Chronicles of a Casual

Apotheosis goes 4/8 in H Dragon Soul! H Zon'Ozz Down!

2012-02-23T22:13:00.003-08:00

This will be a quickie. Tonight was a solid progression night for my new guild, Apotheosis. I had a good feeling we'd get heroic Zon'Ozz down tonight, but I figured there was also a fair chance that we'd spend some quality time wiping.

Much to my surprise, we killed him on the 6th pull! I continue to be amazed by how talented the players in this raid are. I cant say how happy I was to be a legitimate contributor to the DPS effort. From there we went on to drop heroic Hagara and do some excellent first attempts at H Ultraxion. 7.6% wipes=kill coming to a blog near you, soon!

In closing, it was another fun, educational raid night with Apotheosis. I derped a little on Hagara, but I learned a lot from the kill as well. Next time will result in a much better showing from yours truly. Here's a kill shot from Ozzy. Enjoy!

Wait, Where Did That Other "n" Come From?

2012-02-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Oh my a lot has happened since my words last graced this blog. My last post was my non-heroic BIS Ret list. Lol. Non-heroic.

Since I posted that, a lot has happened in the game. I learned how to tank with my face on my druid, Lifehack. I resurrected (ankh'd?) my shaman Syntaxx, LFR-style, and oh yeah, I server changed and got Jack into a new guild. And I (had to) change his name to Jacklalanne. Just a couple of changes.

Rewinding a bit, I'd like to go over the reasons why I'm no longer raiding in my previous guild, Cereal Killers. To start, I want to say that leaving wasn't a simple or easy decision. CK has some people in it I've been playing WoW with for at least five years. As a group of people, I've always enjoyed them immensely. Speaking specifically of our 10 man raid group, everybody involved was fun loving and awesome to play this game with. Sure, I bitched on twitter a lot. More than I should have.

Cereal Killers is a very casual guild with a few full time raiders that may or may not be in varying degrees of disenchantment with World of Warcraft. We weren't on the bleeding edge of progression by a long shot. Our first Madness of Deathwing kill was, I think, three weeks ago. Something I'm still proud of them for. Given the casual nature of our approach to raiding, sometimes I found issues with the way we dealt with our own progression. Those issues weren't the main reason I left the guild. They were a factor, yes, but a minor one.

My biggest issue with CK raiding was the hours. Our schedule was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, from 10PM to 1AM. I have a job. That job has me out of bed around 7-7:30AM 5 days a week. Several months of getting 6 hours or so of sleep 3 days a week was starting to wear me down. Migraines, grouchiness, even confusion were starting to seep into my life in exchange for raiding. After one devastating migraine, I decided it wasn't worth it and I started seriously looking for alternate raid groups.

Along the way, changing guilds started feeling like a breakup. It was, in fact, an emotional experience when I finally got around to saying goodbye to the raid. I still have alts in the guild, but leaving felt so permanent and serious. It hit me right in the gut. WoW is such a social experience for me. I don't think any of my CK guildies ever read this blog, but if they did I'd hope they know the reasons I left weren't personal. I think I did my best to convey that to everybody before I left.

That brings us up to the next big question: where did I go? Almost since I started really using Twitter in earnest, I've followed a player named Tikari. He's helped me with my blog, my rogue, and even just the game in general. I like Tikari, in as much as you can like a person whom you've only really associated with in bits of 140 characters or less. Tikari is a member of the guild Apotheosis on Eldre'Thalas. Through Twitter I found several of his guildies and followed them as well. One was Kurnmogh, who came recommended to me when I asked my tweeps about a good Paladin to follow. Kurn just so happens to be the Guildmaster of Apotheosis.

For several months now Kurn has been looking for a Ret paladin. Given the fact that their raid times end when mine used to begin, they were initially very attractive for that reason alone. Upon closer inspection, Apotheosis was alluring for so much more. After much deliberation, and consulting my lovely girlfriend (whom my raid times matter to very very much,) I decided to apply.

The application process with Apotheosis was ridiculously pleasant. Whereas I've apped to heroic raiding guilds before and found the experience to be wooden and formal, everybody I talked to from Apotheosis was welcoming and nice. True, the application process was structured, but why shouldn't it be? When I applied, I started getting tweets from people in the guild giving me encouragement and preemptive welcomes. I really cant say enough for how nice everybody was to me. In the end I was invited to run a trial period with the guild. As of our first raid last night, I feel I've really hit a home run here.

Last night we walked into Heroic Dragon Soul, 25 man, and handily downed Morchok and Yorsahj. The fact that I'm killing heroic bosses in current content is somewhat mind blowing, given the types of guilds I've always been in. Everything was organized and people did their jobs amazingly. I did okay. Morchok has significantly more movement on heroic, which will take some getting used to. Yorsahj hasn't ever been one of my favorite fights as a ret, but I think I did well. I did more DPS on that fight than I ever have, but I ended up being something like 11th or 13th on DPS. That's how good these players are. One of the best parts of the night, right behind when I won this hunk of burning love, was when Tikari whispered me and actually gave me feedback on my performance. I love it. We ended raid doing some progression work on heroic Zon'ozz. Our attempts were heartening, with one having the boss below 59%. I'm so excited to go back and contribute.

This post is a little cheesy probably, but I can't deny that I'm happy with the way things have gone. Even if I hadn't gotten the #2 BIS weapon for a ret paladin, I would still be ecstatic with my new guild. I'm going to do everything I can to make this trial a slam dunk so they keep me around.

4.3 Retribution BIS List, Non-Heroic Version

2011-12-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

Tuesday's raid brought a big change: now I'm main spec retribution. Not only does that mean that I should change the banner on this blog, but I need to compile a loot list! What follows is a non-heroic raiding ret paladin's BIS list. Keep in mind that I'm basically stealing info from this MMO-Champ thread, and credit goes to the OP and all that. I'm just making this so it's close at hand for me and any ret users that may come across this blog. Enjoy!

Just for clarification, my stat priorities are hit/expertise to cap>strength>mastery>crit>haste. I don't have a lot of theorycraft to offer in the crit vs haste debate, and I think at the non-heroic BIS gear level it doesn't really matter that much. For what it's worth, ret gurus are saying that crit sims out better at high gear levels. Whatever. Right now I have 6% unbuffed, so IDGAF about crit really. Without further ado, here's the list.

Head: Helmet of Radiant Glory Source: Warmaster Blackhorn
Neck: Necklace of Black Dragon's Teeth Source: The VP vendor in your home city (1250 VP)
Shoulders: Backbreaker Spaulders Source: Spine of Deathwing
Back: Dreamcrusher Drape Source: The VP vendor in your home city (1250 VP)
Chest: Battleplate of Radiant Glory Source: Ultraxion
Bracers: Rockhide Bracers Source: Morchok
Hands: Gauntlets of Radiant Glory Source: Warlord Zon'ozz
Belt: Runescriven Demon Collar Source: Hagara the Stormbinder
Legs: Legplates of Radiant Glory Source: Yor'sahj The Unsleeping
Boots: Treads of Crushed Flesh Source: Warlord Zon'ozz
Ring 1: Breathstealer Band Source: Shared boss loot
Ring 2: Curled Twilight Claw Source: Ultraxion
Trinket 1: Eye of Unmaking Source: Spine of Deathwing
Trinket 2: Bone Link Fetish Source: Shared boss loot
Weapon Option 1: Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps Source: Madness of Deathwing
Weapon Option 2: Experimental Specimen Slicer Source: Yor'sahj The Unsleeping
Weapon Option 3: Ataraxis, Cudgel of the Warmaster Source: Warmaster Blackhorn
Relic: Gutripper Shard Source: The VP vendor in your home city (700 VP)

Out of the three weapons, I'm pretty sure the sword from Madness is going to come out on top. Right now I'm using the LFR flavor and it's absurdly awesome. The proc is worth 3k DPS, easy. It sucks that it lacks secondary stats. Wait, no it doesn't. It spawns tentacles that do 3k DPS. That's more than our hunter's fucking wind serpent does in SV spec.

As it is, I'm okay with having a set that's a little more drop reliant vs having a lot of VP pieces. Thanks to LFR, I already have the watered down versions of the head, shoulders, belt, and sword.

In closing, all I have to say is thank GOD for transmogrification:

My UI/Inquisition Tracking

2011-12-12T13:40:00.000-08:00

The other day, @Orvillius asked me a couple of things about how I track Inquisition in Jack's UI.

As it is, I'm very satisfied with the UI I've settled on. I use this same configuration with all of my characters and I think it does exactly what I need without being too flashy. I've tried more elaborate interfaces with artsy panels and boxes around everything, but I've ended up preferring simplicity over flash.

To immediately address the question about inquisition, I use an addon called Retribution FCFS helper, or CLCRet. In the above picture you can see how the addon shows me my available cooldowns (wings, zealotry, guardian, and trinkets/synapse springs) in addition to my "next" ability.

Here's a shot after I've opened and am about to put up Inquisition for the first time. You can see the addon's suggestion in the center there. Side note: obviously I use the standard Blizzard auras for Divine Purpose and The Art of War procs.

The tracker I set up in CLCRet for Inquisition is visible in this shot. Setting the addon up to work in this fashion wasn't too difficult utilizing what I learned from this EJ thread. The helpful information w/screenshots is about two thirds of the way down the page.

This shot shows you what it looks like when I've got most of my cooldowns burning. CLCRet is counting down the time left on Avenging Wrath and Zealotry while also tracking inquisition. Zomg tentacles.

Finally, this one shows how CLCRet tracks overall cooldown times after the abilities in question have run their course.

I'm posting this shot just because I have three tentacles up and it looks amazing. I'm so looking forward to raid on tuesday. Love this sword.

In closing, here's a list of the UI addons (excluding DBM, Omen, etc.) visible in these shots:

Pitbull4 -Unit Frames

Dominos -Action Bars

Recount -Damage/healing/etc meter

Tiptac -Tooltip replacement

CLCRet -Ret Rotation Helper/CD Tracker

Power Auras Classic -Aura/CD/Event tracker

Sexymap -Map replacement

Chocolate bar broker display (with several useful plugins) Broker display

OmniCC -Actionbar based cooldown display

ForteXorcist -Cooldown timeline bar

Vuhdo -Healing frames/Raid frames

MIkScrollingBattleText -Combat Text

Ret Procs, Why Debuffs Matter, and How RNG Killed Ultraxion

2011-12-10T10:59:00.001-08:00

On Wednesday night, Cereal Killers downed Ultraxion in 10 man normal Dragon Soul. If you've read my little snippet of a post, you can see that we barely beat the enrage. I even think using the word "beat" is somewhat of a stretch.

I'm only going off DBM's text that informed me that Ultraxion died after exactly six minutes here. Since there wasn't a warning for the boss's Twilight Eruption cast, I think we may have had the fight finished at exactly the 360 second mark.

At the time of the kill we had obviously gotten the main mechanics of the fight down well enough. Our only hiccup was when one of our tanks died at the two minute mark. From what I can see on the WoL parse, it looks like Bento took a dirt nap because of healer derp. Out of 13 total attempts, five of them were more or less at the enrage. By try 13, we'd all more or less decided that we just didn't have the group DPS required for the encounter. As you can see, we managed to pull it off in true CK fashion, right at the enrage.

Wipetown, Population: 10

Min/Maxing and Enrage Timers:

Ultraxion and my guild's experience with him is representative of our approach to raiding. At first glance, none of us really knew we'd have trouble with the enrage timer. Last week's attempts had me in a healing slot with our discipline priest on DPS duty. That wipefest never amounted to anything close to a kill, so we didn't even consider the lofty-ish DPS requirement. In the guild, it's accepted, without any pomp or arrogance on my part, that I'm a better Ret Paladin than Syuveil is Shadow Priest. Out of the ten of us in the raid, it seems like Syuveil (who goes by "Hammer," and will henceforth be called that,) and myself were the only ones aware that we might need to change our DPS makeup a little to find success. Hammer is our raid leader and he did a couple of things this week that were key to getting us the kill. The first was putting me in as a DPS. The second thing involved our raid group's mage, BLS.

B always shows up to raid with a great, positive attitude. I absolutely love having him there. He's also a pretty quick study of fight mechanics, which is fantastic too. The one thing he's always struggled at is doing DPS appropriate for his gear level. Now, if you're going back to the screenshot of our kill and looking at his 22k, you're probably thinking that's a bit low. It is, but it's huge for a couple of reasons. Prior to raid on Wednesday, Hammer and B had a session together where BLS actually had to learn to play fire spec, from scratch. Yup, he didn't know how to raid fire at all. Hammer taught him. I can't say enough how proud I am of both of these guys for stepping up, taking the extra effort, and coming through in a big way to help the raid. Given that most of the time this sort of thing doesn't happen in Cereal Killers (though it should.)

