God I love my guild: Photo Edition!

So, I was bored, and utterly without ideas for a post today... so I decided to take another page from my GM's blog and do a photo-gallery of sorts! It's mostly guild/raid conversations, with the occasional WTF moment captured on screen.. Enjoy!

BTW.. Most of these focus around my GM. Why? Because she says some of the silliest shit ever.


You sure did Amber.



Dual-wielding Ambers.. ahaha. Nice typo.



Cause of the leadership maybe?



Hideous combination that just shouldn't be allowed... Cursed innkeepers. (THREE IN A ROW.. FUCK!) Click to make bigger.



GRIZZLY ADAMS WAS JUST A SETBACK!!!! No seriously, Tanaris innkeeper.. Put it away.



When a raider shows up unexpectedly....



When we think we're about to pull, but OH WAIT!!! Also... great innuendo Kim. Click to make bigger.



HOW is this allowed to happen? Don't you all know i'm TERRIBLE at pvp? Click to make bigger.

Word vomit

So, I honestly have no idea what to write about at the moment, so I am just going to babble, thus prompting the title of this post.

My guild *Stands In Bad* had a pretty good raid week this past week. We did another full clear of ICC10, doing Blood Queen and the lootship on heroic mode. My GM was on her disc priest, which she hadn't played much since the patch... so she was really thrilled with the idea of doing heroic blood queen... Wednesday, we also went in and roflstomped Halion (Now with video!). After putting Barney's face in the mud, we went and casually made Trial of the Crusader our bitch... All in all, a great 2 night raid schedule.

There's a problem we're coming up with though... we don't know what to do anymore, lol. It seems like everything we've already done is way too easy (for the most part), and the things we haven't done yet are EXTREMELY hard... of course we haven't put any more attempts on heroic Saurfang since 4.0 dropped... but we'll have to see what the raid comp looks like... and now for some more thoughts i've had since 4.0 dropped.

Warlocks and Elemental shamans are overpowered... good shitting hell. Our WoL for the last couple weeks is LITTERED with their names in the top-200 listings.

Levelling is ridiculously overpowered.. Rogues are the worst offenders, closely followed by warriors. When i'm getting one-shot on my priest/warlock by rogues or warriors of the same level, then there is a fucking problem... I realize it'll probably even out more once I reach outlands and forward from there, but seriously... Balance the shit out.

Disc priests are goddamn wrecking crews in battlegrounds. I get one-shot by arms warriors and subtlety rogues, but everything else I can either hold my own until backup arrives, or decimate in my own right. (Penance as an offensive spell AND a healing spell? bwahahaha).

Druid tanking is still as fun as ever. I feel that a nerf is going to come towards druid threat over long encounters... or maybe it won't because it balances out better at 85, hell if I know. But even without misdirection and tricks my threat is generally somewhere between "OMGWTF" and "Are you fucking kidding me?" after a solid minute of fighting. The only time anyone's ripped off of me in a long fight was on General Vezax... with a warlock pulling 20k dps because of the mechanics of the fight that MADE him pull 20k.. yeah, fun times.

BRAIN DUMP! Bah.. This is what happens when i put a blog post away for a couple hours. I posted again on MMOReporter... I generally do that once a week, but I may have another one up later in the week. Sadly, I didn't get to see Blizzcon, and a giant eff you to everyone who did NOTHING but tweet about it this weekend.. (<3 you all really. I'm just insanely jealous) This word vomit has been brought to you by the letter F for "FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKK"... I'll have a less spazzoid post up at some other point... maybe, hell I dunno.

First impressions

So, as expected, patch 4.0.1 came out last tuesday (a couple days after my last post), and I decided to take a few days before posting my first responses. As you've probably noticed, i'm kind of an altaholic... or that could be a major understatement lol. So what i'm thinking i'll do is list things by class.

Druid (tank) - HOLY DOGSHIT SO MUCH FUN. Swipe cooldown is.... quite a change, especially in heroics, but honestly it's not terrible. A lot more tab switching to keep aggro on packs, but otherwise it's not so bad. Heroics are quite a bit harder to keep threat on everyone, but easily doable. Raid tanking on the other hand? HOOOOOLY SHIT. So much fun. Maul being on a cooldown is different, but it's off the GCD so it's not quite so bad. Pulverize is such a great addition to the rotation. Lacerate is weak nowadays, but that's alright. It's more filler to use between mangle/maul/pulverize. FFF really has no room in the single-target rotation anymore, and neither does swipe... and that's perfectly alright with me.

Hunter - Hrmm... Focus... I felt pretty comfortable with it on training dummies, but getting in and doing some heroics and even a quick raid (3 drake OS) I just felt very... *thrash, buttonmash, flail*. I think it's going to take a lot of getting used to. More so than other classes i've played.

