Healer Trek

Success in Sportswriting Endeavors

2011-12-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

I just received this in my inbox:

Dave,
Congratulations on your acceptance into the Bleacher Report Featured Columnist Program.

You should be proud to know that your body of work has set you apart from the field. After consideration from various members of our Content Team, we’ve decided that you’re the person we want to fill our Big 10 Featured Columnist position.

That said, I’m sure you’ll still want to weigh your options before you make a commitment.

YES YES YES!

The sports writing hobby has gone to new heights. I know B/R has a shaky reputation in some circles, but it is a step up from independent SCS where I get very few readers. I had a good week this week as both my articles popped well over 2000 reads (last night's article on Urban Meyer shot past 2000 in 12 hours).

Now I get featured placement on the website, which will keep my read count high. The only downside is the continued requirement for two articles a week during the offseason, but with writing one on the weekend that is not so bad. Especially with editors to help me generate topics, and the whole Big Ten conference providing topics. Plus it will be easier than this season when I tried to hit three a week for B/R and one big article a week for SCS. That was murder, and will not happen again.

But for tonight, despite my broken TV and my four day old cold, I've got a little jump for joy. Boo. Yeah.

Starcraft Adventures Vol. 4 - Night and Day

2011-12-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

The next mission I tackled in the campaign over the weekend was a mission where you defend a base camp during 4 minute nighttime periods and then go burn down zerg infected structures during the 4 minute daytime periods. I remember watching Tom play this mission when he was initially showing the game off to me, so I realize that was not too far into the game. I actually went to Tom for advice after failing a couple of times and he said he used a critical mass of marines and medics to knock out the mission.

Rather than focusing on the specialty units, I followed this advice and it was just enough to win before Night 6, which is the night that pretty much cannot be survived with the amount of enemies invading the base camp. This mission was perhaps the best designed one yet, as it tests the player's ability to build a fast army and micromanage it well in both defense and quick offense. Plus, the story is gaining some momentum. One thing I need to figure out is finding time to find the research points, as the upgrades on the zerg track are definitely worth having.

The next mission in the campaign is another multitasking mission where you must collect 8000 minerals while defending against random zerg attacks and keeping out of the lower ground lava areas every couple of minutes. Let's just say I failed miserably in my first attempt, but will go back at it again soon. I'll blame it on the crappy instructions from the rastafarian guy explaining the mission.

Then I decided to try some one v. one against the computer for the first time. Although I did not know many of the units available, I knew enough to be dangerous. My first attempt was a random map against a very easy computer opponent. I wrecked the computer easily. Then I tried again against a hard computer and got absolutely stomped. I'm building marines and just was building a factory when a group of siege tanks blew me to the stone age.

Although the graphs are not very helpful, looking at the build order and comparing it to mine is helpful in beginning to learn why my strategy sucks. Despite the setback, I did take a big step up in difficulty with little knowledge of the higher level units. The strategy of the game appears to be a lot of fun, but I am a bit disappointed medics are not available. I'm truly enjoying the healers in the campaign, and would love to exploit them in this game like every other game. Ahh well, if I want to PvP as a healer I can go back to World of Warcraft!

I have this burning desire to throw 7 computers on a big old map and see what happens. Perhaps I'd still get rolled, but I'd like to think that battle would be epic. I'll report back when I give that a try, and hopefully the mining centric lava mission will be finished. As Jim Raynor said, lava and zerg, two of my favorite things. Ugh.

Starcraft Adventures Vol. 3 - We Got A Convoy Coming!

2011-12-09T20:14:00.000-08:00

I played a couple more missions in the campaign last evening, and they were quite a contrast in styles. The first mission was a race to grab an artifact from the Protoss before the Zerg overwhelmed the Protoss on the other side of the map. Once again, it took a couple of tries to work a build order that was fast and effective enough to put enough force over at the artifact to clear out the Protoss while leaving enough troops back to guard the base against rare Zerg attacks. It appeared the right mix was to pump out a lot of minerals and supply depots since there was no early pressure from the Zerg, and then pump out troops quickly with three barracks. I also locked down the base easily with barracks, so the strength of those is proving itself quickly.

There are a bunch of side missions in these campaign missions that seem impossible initially, although the way the switch turned on the third try of this mission made me see that these are possible once you figure out the tricks of the trade. I could not come up with nearly enough firepower to take down the three stone guardians at the artifact on the first two tries, as I was lucky to drop one before my army was decimated. But then on that third try, my army was so overwhelming that the final fight was a joke. Plus I was at the artifact a good 3-4 minutes before the Zerg, so I had time to spare to use some of that army for side missions.

The Protoss are an interesting contrast to the Zerg. With the Zerg, you get overwhelmed by these little packs of weaklings that surround you and do a lot of spray damage. With the Protoss, at least in the first mission, you are taking on more powerful units called Zealots and a bunch of defensive pylon structures. You do not want to get in range of too many of these structures, as their combined firepower will tear an army up. Strategic attacking of these Protoss strategies appears to be key to success, while the Zerg is all about quick survival and burn. So far I have no preference for which race I will take into multiplayer, but I do like the Protoss style so far.

The first mission hooked me so I stayed up late and tried another mission. This was a rescue mission where you escort convoy trucks of civilians along a road to airships on the other side of the map. The Zerg presence along the road gets stronger and stronger, but I put together a solid army for the first convoy run and never looked back. I actually let the second convoy truck get destroyed because I misclicked and did not have the army defending the truck. By the time we got to about the fourth truck, the ridiculous swarm of marines, flamethrowing units, and medics surrounding the convoy truck was overpowered and ridiculous looking. These convoy trucks had more security than the United States president.

Perhaps this is just a function of being an early mission, but from a game design standpoint, I think the Zerg should attack or disrupt the base more to make this mission a challenge. Remember, I'm playing on hard as a complete new RTS player, so I do not expect to pass any of these missions on the first try. Once I realized I did not have to leave basically any units at the base, the mission was easy as could be. Anybody who has watched that great movie Convoy or has played World of Warcraft for longer than 24 hours knows how to run an escort or convoy mission.

The options for upgrades are becoming quite varied just five missions in, so I hope these upgrade choices are not terribly important. If they are, I'm probably not doing it right. The flamethrower guys are fun, I look forward to using them with medics more as the combo seems delicious.

Alright that's enough for now. More coming on the weekend I'm sure. Perhaps I'll test a single player match against the computer 1v1 as well. Might as well introduce myself to the chess game that is real starcraft.

StarCraft Adventures Vol. 2 - Leaving Mar Sara

2011-12-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

The second night with the campaign brought a new mission, which was a defensive mission to hold my position until the rescue ship came in 20 minutes. The new technology was bunkers, but I quickly realized that build order was going to be a huge priority as the Zerg got more and more overwhelming towards the end of the twenty minutes.

To survive the escape from Mar Sara, you need to build up a bunch of bunkers, preferably in a defensible location adjacent the command center or adjacent two bridges. I tried to set up two bunkers at each bridge but could not get enough marines quickly to defend both posts. Of course I realized that I was starving myself of resources by not building enough supply depots, which limited the amount of SCV's I could build and keep an adequate army.

After two failures of the mission, I finally decided to go back to basics and build up a bunch of SCV's and supply depots early, while spending some minerals on making both the provided barracks be able to make two marines at once. After I got rolling in supplies, I built three barracks at the fallback position rather than at the bridges, which allowed me to keep my focus on a small area generally speaking. I actually abandoned medics in this attempt because more guys with guns and more barracks seemed like what I needed.

The Zerg are relentless, and they do not give you much time to heal. A couple of medics are fine, but not a bunch. By the end of the mission on the third try, I have capacity for 85 units and probably 50 marines, 20 of which were safely held in five bunkers. This time there was no doubt about it, the mission was easily cleared.

This mission introduced me to the swarm nature of the Zerg, and they are a lot like the flood in Halo. Bunkers are a nice defensive piece to build upon, and I'm looking forward to the next units added to the game. I also see now that I am on the Hyperion that the game branches out a bit, allows you some choice as to what mission to take next. Will I jump at the extra 10k credits to fight some protoss for the first time over artifacts, or will I begin my defense of the homeworlds against the new Zerg invasion?

One thing's for sure, if I'm failing on the easy third mission, I've got a long way to go before the Queen goes down. I also like the ability to customize your army a bit in the armory, but it is hard to tell what will be important. I improved the defense on my marine grunts for now, but some of the other improvements look very spicy. If nothing else, I am definitely getting a flavor for this RTS business. Looking forward to some naptime playtime during the weekend!

Starcraft 2 Adventures - Vol. 1

2011-12-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

In the words of Jim Raynor, it's about time. I jumped on the opportunity to purchase StarCraft 2 from Blizzard over the Thanksgiving weekend at half price, which is a reasonable investment into a game that is high quality by all reports. However, this will be my first true RTS, as the closest gaming experience I have had is my lifelong obsession with chess.

However, the moving parts are much more dynamic in an RTS like Starcraft, and my friend Tom's long term love of the game compels me to give this a run. Blizzard proves their worth to me in World of Warcraft, but I am taking a break from that and blogging about other things. Now that college football season is over except for 35 bowls, I am back to my gaming pursuits and this new game will join L.A. Noire on the top of my list. More about L.A. Noire later, but Starcraft is the new kid on the block and I plan to write about how I experience this new type of gaming.

The tutorials were fairly easy to figure out, but the complexity of the game was immediately apparent. Tom instructed me that if I wanted to learn the ropes and be moderately prepared for multiplayer play, then I should play the campaign on Hard. This is a scary decision for someone not used to RTS let alone the original StarCraft, but I put it on Hard and played the first couple of missions.

The first mission is all about leading Raynor and a small crew of Marines through an easy line of defenses. The second mission was far more what I expected from the game, as I built up my army and resources to take on a similarly building CPU army at a digsite. I believe that I could have done a better job of disrupting the production on the other side of the map earlier, as I really did not attack until the 20 minute mark.

It took a couple retreats and rebuilds of the army (soldiers and medics), but eventually my advantage in resources became a victory. I love that medics are the seocnd unit introduced in the campaign, and I may have struggled a bit because I focused too much on having a bunch of healers instead of guys who actually kill things. If you read this blog, you'll immediately understand why the medic will be one of my favorite units in this game.

It is also clear that I need to do a better job of multitasking. I need to use the minimap more as you can click between areas of the map much more quickly using that than by scrolling across the map as in Diablo II. There's no reason to waste time scrolling across the screen except perhaps at the leading edge of the battle, but even then it is slower than just moving the pointer and clicking on the new area.

Listening to the second episode of the Creep today, I realize that I will need to have a more focused build order or plan once I move along in the game and have more options. But for now, I am simply focused on getting faster and more efficient with my army building process. The game doesn't have me hooked like WoW did, but I am wanting to play the game again and feel more connected to this style of game than Diablo. Who knows, before it's all said and done, I might be fighting my way up the ladders of multiplayer.

That's enough for now. I look forward to getting back in the game bringing more impressions as I move through more campaign missions. It's about time, indeed.

A Little Snooze

2011-10-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of Halloween and being born again (perhaps as an undead, oh my), Ekaterinae has set herself down for a little break after downing the bosses in Zul:Gurub for the first time in the last night of my 3 year subscription. She will return, after all...you can't be in a casket forever!

