Friday, January 30, 2009

Monday raid

I logged on for raid night right about start time again (I really need to do something about that) and I find out that our raid start got pushed back an hour. Apparently one of our tanks had to work late so we had to delay. When I log on the raid leader tells me I need to confirm my raid invite which I didn’t even see. Anyway, I tell him I am here and will go. Since we weren’t starting right away I bounce over to my AH mule and post a few auctions. Then I log over to my enchanter and send a stack of infinite dust and a stack of greater cosmic essences so I can get my polearm from Monday enchanted. Now, I ask one of our guild’s GC’s if he has the Sovereign Twilight Opal. It turns out that this recipe is a world drop as well. I am not happy that both this and the blue level orange gem are both world drops. That is really annoying. So I get the purple rock cut with AP instead. I grab some dragonfin filets and strength elixirs from my bank and head out to naxx.

We finally get started in the arachnid wing and it is a relatively smooth run. I am pretty sure we didn’t have any wipes in that wing. I got the neck from Anub’Rekhan by out rolling a rogue on it. It probably would have been a bigger improvement for him but, I wasn’t feeling generous. We rolled on it and it was in accordance with our stated loot rules. Then Maexxna dropped the polearm again and the DK got it. I was a sport and gave him mats to get it enchanted and he was able to use it right then. We did Patchwerk again and downed him fairly easy. Ok that was not bad. Now, we try a new boss. We go to the military wing and start in instructor raz. No one in the raid has tried this guy before but, the RL had read the strategy and seemed to have an idea of what to do. After many wipes we ended up calling it a night. We had some issues with initial controlling and releasing of the apprentices. And it was getting late so, we just called it. Hopefully we will move further in on Thursday.

I have enough badges for a couple pieces but I am not sure I want to get them as they may not be much of an improvement. Another thing I am not happy with is that there are no useful librams between the venture co one and a couple in naxx-25. That is a pretty big gap in my opinion.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Damage meters

OK, quick post on my opinion of DPS numbers and the importance of these numbers. While the fact that these numbers are relative to specific fights and roles in these fights should be recognized. Also, it should be noted that group composition will have varying effects on the end result of DPS for a given fight. Example: moonkin aura, retribution aura … These numbers do have importance in that if the group doesn’t have enough DPS they will not finish a fight. All of the little sayings being passed around are true to some extent. If a healer dies it’s the tank’s fault. If a tank dies it’s the healer’s fault. If a DPS dies it’s the DPS’s fault. The exceptions are important as well. If melee DPS dies on a boss that does AoE or in a fight where the boss will strike the person in melee with the most HP whose fault is it? If the tank dies because the healer ran out of mana whose fault is it?

While healers and tanks don’t like seeing the damage meters being flashed up, since they are not high on them, the numbers are still important to let people know where they stand in comparison to the rest of the raid/party. Attention should be paid on whether the DPS in question has other duties assigned (sheep, trap or banish to name a few.) But, the blanket DPS numbers are not important comments or the sarcastic “oh that’s important” remarks are just as unproductive as rubbing people’s noses in their lower DPS numbers

Monday raid night

Monday night is raid night in my guild so, last night we went to naxx-10.

Anub’Rekhan-
This boss has turned fairly easy since we figured out that the tank needs to tank him outside of the ooze stuff. The fight went well. We didn’t lose anyone. The DPS plate dropped but I lost the roll to our DK.

Grand Widow Faerlina-
It only took one shot on this boss as well. I didn’t get any drops from this one. This is an interesting boss. I am glad that someone figured out that to beat her you need to kill one of her minions every time she enrages. On the first enrage timer I had to go help the OT DPS the first sacrifice but, after that one the OT had to turn his back on the others for most of the fight or risk killing them to early.

Maexxna-
We ended up wiping a couple of times on this one. One problem in being the highest DPS in the raid is that when the tank dies you follow him to the grave pretty quickly. Our OT was able to pick him/her up fairly fast but, not fast enough for me to live. After two wipes we were able to time the web wraps enough so that the tank didn’t die and next thing you know we have the spider wing done. Then I had to argue with myself for awhile on whether I wanted the polearm or not but, in the end decided to take it and play around with it to see if I could get more DPS out of it. Since I am hit capped and the purple mace I have has a bunch of hit on it I might be able to get a little more DPS. I don’t like the fact is has no strength on it but I will have to give it a try in the world to see how it works out.

