I decided to do a counter-post to a blog entry Jasyla, my guild's GM, posted yesterday. The
purpose of this isn't to attack her or point out how she’s wrong or anything
negative like that. What I hope to do
with this is to get myself involved in the discussion in a constructive
way.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Sunday, November 18, 2012
8th Anniversary Gaffes
Normally I'm not one of those people who jump on the "Blizzard and WoW are really going downhill" bandwagon, but I just couldn't ignore this.
Evidently today is WoW's 8th Anniversary. That's tremendous. I for one still enjoy this game quite a lot, so I'm always happy to observe milestones like this. From year to year the festivities surrounding this even have varied. For several years (it seems,) Blizzard was in the habit of handing out vanity pets, as a thank you to players who were around to log in on the anniversary. This year it seems they just didn't give any shits. Negative shits were given even. See below:
And then I noticed:
And, the cherry on top:
At first I thought, "oh okay, at least it's a rep bonus item, I can dig that. I need lots of rep still." Then I read the green text. -.-
Evidently today is WoW's 8th Anniversary. That's tremendous. I for one still enjoy this game quite a lot, so I'm always happy to observe milestones like this. From year to year the festivities surrounding this even have varied. For several years (it seems,) Blizzard was in the habit of handing out vanity pets, as a thank you to players who were around to log in on the anniversary. This year it seems they just didn't give any shits. Negative shits were given even. See below:
 |
| Oh, no pet? :( |
 |
| Uh, what? A certain very large dragon? A shattered world? Did they just re-use the letter from last year? |
 |
| Oh, SQEEEE a rep item that is of little to no use to a level 90 toon. |
At first I thought, "oh okay, at least it's a rep bonus item, I can dig that. I need lots of rep still." Then I read the green text. -.-
People who play this game generally act like they're entitled to a lot from Blizzard. We pay monthly for this service and sort of expect certain things. Maybe Blizzard was just spoiling us those years we got the pets. I just can't stomach this though. Re-using the thank you letter from last year is just a tacky slap in the face to players. What it really says is "Oh, it's our 8th anniversary already? Uh, sure we remembered! Here's this, uh, thing we whipped up just special for all of you people who have been with us all this time. We hope you don't notice the apparent apathy in our lack of effort! Stay subscribed!"
So lame.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Soloing with a Guardian Druid in Ulduar 10
I just wanted to do a summary post about my first foray into soloing 10 man Ulduar on my druid, Lifehack.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Screenshots of MoP So Far
I've been doing a lot of blog posts without pictures since MoP came out. The reason for that is because I've actually been blogging a lot at work. What this means is that I actually just type up a thought, email it to my personal email, and I post it through the Blogger app on my phone. I don't have access to any images, nor do I have the ability to link items when I post this way. Hopefully I can produce some more fully formed posts soon. Life has been busy lately.
Anyhow, here is a collection of some of the screenshots I've taken throughout MoP. Some are guild first kill shots, some are just fun things I wanted to be able to remember. I hope you enjoy.
Anyhow, here is a collection of some of the screenshots I've taken throughout MoP. Some are guild first kill shots, some are just fun things I wanted to be able to remember. I hope you enjoy.
That's all. I hope you enjoyed :)
Key Bindings
This post is mostly a way to share my current keybinding set with a guildie. He was complaining on Twitter earlier about having issues with too many binds on his feral druid alt. My keybindings are universal across all alts. I think they're pretty easy to remember, and none of them require any advanced finger-yoga. Here's what I use for my feral:
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Etiquette
Dungeon Etiquette 101:
Even before starting, this post feels somewhat redundant. Preaching to the choir, if you will. I do hope that, possibly through retweets, this post makes it to somebody who might actually change a few bad habits.