Transitioning

2011-10-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

This will come as no surprise to any regular followers, but I will be letting my WoW subscription lapse for a while on Friday. Come on by if you are on Earthen Ring tomorrow night and say hello before I leave, if you read this before then.

However, do not fret. I have it on good authority that the blog will go on, especially with all the Blizzard news out there. And I do intend to come back next year before or after the next expansion, so don't expect me to stay down for long.

As always, sportswriting season makes it hard to do other things other than work and family. I am happy to report that I am a featured columnist in training at Bleacher Report, and please hit me up with a message if you want to follow me there. My articles are always linked on twitter as well @BuckeyeFitzy

Please stay in touch and I promise to be on here from time to time. This is a goodbye to wow for now, but certainly not forever. I can't leave AIE and The Illuminati forever :-)

Whack-a-Mole (ahem, Healbot) comes to iOS

2011-07-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

So following up on the heels of other World of Warcraft themed iOS applications (mobile armory and mobile authenticator), today a new app called "Healbot" comes out. Unlike the other apps released thus far, Healbot tries to capture an actual aspect of playing the game to make a mini-game. An argument could be made for the premium mobile auction house, but that actually affects things in Azeroth. Healbot takes the healing part of the game and specifically healing 5-man dungeons, and makes that its own game.

As a healer, this intrigues me. As a healer who uses Healbot as the primary healing mod, this intrigues me even more. But can this app be somewhat realistic or will it be glorified whack-a-mole? After all, that's how many non-healers view healing, and on some level, they are correct. Make the green bars go up when the green bars go down. Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead.

Unfortunately, the app is a colorful whack-a-mole. Instead of having a number of different options such as preemptive healing (shields) and heal-over-time spells, you get light, medium, and heavy, which are analogous to lesser heal, heal, and greater heal for a priest, or the same analogues for other healing classes. That's it.

As shown below, Healbot looks like the healing mod of the same name in World of Warcraft, except with a sixth bar present to show a pretend boss health bar. Over the course of a game, the boss health bar slowly goes down much like in a 5-man dungeon, but the boss deals damage to all party members. The game is not very intense, unless you lose a player (assuming hard mode is turned off, the hard mode making you lose automatically if any party member dies) in which case the damage per player becomes somewhat harder to handle.

On the plus side, the boss does deal damage in a realistic manner, sometimes hitting party members directly for a lot of damage, sometimes doing damage to all party members, and mostly dealing damage to the tank in heavy bursts. The problem is that the damage is really not a problem to keep up with, even late in the boss health bar's life when most bosses put out more damage and cause the battle to be a race.

If this app is supposed to encourage people to learn how to heal, perhaps it is a reasonable introduction to an essential mod for healing. This app might also be analogous to early healing in level 1-30 dungeons when spell lists are simplified. However, Healbot is also just as likely to scare people away from healing because it takes the boring essential bottom line (whack-a-mole) nature of healing and makes that stand out like a sore thumb.

If this app is supposed to help a healer stay in practice when not raiding or playing, then Healbot needs to have far more difficulty levels and preferably more types of spells to make it realistic. Healing requires a lot of situational awareness and strategic use of cooldowns and different tools, but none of that will be refreshed by playing Healbot.

If this app is supposed to be a fix for addicted WoW players who are at work or have 3 minutes to blow, then mission accomplished. iOS games do not have to be anything spectacular to hold your attention in the casual "fill-a-void" type game universe, but Healbot is so simple that it is insulting to healers, especially in the much harder Cataclysm era.

At least the app is a free download. So people can try it and see it, but I suspect most people will not keep it around long. You get what you pay for in this case.

All that being said, this could be a first slow step in an interesting direction for WoW-themed game development on the mobile platforms. Healbot could be the building blocks of a more realistic healing simulator, or a tanking simulator, or maybe even mobile WoW. Hopefully developers build upon this framework and make Healbot or some other healing app that actually captures the essence of that portion of the game. Until then, you can pass on this one.

What Happens When The Guild Leader Retires?

2011-07-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

Although the more pressing concern appeared to be what needed to happen if the figurehead and guild leader Maui left AIE (because of a conflict with working for Blizzard), that has not come to pass. Furthermore, AIE has such a large and established set of officers that a transition would not be all that difficult.

Randy is really a figurehead of the guild, the leader of something that became a monster community under his watch. Of course it helps to have the most popular wow podcast behind you as well, but that's neither here nor there.

What did actually happen was that Jeff decided after nearly three years to step down as leader of The Illuminati. His longtime second in command Ruach had decided to take a break from the game a couple months earlier, so the likely takeover was not in place. So what could Jeff do to maintain the livelihood of the guild he built from scratch into the biggest Alliance guild on the server?

Turn to one frond named Sophrosune, that's what! Although she was one of the two most recently made officers (in a narrow vote over me, and thank goodness they made the right choice...real life would not have made me a good officer the past few months), she captures exactly what made Jeff a fantastic guild leader: personality and drive. It would be difficult for me to understand how any person in the guild for any length of time could not feel like they have a solid relationship with Jeff and Soph, all because they take the time to chat with their guildies and be friendly.

Of course I also am guessing that Soph was behind linking this blog to the front page of the guild website, which is very cool even though I don't write enough anymore. Perhaps that will inspire someone else to start blogging and adding to the alliance-side community, maybe starting a budding new AIE. Jeff is still with the guild as a legacy officer, but it seems like a good time for a new face for the guild. Congratulations to my frond Soph on this momentous promotion, and best of luck in continuing the success of the Lumies!

With the effective departure of Ruach and Jeff, this may open the door for more officers to follow in Soph's footsteps. I urge anybody interested and active in the guild to step up and give back to the guild. This will be an exciting time to lead one of the great guilds in Azeroth. I look forward to the next anniversary event where presumably we will welcome one or two more officers to our core.

Also congratulations to Ghomus and the other recently named new AIE officers. The funny thing about AIE is that people usually become officers after doing so much that they are basically acting like officers without the title beforehand. Ghomus puts out quality content in the AIE Podcast every other week, and so he will be another welcome officer in that guild.

In other words, the beat goes on...the beat goes on....

The Day Twinking Went Free

2011-06-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

In a move that should shock nobody, Blizzard has modified the trial accounts to make them last forever but have a hard cap of level 20. To avoid abuse of this program by current players, many other restrictions are also placed on the trial accounts such as a limit of 10 gold, no mail or auction house functionality, limited communication use, and no guild membership. However, this modifies the 14 day trial into a trial that more casual players can partake in fully to see if they would like to play the game more regularly. Additionally, it also gives new players a chance to try out a bunch of different class and race combinations and not start paying for the game until they find the best combinations for them. After all, not everybody can be as lucky as me and pick a true favorite class on the first try.

The most interesting part of this move is that this could mean a significant way to enjoy the game (twinking or playing battlegrounds at level 19) is totally free to play now. Of course most of the accepted twinking gear is hard to obtain without boatloads of money, which these accounts have no access to. Nonetheless, there have to be some happy players out there willing to make this happen somehow with the restrictions.

So what are the prospects in this bracket for those who like to heal? Perhaps it will take some time to catch on as former players not willing to pay for the game come back, but the level 19 queues should once again become a hot place to be. Although low level characters can struggle with mana management in instances and battlegrounds, this is a good challenge to have in the player-vs-player context. Effectively unlimited mana pools at that level does not teach players how to play the game well. And after all, Blizzard wants to encourage even some of these twink players to pay up for full time accounts and continue their WoW experience. The bottom line is that this free to play bracket will mean faster queue times for healers in the brackets, whether twinking or just passing through.

After the Cataclysm era is over and a new expansion comes out, it will not surprise me if classic WoW up to level 60 goes free to play. Blizzard is quite likely moving to the free to play model with Titan and needs to train their MMO profit-making skills using their current MMO before the company profits are reliant on micro-transactions. Furthermore, while some players will take advantage of a free game, others will appreciate the amount of content put out there for free and will be more willing to take Blizzard up on its $15 per month system on the basis of how much free content was provided. Of course, Titan may not be free to play, in which case this is just an attempt to shore up Warcraft's subscriber numbers.

Patch 4.2 has dropped and a new set of raid bosses is ready to be figured out. If you have any thoughts on how healing is going in the Tier 12 raids, please send them over to the blog e-mail and I may collect these comments for next time. Until then, happy trails in Azeroth.

Call To Arms: Will This Ever Benefit Healers?

2011-04-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

An interesting development tonight was enough to bring me out of hiding right away again! Blizzard has finally announced an attempt to fix the ridiculously long DPS queues in heroic dungeons at maximum level. Playing nothing but healers, I personally never have a queue of more than 12-13 minutes, but some DPS I know have reported waiting up to 45-50 minutes or worse. And they also suffer from rage-quitting tanks that make them drop group and wait for a long time once more. Just when it seemed like this was just the way it was going to be, Patch 4.1 will now include a new feature called Call to Arms Tanks and Healers. Here's the important part of the announcement:

In patch 4.1 we'll be introducing Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms, a new system intended to lower queue times. Call to Arms will automatically detect which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.

Any time the Dungeon Finder queue is longer than a few minutes for level-85 Heroics, the Call to Arms system kicks in and determines which role is the least represented. In the case of tanking being the least represented role, the "Call to Arms: Tanks" icon will display in the Dungeon Finder UI menu where class roles are selected, and will also display on the UI when the queue pops and you are selected to enter a dungeon. Regardless of your role, you'll always be able to see which role currently has been Called to Arms, if any.

Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you'll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include companions like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister's Terrace, and Deathcharger's Reins from Stratholme.

Did you see that...rare mounts only available from dungeons will now rarely drop when your role is needed in the Looking For Group queues! The gold and gems and such are nice, but the cross-faction pets and the rare dungeon mounts are the real story here. Blizzard has found something that is not terribly easy or even possible to get, and something that DPS players will not cry too much foul on missing out on. But the real question is, as much as Blizzard says this applies to healers and tanks, will this ever pop for healers on your realm?

In the entire lifetime of the Looking For Group system (now pushing 2 years old), I have received an instant queue 3 times. The wait sometimes is relatively short and lasts 2-4 minutes, but there are always fewer tanks in the queue. Will that change with extra benefits offered potentially to both healers and tanks? I highly doubt it. The sheer fact of the matter is that playing a tank is a huge responsibility and takes a lot of skill. Jumping into tanking at the heroics level is not a recipe for success and even these rewards may not be enough if other players are not patient and courteous with new tanks. Not to completely sell into the internet anonymity jerk theory, but patience is a virtue lacking in LFG and that will not change, thereby running more potential tanks away. At the same time more healer hybrids will queue up as well and will still outnumber tanks. If there were 2 healer slots in a group to every tank, this Call to Arms may work for healers. But on most realms, expect this to be as empty a promise for healers as it is for DPS. Cross your fingers folks, let's hope this works for the DPS sake.

Here's a sinister thought: will this make the LFG system even worse than before because of a high influx of poor tanks and healers? It's common knowledge in Cataclysm that success in LFG is far less certain than just putting together a group in trade chat or in your guild. Bad tanks and healers will likely become better with practice, but the problem of low quality groups may be exacerbated by this change as an unintended side effect. Once again, healers keep your fingers crossed.

Congratulations tank classes on your new bounty. Perhaps someday it will be shared with the other type of group members taking on added responsibility in a dungeon run.

