Moving day!

I have decided, after much thought, to move my blog! Please update your blogrolls and feed readers accordingly!

http://warcraftoftheworlds.wordpress.com

I've been pondering the move to wordpress for a while, and while blogger.com has been great for me this past year, I think wordpress will offer some extra customizability that I think will really make my blog even better, and look more like I want it to. Hopefully you'll all continue to read along for my future nonsensical garbage.

T12 Set Previews

First off, most of the visuals that i've seen are pretty horrid. The rogue one is probably the coolest of the previewed. The hunter one is utter shit on a stick (Piratestalker? wtf). Pally, Mage, and Priest all look almost the same except for the helmets. Very much unimpressed there. The fire theme is cool and all, but ugh. The DK tier isn't half bad. The helmet is halfway decent, and they actually look different from the rest. But I didn't start writing this to write about the looks of the gear. That's cosmetic (well duh), and secondary to what really matters.. STATS AND BONUSES.

Tier 12 set bonuses are sexy. Except maybe the resto shaman bonus. (Poor shammies). Let me start with the class I am maining right now - Death Knight.

• Blood 2 Pieces - Your melee attacks cause Burning Blood on your target, which deals 800 Fire damage every 2 for 6 sec and causes your abilities to behave as if you had 2 diseases present on the target.
• Blood 4 Pieces - Your Dancing Rune Weapon grants 15% additional parry chance.

• Frost/Unholy 2 Pieces - Your Horn of Winter ability also grants you 3 runic power every 5 sec for 2 min.
• Frost/Unholy 4 Pieces - Your critical strikes with melee abilities deal 15% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.

One of my guildies brought up an interesting point with the 2p bonus. The burning blood ability makes other abilities act like there are "2 diseases on the target"... so does it stack with the other diseases, making things hit even harder? /ponders. I dunno... Also, the wording makes it sound like *every* melee swing puts the burning blood buff on the target. Is it only white hits? Abilities and melee? Does it stack, or just refresh every swing? If so, how will it deal any damage at all, because you're consistently refreshing the DoT.. I'll need more information, but the 2p bonus is pretty promising, and a bit confusing. I had always been under the impression that Blizz wanted to kill diseaseless tanking (which is partly why they rolled Scarlet Fever into Blood Plague for tanks, imo). As far as the 4-piece tanking bonus goes... there's nothing confusing or negative about it. 15% additional parry chance, every 90 seconds. Fuck yes.

Now for the DPS versions. The 2p version is... strange, to me. It's probably better suited to unholy than frost. Frost strike has a relatively low priority in frost's rotation, both for DW and 2h, so i'm not sure what's going to happen there. Obliterate hits harder, and theorycrafting these days even shows that it's worth waiting a couple seconds for an obliterate on killing machine procs over hitting frost strike. Unholy also prioritizes death coil a bit lower last I checked, but it's not *as* far down as frost strikes are for frost. DC's are great for unholy because they're used for the empowered ghoul, and unholy blight stacking. The 4p bonus is, again, just pretty awesome. 15% of extra crit damage, as fire damage, off melee abilities... which means it won't affect diseases, icy touch, howling blast, or death coil.

All in all, i'm stoked to see Blizz trying to do new shit with their set bonuses. So many of them have been just very meh. Some have been good (bear T10), some have been not so good (bear T11), but it's long overdue for some fresh ideas. I'm glad to see it comin from Blizz nowadays.

The Year in Review

Holy shit, i've been blogging for a year. I can hardly believe it. Looking back at the time since I first started blogging, I kind of find myself questioning what the hell i've been doing on here. Honestly, I am not really trying to *take* this blog anywhere. I just like having a place to ramble whenever the mood strikes me. The inspiration comes more often than others, which is why i've never tried to align myself with any kind of writing schedule. I can't force the word vomit that makes up my blog, and to try to do so would be... silly. For that same reason I sometimes have issues coming up with a topic to write for mmoreporter.com, but i've managed to never miss a deadline there, so take that as you will. There's always something worth talking about, but editorialziing like I do there doesn't exactly fit into.... whatever my theme for this blog is.