We had to talk for a few minutes on which wing to do next since we weren’t sure if we had the DPS for patchwork yet but, after one of the healers dropped to run his hunter we figured to give it a try.

Patchwork-
First try we had everyone jump in the slime except the main tank. The problem with that is when you do that your mana drops as well. Since we weren’t sure about this strategy one of the healers jumped in as well. I ran out of mana. The healer ran out of mana. Then we all ran out of life. The next try I didn’t jump in and the healer didn’t jump in since I would not my own life down with SoB and if he hit me once with the strike thing it would be ok as I could live through one of them and that would make me not get another one. We died one more time and then we were able to kill him. I can’t remember the drops unfortunately. Except that our priest healer got some boots.

We then tried Grobulus but only got two tries before the priest and both called it. Maybe we will actually get our Thursday run in and advance a little bit more this week.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Weekend report

Another weekend is gone. I decided to do the entire honor your elder quest series and realized that that is a large time investment. I ended up finishing all of them except a few the ones in the Northrend instances. I will try to get those done fairly soon. I wouldn’t mind getting another title besides Jenkins. While doing the quests I ended up getting exalted with org and getting close on UC.

We ran some heroics as a guild but, I didn’t get any gear ups for my main spec. We did AN, Gundrak, Drak’tharon keep.

I have been doing the daily cooking quest everyday and for the last 6 or 7 days it has been the same one. I am about sick of making a plate for the gathering at the legerman.

I really need to figure out a gear upgrade plan for my paladin instead of just saying I need to do it. My plan is to make a list of all my gear. Find what the best gear I can get from a heroic is. Use a formula I got from somewhere to rate the amount of improvement each gives. And finally, rank the gear by amount of improvement. My fear is that there is not going to be that many pieces that give an improvement in heroics.

Right now my plan is:
1) Finish the lunar festival achievement
2) Make a gear plan
3) Work on finishing the quests in Northrend
4) Run heroics to achieve gear plan

Friday, January 23, 2009

Three days and one drop

Three days go by and what have I gotten done in WoW? Not much unfortunately. Wednesdays are an off day for me.

Tuesday was patch day and with the disconnect issues going on I spent most of my time on my DK. I realize now that some people have no business trying to PvP. My DK was level 60 at the start of the night and in the starter gear you get for the initial quests. I am running around in hellfire and I end up in a bad pull. I had about 6 mobs on me beating me about the head and shoulders. I do OK and end up killing off three of them when another DK grabs me and commences to attacking me. So, I turn my attention to him and kill him. I look at his level and he is a 62. What?!? OK must be a fluke. I finish off the last three mobs and have to resummon my pet since he did actually kill that. Then I decide to see if I can kill some more mobs and stack up 5 more. Halfway through the same DK attacks again. He ends up with the same fate as last time. This time I did end up turning into a ghoul but did not die until I exploded myself so I could rez into my normal body. The he commences to attack again with no mobs on me. I really don’t get it. He couldn’t kill me while I was fighting a bunch of mobs and now he attacks me at full health and read for him. He died. Again and again. I think KoS said like 10 times I killed him that night before he gave up. I finally continue on and make level 61. Then I am fighting three of those ravager things to get their eggs and a retribution paladin hits me. I figure I am done now he’s level 63. Next thing I know I am standing there with his corpse, and the corpse of 5 ravagers ( got some adds in the running around fighting) and at like ¾ health. He didn’t come back for more. Lesson to be learned if you can’t PvP don’t attack people who are not bothering you.

When the servers finally came back online and stayed working I logged on my pally and did my cooking daily and logged off.

Thursday, our designated raid night came and when raid time came around I was online with 8 others waiting for one of our tanks to come online. Long story short at like 0100 he still had not come on. We ran heroic Gundrak and the purple ring dropped. The funny thing is I replaced the ring I had just gotten from heroic nexus on Monday.