Hammer and BLS are an example of the kind of min/max tweaking that we, and other fairly casual raid groups, may have to engage in to kill Ultraxion. Coming out of 4.2 and ultra-nerfed Firelands and going into Dragon Soul, it was pretty easy to be satisfied with our minimal effort. In the first week we went 4/8, with absolutely no wipefests. We actually hit the enrage timer on Yor'sahj once, but I think that was actually our first attempt. After wiping at 60k, we made an adjustment and won that fight pretty easily. Ultraxion changed the game by forcing us to actually think of the fight in terms of absolute minimum DPS. Here's a bit of numbers to show you how we did it, and why it was nerdscream worthy.

Ultraxion's Demise: The Numbers

Here's a link to our WoL parse for the kill. Ultraxion has, in ten man normal, 56 million HP and a strict six minute enrage timer. That means your raid has to do 155,555 raid DPS in order to kill the boss in 360 seconds. Removing healers from the equation puts each tank and DPS at 22.2k required. Cereal killers provided 33.5k of that raid requirement from our two tanks and our smite healing maniac Hammer. That leaves a required minimum DPS of 24.4k for the remaining five players.

As you can see from the parse, only two of our DPS accomplished the minimum requirement. My effective DPS was 28.8k, which allowed for a bit of breathing room, but only lowered the minimum requirement for the other four people to 23.5k. Only one person managed to hit this minimum. Our mage and our shadow priest were at 22.6 and 21.6k, respectively. According to WoL, we eeked out 156,302 total raid DPS.

Given that our average item level throughout the group should be at or above 378, I feel we can do much better. What follows is a few ways we can improve. These tips are obviously universal and in fact are more or less things you should probably do all the time anyway.

Missing Debuffs, Auras, and Optimizing Heroism Damage

For Ultraxion attempts, our raid has the following DPS composition: Shadow priest, fire mage, survival hunter, enhancement shaman, and retribution paladin. We're missing both physical (like Blood Frenzy) and magic (Earth and Moon,) debuffs on the boss. Since we don't have a boomkin, warrior or rogue, we have to rely on our trusty hunter to fill in those gaps. Unfortunately for us, Judicator didn't have a wind serpent around for a magic damage debuff. I derped pretty hard when he told me he didn't have one. Given that a significant portion of our raid's damage is coming through the magic side, an 8% bonus would have been a ridiculous boon to us on this kill.

One other obvious thing we're not doing here is pre-potting, or even using potions at all. I'll be doing this next week and encouraging others to do it. Most likely I'll come prepared with a supply of stuff to hand out. Min/maxing like this has never come easy to us. The fact that crafting mats are outrageously overpriced right now isn't going to help that at all, but that's a different post.

Aside from utilizing potions and available debuffs, I think we could squeeze some more effectiveness out of our heroism use. We don't use heroism countdowns. Usually the raid leader just designates a general time for hero and a mage or shaman to cast the buff. The specified person just kind of fires off the spell without any sort of raid notification. This haphazard usage actually matters on fights like this. If we'd done a few hundred thousand less damage, I wouldn't have my shiny new tier chest and the guild wouldn't be working on soak-the-damage-loot ship. Certain cooldowns must be used before heroism for a maximum benefit. Our shaman has it easy because he knows to drop his spirit wolves before he casts heroism. Our shadow priest could get a decent benefit from his heroism burn by knowing to use his shadowfiend. Simple things like this, when combined with my other improvements, could make our next kill night and day easier than our first.

Finally, when player deaths occur, using multiple sources of heroism to re-cast can help compensate for lost DPS. This was something we actually planned for if we died and got rezzed by Timeloop.

Last Resorts

We're bad at calling out for an iceblock or paladin bubble in the event of a low % wipe. This is an easy fix that could be beneficial, potentially. If we follow my suggestions above, we really shouldn't need this. However, having last resorts ready and waiting is going to pay off 100% of the time.

Finally, How Ridiculous Procs and RNG Killed Ultraxion

I am a paladin. My main raiding spec is holy, but I'm often utilized as a DPS. Encounters like Ultraxion (read: where DPS matters,) are where I shine because I can usually do very competitive DPS, which helps the raid overcome things like high boss health or short enrage timers.

Retribution paladins have gotten some serious love in patch 4.3. here's a list awesome stuff that lets ret pew with a little more pew:

-Two Handed Weapon Specialization got a buff. Used to be 20%

-Seal of Truth got buffed in a couple of ways. First, Censure damage got a significant pre-4.3 buff. Secondly, Judgements got buffed in the form of a +20% damage done per stack of Censure vs 10% pre-4.3.

-Blessing of Might now gives 20% bonus melee attack power vs 10% in 4.2.

Now, it was openly stated that these changes, were part of Blizzard's plan to make ret less bursty and reliant on proc damage. Given my experience with ret so far, I think the 4.3 changes failed in these two respects. However, it is still extremely obvious to me that ret has been buffed. I definitely pew with more pew than I did in 4.2.

All that being said, lets look at the correlation between my procs and DPS across a few Ultraxion attempts. Of our 13 pulls, only six of them were over five minutes. These will be the parses I look at, in order to be able to compare each one as equally as possible.

First, here is a graph representing the average DPS done for all twelve wipes:

As you can see, I managed to do 25.5k DPS on average, which is sufficient for the requirement this fight carries. Since I'm really only looking at five wipes out of twelve (which I cant figure out how to make a graph for without using excel,) it's important to note that over those attempts I averaged out to 25.08k DPS. Could be better, but it is again, sufficient for the encounter if the other DPS are on par.

Secondly, here is a chart containing my two DPS procs, Divine Purpose and The Art of War.

Again, this graph is a cumulative collection of data from all twelve wipes. 146 Divine Purpose procs divided by twelve attempts comes out to just over twelve procs per attempt. Keep in mind that this is skewed to be a bit low because it's including a lot of 2-4 minute fights. The real average over the five relevant wipes is 15.8 procs per attempt. This comes out to 2.8 Divine Purpose procs per minute, based on an average fight time of 5 minutes 41 seconds.

Art of war procs are similarly grouped, although wipe #2 had a stupidly low number which has skewing effects. 180 total AoW procs comes out to 15 per fight, based on the twelve wipes. The five wipe numbers come out to a much higher 21 procs per fight. That's 3.7PPM if you're wondering.

So, to recap, the average wipe was 5 minutes 41 seconds with about 16 DP procs and 21 AoW. These numbers combined to net me an average of 25,000 DPS. Obviously other factors come into play for DPS production, like random crit streaks and whether or not Landslide procs line up with other significant DPS events. This analysis is based entirely on speculating that these two procs have a profound impact on my boss damage.

Now, for the moment of truth: The graph of my procs for the Ultraxion kill:

Both of my procs for this fight were above the average for the five wipes. It's noteworthy to point out that attempts 9 and 12 were the only two that had a higher number of The Art of War procs. Divine Purpose procs comes in at an outrageous count of 29. That's almost twice the average number over the previous five attempts. Here's a graph of my DPS for that fight:

My DPS comes in almost 4k higher than the average from wipes. That's some pretty serious RNG. Dear Blizzard, you didn't fix how proc reliant Ret paladins are. Thanks for the DPS buff anyway!

Proc Chaining

Divine purpose procs come from the talent bearing the same name. Due to the nature of how this mechanic works, everything a ret paladin does damage with (except consecrate,) has a chance to proc DP. That means procs can cause procs. This is an important concept because I know it's what's responsible for the 29 Divine Purpose buffs that drove my DPS up in our Ultraxion kill. DP allows DPS to increase so much because it has several effects. First, it grossly simplifies Inquisition uptime. Taking 3 crusader strike cycles out of the equation means casting more Templar's Verdict (TV), which is the most ideal use of DP unless Inquisition is about to fall off. More TV is the second benefit to DP. The third is proc chaining. The Divine Purpose talent states that ret DPS abilities can proc the talent. Most importantly, what this means is that the more abilities you cast per minute, the greater chance you get to proc. That means increased procs can chain and allow for TV spamming. Art of War procs have the same effect. Exorcism is a fantastic ability that does high damage in its self, but the procs themselves allow for more potential instances for DP to activate.

The proc frenzy is something you either live or die by (sometimes literally) as a ret paladin. I'm looking forward to next week to see if I can best my numbers and improve both myself and the raid with some of the tips I've covered in this post. Also, I've spent some time in LFR and have added Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps and Backbreaker Spaulders to my ret set.

LFR was a great success. Stupid easy.

Along with getting Creche of the Final Dragon from our kill, I'm hoping to see an increase in output. Jack and his new tentacle friends have some surprises in store for Ultraxion!

Rawr tentacles casting mind flay for the win.

Dragon Soul Update: 5/8

2011-12-08T00:26:00.001-08:00

Tonight was a triumphant night for Cereal Killers. After 12 wipes on Ultraxion, we finally managed to muster the DPS to kill him EXACTLY AT THE ENRAGE. Holy shit. I'm very proud of everybody for pulling it together tonight. For clarity, I was filling a DPS role on this fight. Here's the obligatory screenshot:

Kick. Ass. Tomorrow: Blackhorn and beyond. Looking forward to it.

Minipost: Things I've Got My Eye On This Week in Raid

2011-12-05T23:21:00.001-08:00

This is just a quick and dirty list of things I'm gunning for in Dragon Soul. Making a list of this stuff is as much for you as it is for me. I've never been one to have a BIS list of stuff hanging out in front of me during raid.

Morchok:
Petrified Fungal Heart
-Uh, spirit, haste? Yes please.
Vagaries of Time. I may just refer to this as Vag of Time in the future.
-No spirit, but definitely a nice throughput weapon. I'm not having huge mana issues so far anyway.
Rockhide Bracers
-Offspec item. Beautiful stats. Probably have to roll vs our pally tank on this (his OS is ret as well.) He likes to pretend to DPS sometimes.
I'll let Pillarfoot Greaves get sharded or taken for mogging. I'm getting Silver Sabatons of Fury this week, courtesy of my gracious warrior alt.

Warlord Zon'ozz
Gauntlets of the Corrupted Conqueror
-Crit>Mastery for the way I heal holy. Not ideal stats, but I'd be happy with this drop.
Seal of the Seven Signs
-Looks like a fantastic throughput trinket. Look at all that int and haste! Yes please.
Treads of Crushed Flesh
-Absolutely delicious ret boots. Om nom two red sockets w/str bonus. Fantastic.

Yor'sahj The Unsleeping
Heartblood Wristplates
-Hell yes. Perfect holy wrists
Experimental Specimen Slicer
-The 3.6 speed on this 2h axe make it kind of a butterface, but I still think it's a solid upgrade over regular Sulfuras. Beautiful stats.
I'll probably pass on a tier drop from Yor'sahj. Greaves of Radiant Glory are a bit meh with all that mastery. In a perfect world, I'll end up with Pyrium Legplates of Purified Evil. Eight essences is going to suck to come by this early in the patch, so I'll probably hang onto t12 for a while in the leg slot.

Hagara the Stormbinder
Shoulders of the Corrupted Conqueror
-Perfectly itemized for holy. Probably one of the higher priority items I can get from currently killable bosses.
Runescriven Demon Collar
-Very nice ret belt. I'd probably drop that haste for expertise/hit. Depending on other drops.

Ultraxion
Chest of the Corrupted Conqueror
-I will absolutely be rolling on this item. Breastplate of Radiant Glory is beautifully itemized.
Dragonfracture Belt
-All this haste+red sockets+int bonuses is making my head spin. Must-have belt.
Ledger of Revolting Rituals
-There's no way I'll be able to roll on this over our druid/priests this week. Eventually this non-heroic BIS item will be mine.
Curled Twilight Claw and Creche of the Final Dragon would find a good home in my ret set. Looks like this boss is going to be in high demand.

I almost forgot the shared boss loot!
Windward Heart
-A great replacement for Eye of Blazing Power
Signet of Suturing
-Perfect ring. Must-have item.
Bone Link Fetish
-I believe this is a BIS trinket for non-heroic DS paladins. Do want.
Breathstealer Band
-I haven't checked out all of the rings from this encounter, but this one is likely to be sought after by me. I love my mastery.

Getting down these five bosses is a reasonable expectation for this week. If we elect to skip Firelands, which is likely to happen, we should be able to achieve this. Tomorrow is raid night and I'm excited to have another go at Dragon Soul!

Paladins, Stabbing Dargons, and Armor Dye: the 4.3 Post

2011-12-04T17:33:00.001-08:00

The time has come for me to chime in on patch 4.3, the most recent update to World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. It's Sunday so it hasn't been quite a week since the patch dropped. That being said, I think there has been sufficient time to get a solid impression of what this content release is all about. First off: Paladins!
Paladins: Holy and Retribution
If you've payed attention during this blog, you should know by now that I don't play protection spec. That may/may not change, but that's a whole different barrel of monkeys. So far, I feel like this has been a great patch for ret and holy. As it is, I even feel like I wouldn't be surprised if paladins got nerfed in a couple of places. Don't misinterpret and read that as "4.3 made paladins OP ZOMG," I just wouldn't be surprised to see some "balance" adjustments.