The inspiration for this entry comes from a dungeon run I did the other night on my druid tank. I was in the midst of a fairly smooth Heroic Shado Pan Monastery run, enjoying tanking things with my face, when one of the pugs said something exceedingly rude to me. We had just killed the Sha of whirlwinds, random add spawns, and ground spikes (Sha of doubt? I’m not sure :P,) and loot was done. The boss dropped a healing neckpiece, which I was hoping to pick up for a resto set I’m building. Prior to needing, I simply watched the roll frame (not the /loot frame) for any other need rolls. I waited a good 15 seconds, saw none, assumed the healer was one of the other rolls, so I went ahead and needed. I won the drop and ambled on out the door to maul some more mobs into submission.
That brings me back to the rude thing the pug said. I responded, asking if there was a problem. He proceeded to say more rude things on the way to informing me that the healer actually needed that neck. I explained that I’d waited for other need rolls and saw none, so I went for it. While I was explaining, I went over to the healer and traded them the neck. I’m not about to be that guy stealing loot from people filling other roles. I guess the healer must have just waited longer than I did to roll. The rude pugger and I exchanged a few more choice words, we killed the last boss, and that was the end. All the healer ever said was “thanks.”
The whole experience made me think of how many spoken and unspoken common courtesies there are to observe in a simple pug dungeon group. Truth be told, there’s a good amount of little things you can do to make a run either great, or horrible. I’ve decided to take it upon myself to hash out a list of do’s and don’ts, from each of the three possible roles you can fill in a dungeon. These are, of course, my opinion. Please take the lists with a grain of salt. Throughout this blog post, the word “dungeon” can be used interchangeably with “LFR” or “Raid.”
DPS Do’s:
-As much DPS as possible without getting yourself or others killed.
-Attack the tank’s primary target.
-Use threat dropping abilities if available/if you pull threat.
-Ask questions about fights you don’t know or don’t understand them.
-Provide courteous tips when you observe a group member who requires knowledge.
-Roll need on gear you absolutely need, greed or pass if you don’t.
-Minimize the amount of damage you take from avoidable sources (i.e. the same as “don’t stand in bad.”)
-Obey fight mechanics
-Utilize your interrupts
DPS Don’ts:
-Stand in bad.
-Pull for the tank (unless you’re a hunter and you have been instructed to pull.)
-Need on gear that is, black and white, for a role you’re not filling unless nobody else needs it (see rude pugger story above.)
-Need on gear inappropriate for your class and/or spec (i.e. a death knight needing on an agility polearm just because it’s a 2 hander with more weapon DPS.)
-Say abusive things to players for underperforming or any other reason.
-Drop group after getting the item you came to the dungeon for.
DPS do’s and don’ts make up the majority of dungeon grievances I’ve witnessed. Learning to heal and/or tank dungeons is something I encourage everybody to do at some point. Seeing things from all perspectives can make certain things in these lists make a lot more sense. Things like “don’t say abusive things” apply to all roles, so just assume that’s in every one of these lists. Same goes for standing in bad or being a greedy little loot pig. Healers and tanks aren’t perfect little angels either, so here are their lists:
Healer Do’s:
-Use the cooldowns Blizzard gave you. Don’t save them for a rainy day, they’re there to save people when you need them. I don’t care if its trash or that you won’t have archangel up in time to smite the crap out of the boss.
-Know the fights beforehand, where possible (“where possible” really only applies at the start of expansions when stuff is totally new to the majority, imo.)
-Ask questions if you’re uncertain of a fight’s mechanics. It’s much harder for the healer to cheese certain things.
-Come prepared to be a healer. Don’t heal in DPS gear or come wildly undergeared for heroics.
-Communicate with your group/tank if you need mana or time for some reason.
Healer Don’ts:
-Go AFK without announcing it
-Be stingy with cooldowns (see above.)
-Show up without out-of-combat mana replenishment. If I have to wait for you to regenerate 300k mana before the next pull, I’ll flip all the tables.