Warlock - I'm leveling a warlock right now... Level 42 right now. This is a lot of fun. Having a felguard at this level feels ridiculous, but not TOO ridiculous that i'm absolutely unkillable. I can't take on large packs of mobs because felguard's don't have the staying power they used to have, and that's alright... Levelling should be easier, not trivial, and it's really not for the most part. There's a new spell in the Demonology tree called Hand of Gul'dan... holy CRAP is it strong. My very first one at level 39 crit for a little over 1000. Leveling the warlock is fun, can't really talk about the endgame part.

Paladin (ret) - Holy power took a little getting used to, but it's not a severe change really. The rotation feels a bit strange at times, but I think it'll be easier to find a way to fit into than focus. Haven't had a lot of time to play with it much... maybe i'll go into more details in a later post.

Death knight - So i've tried frost (DW and 2h) and unholy specs for this. Man it seems like a lot of fun. Festering strike is a nice addition to the unholy rotation with the rune change to Scourge Strike, and Sudden Doom feels a lot more suited to unholy's playstyle. It almost felt more like frost DKs with the proc watching and little unpredictabilities to the rotation. That's a lot of fun, to me! Dark transformation is also COOL AS HELL. As for frost DKs? They're still fun. I feel like I'm hitting frost strike a lot more (as 2h). Killing machine's change to no longer effect Howling Blast is a bit of a let down, but I feel much less RP starved when runes are on cooldown that i'm not wasting time.

Mage - Now my mage had been shelved for quite some time, but i've recently picked him back up because the changes to the mage class seemed REALLY exciting, just from reading about them. And damn if i wasn't right about that. Y'know why I stopped playing my mage? Because for a long period of time it was "arcane or nothing else" and the arcane rotation was absurdly boring. Mana management made it more interesting, until they made missile barrage procs mana-free... then mana management wasn't a part of the game anymore, and it was just a faceroll spec. I like being engaged in my rotations. I like watching procs and timing different things and having a lot of different buttons to hit... arcane was the antithesis of that. I mean sure, they had missile barrage procs, but lets be honest. It procced all the damn time, so my mage was laid to rest with some middle-high ulduar tier gear... and there he remained until last week. I tried both frost and fire out. Fire plays very much like it did previously, but the improved scorch/firestarter combination (scorch while moving? wat?) make things REALLY different, and the combustion change is unusual. Frost is a lot of FoF procs, Brain freeze procs, and puts out some solid damage. Blizzard seems to have finally figured them out.

That's really the extent of my experience with things since 4.0 came out. Less than a week and 5 different classes... Wow... that's crazy LOL. Anyway. Enough of my babbling. I know that I mentioned that I am the World of Warcraft writer for mmoreporter, it's a good site... you should check it out!

4.0.what?

In news behind the scenes of the writer... I've recently become the WoW columnist for MMOReporter. Feel free to check me out over there for all kinds of World of Warcraft news, as well news about numerous other mmo's. It's a relatively new site, so look it over for a more official (And less curse-riddled) look at the mmos we all love.

Anyway... by the time most of you read this patch 4.0.1 will have landed (or at least be patching in)... and it's a doozy. Now, i'm sure everyone in the wow blogosphere is going to be talking about it... As well they should.. It's a big fucking deal going to change everything as if you didn't already know that.

I'm sure a lot of you are taking last minute (hour, day) looks over the talent trees of your favorite class, flailing wildly and going "what the fuck", then rushing over to wowhead or elitist jerks hoping they'll tell you what to do.. Well, the theorycrafting geniuses at EJ are still working on it, as far as I know, and that means... guess what folks? You get to figure shit out for yourself.

Now, don't worry about it, I know it's kinda scary, especially if you're a new player... I'm not entirely unsympathetic, because we were all new at one point. Here's a few things to ask yourself before deciding where to spend your talent points in 4.0. Keep in mind this is mostly from a pve standpoint. Pvp offers a whole different aspect of things with endless possibilities that i'm not good enough to simplify.

First off, what is it you do? Are you a tank, DPS, or a healer? This should be easy to answer.
Second, what are your main abilities? As a DPS you can simplify this more into: what are your hardest hitting abilities? Tanks and healers have it a little bit more complicated, and i'll delve into that later.
Third, are there talents that increase X (the answer to #2)? Generally, these are the talents you want to shoot for, and generally fill up completely.
Fourth, are all your talent points going into one tree? The answer to this should always be a no. You need 31 points in one tree to access either of the other two trees, but there are always going to be things in other trees that'll help you out... Don't be afraid to toy around with them, because generally these will be the points that will be shifted around the most.

Now, DPS have the easiest things to figure out. Your hardest hitting ability, or at least your main "spammed" ability, generally, is going to be either the capstone, or your "spec into" bonus... Examples include Templar's Verdict (ret pally), Mind Flay (shadow priest), Chimaera shot (marksmanship hunter). You generally want to put talent points into talents that will improve these abilities... Increased damage, increased crit chance, reduced mana cost or cast times, etc.

