Posts Tagged ‘World of Warcraft’

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The Online Melting Pot

Monday, July 13th, 2009

For those that don’t remember their History lessons from grade school, the United States was often referred to as “The Great Melting Pot” because of all the different types of cultures that were united on common ground. As a result, our culture is extremely diverse and ever-changing.

Today I set off on my two-week tour of Texas to visit all the family (so any form of consistency my blog did or did not have will almost certainly have some inconsistency).  As I drove back to my home state, I began to think of my past, present and future. I have no idea where I will end up geographically speaking, but I know that The South will always have a presence in my past, should I find myself making a life elsewhere.

All that pondering got me thinking about culture variations and what it might mean for me and my family someday, and then I began to think about the effect it has on WoW.

The Guild Effect

Some guilds are comprised of local individuals that all play WoW together. Some guilds are built from people who only know each other through WoW. Either way, unless you’re pretty restrictive about recruiting people for your guild, you will find yourself in the midst of some players from all around the world.

If you’re not in an entirely local guild, you might be surprised at the different regions represented on your roster. Making a guild map can really open your eyes to where people are geographically (no stalker business now…). I learned that we have a significant number of individuals from Canada, as well as one or two in the Philippines o.o

It’s natural for guilds to wind up generally occupying just two to three time zones because people will want to be on playing at peak log-in times for their guild. Of course, though, there’s always the one or two odd individuals that will play whenever it suits them :P

Raid times are generally what effects the distribution of your members geographically. Certain raid times will benefit certain time zones based on your general work/school schedule, so people will often migrate to groups that raid at times lining up with their personal free time.

The Role Culture Plays

Blizzard had certianly acknowledged the worldwide acclaim of World of Warcraft by developing realm groupings based on country. So far we have US, European, Korean, Chinese and Taiwan, and I think I’ve heard news of Russian servers in the works (feel free to fill in on any zones I’ve overlooked, I’m afraid I haven’t done my homework on this =X).

Aside from geographical targeting and languages associated with each region of servers, there’s a few game play differences. For instance, on Chinese servers the Forsaken race has a different model than it does on other servers due to cultural beliefs regarding corpses and the revealing of bones.

Blizzard does all kinds of region-specific marketing. I think most people know about the World of Warcraft commercials, in different languages, along with the numerous knock-offs. There’s also the various holidays through out the year such as the Lunar Festival and Brewfest that are modeled after actual cultural celebrations.

It’s quite obvious that Blizzard is aware of the people playing their game. I think it’s really interesting to see how the different cultures influence the game both socially as well as developmentally.

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Teamwork

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Raiding is probably one of the biggest things that keeps people playing WoW; it’s also one of the biggest things that make people quit playing WoW. It’s such an amazing paradox about group contribution that can either be the most amazing thing in a game, or the bane of your daily existance. Sometimes people make sacrifices in order to raid with certain groups because it means seeing more content or getting better gear. Sometimes people just play casually so that they can enjoy the content they have with their friends.

In any case, raiding is still a collaborative activity. It takes the effort of all 10, 25, or 40 raid members in order to get things accomplished. Some groups designated as “hard core” will require their members to have potions, flasks, certain enchants, certain professions, and many other things to attend raids in order to better optimize the group for success. Other groups consider themselves casual raiders and settle for easier content in order to take the burden off their raid members.

However, the one thing you should never do is try to be a casual raider in end-game content. If you are going to choose to spend multiple nights of your week in an end-game dungeon, you better be giving it your all. If you are not giving your all, then you are allowing yourself to be carried, and therefore no long contributing to the group as much as you should. I really don’t care how you define “casual,” but allowing yourself to be carried by a group of people that are working hard on content is a big disrespect to them, and I would think respect plays a much larger role in casual or social raid groups.

I’m trying very hard to make this post informative and expressive without ranting too much, so bear with me. One of the big controversies that has flared up lately with my group is the use of flasks. Barely anyone uses flasks in my group anymore and they all wonder why we keep wiping to Kologarn, Hodir, Thorim, and Freya. My guild has probably made all of 4 attempts on Mimiron since 3.1 came out. We seem to be slipping into a very lax mentailty, and I am of the opinion that that kind of attitude belongs back in Naxxaramas where things are easy.

Attitude is Everything

I have always been of the opinion that the word “casual” in casual raiding only had to do with the amount of times a week you go to raids. Sure it usually means there’s less yelling and fussing, but there’s still standards to be upheld if you’re seeking new content. Casual raiding doesn’t mean you just roll into an instance and try to roll around on the content in hopes that you kill some bosses. It takes effort, it takes contribution, it takes sacrifice.

Now for some people, sacrifice means passing on certain pieces of loot so that others can get better upgrades that will benefit the raid more. For some it means shelling out extra gold to get a special potion or enchant. The idea behind all this is that you let people know you actually want to be at the raid. If you ever get the idea in your head that you can demand to be in the raid, or even worse, that the raid can’t be successful without you, then you should probably take a second to step back and check yourself. Having an attitude like that will usually just cause problems and drama.

The Real Difference

Like I said, the use of flasks is a rather touchy subject in my group right now. A new acquaintance of mine, someone I have found to be rather intelligent, pointed out that the benefit you get from using a flask is better than any loot upgrade you could possibly get (unless you’re raiding in all blues and then… I just don’t know what to say). For example, the difference in stats between the Tier 7 Resto Shaman Shoulders and the Amice of the Stoic Watch is 12 spell power and 3 MP5. EVERY Resto Shaman would make this upgrade because it is indeed an upgrade. Many Elemental Shamans are making the jump from their Tier 7 to these shoulders because of the stats.

Now let’s take a look at what these differences are in comparison to flasks. The Flask of the Frost Wyrm provides 125 spell power; that’s ten times the spell power as the shoulder upgrade. Now if MP5 is your thing as a healer, a Flask of Pure Mojo provides you with 38 MP5; that’s thirteen times the benefit you get from the shoulder upgrade. So my question becomes this—if you don’t feel like a flask has any benefit to you in raiding content, why then do you even care about the gear? The benefit you get from upgrading a piece of gear will NEVER compensate for the benefit you get from a single flask.

So, my new friend pointed out that people who proclaim using flasks is pointless obviously don’t see the need to upgrade their gear either and shouldn’t be allowed to get upgrades that drop (either that or they are just ignorant of how everything works in perspective).

As for me… (rant inc!)

[It has been brought to my attention that the remainder of this post was too explicit and harsh for a public blog. It's true that words are like a fired gun and can never be taken back, but, even though this may seem like a futile attempt, I think it's appropriate to remove the content. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me.]

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Preoccupied…

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Heh so I’m not exactly good at staying on top of this blogging business ^_^’ I guess some days I can’t wait to make a post and other days I just want to play wow, but I’m ok with that. I’ve been working on a lot the past couple of days, not to mention the many different runs I get pulled into. My recent prize is the unveiling of my tailoring squad—Xeraes with Ebonweave, Audrae with Spellweave, and Allandrae with Moonshroud. I’ve also been busy at work trying to reach a number of my summer goals, including daily runs of Sethekk Halls and Jewelcrafting quests.