I think it's safe to say that the big thing this patch for holy spec paladins is Holy Radiance. If you've been living under a rock, primary changes to that spell are the cast time and lack of cooldown. Oh, it also generates holy power when you cast it. Holy is my main spec and I was eagerly anticipating the play-style changes this was going to bring to paladins. At first blush, I was outraged that HR was gaining a cast time. Simply put, I was used to the way the spell fit into my raid and dungeon encounters and I wasn't happy about the possible nerf implications. Having spent this week in Dragon Soul, 4.3's new raid, I can say that my worries are gone. Holy radiance is now outrageously powerful. Ask any of the druids I follow on Twitter. Being able to spam cast a spell that costs 8198 mana presents a fun new mana conservation challenge. All in all, I like the change.

Retribution paladins and melee in general got some serious love this patch. In the essence of time, I'm not going to go link crazy here. The buffs to ret include a buff to the two-handed weapon specialization (from 20% to 25% bonus damage,) and a buff to judgement damage. Melee DPS got a buff in the form of +10% attack power from several different sources. I haven't raided since the changes, but I can definitely feel the buffs when I'm in a five man. Blizzard tried to make it seem like the main motivation behind these ret changes was to make us feel less reliant on procs and cooldowns. I don't really think they were as successful as they could have been. Jack is still either a monster or a decent dps, depending on how lucky I get on procs. That being said, I'm loving getting buffed. Putting up bigger numbers is always a happy time for me.

Transmogrification
Here's the Cliff's Notes version of this section: Jack likes to transmog. This ability to reuse older armor and weapon skins is just plain fun. I was never one of those people who had a special set of gear to cavort around in town in, mainly because of bag space. Transmogrification actually causes additional issues with bag space (mainly bank space,) BUT who cares because it's AWESOME! Look, Jack has a rough mog set for his holy gear:

Here's a link to Jack's AWESOME ret set if you missed it before. Mogging is a new added timesink, which in my opinion is a necessary evil. I find myself more and more with nothing I really *want* to be doing, and for some reason I kind of like farming old content.

Exhibit A:

Dragon Soul

The guild I'm in, Cereal Killers on Kael'Thas, is currently 4/8 in DS. The bosses we haven't killed yet are Ultraxion, Warmaster Blackhorn, and the two Deathwing encounters. Getting half way through a brand new raid in one week is something I can be happy with in this guild. To make a long story short, due to the fact that we're a mixture of people who do and don't give a shit, actually killing new content always feels like SUPER WIN.

Ded. One Shot Ded. Pwned.

Out of the encounters we've successfully killed, and the one we've attempted but can't down, I think they're all pretty fun. Morchok is 100% a gimmee boss. If your group cant get past it, you're either woefully undergeared, or you probably should go back to playing Farmville. None of the encounters, save Ultraxion, really gave us a lot of trouble. Warlord Zon'ozz was an adjustment. We've never played tennis with General Vezax's cousin before, so we had to get a rhythm down to avoid tank deaths and other ridiculously easy shit. Zon'ozz was my intro to the new Holy Radiance spam healing method. Honestly, spammable AOE heals kind of trivializes huge raid damage. I'm not going to lose any sleep over that, but I can see some players complaining about the new HR contributing to what makes raiding too "easy."

Out of the five bosses we've engaged in Dragon soul, Ultraxion is the only one that we haven't bested yet. For some reason we have a bunch of players that are struggling to wrap their head around the "press this button and you won't die" mechanic. I'll spare you the recap of my nerdrage, but let's just say that I wasn't happy. For the most part, this encounter looks tremendously easy. I'm hopeful we'll stab the dargon next week and move on to Blackhorn.

As a related side note, I gave up the tier token to get my shoulders this week in favor of gearing our priest. He's a great guy who actually knows his shit in raids, so I don't have any regrets. Besides, he was super happy to drop his 359 birdbaths. I'm really hoping the good karma comes back around this week because those t13 shoulders are sooooooooooooooo delicious.

5 Man Hour of Twilight Dungeons

I'm going to keep this section short and sweet, just like the new 5 mans. End Time, Hour of Twilight, and Well of Eternity are all engaging, fun, and full of interesting lore. Lore might be one of the things I'm enjoying most out of all the new content.

I'm glad Blizzard made the loot from these dungeons equal in item level to the previous tier, instead of being slightly inferior like they made stuff from Zandoms. For people like myself (read: altoholics) the loot in HoT heroics serve wonderfully to keep alts geared and even to fill holes in the offspec gear of my main.

Other 4.3 Things I don't Care Much About

This is the part of this post where I would talk about the raid finder and the Darkmoon Fair. To be perfectly honest, the DMF has never been something I've taken interest in. The only thing that really interests me is the replica gear. I might farm out a set, but that depends on how ADD I'm feeling.

I'm being kind of a chicken about the raid finder. Pugging results in frustration way too much for me to want to jump into an (albeit watered down) end tier raid with 9-24 people that I don't know/cant communicate with. That being said, I might venture into LFR eventually once my warrior gets some more toys from the new 5 mans. Right now Jack is telling me he's too good for LFR raids. We'll see how he feels after a couple of weeks of good or bad drops in normal DS.

I was going to post a screenshot from the auction house, but Blogger is having a seizure. The shot had some uncut epic gems up for 7k. That's just ridiculous. Fuck that noise. Come on Blizzard, just put the gems in without making them ultra rare.

Prospects For The Week

Normally I do a dedicated post for this, but since this entry is so lengthy, I figured I'd just make it longer! This week I'm hoping we see some efficiency and continued success in Dragon Soul. Actually getting down 3-4 bosses on Tuesday night would be a great success. Judging by the effort we put in last week to get our kills, I think that should be possible. I try not to underestimate our capacity for Derp, so we'll see. Per @kurnmogh's 4.3 holy paladin gear guide, I'm going to be getting VP on an alt to grab the BOE boots from the valor vendor. Other than that, I'm going to continue farming HoT dungeons for useful drops. My warrior is hoping to get his t1 pants from Molten core this week so I can flesh out his Might set.

In closing, I just want to thank all of you who actually read this blog. It's a labor of love and it makes it that much better when I know people are actually checking out my stuff.

Transmogapalooza!

2011-12-04T01:57:00.001-08:00

Greetings! It's been a few days since I've made a post and I wanted to check in real quick before bed with a couple of fun screenies and a brief update.

As most of you know, patch 4.3 hit live servers last Tuesday. Among a lot of big important things, 4.3 brought the dawn of the era of transmogrification. I've spent the last few weeks preparing a few potential sets for my paladin. Ideally I'd like to have at least two different setups that I'm really happy with (one for each spec.) As of tonight, I'm 90% done with my retribution mog set. View:

Mmmm so period correct.

Still on the fence with that cloak.

I say the set is 90% finished because I don't plan on sticking with World Breaker. It's an appropriate weapon for a t5 tribute, but I feel the skin is a bit more warrior than it is paladin. Hammer of the Naaru is my mace of choice for this Crystalforge t5 mog masterpiece. Sure, it's a lot of purple, but I just think the giant purple stone on the end of that mace flows perfectly with the look. The cloak pictured is off Illidan and I'm happy with it for the most part. Once I get my hammer and finalize the look, I may cycle through a few level 70 back pieces and pick my favorite.

As you can see, I'm sporting an Aldor Tabard, which I managed to obtain in one night of farming. Big ups to my guildie Teska for helping me go from neutral to exalted in less than two hours. 71 Fel Armaments go a long way. A ridiculously long way. Going from neutral to 3/4 of the way through revered happened with zero farming. I did the rest by running through some quests in Netherstorm. The tabard is really the icing on the cake here. I think it really ties the set together. I'm very happy with the overall look.

If you're interested in the pieces I mogged to get this look, here's a list:
Crystalforge War-Helm -Head
Crystalforge Shoulderbraces -Shoulders
Shroud of the Highbourne -Back
Crystalforge Breastplate -Chest
World Breaker -Weapon
Crystalforge Gauntlets -Gloves
Crystalforge Greaves -Legs
Boots of Courage Unending -Feet
Aldor Tabard -Tabard

With a group, none of the above are hard to get. The belt is craftable, and the boots drop off of SSC trash (and thus are easily solo-farmable.) Getting an Aldor tab represents either a lot of farming, or some AH/guildie luck. Like I said, I'm super happy with how my set turned out. Happy enough to devote this ridiculous blog post to it.

Tomorrow should bring an obligatory "stepping into DS and what's cool about patch 4.3" post, so stay tuned. Cereal Killers took our maiden voyage into the new end-of-expansion raid this week and I've come back with a ton of thoughts on the content. First though, bed.

Prospects 4.3 Edition

2011-11-27T21:16:00.001-08:00

As many of you know, it was announced that patch 4.3 will be released on Tuesday, November 29th. The guys over at Tankspot noted during Legendary that this could be the biggest non-expansion content patch ever.

Come Tuesday there will indeed be a mountain of new content. I have mixed feelings about the raid/dungeon content. Yes, there will be new awesomeness to be had in the form of loot and shit that hasn't been farmed to death; this is definitely full of upside. I can feel a lot of people cringing when I say this, but I think I'm a little sad that Firelands is going to become a secondary raid. I've only killed Ragnaros twice and as a result, I feel like I'm only just now reaching my stride in that particular raid. Regardless, our group has matured a lot so I'm hopeful about our chances in Dragon Soul. The problem with CK and new content is that most of our raiders are bad at doing their homework.

Dungeons and raids aside, I'm excited to check out the new changes to ret. As it is I feel like ret is a fairly solid DPS. From what I've heard, the 4.3 changes will move rets even further in that direction. Holy has some interesting things coming on the 29th too. Spamming holy radiance sure looks fun. That's only moderate sarcasm.

One thing I've had very mixed feelings about is the Annual Pass thing Blizzard is pushing for World of Warcraft. Basically it's a 12 month subscription commitment. The only reason I'm really considering it (I just pay month to month right now,) is for the mount that's being offered with the pass. Firstly, I can't decide if it's worth it or not. Here's a Youtube video of it from MMO Champion. It's cool, I guess. What appeals to me most, and I feel I've been manipulated here a bit, is that it's exceedingly paladin-y. The wings just seem to be a bit flimsy. I know the mount is themed as a tribute to this guy, but I think Blizzard could have done it better. The mount will be available on Tuesday by those who have agreed to the 12 month subscription. I just find myself wondering where WoW will be in a year. It already seems to be on it's death bed more than just a little. The pass and the mount will be an option for a while still I think, so I'll mull it over for a while.

I'm not going to drone on about everything in the patch. The new five mans are probably what I'm most excited about, but only because I should be able to fill in some gaps in my gear. Other than that, I'm on the fence about Dragon Soul. I'll get back to you on that.

Blog Formatting

2011-11-27T21:04:00.001-08:00

Tonight I went through all the images in this blog to make them less problematic for mobile users. As a result they're kind of small on a full desktop browser. This blog gets viewed by a lot of my friends in real life, but mostly on their phones. Huge images were causing really annoying navigation issues on the mobile version of the site. Non-mobile users can click the resized images to see them in their full glory. As always, I love feedback. Feel free to leave comments or contact me via twitter at @Colinjhawkins. This change should have happened a long time ago. Mobile users, go forth and enjoy!

Blogging Challenge Day 6: My Desk

2011-11-27T20:07:00.001-08:00

I've fallen a bit behind some of the other bloggers who are participating in this challenge, so I thought I'd do a double post day. This one should be short and sweet.
This is where I play WoW 99% of the time. The other 1% is when I'm house sitting. Pictured is my lovely 24" Asus display, my Razer Naga mouse and Razer headphones. I love them both. My keyboard was $15 and it is fantastic. Also pictured: an image of my girlfriend and me, on a trip we took to Hawaii 2 years ago. Also also pictured: the box with my SSD in it and my WoW install discs. Am sadface. That's another post. I was watching/listening to @Devolore's HRag progression stream while cleaning today. Anyway, this is my desk, in all its glory. I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into my glamorous life.

Blogging Challenge Day 5: My Favorite Game Items

2011-11-27T16:54:00.001-08:00

I'm way too appreciative of the coolness of in-game stuff to do a post like this in a timely fashion. Over the time I've spent playing World of Warcraft, I've acquired a lot of...stuff. Ever since the first expansion I was a part of (when Wrath of The Lich King came out) hit, I've saved stuff. Transmogging was made for suckers like me because I'm going to use the shit out of it, and probably void storage when I run out of bag space on all of my toons.

Picking out favorite items is both easy and difficult. There's a ton of stuff in game that I'm fond of. A lot of things that fall into this category, however, aren't items in my possession. I think it's most realistic to make this post about my favorite items. Stuff I've acquired, specifically. I'm going to keep it simple, mostly because if I don't make the effort, this post could end up bigger than it needs to be.

To start, I'm going to open up with a set of things. My hunter, Kiadimundi, was really where I cut my teeth as a player in this game. I have nothing but fond memories of the friends I made and the experiences I had back in BC. Demon Stalker Armor was my first tier set on any toon. I never got around to getting the shoulders, but the Gladiator's Chain Spaulders were a close enough match for me back then. I can remember back before I'd hit 70 spending time inspecting hunters in Shatt that had the Demon Stalker set. It's sinister and aggressive looking. Here's a picture, taken recently (obviously since Kia is a Worgen now,) to share how awesome this set looks:

Also pictured here is the second item I'm proud to have. Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix is my favorite ranged weapon of all time. It also carries a fair amount of nostalgia because of the fun I had running Kara back in the day when hunters still had mana. Good memories to be had there.

