...through wiping, we learn.

Mardah, Destroyer's End

2012-01-22T22:07:00.003+01:00

Two pulls it took sunday, two pulls after 5 wipes last tuesday.... and the first time we got past platform 4... and we did it, we cleared Dragon Soul pre-nerf, surprising our GuildLeader who was expecting some evening full of wipes....

What remains are the pictures.....

But (apart from T7 which was EZ-mode mostly) this is the first time I cleared a raiding-tier before it ended, or it was nerfed..... Ok it is on normal, but that's what we were aiming for. Time for Heroic DS.... I don't know, we'll see...

I am just a very happy Tsjikin now.

Random thoughts before the raid....

2012-01-15T19:08:00.002+01:00

So, It's now raid-start-time, and I have no idea If I am going to be picked. I know we killed 'lower' DragonSoul last Thursday because I was there, so Ultraxion is next.

Before me I see some of my guildies (I am sitting on the keg). One of our druid-healers (kris), and our DK-tank Morrie. Cisse is sitting besides me, both in flight form btw.

Our OP-almost legendary-wearing-dragonrogue is swearing at our forums, probably they ate his post. And we are al just waiting for the pickups. Calendar shows 15 sign-ins.... blaagh, so no 25...again,we could really use some extra people (hint, hint).

Ah, some people seem to be in DS now, with 17 people online.... still waiting to see what happens. Although normally speaking, I was there last thursday, so I probably be...ooh..invite, last one in it seems.

So, time to get my pre-raid-black coffee, and get my zen-thing going to start, laters :)

Innovation : LFM

2012-01-10T23:32:00.001+01:00

So... my guild Innovation has a little problem, which is summed up by SWTOR or Skyrim or UFO, or something.... not enough people sign up anymore :(

That means we usually have around 17 people signing in for our 25's.... which of course is not enough.

So, if you are a healer (preferably not a druid), or a ranged DPS (again, preferably not a druid), and you like some less-hardcore, more relaxed raiding focused on 25-normal... well...

visit: the Innovation Web Site

And to give some idea's what we have been doing lately with some 10man normals:

After 17 wipes, on the last pull of 2011

..and after the first raidweek in 2012 (only 3 wipes to our surprise).

Some things to consider. We may accept more druids, but alas, we have a lot of them.... same goes a little bit for Melee and Tanks, although a Tankadin (the irony, considering my past :p) may be considered.

Oh, and somewhere in the vacation-weeks, we did a little raid to Firelands, and one-shotted Staghelm Heroic??? No idea how that happened though.... too much christmas-stuffing probably...

Happy 2012

2012-01-05T11:02:00.001+01:00

Happy new year everyone....

To many ideas in my head, I probably should just hit publish on some of them.

Things running around:

1. Tell something about my luck in LFR's considering gear...NOT
2. Make a non-WoW-related post about Twillight Imperium
3. I am playing Orcs & Humans atm :)
4. Tell something about Innovation...
- Last pull of 2011 (number 18), and Blackhorn down.
- Second (?) Boss-pull of 2012, Staghelm-Heroic down.
- Innovation is looking for ranged DPS (non-druid), because skyrim/swtor has claimed a lot of people, and we have problems getting 25 together :(

laters...

A Pony?

2011-10-28T00:31:00.002+02:00

Picture from MMO-champion

So, I only see the Pegasus, the Paladin flying mount....

And yeah... I took it. Like I am NOT going to play another year at least.

Mists of Blizzcon

2011-10-23T13:03:00.000+02:00

So, Blizzcon has happened, and yesterday was the lore/art en general question-hours. Let me fill you in on somethings I found remarkable or strange.

First of all, the did not mention one possible legendary, but two. One is probably the Crown of Menethil, which would be the first non-weapon legendary? And there was some talk about a legendary Shield, but... wel, they will be coming soon®, like most news....

There was some talk concerning altism. First, sending heirlooms accros servers is something they want to do, but is technically very difficult, ..our servers don't speak well with each other.. And then there was this:

I have 10 characters, will you add an 11th slot so we can have all 11 classes?
Not sure just yet, might keep the current character cap but let you have them on any realm, so you can have many many charaters on one realm.

Really? Reaaally? Would that just make server overcrowded, or are they expecting people will not run to popular servers. Well, they could do that now I guess. This would at least let me use my heirlooms again on an army of alts.

Some more news about hurricane also be usable in Lunar, well, they better buff the damage then. Currently Hurricane is not that good (understatement), although I sometimes use it, when I am feeling lazy, and just want to watch for several seconds...before I need to replace shrooms.

Some talk about moonkin-form, and looks from all the races, but that doesn't seem to have a high priority.

They are also eleminating all ranged slots (thrown/relics/wands/bows/guns), and removing hunter-melee (finally). How that works out, we'll have to see. They did mention something about quivers and relics becoming visible, so they may become like guild-tabards? Something you wear for something else then stats?

There was some definately NO said about getting other size raids (like 15/20-mans mentioned on the blogospehere), so they seem to stick to the 10/25 sizes, with 3 raid-difficulties.

Mmm, I was sure I read somewhere something about Pandaren Druids. Because Pandaren do not hate, how can they be warlocks, and not be Druids. The answer was something regarding other descisions, and slapping the team on monday.... I am going to start praying now :p

MoP, Ragnaros, Class act and 250...

2011-10-22T16:05:00.001+02:00

Oh my, 250 posts. I don't know if I should congratulate myself or /facepalm myself. So what to write about.... mind you, I have been thinking about that for 2 weeks now. But yesterday Blizzcon started, and now news is all flowing around, and I had some things done last week. So let's put some random screenies up.

I present to you, the Tauren Monk. A new class, and a new race, but no Pandaren Druids, damn. I had hoped to get out of Nelf-form someday. The Nelf female form is the one I find the least stupid, so. Monks seem to be a melee-type healer with energy/focus. So, not only do I feel like a Rogue when I am playing with Holy Power, but now I can actually be a Paladin-Rogue?

Some other things worth mentioning is the fact that obscure achievements, like 'Champion of the Naaru' (I hope) will become account-wide. Oh, and of course the revamped, tuned down talent-tree, so there will be no more cookie-cutter specs....yeah...right... I don't believe that for a moment. There will be talents that will be much more helpfull on different bosses, so methinks we will meed different specs for different bosses, hello theory-crafting.

New heroic versions of Scholomance and Graveyard+Cathedral and Armory+Library. Yes combined. That will be fun, especially the posts that'll be coming because someone pulled the boss in cathedral without clearing the adds. Or the melee that will be dying to whirlwind.

My first reaction is mildly positive towards the whole panda-concept and other changes. But, I think there will be a lot of tweaking ahead. Especially for the druid-talent-trees. As 'Restokin' noted, a talent that automatically transforms me to a cat, while I am tanking.... oops.

Yup, that's me, looking strangely at the hat sitting on my spot. Who put that there? Oh, holiday...great. Like I want to do that, well actually, I did some on my now lvl74-holydin for the extra xp. And that buff for using the bonfire is nice. But really, take that hat away, that's our hang-out spot blizz....

Oh look, Ragnaros. I finally killed him last tuesday, on 10. In 25 to many people where dying to .... welll... I don't really know. With one hour left, the raid was converted to 10, to get the loot. And I was selected, Yay. Only, they didn't tell me they had a different strat on 10, so I had to learn that on the run. But, I only died once prematurely. On the actual kill. Oh yeah, druids can also detonate the traps... right...kitty went splat :(. But I was B-rezzed, and no one died after that.

This is Innovation, on 25, preparing for Ragnaros.... something tells me, we may have a little too much druids in the raid. Hint: It's not because a mage decided to mirror one, it's the other seven.... like seven sins. That would make me...ooh, let's not go there :). But, with that in mind, I did started levelling a holydin. Maybe I will go that route in MoP. But that depends on a lot of things, do we need one (at this moment I would say yes), how are they gonna play, how are boomers going to be... and it is still a ong way till that... so the future is wide open... tanana...nanana...naaa.

And closing this 250th post of me, I'd like to thank an old WoW-friend of mine. Apparantly he had a redeem-code he wanted to give away, so I got a little present, although now it seems to pop up on all my alts also :)

Oh yeah, maybe I should tell something about that class-act.... one picture is higher up. But it is fun to do lower dungeons with guildies, and picking up some guildfirst :). But we are overpowdered. Lower dungeons are not made for a group of people who know each other, and so we are normally running the highest dungeons we can enter. And that all for an extra bank-slot.... and the fun ofcourse.

Happy second Blizzcon-day, let's see what more info will be thrown at us.

Rolling on.

2011-10-08T10:48:00.001+02:00

Remember this one?

What is it with me getting back to sometimes long forgotten alts? Oh yeah, severe case of altism. Mariandel has had a rocky road. I don't even remember which server she started on, but I do know I sent her away to another server and brought her back. Last 6 months she was my AH-alt, but...well..brewfest happened.

So, after some runs to Coren, she had two trinkets and two beerkegs to hit stuff. And because she is also a skinner/enchanter, I went looking for dust/essences and shards, completing all zones in cata. With that combination of professions she is a very good supporting character for Mardah. And the fact that Mariandel is a mail-wearer, Mardah can do something back....

Talking about Mardah,

I had a very succesfull raid last thursday. I picked up a nice looking staff, got revered with the Avengers of Hyjal, and got my tier-pants. Although I forgot to bid on a necklace.... nature called, and I didn't noticed it in the loot, probably because it is not BiS, but alas, can't have it all.

After I got the staff, we had a break, and a quick trip to the reforger, almost reforging everything to haste, and my first 'free' enchant from the guild, I was a staff-wearer Tsj-kin. Innovation wiped two times on trash... the trash before Alysrazor, yeesh, large aggro-range on those. But we managed to do the first five bosses without much hassle.

With my new pants, I broke my T11-bonus. I don't know yet if that is a good thing, or that I should keep it. It would be much easier if I got my hands on one of these new LW-recipes, but the AD-AH doesn't seem to have them, and they didn't drop for Innovation yet. And no, I am not paying 24k for the ready-made things.

I had a little break from raiding last week due to work-stuff, but Innovation did down Majordomo, and killed ragnaros on ten. So if I get to raid Sunday and Tuesday, I'll probably also see their deaths.

Oh, and let me just hit a little remark on the new patch... A lot of quests in Outlands will now be available inside the dungeon..thank god. I really was getting bored flying all over the place to get those. Now I only hope that they are going to do something about the escort-quests still present in some dungeons. It is frustrating to follow Thrall, while you are not on the quest, because someone was selfish.....

Adding up....

2011-09-27T07:23:00.000+02:00

Sheep the Diamond

Ok, let's see

Argent Dawn
With my former main Gowron (153d4h2m) and my current main Mardah (55d8h6m), AD clocks in at a grand total of 268 days 23 hours and 10 minutes (probably more by the time anyone reads this).

The Sha'tar
One of the send-away realms, Lamars the rogue is there with almost 12 days, and it's clocking in at around 12 days.

Steamwheedle Cartel
Another send-away realm. Cymar the lock (8 days) and my undead hunter Vornik (1 day 19 hours) are staioned there, clocking in at around 11 days.

Ghostland
My former main realm. Most of it is gone, but still around 15 days.

Others
And then there are the realms where I only have 1 character, or there are the chars I have disbanded (most notably a 72-paladin and a 40-mage). And the fact that I also had access to another account sometimes. Let's estimate that on around 15 days, seems reasonable with the levels gained.

So, that would made it around...mmmm...310 days I played world of Warcraft..... that's about 10.5 months.

End of summer, or....

2011-09-26T10:31:00.001+02:00

So, the nerf-bat hit Firelands. And Innovation finally killed some more bosses with 25 (or 22). The problem is two-sides, do I think we needed the nerf? The answer is both yes and no.

No, we didn't needed the nerf.

To understand this, you first have to know the guild, which I think I do now, after 9 months. Innovation has a lot of ex-HC-raiders. People who don't actually want to be put in that situation anymore. Been there, done that. And to top that of, there are a few parents in the guild. So on a normal raiding night, Innovation has a lot of breaks. I think we normally only pull a boss thrice an hour, and that is considered fast then.

Actually, thinking about trash, 2 an hour is probably more logical. That means we are not fast, and we are not looking at heroics. We just want to kill some internet-dragons sometimes. Keep in mind, this is not an excuse to not perform! We just have a very relaxed pace. And with that pace, we had 3 bosses down, before the nerf. But, we were also running T11 till 2 weeks ago to gear up people. We would have been further probably, but...

Yes, we did need the nerf.

It's not like we couldn't kill Alysrazor. It was the high turnover that prevented us. As mentioned, Innovation was 3/7 pre-nerf, but only Shannox was killed with 25 (first kill even with only 21). Both the spider and the big guy where done on 10-man. The last few weeks had only about 18 people signing on. So our fearless leader had no choice to go with 10-mans to actually get some raiding done.

Interlude: Kudos to our fearless leader to actually bench herself last monday. Not many guildleaders/raidleaders do that.

I think the 10-mans had around 12 pulls on the bird before the nerfbat hit. And we were almost there, so the guild didn't needed the nerf.... but the guild also needed it. Last thursday we had a full 25-man raid to Firelands for the first time in a long time. And we killed 4 bosses, picking up the 25-kills for the spider and the big guy with a one-shot. And a genuinly first guild-kill, after 4 wipes, of Alysrazor.

Yesterday, we had a new boss to try, the fire-dude. And after some jokes about 'Thou shall not pass', and 4 wipes later, we downed him. The kill itself was messy, with 3 soakers and one tank going splat, but we did it, with 22 people... so... again, some short.

I have a nagging feeling why that is happening... I think I have seen that before.

On another note,
I hit the transmogrification-band-wagon, and am now the proud owner of the T2-recolered TBC-set. It may turn up on some of the screenies on the guild-website.....

It's coming....

2011-08-17T16:54:00.002+02:00

Of course, within 24 hours of my 'what is coming post', the information is starting to leak :P

First up was Ghostcrawler with the threat-change (which is already live). At first I was sceptical about this, more stuff to make it easier on dps, now they don't even have to watch their threat. But then I thought of the amount of times I was threat-capped in heroics, because I overgeared the tank that much, that my third thick from Moonfire almost pulled aggro of him.

This change makes it easier for tanks to hold aggro, and not get that 'what-did-I-do-wrong'-feeling. It may even be more effective then the extra rewards for tanks, because they can hold aggro, and not get blamed by the overzealous dps for losing it.

Then there was an interview on a german site, mmo-champion has the translation. First surprising news for me was that patch 4.3 will bring Deathwing. So, unless they do a Sunwell on us, that will be the last patch, and patch 5.0 should come a lot earlier then late 2012 then, probably in the summer?

There was some talk about an Abyssal Maw-raid, but that's been cancelled. Now, I don't know when it was cancelled, but probably some work was done to it. I also would like to know how long it takes to make an expansion. Both TBC and Wrath lasted for almost two years. I suppose 4.3 will come out around december, just like the ICC-patch did in wrath. So normally speaking, patch 5.0 should be out in the summer. If Cata is also going to last almost two years, prepare for another ICC-summer, where alts will be flying around.

Patch 4.3 will also include three new dungeons, including one in Caverns of Time, and they shouldn't be revamps. I wonder, will they require Ilvl352 orso to enter? Just like the Troll-heroics have a higher entry-gear-level?

And there was some news on the ethereals. The Transmogrifier will let you change your gear-appearance. Now, I don't know about this one. Will it be a complete rainbow in raids? And the news about the Void Storage can maybe be included in this one, a place to store absolute gear. So, you can transmogrify your gear to your voidstoraged gear?

Personally, I don't see the need for the voidstorage, but that's because I already deleted so much gear in the past.... If this would have come earlier, Gowron could actually have used it. Mardah is completely different, because I only started playing her at the beginning of cata, she doesn't have much gear... well, she does have the Druids of the Fang-set :p

...waiting for more news...

What is coming?

2011-08-16T11:44:00.005+02:00

I don't think I have been in this position before, the utter lack of information of stuff to come. In all the time I have this blog running, I always had some info what was coming in the next patch/expansion, but it seems there is so little information out there, that I just have to sit back... and relax.

What do we now know about the future?

Mists of Pandaria
Ok, we do now the name of patch 5.0. There are two camps it seems. One hoping for a Pandarian-race, and one expecting a Hero-class healer, like the Death Knight was in Wrath (Monk anyone?). My money is on the hero-class for two reasons. First, we already had two new races in Cata, and second, who to give the pandas, alliance or horde??? One will feel shafted. Of course, with the screenshot-guys, the other new race could be ethereal....

The screenshot-guys
Look it up, it has 3 Ethereals standing in what appears to be a house in Stormwind. The most interesting of the three is the 'Void Storage', will this be an inter-realm-Bind-on-account-bank?

Patch 4.3
Blizzards stated that there will be a new dungeon and a new raid, but to where, no idea. This one is most surprising, normally we have a lot of information about what is coming in the next patch, but not now.

Patch 4.last
We kill Deathwing. Being the poster-child of this expansion, we know we are going to kill him sometime... soon®.

That's it, 4 little pieces of information... t-t-t-that's all folks.

Keep Asking Mr. Robot

2011-07-25T11:08:00.003+02:00

So, now I am inclined to do a follow-up post. My last post was semi-scrutinized my Mr. Robot on some faults I made. Let's see if he is right :P

3. Mr. Robot does handle mastery right, and I believe the rounding issues with mastery have all be patched out of the game now.

This one had me scratching my head, did I miss a patch-note somewhere? Now I could try to find it, or I could just watch at the numbers of wrath when I was in solar, and reforge something to mastery, while staying in the 13.5-14% range.... oops, he is right. It seems the damage indeed in-/decreases, even with just a little more/less mastery in the 0.5% range.

