Achievements

I have been somewhat of an achievement junkie this last week. At the beginning of the week I decided I wasn't going to wait any longer and went to Ice Crown and got my last 3 quests for Ice Crown: The Final Goal by soloing some more 5 man quests. These were the ones were some ghost chick hovers above an arena floor and you take the quests and she flies up and you kill a bunch of baddies, turn in, pick up another quest and so on. This in turn gave me Loremaster of Northrend.

This weekend I decided to work on some old world rep by doing the starter quests in Trisifal Glades which got me to exalted with Undercity and as a side benefit got me the explore Trisifal Glades Achievement. Now, I know I could get me rep by just doing the Argent tournament dailies. Meaning NOW I know I didn't when I started.

One of my guildies made level 80 on one of his alts this weekend so he wanted to do some heroics I was able to influence the choice of Heroics and after a couple of hours Halls of Lightning, Oculus and Old Kingdom are scratched off the list and bam I have the Heroic Dungeonmaster achievement completed. Along with that we got the Lightning Struck and the Timely Death achievements done. Meanwhile I got exalted with Kirin Tor for that achievement.

I started working on the Argent Tournament thing and got Argent Valor last night along with learning that now when I do the dailies I will be getting Horde city rep (small amounts right now since I had to start with Silvermoon who I am already exalted with)

I was doing my cooking and fishing dailies everyday so, I got the 500 fish achievement. With the Emblems I got from the heroics we were doing I got the Libram of SoC which gave me the superior achievement.

All in all I got 14 achievements in 7 days. We'll see if I can get anything like that this week.

If someone is hitting people with a big hammer it is always better to be the one who is swinging the hammer.

Back

Apparently I can't stay away from the game. I have returned to WOW after a few months. I will probably not post too often this time around. Especially since I will probably be posting from my blackberry now.

After reloading and setting up my ui I logged on and ran a couple instances with my old guild. Even with my lack of practice I still managed to lay the hurt on some mobs. Along with gathering up a good amount of aggro. I downloaded the new rawr program and found that without going to 25 man naxx or ulduar Saraphina won't be getting any better gear yet.

A couple of my guildies invite me into their 3v3 team. I got to do 5 matches and walked away with 5 wins and no deaths. In fact none of us died in the 5 fights I was in.

Well, that's all for now.

Remember to always keep the pointy end away from you!

The End

The End
When I started playing WoW two and a half years ago I never thought I would be playing this long. Historically I played a game for a few months and then quit. One of the reasons I keep playing the game is because of the helpful nature of a lot of my fellow players. The relatively open nature of the game was another one. When people say why should (insert add-on developer name here) make any money off their idea or their hard work it makes me sick. When blizzard says that people can’t even ask for a donation in game it pisses me off. Whether I pay a developer for something that make my enjoyment of the game go up is my decision. This game was developed by a group that had a good idea and put time into developing it. The scale may be different but it is the same idea. Innovation and hard work should ALWAYS be rewarded. The free loaders that say an add-on should always be free should take a look at the world. This has nothing to do with blizzard trying to make the game better or trying to protect its user base. It is all about them trying to make more money. I understand they are a business and that is what they do but, to strong arm the little guys does is just evil. Anyone who has written code in almost any form knows that writing it is not just picking up a microphone and telling the computer to route me a path that efficiently accomplishes 25 tasks with 3 or more steps each in the proper order. Nor is it clicking five times on your screen to add another pane to your character frame that has all available equipment grouped into meaningful sets. I have written code it does not work like that. A company that has a history of absorbing the work of dozens of authors without even acknowledging them should start with an “M”. Some add-ons are simple others are complex which is actually irrelevant to their value. Their value is solely defined by what can be obtained by someone for giving it to another. I value my time. I am sure that most people value their own time. If this program saves you 1 minute of time every time you use it does the person who wrote it not deserve anything? What if it saves you an hour every day? I think those people who say that it is blizzard’s game and they deserve every dime that is made from are just plain silly. 26 months x $15 = $390 + $20 for the original game + $20 for BC + $70 for WotLK CE = $500. I am one of 11 million users plus. If I am average then that means they have made $5.5 billion. Wait they didn’t write lua or C+. They didn’t invent dwarves or elves or mages or warriors. They didn’t create an operating system or invent microprocessors. Should they receive money for what they have done? Yes they should, they innovated. They put together a group of things in a way that no one else did or no one else marketed the way they did. But, if they are so greedy as to say some other developer can not innovate in a way that involves their program then I am done with them. They have gotten their last dollar from me. I like their game but, I refuse to let them have anymore of my money.