I write this blog for myself. I love it when people comment on my blog, or retweet my twitter announcements, or tell me what a good post they think I wrote, or whatever, but that isn't the big deal behind this blog. I don't feel like I owe my readership a post every day, or three times a week, or whatever. If it got to the point where I felt like I *had* to write here on a regular basis, to live up to some weird expectations, i'd probably give it up. I like babbling. If you've read this blog for any amount of time you know that. Hell, i'm babbling right now, for two paragraphs, without much real sentence structure. Such is life, and such is the life of my blog. This is a lot more stream of consciousness than it was probably intended to be when I first started writing a year ago, but it's the life this blog has evolved into, and i'd be silly to go against it.

So, as of April 23rd, this blog has existed for a year. I'm sure a lot of people do this big introspective post for their one year anniversary, but I don't do things a lot of people do... usually. I do what I want (it's a lot funnier if you picture that last line in Cartman's voice... damn my brain for leeching what's on the tv right now). Anyway, if you've been following me for the whole year... holy shit what are you still doing here? :D But thanks! And if you're a new reader... well thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I entertain you with my nonsensical jibberjabber, but if not it's cool too. I don't always ramble this much about nothing... just most of the time.

Also, I use way too many elipses. Sorry.

Progression!

So, you may or may not notice (if you're reading this by a feeder, you should go to my actual page!) that I have a new header image. It's a giant, dead, 2-headed ogre... That's right motha fuckaz! We killed Cho'gall! Officially bringing *Stands In Bad* to 10/12 in normal modes.

In case you couldn't tell, i'm exceedingly happy about this. Cho'gall has been a cock-block for us for over a month now. So much so that we actually had to take a couple weeks away from plugging at him to clear our collective heads out. For a guild that's not a bunch of hardcore raiders, going in 2 weeks in a row and doing nothing for a day but throw ourselves against a wall of ogre.... it gets tiring. People make sloppy mistakes, they get burned out, they lose focus, they get irritable. It's really a difficult time for me, as a raid leader, to find out how to deal with 10 people who are so sick of the same shit... and really, I can't blame them. I was getting sick of doing the same boss. It's times like this that make me realize I am not the type to be in a real hardcore progression guild. I can only imagine how long the server firsters threw themselves at some bosses just for the sake of being... server first.

I don't have that kind of sanity. I like raiding 6 hours a week and not having to stress about whether i've got the mats for flasks or gold for repairs until tuesday. But all of that aside, we hadn't had a lot of real "failures" as far as our raiding progress goes. We had never spent more than a week or two on a boss once we went at him full tilt, so Cho'gall was especially frustrating to me, as raid leader. Aside from the fact that it is, expectedly, a much more difficult fight than any of the others we'd faced previously... it just felt like we would take 2 steps forward, than 2 steps back. We would make good, REAL progress, and then we'd slink backwards when we didn't kill him that time.

So, we took our 2 weeks away from him. Last week was our first time back, but we were running a bit slow on time, so we only had 30 minutes to chip away at him. Turns out those 30 minutes were just enough, really, for us to get angry at him again. Angry, but purposed. In the 3 or 4 attempts we threw at him last week, we got him to phase two, all but one time... A very good sign. So for THIS week we decided, on the surprisingly good advice of one of the guildies, to dedicate a two-hour block to JUST working on Cho'gall, and come hell or high water, when that 2 hours was up, we'd move on. After 2 hours of REALLY solid work, apparently there is something magical about the raid leader saying "This is our last shot before moving on" because i'll be damned if we didn't execute like a very angry, very FOCUSED, group. I haven't seen us that cohesive in a while. Sure there were miscues, but everything was just on. And we brought the fucker down.

