrating. Also just makes hitting the only action availble kind of retarded. Flap flap flap... miss! flap flap flap... oh shit! I got into a lava stream falling from one of the floating rocks. And after all you get to choose between two pets who have the same model and just colour schema is different.
A remarkable mention to the final Fire Gate quest in Hyjal, where you get to face old Raggy again, although it's a "weakened" version and not the real final instance boss. Even original Ragnaros is harder than this soloable quest. But hey, it's the Firelord! And I love engaging this quest with my Lil'Ragnaros pet out and saying "look! it's daddy!". Old "MC friends" are also there in Hyjal, with Baron Geddon as part of one of the initial quests and Charr as a rare spawn 5man boss. Will we ever see a resurrected version of Majordomo Executus?
Well, I think I'll go back to the game to get the rest of *urnaks into shape (so far 2 85s, 1 82, 3 81s), so probably won't be posting much.

A brave new world

2010-11-30T16:40:00.000+01:00

With the release of the Shattering patch the world we used to know has changed forever. Some areas have been almost 100% revamped (Hillsbrad Hills, Loch Modan come to mind) while others are pretty much the same with just some tweaks (Elwynn Forest, Redridge Mountains). Some seem to remain as before everything went tits up. Yet in these almost-unchanged areas you can feel as it's a new place to discover. I warn you there will be some spoilers.

We have now a TON of new quests, all of them grouped in quest hubs. Some of them are just the same quests as before (Shintar already wrote about this) and it feels weird to do them again. In some special cases you get an explanation about this repetition. So far I've found this in The Third Fleet quest (Wetlands), where after completing the quest chain you're told the cursed Eye of Paleth was removed time ago and First mate Fitzsimmons died time ago too, so you've been talking to his ghost without knowing his condition. And when you exit the inn you see he's really gone.
Some of the new quests are continuations of old questchains but others just revamp the whole questchain, like the Stalvan Mistmantle serie. And it feels weird. You already killed Stalvan before, so when his brother asks you for aid (first quest) you expect to be a continuation and you just need to prove him his brother was a true evil beign. Instead of this you get to fight him again, but this time you get a nice surprise from his brother. Did you know the Stalvan family came from Gilneas? :)
Another change related to quests is the addition of questgivers inside instances. The first time I did the "CSI" questchain in Westfall I didn't complete all the outside quests, since there's a point where the chain seems to stop. So when I went inside Deadmines I missed the animation where you get a flashback of Edwin's VanCleef death. If you keep questing in Westfall (hint: do the Westfall Stwe questchain) you'll finally get to see what happened after Edwin was killed by a party of adventurers and who's the shadowy figure that appears in some quests.
The addition of several flightpoints is something I don't know how to rank it. In one hand will make lowbie players life much easy. Almost every quest hub has his flight point. The problem I see is there're too many. Some of them are the best thing since sliced bread: the one in Raven Hill (Duskwood) and Eastvale Logging Camp (Elwynn Forest) were as needed as rain in a desertic landscape. Back then you didn't get to ride a horse until level 40, so you had to run back and forth all the time from east to west in Duskwood to deliver quests, get the continuation and then complete them again and repeat the operation. Doing these quests at level 40 was meaningless. You didn't even got hardly any reputation (yes, back then reputation gain was tied to the level difference between your character and the quest) and even with a 60% horse it took enough time to grow bored of the place. Right now once you get one of these strategic flightpoints life has a new meaning.
On the other hand some flightpoints seem meaningless and just clutter the map. Are you sure Goldshire needed a flightpoint? Stormwind is just there! Same for Wetlands, where Alliance gained several flightpoints, when formerly there was just one (and it was also booooring to run from Menethil to Welgar's Excavation Site or the Dragonmaw Encampment) now whe have several scattered through all the map. What before was a pain it's now so trivial it loses almost all its value.

I've just visited a small part of the revamped Azeroth so far. Western Plaguelands should change its name and recover the Lordaeron designation. Only one Plague Cauldron remains and the rest of the land has recovered. Uther's Tomb is one of the most beautiful places, with so much green around. Stormwind is full of quiet and bautiful corners where you can relax or develop your RP skills, alone or with your mates. And if you're Alliance like me you'll rage and fume when you see how Southshore and most of the Hillsbrad Hills ended. Now I'm just starting to explore Kalimdor. Darkshore is one of the saddest places with the destruction of Auberdine.

My recommendation is: go out there, explore the old-new lands. Check out the quests, even if you're an old grumpy 80, check out the old-new lore you'll get from them. In a week most of us will be busy leveling our chars to 85, so there won't be much time to rejoice in this old-new world (specially when you're out of slots!).

Post soundtrack:
Brave New World - Iron Maiden (Brave New World, 2000)

The misty frontier

2010-11-24T09:51:00.000+01:00

So the day has arrived! Deathwing decided to take a tour and create the biggest barbequeue ever seen in Azeroth, ripping the world apart in the process. The foretold End of the World (copyright The Twilight Hammer) is here...the Cataclysm has arrived!
But wait! How come we are in Cata when the Cata expansion hasn't launched yet? It's not december the 7th yet! Well, for the first time Blizzard has changed the way th new expansions are delivered. When Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were launched we had to wait to get our hands on a copy of the game and install it. You were in vanilla WoW, installed BC and voilà! You can now go through the Dark Portal and visit that strange continent made of different lands stitched together. Same for Wrath... you install the game and then you can take a ship or zeppelin to the frigid lands of the north. But not this time.
Blizzard has taken a progressive approach to the Cataclysm launch. Instead of waiting for release day to deliver all in one shot they've decided to do some major releases before launch date. First we had the new talent trees and abilities in 4.0.1 (note the change in the number version, no longer 3.x.x), then 4.0.3 brought the elemental invasion. Now we have 4.0.3a where the world has gone tits up. But while we're using v4 of the game (the Cataclysm version), we still don't have the Cataclysm game in our hands. We'are not in Wrath anymore, yet we're not fully in Cata. We're in a difuse border between the two expansions, although our foot in Cata land is placed more firmly and the foot in Wrath land is begining to raise and move to join its companion.
In one hand I'm a bit disappointed by this, because I get the feeling it strips a lot of content out of the release. Changing the world entirely is no piece of cake and I think it should have been reserved for that special date. On the other hand I'm happy to see this already without having to wait for december the 7th (even is not that far). The way we get our updates on the world of Azeroth is more dynamic, no more waiting for that milestone that's release day. If things keep going this way we could get patches (specially bugfixes or talents finetuning) on almost everyday, in a smooth way that wouldn't disrupt gameplay (breaking addons, avoiding respeccing, etc), leaving big stuff for special release days, like adding a new dungeon or raid zone. Technically is challenging, but a big software company like Blizzard should be able to cope with it.
I look back to the Burning Crusade release time. A lot of people gathered at the Dark Portal, waiting for midnight. Everybody held his breath when the hands of the clock came together. And then nothing happened. Not even a simple activation effect on the portal. Thinhs have changed a lot nowadays. The elemental invasion has been a good prelude to the Cataclysm launch, amking the content transition smoother.
Come Deathwing! My sword thirsts for your corrupt blood!

So far... so good?

2010-10-29T12:45:00.000+02:00

Several days have passed since the release of the 4.0.1 patch and still I haven't finished tuning all my chars. While specs and glyphs are in place I still lack some gem change here and there and only a few chars have their gear reforged. Also the amount of bugs that have plagued this release made playing too painful sometimes, specially when getting random disconnections for no reason (no /cast or cogwheel icon used) and then taking ages to log back in.

Only one of my main chars have switched specs. Durnak is now Unholy dps/blood tank when formerly was blood dps/frost tank, When deciding which of the two dps specs to use I thought unholy would be funnier thanks to the Dark Transformation talent. I've been doing mainly Headless Horseman runs and so far I haven't been impressed by the numbers or the playstyle, but at least it gives you something to watch (the Shadow Infusion charges). On the other hand I have a humble level 66 deathknight that formerly was unholy and I changed it to frost and it's chugging out 5k obliterates on Killing Machine procs, oneshotting whatever gets in his way. It just needs some hit rating to avoid missing blows, but for a level 66 it's pretty crazy. The downside of the spec is that's just "boring". Hit with whatever is available until Killing Machine procs and unleash a powerful Obliterate.

Priests are a class with new mechanics in all specs. While I haven't rolled any holy spec priests, both discipline healing and shadow dps are cool specs to play. Disc allows plenty of "free time" (while your party is shielded) to stack Evangelism charges using Smite so you can then activate Archangel and get some wings and boost your healing. Just like drinking Red Bull. Shadow (which I haven't played much since healers are scarce) just changes the way you aoe. Instead of using Mind Sear, a spell that does now pretty weak damage, the new way of dealing with groups is to debuff each target with Shadow Word: Pain and start moving around so you increase the probabilities of creating a Shadowy Apparition. It's really fun to see copies of you walking towards their targets and autoimmolate (just lacks a good shadow explosion animation when they hit their goal). While mana isn't an issue in disc spec, shadow consumes a lot of it, so the new replenishment mechanic using Masochism has to be introduced in the rotation while being careful not to kill yourself, aside from using the shadow beast minion on cooldown, both for recovery and for dps boost.

Another heavily changed class are paladins, thanks to the introduction of the Holy Power combo points. Pre-patch tanking with a paladin was just a faceroll: Avenger's Shield, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous and you got a huge aoe threat that kept everybody on you without problems. Right now, after doing some Horseman and Heroics runs I see it hasn't changed much except for some details: Consecration can't be cast now and then since it's larger cooldown (no matter it's also more mana expensive, I haven't find any mana issues yet) and Shield of the Righteous has changed, so you now need to stack 3 points of Holy Power and then slam your current target to get a big threat boost. Healing as holy is also influenced by the amount of Holy Power you have and also the spells used have changed. Previously it was mainly Flash Heal and Holy Light spam, with the occasional Holy Shock for emergencies. Now Holy Shock is your bread and butter since the cooldown has been reduced and also awards Holy Power points. Also you can do a bit of dps, since Crusader Strike is now a base ability for all pladins and rewards Holy Power. This brings the paladin class closer to the typical image of a warrior monk who stays in the line of scrimmage instead of sitting at the back healing. Again I haven't found mana issues so far, even with the Divine Plea nerf, but nowadays people is overgeared and healing isn't as critical as it used to be. As for Retribution spec I haven't had a lot of chances to try it, but seems more fluid now that you have more buttons to push instead of Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and waiting for Exorcism to come out of cooldown so you can use it again on Art of War proc.

The rest of the classes haven't changed much in mechanics, even with changes like focus for hunters, rage normalisation for warriors (and the enrage procs in fury). Melee classes have lost a ton of dps (due to armor penetration going away) while spell classes look like they're on steroids (specially arcane mages. Vurnak has turned into a fearful terminator), but this looks like it's going to be addressed in a future patch (so enjoy it while you can before the nerf bat slams you). The game has changed, but it looks like it hasn't been as dramatic as people expected. And it's a good thing, since re-learning how to play a class from the beggining is not easy nor fun. Old habits still pop up but at least these mistakes aren't fatal.

The last thing i want to comment is regarding gearing up. Thanks to the Frost and Triumph emblems conversion into Justice Points it's been easier to get T10 gear (in most cases I had several Triumph emblems I didn't need, while I was short on Frost). And another big change is the removal of the Arena Rating requeriment on pvp gear, so you just need Honor Points. While I try to stay away from pvp as much as possible some pvp gear is worth getting, specially if you aren't into raids. Ilevel 270 shields are dirty cheap, requiring only 70 HPs. Other itmes like off-hand librams, wands or necklaces are very cheap too. I also managed to get the healing mace (Wrathful Galdiator's Gavel) for my priest, paladin and druid. Finally I found some use for these Honor Points I had collecting dust in the Currency tab.

Now if Blizzard fixes all the bugs it will be great. This wednesday we have a mini-patch that solves some issues, like the cogwheel disconnection that's been plaguing the Headless Horseman fight (thanks to the author of CogFix, that allowed me to click the pumpkin without problems) but still there are several issues pending that cause a lot of unhappiness, like the slow ghost gryphon or the lagged sound and they haven't been included in this mini-patch.

It's going to be hard

2010-10-14T11:01:00.000+02:00

So finally patch 4.0.1 hit the streets. This time we don't only have to sort headaches caused by non-working addons, but all chars need to respecc, check the gems and glyphs, sort out icons on action bars... this week is going to be very interesting.
If you think fixing a char is a pain, multiply that by 26 (ok, I don't play these 26 always, only 12 or 13 regularly). Grimbol, my inscriber, is threatening to go on strike. And Turnak the jewelcrafter is supporting him.
Ok, so after finally downloading the last 1,2 Gb patch file (that didn't show in the background downloader!) I started fixing things. Only some chars have been specced so far (warrior, paladin, druid, priest, hunter) but still they lack some correct glyphs and gems (specially for the relics, now they have sockets). To spec them I used my own designs but I also used WoWPopular to confirm if some talents were mandatory or good enough to invest points on them (btw I find crazy the most voted disco priest build is not investing a single point in Improved Power Word: Shield when this is the cornerstone of the class!, so take the info with a pinch of salt until things settle down a bit).
Addons aren't causing much ruckus at the moment, either they're up to date or old versions aren't giving much problems. As usual, after some days most of them will be up to date or I'll be used to the errors they yield.
The real test will begin once I start doing some heroics. I don't want to take a char to a PUG run unless it's completely fixed, specially if it's a tank or a healer, so my first impressions of some classes come only from dummy tests.
Paladins look like a new class introduced in this patch with the Holy Power combo point and the new talent trees. I've always found frustrating that they changed holy and prot because ret was "broken". Damn it! Pally tanking might be ultra-boring, but was damn comfortable, like your favourite old pair of shoes. And holy wasn't bad, just lacking some AoE healing. Well, it wil take some time to get used to this, specially for tanking.
Shadow priests seem to run out of mana pretty fast. After unleashing the full debuff pack, some mind flays and mind blasts will deplete your mana bar very quick. Maybe something is wrong with my spec or maybe it's a matter of handling rotations/procs correctly. Or could be that I need to use Shadow Word: Death more to trigger the Masochism mana regain. On the other hand, disco priests seem pretty solid and mana doesn't seem to be a problem. In this spec I have the new Evangelism / Archangel combo and looks nice, although you need to use Smite to trigger it. I see mandatory some kind of tracking system for the Evangelism charges, either as combo points or placing the number in the icon on the action bar, since having to check the buff icon may be distracting. Same for the Shadow Orbs you get as shadow priest.
Not much to say yet about the other classes I specced, since I didn't try them much. Only the resto druid, that seems it works correctly as before, unleashing the full pack of HoTs and then using Nourish (instead of the crappy Heal) when needed.
When I logged in it was 21:00 or so. When I went to bed it was 3:00 in the morning and I still think I didn't do much. Today I'm falling asleep at the office, but I know tonight will be the same again and friday will be harder. But thanks goodness it will be friday :)

Braaaaains... I'm coming!

2010-09-20T12:38:00.003+02:00

In the TBC days we got a Simon game set into the game. You may remember the apexis crystals near Ogri'la, where you had to reproduce the sequence of colours played by the crystals. If you liked the idea of placing mini-games into WoW then you'll love the addition of Peaceblooms vs. Ghouls that will be added in Cataclysm.

Uh... what versus who?
Well, if you haven't heard of the game called Plants vs. Zombies then you probably have been locked in some dark cellroom for the last year. The idea is quite simple: there's a zombie invasion in your neighbourhood and you're locked in your home. You must fend off the zombies that think you're their next lunch. But this time you don't have any conventional weapons to get them down. No shotguns, no chainsaws... you just have some plant seeds.
While it sounds weird (yes, it is!) the game is just a tower defense type where your weapons are a wide array of plants: plants that shoot peas, bushes that act as shields, plants that generate extra solar power (you need solar power to sow more plants and get power-ups), so they never reach your home. Zombies in turn have also different abilities: from the standard brain-eater to the armoured zombie (using a bucket as helmet), a pole jumper that avoids shields... The action turns frantic and the cute graphics and great sounds make it an excellent game. And you can play a big bunch of levels for free. Just give it a try, it will hook you.

Need more peacebloms!
So yes, we're having the game ported to Azeroth as a mini game, renamed to Peaceblooms vs. Ghouls. If you're tired of grinding or the wait time in LFD is too big you can always plant some seeds to get some fun. Totalbiscuit from Blue Plz! has released a video of the game so you can see how it looks like:

I want moar!
Yes, there're some plugins that let you play games while still playing WoW, but this and the previous Simon games are different because they're part of WoW. I wonder why other simple games haven't been added yet, like a Dynablaster/Bomberman game (easy to make since we already have the needed items), a Tetris (this may require extra coding like P vs. G, a PacMan or even another classic like Space Invaders (evil draenei?). Which game would you love to see included in the game?

Post soundtrack:
Endgame - Megadeth (Endgame, 2009)

Gnomes, trolls and flying around

2010-09-10T12:14:00.002+02:00

While this entry was going to be dedicated to the operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events, a blue post this morning about flying in Azeroth has stirred me up and I'll be ranting again about crappy design decissions.
First of all, if you haven't done Operation: Gnomeregan and/or Zalazane's Fall you might want to skip this part, since it will contain spoilers. Just head to the last part where I'll be talking about flying in Cataclysm. You've been warned.

Comparing the events
I won't describe deeply the events. Shintar already did it today and probably better than me. I want to focus on comparing the last part of the event (the only you can only do if you're level 75+) that will reward you a feature of strength and ~~a cool overcloak~~ a shitty cloak (more about this in my previous entry).
In the gnome version there's a bigger sense of epicness. During the battle you're given targets to take down: rocket launchers first, then wait for bombers to destroy the shields on tanks, then enter Gnomeregan properly, battling a giant trogg to the climax where the place is blown up with an atomic bomb. All very martial, with a "Scotty, beam me up!" scene before the bomb fires off. Bravo!
On the other hand the troll version seems less epic because you're not given any specific objectives and the finals is somewhat... disappointing. You start by asking the spirit of Bwonsamdi for help (hint: that name is inspired by the voodoo Loa of the Dead, the Baron Samedi), you battle him to prove you're worthy and then you're off to kill Zalazane, taking down whatever gets in your way (you even battle a miniboss, but not as remarkable as the giant trogg). In the end, Zalazane's blown to pieces by Bwonsamdi and everybody's happy. The owrk is done, but I feel it lacks the epic finale you see in the gnome version. By the way, during Operation: Gnomeregan you never face Thermaplugg. He communicates through a brag-bot from the depths of the instace. I suppose they did it so they could keep the instance unchanged, since the bomb explodes in the train station (the upper level, out of the instance) while Thermaplugg is in the depths of th instance and protected by at least two heavy doors, so the blast or radiation won't reach him.
Both events are fun (until you do them by the third time), but I enjoyed the gnome version more. After all, Thermaplugg is an instance end-boss and Zalazane justa low level mob, not even rare or elite :) But while we know Tehrmaplugg will be still alive (so instance remains unchanged)... can we afirm Zalazane's dead for sure? We're told the low level mob was just a brain-washed troll infussed with Zaazane's powers, so are we sure we've killed the right one now? *grin* I expect a comeback... even if the real one's really dead, resurrected like Arugal.

Flying in old Azeroth
Ok, rant time now... again! The detonator now is this blue post:

We’ve added a new flying skill called Azerothian Navigation. When World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is released, players who purchase the expansion will see this skill available from flight trainers once they reach level 60. This new skill is required for flying around all Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms zones, including the new level 80-85 zones.