Raid Loot Policy

I heard general grumblings about the clarity of my previous loot policy so I changed it up a little bit though kept the same general idea.

Rank 1
Tanking Gear
Healing Gear

Rank 2
DPS Gear

Rank 3
Off Set Gear

Tanking gear is defined as anything with a defensive stat (Defense, Dodge, Parry or Block)
Healing gear is defined as anything with spell power and no hit
If the piece is not an improvement you are automatically dropped to Rank 3

Point System
The basis of the point system is that for progression we need to gear our tanks and healers first but not ignore others. Also, you will notice that there is no mention of how much of an improvement a piece is. This is to not penalize people who spend the time an effort to gear their characters outside of raids. The raid we are trying to progress in is not the place to gear up for the raid we are trying to progress in. It is not a DKP system. Your main spec is defined as out of the last 10 raid bosses you have downed you have been on this character in this spec more than half the time. In order to not penalize those who help the group by healing or tanking your main DPS spec ignores bosses you have tanked or healed.

Tank Gear Points
You are capable of tanking (+1)
You are spec’d to tank (+1)
You are currently tanking (+1)
This is your main spec (+1)
You have received a piece of gear this raid ID (-1 each)

Healing Gear Points
You are capable of healing (+1)
You are spec’d to heal (+1)
You are currently healing (+1)
This is your main spec (+1)
You have received a piece of gear this raid ID (-1 each)

DPS Gear Points
You are spec’d to use this piece (+1)
This is your main spec (+1)
You have not received a piece this raid ID (+1)
You have received a piece of gear this raid ID (-1 each)

Basics
First determine which Rank the gear is: Tanking, Healing or DPS.
Second determine who gets to roll on a piece using the appropriate point system: TGP, HGP or DGP. The people with the most points get to roll on the piece. If one person has more points than anyone else they get the piece.

Off-set or off-spec
If you decide to gear up for an off-set or off-spec the first piece you decide on rolling for follows the above rules but every off-set or off-spec piece you win after that costs you one shard or half the going price on the AH for a shard. This situation is defined as a piece that falls into rank 3 or is not your main spec or is not your current spec. If the piece is an improvement to your current or main spec this rule does not apply.

Raid Night

Naxx-
I logged online last night at around 5 minutes before the scheduled raid start time only to find that it got pushed back a half hour again. See, I am not the only one that is late. So I figured I would fly down to dragonblight and fish for a bit for some strength fish. I got a bunch of them and I asked one of my guildies if he had any flasks or elixirs. He made me a couple and I met him in agmar’s hammer to get them. After trading a bunch of things with him I started flying towards naxx to get ready for the run. My computer decided this was a good time to reboot. After manually rebooting (the button) and then ctrl-alt-del rebooting I finally got back in game and we started the military wing. We wiped once on instructor and then downed him with no drops for me. During this fight our freshly minted holy paladin (he healed our guild all through BC but decided to take a break from the paladin for awhile) told me he put beacon of light on me and left it there during most of the way to the boss. I guess seal and judgment of blood do a bunch of damage. It probably doesn’t help that I pulled aggro a couple times. Anyway, we make our way to harvester which is one we haven’t beat yet. After some discussion I go over to the undead side ( I had to remind the RL I do a crap ton more damage to undead) and we one shot the fight. It was pretty nice but, alas no drops for the retribution paladin. The new holy paladin did get a piece as did the shaman healer. We then went towards the four horsemen and made it there with a couple of scares from accidental pulls but no wipes. We tried to do the horsemen but, after two attempts neither one of which lasting more than a minute, we decided to try with another healer later.
Arch-
We decided to try the vault as a guild but it was close to time for wintergrasp fighting to start. While inside the vault the fight started and we ended up doing that as a guild.
Wintergrasp-
We had a pretty good time doing the wintergrasp fighting. We invited some others that were there into our raid. We ended up successfully defending the keep from the allies. I got some of the quests done and went to fight some more allies to finish the kill x allies quest. I think there were multiple raids going on but, we still won so it was all good. I ended up getting like 5k honor which is cool.