We got into some PvP before the run in the crystallized fire farm in Borean Tundra. Those guys were good. We were not so much. They had titles we do not. You know the titles like Brutal Gladiator and the flawless victor. We finally ran the three of them off when our fifth showed up. We need to work on our coordination a bit on that. Didn’t help they made the sky’s not so safe with one of them being a shaman and the other a priest. The shaman knocks me off my mount and the priest gives him levitate. The hunter was plinking away as I am falling. And then right in front of the instance we jumped some people.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

No Raid last night

Last night I logged on late (to minutes before raid time) due to work running over and causing my Monday basketball to go late as well. I figured I would get a ration of crap for being late. I should have known better. I had some flasks already and a few plus foods so I could realistically just go to the raid and get started anyway. So I log on and look at the guild list there are three people online (including me). What!?! Oh well, guess were not raiding tonight. I log off and log on my banker/AH character to check some auctions and when I get back on 5 minutes later there are 10 online including me. Wow, talk about bell tappers. Any way I look at what members are online and only two healers and no tanks are on. After I log in i see in guild chat "only need tanks and we are good to go for naxx." So, I look again at the guild list and see that only four of the members are level 80. Granted that several of them have 80 alts we don’t have enough for a naxx run. I say this and get annoyed comments.

So my arena partner logs on and asks if anyone wants to run some arenas. I let him know I am ready let’s go. We end up running some 3vs switching people in and out for points. Then we start our 2vs. Personally I like 2v2 arenas the best. A retribution paladin teamed with a frost mage is a pretty fun combination. The only problem is that last night we had four to five minute queues with our matches lasting less than a minute it was a lot of sitting around waiting for a quick flurry of activity. What I have found is that our cap right now is around 1400. As soon as we went above that we got smacked back down. It was still a lot of fun. By the way, I really need to get some better PvP gear. I really think it is funny when a druid shifts to kitty form and I drop HoJ and proceed to burst them from 100% to corpse before the stun wears off. Let this be a lesson for druids that don’t know, don’t shift to cat form in front of a paladin who has you targeted. The worst match we had was an elemental shaman and an enhancement shaman team. 8 totems make it hard to target who you want without clicking. And for those that don’t know those shamans can throw some serious DPS out. If they FF they can burn down you down before you can say uhh ohh. Anyway we ended around 1400 as I said.

After we finished up with the arenas the guild leader had come on and wanted to discuss raid schedules. We set up a schedule, much to my chagrin. As fun as raids are when they get scheduled it veers closer to the work zone then I prefer. I do understand that when you are dealing with more people it makes sense that you schedule things but, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I also brought up some loot rules. I had written out a simple looting rules plan a week or so ago and posted it on our guild site and a total of 2 people read it. By the way, that is kind of annoying. I explained it (again annoying to explain something I had already typed up) and after some discussion my policy was for the most part accepted. A couple said they would like to look into DKP and a couple others said that if we used DKP they didn’t want to go on the raids. I will hammer out a few details of my looting rules plan and post it here later on.

While we were having this meeting I was down in dragon blight farming fish for strength food and some idiot level 80 horde warrior starts fishing the node I was on. I mean come on the lake down there has like 5 or 6 spawn points and they respawn fairly quickly. Sometimes I wish they allowed me to hit another horde upside the head. So, I posted his name in guild chat and to our sister guild. I hope he doesn’t need anything from anyone of us.

Finally done with the meeting and with not enough guild members on to run naxx I wanted to run Heroic Gundrak for the ring I need to replace my last green quest piece. But, unfortunately two of the people that would go had already ran it since it was the daily. So, I got everyone to go to heroic nexus. And when we went to the tree boss low and behold the blue ring dropped for me so I am all blues and purples. Now I just need to start replacing my lower blues. I wish there was a good replacement for the venture co libram.

cya

Monday, January 19, 2009

Catch up

Well, I haven’t posted in awhile. I have been finding that when I log on in the evening after work I want to advance my main character (the paladin). So, I look to see who is on in the guild and most times we have ten people on plus or minus two. Then when I look to see who it is there is one or two people on that have tanks and the rest are all DPS types. I know I shouldn't say anything as I am on a DPS character right now as well. Seeing as I want to make my character better I go and do some quests for reputation and gold and make sure to do the dailies for the Wrymrest Accord. At some point someone with a healer gets on and we go do a heroic. I guess no one wants to run a healer now. I am glad that we can usually find a tank to run but, as the only thing I have ever done with my paladin is DPS and tank, it makes it hard to do a run.

I could try to round up a healing set and spec holy but, that’s not the type of paladin I am. I have never gone further into the holy tree then tier 2 or 3 for some divine strength and some off healing junk to get into some groups before paladin could do the massive amounts of DPS they do now.

