Sometimes I wonder you know. Why am I so attached to this game.

Once I would have answered with certainty “it’s the people”… but a year ago the people changed, so my love for this game must have more going for it then my loyal attachment to the people behind the toons. Although… I have no doubt that this loyalty to people I know and desire to please is what sets me out herbing and fishing for raid consumables… because that is a rather boring if semi-satisfying task (Like cleaning the oven really ) So people play a large part – a good and friendly guild motivate me to keep logging in like nothing else.

Is it the story? I don’t think so… while a pretty fantasy adventure that I enjoy partaking in, warcraft doesn’t offer much other games do not in that respect… it is only that after all these years I feel like I own the warcraft universe to some extent. That arrogant and insecure Pandarian video that blizzard released, even though it gets up my nose a little because the over enthused hero voice makes it sounds like Blizz are desperate that we long time players will still be there for Mists of Pandarian … well that video is close to the truth isn’t it. I have been standing in the virtual fields of Azeroth since Vanilla… I know the landscapes of this world… trekked though each expansion and revisited the destroyed zones of my virtual-youth in Cataclysm. If I want to visit the ocean I know which way I need to travel, if I am looking for herds of meat animals I know the most abundant sources are, and even I have some places I just like to fly through to look at the scenery. Wow is not ugly to me… these outdate pixilated graphics are familiar and capable of beauty in my eyes, and even in the familiar it is possible to experience the odd surprise.

Maybe warcraft to me is like comfy old slippers that occasionally attract the odd beetle?

I suppose what I am trying to say is; well I saw that annual subscription bonus and though “ah a ploy to ensure membership, they must be expecting a rocky period… maybe wow is ending” and yet I signed up anyway… because chances are I will be here playing wow if it is at all possible to play wow in another years time. Even though I have Skyrim purchased  and currently on download and am looking with puppy-eyes at guild wars II waiting for its release … I know I will still be playing wow.

By WowOutcastNetwork (Lol! – Redneck Tauren voice)

Well as most my posts indicate these days I am babysitting two peeps in wow fairly often. The blond-kin (he is pretty special and I have photo-shopped a wig onto a moonkin just for posts about this individual who has lots of enthusiasm but little wow-common-sense. He has played wow before but you would never ever guess it.)

And a crazy little new-to-wow newbie that has chosen to roll hunter.

Yesterday the newbie-hunter lass asks me about gnomes: “Can you be a hunter when you play a gnome?”

I reply with: “No”

Newbie-hunter: “Why on earth would anyone want to play them then? If they have no pets!”

Ahhh she is starting to be all wow-grown up… she has developed classism! Indeed little hunter, hunters are the shining stars of the wow verse… give me a few patches and I shall have her on the forums demanding mages get nerfed and QQing about pet changes

/so proud.

World of Warcraft Class Stereotypes
by Wowcrendor

Yeah so I was tanking some dungeons and the blondkin was healing (his new lazy boy role lol) and we wrapped up mana tombs nice and fast… the group auto requeues us… and as I had only intended to throw the blondkin and myself back into the PUG machine anyway I figure why not and I hit the yes button (or whatever it is). After a bit of verbal panicking over vent at me the blondkin does the same (last time a party wanted to venture onward I dropped group and he ended up with a PUG tank… he his still a little emotionally scarred over that incident.)

We must have lost a DPS here because we pop into a dungeon with a little mage called something like motorboat (a name which I honestly look sideways at and which causes my whole “don’t read the naaaames the names are dirty!” instinct to kick in lol)… confused I wander forward to see that in fact in this new instance one boss is down… and other DPS drops? At least that is how it appears because the role checker pops up in my face again … I just slap the okay button to get it out of the way (was it one of my original dps? Or did I lose two in the first move over and the dropping dps was from this obvious wipe situation…. I am unsure – in anycase I am too busy trying to find mobs.)

Of course I assume that the warrior that appears beside me in short time is the DPS replacement( oh how wrong I was), I didn’t check roles at all… after all I had just completed 2-3 runs as a tank heal comb with the blonde kin and we had I though at least originally moved our entire group over.

As we fight he pulls the odd mob off me but it doesn’t take me long to reestablish aggro … its not like I haven’t had to deal with careless or deliberately trolling melee dps before.  I
just became a control freak… snatching back mobs so that they would be planted firmly on me.

At some point Enrage haplessly enquires “Druid go Kitty?” and you know what I honestly thought? I thought “Ahhh another wannabe tank too slack to queue up as tank” /blush. when infact the shoe was firmly on the other foot this time around.