I’ve been pining away for my gloves off Freya hard mode 10 man for several weeks now, somewhat frustrated that the one week I miss my 10man they get hard mode AND the gloves drop QQ I hate to be “that guy” that needs “that one thing” off the hard boss that no one else wants to kill, but at the same time, I still think I deserve the gloves seeing as I asked to do Freya hard mode every single week and was always told “no.” Well hopefully next weekend will be my time for good fortune.

Aside from raiding and the mass leveling of alts, I have spent a significant and concentrated amount of time recently working on a new and interesting task my friend, Maxximuss, told me about. Anyone who’s played a hunter seriously (lol huntars r srs bsns) knows that every now and then there’s glitches in the game that allow you to get a cool and unusual pet. In the past there’s been the Spectral Wolves, Oozes, and Amani War Bears tameable in certain instances that are now retired; however, Blizzard allowed hunters who had seized the opportunity to tame these anomalies to keep them as pets. Another such event was discovered recently in which you could tame a wolf quest mob at JUST the right time to have your new companion in the form of a worgen. Yes, you heard me right, and after many hours of toiling, griefing and frustration, I was able to get my hunter one of these fine specimen this morning around 5am (and subsequently was able to sneak my rent in before a late fee was applied >.>’). So here he is in all his glory:

Professional Tactics

About a month ago I went to a semi-pug 25-man Naxx group with a friend of mine in hopes of grabbing the Torch of Holy Fire. Now this friend of mine, Nahuel, otherwise fondly referred to as Nylara, has been playing her shaman for Wrath for the sake of the buffs. Now, I’m pretty competitive when it comes to my shaman, so of course I was doing everything possible to perform to the best of my ability. I managed to come in on top of the meters for the bosses we killed (Thaddius, Sapph, and KT), and my friend, who admittedly had several more pieces of Ulduar gear than me was trying to figure out what exactly was the difference that made me do so much more damage. She had more spell power, more haste, a little less crit, but somehow I was able to squeak out more damage.

So I began to think about it—I thought about all the little things I do to get more numbers on the meters. Now, I’m not talking about retarded stuff like casting at mobs before they’re tanking or AoEing adds that don’t need to be AoEd; things like that generally make you look like a noob and people begin to disregard you. I have a personal rule that if a multi-target spell contributes to more than 20% of your damage, I consider that cheating; if that kind of spell contributes to more than 50% of your damage… then you’re doing something wrong (in context of current progression raiding of course).

One of the first things I do on all my characters is a critical utilization of my space bar. Jumping was something I was completely overwhelmed with when I first started playing wow. I loved the fact that you could jump. It soon became a normal part of my travel and general character interaction. I will often start running in a certain direction, jump, and activate my autorun mid-air so my character doesn’t stop moving; this sequence is second nature to me anymore. Jumping is a great mechanic because it’s a temporary directional movement of your character that you don’t have to directly control. Instead of actually running all the way out of a ground effect, all you have to do is time your strafe and jump combination, and after a split second, your attention is freed up again to focus on dps or other environmental hazards. This may sound incredibly funny, but I think people underestimate the power of the spacebar o.o

Now, more specifically to Elemental Combat… One thing I figured out after several talent changes (that I think finally stopped with 3.1) is that Flame and Frost Shock are now on 4 second cooldown, while Earth Shock is on a 6 second cooldown. As such, it’s more advantageous to cast Flame and Frost Shock because you can cast them more often. On trash pulls with multiple mobs, I will often use a combination of Chain Lightning and throwing Flame Shock up on as many mobs as possible, while tossing out Lava Bursts and Lightning Bolts in between. This will net you a significant amount of DoT damage while the mobs are being pew-pewed down :)

Another thing I noticed a long time ago and a mechanic that takes some maneuvering, is spell propagation delay. Each spell has a cast time and a length of time before it inflicts damage on a mob. Lightning Bolt has a 2 second cast time and then has to travel through the air to the mob; as such, you are actually capable of casting two lightning bolts before the mob even aggros. This is great for when you’re leveling or farming, but it really hurts in raids because it takes a significant amount of time before you deliver any damage to a mob. Other combinations include Shocks which are instant cast with no propagation, Smite which has a cast time but no propagation, and a Shadow Bolt after Shadow Trance which has no cast time but still had to travel to the mob. Chain Lightning has a 1.5 second cast but deals damage immediately at the end of that cast time, so it’s a great spell to use when a mob has low health to try and squeeze some extra damage in; Shocks are also great for this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a Lightning Bolt or Lava Burst begin traveling to a mob and it end up dying before the spell lands—so much wasted damage QQ

Some other things that I use to improve my raiding proficiency are my mods, mainly xPerl. I use xPerl for my character frame, target, target of target, pet and focus frames. I have the casting bar turned on as well as the latency indicator. This allows me to see the point in time where I can begin casting my next spell and the server will accept it because of the latency, in a sense, allowing me to begin casting my next spell before the current one is complete. Now, sometimes this can cause you to clip your spells, end up casting them to early and getting an error message, so I actually press my hotkey as soon as I’ve just cast a spell and release the key when I’m ready to cast again (I’m really sorry if this doesn’t make sense o_O’).

I also love the way xPerl places your character’s buffs right under the portrait instead of leaving them in the upper right hand corner of the screen; I like having having all my information in a central location on my screen. I’ve tried several different unit frames mods and I always come back to xPerl because it delivers what I need. I also tried using EventHorizon, but it really threw off my casting mojo.

One mod that I’m a big fan of is Power Auras. This is a mod that allows you to develop on-screen visual queues for certain events like buffs or debuffs. I have several set up including a giant orange symbol for when Flametongue is not on my weapon, a giant red skull and cross bones for when Righteous Fury isn’t up, as well as purple icons when one of my warlock’s instant Shadow Bolt procs is up. This mod is useful for every class and alerts you to your buffs and debuffs without your having to stare at them all the time. While it may not seem very life changing, never underestimate the ability to direct your attention to other things and still make the most of your class :)

There’s a couple other things that I remember having thought about, but I can’t remember what they were at this time. It might have something to do with being sorely sleep deprived, so I’ll be sure to jot them down if I remember them and include them in a future post :o

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T.G.I.F. Everybody!

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

This is probably the first Friday in several months where I haven’t had to be at work, and I have to say it’s VERY satisfying to be able to roll out of bed at noon without consequence XD However, if my first few days of freedom are any indicator of the pattern my next month off is going to follow, I may be in for some trouble. I’m a big procrastinator in that I try to make the most of the moment, putting off things that I don’t really see as necessary or fun until later; saddly this tends to include things like laundry, vacuuming and taking out the trash @_@ BUT! I have already made the effort to take care of several things this morning in an attempt to set a better trend for myself :) *would like to point out that all the trash is gone*

I also was supposed to do something about my gold supply and working to get my dailies taken care of every day, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside too. Hopefully I’ll be able to get those taken care of today as well >.>’ Despite my noticed shortcommings, I still plan on enjoying my sweet Friday to the fullest.

Decipher This!