OK as for an update since I haven’t posted in awhile. I got exalted with Wrymrest and got my pants and the drake. I finished exploring Northrend to get the tabard. I upgraded most of my gear by doing heroics. There is only one piece of my gear that is still a quest reward. The only good rings I have found are in heroic Gundrak and heroic nexus so, I have been trying to do those as much as possible. I haven’t had enough time to see what the proc rate is on the mirror of truth yet even though I went ahead and got one. While I was questing in storm peaks I went ahead and used the polearm from the rep gear and topped off that weapon skill to give me my fourth weapon to 400 for the achievement.
Now I need to get my warlocks tailoring skill up so I can make some new bags to get more storage space. I might do some leveling on him so I can get some cloth to make that stuff since I spent 1.6k gold on a dragon mount.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

hardcore or softcore

I was listening to a podcast today and heard more of the hard-core/soft-core debate. I figured I would post my opinion on this. I personally can’t figure out which side of the line I am on so, I will present what I like to consider a neutral point of view.

If your goal is to complete all the content of a game as fast as humanly possible then have fun doing it but, don’t complain when two months after release you don’t have anything left to do. Also, I am not sure where I stand on the achievement thing yet but, I do think it can be a good tool for those who think they have done everything there is to do in the game. In other words, just because you have finished the current highest level raid on heroic doesn't necessarily mean you have “finished” the game. Have you done all the instances in WotLK? Have you done all of them on heroic? Have you done all of the raids on 10-person? Have you done all of them on 25-person? That is just WotLK dungeons. There are also the BC instances and raids. Oh yeah don’t forget there was an entire world before BC that had instances and raids too. So, you’ve done all of the instanced content? Have you done all the quests in all the WotLK zones? Good job. How about the BC zones? Again don’t forget the old world zones. You finished all the quests in all the zones? How is your reputation? Are you exalted with everyone? Great! Have you explored all the zones?

Anyway I think/hope you get the point. There is probably more to do. Some of these things may or may not be things you want to do. The point is that the game has tons of content to do. I assume it was made keeping in mind that different people want to do different things.

The real question is should the developers cater to the top 5% of the players? Should they cater to the rest of the player base? The answer is yes. Without a doubt they should. That being said, I think that a proportional amount of development time should be spent based on the quantity of paying customers that are actually going to get to use/see the product.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Holiday break

It has been a couple weeks and I have really not gotten much done due to spending a week or so out of town.
As a guild we have been doing some heroics and gave two of the 10-mans a try. Notice I said try. I think our DPS needs to gear up. Our tanks and healers seem to be doing fine but, the bosses stay alive too long so the healers end up running out of mana. I am not sure what DPS we are supposed to be at but, I am at around 1400-1800 depending on the fight. The next guy down (yes I am on top) is around 1300-1400. We had a couple of our guys PUG nax but, I don’t like PUG’s and there are still morons out there that think retribution paladins can’t DPS. I also got my northrend dungeon master achievement.

I got my purple crafted two-handed mace and helm. So my instance DPS set is shaping up OK. Let me tell you, that helm made a big difference in overall DPS (around +100), way more than I had expected. And that is without an enchant or gem in it yet. The mace I had expected to have a large impact and it did add around 100-150 or so. I still have not gotten around to making a plan for upgrades yet.

I am working on wyrmrest accord reputation currently. I really want the dragon mount but, the purple pants will be nice as well. Next will probably be ebon hold for the head enchant.

I teamed up with a frost mage for my first arenas of the season and we pulled off a 5-5 set of ten. My partner was the guy from our raids sitting at number two in DPS. We really had no problem with other two DPS teams but, healer-DPS teams posed some difficulty for us. Some of those healers can heal like crazy. I really can’t believe that with both of us banging away at the healer he can keep himself alive. We had problems with all the brands of healers. One of the fights was a DK/DK team both unholy far enough to get the ghoul form thing after you die. While that ghoul doesn’t last long if we concentrated on it, we both seemed to space out the fact that the ghoul might appear. So, when it happened the first one that died came around and killed the mage, I killed the other one and then both of those ghouls focus fired on me. I think with a little more practice we can do pretty good in there. We also did some 3v3 fights with a resto shaman, frost mage and ret pally. Those went ok. And we did a few two ret pally and resto shaman. Those went ok as well.