Thursday July 24, 2008
Hello there(No, I don't really know why I'm awake at 7am, either. I wasn't really planning on it.)
Where I've been? Er. I wasn't really planning to disappear. I started working shifts around the time I disappeared, though, which is mostly to blame for the lack of me.
I also went to Paris (which yes, includes the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational), and then to Italy for some sun, sea and relaxation with my family.
And now I'm back.
I'm still working shifts, though, so I can't really guarantee I'll be posting much.
But I will probably have a fair amount of things to post about - at least, concerning World of Warcraft - assuming I can pry myself off the shininess long enough to talk about it.
Because yes, going to the WWI meant I got a Wrath of the Lich King beta invite.
\o/
Sunday April 20, 2008
Eredar Twins down!At the long last, we found a strategy that worked.
No, I wasn't there for the kill (though I was there for a decent chunk of the attempts; story of my life - still haven't seen a Felmyst kill even though we've been killing her for three resets now), but I was watching and it was awesome. Now to repeat the feat next reset, eh?
(And I just repeatedly typoed "Eredar Twins" as "Eredar Twinks". The mental image of the two ladies in a battleground slaughtering everybody is just too much.)
On the upside, we did end up go to Black Temple afterwards (after skipping it last reset to work on the Eredar Twins some more), and although the random number generator was a bastard to me (no ring from Supremus, no trinket from Bloodboil, no necklace from Reliquary and no goddamned boots from trash - I have the feeling I'll get the necklace from Brutallus and boots from Felmyst before I see either of the latter two), I did finally get my Tier6 chestpiece.
Which when socketed with 3x 15sta gems, is a whole 60sta upgrade over the badge chest I've been tanking Mr. "Hardest hitting boss in the game" Brutallus in for a bunch of resets now.
(Last reset I tanked Brutallus without having a warlock's imp's stamina buff in my group... I never got summarily three-shot by the stomp + mainhand hit + offhand hit combination, but there were a few close calls I'd rather hadn't been there.)
I might be getting up to having a decent health pool yet. :P
Friday April 04, 2008
Further adventures in Sunwell!Ended up tanking Felmyst for all but the first three of our learning attempts. Fun times. We're doing pretty good at learning to stay the hell away from the green stuff, too. And the only times I got splattered (as opposed to the whole raid wiping during a flying phase) was when too many healers were dead, and that one time I stupidly backed out of healing range (one of the melee got Encapsulate, and my brain went "ack! damage bad! move away!" - which, in retrospect, turned out to be a bad idea).
Most priceless wipe today has to be the one where one of the mages avoided deep breath #2 with the rest of the raid, then ran into it via moving too far north in preparation for deep breath #3, got mind controlled, and promptly turned and Dragon's Breathed the raid, leading to everybody else getting caught in deep breath #3.
Tomorrow's a free day; we're going back in on Sunday. I don't know if I'll be picked for the raid again (I was surprised I was picked for today's, nevermind that they actually had me tank the boss for almost the entirety of it). Either way, I'm happy.
Also!Almost forgot to mention. ^^
I've been running Magister's Terrace (both heroic and non-heroic) to death (exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive ftw). Seen the mount drop once, on the first day (didn't win it though, and neither did my boyfriend - grrr!), seen (and won) the 20-slotter bag (just one more to go... *twitch*), seen (and won) the Orb of the Sin'dorei (although I'm grumpy that shapeshifts cancel it... surely it wouldn't be that hard to code it so I can shapeshift in and out and still be a blood elf?), got all the items I could've possibly wanted (as well as the fairly useless healing trinket and the enchant pattern), lost the roll on more rare leatherworking and enchanting patterns (BOE world drops that have been added as BOP from Kael'thas) than I care to count, and seen (and won) the phoenix hatchling.
I have to say, having a baby phoenix following me around almost makes up for me fishing up a second Mr. Pinchy and not getting a Magical Crawdad this time around either. (Or the fact that somebody in my guild got a baby crocolisk off their very first fishing quest.)
And on a completely different noteSo I'm in a new guild in World of Warcraft.