Wrath of the Lich King brought about a new profession, Inscription, along with Glyphs for each class. Glyphs are basically enchants for your spells that benefit or improve them in some way. I think the original idea was to provide a little more variation in how a player should build their toon, but it’s a widely held opinion that several classes are sorely lacking in options when it comes to glyphs. Some classes are a difficult to spec as a 25×25 sudoku puzzle, but I don’t think the Elemental tree is complicated at all. Like I mentioned in my spec post, you have more than enough points to get all the straight damage increasing talents in the tree; the only decision making comes when you’re choosing where to stick the remaining points.

I think the Glyphs for Shamans present a very similar situation. There’s a couple different glyphs that are applicable to an Elemental Raiding Spec, but generally there’s only 5 that are considered good for dps:

Glyph of Lightning Bolt and Glyph of Flame Shock are no brainers because Lightning Bolt is your main damaging ability and the Flame Shock/Lava Burst combo is essential to the Elemental rotation; however, determining the third glyph is a little more elusive. I had the Chain Lightning Glyph for a while, but this is only useful on trash and fights with multiple targets close together the whole time; Chain Lightning is also a terribly mana -hogging spell. So, I dropped Chain Lightning and picked up Glyph of Lava. These were the only options until 3.0.9 when Glyph of Totem of Wrath was added.

At first, I didn’t even think this glyph was worth getting, so I completely ignored it. Then I started talking some more with other shamans and it seemed like a lot people were opting for this glyph over Glyph of Lava. I even heard one person mention that 4k spell power was the point where Glyph of Lava actually scaled to being better than Glyph of Totem of Wrath. Well, now that numbers had actually been thrown into the mix, I had to sit down and figure this out for myself. I did some number crunching of my own and cane to the conclusion that Glyph of Lava scaled to be better than Glyph of ToW at around 2600 spell power. However, theory is theory—practice is practice.

[Hour and a half later...]

Ok so I drug my shaman out to Ironforge for some testing, got some Firecracker Salmon and a Flask of the Frost Wyrm and set myself up for some testing. Overall I did two rounds with each glyph twice, one round with heroism and one without. For the first four rounds I didn’t seem to have woken up enough to think to run a combat log, so I redid them. The first set of data lead me to believe that Glyph of Lava did in fact scale better with my 3103 spell power, but the second set seemed to tell otherwise. According to the stats report, my overall dps is actually higher with the Glyph of Totem of Wrath, so I think I’ll play around with it a bit in my next couple of raids.

The Latest Fad

I’m generally the kind of person that thinks for herself. I don’t run to the latest fads or trends just because the majority is doing it, mainly because people large groups tend to become less intelligent. On the other hand, I also like to think that I can consider all the options and make a fair and justified decision. This is what lead me to do all my testing with the glyphs and whatnot. I still think there’s a big difference between theorycrafting and what actual practice has to say on subjects, but it never hurts to get your brain involved in things.

I will admit that I tend to shy away from trends and take the road less traveled just to say I did, but I don’t want my tendency to divert from the masses to ever be my detriment (at least not long term). So, I challenge anyone reading this to use your head about things, don’t always listen to what the experts say, and to find out for yourself. You might be surprised at what you learn :)

Bonus Footage!

Dear Blizzard,

I know your attempts to keep classes balanced and gear volatile and exciting is all meant to make the game more fun to play overall, but seriously… T8 4-piece bonus? Worst. Bonus. Evar.

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Group Etiquette

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

One of the first things that was ever impressed upon me in the World of Warcraft was the importance of group etiquette. I mean, afterall the point of the game is to play with other people, so logically it would be intelligent to behave in a way that contributes to a group rather than detracts; it’s always a nice bonus when you make the effort to be pleasant too :) However, somehow despite the fact that WoW requires a monthly subscription, there’s still people that manage to get to the maximum level and seem to lack a subtle or even complete concept of group etiquette. So, I figured I would take a moment to /rant about it and possibly provide some informative information.

The Back Story

Last night we got done with our regular 25-man raid, and while frustrating and somewhat unproductive in the end, was decently enjoyable because of the company. Then we moved on to Ulduar 10 and I brought my pally. I was ret at first, but because the off tank didn’t have a mic, I ended up tanking for sanity’s sake—turned out to be a good move because the druid ended up being DYNAMITE dps. Anyways I cleaned up house on the loot (my prize of the evening being a shiny new Legacy of Thunder), taking about half the stuff that dropped just because no one else needed or could use it.

Anyways, filled to the brim with excitement over the night’s massive cache for me, I agreed to do some heroics with the night owls in the guild. In the course of putting the group together, we managed to pick up this ret pally who’s well known on the server for trying to do things unconventionally (i.e. completely pugging a 25man naxx right after people first hit 80, and only picking up 4 healers…). I was kind of weary ofhim from past experience, but I figured as long as I was tanking we’d be fine. LOL this guy managed to do everything you’re not supposed to do in a group, from accidently taunting off me, to bubbling me on the first boss in H Nexus, to pulling early half the time in Oculus… By the end I wanted to chew him out for long while, but seeing as it was 5:30 am server time, I just grudgingly rolled off to bed.

The Basics

After all that I began to think about all the annoying things I’ve experienced while grouped with people. I’ve always leaned on the considerate side, so I’m very careful about what I do in groups so as to not offend people. The downside to that is I usually get offended rather quickly when people act completely brainless, inconsiderate and disrespectful. As such, players have a couple of different areas to be aware of and model good group etiquette, or be ignorant of and annoy anywhere from 4 to 39 other people.

-Disclaimer- Just like every other piece of information about the game, you have to take things with a grain assault. Not everything applies to everyone, but a good rule of thumb is that if you’re not sure about doing something, it’s best not to do it (at least as far as WoW PVE goes :P).

Abilities

Whether you’re in a 5-man for a dungeon or a 25-man raid, there’s explicitly defined roles for each grup member. Spells that taunt should ONLY be used by designated tank except in dire circumstances and only by experienced players. Classes that have taunting abilities include Paladins, Warriors, Druids in Bear form, Death Knights, Hunters, Shamans (sort of), and Warlocks in Demon Form. There are also abilities that generate more than average amounts of threat and should be used with discretion; there are a few cases where these spells are useful such as ranged kiting or DPS off tanking when going for special achievements or low-manning instances (warning—retarded GMs will attempt to ban you for doing this).

Aside from straight mob-stealing, there’s other abilities that you should refrain from using as well that complicate encounters (such as using Hand of Protection on a tank after they pull a boss in an heroic >,.,>). Spells that have a knockback are EXTREMELY annoying on multiple mob pulls; there was a point where many people refrained from inviting Elemental Shamans and Boomkins to groups because most were unable to use discretion with their new abilities. Spells with knockbacks should only be used to push a mob back to the tank if it gets loose for some reason or, again, in special circumstances.

Also, use stuns sparingly. Moreso than not if a mob has just made a dash for a healer, a good tank will realize this and toss out a taunt; however, taunts only last for about 3 seconds, and getting a stun off on said mob might actually cause more trouble than help. Misdirects are also amazing for directing or redirecting mobs, just make sure you’re directing to the correct person.