In any case my rebuttal was something like “Sorry man, I am the blondkins bear… I tank, he heals and thats the way we roll.” Afterall we had been queuing that way for… well the last month. The warrior Enrage thinks this over a bit and then replies “Okay I’ll go fury”, which I think looking back on the situation was quite graceful of him.

So anyway I drag us through the instance… we kill the final boss… short a helpful baggie as it was a requeue not a random. And then after Enrage drops group I FINALLY notice that I am in fact DPS role for the this run.

Snap.

Surprisingly he is on our server… but my fumbling attempt at an apology appears to scare him into logging off. Oh well… I will think to check next time.

So I have this friend who has been getting back into wow after a long break. I believe this friend has previously played a character to past 60 in BC, but he disappeared from the wowscape before hitting endgame. Meaning with all the cata changes I have an interesting case of semi-newbie on my hands.

Why my hands? Well it is my own fault… nostalgia got a hold of me a few months back and I waxed poetical to all and sundry about the joys of running around Duskwood in a group playing on itty-bitty-kitty druid babies… being myself, in all my shiny blabby glory, I guess I must have been rather convincing about the joys and wonders of the experience (or total woeful eyes) because now I have at least three old pros who want to hang out at lower levels (2 cross server unfortunately), one wow-suspicious level seven hunter recruit-a-friend that everyone thought would never touch wow with a six foot stick, and the Blondkin-of-booooom all eating up my wow time whenever I log in as they clamber for low level fun-times lol.

And I do mean low level. The blondkin is convinced I want to play level 1 gnomes … my fat mouth’s fault again omg. I really really don’t want to play level one gnomes that was a silly idea… I was just interested in seeing the starting area … that was it in its wholeness.

Happily I have convinced the blondkin that his high level character is in fact a low level for me… so we have been doing dungeons and out lands quests in the 55-65 level range, which indeed is baby level for me now that I have four 85 lvl toons, one of which raids. In any case the past month or so has been full of amusing incidents such as discovering the blondkin had no idea that at his level a boomkin gets an excellent AOE spell and discovering that he was unfamiliar with other the roles a druid can spec into.

Now at low levels I tend to tank my way around when I am in a group (it is good practice for my endgame tanking and easy levelling, especially since I don’t hang out on my lowbies as much these days.) Anyway for some bizzaro reason (maybe even just to keep me entertained) the blondkin sees me tanking for him in dungeons and declares “I want to learn to tank teach me” O_o

Know you that he is very casual about wow … not a reader or a researcher into the classes or what not… and also honestly… his group play was very new at this stage – this blondkin doesn’t even have a recount, an omen or any of the typical little addons the pros have all set up for extras. Considering even, that he did not know about hurricane (in fact did an amusing little panic dance when he had another boomkin use in in a dungeon on top of him) and that I had never seen him use any of his druid utility… I wasn’t really feeling up to the task.

No really by lack of knowedge of his druid utility I mean that for example once or twice I even had to bully him into switching to cat and using dash for the occasional in dungeon speed boost just for getting about a little speedier (like back tracking in Black Rock)… his head is very much “I am a moonkin I walk about in feather form”. He is unfamiliar with dungeons in general, layouts, mobs and bosses and even some of the basics of group play … skull means hit that there mob first laddie.

So yeah tanking is something I think peeps should pick up when … they know either their class, the content or the tanking role well – you know it is for peeps who care to look things up or peeps that have a good grasp on their own abilities…. Or even an extra challenge for someone wanting to learn something new. So yesh while I have agreed to teach the blondkin to tank… I reckon he should tank from the start … as a new toon, so that he can pick up things as he goes and so he can read his abilities as he gets them lol. No way was I going to dive into the task with a lvl 58 boomkin with no agility gears. We have rolled yet another set of baby druid alts for this purpose.

As he wanted to contribute to the group environment and do something new I suggested healing instead. No need for a new gear set, just a simple dual spec and a couple of what I consider necessary addon installations.

It has been amusing to watching him evolve from the stage of panicking about the idea, to running in circles swearing in the dungeon group once he was given the role, to verbally crying on me over vent because I once dropped group and left him alone with a PUG tank, to now offhandedly declaring that healing is fuck-all easy-peasy and more relaxing to do than dps. (Although he still refuses to PUG it again)

Is this because healing really is just that easy, is it because I am a great teacher (lololol) or is it because I am his pocket tank and my heirlooms so overgear me for content the bondkin doesn’t get much of a challenge? Hmmm well who knows, it is probably a slice of all three factors. But it is certainly keeping me entertained, and I figure it can’t hurt to make a few posts in the future about the process and how it all went.