The cost for this is 250 gold. The name has also changed. I've updated my original post with the new information. :)

So... after paying 250g for normal flying in Outlands (anyone can confirm if formerly was more expensive? I have the sensation it costed more), most probably having paid for the epic flight (between 4000 and 5000g depending on your reputation), another 1000g for flying in Northrend... they want us to pay more just to fly in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms? What's this, we're purchasing a GPS device or subscription to be able to fly over the lands we've ran across hundreads of times before, walking or riding? Not to mention if you want the 310% flying speed: more gold to the sink (5000g).
But the second part of the message just made my eyes roll. 250g is nothing nowadays, not even for a level 60 toon. Heck, I have a level 32 tauren druid that has over 300g, thanks to auctioning stuff from my level 80 main. What's Blizzard's goal? To keep chars under 60 flying around instead of walking/riding? This is already done. You need to be level 60 and head to Outlands to train the flying skill already. A skill that formerly was only available at level 70! So why this double payment for the flying skill? Are they planning to eliminate the Outlands flying skill or allow you to fly there after purchasing this one? If so then all makes sense, but I haven't seen any post about this. Also the skill only refers to Azeroth and Outlands isn't Azeroth. You'll hit 60 and you'll pay twice. If we already can fly in Northrend and we know the lands of Kalimdor and Eastern kingdoms since we've been playing here since the early vanilla days it makes no sense: you know how to fly, you know the place and you even can fly in harsh condtions like in Northrend. So again... what's behind this decission? Can I get a total discount since I've already the Outlands and Northrend's flying licenses?

Post soundtrack:
Revolution Calling - Queensrÿche (Operation: Mindcrime, 1988)

Everybody looks the same

2010-09-09T09:51:00.001+02:00

So finally we have the much announced Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events on live servers. They're fun to play (until you repeat it for the 3rd time in a row), using the same phasing technology as the Wrathgate event and the Battle for Undercity. So far is almost the same as Battle for the Undercity (at least Operation: Gnomeregan, I still haven't played Zalazane's fall with my belf but I expect a simmilar event): after some minor quests you participate in a massive battle with huge buffs so you hit hard and you never die (unless you stray far away from Mekkatorque and lose the healingbuff). There's a lot of pew pew and everything blows up in the end. You get the feature of strength and everybody's happy.
Everybody? Sure? Well, not me, at least completely happy. If you check your bags you'll see a blue object that transforms you into a Gnomeregan Infantry soldier (that you get from a previous quest, this object is available to everybody from level 5 up)... and a white cloak. Yes, a cloak, not an overcloak as it was announced and present in the test servers.
Dude, where's my overcloak?
No trace of it, just a white quality cape with the Gnomeregan crest (if you're Horde you'll get the Darkspear Troll version). What's going on here? We have the answer in this blue post:

It is true that the cloak rewards had overcloak functionality when these events were up on the public test realms some months back. In the end we decided that implementing the cloaks in such a way that players could aesthetically change the cloak they're wearing could set a bad precedent. We like customization and flavor items, but we don't want to start implementing aesthetic items in the game which allow players to look however they want while keeping all the stats they want. We felt the overcloaks were breaking that barrier a little too much.

Excuse me?In a game like WoW, the way you look sometimes is as important as the stats on your gear, even more if you're in an RP server. Not only that, when it came out, it promised you to customize the way you look beyond the typical hari color and facial hair. Even when reforging was announced I expected you could also alter the colours aside the stats. So again people asked why in the same thread and this was the answer:

We've been tossing around some other ideas with regard to gear customization, but we still want to make sure there are appropriate limitations on a system like this. The limited buff timer on the overcloak just wasn't enough considering it would mask any cloak of any level. We'll continue to explore ideas for fun aesthetic gear customization, but we didn't feel this was the proper introduction of this kind of system.

Two words in one: bullshit. What's the problem with masking the cloak you're wearing in a game where you can hide it and where everybody (even opposite faction) can inspect you? It's like you're trying to hide that blue cloak to enter an ICC raid?. Simply you can't, you're going to be inspected or worse: passed through GearScore. And what's wrong with displaying an altered version of the cloak you're wearing? I understand there can be some minor technical issues since not all cloaks have the same length or even use the same rectangular model, but that shouldn't be hard to fix.
Something I've commented before in this blog: it would be great you could at least decide colours in the gear you craft. Remember the green iron gear? Why green? Why don't allow people to buy whatever dye they like and use it to craft pink iron bracers or black iron helm? Technical limitations? Not really, we have the same item model in quite an array of colours already. Just an example: Green Iron Helm. Now click in the "Same model as" tab. Forty-five items. Forty-five frickin' items from green to epic quality, all in different colours: yellow, red, black, blue... Even items from an expansion with a particular model have made comebacks in next expansion with a different texture/colour pattern. So why don't allow people dress as they like? One of the best things games like Quake have is that you can use any model for your character. As long as the opposite players had the same model stored in their harddisk they would see you as you decided (otherwise the default player model is shown). This wouldn't be a problem with WoW since everybody has the same item models in their harddisk.
Now what?
Blizz says they're exploring ideas for customization, but to me that sounds they will develop this if they can get some cash like they did with the pets and pony. If people is willing to pay for a mount and they already pay for a racial change (that lets you customize your character's image from start), adding the "Azeroth Paint Shop: We Pimp Ya Epicz Up" looks like the next step. And we can thank the barber only costs in-game gold.
This may seem a rant too big for such a minor issue and probably you're right, but what really ticked me off was the poor excuses given and this sensation that they don't want us to stray out of a line everybody must follow so we all look the same. If you're an old player just compare how people looked at level 60 and how people looks now at level 80.
Also if they didn't want to implement overcloaks a better reward would be a tabard (like they did with the Dark Portal opening event, even if they used the same existing Argent Dawn tabard, but they added that holy nova-like effect) than just a shitty white cloak nobody's going to wear.

New trees aren't that new

2010-08-18T11:40:00.000+02:00

Good neeeews everyone! I've finally killed Professor Putricide. Since our guild raiding stopped time ago I haven't been in a raid group for a long time, and not being very keen to raid pugs I hadn't put a foot on Icecrown Citadel for long. But last saturday I was asked to join two pugs by fellow guildies. The first one was a complete fail. We got to Marrowgar, wiped and pug disintegrated. Typical. But in the evening I was asked to bring my shammy healer. The raid had already 6 bosses down, so we went to down the Professor, the last boss of the Plagueworks wing I was missing. It was hard, we wiped a lot of times, but we finally made it (including a desperate failed attempt where we brought him to 3% and the whole room was covered in green goo). We then went to kill the Vampire Council, but after several wipes (we got to 10%) the raid began to crumble since it was a bit late and people decided to try Halion, another started raid with only the big dragon alive, but we couldn't down him after several attempts where people (specially the shadow realm tank) started dying on p3. A pity, since the group was very competent. Oh well, I didn't get any loot but it was refreshing to raid again.
Now, on the subject of the post, the upcoming talent trees are mostly set. They are still not complete and we see changes from week to week, but the core and major part of them is in place. And my rant is: one of the explanations Blizzard gave for this change, aside of removing passive buff talents, was to allow people to have more choices when speccing, so we could see more diverse specs than the cookie-cutter or the highly specialized raid tree (where you avoid some must-have talents because that buff/advantage is brought by another player). After playing with all the classes for the specs I am playing or I've played (which are all but holy priest, survival hunter, elemental shaman and sublety rogue) I don't see that diversity Blizzard claimed. Sure you make some choices inside a same tree to advance to the next tier (should I pick a talent that reduces pushback when damaged or that one that reduces certain spell cast time), but almost all of them are very situational, like only helpful while leveling or in certain situations, or when doing pvp, but the few points you get to put in the secondary trees (between 10 and 7 points depending on your class) don't offer really a choice. If you're a resto druid you'll put these in the balance tree in talents that buff your healing, a fury warrior will invest in the arms tree to bost damage and a shadow priest won't put a single point in the holy tree. So in the end we all going to have very simmilar trees,s pecially when people hits 85 and gets into raiding again. the only change I see it's a negative one: hybrid specs are gone. They might not be viable for raiding mostly, but a lot of people found them enjoyable to play.
Picking the right talents wasn't an easy task in the old days. There weren't theorycrafting sites offering information about the most effective trees and you usually picked a talent if you liked it. Right now choices (the right choice) is more obvious, but there's not enough room for experimentation. And once talent trees are finished, I expect even less. If mana is going to matter again, optional talents that allowed mana regeneration will become mandatory, so we'll have less points to expend in other trees or skills that might be useful in certain situations (to reduce stuns, silences and so).

Moar design fails: cloaks

2010-07-24T14:57:00.000+02:00

While a big part of the WoW bloggers seem trapped in the healing addons discussion I want to write about cloaks. Yes, this started with Larísa's post about cloaks. And as I commented int hat post, they usually are too anodine or plainly ugly. Few cloaks are really good looking in game, and taking into consideration is the part of our toon we see most of the time (if you have it enabled) it's strange Blizzard hasn't put more effort into making some good designs.
Technically it's the easiest object to apply a texture mapping. Most of the cloaks are rectangular or trapezoidal, with some bending here and there, but the core object remains a low-polygon rectangle type. Since the form is so simple applying a texture is quite easy and doesn't need much preproduction work so when it's applied to the object it looks correct (you need to stretch the texture to adapt it to the form of the object. Rounder objects like heads need more work so when the skin texture is applied it doesn't look kinky).

So we start playing our level one character, cloakless. By killing the first mobs we'll get some grey-quality items to equip and one of them will be a "cloak". Sorry but that barely can be called a cloak. Maybe a neckerchief or napkin tied on your back.
As your character progresses you'll start getting longer cloaks, capes or mantles. First ones, white-quality and still without any stat are still too short to be called cloaks. Again it seems you have a handtowel tied on your back. The first greens you'll get will also be still short and simple in design.
As time passes your character will get longer cloaks but unfortunately not better in design. Vanilla WoW have simple designs, almost patternless. Some cases are really painful, like getting a blue quality cloak named Tigerstrike Mantle... that even doesn't has tiger stripes on it so you can't avoid feeling deceived when you get it.

During TBC things didn't get much better and only in endgame we can see some elaborated patterns like the Shroud of the Highborne, but the design, as the major part of TBC gear is somewhat... too colorful. I wonder sometimes if TBC designers were thinking on the Acid House times. The only cloaks orth mention are the blue rewards from the Death Knight's questline. And even these don't make cloaks look like they're made of cloth.
And then we reach the Wrath of the Lich King expansion were things haven't improved much. First endgame cloaks from Naxxramas are hideous. Aged Winter Cloak? Horrible colour combination. Cloak of Armed Strife? Come on! Not only has again a more than arguably colour choice but that "skull" motiff on it like Superman's cloak it's just a big design fail. And after all the patches few cloaks are worth mentioning, like Aetha's Intensity. That's a cool looking cloak! Maybe too ellaborate, but at least is worth displaying it in your character.

So we have two expansions and several content patches but still the major part of cloaks look poor. Then you see cloaks from other games like LOTRO, just like these ones and then you can't help but start wishing the designers get banged in the head with a mallet. Because seeing what happened with swords and other gear I don't expect things to improve. Even with the overcloaks: it's like adding an old short cloak over the current one, applying the motiff to the upper part of your current cloak. So if you're not really into tabards (aside from the reputation gain) overcloaks won't be your game too.
So here's my calls to Blizzard designers: please improve cloak designs. Forms are ok (you can add more complexity like how it bends and moves), but patterns need more work. And you don't really need to add complex designs like the Drape of the Violet Tower. Check animal hides and create a good tigerskin cloak, not that Tigerstrike Mantle.

New trees preview

2010-07-14T16:11:00.000+02:00

After announcing a big change in the talents trees, we finally get to test them. While they're just a beta version I don't find Blizzard has accomplished what he's been announcing.
- Eliminating "boring" talents that just buff existing spells or skills. There're still plenty of them in all classes: Incite for warriors, Improved Shadow Word. Pain for priests... they're still here
- Adding more "flavours". Not true at the moment. After picking a specific tree and putting the mandatory 31 talent points in the core talents you're not left with much choices for a given class. I've tried several classes and if you want to improve let's say Fury, your best choice is to spend points in Arms tree, not Protection. Some classes even need more than 31 points in the main tree (33 or even 35) to get full advantage, so that leaves very few "free" points to place on abilities that will give you some "fun" skill. Placing 31 points in your main tree doesn't mean you have still 10 points to place freely. You'll need to invest between 5 and 10 (that's all of them) in a secondary (or in the third too) tree to get talents you'll need for your spec, like it happens now. I think in the best cases I managed to get 3 talent points I could really plae wherever I want to get one talent or another that wouldn't really cripple my main output (be it dpsing, tanking or healing) so I could choose between getting an extra talent that's not really mandatory for my spec but may help in some situations or enhance other stats like mana return/regen, increase healing effects on me, etc
- Very few new talents added. Since the big pruning there's not many points left so you can spend them on new talents. Some of them look very nice, like Blood and Thunder (protection warrior), but others are just "more of the same boring talents", like Even the Odds (fury warrior), that just increases damage on certain abilities
So as I said in my previous post the idea is good, but we still have too many "boring" talents around that are also still mandatory for your class, leaving little or no option to get other talents that differentiate your from any other player of the same class and spec. Let's wait for more tuning and hope next version has trees that allow more customisation and possibilities.

Bye bye real names!

2010-07-09T19:59:00.000+02:00

It couldn't end in any other way. After the HUGE shitstorm unleashed over the internet, Blizzard is dropping the use of real names in forum posts. Even all players did a great noise on forums, social media and anywhere you can think of, I'm pretty sure it was the legal implications rather than our complains. Anyway, it worked.

Trimming the trees

2010-07-08T12:35:00.001+02:00

No, I'm not talking about pruning session or suggesting that resto druids are too fat and need to get fit. I'm talking about the last Blizzard announce about talent trees. While the fires started by the real name appearing on forums are still raging all over the internet Blizzard has made a new announce that will impact gameplay (and I hope this time it's for good)

The fun stuff
For some time Blizzard has been stating they want to get rid of "boring" talents that just pump up your dps/healing/avoidance/etc and just keep what's "fun" in a spec. The problem I saw was what they consider "fun", because most "fun" talents in fact are dps/healing/etc boosters, the only difference is they have a limited time span and add some animation (like Slow for arcane mages). Then they're on cooldown for some minutes until you can use them again. Knowing when to use these skills/spells is the key here, but I don't see how this makes somethign "fun", specially hen you face a given fight for the second or third time. Once you know a boss fight (I'm leaving out leveling and questing on purpouse) using that special talent just turns into something automatic for most of the times,s o I don't see much "fun" in that.

The big pruning
But Blizzard surprised everyone with the announce: taking a lot of talents from every tree, leaving only the core ones and these that add some extra spice to the class, reducing from typical 51 point talent trees to 31, locking the other two trees until you spend 31 points in the main tree and giving a lvel 10 character that just spent the first point in the talent that will become his spec a signature skill/spell (Mortal Strike for arms warriors, Divine Storm for retribution paladins, Shield Bash for protection warriors, etc). While I was skeptic of the "leaving only the funzors" I really like this change. Getting a good spec has turned harder and harder as new levels, talents and skill/spells have been added. Also minimal changes in a talent could mean having to respec so you could have the optimal talent tree for your class, specially if you're a raider. Spotting the core talents you really need for your class must be easier now with this change.

On with the chainsaw!
But I'm wondering... why stop here? If all prot warriors are going to have the same core talents, why bother us in having to spend points on them? I suggest Blizzard reduces trees even more and take out the core talents, making them into learnable skills/spells you'll be able to train as you level up, leaving the trees with side skills that will affect the way you play but not your role effectivity. Of course tat would mean trees aren't anymore a sign of class specialization but as specific class diversity. This way you could have prot warriors that prefer to invest in shield skills while others may prefer other talents that will help them in the tanking job, like shouts, ways of dodging/parrying a blow, mocking the target... so not all prot warriors play the same way, the same way a prot warrior and a prot paladin have different playstyles. Both do the tanking, but paladins excel at aoe aggro and dealing good damage, while warriors generate better single target aggro and have more survivality tricks. Now imagine a warrior that relies more on using the shield while another prefers different defensive stances (kung-fu style) so he can dodge or parry more, while a third warrior prefers to invest in toughness and resilience so the blows he receives do less damage.

The forest
Anyway, the new changes look good if well executed or if they aren't dropped like the Path of the Titans. We'll end having lots of different spec trees instead of what we have nowadays: either a specific tree 98% of the players use or a cookie-cutter where you have like 5 or 7 points to spend where you want, so there's hardly any difference between players. Maybe it will be harder for us to choose which secondary skills suit best our gameplay or are funnier, but at least we'll have different flavours for a given spec on a given class.

1984 is coming

2010-07-07T11:11:00.000+02:00

The reaction by my fellow bloggers to the Blizzard announce about using the real name and surname in forum posts has been unanimous (see here, here, here and here). And I want to join them because I also think it's a very bad idea to put your real name on the internet without even asking first. Some may say "but you accepted the EULA!". So what? Did we have an alternative? Do you want to play WoW? then you're forced to use RealID. I already said in fellow bloggers' posts that they're messing with privacy issues beyond what's acceptable. It's ok for me that a RealID friend sees my real name. After all it's me who chooses that person to be a friend in battle.net. But it's very wrong that friends of my friend (who don't need to be my friends too) see my name, status, etc. I haven't chosen them, so who the hell is Blizzard to give MY name to people I don't know? Same with the forum posts. It's fine if my (and only the ones I've chosen) friends see my posts with my real name. But the rest of the whole world? No way, José.
So why is Blizzard acting in this way? What do they expect? It's to stop spamming, trolling or to sue offensive/inappropiate posts? If you use a credit card to pay they already have your real data. If you have a game card and you recharge it (I think you can only do it by credit card payment) they also have your data. Do Blizzard wants us to switch from credit card to game card and buy a shiny new one each month with cash so our real name doesn't appear anywhere and all players appear in battle.net as John and Jean Doe? If that's the only way to protect our privacity while still enjoying such a great game, then it will be.
Other social networks already had to roll back on their ambitious plans about letting everyone see everything (Blizzard should take a closer look to Facebook and how they were forced to change the default privacy settings not long ago), so I hope this happens too in battle.net. Until then, as other fellow bloggers have said, don't expect any posts in the forums from us. Not that I post usually in official forums, but when there's some big technical problem I like to help people there. Now I'll remain silent and post elsewhere, like this blog, even if no one is reading me.

Beta is coming

2010-07-01T12:51:00.000+02:00

The closed beta has been finally announced and the NDA ban has been lifted from Friends & Family alpha, so a ton of information is now available on the net. Yet again I won't apply for the beta. In the last expansions I was still busy running current content, but now I'm not doing much: some dailies, some alt leveling, raising my fishing skill on some characters, but my gameplay level has decreased. As commented before I'm burned out. If my guild was still raiding I'd be more active. And yes, I know it's a vicious circle: if I'm not there other people will also consider not showing up, but raiding has been scarcer and scarcer (we don't even place sign ups in calendar since we don't even have enough active members). Still the other day we were asked to help our friend guild with an alt run into ICC and I brought Valaak, my enha/resto shaman there, since they needed an offhealer, and managed to kill Festergut (something I already had done with my pally Turnak) and Rotface (first time for me). We also had a pair of attempts at Vampire Council. I really enjoyed being in the fray again and this time without the responsability of leading the raid. I wish I could do more raid runs without heavy responsabilities, either leading or tanking (even tanking isn't very complicated nowadays to be honest), even on known bosses like ICC's first wing it's great to be there and help others to get some gear (or even better, get some ICC gear for me too :D). Heck, I even would like to go back to Ulduar, possibly the best raid zone thanks to its diversity on boss strategies and go past Hodir.
Going back on track: I won't be applying to the beta to avoid being burned with the new expansion. I'm ok with reading about new areas, changes, skills, etc and seeing videos, but I prefer to reserve the real experience for when the expansion hits the streets, just like I did with TBC and WotLK. Having so much alts (already 11 at amx level) means I'll be visiting the same places and doing the same quests again and again and again... so I already have an "alt burn factor" I must consider. Wether the expansion will have enough power to hook me up like TBC and WotLK, only time will tell, but I fear it will be less than WotLK, but that can be due to several reasons: with each expansion you've been around for longer and it's harder to get any interesting surprises on each expansion or patch. Also I think Blizz did several mistakes in the way of delivering content, specially the Trial of the Crusader, the abuse of LFD for badge farming... intentions were good, and necessary, but execution has been somewhat deceiving.
By the way, I will try the new races, that's for sure. I've already tried or have characters (even if they're low level alts) with the existing ones, so I'm looking forward for worgens (specially) and goblins. I'm still wondering which class will fit better each one. Worgens look savage, so feral druids look appropiate for them. I'm not sure about goblins... typically in fantasy realms they're usually cannon fodder in the hands of bigger greenskins, but in the Warcraft world they've been (until now) a neutral race dedicated to commerce (or should I say to gather tons of gold). Warlock may fit well the goblin race, since shaman is not available (so I could create some kind of Warhammer Night Goblin Shaman), but rogues also look good for such a sneaky race.