Hiatus, or how I learned to cheat on wow

2011-04-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, and my apologies to all my followers on the lengthy delay between posting. However, anybody who has followed this blog for a long time knows this happens from time to time as life gets busy and wow and/or wow blogging goes to the background. There has actually been a fair bit of news and patch notes regarding big news for healers in the past month, but today I just want to say hello and let everyone know what's going on.

Three things other than the birth of daughter number two have contributed to my lack of playing time in world of warcraft and therefore my blogging about world of warcraft. The first thing is...well it's kind of hard to do this to you Blizzard...but I've been cheating on you.

Yes indeed, I've finally decided to use my Playstation 3 for something other than sports games and music rhythm games! Literally the only game I owned for PS3 in the first 2 years outside those categories was Lost Via Domus. That game S-U-C-K-S. I finished it, but it was terrible like many TV and movie games. I decided to make the console more than a blu-ray player and bought a couple games of the year in Little Big Planet, which I play with Kelley, and Bioshock 2, which I play late at night after the two year old heads to bed. First person shooters have not been my thing outside of an obsession with Goldeneye and then Halo 1 and 2, but Bioshock 2 has really captured me in the first few levels. The story is compelling and I certainly want to save all the little girls I can find in the underwater Atlantis-esque environment. The game is a bit dark like most modern FPS, but that does not dissuade me as I continue to shoot my way to victory. That and the platforming in Little Big Planet have been a nice change of pace.

Furthermore, my time for raiding has been pretty much cut to nil thanks to work busyness (hooray to being an attorney at a busy law firm, but I've got excellent job security so I'll take it) and taking care of the kids when I can. Raiding is the only way Ekaterinae can really progress, as she's grabbed one or two pieces of gear in her one-off runs of Blackwing Depths and Bastion of Twilight to go with heroic and reputation epics in all other slots. I'm geared enough to raid when I have the time, which is exactly where I want the main character to be. I also made it through Vashjir questing and am mostly through Deepholm, so the Cataclysm loremaster achievement will be done eventually on her.

However, if I want to quest sometimes I've been going back to the three leveling characters to make it more meaningful than just experiencing all the content Blizzard has to offer. The shaman blitzed to nearly level 40 as a result of these urges and dual wielding is some fun. The druid (Horde main) also dinged 83 this week and is beginning to be my main focus to get her to 85 and have two good mains at 85. However, my time with Big Daddy inevitably cuts down on the leveling. Furthermore, this week I got some interesting news that further dampens my wow spirit for the moment. More on that later.

As many of you know from my linked blogs, I am a writer in all aspects of my life. I am a patent attorney by day, drafting legal arguments and patent applications to win the day for our clients. Then my favorite hobbies are sportswriting (mostly about college football) and gaming, including this blog about my number one gaming habit WoW. Well I have been sportswriting for a little independent website called Southern College Sports for 6 years and decided to test the waters of moving forward with this hobby to something a bit more serious. I was accepted on as a writer for Bleacher Report and received well over 3000 reads for a throw away article about March Madness. I am terribly excited about the possibilities and the editors I am working with there are giving me a lot of positive feedback for moving into a featured columnist role there. It's a start up the ladder of sportswriting, and so that has grabbed my attention despite college football being in the off season.

At the same time I approached B/R, I also decided to maybe change my sportswriting to a different hobby of game review writing. I have been following Gameshark.com for over a year thanks to knowing the editor in chief personally and given my writing itch, I want to try that type of critical writing out. So I sent in a writing sample to that editor and he also approved me to do some more work for Gameshark to see if I have what it takes to be a regular contributor there. All of a sudden, I went from one hobby at a non-serious website to two relatively serious hobby writing gigs. Both may not work out, but the possibilities for either is highly exciting. If you have any interest in following me on those websites, I would appreciate any feedback you have on either subject going forward.

The last and only time I linked this photograph in this blog, I was talking about how bittersweet it was when I got knighted as a long-term quality member of The Illuminati on the same night I found out about my grandfather's cancer, which quickly finished him. And just like that sad event, I have been hit with a double-whammy of two out of three of my close friends who brought me into wow leaving the game and letting their subscriptions lapse the first week of April, perhaps permanently. When I was brought into the game, all 5 of us on the daily e-mail string (former Magic players, blowing time on work breaks) were in Wrath of the Lich King at the same time. The closest of those friends leveled with me and it was a real bummer when he quickly got back out of the game. However, the other three friends had persisted for the 2.5 years I had played the game.

Now it will be down to two of us, and the other friend left The Illuminati ages ago for his own reasons. One of the primary reasons for me to log into WoW night after night (even if I was not actively playing) was to use it as a chat channel with all four of these guys, as the one who quit wow plays Starcraft 2. The guild friends I have made in AIE and in the Illuminati are great people and I value those friendships, but they are digital. I know none of them outside the context of the game or guild planning, and so it is just different. I re-upped my 6 month subscription in March so it's not like I'm ready to move on, but this troublesome development takes some of the joy and some of the reason I play this particular game away.

That being said, I understand that people come and go in this game and life moves on just like in real life. But just like our Magic playing days, it feels like a golden era in Azeroth for me has passed. It was a great 2.5 years, and I hope whatever our next hobby is, we can continue our close friendship among the five of us while also gaming together.

So that explains why I've been a bit more hesitant to say much around these parts, but I know I'll get this particular writing bug again and will be back in stride. It just may take a while. To end on a good note, I'd like to welcome Rawrcast back as hosts Stumpalina and Hafrot have obtained new jobs and are back to a steady podcasting schedule. Their first regular episode back showed they will not miss a beat as some of the jokes and interplay between spouses who play wow is spectacular. In a week where the Instance took their first week off since Dils and Turpster joined the crew, it was a welcome sight to see Rawrcast back in the weekly podcast rotation. Also big props to Scott Johnson for The Morning Stream, which is getting national and international attention as a great general morning show. Give it a listen if you have not already, and see how well you can do against the Stump a Trek Nerd questions!

Until next time, may your quivers be full of arrows and your bags be full of gold.

Cataclysm Reboots the 500 Pound Gorilla of MMORPGs

2011-03-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

A little something different today: a game review of Cataclysm. Back to regularly scheduled entries later this week.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has established the gold standard for the MMO market. However, with the first 60 levels of content becoming ancient by computer gaming and graphical standards, Blizzard decided to boldly revamp all of the old content in their third expansion: Cataclysm. But has World of Warcraft cemented continued dominance of the genre for another half decade, or has the magic been lost forever?

(As a brief editorial note, this review of Cataclysm is considering all aspects of the game live after Patch 4.0.6, the first major fix patch of the expansion. While the questing content is largely unchanged, the player-versus-player content and the dungeon content have significantly changed since launch.)

The backbone of every MMO is the questing and leveling experience, and the world of Azeroth has undergone radical changes. The visual quality of the old world has been brought up to a graphics level that is respectable for current computer games. The highlights of the graphical changes are the nearly-lifelike water effects and the cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, the hubs for the Alliance and Horde factions in this expansion. The old world leveling zones have also been brought up to date and made truly three-dimensional with the new ability to fly through these zones. On the whole, Cataclysm is graphically appealing enough to add more life to this old game.

The old world zones have also changed dramatically in many places with the changing storylines. For questing, every quest hub has 2-4 quests and then sends you immediately to the next hub, and then the process repeats ad nauseam. While this structure removes some of the frustration with running out of things to do and not knowing where to go next, the game feels a bit more like a moving walkway now than a place to explore. This will certainly help hasten the ridiculously long grind to endgame at level 85, but perhaps at the cost of the spirit of exploring and questing on your own. The good news is that the questing is completely different in these zones from the pre-Cataclysm versions of these zones, so even long time or returning players will find the leveling experience refreshed and new.

The truly new content for leveling from level 80 to level 85 resides in five new zones. Three of these zones stand out as dramatically different from what has been seen before in World of Warcraft. One of the first new zones is Vash’jir, a completely underwater zone that displays the improved underwater mechanics in the game. While the zone is a bit longer than it needs to be, Vash’jir is exciting because it forces players to be aware of everything in three dimensions rather than two. Although it does become easy to forget that everything is underwater at times, this zone stands out as the best Cataclysm has to offer.

The next leveling zone is Deepholm, which has an otherworldly and primal feel to it. The storyline of fixing a world pillar in another world to prevent Azeroth from falling through the maelstrom in the middle of the world map is compelling enough to follow all the way through.

The final new zone that stands out is Uldum, which includes a ton of cut scenes and Indiana Jones parody. In that regard, Uldum does feel a bit like a major motion picture, but the gaffe is on Blizzard by the end of the zone as the parody becomes overdone and tedious. In sum, the new leveling zones each tell great stories and are developed well, despite the feeling once again that characters are on a moving walkway with no real option to do things out of order.

Two new races join the mix in this expansion: Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance. The two original races that did not have their own starting leveling zones (Trolls and Gnomes) now also have new starting zones. Although each of these starting zones was terribly overcrowded in the first three months of the expansion, Blizzard has redesigned the respawn rate to correspond to active players in these zones. Thus, a lot of the waiting for respawned enemies has been removed from the game.

Each of the new starter zones tells a compelling story, but the highlight is certainly Gilneas, the worgen starting zone. Gilneas features a Victorian style and is always shrouded in fog and mist, which fits the storyline of a spreading werewolf curse well. Although the kingdom of Gilneas has long isolated itself from the problems of the rest of the world, the quests do a superb job of telling how the worgen curse spreads and why Gilneas is now rejoined with the Alliance. The “moving walkway” phenomenon of Cataclysm questing is still ever present, but it becomes acceptable in Gilneas where the quests are primarily telling a story.

In player-versus-player (PvP) content, Cataclysm offers two new battlegrounds and one outdoor battleground area with battles every two hours called Tol Barad. Despite recent changes to the mechanics of Tol Barad, the battleground is a design disaster. To capture Tol Barad and open up a number of daily quests and a single-boss raid, an attacking faction must capture three buildings simultaneously by having more live players in the area than the defending faction. The more imbalance in number of players, the faster a building is captured. However, even with some design adjustments this cat-and-mouse game is unfulfilling because it rewards numbers instead of good PvP combat. To avoid imbalances, the battleground is instanced to only allow in the same number of players from each faction, but this makes late-night or low-population server battles boring with fewer than ten people on each side.

Furthermore, World of Warcraft is always balanced around the latest raid content, and PvP class balance is clearly on the backburner for Blizzard. Thus, radical imbalances in PvP class playability still exist in a game six years old. The other two battlegrounds Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks are nice looking alternatives to previous battlegrounds, but the design is nothing new to World of Warcraft or any first-person shooter since Halo. As such, the PvP content of Cataclysm is perhaps the worst that has been seen over the six year lifespan of the game.

Finally, Cataclysm offers seven new 5-man dungeons, two revised old world 5-man dungeons, and three raids having a total of 13 bosses. The best of the 5-man content appears to be an instance in UIdum called Halls of Origination. Again, the Indiana Jones theme is persistent throughout the instance, but the dungeon offers eight very different bosses and a fast pace throughout. Similar to previous “Halls of” instances in World of Warcraft, the visual scenery in Halls of Origination is stunning if time is taken to admire the surroundings.

On the other side of the spectrum, Stonecore is an instance in Deepholm that offers nothing substantial beyond what is discovered while questing in that zone. Furthermore, the boss mechanics are designed poorly and have a tendency to not work as intended. For a company that does not release many things in an unpolished state, Stonecore is a surprising departure from the norm.