Peeps who are coming here for a good DK dps trinket (or any other gear needs in fact): Let me introduce you to the wonderful MR Robot [ http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow ]

This little program will give you advice on gear, reforging, gemming and enchanting. You can even look at some common talent specs. And best of all it lists available upgrades and can be tailored for pre-troll, pre-raid, T11 or T12 – depending what stage of progression you are at.

It is a beautiful beautiful little site and it has saved me a lot of time and over thinking.

How’s it work this excellent website?

1. Well first go to the site
2. Put in your server and character and load your profile from the armory
3. You can keep the default stat weights or if you have a very good idea of your class theory crafting you can change the settings (as an ele shaman I eliminate the spell-hit… I gets my hit from spirit thank you sir robot)
4. Pick your progression level (considering what you have access to)
5. Then if you want to check out gear up grades you look at the best in slot tab. But even better is you can look as a progressive list of appropriate gear by clicking on the ‘…’ beside the item slot you are intersted in – just like the following images:

The wonderful Mr robot even tells you where to go farm the item

Well I was prepping a post about how real ID has been helping me mend bridges and reconnect with RL peeps, resolving life issues in a virtual landscape. Then I was going to burble enthusiastic about how fun it is to be able to group with peeps cross server and the sweet nostalgia of doing lower level instances. I had a fair portion of it written and ready to go… guess I should have been faster off the bat with that one.

Of course it hasn’t worked out that way really – real life is rarely rose coloured like my imagined scenarios … sides my imagination is clearly overactive and unrealistic. Real-IDing people who are not honestly friends or happy new acquaintances… in fact instead who have the honour of the clouded title of “ex-friends”, just gave the sods an opportunity to deliver a slap in the face in the form of the modern tradition of social media snubbing. Lovely.

Guess the ‘ex’ is there stapled on the ‘friend’ for a reason.

Time to move my weary soul onward once again. It’s a bloody waste of time looking back. That’s for sure.

Tail is a toon I have only recently been paying attention to again to be honest – I loved tanking right up till end game… bargh. So he was sitting on the shelf till I could be bothered getting my act together to set up his kitty spec, kitty interface and rotation.  Which I did last weekend, breezing through heroics as a kitty has been fun… none of the responsibility of the tank role. Tail has been raking in the gear (with a couple of handouts from his big-sister toons) and has almost replaced all his greens meaning we can do 20k aoe dps or 11k single target dps … which is just enough that no one has yelled at us… well except that one occasion where I thought cyclone could be used as a viable form of CC … err opps sorry for the kitty-brain wipe guys

Catz r 4 deeps. Stoopid Kitty should not have tried to do anything else.

Anyways a call goes out across the general chat that someone needs a peep for that arena event there that I have never bothered with… by the time I had alts running around the twilight region the troll heroics were out and I have always figured I can get better gear elsewhere, either crafted or in those heroics.

The little rogue seemed keen … with maybe a slice of desperation so I said I would help which I normally don’t bother to do.

As is usual these helpful side trips are never as straightforward as you hope. The group was all dps, no heals and one man short too boot. I offer to tank be get told to go cat, and I do so.  The group wipes a lot to the last fire casting damage guy (Emberscar the Devourer?) due apparently to a lack of interrupts? Least this is what the rogue tells us is the issue… we are apparently not doing the fight properly. (Maaa well to be honest unlike my elemental/resto shaman Bytes who is currently on interrupting duty with Alysrazor, poor Tail is not exactly set up for interrupts, he has no large target focus cast bars or anything… and his skull bash has a minute cooldown – I should set that stuff up actually – let me jot that on my to do list!)

In anycase my guild tag has been noted and as such I don’t just want to walk out on this group despite needing to be at work in what 10/15 mins. The tank warrior however drops group. Tired of wiping as well I told them I would bring my shaman over for heals.  The proposition wasn’t met with much enthusiasm… apparently I really just had to interrupt better… I re-offer and after one more wipe everyone is “oh okay”.

So I log Bytes in, jump in the stormwind portal to twilight highlands, and fly over to the arena easy as.

Here’s the funny part: Apparently I have awesome gear. The little rogue tells me I am really kitted out. There is marvelling.  Lol no one has admired my gear since lvl 30 horde side when I once managed to collect an entire set of ‘of-the-fang’ gear and pranced around with my Tauren decked out in purple and gold snake leggings.