Your nightmare class as healer

2010-05-25T13:40:00.000+02:00

In my previous entry I commented (poorly I must admit, so thanks to Failadin for pointing it out) about how the class I feared most as a healer, the retri paladin, wasn't because all of them I've found until now were playing carelesssly, without putting much attention on the situation. Long story short: I always found retri paladins were taking too much damage and I thought they didn't care much about playing correctly. Then I got to try the class and even I was playing like I've always done with any other melee class (attack from behind, be quick to move out of fire, cleanse your own debuffs if possible) I was still getting too much damage. Maybe having a poor dps gear (Verech is a tank who just dualed retri and has a very poor dps set) made things worse, but I still don't know why this specifc class is my "black beast" as a healer, just that I always have to put special attention on them, more than on rogues or elemental shamans. Warriors and DKs usually don't need much attention (unless they do things in the complete wrong way). If I'm on my holy pally, Beacon of Light is always set on them.
So aside why retris are getting this damage, which is the class you fear most as a healer? Do you think there's a logic explanation why that class needs extra care?

Here we go again

2010-05-20T10:36:00.000+02:00

So the intrepid Verech reached level 80 past sunday. That's my eleventh character to reach that magic number. But as everybody knows, that's just the begining. Now starts the hard part: gearing up, getting rep for the different factions, farm some gold for the epic flight... The big problem is all these activities rely mainly on running dungeons. While you can get reputation with some factions by doing dailies (Wyrmrest Accord, Sons of Hodir, some Kirin Tor with the daily cooking), the only way of gearing up and getting reputation with factions without dailies is the old dungeon grinding. And this is the dreadest phase because of pugs... or to be more accurate: the amount of failpugs you can get into.
I almost stopped palying my main characters in Hellscream because I grew tired of the wild fauna you can find in heroics, so now compare the seasoned Turnak, clad in full epic gear (ICC, T10, etc) with the frehsly dinged Verech, wearing mainly crafted and quest blues. Cold sweat runs down my back everytime I hit the LFD. I even dualed him retribution so I could do some runs without the responsability of tanking or healing the place. Just good ole no-brainer dps, simple and plain.
With such a poor gear for today' standards I'm just running normal instances in the hope of building some decent gear even if it's slowly. Yet Lady Luck hates me. First random I got was no other than Forge of Souls. At least was as dps, but my dps gear is totally laughable. I ended the last in dps with 1200 but at luckily nobody complained. And not happy with that we ran the place again. And Pit of Saron too. The party was fairly competent and I managed to survive (I thank the kind healer who kept me alive) without much problems, but this experience showed one thing: why retri paladins tend to get so much damage. This got me wondering in the past. They weren't supposed to get so much damage (unless standing in fire, stealing aggro or in front of the mobs). And still I don't know how could I get damage when I was dpsing the mobs from behind, but my health bar couldn't stay still for long. On any group pull I was getting more damage than the rest (and my pathetic gear made things look even worse). Again nobody said anything but I'm sure the healer was cursing me in silence for needing more heals than the tank.
Anyway, knowing what to do and not being a dickhead is a great step in randoms. You don't screw it when Devourer of Souls has Mirrored Soul up, you hide behind saronite chunks when Garfrost is swapping weapons, you move out of green shit and explosive mines on Ick & Krick, you let the tank grab aggro in the tunnel before Tyrannus and you stop dpsing him when you get Overlord's Brand. Isn't that complicated. And nobody died. Why the hell then some idiots can't do any of these simple tasks right?

Going deep underwater

2010-05-04T22:50:00.001+02:00

Some days ago Blizzard announced they're working on what can be the most exciting or deceiving of the Catalysm zones: underwater areas. Some screenshots were shown too. As a scuba-diver I'm thrilled to see how this is going to be handled.

What we have until now is not very friendly: you can swim in lakes, sea, etc and you have a limited amount of air (amount that was highly increased with the launch of Wrtah from 30s to 3 minutes, much more realistic) that lets you stay underwater until it runs out and you begin to die. There're also zones that cause fatigue (and your death if you don't get away from there very fast) but these are only there to keep people away. While swimming your movement speed is reduced, even if you swim mounted (something you couldn't do until a later Wrath patch). Underwater zones haven't been very used since playing there is quite limiting. Until now we've had some quests (to recover several objects or kill aquatic mobs), access some dungeons (the Coilfang Reservoir) or even get a good fishing pole in old vanilla Wow.
Almost no information has been disclosed, only that they're working on a new way of moving around and fighting in these zones. And they better do a good job here. If you plan to use underwater mounts, please no more mounted fights unless you can use your own skills (we've had enough jousting in ToC). The second problem I see coming is the 3D environment. Yes folks, expect a new batch of Oculus 2.0 whining. Diving is very simmilar to floating (why do you think all astronaut training is done underwater?) and you have to take into account the three dimensions when moving down there. It's a great sensation in real life, but you must be careful with reference points or you can get a little confused. If it was easy to get lost in Oculus (until you got the grip of the place) I don't want to imagine what can be playing in an underwater zone where your only reference points are some rocks, seaweed or sunken objects. Was it that rock the same I saw 10 minutes ago while trying to get out of here? At least we have the compass and minimap to help. Getting lost or disoriented in real life while diving is quite dangerous. There're places where there're no reference points and this can mislead you to dive deeper instead of heading for the surface, exposing you to the dangers of nitrogen narcosis and other gas accidents. While the nitrogen narcosis (something I've experienced and I don't want to repeat) may be dangerous in real life, would be fun to see it implemented in deep water areas. This sickness is also known as "the rapture of the deep", as Jacques Costeau himself described it. Now imagine being drunk underwater... weee!

Another point to take into account, something already reflected in current game, is water being 800 times denser than air, so that's why you move slowly down there. And the more you go down, the denser it gets. Of course battles in slow-motion are not fun (add an arcane mage casting Slow to make things worse) so here they better do something. I'm pretty sure nobody imagines playing an underwater dungeon at snail speed.

I can't also forget to mention one of the worse accidents you can suffer while underwater: decompression sickness. Dives are not only limited by the amount of air we can carry, but by the amount of nitrogen our body can absorb.
Basically the more you stay at certain depth, the more nitrogen your body absorbs until it reaches maximum saturation and forms bubbles. Now imagine gas bubbles in your tissues, bones... painful? yes, specially if you ascend: gas expands, and so do bubbles, increasing the pain in your body. This can even cause worse accidents like lung or arterial embolisms (which are almost deadly). But let's not get that negative, this is a game. I don't think they will limit the amount of time we can stay in underwater zones while using that new method of moving/fightning (we have magic in Azeroth, remember!), but I'm curious to see if they add some kind of limitation or debuff (in real life you can't perform repeated dives until you eliminate enough nitrogen from your body)

Yep, that's me diving in the Red Sea, visiting the SS Thistlegorm wreck. Where' re the murlocs?

So, as a diver this new underwater area will be watched closely by me. Not because I will whine and complain if it doesn't reflects the real underwater world, but because I find underwater to be a fascinating place.

Post soundtrack: Underwater Love - Faith No More

The incoming changes

2010-04-15T00:01:00.000+02:00

So all the class previews have already been posted, being the Paladin the last one. And the most dreaded possibly.
In several blogs I've already expressed some of my thoughts: the rune regeneration for death knights, maybe too radical and giving me the feeling the class will be harder to play, the priest healing, really needed another healing spell and that "Chakra" skill? Pure dps classes seem to get all benefits (hunter, rogue, mage). Warriors look a bit uncertain, with the changes to tanking, the buffing of arms... so seems fury is being left behind. Shamans have some gaining and some losing, so seem compensated (although resto seems very buffed despite losing the Cleansing Totem).
Last one has been the paladin. Aoe tanking gets some nerfing but will gain a much needed interrupt. Retri starts with Crusader Strike so is not so painful to level. And holy gains a new healing spell (really needed like priests?) and the spell I love more: Healing Hands. Aoe healing like the paladin is the healing totem. While we have yest to see if the amount of aoe healing is effective, the short range will force the paladin to go near the targets that need that healing. And this links with one of my latests posts: the paladin healer should be in the line of scrimmage, not hiding behind. Still the mobility may reduce effective healing, but we still need to see how all the changes will work.
Anyway, one thing seems to be a downfall is the homogenization of classes, specially tanks, with healers coming close. Why give all tools to tanks? As long as they aren't mandatory in fights there's no need to turn them all into the same class with different looking. Paladins have great aoe aggro but no interrupts and the survivavility is limited (the Ardebt Defender "cheat"), while warriors need more work for keeping the aoe threat but they got better survivality tricks they can use when they feel the need (Shield Wall, Last Man Standing). Until now I haven't found any fight where a certain tank class gets some significal advantage, so why this now?

Anyway it's still too soon and everything are just guessings. Some changes may don't even make it on production servers, others can be totally different. Time will tell.

Old sensations

2010-04-02T14:18:00.001+02:00

Leveling the new chars in SAN has brought back old memories. Usually painful ones since I was used to the comfort that a level 80 armed to the teeth gives you. Good gear, all the class skills available, fast mounts (including flying ones), big bags, plenty of money... all of that disappears when you start leveling a new character in a new realm (although you can cheat a bit by making a deathknight to get some starting gear and money easily)

- Sills. Until level 20 or so your skills won't matter much. You can play any role if you go into a dungeon. Verech tanked RFC at level 12 or so... without any aggro generating skills and using Arcane Torrent to pull groups
- Walking. You'll spend a lot of time walking from one side to another. Nowadays things are much easier since you can get a mount at level 20 (and won't cost you a small fortune like in the old times) Still the lack of "quest-hub design" will make you visit the same place several times. Yesterday night Verech had to cross Arathi Highlands from one side (Hammerfall) to another (Stromgarde) three frigging times! in order to complete the sigil questline. Horse helped, but I couldn't help but feel angry since everytime had to clear the way of mobs I just killed some minutes ago to get to the new target
- Fleeing mobs. This is one of the worst ones. I had almost forgot mobs could flee from you. At low levels almost all humanoids flee from you when theyreach 20% health. And it's a pain chasing them to avoid they call some friends to dance on your face. Some classes like paladin got some good tools to prevent the cowards from getting away (Judgement of Justice, Hammer of Justice) but other ones aren't so lucky
- Survivality. An hybrid class with mail armour is easier to keep alive and level than a pure dps wearing cloth. Thanks to several nerfs introduced in the game (eliminating almost all elites outside instances, better hp & mana recovery, tanking classes doing more damage, etc) some quests can be easily facerolled by some classes. In the old vanilla WoW I would have never been able to kill elites with 2 or 3 levels above me or normal mobs with 5 levels above me unless I'd be very lucky (I'm talking about soloing btw) with a prot paladin. Now it's maybe too easy. Other classes, specially ranged ones who don't have a "tank" will suffer more (mage, balance druid) to achieve it even if you're good at kiting due to the lack of skills and spells at these levels
- Reputation. I still remember my first exalted reputation took ages. Back in the days your rep gain depnded on your level, so completing low level quests for reputation yielded very feew reputation and runecloth grinding was th eonly stable way of getting rep with major cities. Although this was changed long ago (giving now a fixed rep quantity) I find it amusing I got my first one before level 30
- Leveling. this is also an old change but with every expansion it has been modified. In the old vanilla days getting to 40 required a good investment in time play. Now in 3 weeks dedicating some time will get you there. Not a bad change but can't help to feel sad seeing how much took me to get to 40 my mains.
- Gear. Wrath finally hit the nail on the head with quest rewards in form of gear. Now you get an object that will suit your class/role most of the times, but in vanilla WoW, until Cataclysm comes, you're still presented with very poor rewards (unless it's some former elite quest), both in number (two options max to choose from) and usefulness (plate with agi and spirit and things like that)

It's good to do all the journey from start, but as I level I think it's going too fast. On one hand I prefer it this way. Low levels (specially when soloing) can be a pain when lacking so many skills and spells and travelling back and forth to the same place again and again (not to mention those pesky quests that make you travel all around the world, hopping from one continent to the other and back thousandfold). On the other hand I feel I'm maybe losing many things behind... but I won't complain, I can always level another toon :)

Standing at the back wearing plate

2010-03-28T13:10:00.000+02:00

Any The Order of the Stick fans out there? If not, go and check the last page posted here (since I'm late again posting it's no longer the last one, seesh!).
Even it's not WoW-webcomic (in fact it's based in D&D rpg) you'll sure chuckle about the definition Tsukiko (one of the evil ones) gives about paladins. Then I remembered this post in MMO-Champion about letting the healers do some dps (something they already do when overgearing content) and what some colleagues said about how paladins were played in Warhammer Online (sorry, never tried it, was too hooked on WoW): they had to be in the line of scrimmage in order to get power to cast heals. And I like this idea. Protection and Retribution paladins are already in the middle of the fray, but Holy just stands in the back like any priest in sissy robe (hello Tam! ;) ). It just doesn't feel right. As Tsukiko says a paladin should be bossing around, yelling "don't tell me how to heal boy! I was already healing dungeons when you were crapping your pants in Northshire Abbey!" (add here an image of a veteran paladin with a grey moustache and a deep rough voice). We're the only healing class wearing plate, so why don't take advantage of this? I don't think Holy should change so radically that you only get mana when smitting your foes with the powers of the Light, but some more action, now that Cataclysm will (or at least they say) avoid getting these terrible damage spikes, would be nice. It would also fit the class better.
For the Light!

Regaining some SANity

2010-03-18T11:34:00.000+01:00

Lately my beloved *urnaks have been placed on a sort of holidays. I'm tired of the daily routine and since we've had several raids cancelled in a row that means nothing new or exciting to do, just grind heroics endlessly. And after three runs one also gets tired of this, specially when pugging. I still have several chars who need tons of emblems for either main spec's gear or secondary also. But unless I'm lucky to join an all or almost-all guild run, joining the Dungeon Finder it's a pain to me. First because unless I'm bringing a tank or a healer I have to wait a ridiculous amount of time doing nothing more than grinding mats or twiddling my thumbs. But the second reason is still more important: I have zero patience for dickheads nowadays. After waiting 18 minutes to get my dps on an heroic run where unless it's one of the new dungeons I won't get anything useful but emblems, the last thing I need it's a failpug run. Thanks but no.
Under these circumstances I'd surely retire from WoW until Cataclysm, but luckily that won't happen. And all thanks to Single Abstract Noun, the bloggers' guild created by Tamarind. A place to relax, level your char at your own pace without any pressure, enjoying the social atmosphere of a guild full of helpful people. People from all Europe (SAN has also US and Oceanic versions if you're interested in joining and don't belong to the EU region), always ready to talk about anything, be it game related or not.
Also since the european SAN guild belongs to the Horde I have the chance to see places where before I could only get near for a second and then run away with a pvp flag on my head and several angry guards and players on my heels. "The Explorer" was the first title I ever got on WoW, but now I can explore Horde areas in a more relaxed way. Quests are also new to me, since after leveling 10 Alliance characters to 80 you already know the drill. The server is also a RP server, but that's something I haven't sunk my fingers on.
So if you have a blog or are just a reader you'll be welcome to join Single Abstract Noun on any of the regions. Your SANity will thank you.

A great place to be

2010-03-07T13:44:00.002+01:00

If you read my blog then surely you're a reader of Righteous Orbs. If not, then you shall go and read it, it's an order! Tam and Chas really catch you with their posts and it's impossible to resist the urge to jump in and drop some lines. Ok, if you're a Righteous Orbs reader then you probably know about the incident Tamarind had with his guild and how this lead him to gquit. But Tam is a special person and this incident brought a good idea to his mind: to create a guild where bloggers and readers could meet, play together, discuss, whatever they felt like. Go to Tam's post about the Single Abstract Noun guild and read it, he's much better than me at writing down words :)

So I've decided to join too the Single Abstract Noun. Currently I'm playing a belf mage called Seredar, but I'm planning to bring a belf paladin tank too, since there's a shortage of them in the guild, named Verech.
Since I always liked leveling chars it's a breath of fresh air since playing at level 80 has become a tad bit boring: randoms, dailies, more randoms... only some ICC raiding really motivates me, but we keep hitting the Festergut and Rotface brickwalls, even with the new buff. So SAN is a place where I feel free of these game frustrations and also have the joy of leveling with people I've been reading and sharing thoughts.
Meet you there!

PS: Verech is already in, competing with the one and only, Tamarind himself, to be the sexiest belf tank of SAN. He has advantage though, he wears heirlooms! But at least I got a little revenge: he mocked my pants... but he's now wearing the same, the copycat! Seems I'm leading on this season' style! Yeah! Pretty Points for Verech!

Enjoying the fail

2010-02-28T15:59:00.000+01:00

Sometimes a failpug can turn into something better even it's a painful wipefest. I logged my mage to do the daily random since I haven't been playing him much (it's a pain to get into pugs with a dps and mages seem to have to wait even more than other classes) and to my surprise I didn't have to wait more than 8 minutes. The party was composed of a protection warrior, a balance druid, an unholy deathknight and a discipline priest. We got into Halls of Lightning and I was expecting a fluid run. How wrong was I...

I'm not dropping aggro, I'm just chillin'

The party had two big problems. First and most important was the tank. He had good gear (over 38k hp) but was terrible at aggro generation. He almost never charged in, just ran to the mobs like he was doing a walk in the park, used few aoe aggro skills (just some demo shout and thunderclap at start and much later a shockwave, but nothing else during the fight). I didn't check what other skills he was using since I had very tough times trying to drop aggro. No matter if I waited to start dpsing, I always snapped aggro off him at the first or second cast. The slacker even never released after a wipe and just waited for the druid or priest to ress him. The druid was also running around trying to get mobs off him. He was the second problem. Before the tank started his minimal aggro building he already had started the fight pulling some mobs with Moonfire. So if the tank was bad at aggro generation the boomkin just made things worse. The deathknight was poorly equipped (green quest items and some blues) but he made all he could to save our asses. At one point he even asked if somebody had Recount. The boomkin asked "Are you sure you want to see it?", "Yes!" he replied. I was first with over 3.5k dps (and I was restraining myself to hit with full force to avoid more deaths). The boomkin was secod with 2.6k and the dk was third with only 1.6k or so. No surprise with that gear but the chap merrily replied "it's just my first heroic, sorry". The poor priest... well, she was going mad because everybody was taking damage with so many rampant mobs running around and disc spec isn't good for aoe healing, so she was casting bubbles and Penance like mad and discovered the wonders of Divine Hymn.
I was expecting to see the druid quitting after the first wipe but nobody quit during the whole run. And to my surprise nobody complained or bullied the tank for being so terrible (and I was tempted to shout at him, trust me!) If you've read previous posts from me you'll know I don't feel comfortable tanking with the warrior because I feel the aoe aggro generation isn't that good, specially when you have people covered in T9/T10/ICC gear chucking out damage like there's no tomorrow, so my biggest concern is to generate as much aoe aggro I can to keep all mobs on me. I use thunderclap, demo shout, shockwave and cleave as much as I can, switch targets to use shield slam... and despite all that I feel I'm terrible at tanking with the warrior, but the dude we had wasn't even trying. With all the ingredients of the recipe for insanity on the table people still carried on without a single word. Neither a single complain for the tank not releasing after dying like the rest did. And this way what it was a damn wipefest on trash subtletly transformed into a pleasant run because everybody (even the slacking tank) keep pressing forward to get it all done. First I was just wondering who'd be first to take the deserter debuff. Then who'd be the first to shout "L2Play!"... then how many wipes we would take until next boss... and finally, after an indecent amount of deaths and wipes we managed to oneshot Loken without problems.
For me the run was a good practice of evasive skills, reminding me a lot of the Faction Champions fight where you try by all means to avoid getting ganked, immobilising foes, dropping aggro... and do some dps meanwhile.