Loot

Loot is probably one of the most drama-inducing factors of the game; whether it’s a green or an epic, sometimes people just lose their minds. The average 5-man will have loot settings to Group Loot where items of green quality or higher are opened up for rolls to all party members. In this situation, generally you should roll “need” on an item that is a usable upgrade for you (hunters can’t use maces, shamans can’t use swords, don’t be retarded please), “greed” on items that are side-grades or offset items, and “pass” on items that you can’t use. That being said, it’s generally acceptable to roll “greed” on Bind on Equip items as they can always be traded afterward if a mistake is made. Taking loot you can’t use or rolling need on everything is called being a ninja—ninjas get blacklisted on the public forums.

When you begin throwing in an enchanter in the group, things tend to get more complicated. Customary loot rules with enchanters are to either “need” or “pass” on Bind on Pickup items so the enchanter can “greed” the items that aren’t wanted and disenchant them for shards. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve mentioned that I can DE and people will still just roll greed on items for vending, completely disregarding the possibility that I need the shards to level my profession or might even be willing to share them with the group. For the most part I just make passive aggressive comments regarding to their intelligence, or lack thereof, and go on with the dungeon, but in general it is good etiquette to be considerate of the enchanters in your group.

On the flip side, it’s important for enchanters to be aware of the needs of the group as well. If the group is considerate enough to pass on BoP items for you to shard, offer to have rolls on the shards at the end of the run. This is especially important for heroics where the end posibility of an epic crystal is much more valuable. It is also a rather big no-no to make off with shards and crystals from heroics without asking the group to roll on them—this too can get you blacklisted on public forums.

When it comes to raids, some groups will continue to leave it on a Need/Greed system in good faith that the members of the raid know how to behave themselves. However, for more difficult raid content, almost all groups will set the loot system to Master Looter which means the Loot Master (designated by the raid leader) has to give each piece of loot to a member. This allows groups to introduce loot systems to help organize and equalize the distribution of loot in attempts to keep everyone happy and coming back to raids. My raid group uses the SKG system which is basically a glorified queue. A list is made and whoever is in position has first priority on gear that drops; once someone wins a piece of gear, the go to the bottom of the list. It’s a very simple system, managed by a mod, and pretty difficult to abuse.

Mods

This is a little more than basic and generally falls under the category of Raid Etiquette, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Anyone who’s played wow for a significant amount of time is aware of the fact that you can enhance your gameplay with mods. Some people go mod crazy and get everything, some people use the bare basics, and some people go without them altogether. Some people can raid endgame content without a single mod, but those are the kind of people who are very experienced and know their role in the raid. Some raid groups will require you to have certain mods in order to handle fight mechanics more efficiently. In the end, there’s certain mods that good to have if you want show a group you’re serious about your spot.

The first mod that just about any serious raider will tell you to pick up is Omen. Omen Threat Meter is one of the older mods on the scene, but it’s still updated regularly and almost core to the game anymore. Blizzard tried to include an in-game threat meter, but Omen still knocks the socks off of it. Threat meters are core for DPS and Tank roles to make sure mobs stay aggroed to the correct targets, but they can also be useful for healers. If it’s your first time DPSing with a group, you’re trying out a new spec, or your tank isn’t geared all that well, Omen will probably save you a lot of time and headache.

The next mod that is extremely useful for groups is Decursive. I recently picked this up for my shaman to help decurse in Naxx when I went Resto for Noth. I can’t begin to tell you what a difference it makes, not to mention how useful it is on my other characters. I currently have an 80 shaman, pally, and druid, with a priest on the way, all classes who carry the burden of removing maladies. All you have to do is click on a little square to remove debuffs on people—you don’t even have to target them. If you are raiding in Naxx or especially Ulduar, it’s a REALLY good idea to grab this mod.

The last on my list, but certainly not penultimate mod to aqcuire, is Deadly Boss Mods (or Big Wigs if you so choose). DBM is another amazing mod for raids and with WotLK the developers even went so far as to include prominant heroic dungeon events. This mod flashes warnings across your screen alerting you to certain events in an encounter such as Flame Wall on Sarth, Ice Blocks on Kel’Thuzad, or Harpoon Turrets on Razorscale. They also have a submod that allows you to see cool down timers for people’s abilities in your raid group, a feature I have grown very fond of. It’s an amazing mod that allows you to dedicate a little more of your attention to other things which contributes a lot to overall raid success.

R-e-s-p-e-c-t! (and what it means to me)

The first serious raid group I was ever a part of required their atendees to get DBM or Big Wigs, Omen, and Solarian Alarm for Tempus Keep. The fact that they held their raid members to that minimum standard contributed in my opinion to their overall success. I found that having these mods and the attitude the group carried about them helped me develop a much more professional raiding ability. I carry that with me in everything I do in WoW now. I currently run with xPerl for my frames, Grid for party and raid frames, Clique for spells on grid, Omen, DBM, Dominos, Totem Timers, and Decursive for raiding (I also have ButtonFacade, SexyMap, and Carbonite for recreational use :P). I do whatever I can to perform better at my role in a raid, whether that’s DPSing on my shaman, tanking on my pally, or healing on one of my various restorative classes.

Now, I don’t expect everyone to be as hard core OCD about this kind of thing as I am, but I do think people reflect their attitude in their actions. Someone who is unwilling to get a certain mod just because they don’t want to use mods is not modeling an attitude that makes me want to rely on them fully. I think there are some mods that are just irreplaceable in the raiding scene, and players WILL BE limited by not utilizing them; Decursive is a perfect example of that.

Aside from mods, there’s a lot you can do in a group that will reflect not only on you, but your guild. It’s always important to realize what you’re saying to people when you’re not talking or typing :P

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Back to the Way Things Were…

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

So I sit here at my desk (yes I finally made myself go back to the office), shuffling around the last remaining papers, contemplating the freedom I’m going to have in the coming month. As I said before, I’ve decided to take July off for some personal time to get all my crazies out before the Fall semester starts.

It’s been an interesting experience being a full time worker in comparison to my life as a student. When I first started working I was so overwhelmed with all the awesome new things I got to do, like buying cool things, taking road trips, and living in an actual apartment. However, as the months went on, I eventually reached a year of this grand new life style and began to miss the easy life of being a student: my only responsibilities were to learn, something I do well and enjoy greatly. Somehow I’ve managed to piece together the best of both worlds (well, minus the monthly salary :P) and I think my last three semesters are going to be a lot of fun, with a little hard work.

I think a similar thought process goes on in WoW as well. I hear that when BC came out, a lot of people changed their mains and rerolled shamans on alliance because it was the big new thing; the same thing happened with WotLK where many people rolled DKs. The problem that a lot of people find out is that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. Both sides of the fence have pros and cons, but we tend to forget about the cons on the other side and just focus on the grass you haven’t been standing on for the past month.

My Shaman has been my main for the past year and a half that I have played WoW. I started playing just after Black Temple was released, so I never got to experience any of that Vanilla business. I know several people who have changed mains every expansion, some by choice, some by destiny. Some people can’t decide what class they want to play; some decide that their old main was better and revert. I think in the end it’s much more gratifying to stick it out and play a class you enjoy. Now, I could have just magically picked a class that I enjoy, play well, and that gets raid spots and it could be a huge coincidence, but I’d like to think I’m just content with my decisions :)

Dial 5 for Casting

I had a conversation with a Mage friend of mine this morning about casting stats. He’s been recently trying to experiment with his build to see if he can improve his DPS any, and was discussing his Tier 9 bonuses. As of now, the Tier 9 Mage 4-piece bonus seems to be an additional 5% crit to the core bolt spells. He mentioned to me that he was rather unimpressed with this, as I have been unimpressed with my Tier 8 bonuses. I took a moment to explain to him that that was like getting 5 free spells. He proceeded to give me a blank look… through the AIM chat window (I could feel it with my ESPN yo!).