2. Mr. Robot does not favor, or disfavor socket bonuses, it all comes down to math for him

Well, I actually knew this, I just...rrrmm... seem to forgot it when I made the post, because I actually put that under the 'use-brain'-catagory... But let's get to this a bit better then. You can actually set how important each stat is. Default gives intellect a 2.97-rating, while spirit is on 2.4. That is not a big difference, and with these numbers 30 spirit will be better then 20 intellect, hence why it seems Mr. Robot favors gem-bonuses.

Now, as a Boomkin, I know my most important stat is intellect, the priority goes something like 'Intellect > Spirit/Hit (till 17%) > Haste >>> Mastery >>>>>>> Crit >>>>>>>>>everything else'. with that notion, all guides say; gem intellect and reforge to hit. Don't gem for hit, unless the socket-bonus is 20 intellect per non-red gem. This is also important, because you can't reforge to intellect, the only way to get more intellect is getting higher Ilvl-gear, or red gems.

Each class has his own very important stat. Melee-plate has Strength, Hunters/Enhance-shammies/Rogues have Agility, and all caster-dps has intellect. So to make this stat more important, you should give it a higher rating in Mr. Robot. I just set the number for intellect on 5 (twice as high as spirit), so that he will always favor red gems, unless of course the gem-bonus is 20 int/non-red socket. You can do the same for you premium-stat.

I now only have one little problem, it is called spellpower. Now SP only sits on weapons and trinkets these days. On weapons it doesn't matter, but with the trinket-slots it becomes more important. Do you want a trinket w/o intellect, but with more spellpower, or one with intellect, with a mastery-proc.

My personal favor always goes to having at least one Intellect-trinket, because, you can not reforge to intellect. And it seems that with putting the number on 5, Mr. Robot agrees.... but maybe I should also put a higher number on spellpower, because of the same reasoning. Use your brain...

1. Mr. Robot does actually account for set bonuses. When it comes to druids, resto/boomkin often do trade off - it's all a stats game

I already said that the stats on the resto-pieces seem to be better then the balance-pieces, the difference is the bonus. 2pT11 gives a 5%-crit bonus to your Moonfire and Insect Swarm. So I found it hard to believe that the resto-pieces where better. So I digged a little deeper, and found that Mr. Robot favors the chest and legs over the resto-pieces, so you do get the bonus. (I concur that the current 4pT11-bonus is not worth taking). Also, if you put the filter on T11-gear only, the whole thing shifts again, and indeed goes towards the balance-set. So the problem lies with T12.

Current theorycrafting says that you should go for 2pT11+2pT12, which seems ok. The problem lies that the 2pT11 bonus probably is not worth taking on a single target, but increases with more targets. My guts tells me that the difference on single-target is probably only about 100dps, so unless you are in a Hardcore-raiding guild, it is probably not that high of a difference.

TL;DR
1. They are right with their corrections.
2. I am still right with my hit-comment, but that's another discussion.
3. It is an excellent tool. Mr. Robot gives you a setup with your current gear which min/maxes you. It tidies up your reforges, which will get out of control, if you don't do a total-reforge once in a while, and it also does the little things, like reforging mastery->hit on one piece, while doing hit->mastery on another to get you closer to hit-cap. But do set your premium-stat high.

Ask Mr. Robot

2011-07-22T08:11:00.005+02:00

Because of the recent FL-raid, I looked again at my gear, and where I maybe could improve even more. Now I had been aware of a site for sometimes, but really never used it that much. The site is Mr. Robot.

This site does about the same thing the now abonded be.imba.hu did, except for the whole guild-scan. It shows you where you maybe should use other enchants/gems/reforges. And as extra, also has a nice list of BiS-items. Here's the link my character:

Mr. Robot breaking down Mardah

Now there are some things to remember. Most Importantly: Do Not Leave Your Own Brains At The Door. There are a few problems with Mr. Robot, not that bad though.

If you look at the BiS-slot of some of the tier-slots (head/shoulder/chest/hands/legs), Mr. Robot has the tendency to place the resto-kit higher then balance-kit for Balance-druids. So, it doesn't take into account the set-bonus. Let's look at the legs, according to Mr. Robot, the Resto-legs should give a potential dps-increase over the balance-legs by 90dps. Which I should remember, if I ever get flooded with Valorpoints... then I should probably purchase them.

Through some testing, it also seems Mr. Robot favors gem-bonuses, in my link, you see a red square around the 2 red gems in my chest. If I optimize, Mr. Robot puts two Purified Demonseyes in there, lowering my Intellect with 30, but gaining 40 spirit. I myself don't consider that a good trade-off, so I kept the reds, and didn't reforge my Off Hand away from hit. Which also presents another problem of Mr. Robot.

In some of the set-ups I tried, Mr. Robot lets me reforge/gem towards 1740/1741 hitrating, while I need 1742 to be capped. Now you can speculate a lot about whether a 0.01 or 0.02% chance to miss will actually matter, but I just can't live with that. Murphy's Law clearly states that 'If something can go wrong, it will go wrong', so here my brains took over, and edited the result of Mr. Robot. So I am now at 1750 hitrating, which means I loose 8 stat-points, but at the same time, I know I will not miss for sure.

And last hiccup has to do with mastery. Now mastery works in a strange way. You only get an increase in bonus at every half-point percentage. so 13.51% mastery will give the same bonus as 13.99%. That is something Mr. Robot doesn't see, he thinks mastery is better then crit (which is true), and will want to reforge you to highest percentage mastery as possible. So if you find yourself close to such a breakpoint after reforging, consider to actually lowering your mastery, for some extra crit probably.

Now, I didn't only spot little mistakes my Mr. Robot. I also had some little surprises. First off, according to the BiS-list, the Darkmoon Card: Volcano is listed as the best for even T12. Now I wasn't tempted to buy it pre-patch 4.2. My Dps was high enough, but with the min/maxing state I was in.... and it only costed me 4.5k.

The other strange thing was that Mr. Robot favored the Helm of the Blind Seer over my T11-head (and the resto-head even higher). Now I don't have 4pcT11, and to be honest, the bonus was nerfed that hard, that I actually don't consider taking it even (not that I have the shoulders, but alas). But at first sight, I would say the Seer-helmet is worse then the T11-piece, because the latter has a lot more haste. The problem lies in the fact that it also has no spirit. If I equip the T11-piece, I should reforge my haste away on the DMC:Volcano, and some mastery on other sets, resulting in a 0.24% haste loss, and 1% mastery-loss. So the seer-head is better in my current-gear setup.

I also considered buying the resto-head, but next week I will buy my T12-gloves, and then the T11-head comes back for the bonus. The result of two days min/maxing and theorycrafting, and the fact that I got my T12-chest last night, is an increase of around 60 intellect, 2,4% Haste, 2% Mastery, and a loss 1.75% crit. Now don't think that comes mainly due to the T12-chest. That one is mostly responsible for the int-increase. After replacing the Scorched Wormling Vest with the T12 last night, the net gain was 0.34% Haste and 1% Mastery, so most of the Haste-increase came to smarter reforging.

TL;DR
1. Mr. Robot doesn't see Set-Bonuses
2. Mr. Robot tends to favor gem-bonuses
3. Mr. Robot doesn't always put you over hit-cap
4. Mr. Robot doesn't understand Mastery
but most importantly off course, I tend to get a bit confused after reforging every time, and Mr. Robot will clear that up for you. First time I checked, almost all my reforges where red. This comes mainly due to getting new gear, and not reforging all your gear, but only some to get over the hitcap again. Leaving you with a sub-optimal setup.
5. Mr. Robot will clear up your reforges
6. Don't leave your brains at the door.

[RED: due to the response I had, I re-read my article, and should state that I indeed not counted for the statweight-option although 'use brain' accounts for that a little, read the response :p]

Going into Firelands: Shannox

2011-07-20T09:13:00.002+02:00

And there is the wall again.

After two weeks farming trash, pulling some bosses just to see them (spider and steering giant). And also clearing BoT and BWD to get some more gear for people, last night we had our first real Firelands-Raid. Target:Shannox.

At the end of the night, some conclusions where made. First: we where making progress, but Second: to low dps from the raid, so we went over the 10-minutes mark.....ouch.

At the end someone threw the number of 23k dps average around, which made me and Gunho go into a little theorycrafting. First that number 23k is unreachable at the moment. At our last attempt, I think I made almost no mistake. Focusing on Rageface till second spear, then dotting all three up, with almost all the spells cast at the right time. I may get 500dps more if it was earlier on the evening (hey, I am human after all), but that would be it. I had 15.8k dps, and was the highest of the raid, with Gunho following closely, and 3/4 others also around that 15-16k dps-range.

But that 23k is way to high. I took my calculator, and came to a raid-average of 17k with 15 dps, and the 3 tanks doing 15k. Well, that number is reachable methinks. This week some people will probably get 2pT12 (not me though), and than 18k is doable. Problem is, 18k is the average.... and we still have some people with to low gear, because of some new recruits.

But, there are some problems we face now. The most important is players getting Iceblocked. On our last attempt, I turned around to DoT Shannox, and saw three, yes THREE iceblocks, that weren't there 5 seconds before. I don't know the exact hp of the blocks, but they will probably cost you 500dps-average methinks. So getting out of these traps should be a high priority, forget everything, run out of them.

And then there are the times Rageface jumps into an Icetrap, RNG happens. I saw that that Iceblock was also targeted for destruction. It shouldn't. He will get out of it, and all dps on that iceblock is wasted. Everyone should ignore rageface for those 5 seconds, and hit Shannox probably.

And third, the Immolation-traps. Now, let's be clear, I myself am not familiar enough yet to keep the two traps from each other, although I am almost there :p. But if Rageface is alive, he should be immolated as often as possible. First of, he will be damaged by them, which helps the raid-dps. But most importantly, immolation will place a 9-second debuff on the hound, which increase damage taken by 40% (iirc). That will help A LOT. It will potentially lower the dps-average needed by around 1.5k.

With all this in mind, I actually think that he is almost beatable at this moment, it requires no mistakes though, and a high uptime of immolation on the dogs.

And for the record. My average Ilvl at the moment is 360, Innovation hasn't done any heroics, so most people will be around that now. Also raid-dps-average goes 1k up/down with the amount of dps present, so 14dps should bring 18k, and 16dps should bring 16k, and this is with a little safety-factor build in.

Mathemathics:
Rageface:33.7M hp + Riplimb:33.7M hp + Shannox:81.6M hp = 159M hp
159M hp / 600 seconds = 265k dps
265k dps - 15k dps (tanks) = 250k dps
250k dps / 15 dps-players = 17k dps-average (rounded up)

TL;DR-version:
1. Get out of the Ice-Traps
2. Don't target the Iceblock containing Rageface/Riplimb, hit Shannox.
3. Immolate Rageface whenever possible.
4. Bring 17k dps on average. (with 15 dps-players that is)

No Nef for me

2011-06-23T22:11:00.002+02:00

So, I am not in a very fast guild, but I had hoped we could have killed Nefarian pre-4.2. Alas, the raid just finished, with Nef at 30%. We are getting into Phase 3 constantly now, but one mistake means end raid.

Now, one of our Rogues is going into Night-shift, one goes on a 2 week-vacation. And me and my friend are going to Roskilde Festival this weekend. That means that from 4 people who are normally in the top5 DPS are gone the next two weeks....

Well, I am off to Roskilde, with the only three words I know in danish: To Ol, Tak (don't know if it actually should be Tø øl :p)

Low Lock Levelling

2011-06-20T20:08:00.002+02:00

So, after the Horde-experience, I started levelling a human warlock. So, first the spoiler warning:

Behold, Bunnies will tell spoilers ahead.

So, there she was (yes, female, I just can't stand the human male form), standing before the church, ready to go battle wolves, orcs and...mmm...wait, Aznam? An Imp, nice. So, the first zone is mostly the same, some new quests (did I mentioned Orcs), but mostly old... just a better flow. Eastvale logging camp has a FP, so you get there much faster. A lot less running around, although I have the feeling, it is still a lot. Oh, and you don't kill Hogger.

Onwards to Westfall, which completely changed. A long story is told here, with the start-point being a murder, and the end-part is actually in Heroic Deadmines... what, lore-wise, was most striking, is that the humans have a big problem, lots of unhappy citizens. If you look at ogrimmar. most orcs are rallying for battle. The humans are begging for food. Oh, and what is that big whirlwind-thingie doing in Westfall, no one told me?

After I found the killer, I went onto Redridge Mountains. There is a very nice questline here, with you being in a squad of soldiers, ready to kill a lot of orcs.... to bad the quest at camp everstill bugged out... and because I was already on the level-treshold, onwards to Darkshore...rrr...shire (see what I did there ghostlandiers).

Now. I never did this zone often. back in the days it was a lot of running, yes RUNning, between Darkshire and Raven Hill, even taking a detour to Moonbrook Village. That changed, hurray. I actually only used the road from east to west once, they put a FP in Raven Hill. With the new Gilneas-faction, the Worgen-story is more prevalent here, and a lot of quests seem follow ups from old ones. Oh, and on the old spt north-west, where some quest used to be, a rare spawn was killed.

So, after saving a soul, my lock went to the Jungle. Before I knew it, I was knee-deep in killing Kurzen's people, and slaughtering the local Wildlife for the Expedition. And they needed a page... A PAGE??, ONLY ONE??? So, I needed to find only one page, to be precise, number 14. Great... how long should that take? So I killed my first tiger and looted the page. (Insert random nightmares from pre-cata about trying to find that one page that no one had that you needed to complete the book).

And there she is now, Northern Stranglethorn (they divided STV into two zones, although it is a little strange on the map). I do have the feeling that I will outlevel N-STV, because she is lvl 29.65, and only 50% of the map is visible at the moment. Oh well, laters....

Cho'gal performance deconstructed.

2011-06-11T13:01:00.005+02:00

And here is another attempt of mine at movies...

Looking at this (and other) movies, I came to a very logical conclusion:

Why do I need all that information.... and why do I not even notice the clutter of info? I cleared some of it up now, so I hope the battlefield will be clearer in future movies.

Somethings to note:

-Yes, I am completely trying to starfire one of our own priests.... whoops. The start was a littlefast, and at that moment I was trying to figure out if I actually had started recording.

-I think one the second ooze-spawn, I heroically forget to dps and safe the raid... or at least one, by Typhooning a stray ooze back :p

-I also noticed that I actually focus more on oozes NOT reaching the raid, then actually dps-ing them, I should actually wait a second longer to actually hit the damned slime with my shrooms. So the fight has three phases for me: 1-blast boss;2-blast adds;3-OMGaddsmustnotreachraidshroomtyphoonsunfirespam

And it seems I sometimes actually remember NOT to leave Solar, just before oozes span (pats own back)

-mmm, It seems I accidentally hit Typhoon in the last Phase. Little mistake, hey I am human....

-And for the record, it was the first pull of the evening...

Kitty Continued

2011-06-10T17:38:00.004+02:00

I left Morshando in Feralas.

(Spoilers ahead mates)

After battling Cho'gal (see next post), I was one level to low to continue. Maybe I should not have skipped the quests in the Desolace? So, I entered the LFD for a dungeon or two. Luckily, to keep in spirits, I got Dire Maul. After completing, a level was gained.

....and Morshando entered Thousand Needles...... IN WATER.

You actually get transported to a little place where some Taurens are fighting, and then off you go to a barge in the middle of the shimmering flats...rrrr...waters? There are two major stories here, you do some pirate-stuff, and som Tauren-stuff. But the best part is:

You get your own River Boat. Just cruising along, nothing beats that to set sail to the...oh wait..only in 1K.

So, after all the Pirates, some Ice-creams, and some other old friends, Morshando was off to the desert...well...at least what was left of it. Tanaris still has you battling pirates, and killing some bugs. And there is also a quest-line explaining that two-part sword from Zul'Farrak. You also help the Bloodelves in some archaeology-digs, and have to enter the old doors of Uldum.

And some has read to much Herbert:

...and off to the Crater.

In Un'goro some things changed, but you still have to kill a lot of dino's, be aware of the Ninja-saurs. Do some mud-diving, and help a Paladin... actually a quite fun quest. The collect-the-colored-stones-quest has a new ending, which was rather well done lore-wise. But, as in Feralas, one level short to continue, so some dungeons later, I was on my way to Silithus. Mind you, this was as lvl54.

Now Silithus has a warm spot in my heart. Not because I actually like it, but because almost all my characters dinged 58 there. Some just after running through the elven village, others longer in. And, of course, Gowron has been farming here for cenarion Circle reputation.

Off all the zones, Silithus has changed the least. I didn't find a quest into the leven village, but you still have to clear the roads by killing tons of wildlife. And kill the Twillight Hammer for fun. You also encounter some bugs, and a nerfed Pincer. And when Morshando reached lvl 55.95 (just before 56), he was done....

wait a moment... I am done... two levels short of Outlands. shouldn't there be more quests here? Actually, the achievement only needs 18 quests (1 more then Alliance-Arathi Highlands). So it seems this was it.

I do hope Blizzard is going to update this zone, it just doesn't feel finished. No reference to the opening of the gates, no big AQ-storyline...

Before I am making a real conclusion, I will first finish levelling a human lock. She's now in STV, and will continue to The barrens-Dustwallow and then up north, towards winterspring.

Tomorrow: Innovations Second kill of Cho'Gal, which we one-shotted.

Low(er) level questing.