One of my other favorite items is one of the Brewfest mounts, the Great Brewfest Kodo. Up until I got one of these, this mount was always one I've lusted after. Being Alliance, there isn't another way to acquire a Kodo. Even though they grow more and more common each year, I still think they're super cool, especially if you're a gnome. Here's a shot of Jack and his Kodo, chilling in Mulgore where Kodos and cows are born.

My final two choices are both vanity items. Savory Deviate Delight is something I almost always have in the bags of my characters. Food buffs that transform you are good clean fun. Who doesn't want to be a pirate or a ninja sometimes? Lastly, Dartol's Rod of Transformation has always been near and dear to me. The item isn't in game anymore, which makes me like it more. Otherwise, there isn't much else to say. I get to be a furbolg.

And Then There Were Shields: Part One!

2011-11-24T20:37:00.001-08:00

This post has frustratingly been "in the making"™ for at least two weeks. My end goal here is to create an actual transmog guide for shields, but the Blogger.com post editor keeps foiling my plans by molesting my html and doing un-explainable formatting changes. In light of my difficulties, I'm deciding to do this project in at least a few steps. If I can get this one out and learn some tricks to sooth the fickle nature of this blogging tool in the process, then a more complete shields guide will follow. Read on if you'd like to read about some of the best looking shields in Warcraft.

For some reason there has always been something cool to me about playing classes that can wield shields. These items make their wearers look purposeful, heroic, steadfast, and awesome. One of the sillier reasons (right behind the Tidewalker Morogrim video I attached similarly ludicrous value to) I rolled a Shaman was to be able to wear a shield. I'm pretty sure this was the first one I ever got for Syntaxx, and I know for a fact I still have it in her bank. It looks fantastic with her pirate outfit. What a shame you can only transmog similar armor types and pirates only wear cloth apparently. I digress.

Shamans, Warriors, and Paladins all have the proficiency to carry shields. With the incoming advent of transmogging, those of us who play these classes have nigh endless choices for matching shields with our favorite mogged armor. With only about five days left until 4.3 is *maybe* (probably) dropping, it's a little late to start farming old raid content for that special shield you've always wanted. However, we all know that content is exhaustible SO LETS GO TO BWL TO HELP ME GET ________(insert item name here) BECAUSE IT LOOKS SICK. Sorry, I forgot I wasn't typing in /g there for a minute.

Without further ado, here is a collection of my favorite shields in World of Warcraft. Most of these are items I have, am in the process of farming, or will try to have at some point. I love shields, and if you do too hopefully this post will remind you of an item or two that you'd forgotten about.

Here we have Bulwark of Azzinoth. I had to lead out with this because it's my favorite shield in the game, hands down. There isn't a single race or class that this item doesn't look AMAZING on. Regrettably, I don't have one of these, but I will. Mark my words. If you didn't already know, you can find this item by talking to the NPC Illidan Stormrage in Black Temple. As an added perk, if you're farming this item you also have a chance to get one or more Warglaives of Azzinoth. Although mogging legendaries isn't permitted at this time, who doesn't want a legendary mainhand to go with your giant spiky shield? Paladins and Shamans need not apply.

Up next is Barricade of Eternity. No, this list isn't going in descending order of awesomeness if you're wondering. I like this shield because it's big, recognizable, and blue goes with everything! This shield would look, in my opinion, stellar with the 25 man version of Shaman t10. Malygos is a raving asshole. Go kill him for your own pleasure and a chance to get this item. Double win. It drops on the ten man difficulty of the Eye of Eternity raid, which is great. Single boss encounter raids are quick and easy.

Sword Breaker's Bulwark has had its coolness diminished somewhat by the ubiquitous and easy as effffff to obtain Brutal Gladiator's Shield Wall. However, the Sunwell drop is so easy to distinguish from the PVP recolor that I still think it's drool worthy. It's another enormous shield and it's just drenched in character. I love the coloring, detail, and the name is just badass. Please send inquiries on how to obtain this item to Felmyst.

The fact that this shield is Horde only makes me a sad panda. As an unrelated side-note to this post, it pisses me off that I can't say "sad panda" anymore without having snarky thoughts about MoP. Anyway, if you're unfortunate enough to be horde, Forlorn Barrier is a pretty awesome coffin-shaped shield that's (in my opinion) pretty easy to get. Icehowl, of The Northrend Beasts encounter drops this on 25 man mode. If you're trying to talk guildies into running shitty old content like TOC, letting them know that all you need is the first boss is a great selling point.

This blast from the past is near the top of my list of best looking shields in game. Red Dragonscale Protector was a quote, "iconic status symbol" for shammys and paladins in classic WoW." I understand why. This armor skin is 100% unique and looks GREAT if you're sporting period-correct armor. It's dropped by Vaelastrasz the Corrupt in Blackwing Lair, which is a huge pain in the ass if you can't round up three people to kill the boss before it, and a moderate pain in the ass because the boss will eventually afflict you with a one-shot kill you dead-type d.o.t. Do yourself a favor: get attuned.

Sunward Crest has one of the highest potential time commitments for any of these shields. It's a vendor item, but it requires exalted status with the Shattered Sun Offensive on the IQD. Since I'm not a reputation leg-humper AND a shield leg-humper, the rep requirement is a pretty big deterrent. If you don't mind the grind however, this is a great looking item. Who doesn't want to crush skulls with a gold-winged Optimus Prime-faced shield? Also, as you can see, it looks great with Paladin t6.

I generally don't have a ton of love for Ulduar shields. Mainly, I don't really like the "look my shield is a giant face" thing. Except when it's Optimus. Ulduar shields don't have that going for them. That being said, I do like the look of Wisdom's Hold. Sure, it's kind of lumpy, but it looks like you're wearing a Titan relic on your back. It has that cool electrical arc animation too. Sounds like win to me. Obtained by killing Thorim in Ulduar 25.

Aegis of Damnation is an item from the Wrath Naxx reboot. I have a soft spot for this shield because it's distinctive, and it was Syntaxx's first raid drop shield. It's frosty, yellow, recognizable, and looks amazing with Hammer of the Astral Plane and the paladin t7 banana suit. This shield has an identical BOE look-alike if you're not into running Naxx to kill Maexxna or Gluth.

This shield is sadly no longer available in game with this coloring. Bulwark of the Amani Empire was a drop from the dragonhawk boss in Zul'Aman, pre-patch 4.1. In TBC our main tank rocked this shield all the way until the end of the expansion. It's beautiful, recognizable, and has very distinctive coloring. The armor skin has been reused for Zulian Swirling Shield, but it's a shadow of its former self. Enammeled Disc of Mojo deserves honorable mention and does not have any "same-model-as" items. It too isn't in game anymore, so cherish the option if you kept it around.

Force Reactive Disk was a recent pet project of mine. It's unique for a ton of reasons, which is why I set out to get one. First off, it's made by engineers (it's BOE.) The schematic drops from bosses in Molten Core. Secondly, the item its self has an Engineering level requirement. If you're at least at 300 eng then you can use one of these. I like it because I can almost guarantee it's not going to get used by many people. The shield looks like a big metal gear and it's extra cool because it has moving parts. Get it.

Dusty spiderwebs, creepy red-eyed skull, beautiful detail and coloring, and adequate size all make Icecrown Glacial Wall (Heroic) a transmogger's dream. This item looks like it should be wielded by a maniacal necro-warrior or something. I love it. The heroic version gets the nod here because the red accents really make the design pop over the non-heroic version. BQL is still a fun fight at 85, even if the blood bolts are totally trivialized by current health pools. I particularly love this encounter because you can see some pretty ludicrous numbers with the 30% ICC buff AND 100% damage increase from this buff AND guaranteed exorcism crits. The heroic mode of this shield is probably in my top five most awesome looking shields list.

Another ICC shield, Lost Pavise of the Blue Flight is exceedingly unique. I like this item's asymmetry and coloring. It's a spot-on match for 25 man Shaman t10 and will look great with a variety of armor sets since it's blue/gray. This shield wasn't ever very common on my server for some reason, which makes it extra alluring to me. I love the perma-ice and the dragonish design elements.

Alas, there are almost too many shields in the game to evaluate them all. This post will be part of a series that will have more favorites as well as some novelty oriented items in it. Stay tuned for more shield related awesomeness.

To be continued...

Just a Picture

2011-11-23T00:17:00.001-08:00

This. Yes, this. Very happy about the newness. Posts will follow, but now it's bed time.

Rag, my mechanical squirrel is going to leave little metallic squirrel turds ALL OVER YOUR THRONE OF FLAME!

The Weekly Outlook

2011-11-20T22:56:00.001-08:00

Greetings all, it's that magical time of the week where I cover my prospects for the upcoming reset. With most of our guild being out for Thanksgiving festivities this week, we're planning on doing a full Firelands clear on Tuesday. Last week's raid went so smoothly, I strongly believe we can knock out our first one-night clear.

In related news, as a consequence of our abbreviated raiding schedule, we aren't attempting any heroics. I'm okay with this because I think it's great that we're going to make an effort to do a one night clear. Last week's H Majordomo attempts were heartening, and I strongly believe we can get a kill with just a little more work.

On the transmog front, things are looking up for Jack's Judgement set. BWL got invaded tonight and I made out like a bandit. See below:

4/6 of those pieces dropped in one run. I also managed to get Maladath, Runed Blade of the Black Flight tonight. Drillborer Disk, from MC, goes pretty well with the set too, IMO. So far this is intended to be my primary set of gear from which to transmog for raiding. I'm happy with it so far, although I will probably prioritize Red Dragonscale Protector over other shields if I can get my hands on it. I'm sitting at 4/7 pieces of my Judgement recolor. Hopefully I can wrap up my hunt this week after Tuesday. I love seeing the old content, but it's a pain in the ass finding somebody to group up with to get the first boss down in BWL. MC farming is much simpler.

From level-appropriate content I'm hoping for the following loot:
Jaws of Defeat
and any combination of:
Helm of the Fiery Conquerer
Ko'gun, Hammer of the Firelord
and last, but not least:
Sulfuras, The Extinguished Hand.

Of the above items, I'm probably hoping to get Sulfuras the most. Coming in a close second is Ko'gun since I'll probably be doing less DPS and more healing in t13. Anyhow, it's bed time. Stay tuned for more updates!

WoW's 7th Anniversary. Now with more tabard so you can tabard while you tabard!

2011-11-20T02:50:00.001-08:00

I almost forgot that this was coming. Upon logging in tonight to check my mail before bed, I was greeted with achievement spam.

The item granted for this anniversary is called "Celebration Package." I'd link it, but it's not in Wowhead's database just yet. Honestly, I would have preferred a pet instead of a tabard-tabard, but whatever. The XP/reputation bonus will be appreciated at some point I'm sure. The package doesn't appear to have a limited number of uses or a duration on the item its self, so I guess that's good. The tabard is ugly, but that gives it a bit of charm I think.

Anyway, I'm too tired for this shit. Enjoy this SS of Jack while I go to bed.

Yup, a player named Ratfarts logged in just in time to be a part of this screenshot.

Blogging Challenge Day 4: Your Best WoW Memory

2011-11-19T10:18:00.001-08:00

Today's topic isn't an easy one for me to explore. Not because my Warcraft memories are joyless; it's quite the opposite actually. Across all the logins and raids and experiences I've had in game, a lot of them are quite memorable. As silly as it sounds, I've spent a lot of time over the last few days just trying to figure out what I wanted to put in this space.

A lot of more mundane "bests" have cropped up here and there. Memories of finally getting a drop I was farming, like Big Iron Fishing Pole stick out in my mind. I remember when I was farming Crusader on my DK, I never thought it was going to drop. If you go to that Wowhead link, you'll see that it's rarely dropped by only two mob types in EPL/WPL. Finally seeing that green text pop up on my screen after close to four hours of killing lowbie mobs created an explosion of happiness. Finally, my melee twinks could have a proper enchant. I'm a strong believer in providing things (like enchants) for yourself in game. Besides, at that point in Wrath it was pretty difficult to find a person on Kael'Thas with that particular enhancement.

Moving down my list of "awesome moments that probably shouldn't be that awesome," next up is when I got my first Arena Grand Master Trinket. I've spent a decent amount of time twinking in this game. I won't get into too much detail, but it's relevant to point out that five of my characters on KT started their lives twinking in some form. My focus was mainly on the level 29/39 brackets. Having an AGM was a definite advantage at this level. It was also, in my opinion, a mark of dedication and awesomeness. The item didn't instantly make you better upon acquiring it, but it sure had its bonuses. For those of you who either haven't heard of the item, or have never attempted to acquire one (which people do these days mostly for the achievement,) take a look at this quest Arena Grandmaster.