Yeah... I'm proud of my group for that. Not just the other 9 people who finally managed to get us the kill, but everyone else who put in the work on chipping away at him for the last 5 or 6 weeks since we first stepped into his room. Every raider on my roster had a hand in it, whether they were there for the final result or not. So, let me just say thanks to all of you. Well deserved victory.

Pugging, Hostility, and Silliness

I have been working on my death knight, a lot, lately. "Surprise, surprise" you might say... "Another alt"... Well yes, but it's not like that. I'm actually putting VERY serious consideration into making this alt my main. "¿Que?"... You heard me right folks. No this isn't going to be another rampaging post about how bad bears are, cause that's not the case at all. I still have a lot of fun with my bear, BUT, I think they are lacking heavily in the AoE department. Now, in 5-mans I can generally make up for that with the fact that i'm geared to the teeth, and most people in heroics... well... aren't...

Druids are bad at AoE threat. The worst, among the 4 tank specs. Pallies have always been kings, and that's fine. Now, Warriors have come to join the, adding some amazing mobility to the mix as well. Blood & Thunder (which spreads Rend to every target it hits when it's on one target), Thunderclap, Shockwave, lololol, heroic leap, and i'm sure there's something i'm forgetting. DKs as well, have pretty good AoE threat between Death and Decay and Blood Boil all over the place, not to mention all the disease spreads, and heart strike which hits 3 targets just off the cuff (although, admittedly, it shares a rune-cost with Blood Boil).

Bears, on the other hand, have 2.5 aoe abilities. There's thrash and swipe, both of which are on 6 second cooldowns, and there's Maul which i only consider half an aoe ability because it hits 2 targets, the 2nd one for half damage... Bleh. Now, in patch 4.1, they are buffing the damage of thrash and swipe, but lowering it's threat modifiers to compensate... wait what? I have to thrash, swipe, and maul just to keep threat on a few targets, just to outdo my pally offtank's consecrate/hammer of righteousness. And THAT doesn't even always work out well. He still manages to outaggro me pretty consistently in multi-target situations.

Let me reiterate that. They're taking the bear's weakest aoe ability (swipe), cutting it's cooldown in half (3s down from 6), and buffing it's damage... but to counteract the damage buff, they're lowering it's threat modifier. They're also taking our stronger (but still not that strong) other aoe ability (thrash), and buffing it's damage while lowering it's threat modifier. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. If we're struggling on aoe situations, why would they only give us what equates to a cooldown change on our weakest ability? Will it help? Sure, it will help some... but not to the extent that I think Blizzard is hoping it will.

Ah well. Aside from all this, in the process of gearing up, i've been pugging quite a bit to get some heroics out of the way... and much to my surprise i've had a pretty good time of it! I've run across people of all skill levels, good bad, and in between, but the REALLY shocking part is just how NICE everyone's been. And the fact that i've not had anybody leave any of my groups... Well no that's not true. Had a couple people go offline in a VP run I was in, but that wasn't becaues of any failures or anything. I even tanked Stonecore and the healers was like "WTB a group who doesn't fail on Ozruk"... well of course i'd learned that shit the *hard way* when Cata was new so I told him I knew how to tank it... and sure enough I didn't fail on it. He was like "Holy fuck i'm impressed"... Then of course, I go in and fail on the last boss by letting her drop a rock on my nose... sigh. Oh well, we all laughed about it, came in and kicked her ass a few minutes later.

Maybe this LFG call-to-arms shit won't be terrible... of course, i'm only gonna be tanking so i'm coming from a biased perspective. I totally meant to have a picture of my DK to put here, but I don't... So sue me.

I swear i'm not dead!

But, somehow I doubt you thought I was dead. Anyway... I've not blogged over the last month because i've been wholly and completely absorbed into Dragon Age. Now, I haven't been (completely) ignoring WoW... but I haven't played it as much as I had been. So i'll give a brief rundown on what's been going on with myself in-game.