2011-06-04T17:52:00.006+02:00

Last few days, I did something I wanted to do along time, levelling through questing. Before Patch 4.0.1 came out, I already had a heirloomed undead hunter do a lot of the Horde Eastern Kingdoms quests, now I made a Troll kitty, to see the Horde Kalimdor quests.

This time though, no heirlooms, only 10% extra xp from a guildperk. I blasted trough the starting zones, and before I continue....

There be spoilers ahead, mates.

I helped an old dragon in Azshara, which I actually never did that far in. Normally I just start dungeoning around lvl15, not this time I said, no dungeons, only quests...

(For all the new guys: Azshara used to be a higher level zone where bo one would actually go, because the quests where to far apart. Only lvl60's went there for stuff gathering... )

So, my kitty entered Ashenvale, at lvl23 or so.... which is way to high. How could that have happened? Oh, wait, there is something called rested, you know, the fact that you get 200% more xp when you logged out in an Inn and/or City... so, no more rested for Morshando then, and luckily, I have done the Ashenvale quests. So, at lvl25, I visited a board, and went to the Stonetalon Mountains.

If you think Ashenvale is a warzone, wait till you see Stonetalon, you are constantly fighting alliance there. And there is a nice end-quest here.

By the way, every zone is now made for 5 levels and has some nice end-quest, with a blue reward. There are also several in-between-blues. I did almost all quest in Stonetalon, and had a choice, either go Southern Barrens, or go Desolace. Morshando went desolace.

They completely changed this, very nicely done. Although there are more 'old' quests here than in earlier zones. I skipped those, united all centaurs, and went one level to early to Feralas.... wait.

In Desolace, there is a Troll town along the coast, Shadowprey Village at least had some quests. For all of you Horde playes, if you want a nice and quiet town, visit the Tauren retreat in Stonetalon. It has a flightpath, but as far as I know, no quests anymore.

So, Feralas, head-story here resolves around the Green Dragonflight. But of course, you still have to kill a lot wildlife and Ogres. And a new face... or old for me now, rears it ugly head, once and for all proving that you CAN sail East from the Eastern Kingdoms, and reach Kalimdor, yes the Azeroth is not flat. (Actually, I noticed more Azerothian Globes around). Oh yeah, the familiar face:

Whoops... no face... oh... and this is getting a long post, so, to actually up my posting,

To be continued....

mmm.... wOOOOOt...I guess :)

2011-05-31T22:29:00.002+02:00

Yes, I died in the last seconds, so what :

I got the key?

2011-05-23T21:50:00.005+02:00

Ok, I find this a little bit strange news, apparantly Blizzard wants to remove the key-ring.

So, I logged into Gowron to actually see the ring again.

I do remember having more keys, so grabbing from memory: where is my Scarlet Key? And the key to Black Rock Depths where you had to die for (jump into the lava). But, let see what is what.

The Master's Key (#1)- Gained by doing a long quest-chain, where you had to do several TBC-dungeons, including getting the key for the Mechanar (mm, where;s that one?). Which, back before the first Zul'Aman, was needed to actually do Karazhan, everyone needed their own key.

The TBC-heroic keys (#2,3,4,7,8)- Keys needed to get into the Heroic dungeons of TBC, and back then, you needed to be revered to actually but them, not honored. Which of course was a nice way of letting people actually do normals (and getting some gear), before advancing to heroics.

Key to the Focusing Iris (#5)- Key obtained from a quest that started from a drop from Naxx10, to actually get Malygos down.

The Violet Hold Key (#6)- Key obtained after a little delivery-quest, to get into the Violet Hold, actually, I never understood the reason for this key.

Jump-a-Tron 4000 key (#9) - Well, mmm, needed for some obscure quest in Nagrand, you got a nice cloak from it iirc.

Prison Cell Key (#11) - A key to open cell doors in Blackrock Depths.

Relic Coffer Key (#12) - Another key for BRD, to break into da vault, mon.

All the Skeleton Keys - Some obsidium and Titanium keys, I use to open boxes. Hey, Gow is a Blacksmith.

Now the blue post said, that most of the keys will be useless. So I suppose TBC-heroics will be opened to everyone (with the right Ilvl I suppose). All the BRD-doors will be openable by everybody?? And the other keys will also become absolete one way or the other..... except the skeletons keys???

Now I don't have that many, only 12 slots, but these will be dumped into my normal bag-slots.... on Gowron.... where I always had (and have) a problem with bag-spaces? Well, I hope they let us stack the skeleton keys to 200 orso.

But, more to the point, and I quote:
Because of this, we’ve decided to get rid of the Keyring in order to free up some user interface space for exciting new features. This change could also potentially allow us to play around with the amount of default storage space you’re allotted down the road

So... you take something usefull from us, the always expanding key-ring. And you promise us something vagely in return, not even mentioning the word : SOON®

mmmm

But there is one more thing I almost forgot, they stated that they will remove the keys....

Just like they did with the keymaster-achievement.

And some of those key have, well, sentimental value I wouldn't say, but it does describe the feeling the closest.

Job Done

2011-05-15T18:54:00.003+02:00

Yeah, like I really have time to also GM a Bloggers-guild.

Nope, after cleaning up the Gbank, and really looking at all the characters in the guild, I passed the reigns. No way I have time to also do that, I know where that leads.

(Insert picture of Warcraft Orcs and Humans 1994)
Job Done.

SAN: Revolution?

2011-05-10T21:51:00.003+02:00

Yes the rumors are true.

Last Saturday, at around 10 o'clock in the morning, I send out a ticket.

Not long after that Gowron was made CEO of Single Abstract Noun, and started to get the Single Abstract Cows back into the fold.

Since them, there seem to be life again, some new, some old....some older (looks around for the Steamynose-blog).

And that just after I wrote a blog, Gowron was like... retired....

So, what now, well... have fun for sure :)

Cathedral

2011-05-05T19:27:00.001+02:00

You would think that after 6 years of Scarlet Monastery, people would know how to do the last part there...

Right.

Right?

So why was I tanking 2 bosses and a shitload of adds there today...thrice.

Happy May?

2011-05-04T10:37:00.002+02:00

Yes... not dead yet. I have just been busy with a lot of things lately, so actually writing in a blog came in last. So let's do a quick recap I guess.

Mardah still raiding 2/3 nights a week, we haven't downed Nef or Cho yet, but I don't know wether that is because we lack the skill to quickly clear the first bosses, or the fact that it was really hard to get 25 man online the last month. The last week seemed better, we actually had people to sit out.

It is also a little strange that I am not in control. Both in Retribution and in XII, I was an Officer. I am now just a loyal foot-soldier, or Tsjikin for that matter. And I do like it, not the burden of having to do stuff.

On the horde-side, Gowron is retired. As is all of Single Abstract Noun it appears. There are still some players who log in often, and it seems that with the absence of the Guild Leader Tamarind, some members have formed a new guild called Single Abstract Cow. But the busy guild it was, is gone. Maybe we'll really return there if there is again a year-stop in new content....

And of course I still have altism. But I noticed something strange, I remember having a real problem leveling a priest in TBC/WotLK, it just didn't click for me it seemed. But the last two characters that I got to 80 last year, are now both 85. Although one has become a gnome (Gnome shadowpriest on a Roflcopter rocks), and the other is back to dwarf. I also transferred a shaman back, and leveled that one from 72 up.

Yes, that means some other chars where send away. I have several 70+ and 80's scattered around different servers now, just doing nothing until I call them back I guess. I got two lower-level characters left on AD. A goblin disco-priest, in support of a goblin harry-in-the-warry-warrior. And a Tankadorfadin called Yurinov, heirloomed out, and already rockin in the mid-30's.

And now it is time to see if the servers are back online, and time to think about more boomkin-nerfs incoming.....

Oh, yeah, and a need a random-blog-title-generator.

......squaa....

2011-03-31T18:57:00.002+02:00

Now where is the optimal regional stabilizer.

....

....

The colorfull round cubical shaped thingie goes into there?

....

....

What is this, ah, the sonic screwdriver... now where are the sonic screws?

....

....

That should do it... power converter...where did I leave that?

....

....

Yup, still here, just really busy with work at the moment.... and Dr. Who.... and Babylon 5.

....

....

Oh oh, think the boimetricial inducement coil is overloading, gotta buy me a new one, before the who.......

Wall of sound... ...is broken.

2011-02-16T22:05:00.004+01:00

Wall of Sound..

2011-02-15T17:51:00.002+01:00

...that is what Innovation is encountering now. A wall of sound called Atramedes, the blind Dragon. No Idea at the moment what is going wrong, but we cannot seem to get him below 35% with more then 20 people alive.

And of course the try where we weren't suppose to DPS, I screwed up a little. It seems his flame-wave targets the one with the highest sound, and I almost never have sound... but if everyone is so focused on getting no sound... well... I got targetted..twice in a row... that's one time to many :(

Oh well... ready for more tries on him...

Replaying 80-85, or why I already start to hate deepholm.

2011-01-31T22:12:00.004+01:00

I did mention this in a previous post of mine, what is the replayability of Cataclysm. I made a post where I compared the different expansions to books/comics.

I recently levelled a shaman to 84, and my warrior (now named stoneheart) to 85. I didn't really planned anything, just played a little around, mostly in dungeons, and with herbing for the warrior.

When I did do quests, I didn't read them, and just went to the place I needed to go. And because i already did almost all the quests (sans Vashj'ir), it was reasonable quick. But it did got me thinking about the different zones... and the fact that most people with altism want their alt to be good geared.

You see, I want my alts to have nice gear, to actually do heroics without to much to worry. And the quickest way is to get gear through reputations. Now, as a fresh 80, you have got two choices. Goto vashj'ir, or to hyjal. Let me put it clear,
DO NOT GO TO VASHJ'IR

If you go Hyjal, you will get rep, and you will probably be almost 82 if you finish there, and a long way to revered, opening a lot of goodies. The only thing you want in Vashj'ir are the opening quests. They give you a mount, and the portal to Vashj'ir. You should also get the flight....rrr...swimming-path to where the Earthen Ring-vendor is, and (till the patch) swim down the vortex to find the entrance to the Throne of the Tides, that's all.

Now the moment you hit 82, drop all you are doing...well..hypothetically...and go to Deepholm. This is absolutely necessary, you need to do almost all the quests there to get access to the therazane-vendor, which not only provides you with a nice ring, but also the must-have shoulder-enchant.

This is the biggest problem I have with deepholm... if you want to gear your alts good, you NEED that therazane-reputation... so..get ready to do deepholm to often.

After you are done with deepholm, you probably are into your 83's... hey..you have a choice... either continue with hyjal-rep (if you didn't finish that already), or go to uldum. Well... do at least some quests in uldum, to get the portal and the tabard. The moment you hit 84, I would suggest going Twillight Highlands.

Again... do all the quests until you can get the tabard, and the portal...see the pattern. Oh, and because every zone has better gear, you probably want to do the highest zone available. And one thing about gear... most of the times, a GREEN Ilvl 2 higher then a BLUE one is better...so, you don't have to hold onto your blues from lower dungeons...

So, conclusion: There are some alternative ways to levelling, but if you, like most altists want to gear your alt... get ready to hate deepholm.

..and yes...the same applied to the sons of hodirs..but those enchants where at least Bind on Account. And talking about BoA...if the Head Enchants are BoA...why do I need to be revered with that faction to actually use them....wouldn't that actually made the BoA-function..well..kinda useless??

Mental Note

2011-01-19T18:28:00.002+01:00

I should try to make more posts, before this turns into a 'look-what-we-killed-today'-blog...(well, actually tuesday)

But luckily I have some more things on my mind. Like Tobolds suggestion that if you CAN tank and/or heal, you should, instead of whining about long waiting times... which is probably true, but alas, retired tank here, so I just take the long times.

And of course there is a new patch looming with lots of information, and paragon took 11 druids...QQ, and lazorchickens are doing 25k dps... which is a lot, etcetera, etcetera...

But what really caught my attention this week was this:

Honors Code : This really was the hardest button to push

Now, there have been bloggers in the past who stopped blogging because they stopped playing, like Phaelia and BRK. But what caught my eye was the reason honors stopped, he just doesn't have anything to say anymore, and (I quote):

But blogging and doing it well takes a commitment of time that I’m simply not able to give right now.

He will still be playing, but he is just not going to blog about it. This of course everyone saw coming. Honors changed his main, and had very little posts last months. And tbh, I think if I had a wife/gf (oooh, personal information), my blogging also would stop... on the other hand, this blog is more a journal of my travels through WoW, so if for months nothing happens...well then there will be no post.

I have the utmost respect for people that write a post every single day.... I could just not do it.

And for Honors, keep the blog, and just write when you like, not write because you need to fill a blog, but write whenever you like, or feel the need to it, because you can. (well, that is how I write).

..laters.

Magmaw mowned down..

2011-01-11T23:11:00.003+01:00

After 2.5 hours, several wipes (see skeletons), I got my first raid-boss-kill in a full guildrun since a long time

We did it with only 22 people, and it took some tries to get the fire-pillar sorted. If we all got out in time, we had no problems with the little adds, but seeing a red circle spawning, between all the 'good' blue/green/whatever on the ground can be tricky, specially when a new aoe-healing-spell has just been cast. Those tend to be brighter then the red circle.

It was a real wiping-->learning fight. In the end we had one of the DK's kite the adds around, and we had divided the raid into two, screw you tactics... time to find something else. To bad I died in the end, not because of adds, or a pillar, but probably due to Triage-Healing. Not all players, where actually ready for raids, at least gear-wise.

If this continues, I think I have a good stay there :)

Bridge-exploit? or is it?

2011-01-07T15:40:00.004+01:00

I am playing at the moment, so not much writing... well actually, I have enough time to write something, because I am trying to get the epic stuff fors casters from archaelogy, and waiting for TB to switch sides, so I can hand in quests.

So, I have a lot of time to just surf the web. I refound tankspot, found the moonkin resporitory-something, and just fly around from one dig-site to the next.

I am lucky though, I already have the Tol'vir ring..... now trying to get the Nelf-trinket, and the Tol'vir staff.... or dorf staff, but keeping to Kalimdor atm. Just flying around, digging stuff. Luckily I am a druid in a lvl9 guild. Teleport:moonglade and 15min Heartstone FTW

Now on to Tol Barad, I really started doing the dailies today, and also tried to get into a fight. Well... that went well. But I was surfing da internet and found numerous posts, and a gamebreaker-video, talking about the bridge-exploit in Tol Barad.

For those who don't know, if you que up for TB, and the raid is full, you can actually stand on the bridge for around 6 seconds before ported a few yards back. When on that spot, you are considered IN Tol Barad, and if the battle ends, everyone in TB, in raid or outside raid, just IN the zone, gets honor for completeing (win/loss doesn't matter). So the exploit is to stand on that spot when a battle ends for free honor...well free?

Let's look at it a bit closer. As far as I know, only 80 people can actually participate in a TB-battle. 40 Horde, 40 Alliance, just like an Alterac Valley. But Tol Barad is not on a different server like other BG's. Just like wintergrasp, it is server-specific. That means that on a very busy server like AD, only 80 people can actually participate in a battle, the rest has to sit-out.

Now let's look a moment at PVE-raiding. All guilds I was in had a rule that if you where available to raid, but weren't chosen, that you still got some DKP for being there. This is both an incentive to actually sign for raids, and a little compensation because you are online for the raid, while not raiding.

Now, in my humble opinion; IF you actually take time to stand on the bridge, and be ready for the battle, why not get a little honor in exchange? You already miss out the HK's, but with this you actually get something back for being available. And it's not AFK-farming, you actually have to move in/out to get it.

Now, TB itself is hopelessy unbalanced (see greedygoblin). But I did see (and participate in some) 4 TB-battles today. The horde has a simple strategy for defense. 30 people go counterclockwise around the towers, taking them with a lot of force. That leaves 10 free to simply guard the previous tower taken, until the current one is taken. Rince and repeat.

The alliance only way to get all towers is to actually have around 30 people at the same spot as the horde, while simultaneously holding the other 2 forts with around 7 people to counter the 10man of the horde, so... a quick math later. Can 24 hold 30? If yes--->win, if no--->loss.

Oh well... it is PvP... what do I care....

...

.... oh yeah..dailies for PVE-trinkets.

Can I hold your hand?

2010-12-27T20:07:00.002+01:00

That's how the quests from lvl80 till 85 felt to me.

Make no mistake. I liked the stories, the cut-scenes and the idea I was part of a story, maybe not always as participant, but I kept a good idea what the story was. I remember that in the pre-zulaman area (when we had to walk till level 40), I often had no idea what the story was about, I just was flowing with the quests, but often not reading further then what to do.

Now I read all the quests I encountered in cataclysm, they where part of the same story, and I read it like a book. For that matter, vanilla was like reading a lot of books at the same time, while cataclysm was reading one book at the time, before you continued to the next book (with the exception of Uldum where two stories walk side-by-side)

Now both TBC and LK where somehwere inbetween. To continue with books. TBC read like you are normally reading comics. Lots of little different stories after each other. While LK read like several books, while sometimes you took a comic besides the book. And yes, in this line, vanilla was like reading your complete comic-book collection at once.... which is a lot for me.

Now the problem ofcourse arises, that if you need to read a book, you normally need to start at the beginning, and read it to the end. There's no way you can skip a part, books are not written that way. And that is exactly the problem with Cata-questing at this moment. The road you need to take is written, and needs to be followed. So if you want to level in Cata, you are only left with two options, follow the questline or level through dungeons.

Yes, I know that you can choose between two 'starting'-zones. But after that you need to take deepholm, and at least a part of either Uldum or Highlands. And yes, for every one out there who wants to raid, doin all of the Deepholm quest is a must, something to do with shoulder-enchants.