-Be wasteful or overly conservative with your mana. Most fights should be short enough that, if needed, you can use all of your healing tools. Even the mana inefficient ones. Just don’t use them exclusively
As the healer, you have an extremely important job. If you suck, the entire run will most likely suck. This is one of the things you might have to prepare for a little bit beforehand. I like to arm myself with knowledge so I don’t feel entirely unprepared. Sometimes I will do a dungeon as a DPS before I go heal it just so I know a little bit more about the place.
Tank Do’s:
-Observe the importance of your role and come prepared with tank gear and tank knowledge.
-Use your survival cooldowns, even on trash. A dead tank is usually a dead group. Your main job is to live.
-Be mindful of how fast you do pulls. Watch your healer’s mana. Pay attention to group chat and stop if/when you’re asked.
-Avoid standing in bad. This is doubly true because you’re already taking damage others aren’t. Also, if you’re keeping mobs in bad, you’re probably keeping melee DPS in there too.
-Use interrupts, stuns, and other CC to smooth out incoming damage.
-Watch for casters you don’t have threat on. They’re probably attacking your healer.
-Come prepared with addons that help you make sure you have threat on everything. Tidyplates is great for this.
-Keybinds. Make sure you can quickly taunt or blow survival cooldowns. Tank deaths can happen rapidly.
-Assume the DPS in your group don’t know about these lists.
Tank Don’ts”
-Chain pull if your healer’s mana can’t keep up
-Play like a DPS. Be observant, watch threat on groups of mobs. Don’t hump the DPS meter, even when you have 80k attack power from vengeance. You’re probably going to need to target swap and actively manage certain groups. You aren’t in the group to top the DPS meter.
-Tank in DPS or PVP gear. If you’re a guardian druid or a brewmaster monk, you still need to gear appropriately.
-Ignore mechanics you think your healer should just heal through. One of your jobs is minimizing the amount of damage you take.
-Ignore a bad healer. Communicate with people to see if there is something going inhibiting their performance. If you know you have a bad healer, play conservatively.
These lists aren’t always going to be simple to put into practice. There are all kinds of people who play the game, so you may just have to tolerate certain kinds of bad. If you are new to the game or to dungeons in general, observing these rules will make dungeon runs a much happier place. Pug is a pejorative term, but it doesn’t have to be.
Even before starting, this post feels somewhat redundant. Preaching to the choir, if you will. I do hope that, possibly through retweets, this post makes it to somebody who might actually change a few bad habits.
The inspiration for this entry comes from a dungeon run I did the other night on my druid tank. I was in the midst of a fairly smooth Heroic Shado Pan Monastery run, enjoying tanking things with my face, when one of the pugs said something exceedingly rude to me. We had just killed the Sha of whirlwinds, random add spawns, and ground spikes (Sha of doubt? I’m not sure :P,) and loot was done. The boss dropped a healing neckpiece, which I was hoping to pick up for a resto set I’m building. Prior to needing, I simply watched the roll frame (not the /loot frame) for any other need rolls. I waited a good 15 seconds, saw none, assumed the healer was one of the other rolls, so I went ahead and needed. I won the drop and ambled on out the door to maul some more mobs into submission.
That brings me back to the rude thing the pug said. I responded, asking if there was a problem. He proceeded to say more rude things on the way to informing me that the healer actually needed that neck. I explained that I’d waited for other need rolls and saw none, so I went for it. While I was explaining, I went over to the healer and traded them the neck. I’m not about to be that guy stealing loot from people filling other roles. I guess the healer must have just waited longer than I did to roll. The rude pugger and I exchanged a few more choice words, we killed the last boss, and that was the end. All the healer ever said was “thanks.”
The whole experience made me think of how many spoken and unspoken common courtesies there are to observe in a simple pug dungeon group. Truth be told, there’s a good amount of little things you can do to make a run either great, or horrible. I’ve decided to take it upon myself to hash out a list of do’s and don’ts, from each of the three possible roles you can fill in a dungeon. These are, of course, my opinion. Please take the lists with a grain of salt. Throughout this blog post, the word “dungeon” can be used interchangeably with “LFR” or “Raid.”
DPS Do’s:
-As much DPS as possible without getting yourself or others killed.