They recruited my boyfriend because they were in need of a holy priest, and recruited me as an addition even though 1. I was really rather undergeared and 2. they weren't looking for a feral druid at all. The idea was that I'd be geared up when possible and used as a tank (or as a healer, though more as a tank than as a healer) in Hyjal, Black Temple and eventually Sunwell Plateau when needed, but without a 100% guaranteed spot. I was perfectly fine with that (some raiding > no raiding).
Fast-forward a few weeks, and I'm promoted to member, in 4 pieces of Tier6 (and a blue chest *snort*), decent healing gear as well, praised for my tanking abilities, and so on.
Patch 2.4 is released, and though I've tanked in Black Temple and Hyjal (including main-tanking every Hyjal boss but Rage Winterchill and Archimonde... tank #1 was having connection issues, tank #2 was a paladin and didn't really feel up to maintanking, tank #3 had respecced DPS for Hyjal and didn't feel like going back and respeccing again), I sit out and just watch for Sunwell, as expected. Kalecgos gets killed saved, and the guild moves on to Brutallus attempts. A day of good tries, but no kill.
Then the last days of the reset, there's only one tank other than me available for the beginning of the raid. And somebody pops up with the suggestion that I tank Brutallus for a bit.
So I finish burning through battlegrounds for new bracers so I can replace my chestpiece and remain uncrittable (feral druid in T6 tanking gear = flag-carrying hilarity... unless every single horde decides to pile on me, I'm virtually unkillable, especially if people bother healing me) replace my blue chestpiece with a badge chestpiece (unfortunately the only option in that much of a hurry, though it's a bit of a lousy tanking chest), grab a bunch of flasks, approximately fifty billion Ironshield Potions and stamina food, and get flung head-first at a large pitlord. We get some good tries in, then the other tank comes online and I get replaced. And they kill him. Yay for the kill, though I'm a bit sad I couldn't be there for it.
And then it's Wednesday and the raids reset. We go Black Temple for the first night (due to raid composition and wanting to gear up some people some more); then Sunwell tonight. I'm idly fishing in Terokkar, with flasks and potions and food sitting in my mailbox but not really expecting anything, and up pops a raid invite.
o_O
*looks at guild list*
*sees only three tanks, me included, online*
So I pull consumables from the mail and wander off to Sunwell. A few trash pulls later, I'm staring at Kalecgos and wondering exactly how many times it'll take me to learn the tanking rotation. (It only took three or so attempts at Brutallus for me to get that one down; but I try to never be too confident.) The first three attempts, I mess up somewhat - miss a portal, take a portal too early, that sort of thing. The fourth attempt, the gods of the universe clearly decide it's time to give me a hand... the fight starts, and I immediately get popped into a portal. Wasn't my turn, but okay. Walk in, taunt the demon, tank it, get punted out, taunt the dragon, tank it, have it taunted off me, move off, wait for portal... get popped into a portal automatically again. Oooookay. Taunt the demon, tank it, get punted out, taunt the dragon, tank it, have it taunted off of me, go look for portal... okay, this one I have to take on my own... pop in, taunt the demon, tank it, get punted out, taunt the dragon... ooh look, we won. O_o
Off we go to clear trash packs to Brutallus. I mention to my boyfriend, "they'll need to replace a tank with a dps, unless they want me to dps, but if they're smart, they won't want me to do that". The raid leader starts saying in Vent, "okay, [me], I'm going to replace you with..." and one of the warriors pipes up saying that it's silly to replace me, since a feral druid does more damage than a prot warrior when not tanking, and on Brutallus every little bit helps. And since he got all the drops he possibly could've wanted on the previous kill, he would step out.
o_o
Okay!
So for the rest of the evening, my screen is full of gigantic pitlord. There's a few very close wipes: 1% wipe due to enrage, 3% wipe ditto, a few sub-20% wipes due to Murphy's Law (such as the first, and only, taunt resist I got in the whole raid... grrrr).
And then we pull again - last try of the night, as we're already beyond the time the raid was supposed to end.
And he actually dies.