SiB is still recruiting. A tank, and maybe another healer. I *think* we are okay on DPS, but don't let that sway you. We will take pretty much anything, and please keep in mind that joining us doesn't guarantee a raid spot.. Feel free to go to standsinbad.com to read up on our guild if you're interested.

SiB is now 8/12. With my guild downing Chimeron this past raid week, we are officially 9 of 12 normal mode now. Al'akir, Cho'gall and Nef are all we have left... and we have a lot of work to do before we manage the end bosses, from the way I understand it. We threw ourselves at Cho'gall for a couple weeks with... frustrating results. We had a few attempts go really well, but just not enough to take it to the end. I think the best thing for our raid right now is to not look at him for a week or two and turn our attention elsewhere. Nef, from what the other raid leader tells me, is not going to be happening anytime soon. A frost mage would be killer to have for that fight, i'm told, so if THAT is you, also feel free to let us know!

I have been alting more... of course. I've spent some time alternating between a rogue (Ketojan) and a shaman (Shocktogon). I don't know what drives me to play all these alts, because it's not like i'm going to do any raiding on them... My raider is my bear, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, cause I enjoy tanking. I think DPSing (these days) is more stressful than tanking, because there's a lot more to generally have to watch out for. I've done some DPSing on my druid on the single-tank raid bosses (Atramedes, dragon twins. and our Al'Akir attempts), and... Well I kinda failed at the twins, and had a few issues with Atra (but to be fair, i'd only done Atra once before, our first time seeing him).

Chimaeron is a fun fight, by the way. Harrowing, coming from someone who watches his health bar like a freak of nature. Our healing team is a bunch of goddamn superheroes too. Atramades is a harder fight, imo... but my healers might argue that point. Conclave is stupifyingly easy. Like.. We'd never seen them before, and killed them in ~4-5 pulls. WTF. Al'akir is way too random for my tastes. SO much going on.

Oh.. I also built a new computer, and i've taken to recording some of our raid videos. I have an x-fire channel that you can check out here. I might move to a youtube channel, because I know not everybody can access xfire from work... We shall see, though. Anyway... I think that's it for me. I promise not to take another month off from the blog. I hope not TOO many people have stopped following me for fear of lack of updates.

*Stands In Bad* is recruiting!

I don't usually tout stuff about my guild, but i'm going to follow my GM's lead. You should read the post of hers that I linked, because she words things well... And her blog is just fucking awesome.

So... Who are we?

Stands In Bad is a casual/progressive raiding guild that exists Alliance side on the US - Azgalor server. We've only been in existence since July of 2010, but since then we've been kicking ass at our own pace. Currently we are 5/12 in normal mode raiding, after only 3 weeks of raiding. We focus solely on 10 mans (because 25 mans are like herding goddamn cats, and i'm not up for that), and we are looking for people to fill out our just-forming second 10-man group. We are a very mature, open-minded group of people. Racist, sexist, sexual orientation-...ists.... (what do you call them?) Are *not* welcome. We welcome all types in our guild, so all types should FEEL welcome.

What do we need?

Well, as I said, we are filling out a just-starting second 10-man group. We basically have *Exactly* 20 people, but are looking for a couple backups and alternators. If you can only raid every other week, or have no issues sitting out semi-regularly, then we might be worth looking for. We're welcoming all classes, but we currently have no rogues, mages, or boomkins. Any kind of hybrid (tank/dps, dps/heals, tank/heals) is also welcome!

When do we raid?

Wednesday and Thursday evening, at 7-10 pm Central (our server time).

What's expected of you?

While we're not a "hardcore" raiding guild, we do ask you to do your best when you come along for a raid. If you sign up, you're expected to be fully gemmed and enchanted. When I lead raids, I always check gear before I post the final roster. While we do raid "seriously", we also have a lot of fun with it too.

Are you interested? Sound like we might be your cup of tea? Drop an email to Amber, our GM, at endingfire@gmail.com, make sure you include a link to your toon's armory and such. If you can use full words while typing instead of "text speak" it's a bonus! We don't have an official "raid applicant" form for you to fill out, so just tell us a bit about yourself. I'd also recommend reading this first, as it is our guild's charter. Look forward to hearing from you!