So, I threw on my spectacles and pulled out my invisible theorycrafting manual and began to explain to my friend the nature of casting stats. A caster has several different stats that effect your raiding performance. Each stat has a numerical conversion ratio:

Stam and Int are pretty obvious in what they do. Several classes and specs get additional bonuses from stats such as Intellect and Spirit, but Elemental Shamans don’t get any benefit other than the base amounts listed above *stabs at things* When I think about stats and how to build up my gear set, I think about the conversions in terms of probability; afterall, I am a Math Major :P

For a caster, hit rating is the first thing to stack. The reason behind this is that it’s the easiest to cap. At level 80 the spell hit cap is 17%, roughly 443 hit rating; this means with 0 hit rating, you will miss approximately 17 spells out of 100. While at first getting hit capped may seem like a daunting task, remember that hit rating is the easiest to stack at only 26 points per %. There’s also a hit talent in every caster DPS tree. On top of that there’s group composition buffs in the form of the Draenei Racial Passive (party wide), the Druid Balance talent Improved Faerie Fire (raid wide), and the Priest Shadow talent Misery (raid wide). Also, when the rolls are done for a spell, whether or not the spell lands is always rolled first.

Next comes Critical Strikes. Again, every DPS class has some talent that increases the damage of your critical strikes. For Mages it’s 50% extra damage, and for all other casters it’s 100% bonus damage, essentially increasing the damage dealt by 1.5x and 2x respectively (not entirely sure what the deal with Mages is here, so feel free to leave any comments on it). Now, the way crit rating works is that 1% crit generally translates into 1 extra spell crit in 100. So if you have 30% crit rating, you will theoretically have 30 spells out of a 100 crit. Crit is often thought of as a more efficient means of DPSing as it saves mana, but the downsides are that it tends to cause a lot of threat and it’s the hardest stat to gem or enchant. While there’s not really an official crit cap, the perceived cap is said to be 50%.

Last but not least, the mysterious Haste Rating. Haste is calculated at 33 rating to 1% haste. What does 1% haste mean? It means you shave 1% of your spell cast time off, essentially allowing you to cast 101 spells in the time it takes you to cast 100. This mechanic seems to rotate on a different axis from hit and crit, but they all mesh together somehow. There is an actual haste cap of 50%. This is because 50% haste rating reduces your global cool down to 1 second, but it cannot be lower than that. Therefore any additional haste will be lost once spells are reduced a cast time of 1 second or less.

What does all of this mean for me?

Well if you’re not an elemental shaman, this probably won’t mean anything to you XD But if you are, or have interest in them, read on :) Elemental Shamans don’t have any inter-proccing talents such as Nature’s Grace, so each stat has an independent dps effect; however, there are several talents that provide buffs that proc off crits.

In terms of Gems, the priority for stat allocation should be Hit Rating (if you are not hit capped), Spell Power, Haste, and then Crit. This is because of the value of the rating on the gems: 16 Hit rating is .62% hit > 16 Haste rating is .48% haste > 16 Crit rating is .36% crit. However, if you are talking about straight percentages, the order is a little different: 1% hit (again, if you are not capped) > 1% crit > 1% haste. The reasoning behind the latter list is because the elemental tree is chocked full of talents that increase damage and provide personal and raid buffs from critical strikes.

LOOOOOONG Post Short: 5% crit rating is nothing to laugh at.

I have personally tried out just about every stat composition possible. When I was working towards 70 I got the bright idea to stack my crit as high as possible; this often lead to me pulling off tanks in dungeons >.>’ Then I got a tip to get my hit capped first, and then build some spell power, so I got hit capped and gemmed completely for spell power. When Wrath hit, I was incredibly intimidated by the new hit cap, and instead began inadvertantly stacking haste. I think through this I got up to about 700 haste rating, and let me tell you—that was an interesting ride. It was EXTREMELY rough on my mana pool, especially considering the lack of replenishment in my groups at the time, but it’s very exciting to be able to pump out spells that quickly.

After that I managed to get hit capped and starting building my gear up, trying to swing towards Crit over Haste. Now I’m kind of back to where I started, seeking a careful balance of stats; although, I have replaced all my crit gems with haste gems and that seems to have improved things a little.

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Addicted

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Depending on the situation, I’m usually one of the first people to admit that I am addicted to WoW. I think I’ve always been a gamer at heart, and the many years up until now have merely been spent inching away from my parents and inching closer to the perfect game. I will also be the first to admit that I have a very addictive personality. When I get my hands on something that fully captivates my attention, I tend to get rather grumpy when separated from it. That applies to anything from a book to a project to an event in a game. Sometimes it’s so intense that I’ve been kept up all night by dreams of a boss fight that I wasn’t able to complete in a game before I went to sleep. One in particular was this one level in .hack (either 3 or 4 o_O’) where you’re running through this dungeon maze following a boss that looks like a puzzle piece; I was up all night with stressful dreams trying to finish out that encounter because my mom made me go to be before I could complete it. >.>’

I’m sure you get the idea by now :P Of course I do my best to keep my addiction in check, but it is definitely embodied is my every day life. I think any good gamer is addicted to some degree, so it’s always important to acknowledge this. One of my good friends applied to Culinary school back in March and got accepted. Since then he’s been working to get everything set up, to obtain loans, and securing housing (at least… he should be >.>), he made the decision to ween himself off WoW in an attempt to lay the ground work for a more responsible lifestyle in the fall, and I have to say that I admire him a lot for that. Having the will power to put the game down for extended periods of time for the sake of living life… heh it’s something I can only dream of doing :P

He logged in today and I got to spend some time running heroics with him on my pally :) (yes, I has a prot pally). It’s always a pleasure spending time with him, but I can certainly appreciate his reasoning for spending more time offline. Ideally, I should learn to play wow less this fall as well as I embark on my final three semesters of undergrad, but somehow I don’t see myself doing that <.<’ Maybe when I get to grad school XD

Itemization

Any Elemental Shaman that’s raided in Ulduar will tell you that the gear itemization is TERRIBLE. Only 4 out of the 12 pieces of spell power mail in 25 man DON’T have MP5 on them, which makes me very very grumpy. The gear at the end of Naxx was so beautiful—I felt like my shaman was geared to perfection with nicely rounded stats. Now, with Ulduar, you basically are forced to choose between Spell Power, Crit and Haste. I set up a list of my shaman’s best in slot gear, taking into consideration that my guild isn’t capable of doing hard modes in Uldaur 25. However, I have been running with an incredible 10-man group aiming for the drake, so I’ve built several of the pieces off 10-man hard modes :)