Best fun I've had in a long while. And I'm still grinning like an idiot that I'm actually seeing Sunwell Plateau first hand, killing things, rather than just watching it from other people's perspective. I'd pretty much accepted as a fact of life that such a thing wasn't going to happen.
And now it is.
(I forgot to take proper screenshots, though. Was too busy bashing keys like mad and trying my damnedest to hold aggro off a full complement of Tier6 raiders going full out. Ahh well... next time.)
Saturday February 02, 2008
First reaction to patch 2.4 info: buh?Information on upcoming changes in the World of Warcraft patch 2.4 have started being released, and as usual, MMO-Champion is holding an up-to-date list.
Some first impressions in the extended entry...
Continue reading "First reaction to patch 2.4 info: buh?"
Wednesday January 16, 2008
Destiny, clearlyPfft. I should've known that making plans for hunter pets was something doomed to failure.
I was levelling the hunter some more last night. After clearing through most quest in Western Plaguelands (bar one I couldn't pick up and one that would've led me deep into Eastern Plaguelands, but including the entirety of the cauldron series), I decided I'd go to Felwood and then proceed to Winterspring for my last few levels before Outlands.
After completing an escort quest in Jaedenar, I unwisely decided to just run out. (Mount up, ride out, dismount and feign death - how hard can it be, right? Very hard, turns out, when you get dazed off your mount and half the mobs in the pack that's chasing you resists your feign death. They were green to me by that point, to add insult to injury; I could've easily cleared through them. Sigh.)
So - after dying, releasing to graveyard, and finding myself up in the northern graveyard, I decided I couldn't be bothered running all the way south again in ghost form; I figured I'd resurrect at the graveyard, run up to the northern flight point, fly to the southern one and deliver quests - and by that point, my resurrection sickness would be gone, and I could keep questing. Same amount of time spent, less manual running.
While running up from the graveyard, I ran right into Olm the Wise.
Now, that particular owl is the lowest level white owl available in the game. And he comes with Claw 7 and Dive 3 (the highest levels of those skills I could learn at that point).
And he was the second pet I'd originally planned to tame with my first hunter, about two years ago.
"Oh hey, nice, Olm" I commented out loud to my boyfriend. "I wanted to tame him so badly back when I was playing my Tauren hunter."
"So why don't you tame him now?"
Why not, indeed. "Keeping two pets levelled at the same time is painful" was the original reason I'd given myself for taking only one pet to 70, and then restricting myself to creatures that are close to 70 in level for my second pet; but pet levelling changes were implemented in 2.3.2, and there I was, staring at Olm, at level 53 with a level 53 cat by my side and a good 30% of experience still left to hit 54.
So I ran up to the flightpoint, then ran up further to the furbolg tunnel, ran to Everlook, stabled my cat, took the flight back down to Felwood and tamed Olm.
So far, so good - I've just hit level 55 and both the cat and the owl were level 54 long before that. Here's hoping it lasts.
So much for my taming plans, though. But I don't mind. White owls are pretty.
Tuesday January 15, 2008
No Ghost Wolf for meSo I'm levelling a hunter (she just hit level 52 last night).
As those who know me might know, I'm picky about the look, names, and so on of my characters - I even put effort into getting my bank alts nice clothes, I levelled my primary bank alt (also a hunter) to 16 so I could tame Mazzranache and Echeyakee, and so on.
So it should come as no surprise that I'd already planned out what pets to get my hunter as she levelled to 70. Considering what she looks like (white-skinned, white-haired Draenei), my first choice was obvious: Humar the Pridelord, the only black lion in the game. Took me a few days of camping the spawn point to get him once I got to the appropriate level, but he's been with my hunter ever since.
Knowing exactly how much of a pain it is to keep several pets levelled at the same time (my first - now abandoned - hunter, an all-black Tauren whom I'd planned to tame Echeyakee with, got attached to The Rake in the process of levelling, and then trekked all the way to Teldrassil to get an owl), I skipped through Petopia's list of pet skins, hunting for something that looked nice, would match my hunter in looks, and was in levels as close to 70 as possible.