The raid content in this expansion will be split into two or three raids per major content patch, as opposed to having a single epic raid instance with 12-15 bosses. This configuration allows Blizzard to tell more varied stories in the raid instances and offers players the chance to easily move onto another raid if they become stuck on a certain boss. None of the particular boss fights stand out as anything not seen before in six years of content, but the raids are well tuned and beautifully designed. For those players who live for “the endgame,” Cataclysm will not disappoint.

On the whole, Blizzard has done a nice job breathing life back into a six year old game, both graphically and in design terms. However, Blizzard missed a golden opportunity to re-invent the wheel for fantasy-based MMORPGs. World of Warcraft is still in the old fantasy mode of cast a spell and wait for that spell to come off of a cool down, rinse and repeat. As such, the core game play is no different than what was originally offered to players six years ago. For players that enjoy that design or have never experienced it, Cataclysm is probably worth a play through. But for those who have stepped out of Azeroth before, this expansion promises true change, yet delivers lipstick on a pig. Or a 500 pound gorilla, depending on your perspective.

Grade: B-

Conflict of Interest?

2011-02-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

As anybody who has the ability to read the banner on this blog knows, my Horde side characters are members of the largest "guild" in the game: AIE. We have nine co-guilds with countless raid teams and countless officers and countless great people. But who is the man behind this community, the man who is the guild leader of every one of these co-guilds? That would be Randy Jordan a.k.a. RandyDeluxe on the Instance a.k.a. Maui. And because the hot tub Instance picture is too good to pass up, here he is in all his real life glory:

So our fearless guild leader has left the Instance as of two episodes ago because he is taking a dream job in the video game industry, and this creates a conflict of interest with his commentary on World of Warcraft on that podcast. This is what his family needs him to do and I applaud him for both finding a way into his dream job industry and putting family first. Also, as an attorney in my free time away from azeroth, I know all about conflict of interest. You just have to avoid them for the betterment of all involved.

But there was a major question looming in the air, and that was whether his role as a guild leader would also be a conflict of interest. Randy avoided dropping the name of his new employer, but the AIE community meeting last weekend dropped more than enough hints to indicate that Irvine might be where Randy was headed. And that would make the most sense, since he is already friends or acquaintances with many Blizzard employees and has worked with Blizzard on many issues that unexpectedly come up when you run a guild as large as AIE. Today it appears that the news is confirmed: Randy is a Blizzard employee.

So now the interesting conundrum all AIE guild members wondered about has come to pass. Will Randy still be able to lead the guild if it is publicly known he works for Blizzard? His characters in game will be badgered even more than they already are with whispers, and I don't know that this is a healthy situation for Blizzard. Thus, I can only speculate that one of our fine longterm officers will be appointed to take over in Randy's stead if this is indeed as big a conflict as it appears on paper. This is unfortunate as Randy is always fun to be around whether in green wall chat or in instances. And those roles might be taken away.

However, the guild will be fine, as it always is. We will just have a different voice of reason at the top to calm all the chicken littles down when something doesn't go our way like the guild cap. But that doesn't change the fact that this would be a transfer of leadership, something that is tough for every guild to undertake. I can't imagine what would happen to The Illuminati if Jeff (guild leader) left the game, but thankfully we are not dealing with that issue on Alliance side. However, with many AIE guild members fleeing to Rift, Eve, and other games and the change in the air with The Instance and the guild leadership, it's hard to avoid wondering if the golden era of AIE has passed us by.

At the end of the day, change is always hard. My law firm is considering moving from a building that was built 75 years ago and of which we are original tenants. Despite the long history and the sweetheart lease deal, there are so many problems with the water and the HVAC and being spread out over six floors that we have been considering other spaces to settle. It's kind of scary moving an office the size of ours, but if we do, I'm sure it will work out for the better. And who knows, maybe these changes to the best podcast in the community and one of the best guilds in the game will end up for the better as well. Dare to dream!

A Brief Moment of Glory Atop The World

2011-02-21T19:15:00.000-08:00

So it just happened that my first opportunity to run a heroic since the birth of my second daughter came this past weekend and I grabbed my favorite DK tank and mage DPS couple from the Illuminati along with one other guild member for a mostly guild run. As I pressed the queue button, I of course only had healer clicked by habit. The death knight picks tank, and the druid picks healer/tank. Oops. I asked the druid what they would prefer to do and they wanted to heal, so I swapped over to my shadow for my first heroic in DPS form. I warned the group that this was not my normal, but I've been soloing with shadow for a couple months and am confident that I can do fine without great hit cap gear. I'd never walk into a raid like this as shadow, but it's OK for a one-off guild run.

We ended up with Lost City and as the dungeon wore on, I realized that my DPS was roughly keeping up with or exceeding the mage in the group. This is unusual because this mage is a very good player on his main. I'm not pulling great DPS by any stretch of the imagination, but it is ranking a close second to a rogue and sometimes even more than the rogue. I couldn't figure it out because I was making silly mistakes like casting Mind Spike with damage over time spells active (which clears all DoT spells), and the gear was far form hit capped. Nevertheless, Ekaterinae to the top of the charts. And I'm not going to lie, it felt awesome.

Looking into this a bit further, it turns out that in the top 200 players in the world, the best DPS over the weekend was shadow priest. This is probably the first time since I started playing warcraft that a shadow priest was overpowered to the point of leading all DPS potential. Of course, this should not come as much of a surprise as shadow priests received three major buffs in Patch 4.0.6 without any corresponding nerfs. Mind Blast damage was increased by around 50%, which again establishes that spell as a primary nuke cast on cooldown. Mind Sear had damage increased by 15% and could now be channeled on friendly targets, which allows a shadow priest to actually AoE nuke all enemy mobs at once instead of all mobs not targeted by Mind Sear (a long overdue change to this spell). Shadow Orbs were also buffed about 16%, which affects most of the shadow priest's primary damage spells.

All this with no nerfs pushed shadow DPS to the top of the charts, and for once, I got to experience how broken it could be to be the top DPS class. With my gear and experience, I had no business beating two DPS only classes, one of which being played by a better geared and more experienced player. But of course priests are not supposed to be top of the DPS heap, so the hotfix nerf came down swiftly: a 10% reduction of the Shadow Power passive damage buff from 25% to 15%, which theorycrafters have calculated as an 8% damage loss overall. So the next time I walk into a DPS role in a heroic, overpowered will not be the order of the day. It was fun while it lasted, all ten days of it.

In other community news, the Instance podcast is entering a new era with Willy Gregory "Dils" from the AIE Podcast and Mark Turpin "Turpster" joining Scott Johnson. Their first episode was a good one, and I'm happy they kept the theme song opening even though all the segment bumpers have changed. That opening intro music is the best podcast opening music in the community. It looks like the future remains bright for the premiere wow podcast.

It looks like there will be opportunities for me to raid this weekend both nights, so hopefully I can get in to see at least one of Bastion of Twilight or Blackwing Descent. Both have more beatable bosses overall than Throne, so I'm happy this is our weekend off the Winds. Anyway, I hope to report back a bit more about the content of Cataclysm and the health of discipline healing post 4.0.6 next week. As always, leave questions or comments! Cheers.

Will Hotfix Bring Patience?

2011-02-17T20:42:00.000-08:00

If you have been a frequent visitor of the Looking For Group LFG system, then you may be familiar with the above image. Sure, normally little dead bird is smaller on your screen, but the 30 minute debuff is something that is very hard to ignore. Now that Blizzard has taken the big revision pen to Cataclysm and fixed everything for the time being, some minor hotfixes have trickled through to further correct issues remaining with the content currently available. Although one set of hotfixes this week dealt primarily with healer balance (discussed below), the more interesting change was for the LFG system. Here's the rundown:

1. Players who are outside a dungeon for more than a few minutes are now immediately able to be kicked.
2. If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon.
3. If three or more players group queue, it will require an additional vote for them to kick anyone they did not group queue with.
4. If a group queue of 4 players kicks the one person that they did not group queue with, they will each receive a more severe penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.
5. If someone initiates a vote kick for someone they group queued with, they will not incur a penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.

On the whole, Blizzard is hoping these changes will reduce the annoying behaviors that currently plague the LFG system. Although the biggest problems are encountered by DPS players that must wait 30-60 minutes per queue, healers also lose significant time on some servers re-queuing and waiting for tanks. There's nothing more annoying than what I currently call "the one wipe LFG tank." You know, the tank that is too good to wipe more than once with you because he can immediately find another group.

If you jump into a heroic LFG queue and are not ready to struggle a bit, you are missing the entire point of why Blizzard made this game challenging and fun. Although the challenge level is dropping significantly as players become more geared and dungeons receive their 4.0.6 fixes, heroics are still not at the facerolling point. Healers and DPS and tanks must do their jobs and do it reasonably well to pass through the 5-man content. And if there's one thing LFG players seem to lack...it's P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E.

So will these changes make a difference? Number two makes me worry a slight bit. Every once in a while, my real life will have an emergency within the first five minutes of starting a LFG group with a couple of guild members. Although in AIE I am usually with 4 other guild members, in The Illuminati that is simply not the case. So since I always heal, now I must feel even worse if real life kicks me out. Despite this minor and rare possible annoyance for me, this will possibly cut down on the drama king/queen "one wipe LFG tanks" and "one wipe LFG healers". However, in my experience, the best tanks always queue with their guild members and having a guild member makes them way more patient. So this new rule probably will not make much of a difference.

Numbers three and four are changes that are likely overdue. Nobody seems to know for sure the exact formula for the penalty inflicted that prevents you from chain kicking group members, but it is clearly increases with that behavior. I have only been kicked a couple of times since LFG entered the game over a year ago, but both times it was hugely annoying. The one time in Cataclysm it was when a group refused to use CC and just expected their rent a healer to be overgeared enough to heal through the damage. That's not how Cataclysm was designed, and so they probably kicked numerous healers that night. This needs to be nipped in the bud, and hopefully this will help.

Number one does not make much sense, as I believe that the wait time for a disconnected player is only 10 minutes already. So that change is pretty meaningless. As is the number five. I suppose in the scenario I laid out above I could get my guild mate to kick me out and nobody would be worse for wear. Although here's a paradox...if I get kicked in the first five minutes of the dungeon by a guild mate, do they automatically kick themselves too? Well at least there would be no penalty, except for a requeue. Which is probably a worse penalty than the kick initiation penalty. Go figure.

Pro tip: you need to have way more patience if you are running into that penalty.

For the healer changes, the Patch 4.0.6 changes did not quite do the trick so one week later, restoration shamans are getting a 25% bonus to healing effects from Purification instead of 10%. Meanwhile, discipline priests were shield spamming too much with the better Power Word Shield and so the mana cost is up nearly 40%. Kudos to healing shamans as this extra buff should bring them back in line with the other three healing classes. It is also comforting to know that Blizzard wants all four healing classes to be truly viable. I also think they are making interesting changes which will keep priest heads spinning as we try to catch up with whether we should be casting PWS, Renew, or Heal to any great extent. So far, I believe after Patch 4.0.6 Blizzard has been incredibly fair to the healing classes, if nothing else.

-------------------------------------------

Sorry for my delay, but I have good reason. A deer came into the picture and decided that my car is not going to commute me to work anymore.