Now, this is not that a big of a problem for most players... but... well... if you have altism like me, it can became a drag to do the deepholm quests for the umptied time.

Now, I know the past was not good. The forced levelling through Hellfire was not fine, and I destroyed those portals enough, but at least there you had a choice to skip stuff. Don't like the quest, or the reward, just skip it. In Cata this choice is taken away from you. You need to follow the questline.... no more free will....

Well, ok, I did skip ONE other way to level, through professions. Mining, Herbing and *gasp* Digging, gives experience, and you can level through that I suppose...

On the archeology... 3 BiS-gear pre-raid can be solved by archeology. 1 dorf, 1 Nelf and 1 tolvir. It's all RNG, and for that matter, Tol'Vir digsites are rare....very rare.

Back to the topic, for a fast finish. Luckily levelling from 80-85 is fast. So before you are actually bored, you are level 85. But does the game really begins at 85 then?

...well, I am of, studying raid-bosses....and I just keep digging....

oooh, new and different?

2010-12-24T13:42:00.000+01:00

Well... after almost three years, it maybe was time to change a little bit...

And the fact that I am committed to boomkinning at the moment, well...

It does kinda feel strange, I logged into Gowron last night, and put his ceremonial gear on (lvl60-PvP stuff). He has been my main for almost 4 years. even when I was playing around with other alts, I always returned to him. Even making him a dorf for some months. Problem is though, that ever since I left Ghostlands (as a player), Gowron has been lost. Not really bound somewhere, and all his deeds done on another server.

I always remember him as a part of Retribution. Playing with Kemwer,Sceptre, Nagkeen,Rasout and Jorky...

Now, onto my new main.

Mardah, the balance druid. Where did she came from?

Actually, Mardah is one of my oldest characters, she was made in the summer of 2005, just to see the Night Elf starting zone. But, as with a lot of my former alts, left at low level, three if I recall. This was on the server Khadgar. For those who actually followed this blog, you already know that after my raiding-time with XII, Mardah became the character I played. She levelled up, hit outlands, and was transferred of to Argent Dawn to play with friends.

I reached 80 with her, and did some ICC-raids. Nothing much. She became Crusader, played around. The amount of time you have when you are not preparing to raid is actually large. Then Cataclysm hit. And I decided, I could raid again. So I looked around, talked to a friend.... put in an application, got accepted, started preparing for raids.

Preparing for raids... I now have 3 epix. Two from the dorfs, one selfmade. At this moment, some of the BiS-equipment is found by Archeology, the BoA-epix. So that's what I am doing now..... digging.

And this all happened in the last two weeks....

And yes, this name is also Star Trek related. Mardah was the dabo-girl Jake dated on DS9, who later was accepted to the Bajor Science Academy...

edit: Oh, and happy christmas everybody....

...and trial again.

2010-12-22T08:02:00.000+01:00

Yup, I am in a raiding-guild again, well, a guild that is going to raid if all are 85. Best part of being in a guild is....

...GUILD-HEROICS.

No more dependant on stupid PuGs, which often dissolve after 1 wipe.

So, last night I did 4 heroics with my new guildies (or about 4). We didn't AoE the trash down, but CC was also not used often. I even got my first heroic achievement: Arrested Development, which needs you to kill the three guys with Corla before you kill Corla (evolving adds).

Talking about Corla.... she still has the bracers I want. The only 346-bracers for resto/balance in the game. Yes, there sgould also be a BoE drop from Tol'Vir...but rumors say they don't drop.

Look now, I am talking about gear, well, I am getting myself ready for raids now.... Today I will get exalted with the Highland Dorfs, so I'll get my first 2 epix :). And I must start hunting Trinkets....the two I want most are from Grim Batol and Blackrock.... so I probably need to que for those before I do a random.

And I need an option for my Justice Points. Don't need them for gear anymore...

And on a different note: read this.
At the end it says: ONLY FOR CRAFTERS WITH SKILL 525, nice...

Get out of the...

2010-12-21T12:56:00.000+01:00

So, I have been making lightshows in heroics the last few days. And there are some things that spring to mind.

First off, if I get one boss down in a heroic, I consider it a succes. The number of times wipes occur, or that you are invited into a 'dungeon-in-progress', which dissolves after you zone in. Or the tank that leaves because his shield didn't drop.

Luckily, I just did a streak (with a tank from AD) of three dungeons, where the name of this blog really was true. We wiped some, we learned, we succeeded. It also helped that the tank/healer+ 2 DPS where constantly the same, just changing 1 DPS between dungeons.

So... I got my first Chaos Orb, which I need 5. I got a lot of 346-upgrades, bought the JP-helmet. Reforged to Spirit/Hit and haste (now being .03% over hitcap). Put a very expensive enchant on my 346-dagger. And I think I am ready for raiding.....

...now I only need a guild to do that. Well... maybe... I did put an application somewhere, which hopefully rejoins me with a friend.

Oh yeah... the title of this blog...

Most heroic bosses have the same basic principle. Kill Adds, stay out of bad, and sometimes, get into the good. There is a real big difference to what most DPS are accustomed to. DPS on the boss is not that important. Burning down adds, and your own survival is.

If you have to choose between a damage-spell and a healing spell, the choice is already made. If you have to think about it, heal yourself. Help the healers, stay alive, stay out of bad.

Now, as a Boomkin, I have a lot of stuff to help healers. Healing myself up, popping a Tranquility if needed. Casting a glyphed Solar Beam on trash. Rooting....(My Bear bar is three buttons: Growl, Nature's Grasp, entangling Roots), sleeping if needed. Control the damage.

He who controls the damage, controls the fight.

He got me..

2010-12-17T21:02:00.000+01:00

I am no stranger to love...

2010-12-14T16:30:00.000+01:00

Yes, we have been rick rolled... well, if you did the Vashjir-quests.

Just a quick recap.

Gowron went Hyjal(complete)-Deepholm(complete)-Uldum (till 84)-Highlands and was 85 last friday-night....

but

I find it tedious to tank, and I feel I don't have the piece of mind to do many tanking at the moment. I did level some alts up after that. My hunter to 81, and my SP to 82, but damn, do I need a lot of ore for those three.

Actually.... I find my lazer-chicken on the allie-side much more enjoying at the moment, has to do something with the Flying Form. I did some dungeons with her, and yes, the last word is not out yet, but they seem a lot more fun than mindless wrath-spamming... and now of to Uldum.

McGoblin?

2010-12-03T21:36:00.000+01:00

While questing on one of my now numerous low-level alts, I came across a goblin inn, and found the food-stash in the back, well... I remember something like: you shouldn't sleep with glob-flies... I don't think they should be above your food...

And after a week of long log-in, Argent Dawn got their free transfers of, good new for me. So, my shaman,warrior and warlock, accompanied by my lvl60 undead hunter went to steamweedle cartel, to make room for new alts.

I am Forsaken

2010-11-26T11:25:00.000+01:00

Run, run,run, busy, busy,busy,

Yes, it has happened again, the 'one-more-turn'-syndrome, or for WoW-players likely called 'one-more-quest'-syndrome, has struck again.

Wednesday, patch-day, oh, new low-level-quests, undead hunter, here we go.

Gloomweed, or doomweed is still there.
Kill some scarlet crusaders, lots of Flightpaths.
Some nice movies.
He, already honored....
Oh, hi sylvanas and garrosh
He, already revered?
WORGEN, kill 'em all
Gilneas taken/lost/taken....
Dead Sylvanas
Oops... almost no dungeons taken....
Ah, finally dual-wield
I am a NUB???
Nicely redecorated Hillsbrad, and Southshore... and well, everything.
Huh, lvl24 and Exalted with UC??
Oh, the cave-yetis have a BIG leader now.
On to STV, KILL TROLLS
mmm, to many green quest, Hinterlands here I come
.... and thats where I am now...

Level 35 in 15 hours, and everywhere is something new. And I am skipping a lot I know. My hunter is heirloomed to the teeth, and has mining/herbalism. Lots of extra xp, but not enough room to do all quests...luckily. That leaves some for future alts.

Well, of to Kill Shadra I suppose...

Bluffwatcher

2010-11-16T19:00:00.000+01:00

To arms, Thunderbluff is under attack. Build the barricades and save the citizens.

Now Playing?

2010-11-14T12:34:00.001+01:00

So, here I was, new engineer, new recipes... and a need for a lot of Khorium Ore. I needed 60 of those to make Jeeves and the Turbo-Charged Flyer... problem though, they are freaking expensive, and rare. Not only rare to spawn, but also rare on the AH.

So what to do? Well, farm them myself. Luckily I have dual-screen, so while I was half-looking to WoW I saw a lot of Muppet-shows on youtube.... which made me thinking.

You see, I play on a Mac, and WoW on Mac has a build-in movie-maker.... so at the start of one of my runs, I hit CTRL-[.

Some things I need to figure out, like how to better adjust text in the film.... I felt restrained by iMovie. Text where always 2.05 long and couldn't be placed within 2.05 of each other, which made me not use that many text.... There is probably a way to just put text at random in, just have to find it....

Counting Down.

2010-11-12T18:43:00.001+01:00

Whoops, I seem to not have written for a while, and even missing my new project, shots from a month....

So, to start of, what happens if 3 SAN-ers go harass the LFD.....

Yes, the Healer was in for a susrprise :O

Lately I have been smite-spamming with Deathoorth trhough dungeons. Just because it is fun to play with guildies. I just can't seem to hit the LFD-button on Gowron at the moment, although I do think he will be my first 85. But with 10 80's, there is not much to do... I levelled a nelf to 20, just to experience the darkshore-quests once more. Played a little on 20-something rogue killing all of Hillsbrad, made my new priest a miner/engineer, made more alts just to see how low-levels work these days.

One of the Alts is a genuine Holy Clothadin, very interesting how that all works, I wonder though, if their will be some low-level intellect-mail available for my future cow-adin...

While levelling the Pally, I encountered a little quest-chain, I know I did it on Gowron, waaaaay back, but now I actually read the lines.... and I did feel sad afterwards.... I am not going to spoil it, just try to find the named treant.

And, with the coming of Cataclysm, I am making sure to take some nice pictures along the way....

I still remember the first time I was there. This was before I used add-ons, so I was actually using the sign-posts along the way. If you follow them, you actually must climb some of the needles to reach the Flightpath.... you only see the elevators when you have reached the top...

I am ending this post with a picture of one of the most honorable and noble characters in Azeroth.

Level 800 , yes... Hundred.

2010-10-24T16:04:00.000+02:00

Over the weekend the last two spots where taken in my army of alts. Whiteyyama, the troll warrior (formerly known as Whiteheart, the dwarf warrior) put asides his two big weapons and cleaned of his stashed tanking-gear. 4 hours later, Ezrila, the shadowy disco priest also reached the end of the road (not sure, but I think she is also an original Argent Dawner)

So, that's a goal reached. A level 80 of every class before cata hits. So what did I do on sunday?

I made an undead rogue.... you should know that my other rogue is parked on Sha'tar, so I actually don't have a rogue anymore on Argent Dawn. But she's more a in between step I guess.

I did some early stuff and I found out some nice surprises while levelling.

Lifeblood, the herbalism special ability, used to be a Heal over Time. Now it is an instant heal (around 1k at 80) and gives you 240 haste for 20 seconds (2min CD/lvl80). Did I miss the notes? This is a nice upgrade, making it a very good profession I guess.

On herbing, and mining (and I guess skinning), that gives xp now. At lvl75-80 it gave Whitey twice as much xp as killing stuff... but but, the flowers got sharp points, and it hurts me???

Oh, and I found some stange greenies. A lvl10 back with 1 agility AND 1 hit rating. And a lvl8 shield with 2 spellpower.... Did Blizzard also changed the variables for green drops in the last patch? I have yet to see a mail piece with spirit... oh, wait, that actually makes sense now.

And I actually had to discover Wailing Caverns, before I could que for that. DM,SFK and RFC where free btw.

And low level rogues in heirloom are OP.... stealth-ambush-dead mob... and they got a self-heal??? Where's the world going to....mmm. Oh Yeah, a Cataclysm (corny I know)

Disco-dps...

2010-10-20T22:42:00.000+02:00

After some testing it seems that the next rules apply to Disco-dps

Smitex5 (to get evangilism maxed)
then priority: Penance>Holy Fire>Smite

But, if you happen to get your Holy Fire of CD, with only one GCD left for next penance, it seems to better smite,penance, holy fire then.

Glyphs needed:
Glyph of Penance
Glyph of Smite
Glyph of Accuracy

Problem is, that I tested this with a lvl75 on a lvl70 dummy. And Penance and Holy Fire have a 18% miss chance normally....

So, maybe Smite-spam is the way to go.... mmmm?

Why am I even thinking about this?

4.0.fek-patch

2010-10-15T15:06:00.000+02:00

Oh... look who is glaring trough the trees... no there... what do you mean you need time to turn? Surely it doesn't last that long? Does it???

Patch 4.0.something shitty happened. All my addons need re-applying. I can handle that. I have around 12 specs to figure out on all my alts. I can handle that.

But the FPS of 1, yes ONE, in Dalaran, and sometimes in the middle of no-where (lvl25 hunter just outside X-roads), really is shitty. Turning down a lot of graph-thingies, and then dying because the graph of a hellfire-or-something didn't really show up on your screen. Those are things I don't like.

Also the multitude of little graphical errors (little green bars just above the red x on bags for example) are very annoying.

The fact that I have a guild-tag, can see who is in the guild, but get the message 'You are not in a guild' when I try to type in /g is even more annoying. Means I have to /gquit and be reinvited.

But the worst part is, I don't like Tankadinning at the moment. How the hell did those Holy Combo Powerpoint Crap got past the Beta. Do I look like a Rogue/Kitty??? And it is just boring. CS-J-CS-some aoe-CS-SHoR until it hits, rince and repeat. With all the changes we just got another sequence, from 696 to 393.... /rejoice. And with our build-up threat through that getting-hit-for-more-AP-mechanic, one miss-click will hurt. Hope that the DPS don't target the wrong mob, because all your spell will be screwed through different CD's.

And I hate it that I don't have Pursuit of Justice now.

Look, as tank I now have to be completely awake/sober/clear/not-distracted to work. Keeping rotation up, keeping track of threat on different targets, keeping track of what the mobs are doing, current and future, keeping track of healers mana.... and the rest of the freaking stuff that is happening, what mob does what? How to walk... but wait, give us something new... combo points... really, I don't like the point, and I don't like the cast-sequence.

happy now all you OH-NOES-if CS is on 4 sec CD we have empty GCD's...... at least those GCD could be used to throw a Hand or look around...

On the other hand, Smiting Healers are fun :)

NOOES, to many new talents...

2010-10-12T21:52:00.000+02:00

Let me see, with all the alts i have, and now every class played till 72, I have a little problem with all the new talents. My next week will probably be spend figuring out how they all work, what they do, how to glyph, and how to reforge... around 13 characters...oh my.

And what is this about 939.... look like 969. I thought and hoped I would be free of the GCD-key-tapping. To have some time to look around... but no... hit Crusader Strike (What? am I ret?), hit another button, hit CS..etc.... And Holy Power, the Paladin-rogues.... or something. Luckily I have a 66-tankadin, to get a feel for it, before I actually see all... or I am shanghaied into a dungeon by fellow SAN-ers.

Now, it's time for (another) mind-quake.

The downfall of chickens?

2010-10-10T12:35:00.000+02:00

At this moment I am running around 4 characters between level 63 and 73. On disc/shadowpriest, and 3 tanks, a warrior, a paladin and a dw-frost dk. And I have noticed something that will not be good for the future...

I am, by all means, A TBC-child. I started around 2 months after TBC came out. One thing that was hammered down my throat was, let tank pull, unless he asks other wise (sheep-pulls anyone). A lot of people seem to be forgetting that these days, they just expect tanks to taunt of them, and get angry when you don't... /facepalm.

And then there's the constant AoE-spam that makes my screen light up. Most often casted before the tank has made any AoE-threat, or just a little... and then all the mobs start running to you... geesh, how can that happen?

Now the worst example of this are lazor-chickens. Not all of course, but a lot of them. They have three spells to use in dungeons it seems. Hurricane, Starfall and that knockback thingie, typhoon. A common scenario follows...

I run in, target secondary mob, fire of a spell, target primary target... ooh, falling stars... %$#@, use way to many spells with to few resources at my disposal, while the hurricane-spam is started. Chicken gets aggro (no barkskin whatsoever), and after 10 long seconds I finally have all the mobs back where I want them..... knockback... AAAAAARGH.

Now of course, chickens are a prime example, but I have some very bad feelings about the cata-dungeons. It is said that people actually have to think... O_o. Time for another example... Blood Furnace, the SECOND dungeon you encounter in Outlands.. just before the end, there are some packs with large demons. Do you know what they do?

Well, let's see what happens, tank pulls, 2 demons are hitting tank. All of a sudden one of the demons runs to a party-member 25 or so yards back, and stays there.... tank turns around, hits/taunts the demon back, and then the other one does the same. Healer is healing everywhere, but, no problems the group gets them down. Next pack is two of the same demon, and a warlock. Where do you think the ranged is going to stand?

Most of the time I even say, hug tank/demon, but no.... why listen to the healer/tank who gives a tip... oh, and remember the spell starfall... have fun with 2 warlocks summoning all kind of beasties, and 6 mobs charging every way, and not bothering to check who their angry at....

So, if cataclysm actually demands 3/3 in Common Sense, how will 60% of the players, the ones standing in the green, not learning from mob-abilities, etc., handle those dungeons. And how will the 40% sane-people handle it?