ARGH! Sorry folks, I had the wrong email address listed. NOW i've got the correct one. Sorry.. /headdesk

Raid level gear for Da Bears

As you can assume, I don't mean this for the football team... This is going to be the gear you want to look for in normal mode raids. Obviously the heroic versions are comparable if you're doing heroics, but if you're in that point of raiding, you probably don't need me to tell you what gear to look for, who it drops off of, and I'll even mark your "best in slot" with an asterisk, then give a brief explanation afterwords. It should be noted that i'm leaving out crafter-only slot items (engineering head-slots and etc)

Chest

Assassin's Chestplate - Leatherworking

Morrie's Waywalker Wrap - Random drop*

Sark of the Unwatched - Atramedes*

Stormrider's Raiment - Tier 11

Haste is a bad stat for bears, plain and simple. And the 2-piece T11 bonus is really pretty crummy, which is a shame cause the 4-piece bonus is nice... and expertise isn't a bad stat. Have to wonder what Blizz was doing with this tier. The LW crafted piece is nice, but it's lack of gem socket (Compared to the *two* sockets the other pieces have) REALLY hold it back.

Feet

Storm Rider's Boots - Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Treads of Fleeting Joy - Valor Point Vendor

There's really no "best in slot" between these two. They both have haste, which is blah, but can be reforged off. The Storm Rider's Boots have a better secondary stat in mastery, but the socket bonus is meh (only 10 mastery. Better socketing for agi/stam or stam really). The VP boots have a better socket bonus (10 agi), but crit being it's other green stat is kind of eh. Personally, I think the boots Halfus drops are better, but JUST barely, and too close to call.

Gloves

Double Attack Handguards - Chimaeron*

Liar's Handwraps/Stormbolt Gloves - Dragonmaw Clan/Wildhammer Clan (H/A)

Stormrider's Grips - Tier 11

Again, the tier 11 is kind of blah, green-stat wise. Expertise and Mastery, offered by the Double Attack Handguards make a tasty combination, but the rep gloves are by far the easiest to come across in this list.

Head

Membrane of C'thun - Cho'gall

Tsanga's Helm - BoE zone drop in Bastion of Twilight*

Stormrider's Headpiece - Tier 11

Tsanga's just barely edges out the T11 piece, because crit and mastery are valued higher than hit or expertise. Haste brings down the Membrane, and giving haste to the socket bonus really drags this way under the other two pieces. 30 agi is a damn sexy socket bonus, and both the t11, and Tsanga's have, so you could really go either way.

Legs

Aberration's Leggings - Maloriak

Stormrider's Legguards - Tier 11*

I'm quite disappointed to only see TWO pieces of 359 legs even viable for bears. Tier 11 is a CLEAR winner between these two pieces as well. Farm Baradin's Hold for them, because they're really just worth it. Good sockets, good bonus, good stats, easily obtainable.

Shoulders

Poison Protocol Pauldrons - Omnotron Defense System*

Stormrider's Spaulders - Tier 11

The tier 11 has a decent (at best) socket bonus... but it just doesn't outweigh all that nasty haste it has on it.

Belt

Belt of Nefarious Whispers - Leatherworking

Dispersing Belt - Twilight Ascendant Council

This is a tough call. The Dispersing Belt has a socket, whereas the crafted belt doesn't, but the crafted belt has better secondary stats. Take whichever one you like, really.

Bracers

Parasitic Bands - Magmaw

Well.... these are the only 359 leather agility wrists.... Guess what your BiS is? (Ugh.. i'm pretty disgusted about that, honestly). At least they're good statistically.

Neck

Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace - BoE world drop

Necklace of Strife - Valiona & Theralion

There's almost no statistical difference between the two. DRFN edges out the other by way of having more mastery, but it's REALLY a tossup, because you can reforge more off of the Necklace of Strife into dodge.