So car shopping the week before our second baby arrived, and then my recent sleep deprived state while trying to stay caught up at work. Yeah real life. But I hope to see some more questions from the readers and I will get back on the writing horse now that I'm in game more. Well at least fishing with baby on board if nothing else! Cheers!

And here's my beautiful daughters...woot!

Reader Question: What Should I Play?

2011-01-27T20:01:00.000-08:00

An entry a few days ago was linked by both Righteous Orbs and Wow Insider, so thanks to both of those sources for some new eyes. However, the more interesting thing that happened was a handful of e-mails and questions from those readers. Thanks for those, and I plan on answering some of the more interesting questions posted in comments on those websites and/or sent via e-mail. Like Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs, give me suggestions, wind em up, and watch the words roll out on this pink platform.

Today's question comes from Darkdust on the Wow Insider comment board. Darkdust asks:

I like healing quite a bit, but I've focused primarily on priest healing (both discipline and holy). I'm uncertain whether I'd like druid or paladin healing; can anyone point me to a good comparison of how each healing class / spec "feels"? I can read up on the technical differences, of course, but that's significantly different.

Well there is one problem with this question, and that is that it is impossible to answer without looking at the technical differences. After all, the technical differences define how the class plays and how the class feels. But hopefully I can get you on the right track.

So if you've played priest of both healing varieties, the healing world has completely been open to you. With two full healing talent trees and more healing spells than Blizzard knows how to make useful, you have full utility to be a raid healer, a tank healer, a hybrid healer/DPS, or a PvP content master. Nobody is a master of each of these roles, and I am certain there is some role you enjoy more than any other. The other three healing classes are set up to succeed, but perhaps more clearly in one or two of these roles rather than all four. These are the limits we play with when there is only one healing talent tree in a class.

As a baseline, the priest class has 18 total healing spells available, of which 8 are single target heals or absorbs (Flash Heal, Power Word Shield, Heal, Holy Word Serenity, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Desperate Prayer, Smite with Atonement talent), 1 is a heal over time spell (Renew), 7 are area of effect healing spells (Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, Prayer of Mending, Divine Hymn, Lightwell, Circle of Healing, Power Word Barrier), and 2 defensive cooldowns (Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit). So the one thing that priest healers lack is a diversity of options for heal over time spells. Nonetheless, some talents provide a heal over time effect addition to some of the other priest spells, so a small added amount away from these baseline spells is there. It remains the one true non-focus of priest healers though. Absorb spells act similarly to heal over time spells though, so there is that aspect to consider as well.

Turning to the druid, this class jokingly offers you an option to play the best four classes in wow, all rolled into one character. If you are choosing a main alt character, you really cannot go wrong with a druid because all four roles (tank in bear form, ranged DPS in moonkin form, melee DPS in cat form, and healing in caster/tree form). So if you want to have a character that can always do something different including healing, then this is probably the best choice for you although paladin comes a close second. Druids have 9 total healing spells available, of which 3.5 are single target heals (Healing Touch, half of Regrowth, Nourish, Swiftmend), 2.5 are heal over time spells (Rejuvenation, half of Regrowth, Lifebloom), 2 are area of effect healing spells (Tranquility, Wild Growth), and 1 defensive cooldown (Rebirth battle resurrection).

Druids have only half the tools that priests have, but it certainly does not feel that way when you play a restoration druid. The restoration druid typically builds up one or more heal over time spells on targets that will take damage and then all the talents and spells like Nourish and Swiftmend play off the heal over time spells. Instead of reactive, you generally stay much more proactive in healing. Thus, if you enjoy the shield capabilities maximized by discipline priests, then this healing style will definitely appeal to you. Furthermore, druid healers are ridiculously resilient and hard to kill in PvP content, so if that is your preference than this is perhaps an even better class than priest. Druids are also well suited to raid heal because the heal over time spells can be spread around and the druid also has excellent group healing spells. Tank healing is possible but not preferable with this class compared to how other classes are built in the raiding context. However, don't let anyone stop you from being a tank healing druid if that is your dream. But we all have limited playtime, so druid is probably the best choice for raid healers and PvP fanatics.

Next up let's consider the shaman. Shaman has both melee and ranged DPS offspec, so there's a bit more flexibility than priest but less than paladin and druid. On the healing front, shamans have 8 total healing spells available, of which 2 are single target heals (Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave), 2.5 are heal over time spells (Healing Stream Totem, Riptide, Earth Shield), 2.5 are area of effect healing spells (Healing Stream Totem, Chain Heal, Healing Rain), and 1 defensive cooldown (Reincarnation self-resurrection).

The shaman brings a lot of utility to a party even with other classes getting Heroism equivalents in Cataclysm. The shaman is more than just a buff class, but the use of various totems can really add a lot of utility even as a healer. However, for straight healing abilities, the shaman has a couple fewer options than the druid. Plus the class plays completely differently, as the best shaman healing spells are quick one-time heals instead of the heal-over-time build up and weaving style with druids. Shamans are also generally good raid healers thanks to the multiple area of effect abilities, but they can really shine in the hybrid DPS/healer role thanks to the two strong DPS talent trees to accompany the restoration talents. If either of those roles appeals to you, then shaman will be a good style fit. Note that playing a shaman is probably the second hardest class to get the hang of behind priest, as I've found most people to think druid healing is easier to learn than either.

Finally, there is the paladin. Paladin is probably the easiest or most forgiving class to learn in the game, and provides many options at the end of the leveling curve. Paladins, like druids, can tank, DPS, or heal. Paladin healing was too simple in the past, but Cataclysm has brought more diversity for the healers. Paladins have 12 total healing spells available, of which 5 are single target heals (Word of Glory, Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Light, Holy Shock), 0.5 are heal over time spells (Holy Radiance), 0.5 are area of effect healing spells (Holy Radiance), and 6 are defensive cooldowns (Lay on Hands, Hand of Protection, Divine Protection, Divine Shield, Hand of Sacrifice, Guardian of Ancient Kings).

As over half of these abilities are defensive cooldowns, a paladin normally only has the plurality of single target healing spells to rely on. Holy Radiance adds a nice second dimension to the healing, as Paladins were really limited to tank healing before. However, paladins are still the kings of single target focused healing, more so than any other healing class. If you enjoy being a tank healer, this is definitely the class for you. With Holy Shock, Paladins can be respectable hybrid DPS/healers, and of course paladins are decent at PvP content as well. All things considered, paladin could be the choice for you if you are looking for the polar opposite playstyle from priests. Paladins are simple and straightforward, but that can be a refreshing change of pace from the hectic priest lifestyle.

So in summary, like a good lawyer, the answer to your question Darkdustis "it depends." When you move from a priest to some other healing class, you will sacrifice the do-it-all mentality of the priest class. However, you may become more proficient in one or two fields than being a jack of all trades, so the trade-off is certainly worth it. No matter where you end up, I wish you the best of luck. Remember, you can always reroll!

Send more questions to the email address above, and see you next week.

Have You Broken The Obsession?

2011-01-19T19:34:00.000-08:00

Monday I took a look at crowd control, which is building block number one to learn or relearn as a healer or anyone else wanting success in Cataclysm content. For those of us who healed in Wrath or even before, the whole "new" concept of triage healing is perhaps more than a little different than what we are used to. After all, full green bars are good. Full green bars is what everyone expects...that's what we need to achieve as healers because that's what we always do. Top everyone off, even the DPS standing in the fire and the tank who did not use his cooldown. No matter, back to green...

STOP!

This obsession with full green bars must be broken quickly or else you and the poor people you heal for will suffer through countless wipes. The second fastest way to run out of mana on every fight other than the lack of crowd control is overhealing. Every single point of healing that is wasted when a player is at full health is a point of healing that will not be available later in the fight. When heroics are overgeared, perhaps you can go back to obsessing over full green bars. But for the time being, group success depends on breaking this obsession spawned from Wrath and years of overhealing with no real consequence.

The problem is that overhealing and seeing green bars is like a soothing drug after all this time, a shot of nicotine or whatever other drug does the trick. It lures you back in, inciting you to waste your mana on unnecessary heals early in a fight. But you just have to accept that 50-60% or even lower is fine, as long as the players are stable and not at risk of dying based on a random boss or mob ability. Like with crowd control and marking mobs, once again knowing the fights is a great weapon so that you know exactly how much health is an appropriate baseline to keep players alive. This may seem a bit like Russian roulette, but that's the beauty of triage!

You also need to consider potential attacks or mob crowd control that may take your heals offline for a few seconds. Assuming that the tank will go critical even with a cooldown when this happens, is the rest of the group high enough to sustain themselves in the interim? Once again, instinct tells us to fill those bars full, but that is not correct. The full green bar obsession, it is a temptress as always.

Healing in Cataclysm may seem harder, but the truth is that it is only harder because it requires change. Some healers will adapt and continue to thrive in this new environment. Others will not and pass on to other roles (tanks please) or other games entirely. However, these ranks will be replaced by new healers who will probably find it easier because the built-in full green bar obsession is just not there. Oh, to be one of those fresh new healers without a routine to break! But the rest of us must grind on against the urge to fill those little green bars.

So remember, the limiting factor in many encounters is a healer's mana bar. Everything you and the other members of your party or raid do in a fight affects whether or not that mana bar will finish the fight at a comfortable 5-15% or a dead 0%. New healers especially need to know that it is not always you that caused the wipe. However, doing your best requires that triage healing is fully embraced. Adios green bar obsession, hello Cataclysm healing.

Crowd Control for Healers

2011-01-17T20:31:00.000-08:00

There's one primary difference in the LFG pick up groups that work well and those that do not: the use of crowd control! Blizzard has forced the content to be even harder than it was in Wrath so that all those abilities become useful again, including crowd control. Even in the normal dungeons, the amount of damage that rolls through a tank with two mobs active instead of four is a huge difference. This can prevent you from drinking every pull, which slows the group down and may cause impatience (rightly or wrongly). I recommended taking a PUG group by the reins when you queue up and find a tank or group not starting with the right crowd control. But most healers do not know how to do this without having been a tank first, and usually in pre-Wrath days. Information is power, and you need to know what to expect if you are calling the CC shots from the back.

The first thing to realize is that every class does indeed have some crowd control. However, some are far more useful than others because they last longer or apply to more types of enemy mobs. Hence, the crowd control abilities of hunters, mages, and rogues are highly valued and are a nice extra task for the DPS classes. Let's begin with the DPS classes, which generally have the best crowd control.

Mage - Polymorph - This ability turns a beast, critter, or humanoid into a small animal (sheep/turtle/etc.) for 50 seconds at maximum level. Generally used with the moon mob marker in most groups, although this assumption is subject to change.

Hunter - Freezing Trap - A freezing trap can trap any mob for 20 seconds, but requires the mob to run into the trap. Thus, the hunter must generally be experienced at positioning this trap in front of a mob that will run towards a pulling tank. The freezing trap can hit any type of mob, and a Survival Hunter has two talents (Trap Mastery and Resourcefulness) that extend the duration and reduce the cooldown of the trap to enable chain trapping indefinitely. Make sure to know whether a hunter can chain trap before assuming they can.

Rogue - Sap - At maximum level, sap can affect humanoids, beasts, demons, and dragonkin. Note that sap must be done prior to combat, so the rogue must lead with this ability. Sap lasts 60 seconds at maximum level.