If you were too lazy to click, basically the road to acquisition requires the player to farm a chest that spawns every three hours in the Gurubashi arena area in Stranglethorn Vale. What makes the quest fun, difficult, and interesting, is that when you set foot on the floor of the arena you're flagged for PVP. Makes sense, considering the quote/unquote "purpose" of the quest reward, right? So, you've got an item in this chest you're after and you might have to kill another player to get it. Consider how difficult this can be on a level 29 toon. Oh, did I mention you have to do it 12 times? I remember setting my alarm to go off in the middle of the night so I could log in at a time when *hopefully* no max level characters were trying to get the chest. Other times I begged guildies to accompany me on their 80's so that if we encountered resistance, I might still have a chance at the chest. When you look at all of these factors, it's easy to see why I was doing backflips when my little 29 rogue got her 12th Arena Master. That was a fantastic memory. Sidenote: all along the way, I vowed to never farm another AGM. The time commitment made losing the chest too frustrating. I eventually got a second trinket, but this one went to Nerdrage (Jacklalane.) Derp.

I could go on and on about small (but glorious) victories like these. That's not what you're here for though. The memory I picked as my "best" in game reflection is when I killed the Lich King on ten man mode on my Shaman. Warning: the most noteworthy part of this memory is the fact that it is 100% despicable and could just as easily be used in a "how Warcraft ruins lives" post.

Hey! You weren't looking at the camera!

In Wrath of The Lich King I played an elemental/resto shaman named Syntaxx for a guild named The Ebon School. Our main raid group ran the 25 man version of ICC, in which I was mainly a DPS. We were moderately successful, but we hit a frosty Arthas-shaped wall and never managed to climb over it (even with the 30% buff.) This was back when you could run both 10 and 25 man versions of the same raid in one lockout, so those of us who wanted to keep pushing for the LK kill formed a 10 man group. The players composing this group were a distillation of what was good about our 25 man raid, more or less.

Anyway, so the day we killed Arthas sticks out in my mind because of how awesome it was AND how ridiculous I acted near the end. We didn't have to bang our heads against the frozen throne too many times to get the kill, our main problem was raid attendance. When we really got around to doing attempts, our little 10 man always showed promise and progress. It helped that a lot of us were in 25 man gear, I'm sure.

Our final attempt was going swimmingly, and we all knew it. We'd conquered the valks and were doing the defile/vile spirits portion of the final phase. My heart was racing at this point. The only other end-tier boss I'd ever killed on any character was Yogg, but that wasn't as awesome because most of us were in gear from TOC. Having "Kingslayer" over Syntaxx's head was in many ways a validation of the effort I put into this game. The boss was probably around 20-30% and two things happened right at the same time. First, I got teleported into Frostmourne. Second, somebody rang the doorbell at my house. I remember getting on vent, floored at the calamity unfolding. I distinctly remember several guildies telling me that the people at the door were going to have to wait. So, with the doorbell ringing several times, I went in and killed the mob inside Frostmourne, got ported back out, and continued DPSing. The doorbell rang again. At this point I'd say Arthas was below 15%. Several of our more heartbreaking wipes were in this range, so I didn't want to stop. I got up and ran to a window to see what horrific act of gaming induced neglect I was committing. MUCH to my dismay, I saw that it was none other than my GRANDMA WAITING OUTSIDE. At this point she'd been out there for probably a solid three or four minutes. At least, it felt that long. When it was clear to me the Lich King was about to one-shot us all at 10%, I went and answered the door. Grandma never really asked what took so long.

This was what I saw after I came back from answering the door.

The memory is somewhat bittersweet because I didn't actually get to DPS the final 10% of the Lich King encounter, nor did I get to revel in the achievement spam. Making my Grandma wait outside the house while I finished killing a boss is absolutely despicable, but it's also hilarious and a big part of what makes this so memorable.

Progress on Majordomo Staghelm Heroic

2011-11-18T01:20:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to share in the joy and the pain of this screenshot. Up until this point this particular attempt on Majordomo was going fantastically. Unfortunately the RNG gods shat upon our humble little raid. If anybody knows how to deal with every single orb soaker getting pounced 4 times, please DM me on twitter at @ColinJHawkins. I think this would have been a kill if not for our unfortunate leaps. Such attempts (and we had a couple of good ones) are heartening still. I'm looking forward to posting a kill shot next week. One way or another, I think this fight will be our first bit of heroic mode success.

In other news, I finally got a Rag kill! I fail at screenshotting, which disappoints me. Wednesday was our guild's 4th time downing the Firelord. That night it only took two attempts and the first wipe was due to poor positioning resulting in a tank death. All in all, it's been a good week.

Finally, it's looking like I may be able to attend all three of our raid group's raid nights. My girlfriend and I had some friction followed by a lot of good discussion. Above all, my relationship with her matters significantly more than this game (which she's not a big fan of.) I'm happy to report progress on *possibly* being able to find a happy place for both of us concerning this part of my life.

Blogging Challenge Day 3: My First Day Playing WoW

2011-11-17T22:27:00.001-08:00

As I've mentioned, I started playing World of Warcraft in 2007. The events leading up to that fateful first day are simple but fairly comical. One of my roommates got a ten-day trial from a coworker sometime in December of that year. Against the advice of our other roommate and me, he rolled a dwarf hunter and started adventuring in Azeroth. The two of us watched him play with some curiosity, but on the whole (it seemed) we were both uninterested due to stories we'd heard about how WoW could "ruin lives" and consume people. It was then somewhat surprising to me that the other roommate came to me one night and started trying to convince me to play. As we all sat in the living room of the home we lived in, I recall actually being talked into playing Warcraft, slightly against my will. This moment was preceded and probably precipitated by, ironically, the Warcraft episode of South Park.

So, there we were, huddled around our laptops, about to embark on this potentially perilous journey into a game only one of us had played. From what I had seen of my friend's experience in WoW, I decided to play a hunter. For some reason the ability to tame and control a pet was very appealing to me. I'm pretty sure I spent an hour trying to come up with a cool name for my character, but in the end I settled on Lighthawk, which was a gamertag that was born from my Starcraft days back in junior high.

I logged into Lighthawk tonight so that his armory would be available. As you'll see, I hilariously had no idea how to gear a hunter. That first night (which was indeed a very long one) of playing involved a whole lot of the three of us running around Teldrassil trying to figure out questing (read:getting lost.) I think our greatest fascination was with comparing max crit sizes. Since we were all on trial accounts, we had to find non-trials to form groups for us to quest in. I remember specifically that by the end of that session we had stumbled upon Darnassus. Somehow we had become aware of the concept of rested XP and we were fascinated with the prospect of finding beds to /sleep in before we logged out.

Those two friends no longer play, which saddens me. Some of my best memories in game involve both of them. Fortunately our friendships have always been based on more than just our common bonds in gaming. I'm very fond of that memory with them and I'm happy this challenge gave me an opportunity to reminisce and share it here.

Blogging Challenge Day 2: Why You Decided to Start a Blog

2011-11-15T17:29:00.001-08:00

Welcome back to the 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge. I'm your host, Jacklalane, and today we'll be talking about why I started this blog!

There are a few core reasons behind the birth of this blog. Firstly, over the last four years of my life, I've seen a steady decline in real life friends that play Warcraft. When I started my first hunter back in the day I rolled with my two roommates. All along my journey through this game I've always had the most fun when I'm playing with fun, active people. It's a fact that core friendships have always been key to bringing me back to WoW. Watching your friends leave the game is saddening indeed and it also leaves a void behind that needs to be filled. I've done that, to an extent, with my current guild. The thing is, my guildies aren't really the type of player with a ton invested in this game. By that, I mean that I really get the impression from them that when SWTOR drops, I'm going to have a significantly emptier /g chat. One thing I'm aiming to do with this blog is to reach out to people who feel like me, or who might just enjoy a bit of personalized WoW chatter. I don't really get that from my guild, so I guess I'm looking here (and to Twitter) for what I want from my gaming community. Feeling like I'm a contributing part of something bigger than myself is a big part of the allure of blogging.

Another reason I'm doing this blog is to indulge myself. Ever since I was a child, I always had an itch to write. My preference along the way has been to critique, analyze, explain, and share. The access to free pages like blogger made creating content like this a no-brainer. I actually have another blog that I haven't written on in almost a year. Not Without Heart strangely morphed into a page filled with my opinions on Apple vs Android and hacking tips for droid users. Oddly enough, despite not seeing any new entries in so long, my other blog still gets more hits than this one. I haven't quite figured that one out. Either way, both of these pages exist as a creative outlet, to allow me to scratch an exceedingly persistent itch. Aside from that, I've grown to feel that the ability to write in a fashion that people like to read is kind of a "use it or lose it" type of skill. This Warcraft blog allows me to freely write about something I enjoy while trying to stay (or become) sharp as a wordsmith.

Blogging Challenge Day 1: Introductions

2011-11-14T22:03:00.001-08:00

I started this blog exactly 16 days ago. My goal was to have a creative outlet and place to share some of my thoughts on one of my favorite hobbies. Much to my delight, I read Tikari's blog post this evening and was presented with a mountain of fun. A WoW blogger named Saga brought forth the 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge, and it was good. Tikari has been very kind and helpful to me in this larval stage of my blog. I'm thrilled to be able to do something as awesome as this challenge and I hope it brings my readers fun and engaging information about me, my experiences, and the game.

Now, to get on with it, today's blog post is an introduction. I've already done this somewhat, but I'm going to mimic Tikari's formatting a bit and just do a brief rundown of my Warcraft history and some of the characters I play.

It's pretty fair to say that I'm a rabid altoholic. On Kael'Thas I am guilty of filling every available character slot. As of today's date I have 9 level 85 characters and one level 49. Out of the nine max level toons, four of them have been mains.

My illustrious WoW career started back in TBC, in 2007. At that time my main was a night elf hunter named Kiadimundi. Kia and I had many misadventures throughout raiding and pvp in the time of Illidan. Although he was a main and a character I raided on, the amount of dragons successfully slain in that xpac was regrettably low.

Since then I've gravitated to my three other main's for a variety of reasons. From Kia I moved on to Syntaxx, my Dranei shaman. Syn taught me how to heal, how to itemize, how to raid, and how to get really bored with content. My shaman saw all the content throughout Wrath of the Lich King, although I didn't ever see a LK25 kill (still haven't *tear.) We did successfully stand over a 10 man lich corpse though, however.

Cataclysm brought a veritable whirlwind of alts and a revolving door of mains. Syntaxx got sidelined in favor of my priest, Synnerz (who was then named Cruciatus.) I have always loved playing shadow. I always feel comfortable flaying and blasting minds on my little shadowy gnome. Sadly I discovered how easy it was to do raid dominating dps on my hunter, so I graduated from a spriest back to my Kia as a main. At this time I undertook a race change and Kiadimundi became a hulking wolf-man badass Worgen.

Raiding in my first Cata guild gradually went stale and I was forced to shop around. The Ebon School was and is always a place I will be loyal to, so I felt the need to leave my hunter there and roll another main. At that time I hadn't ever played a paladin at max level, so that was my pick. I server transferred a level 39 twink ret paladin named Erosus (which was a name I lazily borrowed from my rogue on KT) back home and set to leveling him. Sidenote: prior to moving said paladin from Kael'Thas to Dragonmaw or whatever server he was on, his name was Nerdrage.

Erosus/Nerdrage became Jacklalane, the inspiration for this blog. Jack joined Cereal Killers the day he hit KT soil and hasn't ever looked back. I leveled as holy/ret largely using the dungeon finder. I wholeheartedly love playing in either of my specs. Of the three healing classes (pally, priest, druid,) I've tried in Cataclysm, paladin comes most naturally to me. Healing makes me really feel like a vital piece of the puzzle when raiding. I love it, really. That being said, I think I'm truly a DPS at heart. To be completely honest, when DPSing a raid boss I get this wave of adrenaline going that really blows my skirt up.

Right now I'm in a bit of an awkward place, feeling like I would very much like to be in a more focused raiding guild but find myself being torn between Warcraft and my real life commitments. This blog serves as my sounding board for such thoughts and I hope it serves me well in choosing a path. I've spent and enjoyed a lot of time playing this game and I hope I can continue in a fashion that makes me and those I care about happy.

In real life I play a mild mannered banker. I work with a manager that talks about SWTOR almost incessantly. My other interests are biking (road and mountain,) photography, reading, and writing of all sorts. My literary muscle has atrophied a bit over the last year or two, so forgive me if the contents of these pages lack a certain creative dynamic. I hope to exercise that muscle here for both my enjoyment and yours.

Prospects for The Week

2011-11-13T20:12:00.001-08:00

It's Sunday night and I find myself house sitting yet again. I have a few friends and family members that turn to me for somebody to watch their homes and pets. Over the last couple of years I've house-sat probably six times a year on average. Depending on the duration, I usually don't mind it. I usually end up missing my own bed, my cats, the comfort of my house, but it takes me a good while to get to that point.