For my second stable slot, then, I'd planned (and still am planning) to tame a black owl (probably Gutripper, although she's painful to tame - the next closest alternative would be to save this quest until I hit 70, so I can spawn the Windroc Matriarch on command, but that cloak's too nice to wait to get it), since I've been wanting an owl for a hunter pet for years. (Took me a while to settle on the color - the owl skins are all pretty - but I figured I'd keep reverse-matching my hunter's coloring.)
For the third one... well, I'd planned on taming the Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Low-level, yes, painful to level, yes, but I really liked the transparent look and color changing. The taming process was really complicated, but it tickled the perfectionist player in me.
Given that it required a helm with a meta socket to tame, I'd planned on waiting until I hit 70 to tame one so I could do it without inconveniencing other people too much. (Although I could've gotten such a helm much earlier than 70, it would've required people 4-manning an instance - either normal Sethekk Halls over and over and over, or heroic Hellfire Ramparts / Blood Furnace - just to get me a Primal Nether, and... no. Heh.)
I guess I should've been faster in levelling, though, because a stealth hotfix went through that made that particular wolf untameable.
This after a Blizzard employee had said that while unintended, the ability to tame it was considered a "fun use of in-game mechanics" and therefore they had no plans to remove it.
Sigh.
I guess I'll go tame myself a color-changing ravager (I wonder if the name AngryLittleRainbow would be too long for a pet name...), or grab a sporebat just because they're pretty (utterly useless, though - bleh). Or just keep the stable slot free for learning skills come the next expansion.
Monday January 14, 2008
New Year's resolution: post moreSo.
What have I been up to?
Well, for one this blog has clearly been recognized as one of the "it" places to go for World of Warcraft information, because it's started getting goldselling spam. :P
It's a good thing that only comments with an approved email address get auto-published, and everything else gets filtered and doesn't show up unless I manually publish it, no?
What else... well, the biggest thing is I've been 3-manning old-world content with my boyfriend and a guildie of his. We cleared the entirety of Molten Core and killed Razorgore in Blackwing Lair, among other things. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony in linking to my posts on a LiveJournal community from my weblog - but I'm lazy, what can I say? ^^)
For a while after we did it, it was entertaining to watch it being spread across the internet - WoWInsider picked it up, for one, as well as MMO-Champion.
Even more entertaining was to watch people's reactions - they ran the gamut from "Congratulations" (thanks!"), to "This has been done on a private server, the people don't show up on the US WoW Armory" (have to love people who don't realize EU servers exist), to "This isn't really an achievement because Onyxia can be two-manned" (when Onyxia is nowhere near MC in fight complexity - but whatever floats their boat), to five billion comments along the lines of "Can you upload your UI?" (I listed what addons I'm using in the comments to my first post - I refuse to cater to the lazy any further than that, it's not like I use some esoteric addon configuration, I run things mostly out-of-the-box), and even to "There's five names showing up in the screenshots, not three, you lied" (it's fine, l2read).
Have to love it when the idiots come out of the woodwork.
Other than that... not much. I've been levelling a hunter off and on (engineering ftw), running Zul'Aman with my boyfriend's guild (timed run ftw: three bear mounts - one of which went to my boyfriend - and counting, we'll have to take a screenshot somewhere fancy when all 10 of us have one), and that's about it.
And for those wondering about the outcome of the previous post - no, I didn't get my lobster. And of course, Mr. Pinchy has been hiding from me ever since. Ah well.
Thursday November 29, 2007
Damnit, stupid lobster375 fishing (for a few months now): check.
Fishing Highland Mixed Schools every time I see one: check.
Mr. Pinchy: yay! Finally.
And of course, the first wish spawns a Furious Mr. Pinchy on me. Bah. :|
Here's hoping I get a Magical Crawdad Box out of either of my two remaining wishes - while I'll keep fishing those pools whenever I see them (Spicy Crawdad and Golden Fish Sticks are good money for not much effort, especially now that I can make Aquadynamic Fish Attractors on an alt rather than buying them off the AH), I would be rather grouchy if I had to fish up another Mr. Pinchy to get the vanity pet. Especially since the boyfriend, lucky him, fished up his Mr. Pinchy and got the vanity pet off the first try a bit ago.