PS: I just had a simmilar case yesterday with my warrior, but at least the tank was competent and nobody was ninja-pulling, just everytime I hitted whirlwind I snapped aggro off the tank. When the run ended I checked Recount and found I had done 45% of the total damage, with over 3.3k dps, while the rest was at or below 1.5k So I blame the Finder for putting me in that group. They weren't undergeared, I was overgeared.

Post soundtrack: Addicted to Chaos - Megadeth

Back to Dickheadland

2010-02-23T15:09:00.001+01:00

I check WoW news on a daily basis, sometimes more than one time per day, specially when new releases are coming. And the other day I saw a pair of news on MMO-Champion thatI'd like to highlight here in my humble blog. Both are connected also.
First thing is the frost lotus droprate. I've been complaining about the low rate in the last weeks with my guildmates. I remember some months ago you could farm Scholazar Basin and in one hour maybe get a stack of 20 lotuses. Those were the good old times. Then the drop rate was severly nerfed to 1% and all the alchemists started craving for them. And while Blizz made other professions that needed high level materials easier (no longer cooldown on titanium transmuting, purchaseable arctic fur and snowfall ink) it let Alchemy in the cold dark alley. I never understood why it offered the option to purchase an item like arctic fur (rare quality) and not the frost lotus (uncommon quality) when you have more need for lotuses than furs. You'll be quaffing potions and flasks on a daily basis (specially if you're raiding), but you're not using the furs to craft gear or enchant yours on a daily basis, so why not offering the option of purchasing the lotuses as they did with the snowfall ink? After all both rely on Herbalism and either they could ask for a stack of icethorn (since herbalism level required to gather is higher than lichbloom) or create a new skill simmilar to milling where you "transmute" X icethorn/lichblooms into a lotus. But no, nothing was done and getting these damn flowers was a nightmare that demanded a lot of time grinding an area.
Then I saw this info where the drop rate was being incremented by 50%. "About f*cking time!" I thought first. And seemed to work because the first two herbs I gathered dropped a lotus each one. But then as I continued getting herbs no more lotuses dropped. Then I saw the base drop rate was 1%, so an increase of 50% means the drop rate is now 1.5%. Ridiculous to say the least.

The second notification (see at the end) again made me cheer: finally frost lotus was available for purchase ("about f*cking time!" again), and eternal elementals too (and a new flying carpet design plus required mats reduced in high level tailoring/leatherworking/blacksmithing recipes). And all I needed for it was a humble frozen orb, those that were gathering dust in my bank after Jurnak reached 450 in leatherworking (yep, as I said before wouldn't take long).
Oh wait a minute! Frozen orbs?? No... it can't... be!! OMFG! They're back! No, not the orbs... the dickheads who click Need on frozen orbs in random pugs! You thought they were almost gone? Nooooo!! Frozen orbs are no longer these useless items you'd probably be putting into AH after winning one in a pug. So expect everybody to go Need on them. I'll change my way of rolling and let the orb the last one (they always appear on top, so it was the first to be clicked Greed). If everybody goes G then fine, no problem here. But as soon as someone goes Need I'll be needing too, and I won't give a damn shit about what the others say.

No love for the fallen

2010-02-16T18:49:00.000+01:00

I decided to take the dust off my DK, the last char created in the Hellscream realm (but can't remember if he was the last to hit 80, I think not...) and bring him into some heroics. But to save my sanity I decided to go only as dps and not as tank. First of all he's not that well geared for today's current standards (even he'd be able to tank whole Naxx). And second it really piss me off those players who just want you to pull half the instance in one go so they can continue grinding emblems at a fast pace.
So there I was, hitting the Finder as dps and doing long forgotten quests meanwhile: the Sons of Hodir rep (although I don't need it since I have at least two or three exalted chars with them and shoulder enchants are now BoA), the Frostborn questline (for rep and the Bronzebeard reunion scene). Luckily didn't have to wait much (Finder said around 12 minutes but usually you got into the dungeon in 6 or 7 minutes), so the combo questing-emblems grinding worked perfectly. And then I saw two things that reflect the post's title:
- Few DKs can be seen now in instances. While before it was very common to get two or even three in a same run, the amount of DKs getting into PUGs seem to have dwindled a lot. This could be due two factors, the first one being the class isn't anything new and exciting any longer, but I suspect the second one is the main cause: the Finder tries to avoid having more than one class in the same group, unless they play different roles. You can see one bear and one tree, or even one cat and one boomkin, but you'll rarely see two cats or two furbies in the same group, not even one cat and one boomkin. Which is very ok since the chances to get loot (does people still needs loot from 5man unless recently dinged 80?) are more fair. But even without playing my DK I rarely get them on the PUGs I join, either as dps or tanks. Maybe it's only my battlegroup, but looks like people is tired of them and prefer good old chars.
- The second one really struck me since I experienced it several times this weekend while doing hardcores: the amount of healing I received was much below the healing other dps were receiving. Several times I went with only half health bar, without receiving any humble healing spell. Do healers really despise DKs that much? Being "heroic class" and plate wearers doesn't mean we're invulnerable or immortal (well, we already died once at least...). Luckily my dps spec is Blood so I could regenerate my hitpoints without much problems. I can understand other more squishy classes get over us in the healing priority, but even after finishing a group and heading for the next one I didn't receive any heals too. And no, the healer wasn't oom neither I was overaggroing or pulling mobs randomly.
Right now, Durnak the walking corpse in plate armour (hey Calli!) looks much better than before (3/5 T9 and a great 2-hander) and had the skills (got rid of Vampiric Blood) and glyphs tweaked, but still needs more work on the tanking set (2/5 T9 and a decent 2-hander, but still wearing some blues). I'll take a look at the current frost tanking builds and see if mine needs a revamp. Also even I like tanking on the DK (but not as much as on the pally) I prefer to keep it for guild runs if no one else is available. I could get into the Finder much faster by selecting that shield-shaped icon, but I prefer to save my sanity even if that means it takes longer to get into an instance.

Post soundtrack: Rise from your grave - Glamour of the kill

Self-sustainable

2010-02-15T10:23:00.000+01:00

I've realized that despite the blog being based (supposedly) on my amount of alts I talk very few about them. Well, leveling 10 characters in a realm is no easy task, neither is giving to almost all of them two main professions. It costs a lot of time and money, but once you have every profession mastered then you realize that time and money was a good investment for the future. Welcome to self-sustainability.
I rarely buy things from the AH, just some recipes I'm missing or some mats I won't farm personally because either would take too long, I'm busy with other things or I'm in a rush to get some skill up to get that desired recipe. Also I rarely sell goods in the AH, except for uncommon and rare uncut gems. Almost everyhting I produce I reuse it on another char. And I've become so used to this that it's difficult for me to think how I'd do without all professions covered. I realized it was hard when the other day I decided to level a retri pally I have in another server. I have other alts in that server too, but they're very low level and without any professions, save for leatherworker if I remember correctly. The pally is a blacksmith since it's a good profession to provide gear at low levels. But then I missed my enchants on gear, the glyphs... this brought me back to the early times of WoW where even my main character didn't have his professions maximised and I had to spend tons of money in the AH or looking for someone to enchant or create something specific. Frustrating most of the times at least.
Although I have all professions I don't have all available specs (same as characters, I have all classes at max level but I don't have all specs), but since WotLK came out that doesn't make a big difference. Kurnak has always been armorsmith, weaponsmith was more attractive at level 70 in the TBC era, but he continued the armorsmith path. Now in WotlK I haven't seen any difference between both. Vurnak was fire tailor in TBC but when Wrath came switched to shadow tailoring since back then the shadow gear was better for mages and this meant other casters could use it (my shadowpriest and warlock). He is also enchanter (my only character without any farming profession). Turnak is jewelcrafter, the most demanded profession in guildchat, with enchanter on second place. Since I do the daily JC quest every day I've collected almost all available recipes. Murnak is alchemist. He chose elixir master since transmuter didn't seem so attractive back then and potions weren't as useful. In my opinion the alchemy profession needs some revamp since WotLK was launched. The extra flasks creation doesn't proc as often as in TBC (and back then wasn't that much too), so doesn't seem that chosing a speciality is such a good investment nowadays. Blizz should do something about it and change the way it works, like having to spend less mats to create flasks if you're elixir master instead of this random proc, access to specific recipes (like weaponsmiths and armorsmiths), and so on. Grimbol is the inscriber, the new profession that came with WotLK,it's a joke to level it since even high end items like the Darkmoon Faerie cards aren't that expensive to produce in mats terms. Surnak is a gnomish engineer. This profession was a pain to level and I don't find it very useful to be honest. It's a pity since both specialities (weird gadgets and big explosives) sound very fun, but in the end you won't be using a lot of what they both offer. The most used items I've seen are the flying machine, the rocket boots enchant to run around and the repair bot (the normal one, since Jeeves is such a money/time sink). Blizz acknowleged back in TBC that engineering needed "more love" and they created the flying machines, but still I think this profession is way behind others in utility terms. Finally Jurnak is the leatherworker. I got elemental leatherworking since back in vanilla WoW seemed the most suitable for rogues, the only leather user I had back then. I'm still trying to reach 450 (445 atm) and it's a pain since getting the quantity of required mats for a single item is prohibitive, either in time or money, but I'll get there eventually.
Aside from the main professions all have maximised First Aid and (almost all) Cooking. Got three miners (so I can produce 3 titansteel bars per day if needed) and three herbalists. Only Kurnak has Fishing at max level, but that's enough (since I find it a boring profession to level).
Thanks to all the chars providing all the professions I can produce virtually anything needed for my characters or for guildmates. This also means that I have to dedicate several hours (not every week tough) to farm mats for flasks or food, but this allows me to raid with all needed buffs available. If you're also playing several chars I totallyr ecommend trying to cover as many professions as possible. You'll be running to the AH or emptying your guildbank less and less.

A great and weird raid night

2010-02-09T11:40:00.000+01:00

I find both weird and exciting when things go smooth where you were foreseeing a big disaster. Last friday night we went to raid ICC. I arrived late since I had a meeting to attend but made it on time to get into the Gunship Battle, where one of the tanks had to leave. So I got my pally up and tanked at the Alliance ship, while the other tank went for the mage in the Horde ship. This fight really seems a joke after Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper, and specially when considering the next one, Deathbringer Saurfang. It's like some kind of holidays with free loot. Anyway we faced Saurfang and even we hadn't the most suitable classes to kite and take down the beasts easily we managed to kill him on third or fourth try. We lacked enough firepower for any of the next bosses, so we just cleaned some trash (and suffered an horrible death at Precious when he was at 8% or so) to get some rep.
Some people had to leave and we didn't have replacements to continue in ICC, so after filling the empty spots people asked where to go. Since we didn't have WG to try the new boss I proposed to take a shot at Trial of the Crusader. I knew I was calling for doom, since the only times our guild tried that instance without people from other friendly guilds it ended in an utter disaster (and call it coincidence, but I was never on these tries), but victory is only for the brave. There we went and I tried to explain tactics since I was one of the few that did the instance several times (in run with a friendly guild), but never as tank, so I was very afraid of encounters like the worms and the Twin Val'Kyrs. Surprisingly the run went like a (almost) charm. We killed the Beasts of Northrend in one go with only one casualty. Lord Jaraxxus was strangely the one that most problems gave and we wiped three times at him. Then the weirdest of all: the Faction Champions and Twin Val'kyrs were oneshotted without any problem. How can we do the most complicated and not the easiest fights? Keep in mind I didn't have much idea about the strat in Twins, trying to remember how I did it with the other guild, which auras to pick up at start and so. Finally I said: "ok, more or less I remember it was this way, let DBM tell you when to switch to what colour". And it worked, I couldn't believe it. Then Anub died at the second try and we finished ToC10 for the first time with only guild members.
People was still hungry for more (completing ToC10 was like an adrenaline injection) so the only possibilities were Naxx/CoA (eazy emblemz!) or take a tour through Ulduar. And there we went, some of us switching to alts since few items we could get from that place that were worthy. Flame Leviathan (sorry, Golf Caddy!), Razorscale and XT-002 Deconstructor were easily stomped to the ground. We skipped Ignis and went in the Antechamber, but instead of going for the easy Kologarn the main tank decided to take the Iron Council in hard more (leaving Steelbreaker the last one alive). We failed and wiped and since it was very late (around 2:00 AM) we decided to call it quits without any bitter sensation. It was a great raiding night for our humble guild. I was feeling both great and weird, since it was really great clearing ToC10 when before people couldn't even finish Beasts, but also had this strange sensation that maybe stars were aligned in the right position and next time we go there we won't get past the jormungars.
I hope I'm totally wrong about this sensation.

The King is dead, long life the King!

2010-02-05T12:16:00.000+01:00

So finally the gates to the Frozen Throne opened. And before a day passed the Lich King was already pushing up daisies. Something's rotten in Northrend and it's not Arthas' corpse. Three things are bugging me a lot about the LK fight:
1. How fast the LK went down. It was a "blind" fight. No previous test in PTR, no data published that could help you through addons like DeadlyBossMods. You had to discover by yourself which were the LK's abilities and how to overcome them. The only info published when the patch hit the streets seemed to involve some beam dance like the Netherspite fight and the access to another room/dimension like Kalecgos. Everybody was expecting a very tough fight, but it didn't last even 24 hours and the published video of the fight it seems pretty easy (although the Frostmourne room isn't shown, maybe there are the beams). This says very few about the encounter designers. Fights should be a challenge, not something you can achieve on the first try. Neither should be something impossible to get, not even by the top raiding guilds, but the amount of time passed since the fight was available it's ridiculous. Other boses in the past took more time to be defeated, but it seems Blizzard didn't take into account how easy is to get good gear nowadays so you can kill the first 4 bosses in ICC with just purchased tier gear.
I was expecting a fight of these epic proportions to last much more, with people trying different tactics, getting a bit closer with every try. In one word: progression. But no, in only some hours we already had a winner. And if you check the videos the tactics seem pretty easy. Is that all the LK can offer? Bullshit I say. Where's that dreaded character that appeared since you first set your feet in Northrend and bragged about his powers, then sparing your life because you weren't powerful enough to challenge him? Gone with the cold Northrend wind. I got the impression it wasn't the last boss in the game but just a last 5man dungeon boss. Of course I'm sure he's a tough one, but in the video looks sooo easy. At least tactics don't seem to pose any complication or involving anything new than tank'n spank and move out of fire. Since I don't want to spoil anything just go and check the video, then tell me what you think.

2. This issue has already been very well addressed by Chastity at Righteous Orbs: why must be always be a Lich King? Just check Chas' post. The argument it's so weak it doesn't have any sense: without a leader, the Scourge would go rampant and destroy all life in Azeroth. Excuse me sir, but
a) the Scourge's goal has always been to exterminate all life on Azeroth, serving the Burning Legion's plans
b) it hasn't shown any trace of following any plan or grand scheme to achieve this, at least since Lordareon was destroyed. No coordinated assaults on major cities, no undercover operations to assassinate/control the Alliance and Horde leaders... so mostly has "ran rampant in Azeroth" killing whatever they could
c) without the pressence of the Lich King and the powers he wield, almost all the Scourge should crumble to dust since they lack the demonic powers that drive them forward. Only the characters with enough power before joining the Scourge or certain degree of free will should be still alive (erm, undead, sorry). And these ones most surely whould be trying to get the LK crown and command the Scourge
d) the LK doesn't show any traces of the former Arthas "being the only thing restraining him from sweping away all life from Azeroth". And the last human remains (aside the body with Arthas' form) were destroyed in the quest Tirion's Gambit. If he hasn't launched a total assault to destroy all life it's not because what's left of Arthas was still struggling to avoid it
Ok, so without anyone as the Lich King the Scourge would cease to exist and that would break the gameplay, at least in a logical way. No problem, I see the point. But that doesn't justify why putting another person in his place. If WoW still needs to Scourge you don't need to pick somebody to wear the crown. There're other ways, more logical: the body that held the crown no longer exists, but that doesn't mean the powers it contained have vanished too. They have only dispersed and just need a new body. You don't need to sacrifice someone, just let the powers rebuild a new body, something like Sauron was trying in the Lord of the Rings. It will take time, since the power it accumulated from the start has vanished or doesn't exist anymore (looks like Frostmourne is shattered and all the trapped souls are free now, so that's less fuel to the dark powers of the Lich King), but if Sargeras' death didn't stop the Bruning Legion, why Arthas death should stop the Scourge at all? It's a very lame argument.

3. The last point is just a personal opinion about Ensidia's being suspended during three days and all achievements and loot removed because apparently they exploited a bug by using saronite bombs in the LK fight. If you read all information available to me it seems a huge pile of bullshit from Blizzard. The encounter had a bug, ok, but that was Blizzard's fault. And doesn't seem Ensidia was exploiting actively this bug. Looks like Blizz forgot the fight wasn't tested previously in the PTRs, so nobody could known that using saronite bombs (something that rogue had been doing before as part of his dps rotation) would cause the platforms to rebuild. WoW is not a perfect game and there're still a good bunch of bugs that need to be fixed. Do you expect players during a boss encounter to see why some platforms reappear again, specially on the endgame boss? This is not like that old bug people were exploiting to get to C'thun faster. Somebody found some kind of invisible ledges that let you get to the Old God faster, avoiding a lot of hard trash mobs fights. Well, that's an exploit. People who did it was punished and the bug was fixed, and that's great. I also concede that with this bug the fight may be easier, but the fight already looks easy enough without it and also they weren't exploiting actively this, it's just something that happened while they were in the middle of the fray. Now it's that important for Blizz who gets a world first? Do they care which guild downs first any boss? It's the guilds who care, since top raiding guilds are sponsorised and get money for being the first ones in achieving something. It would have been smarter to just allow this achievement for Ensidia and fix the bug asap. or at least fix the bug and let them try again. Suspending their accounts and removing achievements looks very lame, like a spoiled brat who's been beaten at a game of chess by someone who's a better player, then gets mad and tosses the board and pieces away (heh, I did that when I was a kid, I never liked being defeated and specially in a game I did not understand at all). And let me tell you this is just my opinion, I don't have any relationship with Ensidia and I couldn't care less who's getting a world first.