-Attack the tank’s primary target.
-Use threat dropping abilities if available/if you pull threat.
-Ask questions about fights you don’t know or don’t understand them.
-Provide courteous tips when you observe a group member who requires knowledge.
-Roll need on gear you absolutely need, greed or pass if you don’t.
-Minimize the amount of damage you take from avoidable sources (i.e. the same as “don’t stand in bad.”)
-Obey fight mechanics
-Utilize your interrupts
DPS Don’ts:
-Stand in bad.
-Pull for the tank (unless you’re a hunter and you have been instructed to pull.)
-Need on gear that is, black and white, for a role you’re not filling unless nobody else needs it (see rude pugger story above.)
-Need on gear inappropriate for your class and/or spec (i.e. a death knight needing on an agility polearm just because it’s a 2 hander with more weapon DPS.)
-Say abusive things to players for underperforming or any other reason.
-Drop group after getting the item you came to the dungeon for.
DPS do’s and don’ts make up the majority of dungeon grievances I’ve witnessed. Learning to heal and/or tank dungeons is something I encourage everybody to do at some point. Seeing things from all perspectives can make certain things in these lists make a lot more sense. Things like “don’t say abusive things” apply to all roles, so just assume that’s in every one of these lists. Same goes for standing in bad or being a greedy little loot pig. Healers and tanks aren’t perfect little angels either, so here are their lists:
Healer Do’s:
-Use the cooldowns Blizzard gave you. Don’t save them for a rainy day, they’re there to save people when you need them. I don’t care if its trash or that you won’t have archangel up in time to smite the crap out of the boss.
-Know the fights beforehand, where possible (“where possible” really only applies at the start of expansions when stuff is totally new to the majority, imo.)
-Ask questions if you’re uncertain of a fight’s mechanics. It’s much harder for the healer to cheese certain things.
-Come prepared to be a healer. Don’t heal in DPS gear or come wildly undergeared for heroics.
-Communicate with your group/tank if you need mana or time for some reason.
Healer Don’ts:
-Go AFK without announcing it
-Be stingy with cooldowns (see above.)
-Show up without out-of-combat mana replenishment. If I have to wait for you to regenerate 300k mana before the next pull, I’ll flip all the tables.
-Be wasteful or overly conservative with your mana. Most fights should be short enough that, if needed, you can use all of your healing tools. Even the mana inefficient ones. Just don’t use them exclusively
As the healer, you have an extremely important job. If you suck, the entire run will most likely suck. This is one of the things you might have to prepare for a little bit beforehand. I like to arm myself with knowledge so I don’t feel entirely unprepared. Sometimes I will do a dungeon as a DPS before I go heal it just so I know a little bit more about the place.
Tank Do’s:
-Observe the importance of your role and come prepared with tank gear and tank knowledge.
-Use your survival cooldowns, even on trash. A dead tank is usually a dead group. Your main job is to live.
-Be mindful of how fast you do pulls. Watch your healer’s mana. Pay attention to group chat and stop if/when you’re asked.
-Avoid standing in bad. This is doubly true because you’re already taking damage others aren’t. Also, if you’re keeping mobs in bad, you’re probably keeping melee DPS in there too.
-Use interrupts, stuns, and other CC to smooth out incoming damage.
-Watch for casters you don’t have threat on. They’re probably attacking your healer.
-Come prepared with addons that help you make sure you have threat on everything. Tidyplates is great for this.
-Keybinds. Make sure you can quickly taunt or blow survival cooldowns. Tank deaths can happen rapidly.
-Assume the DPS in your group don’t know about these lists.
Tank Don’ts”
-Chain pull if your healer’s mana can’t keep up
-Play like a DPS. Be observant, watch threat on groups of mobs. Don’t hump the DPS meter, even when you have 80k attack power from vengeance. You’re probably going to need to target swap and actively manage certain groups. You aren’t in the group to top the DPS meter.