Tanks' talent trees aren't so straight forward, but still relatively simple. Basic things you should fill out are going to improve your survivability... what increases survivability can be broken down into 3 seperate categories: Stamina, avoidance, and mitigation. Now without getting into any heavy theorycrafting, these simply translate into Health, dodge/block/parry, and absorbs. Any talents that increase those things are generally what you want to look for. Also, each tank tree has a talent that says something along the lines of "Reduces your chance to be critically hit by x%"... this is frickin mandatory as a tank. Defense rating is no longer going to be on gear, so this talent will replace the effect of being defense "capped".

Healers generally have the most difficult time "guessing" their way through a talent tree, and i'm hardly a professional healer so take my advice with a grain of salt here. There are several things you should look for within healing trees. Increased intellect, reduced cast times, extra in-combat mana regeneration, haste, spell power, or "increases the healing effect of..." are all going to be good starting points.

Now... I'm no theorycrafter. I don't have the head for formulas and figuring out how to get that extra 1% DPS increase by swapping talent X for talent Y... Chances are, if you're into that kind of thing you're not even bothering to read my silly little blog. But if you're looking at the new talent trees and sitting there with a blank helpless look on your face, then maybe this will help you make heads or tails of some overwhelming changes.

Title is NYI

It's been a busy week for me kiddies... First off... I did another guest post of sorts (actually, a flow chart!) at I Like Bubbles, my lllustrious (and oft amusing) GM's wow blog.

And on top of that, WoW Insider linked to it! Go me! Now.. maybe I just need to put something on my own blog for WI to link to and get some traffic flowing through here.... although my own blog posts are usually peppered with obscenities and nonsensicals... /ponder..

Oh.. Sorry... I also did a guest post for MMO Reporter about why people should play Cataclysm... sorta... Anyway, onto the real blog post.

4.0.1 is coming... Credible sources point to this patch coming next week (more specifically, October 12th in the US). With this pre-Cataclysm patch is going to come a dramatic change for... well... everyone. Changes in our talents, our abilities, our health pools, our gear, our gemming, our enchanting, our stats, our spells, the way we tank, the way we heal, the way we dps... EVERYTHING IS FUCKING CHANGING. I'm pretty excited about a lot of these changes, some people are less than excited, some people are genuinely concerned (and some of them have genuine reasons to be from what I understand at this point), while some people hail Cataclysm as the death of WoW, the sky is falling, and the angel of death will be knocking on Blizzard/Activision's doorstep anyday now asking for their firstborn sons.

Don't get me wrong folks. Everything is NOT perfect with 4.0.1, it won't be perfect next week when the patch drops, it won't be perfect on December 7th (the official Cataclysm launch date), and it won't be perfect for sometime after that. But y'know what? That's okay with me really. I remember November 13th 2008, the day Wrath of the Lich King went live... and it was buggy as hell. Quests and mobs were glitching left and right. Death knights and ret paladins were absolutely having their way with people 5 and 6 levels above them simply by drooling on the keyboard. DK tanks were invincible. Prot pallies suddenly had absurd amounts of unsurpasable aggro, and all they had to do was consecrate and masterbate. And for fuck's sake, does anyone remember "Additional Instances Cannot be Launched"? I sure do.

There are legitimate concerns that people have on the beta every single day. Some of them don't get the recognition they should. I'm not in the beta, so I can only imagine how frustrating it is to bring a real complaint to the powers that be, and having it go largely ignored or brushed off with a "no that's because of X." I get it, really I do. But there's a couple things I would suggest when filing complaints on the forums.

First - Wording is everything. If you proclaim doom, gloom, end of days because Thunder Clap isn't hitting as hard as you want it to, you'll look like an idiot and be ignored... or if you're spectacular enough, Ghostcrawler will make a post making fun of you. Conversely, If you say that thunder clap is hitting for X damage with X gear on the PTR, whereas on live realms it's hitting for Y (bigger number) damage in the same gear, take screenshots, show the buffs you have in each situation, and why exactly this is a problem, Blizzard is more likely to take you seriously.

Secondly - Not everything is going to work out how you want just because you want it to be so. Resto druids? I'm sorry, but Tree of Life is going on a cooldown. Love it or hate it, that's the way it is, and Blizzard is pretty concrete on that. Continuing to bitch and moan that losing your tree form is tantamount to setting your little sister on fire will get you trolled in the most hardcore of ways, and you deserve it. No amount of glib speech and persuasiveness is going to get Blizzard to change their minds about this right now, so it's kinda pointless to argue anymore... which brings me to my next point.

Third - Some things just aren't worth fighting for. Buffs are being spread around. Sorry but it's true. Shamans aren't the only ones with bloodlust anymore. It might be silly that they're giving it to friggin core hounds (i mean seriously.. a core hound with bloodlust? what the hell) but Blizzard is trying to make things easier on raid groups that don't have shamans constantly available to them.

Keep in mind that the examples I used above are just that.. EXAMPLES. They may or may not be entirely accurate depictions of the types of things i've seen on beta forums, so don't get your nose bent out of shape and say that you should be trolled for wanting your tree form back... that's not what I said, pay attention will you?