Post soundtrack: Kill the King - Megadeth

Hard to post lately

2010-02-01T13:03:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time since I published my last entry. And no, I haven't been slacking with the blog. It's just... I don't find something consistent enough to blog about. During this time I prepared two blog entries that I realized weren't worth publishing. Even the second one was a kind of revision of the first and why I shouldn't post it, but again I find the entry futile. On the other hand I haven't found any remarkable situations inside WoW worth pointing out. Not even some epic failpug. Aside from the typical Oculus quitters and some noobish tank who couldn't handle threat properly, all pugs I've done lately were very smooth. I even did several runs with the same group that worked as a charm (in fact was a guild run from another server who just lacked a healer).
Raid stiuation is at stall right now. Saurfang doesn't seem a big problem if we have enough dps to kill the beasts very fast, but we usually have problems with Precious, even not being a boss. Too many zombies running rampant. And when we finally get that doggie down (Stinky is much less problematic) we're having problems facing Festergut. Our best try so far is 68%, with the tank survivality being the biggest problem even before he releases the gas. The poor chap goes from over 45k to flatline in a blink... Anyway we're trying as much as we can, since we're a casual raiding guild and we don't go there every night. Still is great to have gone this far, I'm sure very few guilds who do casual 10man raiding have gone so far inside ICC. We've also reached the Vampire Council but haven't tried the fight yet and this week opens the Frostwing. The first boss, being completely different from anything done before seems promisingly fun and chaotic at the same time.
My chars got also some upgrades, but it's hard to play with all of them without getting burnt out, so I'm not doing lots of randoms (also the wait time if you're dps is a killer, specially if the char doesn't have any gathering profession).
So here I am, in a certain WoW impasse, trying to find something worth to be posted. Meanwhile check the blogroll list at the right side and you'll find some cool people with interesting posts.

A Tyranny of Tanks

2010-01-12T13:23:00.000+01:00

It's nothing new that tanks are scarce. Even before the new Dungeon Finder system came in it was hard to get a tank to run a 5man pug (see one of my first posts). But witht he new Finder tool things doens't seem to improve. Right now having a tank entering the LFG means assured run in 5 seconds or less (unless someone declines). It's the faster way to grind emblems and you can get 5/5 T9 in a very short time. Not only that, you can play as tank and spend the emblems in your second spec, no matter if it's the main or secondary spec and have that char ready for ICC in few days. Yet still the number of tanks hasn't grown.
Being a tank is not the most fun job in the world. Back then it was also stressing, when threat wasn't so easy to get and maintain. But right now tanking isn't that stressing, healers get most of it. Ok, the job is still boring (plant yourself in front of a bunch of mobs or a boss and let them biff you while watching you're the only one being biffed) and few strategy is involved (I'm talking about 5man instances, not raids), but it's right the same for dps: click buttons and forget about your health (and mana mostly). The only thing dps have is the "fun" to deal big damage numbers, while a tank could only take pride in how high is his threat, the number of hitpoints or the percentage of avoidances. Not very funny, I know. yet still tanking can be challenging (specially in Halls of Reflection).
So why people aren't running tank alts? If the job isn't that stressing or challenging anymore, the only answer is for being not as fun as dpsing. But it's so funny doing "big critz lolz"? I don't think so. Maybe it's me, but I don't care much about what the dps meter says. It's good to see some competition between fellow dps, but I don't care about the position I'm in the list at the end of the instance. As long I've played correctly (and that means more than doing over 3k dps, things like avoiding fire, not stealing aggro, buff the fellow players, etc) I'm happy with my dps character, be either melee or ranged, easy to play as arcane mage or more complicated like cat druid. It has sure more responsability than a dps job, but as said before the threat issues are almost gone and with them the biggest source of stress for tanks.
I was in a party tanking with my poorly geared DK while the rest where clad in T9 and the only concern was my low amount of hitpoints. No one managed to snap a mob off me. I reckon not all tanking classes may be appealing. While I enjoy the protection paladin and the frost DK, I feel unsecure with my protection warrior. I feel he lacks good aoe aggro and thus try to avoid tanking with him. So maybe I'm not playing good the prot warrior, but you can't beat me at prot pally or frost DK (and since my druid is cat I can't tell much about bear tanking, I did some offtank and didn't like it, possibly because I lack the right skills and got a tough time).
Right now tanks hold the power in PUG runs. Getting a healer is not an issue anymore, there aren't tons of them like dps characters, but if you only need a healer you won't wait more than 2 minutes (at least in my battlegroup), while getting a tank may mean over 13 minutes. You know that line "who has a friend has a trasure"? Well, if by any chance that friend is running a tank you've hit the jackpot. It will be "interesting" to see how tanks cope with that power. Right now I've experienced both sides. I got into a pug and we were sent to Azjol-Nerub. On entering the instance the tank left without any explanation. I suspect it's because AN is very short and only has 3 bosses (making a total of 5 EoTs), but it's very clear that tank, unless it had a solid reason to quit, was a stupid moron. If you quit a pug you get a 15 minutes penalisation where you can't join the Finder. AN can be completed in less than 15 minutes with the current average gear people has, so maybe he thought he would get more emblems in another place like Gundrak? (5 bosses + 2 reward emblems). In the time he's waiting without getting into any pug he would have won 5 emblems. So damn stupid. On the other hand I was running Forge of Souls (2 bosses and 2 extra emblems) and the tank decided to go afk in a place with wandering monsters. Of course he aggroed them and first I tried to keep him alive without snapping aggro. A DK tried to tank them but he couldn't cope with the mobs and died, with the rest of the party wiping shortly afterwards. The first thing I did before ressing was to propose a votekick that passed in a blink and the dickhead tank was expulsed (he had issues before, leaving rampant mobs alone that killed some of us, but what really ticked us off was going AFK in an unsafe place). So we waited for a new tank and luckily we didn't have to wait much. A protadin came in, we told him first boss was dead, he asked what happened and when we explained the previous tank decided to go AFK in the worst place possible and only Devourer of Souls was the only boss alive he answered "good, fast and easy emblems for me, lol!". We finished FoS without any issue. And the tank was pretty happy to gain 3 emblems for just some minutes of easy work.
So will tanks become tyrannical idiots thinking they're "master and commander" because they class is so needed right now? I hope not. One bad example is not enough to create a tendency, but since they're the one that have the frying pan by the handle (as we say here), things could derive in a game of aversion with everyone getting hurt. I also hope people sees the benefit of playing tank chars, not only for the easy and fast loot, but because tanking can be fun and/or satisfying too (at least as fun sitting in the back chugging out spells like there's no tomorrow). And there're also benefits for the rest: more tanks mean more people doing runs, more emblems at the end of the day.
Just as I was finishing this article I found Calli at Pew Pew Lazers! wrote an excellent post about the reverse side of this article, or what we could call A Tyranny of the Rest. Go and read it.

Post soundtrack: A Tyranny of Souls - Bruce Dickinson

What DPS class you fear most as healer?

2010-01-05T16:20:00.001+01:00

Aggro is no longer the issue used to be back in the pre-Wrath days, but still people seems to like stealing aggro from the tank as much as getting loot. So when you're healing a party (specially a PUG party) it drives me mad seeing someone's plate outline flashing in red when they're not the tank and there's no splash damage from the mobs.
There're two classes of aggro-stealing: the pull steal and the overaggro steal when fight is already going on. While the first one tries to be the most common (gogogogo! pull pull! let's do it faster!) the second one is still there, hiding in the shadows, ready to strike when you lower your guard.
So, what class do you fear most when you're healing? You hop on a PUG and when you see that class as dps you start getting cold sweat and the certainity of an unavoidable incoming doom. For me it's the retribution paladin. Traditionally the aggro-stealers were the hunters and the rogues, but both have ways of avoiding aggro, either by feign death/vanish or redirecting it to the tank wit missdirection/tricks of the trade. Other caster classes can lower the aggro: warlock (shoul shatter), shadow priest (fade) or wipe it completely like the mage (ice block, invisibility). But while other classes don't have lowering threat tricks (dps warriors, cats, death knights, etc) the retribution paladins seem to be the perfect aggro magnet. Maybe because holy damage can't be mitigated and when their hits land, they land with full force, but in every party I've healed with at least one retri paladin in it I've always seen how he gets aggro once the fight starts (so it's not pull steal but overaggro steal). Of course I have to watch him more than the tank.
And you? What's your most hated aggro-monkey?

Post soundtrack: Aggressive - Tribuzy

Leechers

2009-12-31T11:22:00.001+01:00

I wish I'm wrong, but yesterday had a nasty experience, a semi-fail pug, that has the dangers of becoming more and more usual thanks to the Finder system. Ok, the history starts with my mage Vurnak jumping on the Finder system to get some emblems. After a big waiting I get into a pug that's running ToC. I zone in and the joust is in the last phase, but as I setp into the arena one of the bosses tramples me with the horse and kills me. "You spoiled my grand entrance, rat!" is no longer a Black Knight only line. I get back in, mount on a horse and after charging the first boss I saw he dies and we all get dismounted. Well, one death in exchange of all the boring joust isn't that bad. Then the nightmare begins. DK tank and aplly healer. DK pulls, we start dpsing (a boomkin, a rogue and me) and suddenly the orc warrior jumps in the middle of us and whirlwinds. We wipe. The healer starts yelling at the tank why he brought the warrior into the ranged group. With a very bad english the tank tries to explain he got grabbed and pulled by the warrior and also complains about the lack oh heals. We go in again, rebuff and pull again. This time we manage to kill them but the tank and the healer can't stop yelling each other about how to tank and how to heal. I step in and ask to cut down the chatting and go on, which seems to work. We get Eadric the Pure and then the boomkin sits on the floor and goes AFK. And the fugger remains AFK for the whole fight. Pity we didn't get Confessor Paletress this time, because the fucking asshole deserved to die. Not for going AFK without any notification. The son of a bitch stood up when we looted the chest, selected need for the caster cloak (which I also needed) and went afk again. So I issued a vote kick. The healer asked why and they voted no. To add insult to the injury he won the roll and then announced he was back. Fucking leecher son of a donkey's fart. I'm not upset for losing the cloak. I'm upset because the fucking asshole decided not to move a single finger and let the rest do all the work.
Have you experienced leeching players? Because this may become very common. And he wasn't undergeared at all, like other players trying to get loot by playing with overgeared players. He just decided to stay safe in an easy boss fight while others did the dirty job. I swear the next time I see a fugger going AFK on a pug I'll vote kick as soon as his nameplate turns grey. And if the vote is negative I'll drop the group. I rather prefer to log another player (got plenty of them) than wroking for nothing.

Post soundtrack: Leech - Incubus

Can't focus

2009-12-27T22:16:00.000+01:00

Thanks to the Christmas holidays I've been again playing a lot again. But the problem when you have 10 alts is the difficulty to focus on just one. Sure, I've been able to get some of them great new shiny loot, but after 5 or 6 random heroics with a char I get bored of it and need to switch to another. But then if I go on a dps char I need to wait several minutes to get a run, so I've been focusing more on my druid and shaman healer. The last one specially got 3 pieces of t9 now (when previously only had ilevel 200 gear) but still I don't feel quite comfortable with it. It's good at throwing small heals, but Chain Heal takes ages to cast. And when checking the available totems from the vendors you see all focus on Chain Heal... bugger. So I'm still using the old Totem of the Plains. Anyway once I got the fourth piece of t9 I'll guess I'll get one.
On the other hand we did some Icecrown Citadel raiding, since everybody wanted to grind some reputation to get the ring. After a pair of cleanings (without any rogue to see the traps that spawn these giant skeletons) we decided to try the first boss, Lord Marrowgar. As usual only two or three guildmates had read about this boss, so we decided to try and what was this about. I must say that we did great on first try, bringing him to 14%. Quite impressive for a bunch of casuals. On second try we had a silly wipe at start and I could only hold his damage for some seconds before I went splat!! on the floor. But at the third we did it and kicked Marrowgar's bony ass. Not only that, he dropped a tanking mace and a pair of pally boots and I got both items (yay!). After some rep grinding I also got the ring, so now I'm very happy with my paladin.
Now, on what char should I focus? Decissions, decissions...

Be kind to your healer

2009-12-17T09:48:00.001+01:00

First of all I must apologize for publishing this post now. I wrote it before 3.3 hit the streets but a couple of factors made me leave it "in the fridge". Then patch came and non-stop grinding sessions almost made me forget about it. Still what I wrote it's still true, maybe even more now that a lot of people is pugging like mad. Here it is.
Thanks to Miss Medicina's post about the healers I've seen that what ticks me off is very common among healers. I don't consider myself a pure healer, I play all classes (and during old WoW and part of TBC I only played dps specs). So back to the common answer, one of the worst thing for healers is people asking for heals, most of times not in a very polite way. While she thinks usually is caused by a natural reaction I believe it's lack of knowledge. Knowledge of the healer's class, of course. And I say this because in the beginning I was a bit like this. Never yelled for a heal, but it buggered me when I wasn't receiving heals or even worse, I died, specially when I was offtanking some add in Molten Core. And then my thoughts targeted the healer of my group with a "dude, we're my heals?" flashing in bright red.
So, yelling at us demanding heals is one of the worst things you can do. About 90% of the time I'm looking at the raidUI or group healthbars. Unless there's some boss attack that requires my attention so I have to move out of fire or hide behind some wall I'm not checking what's going on. Sometimes I find myself thinking the boss is taking ages to die while other times I feel he bites the dust in a blink. All I see are green bars going up and down and also getting a funky coloration when someone gets a debuff that must be removed asap. I say this so you know I'm VERY AWARE that you're taking damage and your hitpoints are migrating to Tombsville. But you should know that If I'm not healing you is because either someone else needs the heal with more urgency (tank gets top priority always) or there's something preventing me to heal: I'm feared, silenced, running out of fire or I have that funny necrotic aura from Loatheb that prevents all kind of healing.
Of course if yelling for heals is bad, yelling at the healer/s after a wipe is even worse. I think there's no need to go futher that way. If it's my fault I'll apologize and next time I'll try by all means not to fuck it up. And if you're getting healed by somebody new to the healing business give him some credit before opening the can of worms.
Another thing it ticks healers off is players getting damage when they shouldn't, mostly aggro-monkeys who go trigger happy stealing aggro from the tank or fucktards who stand in fire thinking it's our obligation to keep them alive. Sorry mister, I don't care if your dps will be reduced if you have to move, but Blizzard made these attacks powerful enough so trying to overheal that damage is futile. Also this clashes with the healing priority mentioned before. People, specially dps, should carve this in their foreheads with a rusty knife:
Healing Priority
1. Tank
2. Healer
3. Dps
A group or raid can survive if a dps goes down. We can bring you back with a battleress if needed, like bosses with enrage timers, or you can walk back inside the dungeon (like ToC), so in most cases get this very clear: you're the last in line to get our attention. So if you're getting hit and you're not the tank then surely you're doing something wrong (except it's some aoe damage that hits everybody). If you get aggro use your aggro-dropping skills: vanish, iceblock... whatever. And run to the tank so he can snap that pesky mob off you more easily.
If you're standing in fire, gas, poison cloud, blizzard or cyclone area it's simple: MOVE OUT! And quickly. If your dps numbers are lowered then just suck it up and deal with it. Do you prefer a lower dps because you have to move just some steps or do you prefer to die and see your position in Recount plummet? I think the decission is quite simple.
So, after venting some frustration (feeling much better, thank you), just remember that healing usually it's a very stressing role, putting a lot of responsability on you. Adding more stress with bad tempered attitude is the last thing we healers need.

The Dungeon Finder and the Human Condition

2009-12-16T12:19:00.000+01:00

The Dungeon Finder tool is having comments from all the wow-bloggers. And looks like everyone coincides in several aspects, both in the positive and negative ones:
- Fast group assembly. This is probably the best feature. No more waiting endlessly (specially if you're dps) to get into a dungeon, specially if you only want badges. Thanks to the inter-server assembly now you only wait 5 or 6 minutes maximum (of course it depends on what time do you play, don't expect that at 3:00 am).
- Dehumanized runs. Several of you comment that right now there's almost no talk on the runs, just a fast zerg. Well, there wasn't much talk on old pugs unless you were going with some guildies or there was somethings out of the normal happening (like some epic fail, an unexpected wipe, etc). Maybe i'ts just me, but at least in all the runs I've got everybody says "hi" at start and "thanks for the run" at the end. In some even I've got some funny chatting. At least people seems polite enough to greet and say goodbye.
- Increased dickness. People are too anxious to finish the dungeon in the less time possible to hop into another. Undergeared people or underperforming people are abused and kicked out. Again maybe it's me, but I haven't found more dickheads than before. But since there's more people running dungeons and craving for more, the index of dickness increases also, that's a mathematical fact that can't be avoided: if there's a natural percentage of dickhead players in an always growing community, the bigger the number of that community is playing at the same time, the bigger the dickheads percentage in it. Also the dungeon zerging acts as a multiplicator of this percentage, but as I was saying, this factor hasn't been so big for me.
There are two facts that should be clear for everybody when "aiming guns" against the Dungeon Finder:
1. Dungeon Finder doesn't turn dungeon runs into a collection of retarded actions and behavior. If a player is a stupid asshole, it would be still an asshole without the Finder. I reckon that the Finder may accidentally group several dickheads or someone specially annoying, increasing the sensation of "what a collection of stupid bastards I've been grouped with". Also since more runs are made in less time, more chances to find a stupid asshole. But seems nobody noticed about the Ignore option also working for the Dungeon Finder. Put somebody in your ignore list and you won't be ever grouped with her again (note: I'm not sure if it works with cross-realm players, but it should). Also I know it's difficult you'll ever group with the same char, so this tool isn't that good, but it's better than nothing. Remember there's anything that can't stop dickheads from entering PUGs like antigoldpsam addons eliminating spam messages from the chat window. Would be so great...
2. The Finder is a tool designated mainly to farm. Unless your guild is severely crippled , you play at odd hours when there're few people online or you want a specific dungeon few people wants to play (I can read your mind and I see a big word written in red flashy neon light that says "Oculus"), most of your farming runs will be done along your guildmates. Only if you're badges greedy you'll use this tool (and remember, you can play random dungeons to get extra badges with a full group made entirely of guildmates)
So I don't think the Dungeon Finder will kill "traditional" dungeon runs. If you're not level 80 still and you like the lore bits appearing in the instances you'll surely run the dungeon (normal mode, of course) with friends, guildmates or if you use the Finder, with other not-80 not-overgeared people, so the chances of a silent run full of dickheads are minimal. Also keep in mind the Finder is the new shiny toy and once some weeks pass it won't cause such fuss as today. Sure, dickheads will continue to be dickheads, but I doubt there will be this craving for badges (once everybody is covered in T9 the Emblems of Triumph will lose 90% of its value), so runs can be taken in a more relaxed way, even if talking is kept to a minimum.

The Answering Machine post

2009-12-13T23:08:00.005+01:00

"Hello, here's Kurnak. I'm sorry but I'm not back to blogging because new patch is keeping me away. Thank you for your patience. Leave a comment after the signal"...

So yes, as you could expect from somebody with ten 80s to maintain, I'm grinding dungeons as much as I can with several of my characters (not all tough, the day only has 24 hours sadly). Several of you already have posted about how great the new instances are (yes, they are), how cool the Dungeon Finder is (yes, it is) and I've also posted comments on your blogs, so I won't go over these themes again. Just some notes:
- New 5man dungeons are greatly designed and bosses finally challenging (at least the first time :D )
- Most of the new gear has horrible names: Braid of Salt and Fire? Scabrous Zombie Leather Belt? Cold Sweat Grips? Minister's Number One Legplates? (to name just a few). Come on guys, stop smoking crack!
- Remember my previous post about Blizzard designing ugly swords? Well, my predictions came true, specially for 2handed swords, with only a few exceptions (and you guessed right, the various Quel'Delar versions). Just take a look at Mourning Malice and try not to puke. A cool evil name wasted on a hideous blade. And what about Ghoulslicer? That thing is 1handed. Yes, you read right. One-handed. And looks bigger than most 2handed swords in the game... seesh! At least the rest of 1handed swords have cool looks
- Reusing old gear with new color patterns. While some items are ok for the reusing, others are ugly, specially with the new color set/texture added. Yes, I'm thinking on gear like Pauldrons of the Devourer. When we had finally got rid of these chunky pauldrons they come back... with a vengeance! Come on! Why not reuse cool looking pvp gear like Savage Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders or old gear like Abomination Shoulderblades? Bah!