Ring

Hornet-Sting Band - Valor Point vendor (new in patch 4.0.6)

Gilnean Ring of Ruination - BoE world drop

Lightning Conductor Band - Omnotron Defense System*

Signet of the Elder Council - Earthen Ring Revered*

You can kind of go any way with these three. I starred the two that I did because they kind of have the best combination of stats, overall. Mastery, Crit, and Hit. Haste on the rep ring, of course, will be reforged into oblivion.

Weapons

Malevolence - Halfus Wyrmbreaker*

Vicious Gladiator's Pike - PvP

Vicious Gladiator's Staff - PvP

I'm not one to advocate pvp gear in pve content, but there's really SO few choices for 359 gear. Again, i'm completely disgusted at the lack of options. Obviously, if you can get the drop from Halfus, have at it. Shame that resilience can't be reforged off of gear.

Trinkets (i'm going to rank these in order from best to worst IMO)

Symbiotic Worm - Magmaw

Vial of Stolen Memories - Valiona & Theralion

Bedrock Talisman - Valor Point vendor

DMC Earthquake - Stones deck

Mirror of Broken Images - Baradin's Wardens/Hellscream's Reach exalted

Hoo boy.. Trinkets are a bit more titchy than other slots, so let me give a brief rundown of why I ranked these like I did. I'm like trinkets with stamina on them for tanks. I'm also a big fan of passive or proc trinkets, over on-use trinkets. (Thus, Symbiotic Worm > Vial of Stolen Memories). Bedrock Talisman seems a bit underbudget with the bonus armor it grants, but the dodge proc is pretty nice. The Darkmoon card has a really nice dodge bonus, but an on-use battlemaster's trinket? And ONLY 11.5k health, at that? Really? Not worth the cash. Mirror of Broken Images will take a long time to grind, it gives mastery, which isn't bad, but not as good as dodge, and offers a spell-resist usage that's situational at best. It really isn't worth the time, or BH/HR marks, you'd spend on it.

Also, don't forget that my guild, Stands in Bad, is recruiting! See my previous post for details.

20 days... maybe?

Well, I really don't have a whole lot of other stuff to post, and my friend SpellboundSaga decided to come up with a new "20 days of..." blogging challenge. I kinda failed my last one... miserably... but it was all Cataclysm's fault! Anyway, the entire list for *her* 20 day... thingy... can be found here, and I think i'm going to attempt to try this one. So with that...

Day 1 - Introduce Yourself

I've never been much for giving a *lot* of personal details online, but I suppose people could probably find enough about me based on what I have given out, so whatever. Anyway, my name is Chris, i'm 29 years old and I live in a moderate-sized city in middle Tennessee.

As you may or may not have noticed, my main toon is a druid. Feral druid, tankish by nature. I've gone through so many "mains" in my time playing, but this one has really stuck with me for a lot. I've even become a pretty good raiding tank, which is something I didn't think I would see myself doing a year ago.

I've been playing WoW for about 2 1/2 years, but only been blogging for... a little under a year. Since I started blogging, i've come across an AMAZING community of fellow bloggers and twitter folks, an awesome guild that I can call home, and found myself generally having a lot more fun in game than I had in a while. I didn't even realize I wasn't enjoying the game as much, until I started enjoying it more... if that makes sense? Anyway...

Aside from my current main, i've been a long-standing altaholic. I've levelled something like 10 toons to level 80, and not all of them even exist anymore. Right now, my "primary alt" is a priest. I actually healed my first heroic on him a few days ago, and that went okay... Did another one earlier today, and that ended up going not so well, but we all have good and bad days I suppose.