How will I handle it? I think guild-dungeons are back, and the LFD will die...
well, until we all overgear the places again, and AoE everything down.

Justice

2010-10-06T19:36:00.000+02:00

Ok, fine, now it is time to really think about cata. Release date has been established, there seems to be a big chance that 4.01 will be around shortly, so now maybe the time to look ahead. But first, I found this nice statement from our favorite crab:

"Right. If you are trying to AE tank and a bad dps is attacking the wrong target and dies, we call that justice."

So... we now have a name for it.... Justice :)

Shots of September

2010-10-05T19:07:00.001+02:00

Sometimes, I still run into people/npc's/quests that I didn't do before.... not that often anymore... but that's why 7 december is coming....

Screenie from the PTR, you can't fly, but you can summon....

I still find this picture wrong, it seems off somehow. Maybe because he is still in Thralls room?

Not from the PTR, but one of the most epic dungeons-hubs ever created. I didn't do them while levelling with Gowron, or at least I can't remember. But later alts all had lot of fun in there.

Me-ow

2010-09-26T10:26:00.002+02:00

I just wanted to see this for myself, cat-drood is fur fite, at level 8. So off I went through Mulgore. Casting Wraths along the way, I again encountered the most annoying thing of low levels, no bag space. I had to return a lot to sell stuff. But even all that selling was not enough. There's a little problem with druids. They can get the ability to become a cat at lvl8, and have to learn cat-form, and 3 new spells, all costing 3 silver and 70 copper.

Now don't look at it with the eyes as a lvl80 with to much gold. If I hadn't had Gowron transferred to the PTR, I would not have had enough silver to buy all the sweet kitty-stuff. New players will not have the backing of gold, and I am seeing frustration because they can't get the spells. Yes, of course, you could get out and start killing stuff.... but it isn't fun, and confusing for new players.

And there is more confusing stuff coming, but luckily I did had gold-backing.

I leveled on till 10, where I got the choice between the three trees. Your first talent point has a nice place to go, feral swiftness. Something with more dodge, whatever, and 15% more speed while in cat-form, very nice for levelling. I also looked a little at the other trees. Resto is logical it seems, but what is with this Solar Eclipse thing, what is it, what does it do, how does it work. Ok, I know how it works, but again, look at it from the beginning player...

Ok, one good thing are thew tooltips. Below is the one for mangle, which you get for free if you choose to go feral. Very clear what to do with this spell.

So, now I think it's time for some dual-wielding totem-thrower.

10 levels of PTR

2010-09-20T19:53:00.000+02:00

So, due some unforseen incident, like forgetting you have your Authenticator hanging on your car-keychain, and then lending your car to a friend, I made a trial-account and went to the strange land of the Public Test Realm.

I looked at all the classes (except DK's) and tried and studied some beginning-stuff. OP-hunter Arcane shots, nice proc-graphics for Arcane Missiles, etcetera. But I of course went for the paladin for a little bit more information. And I started levelling, between heavy lag-spikes (one killed me).

Paladins now start with Crusader Strike and get Seal of Righteousness/Judgement fairly fast. (no, that's not SoW on the screenies). When you can train a new spell at your trainer, and remember no more ranks on them, you get a huge message in the middle of your screen.

Now the first thing I needed to understand is your completely lack of heal till level 9. Paladins used to start with Holy Light, but now, you are on your own when you get damaged. So, I did run into a little where-the-%$#@-did-all-these-guys-spawn-from moment. But it actually was surprising... a new I-am-death-and-completely-lots-my-way button is added.

At Level8 you get to see your Holy Power Bar. It is still a level till you can use it. Word of Glory is instant, costs no mana, and heals you for around 60/HP at level9, which means 180 of your 200-something health at full strength...mmm, at instant speed. That actually means you can take on lvl15 boars as a lvl9 paladin...

And I reached level10, lots of information, lots of new buttons.

After respeccing to Prot, I joined a BG for fun. Which gave me a sneek peak of the raid-frames. the right-frame can be tinied, while the names show the appropriate buffs you can give.

This is the PTR btw. No archeology, no new landscapes/worgen/goblins/quests. Just the old stuff, with new spells. But I am looking forward to level again.

2 November?

2010-09-17T19:52:00.000+02:00

Patch 4 on november 2? Background-loader started... so it is viable.

Mmm, maybe now is the time to look at some of the changes.

Not sure what I am gonna do first. Level to 85, or start a Cowadin...

A Tribute to....

2010-09-11T17:05:00.001+02:00

Shots of August

2010-09-01T17:55:00.000+02:00

Time to picture and roll... August Screenies are here.

RP-GEAR

I finally got around to get some real RP-gear... the level60 PvP-set, combined with BoJ-cape. I could have gone farming the Blood Knight Shield, but instead I opted for this Shield, which does set me apart from the rest of the Blood knights in Silvermoon. Ooh, and that troll... it seems to pop up on more of my screenies.

Thanksgiving?

This is what you get in a 6-week vacation, boredom and chasing strange achievements. This one is from feeding 10 pets food, making them your temporaly pets.

Single Abstract Noun ICC10 - raid

A fully SAN-raid, very relaxed, and my first new boss-kill in 6 months, and also a nice screenie to show my UI.

Tanking ShatH

It has been a while since I tanked Shattered Halls, this time I did it as a warrior. Was a nice flashback... oh, and there's that other troll again...

...the moron of course

While just shooting around on the future troll capital islands, I had to kill zalazane. So I was clearing some mobs, when this figure came along. And I do mean along. He just sprinted past me, shot zalazane (which I almost cleared), aggroed 3 more trolls, killed Z. and ran away. After which he 'thanked' me for helping... sorry to say, but I ain't helping such people. I would have lolled at him if he died... I would have joined Zalazane's trolls at that moment if it could be possible...

A tribute

Remember this, the outpost CampT. Which does want me to make some sort of Tribute-post....

O_o, what did I do.

2010-08-21T18:45:00.000+02:00

Did I really write that many in the past 2-something years?

I remember why it started, well, it is post 1. Retribution went Boom, and all my articles I wrote where lost. So I actually made the blog as a backup. Which is a good thing, especially considering XII (where I am probably still the highest poster, even after a year gone).

Back then, I just wrote what came up. Mostly new boss-kills. These days I tend to think a little more about posts, until the moment the idea overflows my head. Yes, I tend to write my posts in one stint, while other ideas continue hatching in my brains. Luckily I never said I would write every day/week/etc. I write the Blizzard-way, when I feel like it is ready. Ok, now and then some short answers/remark-posts are still made, but hey, my blog falls under the Munckin Rules: Owner decides.

So, looking back, I really do write like the underline of my blog. Some alt here, some alt there, always returning to Gowron, the Tankadin. Just my 2 cents on World of Warcraft, and to continue...

What have I been doing the last couple of weeks:

Gowron is a little bit done with Wrath. He is now actually collecting pets... but also 5/12 in ICC10 with fellow-bloggers. That was a fun raid. No rush, no expectation, just a walk in the park.

The threesome Dorf2Noam are gone..... they should be called TrollTree???

I played some evony.... which reminds me of Travian... which I do NOT have the time for.

I went some days without internet. Seeing DS9, playing Arkham Horror, and rediscovering Civ4... which still costs 50+ euro for Mac.

Read a lot of posts about Cata.... but I am not yet going to figure it all out... although Paladins need to relearn their stuff.... again. At least we ain't getting spellpower back.

Still trying to get a priest to 80... chances are big that the priest first has to become a Tauren.

8/10 level 80's now. 6 in SAN, 2 on the Allie-side in WEF (which never came off the ground)

Had 6 weeks vacation, way to long, way to hot, monday work starts again.

Bought fast-flying, and the DK-specific mount for Tamarian. Why? Because I could....

Wondering what to do when Cata comes.... AD is full on chars... take another account?

Oh well, we'll see.... oh, LFD for UK-normal pops up... gief AXE

The return of the.... CC?

2010-08-04T10:21:00.000+02:00

Sometimes your mind wanders, tinkers about something. I read Rigtheous Orbs, which is about hard dungeons, and remembered the days of CC, which for a Tankadin stands for Continuous Consecration (although Cons. is a lot less usefull these days), but for the rest it means Crowd Control.

Crowd Control, the tool to keep enemy mobs out of combat for a while, while the party butchered his comrades. Doing this will decrease damage on the tank, and keep the fight 'tidy'. And you needed to mark the stuff, anybody remember these?:

And remember what they stood for?

Skull - First Target
Cross - Second Target
Square - Trap (Hunter)
Triangle - Sap (Rogue)
Moon - Sheep (Mage)... or penguin/turtle, whatever...
Star - Shackle (Priest)
Circle - Banish (Warlock)

Yes, that's how we did it before Wrath, mark mobs, and everyone knew what to do. If you where a mage, and you saw a moon appearing on a mob, you knew what to do. And you'd better knew how to chain-trap as hunter :). Now my current experience in Wrath is, that when you actually put a skull on a mob, it probably dies last ???

I don't get this. If the Tank actually 'wastes' time to put a mark on something, there probably is a reason. He/she may have bad experiences with that mob before, he knows the mob has a dangerous ability, or maybe his threat-generation isn't that high, who knows... and who cares... just Blizzard,Hurricane,Hellfire away... NO, oops, I didn't mean that. FTLoG, please focus fire the skull down, and then go your merry way with AoE. There's a reason for that skull, don't question it, just do it...

Now, back to CC, or better what CC's are out there, and I am going to ignore short spells, we want to take a mob out of combat for at least 15 seconds.

Druid: Hibernate,Entangling Roots
Hunter: Freezing Trap, [Wyvern Sting]
Mage: Polymorph
Paladin: [Repentance]
Priest: Shackle Undead,Mind Control
Rogue: Sap
Shaman: Hex
Warlock: Banish, Enslave Demon, Seduction
Warrior: none
Death Knight: none

I know there also are other options to control mobs. A rogue could stunlock a mob (but preventing the rogue from doing dps), and mobs can be chain-feared by several classes, but as you know, fearing is something you should refrain from in most dungeons, you know why, don't you??? And there are some spells which are spec-specific (wyvern sting/repentance) so not all of that class may have them. And of course they all break on damage.

As you can see, there are a lot of CC's, some are mob-specific, like Shackle Undead, but it seems to me, that a reasonable balanced group at least has 2 CC's to choose from. And as mentioned by our favorite Crab, we will need them again in Cataclysm. So start using them again, pull them out of your spellbook, on to your hotbars.

Now hope you don't get a group with 2 DK's, 2 Warriors and a Holy Paladin.... then yer screwed, lass.

He is coming.....

2010-07-23T19:08:00.000+02:00

The fog was just starting to clear,
daybreak was upon them,
but there was a foul stench in the air,
something different.

They heard him first,
the sound of a riding horse
echoed through the valley,
and all looked up.

Between the hills he came,
onwards with a steady pace,
nothing could stop him,
until he reached his destiny.

Now, where did I leave those LotR-DVD's.. or do I even have them...

Dodge this.

2010-07-21T09:59:00.000+02:00

First: Beta has a new talent tree up for Paladins. Now I am not going to deeply into it, because it is probably far from finished, but it seems we'll be watching procs a lot more, which I don't like as a tank, procs means chance, so I need to gamble with the the other players present.

Now on to the main dish.

GC has stated that he wants avoidance to matter more then now. One of the things changed is that *gasp* healers have to look at their mana again.

No let me take you back. In the old days of TBC, me first voyages into Karazhan was as Holy (long story). So I actually healed there. I had no add-ons to help me, and I just looked at health bars, and pushing 1 (FoL), 2 (HL) or 3 (HL rank 7). But I got away with reactive healing. Tank (or someone else) took damage, throw a heal at him/her. This meant that I didn't waste mana on healing-not-needed. And still I needed to pop a pot every 2 minutes to keep enough mana for the whole fight.

My Primary spell was FoL, because it was cheap, my second most-used spell was HL rank 7, not the max rank. It was cheaper and filled the gap between HL and FL max ranks. It was all about mana.

Now I also healed sometimes in Ulduar, and my memory of that was very simple. Target tank-->spam Holy Light. Mana-problems? Never, I sometimes had to use Divine plea to get mana back, but I can't remember using a pot.

Now these are two completely different healing-methods, and it also effects how tanks played and geared. If you gear/gem like today, which is pointed towards Stamina and Armor, there maybe a problem. You will take most of the hits, so you need to get healed often, if not always, else you die. Now with infinite mana this is not a problem, healers just spam-heal you, but what would happen with the healers mana, if it wasn't infinite? There would be a good chance that your healer would run oom halfway the fight.

And that's the reason tanks used to look at dodge/parry a lot more in TBC then now. A hit avoided would mean that your healer wouldn't have to heal you, which meant that he had more mana. But there-in lies another problem. If the hits where that big, that 2 would kill the tank, the healers still needed to spam-heal the tank, because you don't know before hand if the hit would land or be avoided. You could cancel the heal just before casting, but imho, that often fails, because of lag or because you took the cast-time to look around to others (or colored ground).

So, for dodge/parry to become important again, healers should again be able to heal reactively, instead of pro-active like now. Because that's how is healed these days, just spam HL, and don't worry how hard the tanks get hit. That would mean that bosses can't 2-shot the tank anymore. A normal hit on a (content-geared) tank should only take of 30% of his health, so healers can react to it, and if the hit is avoided, they don't have to heal the tank.

Back in Kara, I never topped of the tanks, I always had them at around 92%. If I would heal the tank, some mana would be wasted, and the tank had enough health to survive at least two hits. So if he got hit, and was thrown, to say 50%, I could fire off an expensive HL, or use two small FoL. Probably the latter, because another healer would probably also toss a heal, and I could actually save the mana from one FoL. It also opened up the possibility to look at the raid, and use a heal there. If the tank was still above 70%, no heal was directly needed, I could finish of a heal on a DPS orso, and then heal the tank. Chance was he would avoid the next hit, so I had some time, and even if it wasn't avoided, the tank would still be alive and ready to receive some oh-shit heals.

So for the TL;DR version:

If Avoidance should matter for tanks again, boss-hits must be smaller, and the mana of healers should not be infinite.

And for the record, I am still in the mind-set, that my weapon should be enchanted for threat (spelldamage in TBC, agi/crit/hit today), and that one trinket-slot is for stamina, an the other for avoidance, or an on-use avoidance ability.

How not to Halls of Lightning

2010-07-15T19:06:00.000+02:00

Sometimes you get real beautiful PuG's.

Halls of Lightning

First Boss:
He has an aggro-range of miles, so by all means healer, go stand there, and pull him. Oh, you only have 5% health left, while the rest needs healing due to Whirlwind... luckily I have lay on hands.

Just after that:
Slags, run through them, round them up, and to be sure, Divine Protection... and yes mage, healers and DK, by all means stand right besides me.... rez-rez-rez....

Just after second boss:
Healer is Shammie, where are my Tremors???

Third Boss:
You know dispers? Well, healer+DK, by all means, don't run... activate DP, use trinket, use Nightmare Seed (yes, I still have some), kill boss. Rez...rez.. oh healer already ran in.

Whirlwinding trash
Bye DK

Lokem:
Oh yes healer+mage, by no means stand close.... LoH the healer, mage dead, healer drops group before ressing, probably because of the 'WTF no heals' from the mage.

Well, at least I was not bored :)

Talented Down.

2010-07-09T19:56:00.000+02:00

Inbetween all the realID-stuff, Blizzard did announce something new last week, revamped talent trees.

TL,DR-version:
-At level 10, you choose a talent tree
-You can only spec into that tree until you have 31 points in it-You get some tree-specific cool abilities at level 10
-You get 1 talentpoint/2 levels (down from 1)
-If you don't get a talentpoint, visit your trainer for something new.

At level 10, you choose a talent tree

So let's me look at all this, and start with a question. Which is the best talent-spec for tankadins at level 39?

If you came up with a 0/xx/0 build, you are wrong (imho), the best build for tankadins at level 39 is this. I must say, this comes from a not widly used glyph, the Glyph of Seal of Command. So, not only SoC gives you a lot of snap-aggro on 3 targets, it will also give you mana back, so almost no downtime in dungeons. And a lot of crit, which means more damage, which means more aggro.

Another question, what spec should a 39-protection-warrior have? Well, here is my tree I had at that level. The reason? This spec lets you have a charge without losing rage after changing stances (macro-time), and with the increase on crit from the talent Incite, there's a good chance you have a bleed-DoT on several targets through Deep Wounds.

Now, take in account, that the possibility that you can join LFD a non-protection specced character will probably not be possible any more (would be logic). So, these two specs wil not be possible anymore (besides the fact that you don't get that many points). One is not protection, the other is a dual-spec (15/0/15).

So, whine, whine, not good, let's protest ag... oh wait... Now if you read this, there's a 89% chance that you actually know how the game works. But do new players now this? Can you imagine that a new player will be very confused if everyone says that the best tanking tree for Paladins is not the the Tanking Tree, but the DPS-tree? So, I think this step is a very good one.

You can only spec into that tree until you have 31 points in it

But, but, won't all the specs be the same then? Yes, of course, like they are now, except maybe for 2-3 points. So please don't go that way, cookie-cutter was invented for a reason. It will be the end of some strange specs though. Looking at the past, a Shockadin-build will be impossible, just as my still-much-loved 0/40/21 spec I had in TBC. You need to have the top-talent in your spec, before you actually spec into another tree, which most specs actually do, so...

You get some tree-specific cool abilities at level 10

Think Shaman-DW, Divine Storm. For enhancement Shamans, this means that they can actually BE enhancement Shaman at level 10, instead of waiting till 40 for Dual Wield. This alone is reason enough to make it a good descision. I don't know more specifics about these abilities, but wouldn't a DW-2H warrior be cool at 10?