Warlock - Fear, Banish, and Seduction - Although warlocks have three crowd control abilities, each of them are risky in instances or severely limited. Fear is repeatable to make a mob flee in fear infinitely, but in an instance this will generally lead to accidental pulling of more groups of mobs and a wipe. Hence, fear is very limited in application. However, the Glyph of Fear allows a Warlock to make a mob cower in place rather than run around wildly, which makes this one of the best CC abilities. Banish only applies to demons and elementals, but lasts for 30 seconds. Seduction is an ability only usable with the succubus pet, and it shuts down humanoids for 15 seconds. Enslave Demon is also another option against demons, which makes the mob a pet for up to 5 minutes. Thus, Warlocks bring a nice mix of different abilities to the table.

Turning to healer classes, each class has one primary ability but most are limited in duration or the classes of mobs it can affect. However, these abilities should not be forgotten when the four pure DPS classes are not available or need supplemental crowd control.

Paladin - Repentance - This ability is only available to Retribution paladins, so healadins will not have this ability (but you knew that already if you are reading this blog). However, Repentance lasts a minute and may be repeated indefinitely, and is applicable to humanoids, undead, dragonkin, giants, and demons. A great ability to have at hand if the Paladin is of the correct talent spec.

Shaman - Hex - Shamans of all varieties can turn mobs into frogs, much like the polymorph ability of mages. However, only humanoids and beasts may be hexed. The ability is repeatable, so the mob can be taken out of commission as long as possible.

Druid - Hibernate - This ability may only be used on beasts and dragonkin, and lasts for 40 seconds. While hibernate may break early on mobs of equal or higher level, so the druid will need to stay diligent. This means bear tanks typically cannot count on this ability as a useful CC, so this may be better from moonkin and healing druids.

Priest - Shackle Undead - As the name suggests, this is a repeatable ability that works only on undead mobs. This was great in Icecrown Citadel, and not so much thus far in Cataclysm. Priests also have Psychic Scream, an area of effect fear, but this is even more dangerous than a warlock fear.

Now we have the two remaining melee DPS and tank classes, neither of which have great crowd control abilities. But just in case it becomes relevant...

Death Knight - Chains of Ice - For 8 seconds, a mob's movement is impaired by 60%. The short duration of this ability makes it not all that useful unless a pack of mobs is being kited away. Death Grip could also be used to pull one mob off the tank, but incoming damage to a non-tank melee DPS death knight will usually be a more significant drain on healer mana than just leaving the mob on the tank.

Warrior - Stuns including Charge, Intercept, Piercing Howl, and Hamstring - None of these stuns lasts more than a few seconds, so these abilities are only moderately useful as damage-slowing crowd control. Better than nothing, but not by much.

So now that you know the types of crowd control, the only other thing you need to know is how to mark mobs. This is a very simple process now. Target the mob, right click on the portrait of the mob, and select the mark from the drop-down menu. Once you determine what 1-2 CC abilities will be used on each pull, the only other important point is to ensure that each player responsible for a CC spell knows which mark applies to their mob. For example, a star could mean rogue sap or hunter trap, but just clarify it at the beginning and then it is clear what you mean with the marks. Also be sure to use skull and X on the first and second kill targets, which should be the highest threats to your group survival after the mobs removed by crowd control. Studying the mobs of an instance will help you be a better leader and never be afraid to ask for advice from tanks and DPS who may know kill orders better from doing it before.

Tanks are not the only class that can lead and can mark, directing the group to success through crowd control. Before a train wreck LFG pick up group puts you back in the queue, take the reins and lead the group. The tank will probably appreciate it and things will go smoother for healing as long as the CC assignees do their jobs. Until next time, use the abilities Blizzard gave you!

Why Heal in Cataclysm?

2011-01-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

A great statement on healing from World of Matticus

When Cataclysm dropped a month ago, many players raced to 85 on their mains and prepared them for raiding. As is always the case with a new expansion, players saw this as a perfect opportunity to try something new or switch main characters. Now that raiding has begun in most guilds, it may be a little late to change a raiding character. However, this also makes it the perfect time to try something new (perhaps a worgen or goblin) and see if you like it. Most people try out every role in the game within the first year, but many players try healing and leave it forever. With the release of Cataclysm, there are five reasons why you should roll or respec into a healer:

1. The Game Will Never Get Stale - One complaint that seemed to fill the world of warcraft in the twelve months of Icecrown Citadel was how the game was so stale and the same thing every week. Even though there are three new raids and many new instances to try out with Cataclysm, even all this new content will grow stale with time. No matter how thrilling taking down a raid boss may be, after defeating Lord Marrowgar 12 times, the only thing left to do is make bad "Bone" jokes. This happens because the boss abilities do not change. The same strategy the tanks used to manage threat and the same rotations used to maximize DPS applies every week.

By contrast, healing an encounter 12 times will offer twelve unique challenges. No matter how good a raid team becomes, there will always be an off night or a fight that gives a certain player fits, which leads to unexpected damage to deal with. This changes every single week. A common misconception is that healing is more simple than anything else because it is green bar "whack-a-mole." Healing in Cataclysm is not a spam your best spell over and over endeavor like healing in Wrath was. Now the renewed concept of triage healing has forced healers to learn how to use all the tools supplied to them. Especially for priests and druids, choosing an appropriate amount of healing to spread around in a raid or a 5-man dungeon makes all the difference between passing the content and wiping over and over. And even as Lord Marrowgar becomes completely boring to everyone else, the fight changes every time and challenges a healer in new a different ways.

2. Healing is a Real Challenge - Perhaps all that needs to be said about healing in Cataclysm is that Ghostcrawler's first blog entry for the Blizzard community site was entitled "Why does Blizzard hate healers?" But the gauntlet has indeed been thrown and healers must rise to the new challenge. Thankfully the gear ramps up quickly in this expansion so regular dungeons and heroic dungeons that are nearly impossible at the early levels and right after hitting 85 become more and more manageable after only a small handful of instance runs. Mana will remain an issue throughout this expansion by design, but the 5-man content at least becomes manageable on mana once the other players learn to limit unnecessary incoming damage and the healer learns the art of triage instead of keeping everyone at full health all the time. That being said, healing is the hardest role currently in the game and that makes healing rewarding to those who like a challenge. As Ghostcrawler stated, god mode is only compelling for a short time. A challenging game makes you strive to be better and better.

3. Healing Provides Leadership Opportunities - Tanks have always been natural leaders of groups in Azeroth because tanks dictate how fast a group pulls new mobs and can set up success by marking groups of mobs. To succeed in Cataclysm, a leader must coordinate more than kill order. A leader must make sure cooldowns are managed, healers are keeping up and full of mana before each pull, and DPS with crowd control abilities are using them at every opportunity. Tanks are not the only players who can mark mobs! With healing becoming the glue of most groups in Cataclysm, this is a perfect opportunity to take leadership roles in raids and pick up groups! After all, the healer mana is really the factor that dictates the speed of moving through an instance now. A tank can pull with a healer at half full on mana, but that is a strategy doomed to fail more often than not. So if you are not a natural tank but want to be a leader, this respected role in the game is a perfect place to find your leadership niche.

4. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility - As I just alluded to, quality healers are highly respected and always have been. However, a poor healer is generally the first one to get blamed whether rightly or wrongly. Healing is a great challenge and provides a huge sense of reward and accomplishment for helping a group survive encounters. But with those great rewards come the high level of responsibility for doing the job well or making the entire group suffer. Gone are the days of multitasking while running heroics, at least until another tier of raid gear comes out to over-gear most heroics. Healing is high risk, high reward. For most players, that scenario is worth the effort.

5. Shorter LFG Queue Times - Leaving this for the end because as shown above, healing in pick up groups is kidn of like playing Russian Roulette with yourself right now. Most players in LFG are truly decent people and decent players, but it only takes one bad seed or one bad player who does not know how to move out of the green stuff on the floor to tear a group apart. Especially when gear is underpowered for the current content, jumping into LFG rather than running instances with fellow guild members can be a recipe for disaster. However, even though this can be a disaster, it is much better to wait 0-10 minutes to get into an instance rather than 20-45 minutes as a DPS. Even if the group ends up being full of fail, the wait for another group is not that bad. Perhaps it is just dumb luck, but LFG has placed me in a fair number of groups with a tank and 1-3 others from a single guild numerous times, and those runs are always the best because guild members are considerate in front of people they know. LFG is a tough place to play right now, but patience is much easier to have as a healer with a short queue time than as a DPS with another 45 minutes of mining or archaeology on the horizon.

This is the perfect time to roll up a new character and dive into all the renewed content from 1-60 and 80-85, and I highly recommend a class that can heal. Even if healing has not worked out in the past, this is the right time to step up to the challenge and become a healer that enjoys a different challenge every single fight but still pushes the group through to survive for another day and another raid. In the words of the television show my daughter is addicted to right now (Yo Gabba Gabba): Try It, You'll Like It!

Cheers!

--------------

On an unrelated note, I finally broke my drive to level two main characters equally. Once again, the priest class called me with her sweet siren's call. And just like that, Ekaterinae is level 85. While she works her way to heroics, the leveling focus is again on Arielae the druid. Also, leveling professions is now also on the docket. But the competition for mining nodes in Hyjal is so fierce. Anybody having any luck mining elsewhere?

Leveling A Priest 101

2011-01-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone, and I hope the new year looks as good to you as it does to me. In my travels away from keyboard, I put in some long hours last year and ended up with a sparkling good review and a hefty bump in pay. This will come in handy with daughter number two now being imminent (beginning of February). Looks like some daddy-daughter fishing time will be back in session next month. I might not even be 525 then, so we can ding Illustrious Grand Poobah fishing together.

Also before getting into today's topic, I'd like to share some podcasts I have found recently. As you know, I am a regular listener to The Instance and The AIE Podcast, but I've added Rawrcast, All Things Azeroth, Circle of Healing, and Matticast to my regular playlist. Rawrcast and All Things Azeroth are both similar to The Instance, but it's just a different set of voices and that can be refreshing in a new year. Rawrcast can be a bit NSFW with language, in case that bothers you. Of more concern to this blog are the other two podcasts. Circle of Healing is back again and is trying to be more regular, so I wish them the best in their endeavors to give healers something to listen to every week. And as if Matt Low did not have enough going on (including being a co-host of Circle of Healing), he has started his own podcast focused on healing and that should be very good seeing how he puts his heart into everything he does. If you have any other suggestions for a playlist, the time is open because college football season and sportswriting ended for me this weekend.

So let's say you want to play a priest. How should you level that priest? Although my leveling experience on Ekaterinae from 1-70 was at the end of The Burning Crusade, everyone has relearned the leveling game for Catclysm, even if it is to a lesser extent. Now there are even more options and tools to level your character including Looking For Group and Looking For Battleground. While many of these options are fair alternatives, I believe there is an optimal way to level from 1-85.

Once you hit level 10 and start getting talent points, you should definitely begin in the shadow tree for open world questing. The key to the first two tiers of talents 10-30 is to improve damage output, and the best options you have are in shadow with improved damage-over-time talents buffing both of your key DoT's. Then the real game begins at level 31 with the third tier of talents and dual spec. There are now two approaches you can take.