I'm rambling now, and i'm sure that you all don't want to know much about the IRL me. I'm not that interesting really. ;)

Raiding commences

So... SiB took it's first turn back to raiding this week. I seriously think that's the most fun i've had spending basically 6 hours dying (over 2 nights) ever. Don't get me wrong, we weren't completely unsuccessful. We downed Magmaw on the first night, after... 4 tries I think? And then we spent the rest of the first night working out the kinks on Omnitron Defense System. We came back on the 2nd night and wiped for another few tries, before finally taking them down. Holy donkey fucks these fights are intense. Magmaw isn't terribly difficult, just took a few tries to perfect what was going on. Omnitron, again, isn't really TECHNICALLY difficult... there is just a SHIT TON going on, and the healers are pretty much in a state of panic for the entire fight. There's a brief bit of the ODS killshot video here. It's taken from the point of view of my dead GM on her death knigget (...say that with a french accent).

Aside from raiding (since that really only took up a small portion of my in-game time), i've been spending a lot of time on my priest doing Archaeology. At first I wasn't really a huge fan of it. I gave it a brief shot a week ago, or something like that and got bored with it REALLY quickly. So, at the time I gave it up as a bad job, but something got me back into it... I don't even remember what it was. I think it was the amusment I was getting from one of my guildies' inability to find Tyrande's Favorite Doll... so I told myself that I bet I could level arch from the ground up and find the trinket before him. Well, today my archaeology hit... 418 I think? I'm pretty sure I need to be 450 before the good stuff will have a chance to come up. Last I heard there's still no luck with the trinket for my guildie, so I do have a chance to catch it before him still. we'll see.

That's pretty much how I spent my time this past week. It felt good to get back into raiding. I leave you with a couple killshots. Expect more info when we down Halfus and Valiona & Theralion next week.

More babbling

So i've been neglecting my blog... apologies everybody. I have no intention of stopping blogging, I just haven't had much jump out at me as something that OMG I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS in the last month.

I guess, what i'll do is talk about what i've been doing in game lately. I've not been playing my fuzzbutt as much. Not because I don't like playing him anymore, but more or less he's well geared enough in my mind and we haven't started raiding yet. It was my decision to wait till the last week of January to start our official raiding, and i'm not entirely sure *why* i picked that date... I just kinda did. I figured that it would give everyone who wanted to more than enough time to get themselves "acceptably" geared for raiding, as well as give them time to look over fight strategies and... well... decide on where the fuck we're going first.

I put a post in my guild forums asking all the raiders where they wanted to go first, between the 3 raids (Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, or Throne of the Four Winds), and it has ended up being a 3 way tie between them... go figure. After that, I asked twitter. I think I may have done that too early, because now I don't remember what most people said... go me. I think it was a lot of Bastion of Twilight, but we'll see lol. (I'll take any opinions in comments as well, so feel free to tell me what you think we should do first ;D)

So... if i've not been playing my druid, what have i been playing? One of my other cadre of 80s? Oh no no, because that would be silly. No, i've actually been playing the absolute *shit* out of my priest... who is now level 85 (that makes a 10th toon over level 80...geeeeeeez. Only my 2nd 85 though). Anyway... After trying to play a priest several times over my wow career, I was finally successful with one, and I think it might end up being my secondary main once the new patch comes through and they fix shadow priest dps. Shadow is pretty fun, and I only died a couple times while levelling to non pvp-related things.

My priest is a female worgen, and I must say... after 85 levels of looking at that model, i'm pretty disappointed in the way they look. The female worgen models look *terrible* to me. Especially after having race changed my druid to a male worgen, which look incredibly badass. I think I might race change or re-customize my priest. Don't know just yet.

I feel like i've kinda been babbling on this post. Hell it's been sitting in my unfinished listing for almost a week. Oh well, I still have a normal subscriber base, so no one's left me yet ;D Thanks for hanging with me all. In other news, SiB raiding starts wednesday and i'm disturbingly excited about it. I should've had us start a week or two ago. Oh well. No excuses now, for people not being ready. I guess that's all for this post.

ALL OF THE ALTS

Fuck.. I hit publish on accident... If you're seeing a blank post, my apologies.