I’ve strayed once or twice for a few pieces of Ulduar gear but have returned from my Ice Layered Barrier back to my Voice of Reason sheerely for the balance of stats. I also finally managed to pick up a Hammer of the Astral Plane from Naxx 10 (after several different escapades, one of which involving a druid who had come back from a year break from the game for three bosses, beat me by 10 on the roll, and has since “permanently” switched to Feral >,.,>). I also stand by the Totem of Hex because of personal theorycrafting AND target dummy practice; Thunderfall Totem, despite the higher item level, is only useful for improving your wow-heroes score XD

My thoughts are that Blizzard is making another crappy interval of gear between the first and last sets in the expansion, much like they did with BC; tier 5 set bonuses for Elemental were laughable. Ghostcrawler has made a couple of public statements about this saying that they’re providing players with different options in stats to make it less obvious how to best maximize your gear. Honestly, I think they just don’t want less competent raid groups to sweep through the first half of Ulduar and be geared enough to take on the Tier 9 content. In either case, Tier 8 is pretty much just as disappointing as Tier 5 was. Here’s hoping Tier 9 is better o.O

In Other News…

More word from the PTRs! (Although I wouldn’t know because I can’t actually get the PTR to work >.>). It appears they have finally posted the Elemental Shaman T9 set bonuses for serious; glad to see it increases Lava Burst’s damage by 20% instead of 0.02 seconds. Also, some peculiar achievements seem to be surfacing specifically for the PTR servers XD

There’s also a mention under the JC profession list that Jewelcrafters will be able to transmute epic gems on a 20 hour cool down. I’m wondering if they’re just commenting on the installed cool down or if Jewelcrafters will actually be able to make the epic gems and NOT alchemists *crosses fingers and hopes for this* Blizzard appears to be trying to cut down on mislooted item tickets with a timer on BoP items that allows them to be traded to people in your raid group that are eligible for the piece too. Raid IDs also appear to be extendible on the PTRs, meaning you can make your Ulduar 25man instance last three weeks if you wanted to (but who wants to wipe that long >.o). Plus, more drama amongst the higher ranks—again, that whole being addicted thing coming back to bite you.

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Has you seen mah bucket?

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

It has happened; not even a week into my new blog and I’ve missed a post @_@ Ah well, hope this makes up for it… somehow >.>’

As I was flipping through the channels this morning trying to find something entertaining to watch, I paused on Spike to watch some CSI. One of the commercials was announcing their Summer Bucket List event later this evening—all the things you need to do before the summer is over. I’ve always had lists in my head of things I wanted to accomplish, but most of the time I end up busying myself with other things and having to settle for less. So I have decided to make summer bucket lists—one for WoW and one for Real Life *gasp*

WoW Summer Bucket List:

  1. Get my Priest and Warlock to level 65 so I can do Northrend tailoring
  2. Get the Rusted Proto Drake for my Shaman
  3. Get my gold supply above 10k (somehow o.O)
  4. Get a Raven Mount for my Shaman

Real Life Summer Bucket List:

  1. Make the WoW Machinimas I’ve been talking about forever
  2. Develop a new, better daily lifestyle routine
  3. See at least 5 new movies in theatres
  4. Completely clean up my apartment and set things up the way I want
  5. Lose 10 pounds
  6. Read a new book

Now that being said, hopefully the public statement will give me a little more impetus to follow through with my goals :)

Elementary, my dear Dawson!

I figure at some point or another, blogs dedicated to a certain class will talk about specs :) So, I’ll take this time to give some of my preliminary thoughts on the elemental tree in terms of raiding. As most good players know, you always put a few points in other trees to get a well-rounded spec. For Wrath so far, the Enhancement tree appears to be the best place to find well-rounded talents for both the Elemental and Resto trees. This appears to be the basic Elemental Build; the main differences between specs lie in rows 2-5 of the elemental tree among the talents

Now each of these talents has it’s own purpose and I’ll explain my perspective on them. Elemental Warding, which used to reduce elemental damage taken by up to 10% (my good friend E pointed out that this was EXTREMELY helpful on the Naj’entus fight), now reduces all damage taken by up to 6%. This is clearly a survivability talent, and while most will say it’s purely for PVP, reducing damage taken can be very helpful in boss encounters post-3.0. Just about every boss fight has some form of AoE raid damage now and being able to reduce damage can go a long ways towards keeping you alive longer; it’s a well known fact that dead players do no DPS *makes scholarly face*

The next talent, Reverberation, reduces the cool down of your shock spells by up to 1 second. Again, many people consider this to be a PVP talent, but I feel it too has it’s uses in PVE content. The group I raid 25 mans with has a boomkin that has graciously specced into Improved Faerie Fire, which is comparable to a shadow priest’s Misery. This 3% hit buff is amazing to any caster, so accordingly I adjusted my gear, gems and enchants to best maximize my stats. Now the 10 man group I run Ulduar with has neither hit buff, which often brings me great distress (not to mention the priest started bringing his elemental shaman instead, and for the sake of avoiding certain sexual connotations, I will just say that it makes things feel VERY crowded). Anyways… I have been too lazy to adjust for the 3% hit loss considering I’m only 1% under the cap. That means occasionally a spell will miss. I usually don’t notice it unless it’s a Flame Shock and I’m like OMGWTHBBQQQ!!?!??!one! WHERE’S MAH DOT??!? What on earth am I going to do with this Lava Burst now?!??!?!!!? Well with Booming Echoes down in tier 8 of the tree, Flame Shock’s cool down is reduced 2 seconds in addition to any points in reverberation, meaning you can probably cast a Lightning bolt and then Flame Shock will be back up again.

Another scenario for why this talent is handy is on fights like Assembly of Iron or Freya where a mechanic of the fight relies heavily on interrupting spells. Considering Booming Echoes, Earth Shock puts your shocks on a longer cool down than Flame Shock does (or Frost Shock for that matter FROST SHAWK!!!1!), and because Flame Shock is such a vital part of the Elemental DPS rotation, it’s important to be able to have both spells as ready as possible.

Eye of the Storm—no, not the Battleground… Yet again, another talent that I’ve heard so many people describe as being a PVP talent. First off I would like to point out that this talent + Concentration Aura means ZERO SPELL PUSHBACK. As mentioned before, almost all of the fights these days have some form of raid damage, which means pushback, which means time lost in your dps rotation. I would say that if you can afford it, max this talent out.

The last talent on my list is Unrelenting Storm—the mana regen talent. When I first hit 80 and set up my raiding spec, I had maxed this talent out because I was always running out of mana. Then two things happened: I did a little research and figured out that Chain Lightning had no place in my normal rotation on a single target, and suddenly our raids were filled with Ret Pallies and Survival Hunters. Suddenly I couldn’t go below 95% mana o_O I would die on a fight, ankh, and be back to 100% mana by the end of the fight. Somehow, this talent didn’t hold much value to me anymore >_> However, that is not to say that it is a useless talent. Not all raid groups are blessed with the ocean of replenishment talents, so you may find yourself running out of mana a lot anyways and see a purpose for this talent. Don’t forget to use Thunderstorm though! (Just make sure you’re off in a corner away from the mobs and potentially grumpy tanks >.>’). If you still find yourself having mana issues, I would say to look into Improved Shields over in the Enhancement tree, tier 2.