-You get 1 talentpoint/2 levels (down from 1)
-If you don't get a talentpoint, visit your trainer for something new.
So, every new level we got something new, mmm, are they really going to give us 30+ different spells? Remember, they already said that ranking up for spells you already got will be automatic. Seems a lot to me.

Conclusion: I think I like these changes, although I do have my questions by the 'every level something new'-statement. Also, no idea what the trees will look like. we know the +5% to something talents will disappear, but what about some situational talents we have? Will there only be 31 points to be spend in a tree? Or will we still have some filler-talents for fun (like Unholy DK's Corpse explosion?), time will tell....

Real No Idea

2010-07-09T19:22:00.000+02:00

-----> That way (bloglist)

The players won?

Or....

Inscription?

2010-07-08T22:33:00.000+02:00

Just before the whole RealID blew up, I again read some posts on Inscription. There seems to be ab oppurtunity there to make a lot of gold. Well, why?

I maybe buy 15 glyphs per char, and keep them a long time. I see no reason at this moment to replace my DP,Sense Undead and taunt-glyphs. And most of the glyphs are only 10g max. That's ONE daily, which is a lot faster then logging on my inscriber, finding the flowers on the AH, smashing them to pulp, making ink, making glyph. Of all my characters who make stuff, my inscriber is only good for making armor/weapon-glyphs, which I have a lot of at this moment. More then enough to make all the enchants I want on all my alts.

Now, maybe if I was a progression-tank, I may carry around a lot of glyphs to switch around. But how many hardcore-guilds will enforce that rule? And how many HC-guilds are there on your server? 4? 5? Off which 70% probably don't need to switch around.

I just don't see why the glyph-business can make that much gold?

Oh, and yes, I am interested in the new talent trees, gief more info on the talents. But paladins probably have to wait till last....

RealID, do we have the power?

2010-07-07T16:00:00.000+02:00

Oh, a Tidal-wave is rolling along, let's jump into it.

So, the blogworld is swarming with RealID-posts.

To be honest, personally I don't care that much (at the moment). If you type in my (real) name, you already get a lot of information about me, posts on Magic-forums, posts on trek-forums, travian, Rock wrchter, Hyves (dutch facebook) and some more.

But, that is my choice. It was not forced upon me. And on some forums I posted on (hello Maintankadin) my name is Gowron, Not A**** D****. And I like to keep that choice. we are not living in 1984 here, aren't we?

Now don't expect me to cancel my subscription (oh, from a Doors-song), but I am wondering about a comment I made in a post a while back.

At the beginning, someone known as 'Tamarind', together with someone known as 'Miss Medicina', created something different, a guild for bloggers and readers. And I wondered if we in the future, as voice of all the players, could make a difference...

The Post

...and six.

2010-07-05T15:04:00.000+02:00

'Whoops, I did it again.'
(B. Spears)

Cymar is now an 80 Affliction Warlock, I did a long run this weekend, even snatching up 4 frosties and a 232-cloak from Ahune. Coupled with the Summerfestival Swirling Bonus, Cymar hit 80 somewhere sunday late afternoon. So after some althops, some new Ilvl200 gear I went into the LFD for emblems.

Now, with still 2 heirloomtrinkets and the pvp-heirloom staff, I am doing 2000+ dps, which methinks is fairly good. Especially considering that you needed 1500 dps for Patchwerk (iirc). But my my, wat a %#@&heads are around.

Now, my complete ignore-list was empty, there were no real lesser experiences until I hit the Heroic-LFD.

Now, there are several things.
-1: I don't have a real dps-chart, because we only did 2 bosses, and this was OK
-2: This is during Voljaz (last boss) in OK
-3: Dps-meters don't work here, because you only record you own dps during Insanity.
-4: Instead of actually right-clicking on the last mob standing, he actually typed, prolonging it's life.
-5: And to top it off, the healer/tank weren't really better, continually harrassing the rogue (Ghaz) because he didn't know some tactics....
-6: And Gz bear, on needing the spellpowerstaff.....

Within 24 hours, I have seen it all. DPS who just do nothing, because the other 4 in the group want to do all bosses. Swearing, after someone asks politely to do some more bosses. DPS leaving during bossfights, because they are to 'Sexy for their Shirt'. Healers leaving during bossfight, while soulstoned, because someone died (or someones). Tanks just chainpulling, not looking at either the healers mana, or if there is maybe a loose mob. Warlocks getting aggro because of Seed-spam.. oh wait, that would be me :). At least I am talented in aggro->run to tank.

Luckily, vacation is coming, probably lessening the 'Kids'....

You no take Flame.

2010-06-23T10:22:00.001+02:00

This Midsummer festival is a good thing to get your City Defender Achievement.

Last Monday, 4 members od SAN where just doing there usual thing, nothing. I got a little tired of all the local defense-spam. So I went to the Flame, and killed every alliance who was so stupid to actually attack NPC's. I was joined by Naofa's Tankadin, Steamynose and Wasmemon's Shammy. And it quickly turned into 'just kill all allies'.

I don't think the flame was stolen for three hours straight, and the bones kept piling up. We also had a good laugh about all the 'Elder Rise is under attack' messages. Apparantly a lot of Allies don't know their way around TB.

We also had a lot of allies that tried to escape by jumping of Spirit Rise, it's called Rise for a reason... a lot went splat below.

Most fun was yesterday. Steamy and me vs. 4-5 alliance that came with the zeppelin from Ogrimmar. We followed them on the boat, and had a Ship-fight, which we won. Outnumbered 2-1 and winning...

But I do have an apology, for the non-level-80's who where caught in the crossfire, or more likely in the 'Alliance-Kill'. And I am pretty sure I killed a former Guildmate from WEF, sorry for that... well, maybe...

Heirlooms

2010-06-13T16:54:00.000+02:00

Some news about cata today. Path gone, more glyphs, but I am scratching my head over this one:

The current heirlooms will stop growing after level 80. There will be a whole new crop of heirlooms for Cataclysm.

They will stop growing.... so what? 10% more xp dwarves all other stats, in my humble opinion. Or does it mean that they won't work for lvl81-85? That would be, mm, not cool.

I have a lot of those heirlooms. And the idea behind it was always that I could use them in Cata, and what else to do with all those emblems. But I think Blizzard wants the same with what they did to Northrend Flying. One time without, after that, who cares.

Status-report.

2010-06-07T07:47:00.000+02:00

Oh, 2 weeks no blog, mm, probably because the last week of the schoolyear are very busy. So, a little rundown of what I have been doing last two weeks.

First up, more rep-grinding...

Which also means I did the Mag'Har, and the tunnel-one, which gave me a nice speech from Thrall.

And I am also doing some other Outland-rep-grinds, which resulted in me getting a transformarion-trinket....

So... with all those exalted reputations, I visited some quartermasters, bought some mounts, and got a free drake.

And something else happened last night. I was present in a succesfull WG, and thought, why not. I joined a VOA25. After that, about 5 people wanted to do VOA10, including me. RL left because he already did it, and left me with the reigns.... So I raid-leaded again.. well, sort of. It's not that you really need a RL in VOA.

Something different.

2010-05-19T10:34:00.000+02:00

The void before a new expansion. It has happened in the past, and it will happen again. So what to do, continue with the reputation-hunts Gowron recently found himself one, but it is boring... Do more heroics, which I already can dream about... Get into a raiding-community... not again.

Last night I toon-hopped, bought a load of BoA-thingies, and according to the tab, Gowron gained about 200000 honor yesterday... yes, let's try something new, Player vs. Player.

Now, I did do some PvP on Gowron in TBC, mainly because the best Tankadin-weapons came from PvP (stamina/spellpower and crit-reducement through resilience). But I never liked it very much, especially because I was Prot-specced, and no dual-specs back then.

Yesterday, I respecced my ret-spec to a more PvP-orientated build, not quit right yet. Bought some 232,245,246-pvp stuff from the honor (and some triumphs), and did some random BG's.

I am sitting at around 420 resilience, which is just enough to not feel to squishy. Of course, against a full pvp-ed allie, I am toast, but I am managing.

Now of course, everybody says Ret-pvp is OP, well, it is, if I have all my cooldowns available. But the moment I just killed someone using my CD's, the next fight will be a lot harder, a lot, and probably a loss.

I did found out some nice tricks, I have three stuns/interrupts. The racial, the hammer, and the repentance. If all 3 are available, I can even take down a tree... if only 2 are up, tree lives.... sigh.

Well, let's see how long I can handle this, before I get crazy.

Hunter Up...

2010-05-18T19:25:00.000+02:00

Be carefull...

look where you are going...

because in that shadow over there...

there could be lurkin'...

A BIG RED KITTY

Greetings from Thunderbluff

2010-05-13T01:14:00.000+02:00

Me and my friend Steamy met this Paladin in Thunderbluff. We had some laughs, shared some stories, and some booze. I hope the bloke will not get too much grief from his 'better' half.

I have been around.

2010-05-11T20:34:00.000+02:00

So, what was I doing, oh yeah:

It took me two days, and in contrary to the Eastern Kindoms, Kalimdor-quests are much harder to find and do in the end. Mostly because of the whole Silithus-scene (more on that later). But, if you look at the screenie, I got the achievement by turning in cloth.... If I would have known that earlier... oh well. So, next up was Northrend:

Not that much work. Apparantly I never did the Nexus- and DTK-quests.. and never been to Shozalar with Gowron. Most of the quests I had already done, and before I knew it... well actually, I did knew it was gonna happen...:

But when I got this, I still needed to Icecrown, where I got stuck on 138/140, with only one group-quest (one you can't solo due to cd's). So, I searched around, and I found that I needed to get a random drop, from a chest, which could only be opened when I was on a Daily... and it involves that Guy who always runs away before we kill him, Mal' Ganis. But, I found it...

So, I got a nice letter from Bloodhoof, a new title and a very ugly tabard, and some pictures.

The last one, is from one of the quests in Silithus when I was working toward Kalimdor. After I completed Loremaster today, I looked at my cenarion circle rep, and thought, what the.. So, of I was, collecting texts and cultist wardrobes. Killing some lesser elementals, and finally I had enough, to summon an old-school 40-man raid boss.

Yeah, well, raid-boss? Somewhere along the line they nerfed these. It had less health then me in my tanking gear. But, it actually dropped something nice, a purple shield. And after besting one of their biggest enemies, the druids of the Cenarion Circle/Expedition/whatever they will be called in cataclysm, bestowed me with a new title:

So, what now... maybe diplomat, or maybe I should do the AT-quests on Gowron... we'll see.

About maps and a lot of quests.

2010-05-06T19:15:00.000+02:00

I have this nice thing on the left, which says what my most-played chars are doing... not much levelling on Cymar that is. I just decided that it was time to get my explorer's badge. Most of the map was already visible, just some weird spots left. I already had the achievement for Outland, and with the fact that I levelled before faster levelling and heirlooms on Gowron, most of the map was already clear, only those last spots..

I first explored Kalimdor, then I went to Northrend to loosely fly around, and get a hideous looking tabard. After that it was Eastern Kingdoms time:

While I was flying all over the map, I was checking some other achievements. And because I was near, I also completed The Keymaster by dying in Blackrock. I also noted that I was ONE quest short in Zangarmarsh to complete Loremaster of Outland. And that this was probably so for the whole of WotLK. I quickly did an escort with a Tauren and got it... but then it started.... why not more....

Around 15 hours, and 100 quests later:

Most of the time, the quests I had where deliveries/report-quests. And hard to find sometimes. In most of the zones I only had a max of 5 quests to do, probably forgot them, or never encountered them 4 years ago. I did had all the quests to do in the Undead starter zone though. I also didn't do any of the Nesingwary quests in STV, another nice bunch. In Kargath I encountered a lot of undone quests, most of them in Blackrock. Also, all the quests leading up to the Thorium Brotherhood where nice. I had bever been in that cave before. And there was a long quest-chain, bringing me all over the world, regarding the dead hero of the horde on the border of Swamps of Sorrows and Blasted lands.

After the first leg, I had a lot of little quests to complete, and I did all the quests for, and in Blackrock Depths. Luckily I have a remote. I am also trying to get as much rep for the thorium brotherhood, BS and Enchanting recipes... and of course some screenshots:

A picture of the magnificient Horde Transportation System, while I was killing some cloaked Panthers.

This is the Altar of Storms (I think). This is the one you see if you travel from SW to IF with airtram. It's one of the things I always wanted to see, since I flew for the first time, 4 years ago, when my first character was a dwarf hunter. Took me a while...

Well, I was in BRD anyway... and this two-headed monstrosity dropped
some nice pants , yes, from the banana-shoulders-set.

...next up, Kalimdor-quests.

Warlocks don't need spirit noob...

2010-05-03T17:39:00.000+02:00

After some shuffling, the following things happened:

Gowron looks like his picture on the right again.
Luaran is now an orc female again.
Cymara, my lvl60 human female warlock is gone, and is now a lvl62 orc male warlock.
and I started a priest.

Goal: get all classes to 80, before Cataclysm, that means:

9 more levels on my Deathknight
8 more levels on my Warrior
10 more levels on my Mage
18 more levels on my Warlock
78 more levels on my Priest

should be do-able... maybe.

...and in other news, the reason for the title.

Yesterday Cymar was doing some dungeons, and I got a first.

I got kicked.

The screenshot is from just after I got kicked.

From the first boss in Underbog, some cloth hands dropped, I needed and won. It had Intel/Spellpower/Hit/Red Gem/Yellow gem/Crit and SPIRIT

Clearly, bot the Shadowpriest and the Dorktank weren't that amused by it (same server, friends?). Warlocks don't need spirit, so give it to the priest. Now there are two things.

First it was over 10 spirit.... even if locks didn't need spirit, the rest of the stats are very good, combined with the gems.
Second... LOCKS DON"T NEED SPIRIT?

Ok, I'd rather have more spellpower and hit. After that some haste, and as FOURTH best stat I'd choose Spirit...

Why?

Again two things:
-Fel Armor (self-buff) : 30% of your spirit becomes spellpower
-Glyph of Life Tap: 20% of your spirit becomes spellpower

So, take out your calculator, and find out that 2 spirit = 1 spellpower....

Right, locks don't need Spirit.
And do you really think using wtf and noob will make people more likely to hand over stuff...
Oh well, I was kicked before I could respond.
(and, yes, this time, name & shame applies here)

PS, the screenshot also shows that even very nice little blood elfs can get drunk....

And the guilds went BOOM...

2010-04-26T22:21:00.000+02:00

The new changes for raiding...

It comes down between choosing 10 or 25man, with 25mans not having better gear, only less. restokin has a nice view about it, and she really delves into the what it will do with the people managing guilds. I have been there.

In 2007, I was the-one-that-did-almost-everything. My RL needed that, an excuse to be alone. And I managed, until my RL changed. Running a guild is a lot of work, or rather, running a 25-raiding guild (although social) who raids 6 days a week. That means you have to have around 45-50 members (social guild) with people attending about half the raids, supplemented with some that did a lot more.

Now, if you have never did this, it's hard to imagine. XII had around 50 members, of which 1 was the GM, and 8 others where officers. The GM was more for PR, and to sometimes make the descision to continue, but was not doing much for the raiding-part. 5 officers where mostly there for inviting, and relaying messages to the other 3, who did most of the work, recruiting, forming raids, guildbank stuff, website... that stuff.

That means 40 other people where mostly just showing up for raids. And like in most guilds, not all where that clever. There have been enough times where I should have kicked people, but to keep the peace, and the raids going, I didn't. But it comes down to the fact that 3-5 people did a lot for the others, which wasn't always seen. It also meant, that sometimes you just didn't know someone good enough.

And everyone was there for the purplez of course, now if 10s are going to drop the same as 25s, I must concur with restokin, who would be crazy enough to do 25s (unless they drop 1.5 times the loot maybe). You can keep the really nice an good people, and ditch the rest. And the fact that the guild wouldn't that be that big, you would know each other better, less turn-over, and better results probably.

There are some concerns though. 10mans favor hybrids. Why? Simple. If one person can do multiple roles, the number of people in the guild can be lower. So one day, you are healer, and the next day tank. So 10-guilds will not have many pure dps-specs, not more then 2, else if one of the tanks/healers is not there, no run. Or you could do it with 16 people in the guild, where a lot of the time 4 people are benched, and it depends on the number of days.

If your 10man would raid 6 days/week, a guild of around 20, with more pure-dps would be possible. But if you only raid 3 days (like most guilds)., 12-14 should be enough, but you need to have a lot of hybrids.

I probably could let loose a lot of statistics, but, luckily, I am not raiding at the moment, so it will not affect me.... maybe.

SAN and raiding... O_o

2010-04-20T11:43:00.000+02:00

It came up last night in the green. Raiding, and raiding burnout, and how to get back to raiding... in the SAN-chat, that is.

Last weeks, I have only been playing SAN. And as one of them stated, the guild where nothing get done, because we are to busy talking. Well, some do stuff. My friend (now called Steamy) was the first real SAN 1-80 (with heirlooms). I don't know if there already is a non-heirloom 1-80, I am very close though at 75. And last night the raiding was mentioned.

Do we really want so many bloggers raiding in one guild? Well, we could ofcourse be soft-core. But what impact shall it have on the blogosphere? And what power do we actually have...and yes, it may corrupt.

We already saw what a small remark could do, to bring people together, having fun. That's why SAN exists. But what is the 'power' of the blogosphere? If 70% of the blogs out there is going to write the same wish/conclusion/whatever, can we have the power to change the mind of Ghostcrawler for example?