-Tank in DPS or PVP gear. If you’re a guardian druid or a brewmaster monk, you still need to gear appropriately.
-Ignore mechanics you think your healer should just heal through. One of your jobs is minimizing the amount of damage you take.
-Ignore a bad healer. Communicate with people to see if there is something going inhibiting their performance. If you know you have a bad healer, play conservatively.
These lists aren’t always going to be simple to put into practice. There are all kinds of people who play the game, so you may just have to tolerate certain kinds of bad. If you are new to the game or to dungeons in general, observing these rules will make dungeon runs a much happier place. Pug is a pejorative term, but it doesn’t have to be.
Monday, October 29, 2012
This Was An Email To a Friend
He's trying to get a Darkmoon trinket. Poor guy asked what DMF stands for.
DMF stands for Darkmoon Fair. The fair has to be going on for you to actually be able to get the trinket. Otherwise, you just have the deck. Prices can go up or down depending on whether or not the DMF is going, or how soon it will start/end.
*WARNING THIS TURNED INTO A WALL OF TEXT RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN*
Here’s the breakdown for how many herbs you need to make 8 cards. The thing with these decks is that when the scribe makes the card, you get a totally random one each time. The deck you’re after uses serpents cards, ace through eight. If you look at the AH, the deck is just called Serpents Deck, and the trinket you can get from the deck is called Relic of Yu’lon. Additionally, the individual cards can be found by searching for “of serpents.”
Anyway, the last time I milled herbs for 2 cards, I had exactly 400 herbs. When you mill a stack of herbs you get two different pigments. One is a common pigment (Ink of Dreams) and the other is uncommon (Starlight Ink.) You need 20 of the green pigments to make the 10 Starlight inks the card requires. The thing is you can trade 10 Ink of dreams for 1 Starlight Ink. A full deck worth of Darkmoon cards takes 80 Starlight Ink and 24 Ink of Dreams. Or just 824 Ink of dreams if you’re using the ink trader vendor.
You get *about* 10 Starlight Ink and 70-ish Ink of Dreams per 200 herbs.
Bento’s request for 1000 herbs is about right because that should make 85 Starlight Inks. Warning…math inc. From that 1000 you get roughly 350 Ink of Dreams and 50 Starlight Ink. Enough for 8.5 cards.
Skip to the bottom for the punch line.
These are actual prices from the Kael’Thas Alliance AH:
Starlight InkX10 (102g per)
Ink of DreamsX3 (8g per)
Per card= 10 SI+3 IoD= 102X10+8X3= 1044g per card just from ink.
Fool’s cap=90g per stack
The raw cost of making 8 cards, just buying stuff from the AH is as follows:
Only buying herbs:
-Potentially 4500g
Only buying inks:
-8352g (buying 80 SI/24IoD)
-7900 (buying 50 SI/350 IoD) This is the AH value of your 1000 fool’s cap, by the way.
-6592g (buying 824 IoD)
Relic of Yu’lon (67500g per)
Serpent Deck (45500g per)
Aw, you skipped my math.
SO, (LOL TOO MUCH INFO) you have a few options here. The most cost effective way of doing this is just farming your own herbs and having Bento mill them. It’s much more expensive to buy the inks from the AH, so don’t do it unless you have to. If you have the means, I would probably just buy 1000 herbs from the AH, assuming you can get them for around 90g/stack or less. If Bento says he can get you a complete deck for 1000 herbs, that’s a pretty damn good deal, considering how each time you make a card you have a 1 in 36 chance of getting what you want. Even though you’re spending 4500g for those herbs, you’re getting a trinket worth 10x that much. If you have the money, just buy the herbs as they come up. Don’t spend over 90g per 20 and you’ll stay within that figure.
Technically you could buy 1000 herbs, have somebody mill them and make them into inks, sell the inks on the AH, then buy ANOTHER 1000 herbs to make your cards and you’d (by the numbers above) only be out of pocket 1100g total for a 67500g trinket. This is heavily dependent on there being a LOT of fool’s cap on you AH, which there is not.