Well, I'm sorry but I must go back and continue grinding on some alt. What? Oh yes, you're right. I forgot the signal, here it is...
*BEEEP!*

Post soundtrack: Answering Machine - The Replacements

Are you dead yet?

2009-11-28T18:21:00.002+01:00

No, I'm not dead yet. I know I haven't written a single line for several days, yet I've been playing a lot lately thanks to some holidays I got last week. Just I haven't found anything remarkable to create a post (and still I have an unfinished one that's a pain to write). So what's been happening to the *urnaks these days?
Vurnak got exalted with Netherwing after several days of grinding rep. He doesn't have any gatherer professions, so I had fewer quests to get rep (well, one quest less, but it's a nice amount of rep less every day). Anyway he grinded everyday and is now the proud owner of the Azure Netherdrake (I still think the Obsidian looks better, but that's Kurnak's flying mount already). Also yesterday finally did The Oculus, the last dungeon I was missing and now I can create the Wispcloak. And last but not least also got the achievement for completing all heroic daily dungeon quests. Talking about achievements, got several of the Pilgrim fest, thanks to the teleport spell it's not a pain in the ass, but since I don't like much the frenzy people get in during festivals to get all achievements and claim the violet drake I didn't complete them all and won't do any on other characters.
Turnak was invited to ToC25 with our allied guild... as MT healer! (gasp!) An important responsability that I think I managed in a good way (I was only in ToC10 as dps before). Raid took several wipes since it was an alts/non-regular raiders and we didn't manage to kill Anub'arak in the end (damn enrage timer!) and the raid took longer than expected, so as a kind of compensation we went to Onyxia's lair to get some easy loot.
Surnak the warlock dualspecced destruction. Since demonology does such weak dps I wanted to try the only spec I haven't played yet (formerly he was affliction). Destruction spec increases his dps greatly, but it's boring as hell. At least it has a clear rotation to follow. He also got the epic flight skill and crafted the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, since he's an engineer. I just lack now the rep with Alliance Vanguard to get the Chopper plans. I've been playing Surnak more and more lately and also since he can access the AH in Dalaran he's been selling tons and tons of gems that Turnak prospects. And I've made a ton of gold in a short time. I've almost recovered all the money invested in him (1k for dualspec and 4k for epic flight).
The rest of characters have been mainly inactive. Jurnak still needs to level leatherworking to 450 (he's 433 atm) and then all my characters main professions will be at top level.

Post soundtrack: Are you dead yet? - Children of Bodom

PS: This entry was supposed to be posted through Google Wave, but seems the Blogger plugin is not working correctly yet.

Headbanging on a dragon

2009-11-16T11:59:00.000+01:00

So yesterday I was with my mage bored in Dalaran, trying to get in a group to do daily heroic when I see someone asking for some dps who had the Vault of Archavon achievements. Since it didn't seem I'd get into apug for that daily hardcore I decided to try going VoA and whispered that guy the Koralon and Emalon achievements and surprisingly got in. The raid wasn't a total pug but a guild run who only needed some spots to fill in. This usually gives more confidence it won't end in an utter disaster, so I was happy to finally found a raid outside my guild's or our "brother" guild that doesn't suck Hodir's Horn (copyright Tamarind again).
The three bosses went down easily since people was good geared and then somebody proposed to do Sartharion 3D (no, not the new Pixar's film in three dimensions). That sounded lovely, since I never did it with any drake on (and the times I tried ended wiping). Checking Recount dps was maybe a bit low, but hey, nobody ever wrote anything about cowards, so we cleared all the adds and then charged the big one.
Oh my...
First attempts were dissapointing, wiping at 20% or so. So some of the players switched chars to increase dps. I was doing around 3,8k dps by then and I needed to improve it (and I was blowing all my cds from start). Then I remembered I was carrying some Potions of Speed. And also remembered that even not being in frost spec I still had Icy Veins. My dps grew from 3,8k to 5k. Mmmm I must make more of these lovely potions, they're a great steampack. Still we couldn't down the bugger, wiping at 3 or 4%. But we were stubborn and kept trying, wiping over a dozen times. From the 20% at first try to 3% it was a big progression and we were happy of such improvement, yet disappointed because everybody knew we could do it and it was just a factor of luck... getting good flame waves so we didn't need to move much, timing the heals when first drake landed... but in the end Sartharion and his drakes won the match yesterday.
Anyway it was great to see such progression, so I'm not complaining. And rest assured, there will be revenge.

Post soundtrack: The Revenge - Russell Allen and Jorn Lande

Feeling better

2009-11-14T13:31:00.007+01:00

Seems the heals and cleanses finally arrived (thanks Tam!) and yesterday was much better, enough to give a hand to the guild and do some Ulduar raiding (also after so many time in bed my back was killing me). Fortunately I could rid of the fever (thursday I was over 38ºC), the headache was almost gone and the choughing reduced to minimum. I've also taken so much paracetamol for the muscular pain that probably I'm still half anesthetized. Still my voice sounds like Darth Vader after smoking half dozen of cuban cigars, so the few times I talked in vent I probably scared someone.
We tried the Golf Caddy (copyright Tamarind) with the 4 beacons up, but there was too many shit going on and people wasn't that experienced and we wiped, so we took down 2 of them and then flatlined the caddy easily. A good start. Next was Razorscale who was also killed on first try granting also the Quick Shave achievement. Things were on a roll. XT-002 also was downed without any problems (no achievement this time, we lacked firepower). But things came to a dead end with Ignis. We tried like 6 times and we couldn't get him down, wiping at 9%. Frustrated we decided to move on because it was getting late and we didn't seem to improve on each try. Kologarn was going smooth until the left arm was destroyed, nobody said anything in vent and I didn't saw the adds on time, so they killed the healers. Darn! Not again with this boss! We rezzed, rebuffed and this time I set the camera so I could see the left arm while kicking the right arm. Luckily the left arm wasn't destroyed this time and the giant fell like a chopped tree. It was getting very late so we had time only for one boss more, the Crazy Cat Lady, that's it, Auriaya (a.k.a. Screaming Bitch). We cleared the sentinels from the right side but thinking we could get her down fast we didn't clear the ones from the left side. Big mistake. And mistakes here are paid with blood. After the Feral Defender was killed and we moved to the other side someone was feared into the sentinels, so a smooth boss kill turned into a chaotic hell. Of course we wiped, even after trying to tank the sentinels at the same time. This time we killed these sentinels and this time the screaming titan went down without any problem (message to Deadly Boss Mods creators: you should get Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden to record his famous cry "Scream for me (city name)!!!", so when she goes down screaming like mad we could hear Bruce "Scream for me Ulduar!!!". That would be truly epic!)
Let's see if tonight we can get enough people again to continue, at least I'd like to see some new bosses like Hodir and Freya.
Btw, Turnak got a new shiny shield from XT-002, the Pulsing Spellshield, much prettier than the Aegis of Damnation and that silly rune it has. Bye bye egyptian look.

Post soundtrack: Gods of War (live) - Bruce Dickinson

WTB Cleanse

2009-11-12T00:19:00.000+01:00

Woke up today feeling sick, seems flu has finally got me (right now doesn't seem swine flu at least). Sore throat, headache, cough, muscular pain...
Next week I'm on holidays, so WTB Cleanse very fast, no matter price, but must be effective, just /w me.

The Tanking Questionnaire

2009-11-07T12:37:00.004+01:00

If some days ago I posted my answers to the Healers Questionnaire created by Miss Medicina, now it's turn for the Tanking Questionnaire created by Beruthiel at Falling leaves and wings (and again thanks to Righteous Orbs, if you are not following this blog you're missing a lot).
Again the character chosen will be Turnak the paladin. As tank he's the best geared and also is the one I enjoy more when standing in the line of scrimmage. So let's go with the meme:

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Any place. While I used Turnak the most in 5mans, I became the unofficial guild's OT, so I'm also tanking in raids unless some friend comes and then I switch to healer or dps.

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
Mmm this is tough, protadins have a lot of good tanking spells, but I think I'll be a draw between Avenger's Shield and Hammer of the Righteous. Avenger's Shield is a great pulling spell, while Hammer of the Righteous helps me get aoe aggro fast. I know Consecration affects all mobs inside, but Hammer generates more aggro (or at least it's what I feel). Avenger's Shield gets a plus bonus for that Captain America feeling :)

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Divine Sacrifice. I think I've never used it. I feel is too dangerous, specially if you're facing a boss that hits hard and affects several players. If healers are already struggling to keep you alive they don't need more work. Also nowadays I don't find much utility inr aids since most of the times you have some healer able to do good aoe healing. The only place I can see this can be useful is 5man runs with a paladin healing where there's a lot of splash damage (like poison debuffs in Azjol'Nerub)

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
The ability to generate a lot of aoe aggro and keep all mobs focused on you so they don't run rampant around. Also pallies have great tricks to solve mobility situations (like Hand of Freedom), protective measures (wearing plate armour and a shield, Sacred Shield spell, bubbling someone, etc)

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
Before Divine Plea it was keeping enough mana to get your spells going. Right now it's just a matter of keeping Divine Plea always up, so only good timing is needed. Still in some occasions you may run oom, then you better pray that you generated enough aggro before so nobody snaps a mob off you until you regain enough mana to continue your duty.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
Whatever the raidleader assigns me. Thanks to the great aoe aggro I may be better offtanking in fights where you have to pick up several adds, but maintanking the big bad boss is also ok for me.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
Paladin. You can see why in the answers above: great aoe aggro generation, good survivality and also brings utility to the raid with blessings, hands, etc.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
I'd say bear druid, but I'd be lying since my feral druid is specced cat, so I'm just an emergency tank when playing him. The real answer is warrior. I feel I have to struggle a lot to generate good aoe aggro, so when doing 5mans or tanking groups of mobs in raids I always feel I'm going to loose aggro ons ome mobs and they will crush a dps or healer, so I don't like tanking with the warrior. And it's not really a matter of gear (he has very decent tanking gear) or skills, I just feel warriors are best tanking one mob than a group, but nowadays you have to deal with groups of mobs or adds almost everywhere.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Good question, because I'm not sure I have an answer.This doesn't mean I'm a perfect tank. I just try not ot pull too many mobs at once, try to keepp high aggro on all... maybe I'm too cautious and I could make instances faster by pulling more, but I don't want to wipe for being trigger-happy. Maybe the worst thing I've ever done is forgetting some times to put Righteous Fury up and then wonder why people is getting aggro.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Aggro monleys. People that doesn't wait for me to even cast Avenger Shield or Exorcism. And then they scream "AGGRRRRROOOO!!!" and run away from me.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
In fact i think protadins are better than the rest of classes since they seem to have all the tanking tools needed: good mitigation (including block and parry), good aoe generation tools, a set of "oh shit!" tools (hands, bubbles, heals)... I couldn't ask for more. For example as I mentioned before I feel that warriors lack some better aoe aggro tools (I know they have Demoralizing Shout, Thunderclap and Shockwave). Bears need to stack hitpoints and because they lack mitigation (parry, block) while stacking too much dodge means they will starve rage.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Basically Omen so I see I have enough aggro and RatingBuster to check new loot and if it's better than my current one. I also have a script that tells me if I need to go for parry or dodge. Not sure if it works only for paladins or also for warriors and death knights, I got it from a paladin blog which name I can't remember right now (shame on me):

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("If ratio above 1.88 start getting Parry. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", (GetDodgeChance()-10)/(GetParryChance()-10)))

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
Again I'm not sure, nowadays the tank classes aren't so different and they can perform good in simmilar situations. Still there're situations where some classes have some advantage (like Death Knights pulling the sparks in Malygos fight or spores in Loatheb, while paladins excel at tanking the zombies in Gluth)

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Probably getting the right stats. You have to care for defense, health, parry, dodge, block... too many things to maintain and when you start a tank this can be cumbersome. Then in second position is mastering your spells/skills rotation.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
Depends on your gear and skill. For new tanks, health. Once you have decent health and are defense capped, you can start worriying about avoidance. For bears can be more tricky, too much avoidance will ruin their rage generation.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Bears. Probably because my druid is cat specced and when he had to tank it was a stressing. Also almost all the abilities have a paw or claw depicted so it's very very easy to confuse them if you don't play a bear on the daily basis.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
Omen, Outfitter (without this we dualspeccers would go insane), RatingBuster and that macro I mentioned before.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
As I said once you're defense capped and got a fair amount of hitpoints it's time to worry about the rest of stats. In the begining I went mainly for hps. Right now I've stopped getting more health and I'm stacking dodge until my macro tells me to get parry.

Cute pets

2009-11-05T22:31:00.000+01:00

While I've never been mad about getting pets and also I'm not prone to spend money on game items (other than the monthly fee), yesterday I couldn't resist and got the two pets you can only buy through the Blizzard Store. Let me introduce you the Pandaren Monk. He bows, practices kung-fu moves and finishes with the world famous "crane stance" from The Karate Kid movie.

And now cower in fear in presence of Lil' K.T., the mini-version of the Archlich. He laughs when your enemies die and also freezes critters to dead and then cackles at their demise. And it's Kel'Thuzad himself who writes the letter in which he comes attached.

Vurnak's day

2009-11-01T12:57:00.000+01:00

After several days grinding quests endlessly it's done! Vurnak got the Loremaster of Northrend achievement. And not only that. I gathered enough Emblems of Triumph to get the Mantle of Catastrophic Emanation, picked up the recipe for the Deathchill Cloak (which I crafted and enchanted and I'm wearing right now), bought him Artisan Riding and spent some emblems in Band of Channeled Magic. I crafted the Magnificent Flying Carpet plus finally I can use the Bronze Drake that I had in the bank collecting dust. Yeah, he's like Paris Hilton with daddy's credit card on the wild. But he deserved it. The Loremaster achievement was a frigging pain in the ass. Hours and hours of grinding. While Borean Tundra was tedious at least you could skip the group quests. Not with Icecrown. I had about 120/140 done and all I could see were group quests. Oh my... luckily I found two ret paladins who were doing these quests and we all three managed to do them all, included the Battle at Valhalas line (a mini-arena chainquest). Looks like Blizzard's obssesed with arenas... expect 5 or 6 in Cataclysm *roll eyes*

So now I'm wondering who should receive more attentions in the form of Emblems of Triumph (until 3.3 comes and all heroics drop that). I wish to do it with Kurnak to get these sexy Pauldrons of Trembling Rage but I fear he would only be invited as tank when pugging, and I never feel comfortable tanking with him even in guild runs (I always feel I can't grab enough aggro when pulling groups of 3 mobs or more), so no way I'm bringing him to pugs where dps are so trigger-happy. And ticking off the Tank checkbox would reduce his probabilities of getting into a party a lot. Oh well, we'll see...

Loremaster of Northrend

2009-10-30T11:53:00.004+01:00

I've decided to get the Loremaster of Northrend achievement for Vurnak so I get the recipe for the Deathchill Cloak. That means doing tons of quests on every Northrend area (save Wintergrasp). I checked the amount pending for all areas and on most of them was only one or three left, so I got these easily (Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak) then came the Fjord (missing like 20) and the hard ones: Scholazar Basin (about 15 done of 75), Borean Tundra (15/130) and Icecrown (75/140). I grinded quests all the sunday and managed to complete the Fjord and Basin and also gave a big thrust to Borean Tundra. Ironic that the achievement is called "Nothing boring about borean", because doing these quests at level 80 is something more than boring. Obviously by the end of the day I was really tired of questing. Luckily I won't do it again with another alt, it's only useful for tailors plus when 3.3 hits the street they will make reputation earning faster and also items like the Sons of Hodir shoulder enchants will be treated as heirlooms, so you can grind rep to exalted on one char and forget about the rest since you can buy the item and mail it. Only head enchants will remain as they're now (not entirely confirmed, need to double-check when definitive patch notes come now).
Although doing quests you've already done before is certainly boring, doing them at level 80 has two advantages: the first one is obvious: you already know the drill and quests are easy to complete. The second one is gold. Tons and tons of gold. In just one day I did about 1000 gold entirely of quest rewards (also since Vurnak is enchanter I got my bags flooded with Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essence). I think I'll purchase Vurnak the artisan flying so he can finally craft and ride the Magnificent Flying Carpet. Right now I have money to buy artisan flight for 3 chars but since normal flying mount speed was enhanced to 150% is not so mandatory anymore. Also I like to keep some gold for any contingence (as in real life) that may happen and I want to have a good amount of cash ready for Cataclysm to purchase all the skills, spells and recipes for all my chars.
Update: yesterday finished the Borean quests. Now I hate the zone with passion.

The Healing Questionnaire

2009-10-29T16:02:00.001+01:00

As a faithful follower of Righteous Orbs I can't but provide my own version of the Healing Questionaire created by Miss Medicina and linked and answered by Tamarind in his last post.
Since my main healer (well, he's the bets geared) is Turnak I'll hand the keyboard to the blond paladin to answer.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Turnak, holy paladin. For the Light!

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
I'm a jack-of-all-trades. I can go anywhere, but I prefer to play him on raids. Certain 5man dungeons are a pain for me (lots of splash damage, group poisoning...), so I prefer bringing the resto druid to 5mans.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Flash of Light. Cheap, short cast time and can pack a good punch... I mean heal!. Combined with Beacon of Light does wonders. And can be cast as an instant after you critically hit with Holy Shock.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Lay of Hands. Most of the time I keep forgeting it exists :) It's a "panic button" but I usually use Holy Shock before. And if shock is on cooldown then it doesn't matter because surely by the time I remember where it's placed in the actionbar we'll be all dead.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Single-target healing. Paladins have a burst heal (as well as a burst damage if specced ret) that can restore a player from almost dead to full health in a split second.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Group/Area healing. We don't have that and places where there's a lot of splash damage are a pain for us. The only simmilar things we have are the glyphed Holy Light and the Beacon of Light. But that means we can heal two targets correctly only, since the effect of the Holy Light is too small.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Tank healer, no matter MT or OT, or any single-healing target like the hateful eaters in Patchwerk.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Restoration druids. They provide great healing to everyone via hots so our job is very complementary. They also have some nice area healing (Wild Growth) that we lack.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
I don't think there's any. It's not a matter of taste, it's a case of effectivity. Maybe if the other only healing in the raid is a holy paladin then we'll have more pressure when there's area damage, but I can team with any healing class/spec.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
Not caring about my health. I'm so worried that the group may die that I always put myself last in line for heals. And sometimes this has caused problems, so I'm trying to establish a healing priority that doesn't forgets myself. The second bad habit, if that's one, is overhealing. Since mana is usually not a problem I don't care throwing heals at a target that's just at 98% (and is not a tank)

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
People I don't know or who doesn't know me yelling for heals. I see your health bar going down, if you're not getting any heals then surely threre is a good reason (out of range, healing priority, being a dick who needs a lesson for standing on fire...). Healing is very stressing, I don't need extra pressure, thank you.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Healing classes aren't designed to be balanced amongst them, so question seems a bit out of place. Pallys deliver good heal nukes, while druids on the other hand provide excellent heal over time to fill gaps or replenish everyone's health easily. Everyone has a different "heal target". I'm happy with the holy paladin, but I find it lacks some better area healing.
If you wanted to know if I think my class is well designed I say yes, it's neither overpowered nor nerfed.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
None, as long as everybody (or most of the group) is alive when boss is down, it means I've done my job properly. I don't care about overhealing as long as that's not a problem (running oom, stealing aggro).