If you want to be the most efficient, you should choose shadow and discipline as your two talent trees. At level 31, shadow priests receive shadowform, which really ramps up shadow damage output and synergizes the rest of your talents in that tree all the way to Cataclysm content. Discipline will offer you the ability to quest in healer form for something different and also heal. The key to your Discipline leveling spec is the second-tier talents Evangelism and Archangel and (most importantly) two ranks of third-tier talent Atonement. Atonement allows you to heal a party member at the lowest health for as much as you smite an enemy for (half if it heals you), and smite happens to be the go-to DPS spell in discipline spec. Smite also activates Evangelism, which increases smite damage and healing further for each stack, leading to a big Archangel for empowered healing and a little mana regeneration when necessary. When solo questing, the Atonement healing after level 33 will normally be enough with Power Word Shield to make a priest invincible as long as the mana bar stays above 0%. While not quite as fast as shadow spells at killing mobs, the lessened downtime for not having to heal yourself does make a difference towards overall efficiency. Furthermore, discipline is a good low-level spec to heal dungeons thanks to the same Atonement talent (which usually heals the tank as you help the DPS burn down the enemies).

If you want to really hone in on your healing skills and don't prefer questing, then you should focus on holy and discipline as your two specs. For discipline, the same atonement-evangelism plan is in effect. For holy, there are very few early talents that can help your DPS (smite only), but you will power up your healing to extents even more than discipline in the 10-60 range. This will make you even more of a desirable healer if you choose to enter dungeons and battlegrounds a lot. One mid-level talent not to miss is Spirit of Redemption, which only activates on death but can be a group-saver in dungeons and a real force in battlegrounds where you are usually targeted first. Holy/discipline will allow you to hone the skills necessary to be an endgame healer or jack of all priest trades long before you get to endgame.

When you get to Cataclysm levels, I would recommend going back to Shadow/Discipline, which is what I am using now. The same strategy applies as above, although Mind Spike must be picked up immediately upon hitting level 81. With Mind Spike, the rotation changes completely for shadow and becomes even better as the damage-over-time spells are highly mana-inefficient from 80-85. After 81, the rotation becomes shield up, mind spike twice, cast mind blast as an instant spell and then turn to vampiric touch and mind flay, with Shadow Word Death as a finisher to gain back some mana via the Spirit Tap glyph. Shadow Orbs will also help the damage output. The only faux pas to avoid is leading with DoT's because Mind Spike clears all DoT's. That is not a good thing to do, especially when the DoT spells are inefficient to begin with!

I have been Discipline healing some 5-man normal instances during the leveling process as well, and Atonement is excellent because you can improve a group's DPS and therbey lessen the burden on your healing. Always switch back to Penance and Greater Heal when you need to, and keep shield and Prayer of Mending up as much as possible, but jumping from smite-spam and back (using archangel when jumping back to use healing spells to improve healing output) is a fun and different way to play that healing priests have not seen before.

Another tip for leveling: if the varied options already discussed are getting old, take up Archaeology and/or a gathering talent. Each of these professions gives experience for every node/flower picked or every fragment surveyed out of the ground. Especially in the cataclysm levels, a quick dose of archaeology is a good way to see some of the old world and have a chance at nifty rewards like the skeleton fossil pet. With 310% flight, the travel between dig sites is not so bad either. Perhaps not as efficient as leveling via questing (and each of these activities sucks up rested time), but a nice change of pace and a good way to play the lottery or make some major money in the process.

If you want to read further into my personal talent choices, check out Ekaterinae on the Armory. There's sure to be some mistakes, but that is all part of the learning process. Whatever spec or method of leveling you choose, enjoy the journey because even if endgame is "half the game", the first half of the game is worth enjoying.

POSTNOTE - If you wonder what the artwork above means, then stay tuned. The next Illuminati guild event is on the way and one of our more talented artists rendered Ekaterinae and some other guild members for the event. Very nifty work and I look forward to helping Soph bring the rest of the guild something truly entertaining in February (baby duty notwithstanding!)

Merry Christmas! (and Ghostcrawler)

2010-12-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your gatherings with friends and family are going well. Our two-year old has finally got the hang of opening presents after her birthday and so it was amazing to watch her tear open things and have trouble putting any new presents down to open more. The best present...a slinky. Amen to the simple pleasures in life. It's a shame many people miss out on the pure joy that the simple things can bring, especially in this season of excess. But to avoid sounding like the sermon I heard last night, I'll move on!

Ghostcrawler Greg Street is the Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft, and basically has become the public face of the developers over the past couple of years. Ghostcrawler can be abrasive at times, but he has a great sense of humor and brings a dose of good perspective to the community, which typically wonders at large what in the world the developers are thinking.

In order to open another avenue of regular communication with the players, the developers have decided to start blogging on battle.net. Of course, the first developer posting blog entries is Ghostcrawler. His first entry was about 4 weeks ago, and it focused directly on healers. More specifically, why healing is becoming more difficult in Cataclysm. Now that the entire playerbase is hitting 85 and trying out heroics and perhaps even starting raids, the calls for "why is this content so hard" have come out in full swing. Yet if these masses paid attention to this Ghostcrawler blog, they might have some insight on why Cataclysm is different.

In reality, Cataclysm is a return to the difficulty levels or play style of vanilla and The Burning Crusade:

As a blanket statement, healer mana wasn’t a big concern in Wrath of the Lich King. You could run out of mana sometimes, but it really didn’t affect your spell choice in the way it did prior to Lich King. We think resources should be important, though. A lot of gameplay in a wide variety of games comes down to managing a limited resource, whether it's Vespene Gas in an RTS, ammo in an FPS, or even time in a puzzle game. Managing your resources well makes you a better player.

Obviously the resource that all healers manage is mana, and there were absolutely no mana problems in Wrath of the Lich King. Ghostcrawler explains all the ways this damaged the game by taking half the possible dimensions out of decision-making for healers. When overhealing and mana resources are not a problem, why wouldn't you cast your fastest heals over and over, even if they are inefficient?

In other words, Cataclysm will bring back the concept that healing is a triage operation. You must save who you can with the right heal for the job because if you do not choose the right heal, you will eventually run out of mana and everyone will die. On occasion, this will mean you have to let someone die because they are beyond the point at which you can help them.

For example, think about the marks that Saurfang put on raid members when he reached 100 blood power in Icecrown Citadel. The marks put out a continuous stream of heavy damage on whomever received the mark. In Wrath mode, raids assigned a healer or two to do nothing but counteract the first couple of marks. While the healer would be fully occupied or nearly fully occupied keeping up with the mark damage, mana was not a problem so this was a way to circumvent the penalty for playing poorly (because marks and blood power were a result of not taking care of blood beasts, mainly). In a 25 man raid, I witnessed a raid survive five marks with only losing a couple of players. That should not happen.

So Ghostcrawler says resource management will make healers become better players. However, the tools like Saurfang's mark are there to also force other players to also play better or else they will doom their healers to failure. This is no different than the DPS and healers needing to help the tanks with threat by killing things in order and using crowd control. Everyone has more to do in instances now, but the biggest change is for healers.

But here's the thing: that's just how it should be! A good healer should be able to use all the tools and spells at their disposal like a grandmaster in chess or a conductor of a symphony. Anybody who has ever watched a really good tank manage all of their abilities understands just how challenging and how rewarding this game can be for healers. That's the game I want to play, and that's the magic I want to bring to my guilds and my raids.

Yes, the first few months of Cataclysm will be an adjustment period and will be difficult. However, the payoff for the players who enjoy healing will be so worth it, and the developers should be applauded for looking this problem right in the eye and fixing it the best way they know how.

------------

In December, Ghostcrawler has issued three more blog entries. Two have focused primarily on threat and tanking, and thus are not terribly pertinent here. However, Ghostcrawler does acknowledge that if a tank is using area of effect threat generation abilities, healing should not pull aggro on a non-focused mob. This is not rocket science though, it is what we expect as a baseline.

The other entry explains the design philosophy behind primary and secondary stats on gear. The game is currently designed so that every progressive piece of gear is designed to give increasing stamina and increasing strength/agility/intellect depending on your type of character. Those statistics are now clearly not intermixed with the secondary stats: haste, dodge, crit, mastery, hit, expertise, and spirit. The developers currently intend these secondary stats to be another way to customize your character, as haste, crit, and mastery all have very different effects if you stack them.

Hopefully this means that there will be multiple ways to have a properly talented and geared character, making socketing gems and choosing enchants fun as opposed to brainless based on what wow-popular and Elitist Jerks say. More on this later, but character customization may have a golden age in the future post-Cataclysm because the developers are thinking about mixing the primary stats into the customization and gearing mix. That would be exciting, and would make gearing nearly as fun as healing!

On that note, have a great Christmas and a happy holiday season.

The PPI Awards of 2010 - My Nominations

2010-12-21T14:53:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays everyone! I hope the Cataclysm is continuing to be fun for you and all your friends in the game. This is the time of year when Larisa over at Pink Pigtail Inn takes a look back with her readers and the blogosphere at large as to the biggest happenings in Azeroth in 2010. Without further ado, here is the Healer Trek vote for the 2010 PPI awards.

1. Best Raid Instance - Icecrown Citadel. Since the Cataclysm first tier raids are not eligible and only Ruby Sanctum came out during calendar year 2010, the only remaining choice is ICC. However, that should not take away from one of the better designed raid instances in the game's history. ICC was a nice capstone for the scourge storylines in WOTLK, and the Lich King fight at 80 was a real challenge even at the 30% buff. Defeating Lich King may be my most memorable raid experience ever in World of Warcraft because you really felt like you earned the Kingslayer title. The first bosses were nice and easy but the difficulty ramped up appropriately all the way to Arthas.

2. Least Successful Raid Instance - Ruby Sanctum. I did throw ToC back into the mix here, but Ruby Sanctum was largely played for a week or two and then completely ignored by the playerbase. Considering ICC had been out for 8 or 9 months and nothing else was going on in the game, this instance was a complete flop. I made one attempt on Halion with my guild, but even the mini-bosses were relatively glitchy and difficult to handle. People have no patience for that, especially when the gear is a waste of time late in an expansion. The raid should have given more unique rewards, and then it might have succeeded.

3. Most Longed For Instance - Icecrown Citadel. For over a year, all we saw were short cutscenes and one large Wrathgate story movie featuring Arthas, the whole reason we were in Northrend. Especially after the flop of Trial of the Crusader, an instance with lots of challenging trash and 13 diverse bosses on varying difficulty was just what the doctor ordered. The downfall of the Lich King was certainly the thing everyone looked forward to in 2010.

4. Silliest Gold Sink - Dual Spec (at 1000 gold). One of the worst feelings in the world is paying one price for a product or service and then seeing that same product go on sale shortly thereafter with no way for you to pay less. In 2010, I spent 4000 gold on dual spec for four characters. This happened because I like to heal, but leveling in healer spec is not always a good idea. However, right after buying it on my druid and my paladin, the price dropped to 100 gold. Then again to 10 gold! For those of us who got in at the going rate of 1000 gold, it was money well spent but a gold sink compared to how it is given away today.

5. Biggest Addition to the Game - Looking For Group (LFG) Interface. The runner-up in 2009 still resonates as just as important as Dual Spec. LFG has changed the way we play, allowing instant grouping across servers and basically killing the trade chat groupings PUG'gers had to deal with previously. There's still no replacement for a good guild-based instance group, but when in doubt or during down hours, LFG allows you to play the game you want to rather than be forced to do something else.