What would happen if SAN, actually started to do some raids, just for fun? One likely outcome is a death Arthas within a month...

But, a lot of SAN has been burned out on raiding, they just want to have fun, no schedules to raid, and no consequences if they just don't play for a week. The after effects of burn-out. Like I have.

I probably won't mind raiding again, but not like I did in the past with XII. Fun and relaxation is my main-goal in WoW at the moment. Log in, do some quests, some dungeons, have some fun with guildies and be afk for an hour because of Torchwood.

I do miss my enterprise, both my enchanter/bs as my miner/jc are alliance. And my 60-warlock is also doing nothing....

More Politics

2010-04-04T14:07:00.000+02:00

Wow.com has an interesting set of articles about wow-politics. Here you can read the last installment about Bloodelfs.

Now, last week I wrote something towards that (here).

So, is it time to really shake up the player-base? Will we have Horde (Orcs/Trolls/Goblins), Alliance (Human/Dwarves/Worgen/Gnomes) and some neutral races?

Why are the Bloodelfs and the Undead still in the Horde. What are the Tauren going to do. Will the Night-elves get enough of lesser races? And what about the Draenai? What are they doing in the Alliance?

It will be interesting how Blizzard will tackle this, or will they outright ignore it?

..speculation..

Horde: Orc/Troll/Tauren/Goblin
Alliance: Human/Dwarf/Gnome/Worgen
Northern Alliance: Night-Elves/Blood-Elves/Draenai/Undead

That would really shake up stuff :)

Oh, and with all the new classes to each races, every faction still would have access to all, hurray for Holy Cows, dwarven totem-throwers and worgen druids.

April's Fool

2010-04-01T20:48:00.000+02:00

Look, some people are way to logical for that.

I had some scholars sabotage the whiteboard, redecorate a classroom in 30 seconds, and of course the old shoe-lace-tricks today. But I am to logical to fall for most, probably because my shoes don't have laces :)

There are a couple of AF-blogs around. Wowwiki has every picture (and some more) turn upside down.

And I just noticed the achievement-rrs-feed.

Cloudcaller Cheesed the achievement...
Cloudcaller Ninjaed ....

Yeah yeah, luckily this day only lasts 24 hours, of which luckily I sleep 8.

And now I am part of a larger community, I probably need to start watching comments.

Yes Zaeni, I find shamans nice to play. Actually, I have a 70-enhancement somewhere.

Oh, and btw, Cloudcaller is still without heirlooms, by choice.

Blackrock Depths/Temple of Atal'Hakkar

2010-03-30T13:13:00.000+02:00

BRD and ST... Cloud has been running those a lot last week. With different succes. There's a real problem with those two... the place of the entrance, the way daily-random-bosses are placed, and ofcoure, their inner layout.

Entrance.

Both dungeons have a maze before their actual entrance, most of the people these days don't know the way back, which ofcourse means that almost every wipe is end of party.

Daily Random-bosses.

In ST you need to kill Eranikus, which is the upper part. In all the runs I have only seen the lower part once. People just skip that part, which is not strange, considering the faxt that you have to click statues in a different order.

BRD actually has two levels. BRD-prison and BRD-upper. Both start at the beginning, so you have no way to know which you are doing. Luckily, prison only needs one boss-kill (2nd hall to the right). So you figure it out fast enough. But now you are in upper... and no one has the key. Not that it has happened to me yet.. Fun part is of cousre you have to die to get the quest. So you have to know how to get to BRD... see the problem arising here.

Inner Layout.

Well, if you only do upper-ST, it is fairly simple, just stay close to each other, else you will loose people.

BRD is something different, let's see from memory.

Enter
Kill 2 mobs.
Enter a big room with lots of hallways.
Take the second on the right, kill all untill boss (Head boss for Prison)
Go back. (1st and 3rd on left just are alternative paths, or for a quest)
Take second hallway on the left (from entering big room).
Clear all, until you find Roccor, or he finds you.
Boss Houndmaster is in the first room on the right side.
Second room on right is the Arena, all enter together, and you'd better not stand behind gates.
(If you took third from the right, the first room on the left is arena...)
After completing Arena, exit the other way.
>>>hold, what about the first hallway to the right? Well it goes to a door, which you can open with the key to enter the same place you are now, see, a little shortcut.

Now this room which you are in, is not big, has 2 levels, is packed with mobs, has 2 entrances (one with key) and two exits. One exit goes even further up, the other one goes around a corner to a half-opened door, which you can open with the key on the lower-part of the room...

Oh at the entrance btw, you can also directly use the key to ge left, to the last boss of lower-city, and then you can go the other way around, back . And in that room just mentioned, just before the half-opened door, you can actually jump down to achieve the same, and then go back... and..

And that's just the start. Very Confusing for people. Hope you have some one who knows the way. After this, it becomes a little bit more linear. But there are a lot of things to watch out for. Especially in the bar...

But, I do like it. Lots of work to do, lots of bosses, lot of things to look at. Just be ready for a good 2 hours of this. I really smile evrytime I see someone asking 'How Long till end?'. And I laugh at the 'Gogogo' and 'Plz Fast'-comments.

Really, never rush yourself in BRD. Almost every dwarf runs away when almost beaten to death. And will pull additional mobs.... and it is really crowdy, before you know it, you have 15 dwarves, 2 fire elementals and several hounds beating on your party...

Cataclysm - Politics.

2010-03-29T15:26:00.000+02:00

I was just reading the books of Lore found all over the world, when my mind started to wander.

We have some information about the politics in Cataclysm.

1. Hellscream will be the new leader for the Orcs.
2. Hellscream will throw out most Blood Elfs and Undead from Ogrimmar.
3. Hellscream will execute Bloodhoof for treason.
4. Night Elfs will 'welcome' some of their long lost High-Elf brothers back.

Let us start with the Horde.

Executing Bloodhoof for treason? The only thing I can actually see Bloodhoof doing, is not wanting to declare open warfare on the Alliance. The Tauren are a mostly peace-full people, only taking up arms if they are threatened. So, how will the executing of their beloved leader fall on all Taurens.... I suppose they will not be very happy.

Undeads and Bloodelfs also will be very distrusting about Hellscream. They don't know him, so why should he be leader of the Horde? And he expels them from the orc-city, not a good base for trust, I would say.

Now let's speculate some more.

What are the Undead going to do, now Arthas, the sole reason they existed is death? And keep in mind, that most of the Undead are in fact risen citizens of Lordearan, former humans that is, and most of them still remember their past lives. Although they do not want to.

The High-Elves are returning. They will join the Night-Elves in a fight for good (I pressume). But, are the High-Elves not closer to the Blood-Elves, then to the Night-Elves. And if the Night-Elves welcome High-Elves back, could that also be the start of getting the Night-Elves and Blood-Elves closer together again.

Will the aggressive path of the new Orc-Leader be the end of the New Horde? I wouldn't be surprised that the Undeads and Blood-elfs would say goodbye, and that the Taurens would seal Mulgore, and let the Orcs, Trolls and Goblins go their way.

It's just, what are the long-term consequences of alienating half of the people in the Horde.....

Clouds' on the move.

2010-03-19T11:39:00.000+01:00

Well, my idea was to actually write a blog before this, but, alas, playing got in the way.

Cloudcaller is no 36, mostly using the lfd-function. Although I did some questing killing animals for skinning. And like a friend of mine says, he is a bane to all cloth-wearers. well, there's hardly any sp-leather at low levels.

Few things about the last 25 levels, but especially about level 20.

Level 20 gives you some new spells, most importantly is water-shield. This finally gives you the mana-regen you need to not drink that much, or rather almost never. But lvl20 also gives you a quest, to get your third totem. And it is a drag. It sends you all over the world to get water. Tarren Mill, Ashenvale and finally the sepulcher... oh, and it starts and ends somewhere in the southern barrens. At that level it means a lot of travelling, because you probably don't have the flightpaths yet. Luckily you also get a Kodo at level 20 these days. But, it will take you about an 60-90 minutes to do the quests, with not that much xp, so it seems slow.

And there's the problem with glyphs. I actually used glyph of flametongue for more crit until I got Earthliving. And at the moment I am using Water Shield and Healing Totem. I am really looking forward to lvl40, when we get that spell everybody knows of resto-shammies, Chain Heal. And then I should probably re-evaluate my glyphs again. I don't think any other class has this problem.

And, btw, the first tier of resto-talents suck... You got the option between faster Healing Waves, and cheaper totems. Now totems are not that expensive, and the moment you get lesser healing wave, you almost forget about healing wave. And why is my 'cleanse' button a talent? I had to explain to a PuG in RFD that I couldn't remove the debuff from the gong-boss, because I wasn't lvl40 yet...

And on PuGs, I find myself getting more harsh with each level I get. Look, as a teacher, I have no problems helping people. Especially with finding your way around dungeons, or finding the entrance (which happens a lot). But at level 30 you should have a basic grasp what is good for you, so no more needing on spellpower if you are a hunter.

Oh, and I had my first leecher yesterday. It was an armory-run. Our tank d/c-ed so we vote-kicked her, and of course no new tank showed up for the next 15 minutes. But the arms-warrior did a good job, so we just cleared trash, with three people, because the warlock was on /follow. We tried to loose him, but every time we did that, he just moved and put himself on follow again.... and we couldn't kick him, because we already had used our kick.

Neext dungeon, Cathedral, other warlock, but he just went AFK from the start. The moment we where ready for Mograine, he started to move again, but a quick vote-kick by me was passed, luckily... and we just 4-manned it. I hate leechers..

On level 30, you get your fourth totem, this time no long questline, just a quick delivery in 1k needles. And you get a quest to ditch your four totems for a single one, that counts for all, and it is equipable, yeah, more bag-space.

So far for shammie-levelling. To end, my story about last weeks Saurfang. I was a Tree, and my co-healer was a resto-shammie, who kept putting down cleansing totem... oh well, everything died, without many deaths on our side, so.

Now, durng the first three bosses, I had real big mana-problems, and even my new trinket from marrow/lady D.? didn't help me with that. And that problem really was a problem on Saurfang, as both me and the shammie ran out of mana at 30%. Problem: No ret-palyy/surv-hunter/frostmage, i.e. replenishment. So... we had one of our tree mages change spec to frost :)

So gone where the mana-problems, and when Saurfang hit 30% the second time, I still had 50% mana orso, and that was a good thing, becaus I needed it all. Saurfang casted his mark of heavy-sustains-through-death-damage on the shammy. My first thought was, cool, he can heal himself, while I keep focusing tanks. WRONG. I just sw his health going down, and when I finally reached the conclusion that he wasn't going to heal himself, it was to late. So splat went the shammy, and saurfang gained some health. Shammie anked, went splat again and saurfang gained more health... Solo-healing the last 30% of saurfang is hard... but I got it done, with no other deads iirc. I was exhausted after that though, gambling with health-bars for a minute or a half is not fun.

The first steps.

2010-03-17T10:25:00.000+01:00

Well, cloudchaser was taken, so my shaman is now named cloudcaller, still a dreamy name for a Taurahe.

So, there he was standing, with the big yellow ! before him. Now I have done the tauren starting area a few times, so I knew how to run, and what to expect. Get a jug, kill some plainstriders, kill some wolves, kill some bears, some thistleburs...

Well, somethings have changed, the thistleburs are no longer aggressive, so the valley became a cake-walk. The times I died there in the past. And the mana-cost of your Lightning Bolt is only 3, combined with the all-new super mana/health regen till 20, I could just spam LB.

At lvl5 you get your first totem, the earth one. You need to walk all the way back into the thistlebur valley and kill two shamans, and then you have to find a stone. Not hard, a little time-consuming though.

After that, I made my way out of the starting-zone, picked up a lot of quests, and walked to Thunderbluff to learn skinning and leatherworking. It took me some walking around to find a skinning knife. The LW-supplier doesn't have one. I found a trade-goods vendor on the lowest level tucked away in a tent, so I missed her twice, that sold one.

Back to bloodhoof, and start killing everything that moves. After two circles I reached level 10 (luckily SAN had some bags in the guildbank). So the next stop was a quest-giver in the barrens for my next totem.

I took the new zeppelin to ogrimmar, to pick up the Flightpath, and to learn some more weaponskills. The zeppelin had a vend-o-matic (yeah, food and drinks) and a gear-o-matic (where I could get a skinning knife....).

When I reached the zep-tower, I noticed a yellow ! on the map. Apparantly a troll wants me to get some anti-dote. I have never noticed this quest until now, well, what would you do in that corner before the tower was put there?

Now, this lvl10-shaman-quest... that's time-consuming. The NPC in the barrens send you up the hidden path to a troll. He then wants two reagents. One is dropped by lvl12-13 casters, who stand in the middle of a lot of other thistleburs, and some patrolling hunters. The other reagent is in a cave North-East of... that orc-town. It is also on a place you will almost not see, unless you walk to it.

After returning the items, I had to fight a fire-elemental. To my surprise an 80-pally was standing on the top. What is he doing there, this is for shammans only, but, well, he just healed me, while I killed the elemental. And back to the original quest-giver to get my fire-totem.

This quest took me about an hour I think, the places are not that close together, and I did some detouring (killing scorpids and getting crossroads-fp). I had hoped to reach lvl15, and do a random, but only reached 11.

And now, the barrenschat....

The birth of Cloudchaser

2010-03-16T10:15:00.000+01:00

Well, at least I hope that name is available, but I have to wait till one of my current characters has been moved to Sha'tar to create a new one on AD.

The idea of course is to make a genuine RP-character. That is what SAN is about I think, doing something new. At least the faction is set then, Horde.

Now the race, well, that would be tauren (the wise) or troll (the crazy). I will go for tauren, and play the wise one.

And then the class. Well, I would like paldin, but cata is not here yet, and that means priests are also not an option (why is there not a pally-trainer in TB yet?). So left are warrior, druid and shaman. Well, warrior not really, I already said I would play the wise one... charging in on mobs hardly seems wise. And my main-raiding character at the moment is a tree, so I don't feel like druiding. Leaves the Shaman. (re: and hunter, but I choose shaman)

Spec... again, running close to a mob doesn't seem wise, so no enhancement, leaves elemental and restoration. Both fit the idea of a wise man. Think I go for resto, mainly because I can do some dungeons then without long waiting.

Professions... now we have a catch. I did some reading about shamans, and they are 'in touch' with the world. They hold high regards to the eartmother (no worshipping though). So they would view people taking from the land, ravagers. And they also let nothing to waste... so no mining and herbalism (taking from the land) allowed, but skinning can be done. Well I had to kill the beast, but I will make his skin into something new... oh, that means Leatherworking then.

Now I only need a history, Taurens are just like Klingons. Remembering their father's father deeds and before that... and being a horde shaman, they tend to not like undead and bloodelfs, although they where responsible (at least the azeroth shaman organisation Earthen Ring) for getting the undead into the horde.

So, next item, find a history...

SAN: Ragefire Chasm

2010-03-08T16:36:00.000+01:00

What do you get, when you put a lot of people from the blogosphere, who normally just type what's in their head, on their little space of the web, or the readers of those, in one guild?

Lots of friendly people, just talking away, doing stuff on low level characters. Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep become nice again.

So, last saturday, Gowronn reached lvl16. That mend Righteous Fury and Hand of Reckoning. I innocently wrote in /g, that I finally was ready to tank, the result:

The party considered of Tobold (Tobold's MMORPG Blog), Hadawako(Fail PUG!), Randomaia (blog-reader) and Shasti (no idea, adding later).

We ofcourse cleared it without problems... well, what did you expect, 5 people who are part of the blogosphere, you can bet they know how to play :)

Of course, I also pugged a lot. One run to Wailing Caverns again teamed me up with Randomaia, I think it lasted 2 hours, going through several healers and dps, because they didn't realise it would take that long. Or as Randomaia said; " I think my beard grew 2 centimeters during this run"

Gowron is now lvl25. He is specced into ret-tanking. Seal of Command at low levels is a very good threat-machine, together with faster judgements. I also took the Glyph of SoC, less mana-problems, means faster runs (almost no drinking). Think I switch to full ret when Blessing of Sanctuary becomes available.

On the Allie-side of AD: My Warlock started levelling again, and I specced her into Affliction. And tonight my Tree will be healing ICC10, if all goes well. Fester or that other one are on the menu.... or are we on theirs?

One thing puzzles me though. All guides say, gem for haste. But my Nourish (and GCD) is allready on 1.13sec. And that's exactly what my playing style needs. And being one of two healers, I am spamming Nourish a lot, so I actually gemmed for crit mostly. And it gives the benefit that most gear is interchangeable with Boomkin-spec. Can anyone enlighten me?

Single Abstract Noun

2010-03-05T16:56:00.000+01:00

What is this?

Some days ago, Tam at Righteous Orbs, called out to all bloggers to go to Argent Dawn (europe) and form a blogging guild. A place to hang out, and talk to each other. I thought about it, and I did like the idea, but the problem was, that with mu althoism, all slots where filled on AD, with alliance-characters, and the guild was horde.

So I had to delete a character to join... in the end, Mendak, my very casual, non-heirloomed-priest, went the way of the dodo.

Thusfar the /gchat has been lively, some nice discussions about C&C and Dune (old strategy-games), movies and other stuff. And of course I made a pally, called Gowronn. (well, Gowron ws taken... by myself). There are about 60 players thusfar.

And on another note, it is very hard to find spellpower-leather with hit. It seems only the tier-pieces have it... that means my ilvl200-belt is very much needed atm. I culd re-gem, but a lot of gear is crosslinked to my tree-form.... oh well.