Tonight I'm nestled in a comfortable leather chair belonging to my good friend Bevan's parents. Watching their house is always a pleasant experience. Since I'm away from home I'm actually reaching out to you, my faithful audience, from my laptop. I haven't played WoW/done much of anything on my lappy in a while, so I'm giving it a minute to let Dropbox sync and for windows to update. What a pain in the ass. Dropbox is a wonderful program that is usually as reliable as the day is long, but right now it seems to be having some issues downloading the files I added earlier today. These particular files are actually my user interface. I'm trying to attempt to keep some uniformity between my two pc's. Since my computer is crawling a bit due to the Windows/Dropbox updating, I thought I'd blog a bit about my hopes for the week.

This last week I've spent a lot of time on my paladin farming transmog gear. I actually ran Blackwing Lair, Molten Core, and Sunwell Plateau for the first time, in hopes of gathering a variety of awesome looking armor pieces. All in all I didn't have that much success as far as my acquisitions go, but I sure had fun. Blizzard came up with something that is very broadly appealing when they decided to include mogging in 4.3. I've always held on to cool gear from previous raid tiers because I'm a nostalgic player. My shaman, Syntaxx, has all of her Tier 7/7.5 gear from Naxx 2.0 because it's cool AND it's her first real tier set. Jack will hold onto his t11 stuff for the same reasons. I wasn't lucky enough to play classic wow, so I'm currently in the process of farming up the Paladin Judgement set, which is tier 2 I believe.

How badass is that? I feel like this armor set just screams paladin, in the coolest way possible. Just like my firelands tier, it's a little cloth-plate ish, but I dig it. When I ran BWL with my guildies this week I was lucky enough to get the iconic helm. None of the other bosses coughed up anything from the set, but it was cool to see some new-to-me content. I did get 2 Force Reactive Disks made when I ran my Shaman through MC, and I must say I'm PUMPED to wear that shield. I feel it's going to be a pretty rare piece around town. Check it out in game through Atlasloot; pictures don't do its coolness justice. Hopefully I can get a group together after the lockout resets to do another BWL excursion. I find it pretty unfortunate that the first boss can't be solo'd, but there's no use bitching over something like that.

In addition to the Judgement Armor set, I'm also looking to get a 25 man Naxx group together so I can have a shot at Betrayer of Humanity. It doesn't exactly flow with the Judgement set, but it is such an awesome looking axe I'd still love to have it.

Aside from my transmog lusting, this week *should* mean another run through Firelands. Right now I'm stockpiling VP to buy my first t12 ret pieces. Last week's raid was deeply frustrating, which you'd know if you read my blog post on it. I'm hoping we can be a little more focused on what we are/are not doing as far as heroics are concerned. I'm prepared with a new set of helpful suggestions for Shannox and Baleroc's hard modes, but it's always a guessing game whether or not people will listen to me. By that I don't mean I'm the only person with an idea worth listening to, but generally when I get on vent and start throwing out suggestions, I'm greeted with a lot of apathy. We're really a terrible heroic raiding guild. A big part of me would rather just zerg the first six bosses and actually try to get some rag in on Tuesday instead of letting it go to another day of the week (which I most likely won't be attending.)

I'm going to log this week's raid, like I did last lockout. This time around I'm actually going to try to take some of our under performing DPS aside to try and help them. Our rogue in particular is right on the cusp of being a really great DPS, if only he did a few things better. I've had generous offers of help in this area from a few of my twitter pals. You know who you are, and thank you both. Hopefully I can help raise the bar for a few of us in raid this week.

On the whole, I have high hopes for Tuesday and beyond. I'll be keeping this blog updated on my progress in all things, so stay tuned. Maybe the next Judgement set screenshot I use in this blog will actually be of Jack.

Paladin in 4.3

2011-11-11T22:27:00.001-08:00

I feel like it's safe to say that I'm not a strong theorycrafter. Whether or not that makes me a sub-par player isn't really something I've ever been concerned with. When I play a class I typically find out what I can to make sure I'm "doing it right." For as long as I've been the type who goes looking for it, the World of Warcraft theorycrafting community has always had a bounty of useful information to help people know how to play their toons. Note: I probably should have called this post "Holy/Ret/I don't play Prot Paladin in 4.3.

Incoming "balance" changes have been big WoW news lately. Lead systems designer Ghostcrawler has released a couple of explanations for what's headed our way. At this stage if you're not on the PTR, these explanations feel fairly flimsy. Part one of the balance changes can be found here, and part two here.

For those of us who don't take notes, these explanations remain vague from a theorycrafting point of view (IMO.) Part one ignores ret entirely, although you could say that it mentions us indirectly under the melee section. If the raid progression section on Jack's armory page is accurate, then I've seen a total of 82 non-BH boss kills in Cataclysm. I'd say probably less than twenty of those were done as ret. That statement is meant to give weight to the fact that I don't really have a concept of how weak or strong melee is vs ranged in a raid setting. In the current tier, vs the ranged DPS I raid with, melee (namely retribution paladins) feel strong, but I obviously am not part of a min-maxing team so my point of view is most likely not going to show me precisely the reasons for this change. Adding a 10% melee attack power bonus to Blessing of Might, Abomination's Might, Trueshot Aura, and Unleashed Rage suits me just fine. I loves me some more pew pew.

Part two of Ghostcrawler's explanation does actually mention ret, although it seems like a very truncated blurb:

" For Retribution, as we suggested previously, we lowered the crit chance of Hammer of Wrath to reduce burst but increased sustained damage through Two-Handed Specialization and Seal of Truth."

When the above mentioned nerf to the crit chance portion of the Sanctified Wrath talent hit MMO-Champion, I was initially dismayed. All other logic aside, critting is fun. In full raid buffs Jack is only sporting around 11% crit chance, so when I heard that my Hammer of Wrath wasn't going to produce a nearly guaranteed big shiny number, my nerd rage alert went off. But then I thought about it.

By its self this is a PvE nerf, plain and simple, but not a huge one. Ret isn't heavily reliant on HoW as a major damage contributor, mainly due to the collection of cooldowns that are commonly burned together. Without getting into too much detail or littering this post with too many of my beloved Wowhead mouseover links, when using Avenging Wrath above 20% boss health, hammer commonly falls so low on the "rotation" priority list that it gets skipped. This is due to a couple of factors like the need to generate holy power, and the fact that HoW isn't affected by mastery and therefore does less damage than Templar's Verdict. Depending on haste (which is the DEVIL,) you're really only using Crusader Strike and Templar's verdict during burns. Using hammer almost always interferes with those two abilities, so the loss of crit chance is really only noticed when boss health is <20% where you'll actually start using HoW as a filler between CS/TV.

While this nerf to execute phase hammer use is unfortunate, it's not without reason. Right now ret is bursty and extremely reliant on cooldowns and random procs. Blizzard is removing most of the crit bonus from Sanctified Wrath to balance other changes. These balances are intended to increase sustained output through buffs to Judgement, two-handed weapon specialization, and an already implemented change to the Seal of Truth d.o.t. Combined with the bonus AP from raid buffs, I'm excited to see where ret sits in 4.3. It's times like these that make me want to get on the PTR, but I'm just too lazy.

To reiterate, my theorycrafting muscle doesn't get a lot of exercise, so I don't know numbers on what kind of output increase (if any) ret pallys should be hoping for. Browsing through several paladin forums has yielded a good deal of optimism about the changes. Some people fixate on the SW nerf, but I think that's due in large part to how it affects PVP. If buffed judgements hit hard enough, I think the PVP trolls might find a remedy to their nerfbat blues.

Paladins

Holy Radiance now has a 3.0-second cast time, no cooldown, and requires a player target. That target is imbued with Holy Radiance, which heals them and all group members within 10 yards instantly, and continues to heal them by a smaller amount every 1 second for 3 seconds.
Seal of Insight, when Judged, no longer returns 15% base mana to the paladin. Judging Seal of Insight still causes damage, and melee attacks will still restore 4% of base mana.
Seal of Truth, when Judged, now benefits from a multiplier of 20% per stack of Censure, up from 10%.
Talent Specializations
- Holy
  - Clarity of Purpose now also reduces the cast time of Holy Radiance.
  - Illuminated Healing (mastery) now also applies to Holy Radiance.
  - Infusion of Light now applies its cast time reduction from Holy Shock critical effects to Holy Radiance, in addition to its current effects.
  - In addition to providing haste, the effect from Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 10/20/30% for 60 seconds.
  - Light of Dawn now affects 6 targets (base effect), up from 5.
  - Paragon of Virtue now lowers the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 seconds, up from 10/20 seconds.
  - Speed of Light no longer triggers from Holy Radiance and no longer lowers the Holy Radiance cooldown. Speed of Light now only triggers from Divine Protection.
  - Tower of Radiance, in addition to its current effects, now also causes Holy Radiance to always generate 1 charge of Holy Power at all times
Glyphs
- Glyph of Light of Dawn now lowers the number of targets to 4, instead of increasing targets to 6, but increases healing by 25%.

4.3 (look I found more blue posts! Thanks Wowhead!) is bringing some pretty big changes to holy paladin healing. Holy Radiance, our main AOE healing tool, is getting revamped. Changes include an added cast time, a removed cooldown, granting of holy power, and alterations to target capping and how the heal is delivered. At first blush I was pissed off about the cast time. Being able to hit HR on the run has always been extremely handy. The lack of a targeting requirement is also something I enjoy because that means I don't have to utilize a binding in Vuhdo for the spell.

I'll certainly get over both of those things, but I cant help but wonder why Blizzard needed to change this heal. Holy radiance currently radiates (lols) out from the caster, which is both convenient and limiting. With the targeting requirement, HR will radiate out from the person you cast it on. For situations where group stacking is occurring but you're not a part of the dogpile, this design change will allow you to heal effectively in a variety of placement situations instead of just one. Removing Holy Radiance's cooldown certainly poses it's own set of questions, but I think it's only a negative to bad players with no concept of mana conservation.

Aside from the big HR controversy (read: druids be real mad,) there are only a couple of other changes of note. Protecter of the innocent, a small heal the paladin gets every time they directly heal a friendly target, no longer transfers through beacon of light. The major downside here is that while this heal is never large, it's nearly constant. It's often likened to being the closest thing a holy paladin has to a h.o.t. H.o.t.'s are favorable because they help stabilize tank health while they're not being healed directly. I'm not overly concerned about it, but again it seems like a mechanic that didn't need to be changed. Blizzard has made some statements that seem to indicate a desire to remove the amount of healing done by beacon, but if they start doing that it's going to require a massive spec redesign. The PotI change feels like they're just testing the waters here. Don't get me started on the multiple false releases stating that Word of Glory wont be eligible for beacon transfer. That's either a derpfest or they were actually considering it for a while. Either conclusion is full of too much fail for my blood.

*Ammendment*
I do a lot of my blog posts late at night, which I'm finding can be good and bad. When I'm awake, the creative juices just seem to flow better. The problem is that I tend to get lazy and forgetful at the ends of drowsy entries.

You know you play a game too much when you're mowing the lawn and you have an epiphany about patch 4.3 holy paladin changes you forgot to mention in your blog. How foolish of me to leave out the changes to seal of insight! Right now holy paladins are spending a GCD every eight seconds on judging. The reason for this is Seal of Insight's mana return mechanic. Every time I judge I get 15% of my base mana (around 3500) back. Over the course of a five minute fight, that's worth over 130k mana. That's an entire mana pool!

Come 4.3 everything about that mechanic is changing. As noted in the blue post above, judging seal of insight no longer returns insta-mana, but will instead increase spirit based regen for 60 seconds. I feel this is a good change, mostly. The only part I don't like about it is that I've grown to think that judging is fun, and a good measure of whether or not I'm "doing it right." Right now if I forget to judge on cooldown, I feel it in my mana use. While it's true that it will be great to not have to think about judging during an emergency healing moment, I think that takes some of the fun out of the spec. I'm also a little concerned with the quantity of spirit I'm sporting. Jack has probably more spirit-less items equipped than he should, in exchange for higher intellect and haste. I don't particularly have mana issues, but that's with a pretty solid habit of using my judgement on cooldown. Whether or not I have enough to stay at the same level of regen is something I'm concerned about. If I knew how to calculate passive mana regen to figure out how much I'll actually be churning out, I'd be a bit more comfortable.

The other holy changes in 4.3 I think are just meh. Yeah, light of dawn is getting messed with, and holy radiance is now affected by mastery (whoopie.) Having a reduced cooldown on my mini-bubble will be nice, especially since it's the only source of my pally sprint in 4.3.

These balance changes are obviously just Blizzard's way of trying to cope with gear scaling over different raid tiers. I get that this is needed, I really do, I just wish the changes didn't feel so hamfisted. The ret changes seem fine, I suppose. One thing I'd add to the sanctified wrath nerf is to make HoW be affected by ret's mastery:Hand of Light. To me that would help balance out the dps contribution for when hammer is being used most often. The healing changes incoming don't particularly seem to come from a specific problem. Ret is bursty, hammer of wrath crit reliance in pvp is crutch-ish. Smoothing out and increasing sustained damage is exactly what retribution needs. Holy was doing just fine as far as I know, but like I said, I'm not a pro theorycrafter.