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Mmm not sure, but I'd say that people thinks we can survive without healing ourselves just because we're covered in plate (or should be), so they should get a heal always before us in any circumstance.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
First thing, and this affects all healers, is to keep calm, don't panic if someone's health is falling down like a meteorite. Know your UI/keybinds so you don't have to waste time looking for the place of a specific heal spell to click it/press the correct key.
Specifically to the class, although it's not a big problem nowadays specially when you get some good gear, is to be mana conservative. Know the rhythm of the fights (soft enrages, special attacks, etc) so you know when to unleash your healing-fury and when to reserve that special spell or keep mana for later.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
Lots of overhealing, but as long as nobody important dies I don't care :)

Haste or Crit and why?
Depends on the gear you currently have, but as pally I'd say haste. Holy Light takes ages to cast. Also I think relying on random numbers for big heals is very risky.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
I've never played Holy Priest, mine is Discipline, but I think I'd get the grip quite fast.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
None healing-specific. I just use X-Perl for the raid UI. Then I just click character and press the corresponding heal key. I'd like to try some like Clique, Healbot or Decursive, but I'm very used to click and press. Oh, I remember now, I have LibHealComm, that let's me see the estimated healing amount a certain target will receive, but doesn't modify my playstyle.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I always try to balance, I feel it's the natural way to go, no matter if at pure numbers it's better to stack a specific stat.

Idle times in Azeroth

2009-10-24T11:59:00.000+02:00

Rememeber the old times in vanilla WoW when you had to walk to get to new areas or discover a whole zone? While it was good to see places "on foot" for the first times it quickly got boring since the amount of time you had to invest to reach certain places was too big to be worth the reward (like being sent from Stormwind to Stonetalon Mountains to kill some basilisks and being awarded a simple green object and some silver, or that damn quest in Dustswallow Marsh, Tabitha's request, what a pain!). Yes, we had flight points to ease things, but that ment also investing time in doing nothing but travel. We'll get back to this point later.
As your char progressed you were allowed to buy a mount (level 40 yeehaw!!) that made things a bit easier. Back then the mount alone was expensive as Hell, while skill was very cheap. Again you gained more levels and at level 60 you were able to purchase the swift mount that duplicated your travel speed. Of course only if you got the amount of gold needed for it. And back then wasn't easy to get.

Game evolved and travel was slightly modified. Flying mounts added in TBC (working only there) and prices were changed so the mounts were cheap and the skills expensive. We got also a reduction on prices for normal and fast riding, while the price for fast flying was (and still is) very high (if you have several chars you're screwed). Nothing else was changed. Ships don't really need any change, once you hop in you get transported to the other continent in a pair of minutes. The underground tram and gryphon/wyverns kept their speed. And this is what mostly annoys me nowadays. Yes, in some points the game has turned too easy. But one thing is putting up an epic farm like Trial of the Champion and another is having to waste 15 minutes of your life if you're in Darnassus and want to reach Tanaris. Fifteen damn minutes of doing nothing. It's ok the first two or three times while you gaze at the ground below, seeing new places and monsters, but as they say, time is money (our money every month) and during that time your character can't do anything. At least in Outland and Northrend you can fly with your own mount, a bit faster than the taxi service, and you can stop anytime (if the guild needs you for anything). If you're on a gryphon/wyvern you can't do a single thing, not even creating bandages or combining low leather pieces into higher ones. This wouldn't be so bad if flights took a maximum of 5 minutes, but come on! 15 minutes to cross a continent in a world full of magic? Big fail! come on Blizzard, it's not that hard to implement a teleport service, more expensive than air taxi, that takes you to the destination in almost no time (depending on how long takes your computer to load the new zone).
Thanks to how quest hubs were designed since TBC came out it's now almost impossible to see a quest that sends you to the other continent/Outland and then back to multiple other places just to obtain a stinky green item. I'm not against traveler/exploration quests (in fact the first title I ever got was "the Explorer"), it's good that you're asked to leave the zone you usually stroll around and embark to new places, but reward should be equally satisfying and quest fun to complete, not a "go there, pick X, go the opposite side of the world, do some nonsense quests so you can deliver X, get Y in return, deliver Y where Christ lost his left sandal. Here, take your reward: [Silly Hat of Worldhopping]" absurd questline. And if so, at least make the journey enjoying and profitable. Sitting on a gryphon while twiddling your thumbs is not fun. More realistic than crossing a continent in 2 minutes? sure, but we're not dealing with a real world, it's a fantasy world. And we pay for that fantasy, so at least make our money worth.
Why am I ranting now about the amount of time traveling takes? Because Cataclysm is coming and again we'll have to face a place where getting to places like Feathermoon Isle could mean wasting a lot of time, even if you were already in Feralas. This could be linked to Shintar's entry about questing in Feralas. While he loved Feralas I highly hated that place and it's twisted design: flightpoint in one side already hard to get to if you're Alliance, since you had to jump on a ship, cross the sea, cross the entire Marsh, cross the Barrens, dodge some Horde guards to get into a lifter, cross half Thousand Needles, then cross all Feralas, dodging an entire Horde post in the middle of the road, and finally wait for another slow ship to take you to the isle. Phew! And when you get there you're asked to go half way back and kill some yetis, deal with gnolls... no thanks, I had enough bouncing back and forth. Give me a shout when you install some portals.
Although Azeroth will be revamped in Cataclysm I still fear these situations will still happen. I don't want to lose 15 frigging minutes on a back of a gryphon watching the world passing by under my feet. I already switch windows while flying from Dalaran to Howling Fjord so I can invest that time doing other things. Now imagine the amount of things you could do while going from Darnassus to Tanaris. And I'd prefer to do things in the game. So the solutions are: either implement a fastest way of traveling, no matter if more expensive, attach some rockets to gryphons/wyverns so they fly way faster or allow you to do some useful things while flying, like crafting items or (this would be really great, but irrealistic), accessing the Auction House (gryphons with satellite connection? I'm buying!)

Happy guild raid

2009-10-17T13:17:00.000+02:00

The Guild hasn't been raiding lately. Always we lacked enough people to put up a raid and pug the missing spots. Plus people was tired of going always to Naxxramas. So yesterday (friday, the usual raid day) we were 10 or 11 online and someone asked if we were going to raid. As usual my answer was: if we get enough people. That means not only getting 10 players willing to raid but getting the right classes.
After some minutes a raid starts to form and we manage to get 8 guildies plus one tank from Sempher Fi, a friendly guild we've raided with since the times of Molten Core. People is fed up with Naxx and also few items would be useful since all of us are covered in good gear thanks to badges and ToC hc runs, so they want to try Ulduar. Only me, the tank from SF and maybe two other players knows the place or at least have a slight idea of tactics. The only two times we tried an Ulduar run was an utter disaster (epic fail!), with everybody running around scattered and pulling everything that moved, so I was afraid this would end in the same way. At least we had a maintank who could run the place blindfolded and single-handed. Still there's a spot that could be covered by any class since I was willing to tank, heal or dps. Finally our tank friend (an imba tank, with whom I did Trial of the Crusader 10man) brings another tank from another top guild and I switched my pally to healer.

Everybody hops on their vehicles (I choose siege gunner since it's the one I know best) and the run starts. First beacons go down smoothly, big giants are tanked correctly. Wow, this works! There was a moment of panic when we got two mecha tanks firing at us, but we could manage it and headed to the Flame Leviathan (aka Golf Caddy) place. And down it went at first try! People cheered and danced over the Leviathan remains. My confidence grows, but the Leviathan isn't a complicated fight, now is when serious business starts. All to Razorscale, who also was killed at first try without anybody dying for standing on fire (hey! seems we turned pro finally!). Next one was XT-002 Deconstructor, where we got the first "oh shit!" moment of the night, since somebody pulled XT while we were still finishing some trash. Doors closed before people could run out and reset and we wiped. Ok, don't panic, was just a mistake with the trash. We ress everybody, clean the scrapyard and engage the giant robot with Michael Jackson's voice on helium. Maintank mistakenly assigned to clean the trash from one side to our guildleader who was playing his shaman. He didn't check he was enhancement, not elemental. Hello shaman, let me introduce you Mr. Boombot. BOOM! Ouch. This is what I call an explosive salutation. Anyway, XT was downed without much fuss (nobody died due to light and gravity bombs, hooray!) and we headed to Ignis. We had the second wipe with the trash since the flame cyclones decided to play ping-pong with us. Anyway we came back on our feet and engaged Ignis, who was tanked the safe way (maintank in the water) and killed for the joy of the entire raid, who got the Siege of Ulduar achievement.

I was happy things were going so smooth, but happier because people was seeing new content and getting some gear (although several items ended disenchanted!). The next fight was Kologarn. I always liked that fight, it gives you a great feeling of bravery when the colossus goes down. We even got an unexpected achievement, Disarmed, since the left arm (which nobody was dpsing) was also destroyed due to aoe fire when right arm and body were killed at the same time. So deeper we went into the antechamber to face the crazy cat lady, Auriaya, a frantic fight with that damn fear scattering the whole raid and kittens everywhere. Tank explained tactics and the plan was executed in a clockwork style (even nobody got damage from the void explosion) and she died doing what women know to do better than men: screaming.
It was a bit late and maintank announced he had time for only one try at the Assembly of Iron. Again tactics were briefed and there we went. I wasn't confident enough since this fight can turn very messy if people doesn't pay attention. Brundir's the most dangerous with the Overload and Lighning Whirl attacks, followed by Steelbreaker and his Fusion Punch that must be dispeled asap. Fight started and we had the second "oh shit" moment of the night when a combination of Overload and Fusion Punch left the maintank at 1%. But from the deeps of the chamber a shining flash of light struck the tank restoring his life enough to survive. A brave paladin called Turnak (*wink* *wink*) had saved the fight with his Holy Shock. We kept pressing on and we lost our restoration shaman, putting more pressure on me and the restoration druid, but thank goodness he had reincarnation ready and again joined the fray. One by one the Assembly of Iron went down, awarding us two new achievements. We had cleared the siege and the antechamber and I couldn't be happier.

Failraids

2009-10-15T12:50:00.005+02:00

We've usually posted about failpugs and how pathetically funny can be, but there's even a highrer level in this particular world: the failraid. If gathering 5 random unknown people can cause anger and shame, imagine now getting 10 or even worse, 25. We jump now to the epic level of retardness, a place only for the bold who don't care about their health.
Failraids introduce a new aspect that in 5man dungeons is usually not present: the leadership, or should I say leaderfailingship. While a 5man has a very simple setup, things escalate in 10man and specially 25man raids. And since this is a pug you never know beforehand who'll come for dinner.
Things a fail-leader usually does:
- Asking for the achievement to join the raid. Excuse me sir, this is a pug. That means random unknown people. It's ok that you want a minimum level for the people, but relying in the achievement system is stupid. I may have a certain achievement just because I was dragged in a raid by guildmembers with better gear and knowledge than I, or joined a pug-raid where my contribution was lame but still the raid succeded. Does that mean I am qualified for the place you want to raid? A big no-no. Also I could have got the achievement one year ago and never stepped back into that place. Again I may have forgotten all the tactics so I'm not qualified for the run. Even more, on the other hand I could have raided that place ad nauseam with other characters and now I'm playing an alt. I may know the tank, heal and dps roles and specific tactics but this char doesn't have the achievement. So in the eyes of the raidleader I'm not qualified for the raid. Great.

- Enlisting people without forming the backbone first. You stand in the middle of Dalaran and yell "going to X 25man, /w me for inv", and then the raid spots fill FIFO mode without any consideration to what class are you bringing. Then when there're 23 people inside you ask "how many tanks and healers do we have?" Then come the cries, laughs and people quitting en masse. Brilliant.

- Not imposing your will. A raid leader must give orders, and the first thing is keeping the raid a calm place so orders reach the people. This means kicking out the annoying players, like the ones who constantly demand for a summon, or water, or a specific buff. If you don't put some order expect people to leave before starting. Make also sure the roles are clearly assigned and every one knows what to do. Put up a MainTank list, marking tanks with raid icons is stupid (plus it annoys a lot bearing a mark upon your head that distracts the player). If anyone does not have a plugin to see the MT list is their problem, not yours.

- Be fair with loot rolls. Ask first for current spec roll, not main spec. If no one is eligible for the loot or nobody rolls (difficult that happens, but hey, this is Sparta! ops, I mean, pugland), ask somebody to disenchant the item and raidroll the shard.

Players are the main source of lameness in fail raids. Aside the typical problems you find in 5man (undergeared, not bringing food buffs and flasks/pots, being an ass) the most usual are:
- Asking for a summon when everybody is inside and after the leader has asked several times who needs a summon. Now people has to run out to the stone or a warlock waste a shard to summon your sorry ass. Mister, you should be kicked out for being stupid. Since anyway the raid will lose time summoning, it's better to get rid of a stupid before the run starts. Raid will runs smoother without you.

- Asking repeatedly for a certain buff, without checking if any other buff is overwriting it. It's ok to ask one time for certain buff, but if nobody casts it on you maybe there's no need to, so don't insist. Instead of yelling "BUFF BOM ON ME NOW!!!1" you could ask why aren't you getting Blessing of Might. Maybe there's a warrior using Battle Shout.

- Leaving without any warning. This is very common and can happen anytime. The first "batch of flees" happens before raid starts. While it's ok to leave if you don't feel confident the raid will take place, at least you could first wait 5 minutes and whisper the leader about this. Same if it's taking too long to start. Keep in mind you're in a pug, things don't happen magically when you snap your finger, even if you're playing a mage. It's specially sensible if you're a tank or healer. The second batch happens after the first problem encountered, usually ending in a wipe. You're in a pug. That means run won't go smooth as oil, so expect problems. If you want a perfect run raid with your guild and quit joining pugs.

- Being an ass. This may seem obvious and was mentioned before, but now you're not annoying four people. You're annoying nine or twentyfour, so the risk of provoking a bunch of quits is higher. Shut. Up. Your. Mouth.

- If you don't know certain tactic don't be afraid to ask. If you think it could end with you being kicked out of the raid whisper someone playing your class. It's better to appear as a noob before someone than ruining a whole raid because you went the wrong way or pulled the wrong target.

- Failbuffing. This is specially for paladins. Leaving Crusader Aura on (or hunters with Aspect of the Pack), buffing warlocks with BoM and rogues with BoW, overwriting other pallies buffs... please coordinate if there're more than one pally, make sure you're giving each class a correct buff. There're addons that will help you with this, like PallyPower or ZOMGBuffs (I really recommend this one).

- Lying on roll results. The peak of stupidity. Unbelieveable? it happens, I've seen it. There're addons that record the roll results, but even without these they appear in the chat frame. How can you be so fucking idiot to lie about a result everybody sees and can scroll up to check? If you think the main looter will be as stupid as you, trusting your dirty lying mouth then you should stop playing. Any kind of game. Same goes for the main looter if he trusts you.

Now that you've got a peek at what you'll find in pug raids, are you brave enough to dare into unknown territory?

Thanks for the run

2009-10-14T18:25:00.006+02:00

Since the addition of badges to buy gear, pugging has been more common everyday. And since the last big patch (3.2) the amount of pug runs has escalated through the roof and beyond. It's now quite common today to see pugs formed by highly geared characters, who would fit better an Ulduar25 run rather than going to UK hc, and while several of us has got bad experiences with such chars now and then, it's more common that if you find several high-geared chars they know how to play properly. Then you usually get an eerie feeling of underperforming or slacking when you see your dps is way behind (despite playing correctly) or if you're the healer you feel like you could go dps because the tank seems indestructible. On the other hand if you're the tank you're screwed. You better work hard on aggro-grabbing or prepare to see all the mobs heading to the dps. Anyway these badge runs tend to be lightning fast, becoming more like an easy daily quest rather than a harcore dungeon run.
Even being an easy and fast run, it's nice to see that everybody say thanks at the end of the run. Even the über-geared. This also makes a difference between good players and mediocre ones, not only gear or class knowledge. I think it's important in pug runs to say thanks to the rest (we're assuming the run went ok, not ending in an utter disaster). As in the tips displayed in the loading screen, being polite to the rest will get you invited more times. Maybe this is not so true in pug runs, where it's difficult to reunite almost the same players the next day, but if the run goes smooth you'll surely do more after finishing the current one if you're a kind person. The same happens for the rest of the party, seeing an end-game geared character saying thanks demosntrates not all of them are fucktards in high ilevel purples, but rather humble players who don't brag about how leet is their dps or how über they are.

The Porky Set

2009-10-12T00:19:00.009+02:00

We can now see some of the upcoming Tier 10 armour sets. And again they confirm what I've been suspecting for a long time: Blizzard designers hate warriors. I mean... see this! A frigging boar head on shoulders!! Usually warriors have followed the boring themes of spikes and blades (since skulls have been reserved for death Knights), so when they try to strife out of that what do they come with? A swine with tusks on shoulder. Oink! Oink! The set looks good on Horde, specially orcs and tauren, but for Alliance just looks horrible. The helmet isn't bad and reminds of a yeti, but shoulders are a big design fail. And the rest of the set doesn't have any remarkable features. At least they could have followed the boar motiff on the rest of pieces, like a belt simmilar to the one Sláine used in the comic by Simon Bisley. Would be more 'porky' but at least it would had been more coherent.

I'm too sexy for my gear, too sexy for my gear

The rest of the available sets are ok. Rogues look like geists, death knights follow the skulls-everywhere design, hunters' helmet make them look like Dagoth, the horned demigod from Conan the Destroyer and druids... well, seems somebody drank too much because the set seems more fit for evil warlocks than treehuggers.
See them in motion:

This is the end... for now!

2009-10-11T18:51:00.006+02:00

Leveling is no more! Jurnak got early today to 80, so now all *urnaks are top level. He still needs to do some questchains (Shadow Vault, Sons of Hodir) but right now priority is to get some decent gear. I still don't know what to do with the spec. I always was Assassination, but I switched to combat to finnish the leveling. Combat has been always the dps raid spec, but with the last changes to Assassination (no more Hunger for Blood stacking before the fight) the dps has come very close to Combat output. Also I've always felt daggers are the best suited weapon for rogues. I could go dual-specced, but being a pure dps class I don't see any advantage in one over the other. And I don't feel like going Sublety, just to bring Honor Amongs Thieves. Also I don't expect to raid much with him.
Anyway, I'll try to level leatherwoking first. I'm still below 440 and some crafter epics would be good for him.

Post soundtrack: 'This is the end' by The Doors

New level cap (WTF!)

2009-10-08T22:33:00.005+02:00

Just take a look at the Looking For Group channel. Haven't you seen lately low level people (1-20) in subchannels like Trial of the Champion (normal and heroic)? Well, i just saw THIS:

Talked to her and asked if she was a GM :D

On the other hand, I just had another example, this time in a ToC hc pug, of a dickhead healer. We got a druid who couldn't stay 2 seconds without jumping around and the tank (a paladin with 30k) was always below 20% health. He didn't cast almost any nourish or regrowth, relying only in lifebloom/renew. Of course we didn't manage to get the Black Knight down and after several fails the group disbanded. What a piece of crap!

The new noobs

2009-10-08T11:54:00.003+02:00

As I expressed in some of my comments in Pew Pew Lazers! and Righteous Orbs there's a new kind of player that seems to enjoy ruinning any pug run. Usually called fucktards or dickheads, these aren't poorly geared players or people who just landed in the game. They're usually wearing top tier armour, have ran the dungeons more times than they can remember but yet they FAIL at playing properly. And they do it in an epic way. They think their 'imbaness' puts them above all and they shouldn't follow the group mechanics (don't overaggro, don't overpull, wait for the party to regain mana, etc) but should be the rest (usually players with lower gear or less experience) who must follow their playstyle. And of course, if someone dies it's never their fault, they prefer to blame the tank for not holding aggro ("l2tank noob!" is the typical yell) or the poor healer for not keeping everyone alive. This really burns me out. I can forgive someone who has never been in a certain instance or does a specific boss for the first times. I can forgive having someone lowly geared if the rest can compensate. I can forgive someone who's playing a new class or spec and doesn't have the grip on the mechanics, rotations or skills. But I can't forgive a fucktard who's been playing a character/class/spec for several years and thinks he's above all and everyone just because he has 'imba gear'.