Fingers crossed.
Thursday November 22, 2007
Teaches him not to listen to meSo the boyfriend wants Argent Dawn reputation - not for any specific reason, just because he's a bloody perfectionist.
So he asks me to help him with Battle of Darrowshire, which he never ended up doing while he was levelling.
While we're doing Battle of Darrowshire, a conversation starts in his guild about some person on the server having Deathcharger's Reins, and how it's such a rare drop, and so on and so forth.
Boyfriend goes, "oh, I hate the bastard, I want that mount so much".
We finish Battle of Darrowshire and figure, hey, let's go poke Stratholme, get some Argent Dawn reputation and maybe we'll see the mount drop. (Please note that we're both level 70 and haven't been to Stratholme in forever, and we both ran it countless times when we were level 60 and never saw the Bony Pony of Much Coolness™.)
The following conversation ensues:
Me: "If the mount does drop, what do we do?"
Him: "It'll never drop, don't be silly."
Me: "Right, if it drops, I'll just pass to you, there's no way you'd ever forgive me for outrolling you on it."
Him: "It won't drop."
Flash forward half an hour, kill Baron, guess what drops?
So now boyfriend is a very happy Night Elf on the Baron's mount. Teaches him not to listen to me. :)
Saturday November 10, 2007
Showing item tooltips inlineObligatory "isn't this nifty?" advertisement: Phaelia of Resto4Life and Valenna of Parry! Dodge! Spin! have written a program to pull HTML code out of Wowhead and display item tooltips inline in a blog post (or any webpage).
It's very nice, and I'm using it (as of last post), so I thought I'd give credit where credit is due. The program is called WISP, and can be found here.
Stealth farming: Sanguine HibiscusWith patch 2.3 on the horizon (next week!), both I and my boyfriend have been focusing on items to get and reputations to grind in preparation. We both collect vanity pets, so with the addition of several new ones in the upcoming patch, we've been trying to figure out ways to obtain them as soon as possible. Some are obviously impossible to prepare for (being droprate-based), so we focused on the only one we can pre-grind for.
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One main problem emerged pretty quickly. I'm a feral druid, and was starting the grind from pretty deep through honored with Sporeggar (thanks to all the Primal Life farming I've been doing on the Zangarmarsh giants), so it was easy enough for me to kill enough Naga to hit exalted.
Boyfriend, on the other hand, plays a holy priest. And doesn't have much time for grinding. Argh.
The solution?
Continue reading "Stealth farming: Sanguine Hibiscus"
Monday October 29, 2007
Guild go boomDear Guild Leader Self-absorbed idiot,
in what universe, exactly, is "oh noes, let's /gdisband" an appropriate reaction to the fact that the second-best raiding guild on the server has the same amount of bosses killed as this guild does, and therefore they might overtake the guild and kill Illidan first?
Continue reading "Guild go boom"
Saturday October 27, 2007
Same subject, different subject(Still related to World of Warcraft, before anybody starts worrying it's about real life.)
I really hope things sort themselves out.
(And yes, I know it's cryptic, but I'm not wanting to jinx it or talk overmuch about it before I actually know what the hell is going to happen.)
Friday October 26, 2007
About paladin buffsRight. For the paladins in the audience, I have a question...
I know about PallyPower, and I know what it does.
My question is: would it, or any similar mod that you know of, automatically rotate through the classes and the buffs that are assigned to it, so you can just bash one button repeatedly until everybody is buffed and the mod informs you of it?
Or does the trained monkey person sitting at the keyboard actually control which class they buff / rebuff by clicking a different button for each class?
Because I've honestly lost count of the amount of times I've been acting as a tank in a raid or group and clicked off Blessing of Salvation, right after it was buffed, only to have it immediately rebuffed. It's not random, it's not an accident, it almost always happens.
"Okay guys, rebuff."