More Woes of a Casual

2011-11-09T22:04:00.001-08:00

This entry should probably be about the Blizzard class design and balance Q&A. If you noticed the title, it should be abundantly clear that it's not. The World of Warcraft community is most likely quite interested in these changes, and I'll follow suit eventually. At the moment I'm a bit consumed with my own future in the game, and while that is largely connected to things like class design, my focus lies elsewhere.

Tuesdays are my raid night. As I've mentioned before, Cereal Killers raids on more than one day a week, but due to outside factors I only have one official night of scheduled game play. Despite how long I've been playing, I still get excited for a new lockout and the possibilities held therein. This week had an elevated potential because of our plans to try some heroic modes. To cut to the chase, our first experiment with Firelands heroics was both underwhelming and entirely predictable. My experiences Tuesday inflamed a lot of feelings I have toward my guildmates and the game it self.

It's late Wednesday night and I've had some time to mull this over quite a few times. One concept that I've focused on in my frustration is player identity. I'm not just talking about the fact that I play a paladin named Jacklalane, but that's woven in there. My identity, my M.O., is closely related to what matters to me in things I devote my time to: validation. When I'm in your raid, I'm there to be the best player I can be. Sure, on one of our heroic Shannox fights I tripped on an immolation trap and took a bunch of damage, but it only happened once that night. Raiding is, to me, largely about showing my peers that I know my shit. When I'm in the role of a DPS I'm in it to be at the top of that damage meter. I take the very presence of other players in my raid as a welcome challenge to best them. I deeply enjoy the fact that I come prepared with the knowledge of how to play my raiding main to the highest level possible. Whether or not I succeed is always up for debate, but nobody can argue that I try.

Being considered a valuable asset to my team is important to me, so I act in such a way as to try to embody value. I knew that we were doing heroics on Tuesday, so I brushed up on strategies. Videos were watched, posts read. Although I was most likely to be in a DPS role, I made sure I knew the healing requirements for the two fights we had in our sights. I never assumed to the contrary, but let me reassure you that heroic modes are indeed markedly more difficult than normals. It is in light of all this that I have since felt resentful to the majority of my raiding team that almost nobody came prepared to run heroic Shannox or Baleroc. It felt like they couldn't give a shit less.

I set up an account with World of Logs for Tuesday's raid. Partly to help @TikariOfET and @TrocarRogue out with a parse for a raiding Assassination rogue, but also to do some analysis myself. The boastful asshole in me also finds a lot of pleasure in being able to oogle those fights I did the highest DPS on.

Sadly, the Firelands raid parse gave me concrete evidence of things I already knew. Our players lack a basic level of class knowledge that I believe is key to success in heroics. The log of all three of our H Shannox attempts show a total of zero defensive cooldowns used by our main tank. I have nothing but love for Josh. He and I have been playing this game, more or less together, almost since I started. Ironically, he's responsible for the value I place in knowing my shit. Sadly, he appears to not care enough about the mastery of his character enough to know that tank survival isn't always through the RNG of dodges and parries, or through blocking massive amounts by stacking mastery. He's our GM and is an elegant representation of how most of our other players treat their participation in this game. The rogue in our group consistently ignores the benefits of using Tricks of the Trade on a DPS throughout fights. Baleroc took damage from his rupture only 32 times. I couldn't find a d.o.t. uptime % for that, but both of the above mentioned twitter rogues said that's insufficient. Our arcane mage doesn't use mana gems, ever. He also only did 14k dps and a total damage done % that was a scant .5% over our feral druid tank. Please keep in mind that Baleroc was (and still is) one of the fights we have high hopes to beat on heroic.

Prior to pulling the gatekeeper, I got into a brief argument with our druid healer about raid preparedness. While we were trying to decide whether or not to make any heroic attempts, I started griping in /raid about the fact that people were patently unprepared with even a basic idea of the strategies for heroics. She countered with the fact that "that's why we're discussing it now." Derp. Really? Given the beating we took on Shannox, which is supposed to be zergable and "easy," did she really not see that people should have done some fucking homework? Did I have some kind of notion that this knowledge would have resulted in one-shotting these bosses? Absolutely not. However, I recognized the fact that knowing the fight will save time. The flip side of that is that not knowing is a waste of everybody's time.

All of this has been crashing around in my head since raid ended. To add insult to injury, we called it early for some reason that night too. That means we didn't kill our normal 6/7 bosses, we only got five. My chances at getting an offspec tier token are nonexistent until our priests get their first set, but I still wanted a shot at Jaws of Defeat. I'm also trying to take my new primary DPS role with grace, but I can't help but be miffed by how all of my holy gear seems to be a shiny purple waste of flaming cloth-plate right about now.

So, what do I do? Our resto shaman, Shampagne (whom I think is an excellent player) was chatting with me all night on Tuesday. He's of a similar frame of mind in that he's disappointed with the guild. We both came to the conclusion that we might be happier somewhere else, but that poses its own problems. Compared to where my gear might be if I were in a successful heroic guild, I'm arguably undergeared. This week's Baleroc kill marks my personal best DPS (just a hair under 24k,) but how does that stack up to the 30k+ that's more common in heroic guilds? How do I market myself? "Yeah, I'll own face in your alt raid. Can I join your guild and leech?" I see myself as a bit behind and quite unattractive to a group that is looking to recruit somebody who can contribute on a level relative to their own baseline. I'm confident in my healing as well, but how do I jump into a group that is currently doing hard progression runs where min/maxing matters they're barely eeking out kills as it is? Since the new content of patch 4.3 isn't exactly going to level the playing field, I'm pretty stumped on what to do.

At the moment raiding seems pretty important to me. I love watching heroic mode kill videos for various classes. My Ui is based off of design elements from players in Blood Legion, a successful "U.S. Firsts" type of guild. This emulation is partly because their setups are functional and elegant, but also because these players represent a type of professionalism in the game. It's a little bizarre to think of it this way, but it's almost like players in guilds like that are celebrities to me. Even non-world first heroic raiders are almost like professional athletes. There's a lot of grumbling in the player base of WoW about how raid content isn't difficult and Blizzard is begrudged for nerfs and for catering to casuals. My guild can't even take the game seriously enough to kill tier 11 content. Hell, the last time we tried to kill the Lich King on ten man heroic mode we wiped for an hour. In t11/t12 gear. Derp? I think so. I'm very disappointed and frustrated with things right now and I hope I can find a solution to make myself happier in game.

In other news, I finally got rid of my engineering helm and upgraded to Greathelm of the Voracious Paladeathknightadin.

My descent into deathknighthood continues.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm hoping to do a fun, nostalgic post on twinking soon, so stay tuned!

Project Minipost: More New Stuff

2011-11-07T23:10:00.000-08:00

It's about time for bed, but I just wanted to triumphantly display the newest mount to my stable. Reins of the Drake of the West Wind is finally mine. I realize this is an easily obtainable mount, but I don't give a shit. It's cool, new, and I farmed 200 TB Commendations for it. Out of 9 85's, this is my only Cataclysm drake style mount, so I'm pretty happy about it. Another super bonus for me is that it doesn't have the crazy particle effects of the Dark Phoenix guild rep mount, which get a little old if you actually use your mounts to fly places. Here is a snapshot of yours truly enjoying the newness:

Yeah, you probably had this mount months ago, but IDGAF :D

In an unrelated mention, tomorrow is raid night. The guild got Rag down last week so we're finally in a position to try out a few heroics. We're tentatively planning on trying out Shannox and Baleroc. Knowing Cereal Killers, we'll try to power through these heroics generally without changing strategy nor requiring that people be aware of what's new in heroic mode. I'll be prepared, so we'll see. I'm likely to be Ret-ing these bosses. At this point I'm planning on making a post on our first foray into Heroics as a guild. Anyway, time for bed. Good night Internets.

Jack's First Transmog Set

2011-11-06T23:13:00.000-08:00

Mechanical Squirrel sez: "Transmog that unsightly non-matching raid gear!

With 4.3 creeping ever closer (the background downloader makes it feel like it's coming RIGHT NOW,) I'm feeling a little bit more compelled to have something to transmog. My guild isn't really into farming old content for vanity loot, so I found a simple solution that I think is still fun enough to wear around.

With Jacklalane being a human paladin, I'm given the not-so-unique opportunity to make him look JUST like a guard in Stormwind. The Imperial Plate armor set is amazingly easy to get, and aside from the shoulders it looks identical to what Stormwind guards pat around in. I decided to forego the bracers, since you cant see them anyway. Since the set lacks gloves entirely, I grabbed some Platemail Gloves from a vendor. They're a temporary solution since I don't believe you can transmog stat-less items.

The mats for the helm, shoulders, chest, legs, boots, and belt are as follows: 102 Thorium Bar, 12 Rugged Leather, and 1 Star Ruby, as seen here:

All I had to do was yell at my GM long enough to get on his blacksmith, and POOF, Jack is a badass Stormwind guard:

Badass.
(also pictured: Mechanical Squirrel)

I added a Grand Marshal's Longsword and Aegis to finish the look (purchased for a mere 370 honor.) As you can see in this convenient comparison with an actual guard, the Imperial plate shoulders don't exactly match, nor do the gloves. Wowhead commenters suggest using Heavy Mithril Shoulders as an "acceptable" substitute, but I think they're too purplish. As it is, I think the set looks fantastic, especially considering the minimal effort involved.

More transmogging will certainly happen. I've got a pretty delicious looking set of brutal gladiator pvp gear that will probably see some use, but I think I'll definitely spend some time raiding in this getup.

HOLY SHIT SCREENSHOT GALLERY

2011-11-05T14:58:00.000-07:00

Check out the link to my Warcraft screenshot gallery in the "Screenshots" tab above. MOAR CONTENT!

TESTING MOUSEOVER LINKS

2011-11-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

Immolation Mantle

LOOK HOW SHINY!!!!!

I win. Thanks Trocar.

Also, observe the less atrocious formatting. Super win.

Alternate Reality

2011-11-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

It’s another perfect, sunny day in Stormwind. Towers and spires all around gleam in all their unmolested majesty, having recently had their festive pumpkin decorations removed. Trade districts are bustling with activity, as always. Heroes fly to and fro on the backs of exotic beasts, magic carpets, and homemade flying contraptions. Business is conducted as gold and artisan made goods exchange eager hands. Not far from these bustling zones of commerce is the Old Stormwind Barracks. Commonly misperceived as a condemned building, the Barracks are actually a high-end nexus of player housing. The overt destruction to the Barracks, courtesy of Deathwing himself, actually added property value and infused the neighborhood with new tenants. Apparently people are drawn to that distressed “recently incinerated” look.

In unit B303 a level 85 rogue is lounging on a kodo hide recliner, picking his teeth with an enormous dagger. Floating conspicuously over his head is the name Erosus. Erosus isn’t logged in right now, so he’s just kind of killing time in the apartment. Irritation wells up hot in the hero’s leather-clad chest as he notices a trail of dirt clods that leads from the front door all the way through the kitchen and down the hall.

“Sought!” Erosus shouted, “What the hell man? I thought we had a rule about leaving weapons in the entry way! Seriously dude, I know you’re getting a lot of play time lately, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore house rules!”

A light chuckle could be heard from down the hall. Sought, the warrior of the house, got out of his oversized circular bed with a snort. As he moved toward the hallway, he glanced at his two gigantic maces. The weapons, his pride and joy, made his heart swell as they churned away, their Landslide enchant releasing an ungodly amount of loose dirt and rock into the room. Once Erosus was in line of sight of his doorway, Sought Heroic Leapt into the living room, landing with a deafening crash. The rogue glared up at him from his leather throne of solitude, his grip on the dagger tightening unconsciously.

“You know how things run around here, warrior. Those maces will fill this place with that bullshit dirt within hours. Get them out, now!”

Sought shifted his weight from one foot to another, sizing Erosus up. He was clearly agitated, but that only made the situation all the more amusing to the plate-wearer. With a crooked grin, Sought said:

“Why don’t you just go in there and move them for me?”

The rogue rolled his eyes, unimpressed with Sought’s baiting. He’d made jokes about rogues not being able to equip two-handers before. Before he could respond, Lifehack, a druid, burst into the room, all feathers and fur, crying.

“Why would they just nerf Wild Growth like that? Why? It’s just not fair. I barely get played as is and they’re NERFING me? This is hopeless. Just HOPELESS. Wait, why do you two look like you’re about to duel?”

Sought let out a bellowing laugh, clutching his stomach like the force of it was too much to bear. Erosus sighed.

“Do you see the mess he’s made? He brought those damn maces in the apartment again. I don’t know what time he got here, so Adal only knows what kind of mess is building up in his room. He’s been the popular alt lately, so his inflated sense of self worth is no doubt making him feel that he’s above common decency” Erosus cried.

Lifehack glanced sideways at the smirking warrior, one eyebrow raised, and said “Well, if you want I can go into his room and get them. I seem to have left some of my, things, in there the other night.” At that, the rogue shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Alts weren’t supposed to share rooms. If they were logged into while together, it caused disconnects. Besides, Erosus had a brief coupling with the druid when they were both lower level, and hearing of such things, especially with a clod like Sought, always stung. The rogue finally stood up, put himself eye to eye with the warrior and said,

“No, don’t enable him. He is a child without a single bit of regard for any of us in this home. I have to watch our NPC maid come in here and work her fingers to the bone cleaning up after this slob. I’m done living in his filth.”