I suppose if he had been more observant or critical he would have noted that I don’t have my shoulders or helm and that everything is from normal mode raids… almost none of it from the firelands outside of rep pieces because I haven’t been lucky enough to be present on shaman item-drop nights… sigh. Still it was weird to be admired for the little I had.

I bet he wasn’t impressed by me pulling less than 11k in the oncoming battle and the subsequent wipe lol, the little warlock-void tanking worried me and I didn’t let loose, only to still die to fireball spells because a rogue and shaman’s interrupts being apparently not enough.

I put my foot down and switched to resto and the fight became easy as pie – I could still interrupt and I could keep everyone alive, be still my beating bleeding healers heart.

The rogue was happy to have his achieve and whatever weapon a peep gets from that battle… and I was happy to be able to go back to herbing … for a minute anyway.

Raid night rolled around as it ever does and this time the guild decided to preview Lord Rhyolith (the leg boss). I started as heals and got moved to dps in favour of the light well as the RL’s tested the scenario to see what would work best for the group… then to my embarrassment I totally face pulled a couple of times (twice to my horror because I totally hadn’t realised it was my actions that caused it the first time, to me it looked like a tank pull head/desk) due to having totem placement anxieties.

But worst about this fight was that I had real trouble on the AOE phase, just after i had come to the conclusion that I was now awesome at AOE wtf

My biggest issue: Visibility was a real issue, with the boss being walked around the inner circle I couldn’t see, volcanoes, adds or even the light well due to constantly circling boss legs and crotch. I am looking at getting tidy plates set up for DPS (but as I have only used it before for tanking with threat plates I am having real trouble getting them to display.)

Because I couldn’t see anything I resorted to tab targeting…. my aoe requires that I tab target to dot up as many of the mobs that need aoe’ing as possible. This resulted in me dotting a foot head/desk. I am not meant to touch the actual boss feet in this outside of called for dps… we have melee and a mage driver for that task. I even set our hunter RL as my focus target in the hopes that I could use the assist function. Oh and I made a macro for the spark.

Not being able to see anything on the ground had other consequences, I got myself volcano’ed to death far too often. I am sure at one point I was actually stomped to death… and my tab targeting aoe attracted aggro due to us only having one tank (often busy with the spark) – NB: why on earth don’t shaman have any aggro dropping abilities??? Earth shock used to generate extra aggro for griefs sake O_o this is punishment for being allowed a shield isn’t it?

In any case all the above troubles aside my dps was terrible (new fight, lots of targets, lots of movement, lots of confusion) but i have been clocking 20+ K dps in the troll heroics when doing AOE. And this raid I had under 10K thats terrible.

Then I saw this written on an article over at WoW Insider by Josh Myers “Totem Talk“

Terrible for burst, but our sustained AOE was very much improved. Now, if only Blizzard could release a tier where sustained AOE mattered and burst AOE didn’t, we’d be golden.

And it started to make a lot more sense, the little mobs were (a) all over the place and (b) often going down too fast to be any use to me in an aoe roatation. I would tab madly for an acceptable target (damn legs) wasting time, find one and drop a flame shock only to realise that that mob was near death or out of the pack. So painful. All the scrabbling around was time spent not casting which is a terrible thing for DPS.

Man all I want is an addon that makes a boss roughly pet sized – bringing some civilization and order to my battleground. Maybe I lack the soul of adventure. Sigh. 

Things to be wary of according to personal observation

• Totems – sit them near to the tank points as they will draw aggro from spawning adds and may split the pack.
• Lighwells can be hidden by volcanos (or be unreachable due to terrain) and mobs, trying to get to it is not worth dying for.
• Hard to heal if the volcanos are not taken out.
• Don’t stay near an impending stomp action.
• Stand further away from the lava flows, I totally have a suspicion that it is possible that the damage zone for the lava flows from the volcanos are slightly larger than they appear in game (or my graphics suck)
• Hunter pets die when summoned on the little rock in the lava moat – very odd

I did notice that all the things to avoid or stay alert for were the same colour (fire) - why Blizz, why? Currently also experiementing with inbuilt blizzard name plate display options… have noticed big mobs disappear off screen. O_o want plates that display dots… grumble

Tribute to a creepy warcraft questline of a school teacher that falls for his student, who is young and uninterested and off to marry another – resulting in obsession, murder and undeath.