*30-min BoSalv goes on*
*BoSalv gets clicked off*
*30-min BoSalv goes on again*
(I eventually just gave up and waited until we entered combat to click it off.)
If it's an addon that redoes it (semi-)automatically, fair enough. If it's not, I think I've just lost a little bit more of my faith in humanity - because you really must not be paying attention to what the hell is going on to chain-rebuff BoSalv on somebody who's been assigned as a tank.
Blizzard implements paid character name changesHuh. Yet another World of Warcraft change that I can say "I've been saying they should do this for ages!" to: paid character name changes. (Forum announcement / FAQ page.)
We're happy to announce that through the wonders of modern gnomish engineering, you are now able to change your characters' names. Finally, you can turn the moniker that seemed like a good idea at the time into something more befitting your true standing in World of Warcraft.
I don't have any issues with the names of my characters, myself (beyond a character whose name had to be changed due to server transfer and the original name being taken on the new server - but nothing I could do about that), but that's most likely because I actually think about what I'm going to name my characters when I create them. The multitude of people who just randomly typed whatever first came to mind, then found themselves several months later loathing the name but not wanting to delete the character and start over, should be happy now.
Perhaps they should've thought about what they were naming themselves before getting to the point where they were unwilling to restart the character, but hey. Call it a tax on stupidity.
Thursday October 25, 2007
Black Temple attunement!Tonight's raid in World of Warcraft was supposed to have been Black Temple. But since there weren't enough people of the right classes online at the appointed time for raid start, the officers decided to go first to Tempest Keep, then to Mount Hyjal, in order to attune some trial members (as well as some casual members) to Black Temple.
Tempest Keep was uneventful, and it went much better than the last time I went there, since I had more of a clue as to what was expected of me this time.
Kael'thas the rat bastard didn't drop the Thalassian Wildercloak, though. Damnit.
I was so hopeful... it's pretty much the cloak for Feral Druid DPS, especially after 2.3. Razor-Scale Battlecloak is pretty comparable, but it's from Morogrim, which means it's even more unlikely I'll ever see it drop (as the guild is even less inclined to go to SSC than to go to TK, for understandable reasons); nothing else really compares in terms of scaling. Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape is really shiny, and a definite upgrade over Capacitus' Cloak of Calibration, but it works out to less AP and less crit than Thalassian Wildercloak, especially when taking raid buffs into account.
I can't complain, though. Mount Hyjal was nice to me. Anetheron decided to spit out Don Alejandro's Money Belt, which is pretty much the belt (Belt of One-Hundred Deaths is a bit of an upgrade over it in 2.3, depending on how you value the new expertise stat, but it's from Lady Vashj); Kazrogal figured he'd help out and dropped Razorfury Mantle, which is also extremely nice (Shoulderpads of the Stranger is better, especially with the 2.3 changes, but it's from Hydross; I ultimately want Tier6 in the slot, but it'll take a while).
As my boyfriend put it, "Welcome to negative DKP". :P
Granted, the annoying side of it was I lost the Wastewalker two-piece set bonus - which, in addition to losing the +hit on the Wastewalker Shoulders, meant I had to burn somewhere around 500g regemming the rest of my items to remain at the +hit cap; still, it was something I always knew I'd have to do eventually. Might as well do it now, rather than pass on upgrades and cling to blue items just to save myself the gold.
And of course, I got the quest item from Rage Winterchill, which means I can now enter Black Temple. It's unlikely I'll do so before the next reset, as the guild already killed a good chunk of the bosses in there this week so what's left is the harder stuff I'm unlikely to be much use on, but - yay. :)
You are now Hated with Bloodscale Naga.Well, that went faster than I would've thought. Only around three hours to hit exalted with Sporeggar.
Granted, I was starting from almost revered (thanks to quite some time spent farming bogpeople for Primal Life), but still...
The repeatable quest gives 750 reputation per turn-in, and it took me roughly 5-6 minutes for each (including travel time between Sporeggar and the Naga). Three-shotting level 63-64 mobs for rep ftw.