The Audrae Spec

I’ve explained my thoughts behind some of the expendable talents above, but I figured I would spend a moment to explain all my decision making in my spec :) First off, many people will comment on the points I put into Improved Ghost Wolf in the Enhancement tree. The way I see it, they either go there to help out with mobility mechanics, or they go into Elemental Warding or Reverberation. The short explanation is that I notice the difference in the Ghost Wolf talent moreso than the other two. The long explanation is that on fights like Flame Leviathon where I’ve just caused a shut down, I insta-ghostwolf off back to my demolisher because the choppers are incapable of picking me up for some reason. I also help fire harpoons on the Razorscale fight. In outdoor areas, the time saved by being able to sprint off somewhere can really improve your efficiency.

Also, as I’ve said, mana regen isn’t a problem for me anymore, so I pushed those points into Eye of the Storm; it just seemed like an all around win-win situation. That left one point left over, which drives me crazy. There are no one-point talents left in my trees so I’m forced to stick it somewhere to receive a meager benefit. I decided the best place was Reverberation to help with the whole shock cool down business.

At this time I feel like there’s not much that can go wrong with the Elemental spec if you take the time to understand what each talent does. It’s not like the Prot Pally tree or the Balance Druid tree where you have 100 points worth of useful spells and only 71 to spend; now, granted, I could just be unfamiliar with these trees, and it could be as obvious as the elemental tree as to the no-brainer decisions. I know my hunter friend seems to come up to me once a week telling me about something he’s changed in his spec to try and squeak out some more dps. Sometimes I’m glad my tree isn’t that complicated, but that means a lot of people are going to have the potential to perform as well as me without having taken the time to think this critically about things.

Updates for 3.2

It looks like the new Epic JC patterns will be available for purchase from the vendor in Dalaran for tokens, though I still think they shouldn’t ALL be available that way (that might just be the overachiever in me talking though >.>”). Also, they’re putting a trade timer on BoP items from instances so you can trade the item with people who are also eligible for that piece of loot. It appears blizzard is trying to find ways to cut down on the mis-master-looting tickets.

Also, I nearly flipped out when I saw the list of new tier sets and viewed the Shaman set; come to find out it’s just the PVP gear, so it was merely a false ugly alarm XD

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In the Rough

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

When I first rolled my shaman, I was told to pick a profession to level. After a little looking around, it appeared that Jewelcrafting was the perfect choice given the draenei propensity for the craft. So I trained in Jewelcrafting and the complimentary Mining skill and started my journey to 70. It was pretty simple at first—mine copper, make rings, auction rings, win. It seemed fine. Then I started outleveling my mining skill, encountering Iron and Mithril along the way and having to pass them up because my skill wasn’t high enough. <rant>Why in the heck does it take so much time to learn how to beat up a freaking rock with a stinking stick?!?!?</rant>

At some point around level 50, I gave up on my professions in lue of racing to 70 as fast as possible, so I found myself trolling around outlands with new and exotic mines to observe and leave in my wake. I also had no idea of the fancy gems I would be able to cut; instead I bought the cheapo vendor gems for a couple gold a piece. Shortly after hitting 70, I participated in a normal Black Morass run in attempt to escape the seemingly impossible (and at the time no long necessary) Kara attunement, without knowing that Black Morass was actually the final part of the attunement chain. Well I was in a group with a hunter, a warrior, and two druids. The druid tank asked me to drop totems that would benefit the melee, so I obliged. After the run, they invited me to their vent to discuss possibly recruiting me to their raid group, but that’s a different storyline for a later time.

The part I want to expand upon was my relationship with the druid tank, or his main, a shaman named Eshinai. The next day I ran BM with them again and afterward, E took me aside and cut me some blue quality gems for my gear—this completely blew me away. They were like 50x better than the gems I had! Not mention I realized they were worth a significant amount of gold. I decided to make E my mentor and learn as much from him as possible. I ended up adopting his insatiable desire to master Jewelcrafting and collect as many patterns as possible. When the epic patterns hit the Isle of Quel’Danas, I dropped just about all my gold buying them up in attempt to prove my dedication to the craft.

Fast forward several months—Wrath of the Lich King *dundundunnnnnn* The playing field once again had been leveled. I made my primary goal to get to 80, and the close second was maxing out my Jewelcrafting. Within a month I had nearly half the known patterns in the game after a significant amount of freaking out, rep griding, and heroic runs. I had a system for doing the JC dailies to get the most beneficial patterns as quickly as possible. At one point I had kind of become the guild Jewelcrafter because I was the only person with the majority of the patterns. I took my craft to heart and tried to help out as many people as possible. At times I would get my feelings hurt when someone didn’t seem as appreciative of my efforts, but I have learned to take it in stride. All this talk of taking Jewelcrafting to heart and helping people out brings me to my next point :P

Finding the Right Gem

I figured I would try my hand at posting a guide, seeing as they tend to go over fairly well. I made a gem finding guide on my guild forums, but it seemed to go unnoticed… >_> For some reason it’s just easier to ask the Jewelcrafter what the best gem is.

Color wheel—the basic concept of gems.

The basic concept of gems is like a color wheel (has you seen mah bucket? o.O) The example I have used to the right incorporates Spell Power, Hit and Stamina. Most gems have a color, excluding of course prismatic and meta gems. The color allows you to match, or respectively mismatch, your gems with your gear to gain or ignore socket bonuses. It would appear that tier 8 seems to have forgotten what gems benefit what classes, or Blizzard is just being mean. In any case, the gem concept goes as follows:

  • Red: Spell Power, Strength, Agility, Attack Power, Parry, Expertise, Dodge, Armor Penetration
  • Yellow: Intellect, Crit, Haste, Hit, Resilience, Defense
  • Blue: Stamina, Spirit, MP5, Spell Penetration

In short, Red is about damage, Blue is about defense/restoration, and Yellow is about support. Accordingly, all blended gems (orange, purple and green) are merely half of each primary color’s stats on one gem. In the color wheel example to the right, the Runed Scarlet Ruby (red) and the Rigid Autumn’s Glow (yellow) are represented with Veiled Monarch Topaz (orange) in between with half of each of the previous gems’ stats.

It’s also important to know the different ranks of gems. When Wrath came out, there were only two new ranks released:

There were also several Jewelcrafter-only Epic gems that were released as the unique buff for Jewelcrafters. With 3.1 Blizzard introduced some universal epic gems through the fishing daily: Storm Jewels. Of course, you could only have one Storm Jewel equipped, so it didn’t provide any profession with an advantage. However, the patch notes for 3.2 talk of the introduction of Epic Gems.

  • Epic Gems: Cardinal Ruby, Flawless Ametrine, King’s Amber, Eye of Zul, Majestic Zircon, Dreadstone

Accordingly, all professions except Blacksmithing are getting a slight buff to compensate for Blacksmithing sockets scaling with the new gems. Many people are cranking out the JC dailies in order to rack up a significant amount of Dalaran Tokens for when 3.2 comes out in hopes of being able to snatch up several patterns on patch day. I have yet to see any solid evidence that you will even be able to buy the Epic patterns straight out. My bets are on one of three posibilities: a new token will be used to purchase them making the current tokens unnecessary, they will be zone or world drops, or they will be faction based. I won’t deny the possibility that they might be just as available as the Rare patterns were, but it doesn’t follow Blizzard’s MO.