Since Blizzard made so easy to clad somebody in epics in just some days this has been worse. Aside the typical arrogant goons now we have an army of noobs who think they're 'leet' because they're covered in purples. Instead of improving playstyle, identifying how can they improve both boss fights and personal performance they prefer to follow the path of the arrogant goons and brag about how superior are they and blame everybody after a wipe in Utgarde Keep... after they pulled half of the instance in one go. Brilliant, Mr. Dickhead!

How to identify an arrogant dickhead
Most of them will be dps, although each class has its distinctive. As a common trait they will ask for a fast run or to keep speed up at the start. Another trait is the equip they wear. If you see T9 shoulders all around you, start praying, specially if any of them asks for a quick run.
Tanks: the dickhead tank will pull like a machine-gun, grabbing half of the instance in one go. He won't wait for the party (specially the healer) to recover mana. He will also stand in fire and yell the poor healer to spam-heal.
Dps: the most common. Main traits are to be an aggro-monkey and not to follow marks in the pull/kill sequence, targeting mobs randomly, no matter if tank is holding their aggro. Turns the tank's duty into a nightmare since suddenly half of the party is getting hit by mobs he didn't pull. Healer's life becomes hell too, trying to keep everybody alive.
Healers: difficult to find some dickhead playing healer, but still the're ways to turn Mr. Responsible Healer into Mr. Noob Fucktard, like going into an overhealing frenzy and pulling aggro or the worst one: over-confidence in their gear/skills and then not managing to cleanse poison/remove curses/dispel magic.

When you find yourself in a group with one or more dickheads there're three ways of dealing with them:
1. The easy. Just leave the group, telling them to stop being dickheads and learn to play being polite. You'll be flamed but will save your health, both physical and mental. Just ignore them. If they keep insulting you for leaving just report them.
2. The difficult. Just carry on, trying ot overperform their dickness with your skills. Only for the brave.
3. The creative. Only if you have certain control over the group, that's it, if you're the tank or the healer. Set your irony to 'kill' level and just let the fucktard die everytime he's on the wild. Don't taunt mobs off him, don't heal him when he stands in the fire. You'll be flamed, so be sure to have your ironic answers at hand. Don't worry if you get kicked out of the group, there're lots of pugs out there and not all are formed by stupid assholes.

Now that the bile level has gone down after venting my frustration, a brighter note: Vurnak got inside Ulduar for the second time and even he didn't get any loot this time, it was a great and funny experience plus he got a bunch of achievements, killing all the mobs of the Siege and Antechamber. While heading to the Antechamber I whispered the raidleader that I was amazed I was standing solid at third place in dps (above a warlock, woot!!) since I'm still a bit new to arcane spec and my gear is mostly ilevel 200 to which he replied "well, what it amazes me is that we're all alts and nobody died yet!" We had only a pair of wipes but the important was having fun and learning tactics for the new bosses I didn't play the other time (Ignis and Auriaya).

Pugging ain't bad sometimes

2009-10-04T03:40:00.009+02:00

Pugs aren't always that bad, specially when you know several of the members. And more specially when you know they're good players. Last week I was invited by Sempher Fi (a guild we've been playing with since the times of Molten Core) to play Trial of the Crusader 10man (normal) as dps and brought Kurnak since he's the best geared. Coliseum is serious business, so I didn't want to bring someone who wasn't truly prepared (well, Vurnak could do well but I wanted to bring a char that didn't seem it was slacking as dps). I thought it was a guild run but when I arrived I found people from other guilds. Ops... a pug. But people seemed well geared and the game was already started, with Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus already down, so the pug didn't smell like failpug. New content to see and the possibility to get some gear were enough :) so there I headed in my trusty Onyx Nether Drake.
The Faction Champions was a very tricky fight, were a good strategy is needed and everyone has to squeeze the most out of his character. After a pair of wipes we got them down and faced the Twin Val'kyr, another tricky and crazy fight that we also did after a wipe. Then came the Lich King (again the boring Arthas... sometimes I think he's going to appear while I'm grinding mats around Northrend to brag about how powerful he is and how squashable I am) and we faced the last fight: the revamped Anub'arak 2.0 (yes the last boss of Azjol-Nerub is back and on steroids) who was killed on first try. Everybody was happy with the group and agreed to do it again this saturday, hoping to convert this pug in a stable weekly run.
This time the game was a fresh run so I was hoping to get the achievement. And after some wipe here and there... you can call me crusader!
Not only that, I also managed to snatch three items to boost my dps: Girdle of the Impaler, Victor's Call and Legplates of the Silver Hand, so today I'm a happy warrior :) Waiting for more next saturday!
Post soundtack: Crusader by Saxon

From arcane to arcane: a mage's journey

2009-09-30T12:24:00.005+02:00

Vurnak was created when the endgame content was Molten Core, so when deciding which spec to go I discarded the choice of fire because fighting fire with fire didn't look logical here. Back then I wasn't so informed about the game so I just followed my instinct here (later confirmed it was right since most of the mobs inside the Core had high resistance to fire spells). That left me with two choices: frost and arcane. Frost suffered from the same penalties like fire in my oppinion: you rely on a simple elemental source of damage... what if later you should fight in some frozen place? (Northrend wasn't even planned back then). Also fire and frost didn't look very mage-like imho (although one of the star spells of mages in all games is the Fireball) so I decided to go arcane. The name was also very appealing: you are a master of long-kept secrets that unleash astounding powers to strike down your foes. Woah! Sign me in, mister!
The crude reality however proved it wasn't that good. In the old days of classic WoW arcane was a bottomless pit for mana. You could spend all your mana on a single mob. And the routine of kill-drink-kill-drink was boring ad nauseam. Still Vurnak was somewhat sturdy and kept on leveling as arcane. Can't remember exactly when I was totally fed up, around 40-42 I think, but I decided to leave arcane and go for a good leveling spec, which was (and still is) frost. The change was as good as when I moved Kurnak from old arms to fury. More survivality, more cc and less drinking (my kidneys thanked me for stoping processing so much liquid).
The Burning Crusade came and Vurnak reached level 70 and started doing Karazhan. Frost was a good leveling spec, but a poor dps one for raids, so again I went to the trainer to respecc. Arcane was still the ugly sister of the three, so I turned (as all mages doing raids) to fire. And was very enjoyable. Even losing the cc and survivality frost offered, fire compensated it with a big punch, able to take down mobs before they reached you (soloing wasn't a problem anymore while being fire)
Then the news about WotLK started pouring and things didn't look good for fire mages. Seemed fire was being turned into the new pvp spec instead of frost and damage was being notably reduced. Also I had to level again, so I welcomed back frost spec. Everything was good (even using a spec without the defense Ice Barrier gives you) and reached level 80, getting into Naxxramas as frost. Dps wasn't that good despite wearing good gear, but for some time it was ok for me. Until I started growing tired of seeing my name so down in the dps list. It was time for a change. The decission was going back to fire, go frostfire (never really liked it, spell looks really ugly) or try the new and improved arcane spec. I already saw some arcane mages doing tons of damage in raids, so I finally decided to return home and dualspecc arcane. It was a good decission. Arcane is no longer a black hole for mana. Well played, a mage shouldn't use Evocation except in very long fights, and thanks to the changes in mana regeneration and Missile Barrage proc I manage to keep my mana bar in good condition. And not also arcane gives you one button more to push (frost is just Frostbolt all the way), but the fx look very cool (except maybe for Arcane Blast, some more elaborated effects on your character would look great) and makes you look more "magesque", the increase of dps is also very satisfactory.

Where have all the cowboys gone?

2009-09-30T11:35:00.005+02:00

That's what Paula Cole sang back in 1997, but to be more precise in this case... where have all the tanks gone? You know, when trying to put up a pug, forming the backbone (tank + healer) is always the hardest part. Not everybody finds joy in being biffed by big meanies or staying in the back trying to keep everybody alive, so when you enter LFG channel it's typical to find lots of dps hoping to get inside a group but very few healers and tanks.

For some mysterious reason the amount of tanks available in LFG on Hellscream server has decreased to almost extintion, while months ago getting a healer in LFG was like finding a gold vein (in real life). So why this change? Nowadays it's easy to see 2 or 3 healers (all of them dualspecced, of course) available for each dungeon, but no trace of tanks. And you guessed it... all the huge load of death knights roaming LFG-land are dps! I know tanking is possibly the less exciting role in the game (unless you get inside a band of happy-trigger dickheads who think aggro holding comes built in all tanks as a passive skill) and requires more skill than most dps classes who only smash one or two buttons (hello mages and hunters!) but seriously, people should try tanking and break away from the I-only-play-dps-chars mentality (something I once did). Not only will give you a better understanding of game mechanics, it may reveal a hidden über-skilled tank in you. So... where's my John Wayne?

Lich King soup

2009-09-28T14:09:00.009+02:00

There's an expression in spanish, "hasta en la sopa" (even in the soup) that's used when something or someone can be found everywhere and everytime. And this is the feeling I have with the Lich King: you can find him even in the soup. And everytime is the same: grand entrance, threats you with the fist of doom (/threat) and then spares your sorry ass because he sees something in you but you're not yet a challenge for him. As if it this stopped him from slaughtering hundreds before...
Anyway, the first time we saw the Lich King in Northrend we thought it was a real good idea to show you the Last-Boss-of-the-expansion tm without having to level your char and do a painful attunement (no more attunements in WotLK, yay!) and get your face smashed to the ground by every boss until you get to the top of the Frozen Throne (which at present day still doesn't exist) so you can glimpse the Lich King in full glory (before your face is smashed down again and you have to pick up your teeth one by one again). A clever move by Blizzard, who using the phase technology helped us to get into the story much better. But the problem is always balance: either too few of anything or too much. And imho Blizz has gone to the other side with the Lich King. he appears in several places and his reputation of bloody murderer gets smashed to the floor (yeah, like your face) because you're still breathing instead of having joined the "Thriller Zombie Army". Dissapointing. Lich King's personality has been badly wounded. I got into Trial of the Crusader the other day and while his appearance before Anub'arak is cool (won't spoil anything, don't worry), you don't get excited for seeing him around... "oh, Arthas again. Looser!" is the common reaction. Even /ruding or /farting him is not fun anymore and the only emote that still pops from time to time is /bored
The worst, however, has yet to come with the release of Icecrown patch. I expect he'll be there on almost every boss fight. We have another phrase in spanish for these situations: "no quieres caldo? pues toma dos tazas!" (you don't want broth? then take two bowls!). As I said: Lich King even in the soup!

Sword designs: an epic fail

2009-09-28T13:42:00.008+02:00

Fact: Blizzard doesn't know how to design swords. Ok, let me get some explanation because the statement is too simple.

I should say the weird design affects almost every object class, specially weapons, but I find the swords the most poignant. Maybe because I love swords, both in game and real life. I find they have some kind of inner beauty despite they're designed to kill. Or at least they were, hard to see people carrying swords nowadays :)
So, take a look at classic WoW designs. Most of them are quite simple but they look good. There're some exceptions, like the Blade of the Titans, that looks like some weird tool to put bread or pizzas in an oven, but the rest of them look very real. We get from european straight-bladed swords to curved blades like katanas and scimitars. Even most high quality swords look simple in design, and this probably was the ignition point where Blizzard decided to go into the land of the wild dreams and start producing the weirdest looking items I wouldn't call "swords" even in my most twisted nightmares.
Starting with The Burning Crusade swords start looking odd and lacking all balance between the handle and the blade. And after practicing 3 years of ken-jutsu with a bad balanced katana I can tell you how important is balance in a sword. If the blade weights too much it costs more to swing and strikes aren't so precise. And if the handle is too short the grapping of the sword becomes a nightmare. Ok, this is a game, so it doesn't need to reflect real world 100%, but at least I'm expecting some simple logic in designs. And another thing it really bugs me out: Blizzard started making all rare/epic swords pointless (as in "no point at the end of the blade"). Take for example Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword. Holy jormungar's tits, Batman! Do you really expect somebody to go around with such monstrosity? And where's the pointy end of the blade? What to you expect? To hack your foe like you're using an axe? Why do they call it a sword then? Just say you're wearing an axe or some kind of short-handled glaive and you'll be closer to what it looks. And WotLK swords are even worse. Uncommon quality ones look sturdy and with a broad blade that looks like made of stone instead of metal. Come on guys! You can make it better. Classic swords looked great. Just add some fancy decoration and you'll get good-looking swords. Take for example Quel'Serrar. Ok, blade is too wide, but it's one of the best looking swords in the game. In the other hand take the Claymore of Ancient Power that drops from the Four Horsemen in Naxx10... ye Olde Gods!! It's awfully heinous! I had this blade (it's still lying in my bank) and it makes you look like some silly jester, not a bloodthirsty destruction machine.
I've seen a lot of comments about the robes designs (all cloth chest items look almost the same, all dark and simmialr since the patterns aren't noticeable) but I think the case of swords is just worse every time. And I fear the worst to come with Cataclysm :_(

Fastfail

2009-09-28T13:07:00.004+02:00

Ah failpugs... we all hate them, but they're the source of some of the funniest stories in WoW. But it feels strange when failpugs disband so quickly, usually takes 2 or 3 wipes until a raid compeltely disbands. Not in this case. The other day my guild-leader asks me if I'm interested in joining a NAxx25 pug with one ranged dps. Since I was a bit bored I agreed to bring Vurnak and try his new Arcane spec (now he's dual Frost/Arcane) since Arcane seems fun to play and chugs out decent dps. The group took a bit to form and then another bit to get everyone inside Naxx (come on people, don't be lazy slackers and get your asses to the instance or summoning stone when you're invited, don't wait for a summon unless your hearthstone is on cooldown). And yes, then took another bit (heh, I should use another word instead of bit, because it wasn't a small amount of time) to get buffed up and ready, with people yelling for missing pally buff and not realizing the shaman was overwriting it with totem. Usual story. When I joined I was the only mage and few clothies were inside, so my mate whispers me that I have a big chance of getting some loot. "I think not" I reply, "I smell failure". He checks the tanks and healers and replies back I'm being too negative, they look well geared. I tell him I'm not feeling confident with pugs, specially 25man where there's not a core formed by people of the same guild or at least recognized guilds who do endgame content. And again I had to say the words I really hate "I told you so".
So the run finally starts and we get quickly to Anub'Rekhan without losing anyone and nobody acting wildly. "See? group looks good, we're going to pwn his ass" he tells me. But as Ragnaros said... "too soon!", yep he spoke too soon about pwning because it was Anub'Rekhan who wiped the whole raid when he casted Locust Swarm. The tank decided to stand and let the healers deak with the damage (a tactic I never liked, I prefer to move the bosss to the other side of the room), but the problem was the rest of melee not getting away to kill the Crypt Guard. Obviously the healers couldn't keep up all the people taking damage from the swarm and we were finished in a blink. Up to this point nothing out of the normal with failpugs... every asshole thinks another person will do his duty and prefers to stay on boss to get "HUGEDPSLOL!!!!1". Morons. But then about 70% of the raid left almost at once, with the rest of people leaving too after seeing they would had to wait again to get a full raid. My guild-leader whispered me "Wow, this is the fastest failpug I've ever seen, they even didn't wanted to go a second time". My answer was "well, at least we didn't get locked". Leeroy at least got chicken.

Every story has a beginning

2009-09-21T20:58:00.031+02:00

Hello there, brave adventurer! Welcome to The *urnaks! A place of thrilling mysteries and... oh wait! Sorry! I can't start like this. Let's try again... Beware brave adventurer, tread carefully on the... cut!! Can I take a different approach? This is not even original. Once upon a time... no! Somebody fire the writer please!
Ok, I'll do all the dirty work. My name is Kurnak, a veteran warrior of the Hellscream EU realm and elder of the *urnak family. Me and my alts have been around the world of Azeroth since almost the begining. So what's the deal with this blog? You won't find here theorycrafting or statistics. I'm not a numbers junkie. I prefer to have fun rather than chugging out "bit critz lol!". I know there're lots of blogs with funny stories out there and I hope to bring you some too.
So first of all let me introduce you the family and friends:

Kurnak . Warrior. Cold and precise. He's my main char, the first one I created. Not rare, I tend to create a warrior on all MUDs/RPGs/MMORPGs I play. maybe because is possibly the easiest character and lets you get the grip on the game. He enjoys bashing heads (started as Arms until I got really tired of it and discovered the joy of Fury). He doesn't like tanking but when needed he switchs to Protection and puts his face on the frontline, ready to be biffed and spanked just so the rest of the group can dps safely.

Turnak. Paladin. Caring and generous. He started a career as dps when Retribution wasn't a good dps spec, so he finally switched to Holy (guild was low on healers too). While Kurnak doesn't like tanking he really loves it. I suspect he has a secret passion for martyrdom.

Murnak. Priest. Serious and with a twisted vein. Follower of the Shadow during his entire life he discovered the joy of Discipline some time ago. Nothing teachs you better to respect the gods than a good face melting.

Vurnak. Mage. Wild and a bit crazy. After playing with the Arcane for some little time he decided to investigate the power of Frost until he turned to the other side... Fire. Only to go back to Frost. And he's thinking on switching again.

Surnak. Warlock. Cold and dangerous. After mastering the way of Affliction turned to Demonology to investigate the preternatural beings that can be summoned into Azeroth. Someone you don't want to upset.

Jurnak. Rogue. Cheerful and playful. The younger of the family and possibly the most irresponsible. He forged a respectable career in the field of Assassination but decided to give a shot to Combat. He's still developing his rogue skills and plans to go back to Assassination because he just loves to wield daggers.

Durnak. Death Knight. Dreadful and fearless. The last member of the family who came back from the Dark Side and offered his abilities in Blood and Frost to the Alliance. He thinks the Lich King is a boring snob.

These're all the *urnak family members, but in their joruneys around the Warcraft world they made some great friends that share their adventures in Azeroth and Outland.

Grimbol. Hunter. Brawler and good-hearted. This proud son of Ironforge swore to follow the *urnaks wherever they went. A great Marksman in his early years he decided to extend his love for beasts and decided to go deep in the ways of Beast Mastery.

Lorathiel. Druid. Distant and silent. No one really knows why he decided to follow the family, but they're happy to have this professional Feral and Restoration druid around. He enjoys prowling around stealthed and you never know when he's there watching you.

Valaak. Shaman. Solid and loyal. The last companion that joined the band, coming from the crashed ship Exodar, crossed the paths with the family and found their goals were the same, so he offered his knowledge in the art of war as Enhancement and also his healing skills as Restoration.

So now you know the family a bit. What's then with them? Although I like to add some roleplay I've never developed a full personality for all (or at all in most cases), so I usually don't project difrferent parts of me into the different characters. All are basically me :) I find disappointing that all races (and specially with humans) have an unique body configuration. It would be great to have mages and warlocks with a crooked and fragile look, fat and rounded priests, warriors with a beer-belly and so. Shouldn't be a big deal when you check the amount of models WoW has. Who knows... maybe in some very future expansion...
And what about the blog itself? I don't really have a script or goal for it. I want to write about any possible aspect of WoW, specially about the funny issues you might find on a daily basis. After all, WoW is a game and the goal is to have fun with it. When you get your nineth character to level 80 there's not much fun in the daily play per se. It's the people behind the characters who really make you login everyday, either by what they say or the actions they perform in-game. So again be welcomed here, hope you find my posts amusing.