MMO-Champion has a screenshot of the Tiny Spore Bat, and it is, as expected, ridiculously cute. Can we have the patch soon please?
(Also, dragon kite. I don't know where this will be from, but I do know I want one. My poor abused bank space...)
Tuesday October 23, 2007
Quick recap of the last few weeksYes, I know I don't post much. Shush!
First of all, a couple of images:
After missing the Tempest Keep attunement run (due to my boyfriend's computer croaking a few hours before it was scheduled, and me lending him my laptop so at least he could go), I finally got attuned to at least Mount Hyjal (and now just need to kill Rage Winterchill for Black Temple attunement).
Granted, I'd be happier if this hadn't come at the expense of progression for the guild (the only reason we went to Tempest Keep instead of them going to Black Temple to kill Reliquary of Souls was they were short on rogues for the evening)... eh.
Also, though I don't have a screenshot (I forgot to take one, for once, heh), I managed to get my hands on a Sinister Squashling a few days ago. And my boyfriend got his today, too. Whee. (We're both a bit obsessed with collecting vanity pets. Just a tiiiiiny bit obsessed. *cough*)
I do sympathize, though, with the guildie who wants The Horseman's Helm for his warrior alt and still hasn't seen it drop even once after several days and a couple hundred runs of the place.
Continue reading "Quick recap of the last few weeks"
Monday October 08, 2007
Heart of the Wild buff in 2.3Sometimes it pays to be subscribed to a RSS feed of Blue posts on the WoW forums, even though on bad days you have to sift through an endless sea of "stop posting nerf thread please" to get anything even semi-useful.
Patch 2.3 will bring a change to the Heart of the Wild talent for feral druids. The talent, previously giving a 20% increase to strength while in cat form, will give a 10% increase in attack power instead. (Source, for those interested.)
While at first this might seem like a nerf, doing the math (as pointed out in the linked thread) shows it's a buff. With my current DPS gear (which is by no means stellar, as I focused on my tanking gear first and foremost), the change nets me a gain of (slightly less than) 200AP.
The Blue post on the linked thread also mentions that 2.3 will finally correct the issue with feral druid weapons (short version - due to a flaw in calculating the additional feral attack power that gets added onto feral druid weapons, feral druids were consistently getting shorted on dps compared to melee dps using weapons of equivalent item level; long version with math, see this thread on the Elitist Jerks forum).
All in all - finally a good change, and hopefully a way for feral druid dps to match up to other dps classes a bit better.
Now to wrap my brain around the math and recalculate gear choices...
Sunday October 07, 2007
Fun with random droprateHow to make one's boyfriend whine about his luck: help him farm Primal Shadow.
The following conversation ensued...
Him: "Bah, lousy droprate... no motes so far."
Me: (jokingly) "Maybe it's your fault. You might be jinxing it. I have four motes on me that dropped before you got here."
Him: "Well, fine, I'm moving to the other place. Woudn't want to ruin your luck." (moves away)
Me: (immediately, upon the next kill) "Look, a mote!"
Him: "..."
Me: (a few minutes later, three more kills) "Another mote! Another two! ...look - a random blue!"
Him: "......"
Him: (45 minutes later or so) "So how many motes do you have?"
Me: "Four primals, five motes."
Him: "...I only have one primal and two motes. I hate my luck."
Me: "...hey, another three motes!"
Him: "If you say another word about more motes, I'll murder you."
Me: (kills some more) "Two more motes... another... ...hey, look - another random blue!"
Him: "......"
I don't know whether to be glad or not that we were done shortly after. With his luck inversely affecting mine, who knows, I might've ended up getting an epic world drop. :P (Another one, that is... got a Lola's Eve a couple of weeks ago from a random birdman in Skettis. Not that I've been able to sell it so far, but still...)