Edit: Just read that on the US Argent Dawn, a sister-project is started with the same idea.

Going Restokin

2010-03-03T12:12:00.000+01:00

I had two days of theorycraft-reading. How to Tree, and How to Lazerchicken.

Th conclusion was simple, I have been gemming wrong. Talents where also not really right, but I already knew that, I just specced for heroics a while back, not for raids.

So now all my spellpower/spirit and spellpower/intellect have to be replaced, well, not all spellpower/spirit gems. There's also a different way to gem for both treesm Tree likes haste more, while Chicken likes more crit (in boomkin my haste is 550, so crit>haste). This is something I am not really happy with.

I will probably be tree in our guilds 10mens, but I may also apply to a raiding community as chicken... so I probably need some dual-gears, gemmed differently.

The fact remains, I don't really see the use of more haste on tree to help me out, most of the time I just HoT away, and on that ICC last I used Nourish a lot, which already has a low casting time.

So, time to make a lot of Spellpower/Crit gems I guess, now how did that work with converting honor-points to gems, some of my alts have a lot of that, and those tokens you get in dungeons while your side has Wintergrasp are also growing to humor-heights.

But... I like Theorycrafting, so...

Changes

2010-03-02T11:48:00.000+01:00

Cataclysm-changes, I think 75% of the blogs write about it, I don't feel like writing about it now, to much will change.

The guildleader of my new guild, left the server this weekend, leaving Gunho, me and Tjaoten in charge, We changed some of the goals, and we will probably be doing ICC10 two days/week.

That does mean, I will probably change my main-raiding-char Gowron, to my tree/lazerchicken Mardah. We have the tanks/DPS, but no healers.

So, a lot of changes, time to rant.

I did a LFD-Oculus yesterday. Really, I can not heal you, if you fly through the orbs, get pounded by 15 drakes, and taking damage from that dragon... and then accusing me of not to play well.

Awake...

2010-02-10T14:39:00.000+01:00

Light, awake, sort of, strange feeling, there is something wrong.

He sat upright in his bunk, and looked around. There was something strange around. He looked at his feet, they seemed to be closer, his belly seemed bigger. But weren't they always this... but a strange feeling crept up his spine. Where was he? The room was large, or better said, high. The lay-out looked a little sloppy, but also familair.

'Ah, look, he finally is awake', a low voice sad. 'I thought he would never snap out of it.'

He looked to the voice, a face familair, yet unfamilair appeared. 'So, how was your trip through the Nether, old friend.' the voice said. Who was he? The face seemed of, distant memories floated in, a horned creature shifting into... a bear? But this one was not a bear... he was a dwarf, no horns on him. But the face was unmistakenly the same... 'Kemwer?, Is that you?'

'Ha, he remembers stuff Gunho', and other voice said. A third voice also joined, 'Hehe, he still sees a druid in you, Gunho,this will take some time to explain'. The two others also seemed familair, a dwarf and a creature from hell? Oh, a Draenai.

A Draenai? Wait that face, and that dwarf... 'Rasout? Jorky?'

'Ha', the dwarf laughed, 'One name he did get right'.
'Well, Jorky, you are the only one who actually kept your old name, unlike me and Tjaoten', the dwarf named Gunho said. 'The question is, what name he thinks he has?'

Three faces looked at him, a question was asked, and they where waiting on an answer. 'My name?' he asked. What a strange question, where they challenging him, but weren't they his friends?

'I am Gowron, slayer of demons, undead and dragons, what is happening here?'

Jorky answered 'Well, he kept his name allright, and what has happened here? We finally got you summoned here, to help us.'

'I am retired' he said, why did he said that, well he was certain he was. 'I gave up helping people a long time ago. I did my job for Silver.... wait... this is not Silvermoon, this is Ironforge, why am I thinking about the Blood Elf capital as home.. as well as Ironforge?. Oh no, you bastards!.'

A general laughter roared up. 'Now he remembers everything.' Tjaoten said laughing. 'Yes Gowron, we where succesfull, we changed worlds, and on this world we are Alliance, because here the Horde are the bad guys.'

Memories flooded his mind. He did retire, but after a few months his old friends showed up with a crazy idea. They heard that there was a way to switch worlds. A possibility to start over again on another world, not burdened by the things you did. No one begging to help you, what happened to often.

First he laughed at it. But they argued, and said his old friend Kemwer had done it. Kemwer, who he hadn't seen in a year... would it make sense. He was still sceptical. Three weeks later he went to visit Jorky, but he was gone. Only a note with some instructions where left.He had to drink something which Rasout would give to him.

But Rasout was also missing. In his home was a little bottle with a fluid in it, with a note. 'Drink it, and see you on the other side, Rasout.' He waited, he didn't trust it, and he was called into action by his former teammates.

He entered the house of the guild he used to be in, some people where familiar, but most where strangers.

He just couldn't be bothered anymore, his closest friends had left, an this new bunch of people were not known to him. So there he was sitting on night, with the bottle on his table....

And now he was here, in his old, and new home. Like it has always been it seemed.

'So,this is the one you told me about?', a female said. 'He seems a little fat and rusty'. A dark-haired human female appeared in the corner. She wore a robe, and with the absence of a demon, she looked like a mage. 'Are you sure he can do the job?'.

'Well, his gear needs some polishing, but he should be able to get into the flow quick enough.' was the reply by Gunho. 'Oh, and Gowron, meet Carnessa, a friend of ours.'

He walked towards his closet, and wondered what they wanted. He looked around, and saw a wolf and a bear sleeping in the corner, near some futuristic looking things, glowing in the dark. He opened his closet, and his eyes wandered his old armor and weapons. There was a mace which still carried the essence of life within, a big two-handed axe was hanging to the left. But he already figured out what he needed.

He took a drape-covered object, and removed the cloth. The shield had a skull on it, and what looked like a mouth, but there was something missing, maybe something that woman could do. He placed it on his left arm, and looked at her.

The woman named Carnessa, recognized the shield, and she started chanting. A firey ball was appearing, and 5 seconds later she exclaimed; 'Stand Clear'.

The Ball of Fire hurled toward him, and he put his shield up. The impact was violent, but the shield seemed to absorp the fire, like it was hungry. And when it was done, the shield was on fire. Like it should be.

'So', he said, 'That's done, now I think we need some more comrades.'

The five looked at each other, the pets awakened, and they left the room. Adventure lie ahead, hard fights, lots of laughter, hard descisions. But Gowron knew he felt alive again.

When Elekks Fly

2010-02-01T22:32:00.001+01:00

Starting a raiding guild is a lot of work,

Website
DSP-systems
calendars
recruitment
rules

and, oh, it seemed the majority of the current members where not that happy with the name Shutout.

So, it is renamed to:

WHEN ELEKKS FLY

now to find more members, and slowly start raiding I suppose.

Oh, and the inevatible has happened again,

for the third time....

New Guild

2010-01-31T09:03:00.000+01:00

Gowron,Mardah,Luaran,Lamars and Whiteheart joined a new guild last night.

My friend Gunho, co-founded a new guild called Shutout. The focus lies towards 10-mans, so there's a real possibility I will start raiding again. I hope with Gowron, but I also have a geared healer and dps, actually, Luaran has the best gear of the three.

So, for future reference, here is the Gowron-Guild-List (months are open for discussion)

feb2007:Gowron created, Blood Elf Paladin on Ghostlands-EU
mar2007:Joined Wanderers
Jun2007:Co-founded Retribution
Jan2008:Joined XII
Feb2009:Joined Blood and Tears
Mar2009:Left Blood and Tears
Apr2009:Joined XII
Jun2009:Left XII, joined The Largo Embargo, Gowron on Vacation
Jan2010:Server Transfer, Dwarf Paladin on Argent Dawn-EU, joined Dark Cloud
Jan2010:Joined Shutout

I had no problem leaving Dark Cloud, it was a very social guild, and the member who where mostly online are now in Shutout, and I do like the idea of starting guild, was there twice before, and it is always an exciting time.

Shutout

edit: oh my, that means Gowron is almost 3 years old, and this blog is running for 2 years :p

Army of the stupids.

2010-01-26T13:13:00.000+01:00

Really, why did Blizzard make this spell? To annoy all other tanks?

I got Tailswiped in VH??? What? Really, good idea to have the drake go circling, melee (incl. DK)+tank where flying everywhere.

Since the introduction of Death Knights, I only saw it used once when needed. That was 2 days ago in Pit of Saron, on Tyrannus. Somehow the healer died, and the DPS-DK (I was the tank) made the best descision at that point, cast Army of the Dead. That is the way to use it, as a oh-shit button when tank or healer bites the dust. It basically gives everyone the ability to step back for a moment, see what is happening and if needed to take another role (ele-shammy goes healing e.g.).

But all the other times, I see it used as a dps-gain. I have one question though, is the ghoul-taunt allways on, or can it be turned off like on hunter-pets? If yes, then I can blame the DK for not taking it off, if no, I can blame the DK for using it, well.. I just blame the DK.

I dont really see any use for this spell only to annoy other tanks....

Forge of Souls

2010-01-21T07:17:00.000+01:00

Forge of Souls

I ran that heroic around 20 times last weeks to get the best trinket for MM-hunters, needle-encrusted scorpion.

And now it seems, I am destined to tank it, until a Friend of mine gets it, he is at 28 tries sofar...

One thing about running with friends is that you know things will happen. There are some pulls with a lot of casters there, and I can count on it that one out of consecration-range will be frost-trapped :), and the other one will be tanked by the enhancement-shammie-friend, who, just like on his mage (see Dwarf2Noam) has the ability to always target the mob I have the least threat on :p

L2R Omen

2010-01-19T19:36:00.000+01:00

I was making a post about dps,threat and other things... but I already read 7 of those today...

So here's the TL;DR version:

A DPS should never over-aggro the tank.

Now, this doesn't really counts for raids anymore I guess (no experience there) as it used to be in TBC, but it does count towards heroics. You may end up with a just-dinged-80... don't leave group, the run may take 5 minutes longer, just manage your threat.

There are also a lot of posts about CC today. Anyone remember that? It means Continuous Consecration... :p, just kidding, crowd control. It has no place anymore, except for a few pulls with casters in FoS and the waves in HoR. There are a lot of people who find that a shame, me included. But everything is an AoE-fest these days... why do we even have those spells??

Is there a secret to the LFD?

2010-01-17T21:03:00.000+01:00

I know it is normally not 'nice' to show names of characters you don't know, but when it comes to names, well...

The partial screenshot is from a trinket-FoS-run I was in, and it let me to believe that the LFD-function of Blizzards has some secret parameters.

Some interesting news.

2010-01-16T10:08:00.000+01:00

Over on mmo-champion is a Q@A with some Blizzard developers. Now there are a lot of things said about the answers on other blogs, so lets look at some of the more obscure news.

Q. Are there plans to improve the Dwarven Racials? At this point anything is better than Find Treasure.
A. Well, we are adding Archaeology to WoW...

So, as a dwarf, you'll probably be running around with find Treasure on, unless of course you are a herb/miner... interesting.

Q. For those of us who collect tabards and armor sets, do you see a way for us to store and not use our very limited inventory?
A. Yes. We'd like to store them the same way you do titles. In general, we don't want to punish the packrats out there who just like to collect stuff. We will have to wait and see what we can do about it though.

YES PLEASE. And it's not just for the tabard-collectors. Gowron has around 30 slots of healing gear, 35 slots on Tanking Gear, 20 slots on retri-gear. A bag with old stuff, a Bag with enchanting stuff, and some more, NEED MORE SPACE

It's a Dwarf

2010-01-13T08:40:00.001+01:00

BEHOLD

Gowron has lost some height, and all the mass had to be applied somewhere else.

And after looking through my bags (lots of gear, and old-stuuf), I joined LFG...1sec..found group, DTK.

After I zoned in, I noticed something was wrong, no PallyPower, so I opened my spellbook for the blessings :p. After blessing everyone, I wanted to pull, but apparantly a rogue or DK was getting bored and started already... sorry to say, but if you want to make your tank angry, you should do just that /leave.

15 minutes later, join LFG, enter dungeon, VH this time. I am rusty, but when the healer was complaining about boredom, I knew it went good :p. After the dungeon, I noticed I had now 2 Frost and 5 Triumphs. I wonder where those other 2 triumphs came from, I don't recall doing any trumph-related stuff on Gowron.

I also did a TotC, a HoL, and Nexus. No upgrades from TotC, which could happen, but there was something else I noticed. I do remember tanking normal TotC in the week it came available, to find out how it tanked, but I didn't do heroic. Apparantly that means you cant skip the bullshit at the start... so we had some time to get a drink, toilet whatever...

At the end of the 4 runs, my fingers where again going smoothly over my belkin, hitting the right buttons, although I should us Sacred Shield more on bosses I guess. No one died in the runs, and my second mana-bar (the healer's one), was never below 75%. I sometimes did have problems with aggro, mmm, actually some dps had problems with aggro, going all out on a Mob I wasn't targetting, but most of the time that didn't even matter, probably because of Seal of Command..

Yes, Command.

I never stopped reading Maintankadin, so I knew that for 4 or more mobs, Seal of Command gives better aggro. Because Hammer of the Righteousness works on max three targets, every time I had a pull of 4 or more, I switched from Vengeance to Command, and had almost no problems with the aggro.

Actually Command also gives more threat on 3 mobs then Vengeance apparantly, but that would mean a lot more Seal-changing, and I did struggle with mana. Probably because I didn't felt comfortable enough to massive chain-pulls yet.

Today I will probably que for some of the normals, especially TotC for that stam-trinket. And for the ICC-dungeons also, gief upgrades. And I will be doing some of the AT-dailies, I noticed that I am almost exalted with all factions, so time to get another title. I also noticed that I am 1, maybe 2 runs away from being exalted with the ashtongue deathsworn, the Black temple-faction, so maybe i should get that up.

Well, enough emblem-farming to do, I can have three roles :p. And being a Tank, it's really, log in, join LFG, goto dungeon in mere seconds...

And now? Part 2

2010-01-12T11:28:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I asked myself: What now? Mardah, my Tree, had all the pre-frost stuff she wanted, except maybe a trinket from one of the ICC-dungeons. So what to do now?

So, the last 3 weeks orso, I huntered on. And 2 days ago, Luaran is at the same stage as Mardah. She got all the pre-frost gear she wants, and there are three upgrades left in the new dungeons. Shoes, necklace and that trinket that never drops :(

She started as SV-hunter, but quickly went with MM-ArP-build. Problem is, in dungeons you move a lot, not on bosses, but between everything else. Mobs die very fast. Now Luaran's ArP was high enough to actually make that build better, but with all the wuick dying stuff, I respecced her into the MM-Agi build, putting Arcane Shot back into bussines. But, as I said, she is almost done. Doing the random and the ICC-dungeons every day, together with th JC-daily and the fishing daily, so what now?

I did get a tip for a raid-community, they raid 3 times a week, 19-23. Problem is, my RL is still not fully healed, so after a long night thinking I decided not to go raiding just yet. I do like to play for something though, something that both Mardah and Luaran can't really do anymore...

So what now?

I could level one of my 70+ alts, but tbh, I don't feel like levelling atm, besides the levelling I do with two friends (Dwarf2Gnome). I could play my 80-rogue Lamars for a couple of weeks to gear him out. But, there's something holding me back...

Now, there is one more option. An 80-character with Blacksmithing (which I don't have on Argent Dawn atm) and enchanting (with a load of not-readily-available-enchants). This one has been on vacation for the past 7 months, and is sporting Naxx-gear, not epic gems (not available at that time), a slightly wrong talent-build, wrong server, wrong faction...

Should I?
It probably will be fun again to throw my Captain America's Shield, to hear the K-Tang from SHOR, and to be the front of the wave....

Should I?

Maybe I should read the subtitle of my blog...

Cataclysm - Hope?

2009-12-29T12:06:00.001+01:00

I wonder,

with all the QQ about easy epics,
easy raiding
and everything else people dislike about WoW.

Are we still playing WoW, because of cataclysm?

It does seem that cataclysm is actually World of Warcraft 2.

The not-so-good-puggers.

2009-12-23T14:53:00.000+01:00

This one goes out to:

The Retridin who doesn't buff the other DPS
The DorK-tank who doesn't notice he let his healer die, and continues pulling.
The DPS in 'uber'-gear, who want to go faster and pull before the tank.

but mostly to:

The multitude of melee who stand in front of the boss, eating cleaves,pounds, etcetera. But especially whirlwind, which is very, very bad for melee, and then complain that they aren't battle-rezzed, why should I? 90% of the time I BR a fallen melee for something like this, they die the next time... /sigh

Oh, and I heard a nice rule. One of the realms in our BG (don't remember which) apparantly has the rule, that if you die for the second time due to stupidity, walk back, expect no rez (I was boomkinning when I witnessed this).

And Mardah is done with pre-frost emblems, there are some upgrades left in PoS and HoR (cloth belt, leather wrist, trinket), but the rest is from frost-emblem, which I dont get a lot off, because I don't raid. So what now?

Argent Dawn roll-call:

Ezrila, 75, retribution paladin, Skinning/Herbalism
Mardah, 80, restoration/balance druid, Skinning/Leatherworking
Kyari, 73? protection paladin, Herbalism/Inscription
Lamars, 80, subtlety/combat rogue, Mining/Engineering
Luaran, 80, beastmaster/survival hunter, Mining/Jewelcrafting
Mariandel, 70, enhancement shaman, Skinning/Enchanting
Whiteheart, 65, protection warrior, Herbalism/Alchemy (restricted access due to group-levelling)
Cymara, 31, demonology warlock, Mining/Tailoring
Yorille, 5, warrior