Sought snickered and said, “well, if you got logged into more than once a day for that JC daily, maybe you wouldn’t have to watch the cleaning lady so much.” His face was a picture of barely contained hilarity. Lifehack gazed dreamily at the warrior’s armor. He looks so good when he’s recently repaired she thought.

With a barely visible motion, Erosus unsheathed his mainhand weapon and pressed it against Sought’s neck. Lifehack screamed girlishly and cast Roots on the rogue. Sought Intimidating Shouted and stepped calmly out of melee range. Once the fear wore off, Erosus vanished in an explosion of smoke. Just then, heavy plate boot footsteps could be heard on the front porch of B303. Sought and Lifehack fearfully looked at each other. The main was home. Jack burst in the door just as Sought got sapped. After noticing the dirt, the paladin immediately knew what was going on. In a flash of holy light, sought was suddenly surrounded by Jack’s Hand of protection. Erosus hadn’t noticed, but was quickly embarrassed as his attacks unstealthed him. Sought stood, unharmed, as the jabs made a hollow whooshing sound against the shield.

“God damn it you two, are you fighting over this damn tree again, and what is this shit all over the floor?!” Jack shouted in full fury. The paladin was an image of bottled aggression. His weapon, Volcanospike, wreathed in color shifting flame, his new tier 12 shoulders glistening with the sheen of a recently applied enchantment. “I swear it” he screamed, “if this keeps happening, I’ll get one of you deleted, and I don’t care which one!!” Clean up this mess and stop being at each other’s throats. You know how much I hate coming home to find I have to rez one of you!”

The rogue stomped (or in as much as one can stomp in leather soled boots) down the hall and slammed the door to his room. After the shield wore off, Sought simply shrugged and scratched his shoulder.

“Ugh, I hate forbearance. Sorry Jack, I don’t know what his problem is. I think he’s just mad that his weapons still have hurricane on them,” Sought said thoughtfully.

Jacklalane sighed. “Shut up Sought. Just ring the maid and get this dirt out of here. And for god’s sake, take get your maces outside. I can see the pile of dirt from down the hall. Fucking Landslide."

Thank You

2011-11-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

Just really quick, I'd like to thank Josef and Tikari for taking the time to comment on my last entry. The content of that blog came from genuine emotions. Although this is indeed just a game, it's still something I spend a good deal of time doing. Finding justification, motivation, and enjoyment in a hobby that most of my real life friends misunderstand and often disapprove of, is not only helpful but necessary. Myself being new to the Warcraft blogging community, I feel grateful to have received those two comments.

Thanks much.

Also, I plan on adding more content to my "noteworthy wow blogs" sidebar. Additionally, if anybody out there is familiar with blogger and how to make entries more content rich (with appropriately sized images, links, and even possibly working mouseover links,) please feel free to message me at @Colinjhawkins on Twitter.

Stay tuned for an attempt at humorous fictional accounts of nonsensical Warcraft situations.

Disappointments of a Casual

2011-11-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

In WoW the term "casual" is typically pejorative. Being an individual that plays the game in the fashion I do, I think some would apply it to me. I'm an active raider, but only one day a week. I'm not even exalted with Avengers of Hyjal yet. To be fair, I'm not positive anybody in Cereal Killers is. Don't quote me on that though.

Here's a poorly sized screenshot to prove it. Casuals are treated as a blight upon this game. We've been blamed with diluting it, making it too easy. Epic quality gear, at one point in Warcraft history, was a mark of dedication. A player could spot a hardcore raider in a crowded auction house. These days Blizzard is scorned for how simple it is to get purples, for how easy raid content is. I never played in vanilla, in the days where killing Ragnaros 1.0 required 40 people to have their shit together. I started playing in BC and since I have been a casual in several senses of the term.

On Wednesday this week the guild I'm in, Cereal Killers on Kael'Thas (or Fail'Thas as it's lovingly referred to by many,) killed Rag on 10 man regular for the first time. I was not present because I was with my girlfriend, living out parts of my life that have taken priority over Warcraft. I found out late that night when I logged in to do my rogue's jewelcrafting daily (gotta be ready for epic cuts!) Our GM's girlfriend, who raids on a resto druid, linked me her meta achievement for Firelands in guild chat. Instead of feeling triumph for my friends, I was filled with disappointment.

For most of the time I've spent playing this game, I've filled a backup raider-type role. In BC my hunter came into SSC to wipe on Tidewalker when people were sick of it. I did that sort of thing a lot for Uprising. My longest stretch of full time (3 days a week) raiding came when I started healing on my shaman in Wrath. Being a casual among casuals (or bads, people we carried the whole way through progression,) I considered myself better than a lot of my guildmates. Naxx wasn't a cakewalk for us. I remember how we never really got around to having Kel'Thuzad on farm, or at least it felt that way. I was with players who constantly stood in the fire, causing avoidable wipes. I don't say this to reject them as contributors to our time, but to help explain that when we triumphed, even with things other players quickly found mundane, we fucking triumphed.

When t11 came around, I was still on my shaman, but I was playing mainly as elemental. I was also in a new guild, one I saw as a step up from Uprising. The Ebon School, interestingly enough, was where rogue Uprising members defected to. TES was an improvement, but not by much. I had taken a break from the game when Uprising was flailing around in Ulduar. My first full clear of Uld was with TES, but we were in t9 gear, and we still wiped over and over and over on Yogg. Later, ICC became a place I was intimately familiar with. Ebon School hammered away at Arthas's stronghold until long after the 30% buff was released.

These experiences were fraught with frustration. Almost all of my raiding has been to some degree. Repeated wipes with these guilds never really felt like a learning experience. I've always been mixed up with players who simply got carried. There is something I always cherished with these guilds though: success. I think there's a lot to be said for the sense of joy a group of casuals feel when they drop a particularly difficult boss. When we killed Yogg in Ebon School we nerdscreamed like it was a world first. Killing The Lich King, even though it was way past when even our crappy server should have had him on farm, was exhilarating. I love first kill screenshots. Sometimes I get all nostalgic and look though those I've saved, trying to pick out the names of the other players against the backdrop of the slain monster.

The pride felt when being part of a guild-first boss kill is something I've always valued. Being denied such pleasures makes subsequent kills feel like sloppy seconds. This is all wrapped up in the way I feel about Wednesday's Ragnaros kill. Even though I'm a casual in an underachieving guild, my objective is to find success where I can. Without it, my reasons for playing Warcraft all wither away. Perhaps all this is selfish, but I can't help it. I'm proud of my guildies, that much is true. We've struggled with Ragnaros way too long. I certainly wasn't present for every wipe. Still, I wish I had been there to the kill. Hopefully Deathwing will be different.

A New Week

2011-10-31T11:13:00.001-07:00

With the start of a new (calendar) week, I get to ponder the possibility of the new raid lockout. As I previously mentioned, I only really raid once a week. Every Tuesday I get to go in with our 10 man group to kill the first six Firelands bosses. This week it’s looking like I’m going to be in more of a DPS role. Using three healers on basically any of the first six (or seven if you’d ask me) bosses is a joke. Our disc priest ends up smite healing most of the time if I don’t go DPS. On the whole Cereal Killers has a very strong healing roster, so I’m always excited when three of us show up on a Tuesday.
Ret DPS isn’t terribly entertaining, but it’s a nice change of pace from healing. Whether or not I feel ret is broken is a bit up in the air. This is mostly because I don’t do damage in raid all the time. Our ten man group typically averages DPS numbers around 20k for most fights, some higher, some lower. Jack can definitely keep up with that. I’m still sporting two pieces of t11 since breaking it up will mean -10% damage from TV. The sum total of the fights I’ve actually been a button masher on can easily fit on one hand. So far my best contribution is a 22k Baleroc kill. That seems decent to me. I’m in a handful of offset pieces from FL, with a 378 weapon. I still have the ZA shoulders and a couple of Molten Front epics. Hopefully I’ll be able to best that number this week.
I AM looking forward to the upcoming ret changes. A lot of people (read: PVP’rs) cried when the crit chance bonus to HoW was removed from Avenging Wrath, but I’m not too worried. Apparently they’re making judgments hit harder, and that along with the passive band aid attack power fix for melee should be a distinct quality of life improvement. The AW nerf will reduce our execute-phase DPS a bit, but the other buffs should compensate for that as well. For my AW/Zealotry burn phase it was always pretty awkward trying to weave hammer of wrath into the equation anyway. I could more or less count on ignoring it if heroism was up. As is, ret is too reliant on procs and our rotation is clunky as hell. Hopefully the incoming changes will smooth things out for us. I for one don’t really like doing 90% of my paladin’s dps on my ilevel 358 geared warrior alt either, so I’m welcoming a buff.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to a new week of potential FL drops. Hopefully some of the bosses will stop being so stingy with the plate DPS gear. Also, although I don’t like Mastery, I’d like Beth’Tilac to drop my t12 look-alike shoulders. We roll with too many paladin/priest/warlock players for me to even dream of getting the tier token. Out of the six or so Majordomo kills I’ve been in raid for, only one PPW token has dropped anyway, and our main tank got that one. I’m semi-optimistic still. A new raid lockout is full of possibilities.
P.s. I posted this at work from my phone. Ignore any failures herein.

A Bit of History

2011-10-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

My journey through the World of Warcraft started in 2007. At the time I lived in a home with two good friends who just happened to have very similar gaming tastes. WoW came into the house through a fairly unlikely means. Oddly enough, the catalyst that got us playing was the Warcraft episode of Southpark. On that fateful day I rolled a hunter named Lighthawk, which was my gamertag of choice back then.

In the following four years I've enjoyed my time playing quite a bit. The two friends I started with hung around, sometimes in the same guild as me, sometimes not. Among all the reasons I've ever cited for "why I play World of Warcraft," the friendships I've forged with other players is always the first.

Over the course of the last four years, I've played a lot of Warcraft. Raiding is absolutely the end objective of all my efforts. Out of all 12 (soon to be 13) tiers of content, the only ones I've actually successfully cleared are 4, 7(25 man), 9(25 man), 10(10 man), and 11(10 man.) Of the four guilds I've belonged to, none of them could be categorized as progression guilds. For me, that's okay. The kind of player I'd like to be is generally at odds with the kind of social life I'd like to have. Again, I'm okay with that. Mostly.

Out of those five tiers of content, I've raided as a marksman hunter, a resto shaman, an elemental shaman, an assassination Rogue, a holy paladin, and a ret paladin.. As the banner on this blog suggests, my current main is a holy paladin. I named him Jacklalane after the late and quite famous "Juice Man." Lalane was a fitness/health buff, so I find it a fitting tribute (if I can call it that) to play a healer with his name. Most people don't realize the reference, but that's cool. It's nice and easy for people to say "Jack" on vent, so that works for me. My first real raiding main was a hunter named Kiadimundi and NOBODY could say that name on vent. I ended up with the nickname "Kia" as a result.

At present I'm an active member of an (Alliance) ten man raiding guild On Kael'Thas called Cereal Killers. The guild was created by a guy I've known in game for almost the entirety of my experience. We're a patchwork of players who are generally pretty profane and always fun-loving. CK is another guild that I wouldn't call "bleeding edge," but we're doing all right in Firelands. Some may laugh at our 6/7 normal-mode progress (especially after nerfs,) but all things considered I think we are proud of our success. Membership is low and most weeks it's a crap shoot as to who will be participating in raids. I myself am only currently raiding one out of three days a week. We're making progress on Rag, but it's difficult because we generally don't have a lot of stuns and knockbacks. If not for the add phases, I'd say we would have the firelord on farm by now.

Despite the fact that we're not running hardmodes, I always enjoy my raid time with CK. Healing as a holy paladin suits me so well. Post Firelands nerf I've started contributing more as a DPS in raid, which I also love. For me raiding is somewhat of a competition against others in the group who have similar roles. That might be why I've never really gravitated toward tanking. Contributing toward kills while excelling (read: topping meters) vs other players is a big part of the fun I have raiding.

The purpose of this blog is going to be simple and straight forward. I'm just here to share my thoughts. I don't really theorycraft or get into lore. That said, Warcraft has been a big part of my life for the last few years and I do enjoy the blogging community that has grown from the game. I'd very much like to be a part of it. Although I'm not a member of a wildly successful guild, I hope I can contribute something to the WoW bloggersphere. Please always feel free to comment, but if you're here to troll, put people down, or contribute negatively, don't expect anything other than removed comments. This is about fun, sharing, and collaborating. I hope to see at least some traffic, and maybe some comments. If you've come this far, thank you. I hope this space embodies something interesting for those players who are like me.

A New Endeavor

2011-10-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

I have wanted to make a World of Warcraft blog for some time now. Herein I will share some of my thoughts and activities concerning Blizzard's MMO. Topics and information shared will be geared toward readers that already have a working knowledge of WoW. It's past 4 A.M., so I should probably turn in. It just didn't feel right to bring a blog into the world and leave its pages barren. Stay tuned.