At least the plate chest is going to be useful for his paladin alt, assuming he manages to get it to that level. (Granted, I know next to nothing about gearing paladins, so I have no idea how good that thing is... but given that there are two classes in the game that wear plate, and warriors don't use spelldamage, it seems a pretty paladin item to me. :P) The mail belt I'll probably just try selling on the auction house, as it looks pretty nice, I lack a shaman alt, and - since it's mail - I doubt a paladin would find it useful. (Do feel free to tell me I'm wrong, though. As I mentioned, I have no clue about paladins. :P)
Tuesday October 02, 2007
Life, the universe and everythingWell, what do you know? I'm actually awake and coherent in the morning. Will wonders never cease? (Have had issues sleeping decently for the last handful of days... kept waking up, having nightmares, etc, and very little sleep - and fragmented at that - does not do nice things to one's brain.)
As for the guild situation... let me put it with an image:
And the funny thing is - this isn't even a Serpentshrine / Tempest Keep guild I've joined. They've cleared Mount Hyjal completely, and are on 6/9 bosses in Black Temple. Last night's run was basically a Karathress - Vashj "oh hi new trials, here, have attunements" run.
Here's hoping I (and my boyfriend, for that matter) pass trial. *crosses fingers*
(Boyfriend found the guild. If we pass trial, I don't think he'll ever let me forget that because of him I basically went from a guild that had cleared Karazhan and had a poke or two at Gruul to a Black Temple / Hyjal guild. Heh.)
Friday September 21, 2007
Daily quests and youSo I recently got my Netherdrake (./cheer). This makes me exalted with three out of three factions with which players acquire rep through daily quests, and leaves me free to choose which dailies to do to maximize my income per day.
As this has been an interesting exercise to figure out, I thought I'd share my observations here.
Continue reading "Daily quests and you"
It just figures
So the guild situation finally came to an end. It had been brewing a long, long time, and while I can't say I'm sorry that it's finally over... ugh.
To make a long story short: I got into the guild as a feral druid, and they've always known I wanted to stay feral (tank / dps, offhealing without respeccing if necessary). I took a break from World of Warcraft for a few months, came back, was still in the guild, all was well and good... except while I was away, they happened to implement rules saying that every "healer" class (priest / paladin / shaman / druid) had to be healing-specced unless allowed otherwise.
Continue reading "It just figures"
Wednesday September 19, 2007
Of blue and purple gearIt seems this weblog is quite likely to turn into a mostly World of Warcraft related weblog. My real life, at the moment, isn't really that interesting, and there isn't that much to talk about; on the other hand, if you listen to the people I know, you'll be told I talk about WoW far too much.
And I guess I do. But I enjoy the game, and the class I play, and the theorycrafting aspect of the game - so why wouldn't I enjoy talking about it as well?
So I'm giving up and creating a World of Warcraft category, as doubtlessly, this is only one of many WoW-related posts to come.
Carrying on...
I would consider my main character - a level 70 feral druid - quite well-geared, for the gear sources I have access to. The officers in the guild I'm in (all but one of them, who's on my side and doing his best to try and point out to them exactly how stupid they're being) seem to disagree, questioning why I don't have more epics. They also appear to think that player skill isn't worth much in terms of who is "allowed" to be feralspec, and that I should just respec healing so the people they've told they can't spec feral won't whine.
Lovely attitude, isn't it? Would almost think this was a level 60, pre-BC raiding guild wanting all their druids to spec healing because feral isn't "viable". If this carries on, I might have to find myself another guild - but while I'm in it, I'll be doing my damnedest to change their mind.
The extended entry has - mostly for my own reference, just so I can bring coherent examples to them should they whine about my lack of purples to my face instead of forgetting the names of items and scrambling for Wowhead - a list of equipment I have for each slot, both in bearform and in catform, and whether there's an accessible purple upgrade for it or not. I don't know how interesting this could be for somebody who's not in my situation, but I can't be the only one with a stupid guild...
*grumble*
And they even have a feral druid in the officer council. I'd be surprised he's not telling them off for being stupid, but I have a strong suspicion he's one of the sources of the stupidity. Sigh.
Continue reading "Of blue and purple gear"
Monday August 06, 2007
World of Warcraft linkdumpJust a linkdump. You can probably ignore this unless you play WoW, and even if you play it as something other than a druid. ;)
Continue reading "World of Warcraft linkdump"