After November’s Darkmoon Fair, prices for individual cards and trinkets should come down. Your server is selling decks and completed trinkets for a lot more money than mine. Demand won’t sustain prices like that. Still, the cheapest way of getting the deck will be farming yourself. 1000 herbs represents hours of farming though, so if you have the money, just buy them.
It’s been a slow morning.
DMF stands for Darkmoon Fair. The fair has to be going on for you to actually be able to get the trinket. Otherwise, you just have the deck. Prices can go up or down depending on whether or not the DMF is going, or how soon it will start/end.
*WARNING THIS TURNED INTO A WALL OF TEXT RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN*
Here’s the breakdown for how many herbs you need to make 8 cards. The thing with these decks is that when the scribe makes the card, you get a totally random one each time. The deck you’re after uses serpents cards, ace through eight. If you look at the AH, the deck is just called Serpents Deck, and the trinket you can get from the deck is called Relic of Yu’lon. Additionally, the individual cards can be found by searching for “of serpents.”
Anyway, the last time I milled herbs for 2 cards, I had exactly 400 herbs. When you mill a stack of herbs you get two different pigments. One is a common pigment (Ink of Dreams) and the other is uncommon (Starlight Ink.) You need 20 of the green pigments to make the 10 Starlight inks the card requires. The thing is you can trade 10 Ink of dreams for 1 Starlight Ink. A full deck worth of Darkmoon cards takes 80 Starlight Ink and 24 Ink of Dreams. Or just 824 Ink of dreams if you’re using the ink trader vendor.
You get *about* 10 Starlight Ink and 70-ish Ink of Dreams per 200 herbs.
Bento’s request for 1000 herbs is about right because that should make 85 Starlight Inks. Warning…math inc. From that 1000 you get roughly 350 Ink of Dreams and 50 Starlight Ink. Enough for 8.5 cards.
Skip to the bottom for the punch line.
These are actual prices from the Kael’Thas Alliance AH:
Starlight InkX10 (102g per)
Ink of DreamsX3 (8g per)
Per card= 10 SI+3 IoD= 102X10+8X3= 1044g per card just from ink.
Fool’s cap=90g per stack
The raw cost of making 8 cards, just buying stuff from the AH is as follows:
Only buying herbs:
-Potentially 4500g
Only buying inks:
-8352g (buying 80 SI/24IoD)
-7900 (buying 50 SI/350 IoD) This is the AH value of your 1000 fool’s cap, by the way.
-6592g (buying 824 IoD)
Relic of Yu’lon (67500g per)
Serpent Deck (45500g per)
Aw, you skipped my math.
SO, (LOL TOO MUCH INFO) you have a few options here. The most cost effective way of doing this is just farming your own herbs and having Bento mill them. It’s much more expensive to buy the inks from the AH, so don’t do it unless you have to. If you have the means, I would probably just buy 1000 herbs from the AH, assuming you can get them for around 90g/stack or less. If Bento says he can get you a complete deck for 1000 herbs, that’s a pretty damn good deal, considering how each time you make a card you have a 1 in 36 chance of getting what you want. Even though you’re spending 4500g for those herbs, you’re getting a trinket worth 10x that much. If you have the money, just buy the herbs as they come up. Don’t spend over 90g per 20 and you’ll stay within that figure.
Technically you could buy 1000 herbs, have somebody mill them and make them into inks, sell the inks on the AH, then buy ANOTHER 1000 herbs to make your cards and you’d (by the numbers above) only be out of pocket 1100g total for a 67500g trinket. This is heavily dependent on there being a LOT of fool’s cap on you AH, which there is not.
After November’s Darkmoon Fair, prices for individual cards and trinkets should come down. Your server is selling decks and completed trinkets for a lot more money than mine. Demand won’t sustain prices like that. Still, the cheapest way of getting the deck will be farming yourself. 1000 herbs represents hours of farming though, so if you have the money, just buy them.
It’s been a slow morning.
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