Anyway.. Lately i've been reading a lot of the backlog of Hyperbole and a Half... I literally can't be upset at anything when I read her shit, but I digress. That's what inspired the title of this blogpost. I actually had some more useful-type shit slated to post, but I had a lot of brain stagnation that kept me from fleshing it out properly... I still plan on writing it, I just need to unfog my brain. Not sleeping on a regular schedule will really screw with me.

So, i've been doing a lot of alting lately. I haven't been able to stabilize my schedule to the point of where I can run heroics with my guildies as much as I like. Working overnights sucks you guys.. argh. anyway. I can't even decide on one alt to play over the others, but right now it's mostly been my priest. I levelled as disc until I hit.... 32? I think that's what level you get Shadow Word: Death, and that seemed like a great time to dual spec (bwahaha only 10 gold now) shadow, and try it out.

So, I had a kind of vague idea of what I was going to post, but a discussion JUST popped up on twitter that gave me something a little more interesting to talk about. I want to thank Oestrus (who blogs on World of Matticus and Divine Aegis) for the idea. Inititally her and I had discussed something else, but we had a brief discussion on twitter about whether 10-man and 25-man raids should be held on the same progression chart. She said they should, and I said they shouldn't.. Here's how the conversation went.

Oestrus (to twitter at large): At risk of sounding elitist, I really, really don't like that 10/25 mans make no difference in terms of progression.

Me: How come?

O: I just feel they should be seperate. Maybe it's just old habits dying hard. *shrug*

Me: Eh. I disagree. There are points where 10s are more difficult than 25s, and vice versa. Makes sense to me /shrug.

O: I don't mean it as an insult to 10s, quite the opposite. They should be judged on their merits and we on ours. If I were working my butt off in a 10 man guild I wouldn't want to be competing against 25-man folks.

Me: Oh no, I wasn't taking it as an insult from you. But if they're seperate there will always be those who feel that 10s are inferior than 25s for whatever ludicrous reason.

O: I did 10-man hard modes in ICC for a time. It is work, absolutely. I hated being made to feel less than.

Me: Oh, I agree but like I said, there are others who will always feel that 10s are inferior to 25s if they're not on the same playing field. Hell some people STILL think 10s are inferior. Whatever to them lol.

That's the end of the conversation but it sparked a little thought process in my mind. For all of Wrath 10 and 25 man raids were judged on a seperate scale of progression, with 25's being the "real progression", such as it was. Prior to Wrath, if there was any difference in the number of people required for a raid, then it was specific to that raid, and they were all in one progression line. For instance Kara was 10-man, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon were 25, Zul'Aman was 10, etc, but they were all in progression, in that order. I think Wrath's way worked much better because splitting 25 man raids into two-10 mans doesn't exactly work out right, nor did joining two 10-mans into a 25-man. However, having two seperate progression lines, one for 10s, one for 25s made things a lot easier. You didn't have to combine raid groups, or split them up to reach different raids if you didn't want to... but at the same time it was still flawed in a way.

As I said before, 10s and 25s always competed with each other. 25 man dropped better loot, and was considered the "real" progression. 10 man raids were just inferior, in spite of (at times) being more difficult in one fashion or another. Mistakes tended to be more... life-threatening. Going without a healer could make some encounters un-survivable... going without a DPS could mean you wouldn't beat the enrage timer, etc. But at the same time, 25s had their own issues. There was less room to run around and avoid things (Especially range-oriented things like malleable goo or defile), and there were usually more "obstacles" (3 valks on the lich king fight) to avoid, but mistakes weren't quite as punishing. You could lose a healer and still have 5-6 more.

My point is, 10s and 25s both had their ups and downs, but 25s were held in a higher regard than 10s, and I don't think that should be the case. As it is, Blizzard has changed their focus, and made it so that neither 10 or 25 mans are ranked any differently. There are no more separate achievements for... say killing a certain raid boss on 10 man and 25 man difficulty... there's just the achievement for killing the boss, and that's it.

So, what do you all think? I'd love some feedback... leave me comments!