Weekend Report

Another weekend gone and what have I gotten done?

Quests-
I am still working on the Icecrown quest achievement. I am at 133/140 now and all the quests I have left are group quests. I got some guildies to help me with a few of them but, several of the ones left now are in phased areas of the map. And one of them requires more than one person in the group to be on the quest.

Reputation-
I got exalted on Knights of the Ebon Blade by running a bunch of heroics and also the quests in Icecrown. I also made it to honored on Sons of Hodir doing the dailies. I am not sure which tabard to wear in instances now since I didn’t see much in the way of reputation gear for the other two factions. I am just wearing the Kirin Tor tabard until I decide since more rep with them lowers repair costs in Dalaran.

Gear-
I got my new bracers enchanted and put some gems in them so I wear them now. Those replace my vengeance bindings bringing my epic count up to eight. Because of my new reputation with the Knights I was able to get some new boots which replace my crafted ones. More than likely I won’t replace my helmet since it is in the top three in the game right now. I finally made a list of heroics to do to replace my blue armor to best pre-naxx in slot. I also helped one of our enchanters to make his runed titanium rod so he could put massacre on my polearm and greater assault on my boots.

PvP-
While doing the daily for the Viking women a rogue and DK tried to kill me. Both of them were level 80 so, I figured I was dead. Well, it turns out that they should have left me to do my daily since they both got to do the flight of shame about 60 seconds after they attacked. Then after they resurrected they ran away. Sometimes people are just amusing. The next day a mage tried the same thing, attack me while I am doing the pit fighting. He ended up fully following their example by making his flight of shame in around 45 seconds. Also last night I did a Wintergrasp defense, unsuccessfully I might add, and got like 3000 honor. That puts me around 19k honor. Maybe I will buy something soon.

Heroics-
We ran a few heroics (HoL, UP and UK) and I have to say I have not successfully killed Loken on heroic yet. It is really annoying that we can’t get that one done. We tried the stand and fight method and the healer died every time. We tried the up and down path and we could only do like 4 times up and down before we screwed it up. We tried the right left method and didn’t even make it to the right before we died. I don’t know what to do. I need to finish that one but, I hate dropping 75-100 gold on attempts. That’s more then I usually spend on repairs for a raid night.

Alts-
I ran my lock a little bit to try and get him up in level and work a little on his tailoring. I really want to get his tailoring up so I can make bigger bags for my main. I just can’t get enough interest in him to level him up.

Spell Rotations

Since paladins are a first come first served rotation DPS class, I have a priority of casting as I am sure most of us do. With global cooldowns at 1.5 seconds it is very important to cast the best spell you can cast as soon as you can cast it. Basically I start at the top and cast the first spell that is off c/d and meets the special requirement in parentheses. to arrive at these rotations i did a lot of reading and practicing. There are different circumstances which vary what I do but here are the basics.

Elite pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Avenging Wrath (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Trinket (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Judgment of Wisdom
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Consecrate

Non-elite AoE pulls (instance)-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)

Solo small group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Judgment of Wisdom
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Consecrate
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)

Solo large group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Consecrate
Divine Storm
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)

Single non-elite (not prefered)-
Judgment of Wisdom
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
they should be dead