The Stresses of Raiding

I’ve been raiding seriously for over a year now and have participated in several different types of raid groups. I’ve been through my various types of drama in different places, but I have found myself back in my guild’s parallel raid group. The foundational philosophies for raid group, similarly to the guild, are based on a Friends and Family environment. The idea behind this is to provide our group of folks with a means to experience raiding content and ideally end-game content without having to deal with the stresses of a “hard core” raiding group. In short, it means as long as you can learn to avoid the fire and perform your role efficiently, you’ll likely get to come back.

However, no matter how much you dumb down or simplify the raiding experience, it’s still going to be stressful at times. Whether it’s being one of SEVEN paladins in the raid all rolling against the three priests (notice the lack of warlocks [here]) for tier tokens, or one of four hunters all vying to be the masters of Volley, or just one of the usual 15 DPSers trying to hold their own against the relentless and merciless chain pulling of trash groups.

I had a recent experience similar to the latter event where we had just finished killing Auriaya and were rapidly moving onto Thorim. One of my long-time friends and co-dps-nuts took the time to express some distress in recent events of the evening. I, in my rush to keep up with the tank and hacked AoE damage of just about every other class (run up, drop totem, jump back, chain lightning, spam flame shock, chain again, repeat in some discombobulated fashion…), made an off-handed comment to my friend which, rather than supporting him or even calming him down, caused him to become rather angry with me.

After a few days of this divide between us, there were some minor attempts to exchange sentiments which wound up in both of us apologizing to each other. I always hate being at odds with people, and it’s everything I can do to keep from letting it eat me up completely inside. It kind of blows my mind how all of this could have been avoided if I had taken a moment to use my brain in a conversation instead of worrying about boosting my numbers on the overall meters (which seems more and more lately like an extremely futile task <_<).

I have made amends with my friend and am once again astounded by his ability to show humility, something very few people seem to be capable of these days. So out of all of this I have learned two lessons—1) Don’t let raiding consume you entirely to the point where trash is as intense as a boss fight and 2) Your friends are always more important than a game.

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Wednesday

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
The ravaging event of the week that is Wednesday.

The ravaging event of the week that is Wednesday.

Wednesday has always seemed to be the bane of my weeks. It’s smack dab in the middle of the work week and always requires me to be in the office in the mornings for our weekly meetings (which never amount to much more than babbling about projects that aren’t done). On the bright side of things, I only have about two more of these meetings left until I take my sweet time to enjoy unemployement heh.

To some this may sound like something to worry about, but I’m actually rather in anticipation of my time off. The plan is to take July to unwind and do whatever I want before buckling back down into a responsible lifestyle again. *cringes*

During this time I anticipate much of my time will be spent playing wow until I burn myself out on it. At that point I’ll hopefully shift my efforts to more constructive venues such as web design or those long awaited video projects I’ve been meaning to work on for months now. Who knows, I might even break out the scrapbooking stuff and toss together a few cards. Cards were always my means of staying on top of important dates like birthdays and anniversaries. I was constantly looking forward to special dates where I had a reason to sit down for several hours and work several brightly colored pieces of paper into a heartfelt message that was more than just the words written on it.

Since having started playing wow, I’ve lost a general sense of time and these dates which always meant so much to me. I remember birthdays at the last minute or worse, and often end up coming up with a lame excuse like “My phone was dead the whole weekend” or “A 747 crashed into my apartment building.” I even forgot to call my own father on Father’s Day @_@ and I’ve been ominously glancing at my phone every couple of minutes since. It’s things like this that make me wonder why I let WoW encompass so much of my conscience existence. Hopefully I will be able to confront that during my month of freedom and exploration and do something about it  :)

Shamans for 3.2

That which was sought after most...

So the patch notes for 3.2 are leaking out ever-so slowly. We have several individuals in my guild that taut bits and pieces here and there where applicable. Whenever I hear that new info is out, I immediately run to mmo-champion and scroll down to the portion with the dark blue name. Some of the new things for shamans this patch appear to be

  • New Tier 9 (yes, Apoc, you were right; I apologize profusely for arguing with you >.<) – rather peculiar set bonuses, but they are just place holders at the moment.
  • Totem Bars – This is blizzard’s solution to us complaining about totems being so cumbersome in combat—UI bars that allow us to drop 4 preset totems at once for the combined mana cost. I personally think this is a rather nice mechanic and will definitely help out of extremely mobile fights.
  • Changes to Talents – Not entirely sure what they’re doing to Elemental Oath, Focus and Devastation, but it sounds like they’re making the spells incapable of proccing off Flame Shock DoT crits. I guess they felt that elemental shamans with T8 2-piece bonus had too much of an advantage? I don’t know… just sounds like a nerf to me.

Some interesting changes indeed; I really don’t feel like this is worthy of being end-game material, so I have my money on Blizzard pulling out Tier 10 before the end of this expansion. Although, I’m eager to see what the new shaman tier set models will look like—the shamans are almost always impressive looking.

The Elements

The questline for this guy is quite possibly my favorite part of WoW.

The questline for this guy (Summer Scorchling) is quite possibly my favorite part of WoW.

I remember back when they were posting changes before 3.0 came out that there was significant talk of improving the elemental totem system by taking the fire and earth elementals off their totems. I was extremely excited by this prospect because I loved using my fire and earth elementals, but could only do so sparingly. The concept would have also given shamans a pet mechanic to improve their survivability. However, when nothing ever came of these posted intentions, I was very disappointed. I had my own predictions of them implementing a water and wind elemental into the totem system according to the order in which a shaman receives their physical totems.

At level 4, a shaman does a quest to obtain their earth totem; At level 10 you complete the quest to obtain your fire totem. 20 is water and 30 is air. In Burning Crusade, at level 66 you could train Earth Elemental Totem (tank) and at 68 you could train Fire Elemental Totem (damage dealer). See a pattern here? My logical assumption would be that shamans would get a Water Elemental Totem for some kind of restorative purposes and then a Wind Elemental Totem for some kind of buff; however, I always had people shooting down my conjecture with the single argument that Mages already had a water elemental. I always said they should call it a frost elemental seeing as it was a part of the Frost tree.

Your earth elemental took the place of an earth totem, and your fire elemental took the place of a fire totem. Each lasted 2 minutes and had a 20 minute cool down, and they were set up so as to prevent you from having both out at the same time. It was for the most part a once in a while commodity, appearing to be lie in the realm of long cool downs such as Divine Intervention, Battle Ressing, and the old Last Stand (10 minute cd)—the odds were that most of the time it was on cool down when you needed it. Not to mention the fact that I was using a totem mod for a while that would randomly wig out and summon my earth elemental totem in the middle of boss fights <.<’

I still wish Blizzard would do more in terms of the elemental mechanics, possibly allowing us to enslave elemental NPCs similar to warlocks enslaving demons. I was really fond of the idea of being able to summon up a fire elemental pet to do my bidding, but even I can admit that would be a little OP. Even so, I’m still waiting for a better utilization of the elemental mechanics.

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=2062

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