6. Best Quest - The Twilight Cultist Pre-Cataclysm Quest Chains. In the final days before The Shattering of Azeroth, the first taste of Cataclysm arrived in some quirky quest chains around Orgrimmar and Stormwind for about a month. In addition to random elemental attacks all over the world, you got to infiltrate the Twilight Cultists and try to undermine their efforts to bring on the end of the world and destruction of the major cities. It was a compelling and different take on telling a story, and a job well done by Blizzard for a one-time event.

7. Ugliest Tabard - Kirin Tor. Maybe purple is attractive to mages and other Dalaran lovers, but it just looks awful with most serious gear. By the time you got good gear, the last thing you wanted to do was cover it up with a big ugly eye. Yet that's just what the Kirin Tor offered. Better than Wyrmrest Accord, but not by much.

8. Favorite Non-Combat Pet - Pandaren Monk. While I personally would never pay real money for an in-game pet, the cash-based offerings have not been disappointing for those who want to give their characters something a bit more special. Perhaps my minor infatuation with Kung Fu Panda colors my judgment here, but seeing that little Pandaren bust out some kung fu kicks always makes me giggle and smile. And that is precisely what a non-combat pet is for!

9. Biggest Community Controversy - Real ID snafus. I really should say the guild cap, but that only affected my guild Alea Iacta Est and a small handful of others. A much bigges issue was the release of Real ID without control over "friends of friends list" and other features, followed by the near disaster that was requiring Real ID's to be used on the official blizzard forums. Real ID is a great tool, but like Facebook, you have to enable users to maintain their privacy and Blizzard just did not consider these items well enough, especially when it came to forum posts. Blizzard employees get hate mail and harassed by forum trolls, so why would they expect the rest of the world to subject themselves willingly to that harassment? Blizzard underestimated the potential downside to Real ID, and the community outcry was just enough to save the day.

10. Most Charming Blizzard Employee - Russell Brower. Sorry if that's misspelled, but Brower is the musical director for World of Warcraft and has done a great series of interviews on The Instance podcast in 2010. Brower always seems more than happy to share as much as he can about musical direction of the game and upcoming patches or expansions. It is great to see someone so proficient and so passionate working behind the scenes to make a critical aspect of our beloved game better. If you are playing Cataclysm without the music on, you are missing something great.

11. Best Podcast - The Instance. Randy and Scott hit 200 episodes a couple months ago, which is simply astounding for a world of warcraft podcast. This is usually the first WoW podcast people run into and it remains one of the best. Special kudos go to Randy Jordan, who must write two hours worth of good discussion content for the show every week or nearly every week. Passion for the game is what makes a podcast great and these two guys managed to keep passion going during a rough summer and autumn downtime for nearly everyone else in the community of bloggers and podcasters. The oldest podcast is the best for 2010.

12. Biggest Blog Facelift - Other than Matticus, who has already won, I cannot think of a real notable facelift of any of the bloggers I follow. I am certain some out there did better than what I did with modifying the header, so I'll leave this category to those who know better. Besides, when pink is available, why pick anything else. Honorable mention goes to arkslaw for an updated banner, even though he updates about as much as me which is to say not often!

13. Most memorable blog post - The PuG and the following entries from Gevlon. Just when it looked like Gevlon had blown all out of steam with his economic take on the world of warcraft, he decided to take on a new project with a bold announcement. Following his success in taking down Ulduar in blues, he thought up a PuG guild where his anti-socialist ways and super efficiency are valued above all else. If you want to see raiding treated like a business, this is a fascinating set of entries to follow that continues to this day. In fact, this is really the entry that spawned a whole new Gevlon.

14. Most Noticed Blogger Breakthrough - Lathere and Cassandri at HoTs and DoTs. Although the sisters from Australia had more entries in six months of 2009 than they had in all of 2010, their fun style has put them on many blogrolls of others I follow. That's as good an indication as any that this blog is having a major breakthrough. And how could you not appreciate the name?

15. Most Solid Content Provider - Matt Low both at World of Matticus and wow Insider. Matt Low is probably the face of the healing wow community, and although he does get some assistance from co-writers at WOM, he still manages to produce multiple quality articles every month. Plus, his perspective on raiding and leading a raiding guild provide valuable insights to other guild officers and even the regular guild members of other guilds who wonder what goes on behind the scenes.

16. Most Hugged Blogger - Tobold. One of the most solid content providers of the past two years has gotten into some battles but keeps blogging and coming back strong because his community supports him well. There's nobody that stands out like Phaelia and BRK from a year ago, but Tobold deserves all his hugs as well!

17. Hottest Blogosphere Topic - Real ID. Not only does it count as the most controversial happening in the community at large, but Real ID set the blogging community on fire more than any Cataclysmic announcements. Whether you were for or against the changes, everybody had something to say.

18. Best Writer - John Patricelli at Big Bear Butt. I'm not a tank, this I accept. Sure I find it fun on the Death Knight from time to time, but my attempt to tank with my druid have been fail fail fail. However, Patricelli explains things so well about tanking that even I feel like I can get it (as a healer). That's a great achievement, and he's entertaining to read to boot. Definitely my favorite read of 2010.

First Week of Cataclysm

2010-12-12T20:02:00.000-08:00

As I read the blogosphere and watch many of my guildmates race their main characters to 85 within 5 days of the expansion release, I wonder if the leveling curve was too short for this expansion. Don't get me wrong, I think it's perfectly fine to lower requirements for getting through non-current levels 1-80, but this expansion seems even faster than Wrath leveling was. In my own personal experience, I received about 20% of a level for doing daily SW cooking and fishing dailies, 50% more for a first run through Blackrock Caverns with all the quests that pop up, and another 30% quickly gained in maybe an hour of questing in Hyjal. I barely scratched the surface of Hyjal, with 20 quests out of 125+ done. Yet there I sit at 81 already. Of course Ekat is my loremaster and will come back, but she's off the Vash'jir to see the sea zone before she outlevels it...which just seems sad. Most people don't go back and see the quest content like I do, and that's so much game that Blizzard leaves on the table by enabling such quick leveling via dailies and 5-man instances.

Also, as much as I enjoy reading World of Matticus, I cannot fathom having a raiding guild where it is normal and expected for everyone to be 85 and ready to raid by the Monday following an expansion. Didn't you guys just clear ICC 7 days ago? I know I'm also jaded by the fact that here we sit on the 12th day of December and I have worked more than 8 hours 11 of those days. So even if I wanted to geek out for hours on end, it's just not going to happen right now. Kind of sucks, but my take on the expansion is to sort of take my time and enjoy it. Who knows, I might change my mind if I feel guilty about being the last raider at 85!

The conversion to AIE sub-guilds was incredibly seamless, as a side note. The officers did an amazing job getting programming ready to both make a green wall of chat across guilds automatic and division into subguilds also simple and easy. Two quick steps and you were in! I still eagerly await the opening for alts as do many others, as my main is still stuck in a AIE alt holidng guild until they open alt applications again. Looks like my subguild at the moment has about 200 fewer characters than The Illuminati, but that number will probably equalize with alts and raid teams moving around soon. Kudos once more to AIE.

My initial take on Hyjal is that the zone clearly has a story I want to follow. You've got a forest at risk and big bad elementals all over the place, but druids from the Earthen Ring to help you out and make you powerful enough to make a difference. So far, the mobs respawn a bit quickly but perhaps that will be tuned back down once people quickly move through the content. My ICC gear more than has Ekat easily surviving encounters in these zones, but I'm close to replacing gear already with greens in the initial quests. It will not be very long at all, and I replaced my cloak and my wand already in BRC, but at least those are blue items!

My really preliminary initial take on Vash'jir is that I wish there were an easier way to transport to and from the zone at least at the beginning like the hearthstone portal trick in SW to Hyjal. The underwater zone is not bad after the first quest thanks to the permanent swim speed boost and underwater breathing you get as a reward for the first quest. In fact, the three-dimensional nature of the zone is incredibly well managed nearby the initial ship you start at. Hopefully that design continues as I explore farther into the zone. And I know there's a seahorse on the way!

I do have to commend Blizzard on improving from their past two expansions for starter zones. Hellfire is hell on the eyes for as long as you spend there and the mobs are still so closely packed that it is difficult years later. No alternatives there. In Wrath the two zones were so similarly drab and alike at points that the choices were not compelling. At least Borean Tundra had a fair amount of variety in backgrounds, but the zone felt totally disjointed and the story of both zones was totally not interesting. Now we have two zones that grab you with a story right away and thanks to Vash'jir being underwater, they are so vastly different that you can thoroughly enjoy your options. So far, so good.

Blackrock Caverns was nothing special, although the fight with the lava flow in the center is a fun mechanic (stay in as long as you dare...). A solid instance but not one I'm jumping for joy about. We'll see how the next ones pan out.

so what did you do first in Cataclysm? I haven't even touched my old world alts or the goblin/worgen starting zones. So much to do, and in my case, so little time.

A Whole New World

2010-12-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

We are now just over two days away from the release date of World of Warcraft Cataclysm. Deathwing has been killing entire zones of characters and the world has been shattered. Indeed, this is a whole new world, at least except for Northrend. It is invigorating exploring zones that are nothing like what you remember. In order to explore a bit with purpose, I took Biancae around to up her mining skill to an appropriate level before heading to Outland. There are definitely things that will keep surprising me for a long time as these zones are nothing like they used to be. Of course there will be a lot of time spent in the new 80-85 zones over the next few weeks, but for now taking a swim across Thousand Needles and mining nodes well underneath the water is a highlight I won't soon forget.

I debated the issue with some friends, never got the chance to bring it up with some guild members, and finally came to the decision that it was stupid to not faction transfer a character I would gladly make my Horde main over paladin. Holy power is awesome, but for a healer nothing seems to beat Druid and Priest for varied gameplay (at least for me, although I know I will love paladin and shaman more at endgame). Plus this allows me to set up the uber-team of professions right away on both sides of the Horde-Alliance ledger and participate more fully with my AIE sub-guild and The Illuminati. I briefly thought about naming my main Ekaterin and making her a male troll, but the female troll hairstyles are too funny to pass up. So the button was pressed, Ariel went to sleep in Stormwind with bags full of bags (for Biancae and goblin bank alt to be), ore for jewelcrafting, and some northrend herbs just in case.

*She wakes up in a whole different place...the smells, the sounds, everything is unfamiliar. Her hair stands on end as she realizes she is surrounded by trolls, and as she grabs her staff to fight, she realizes that these hands are a much different shade than before. Instead of pink, the fingers are a shade of emerald green. And what are these tusks? It is at this point that Arielae realizes something life-changing has happened. At that point, a blood elf walks up and offers her a hand. She introduces herself as Biancae of Alea Iacta Est, and welcomes Arielae to the family. Perhaps things will not be so bad after all...*

So just like that, the AE Team has also undergone a dramatic change for the better. I know some of my guild mates in The Illuminati will not be happy to see me pull a level 80 out of the guild, but Ekat and Navar will be joined at endgame in a few months by Clara, and things will be about how they were before. Speaking of, I now have some guild business to take care of as Clara was kicked for inactivity a while back and Ariel will need to join Bianca after the new sub guilds are split up Sunday evening and Monday in AIE.

So what's left "for the Horde" going into cataclysm?
Main - Arielae, 80 druid, alchemy/herbalism/fishing/cooking/archaeology
Alt - Biancae, 54 paladin, jewelcrafting/mining

And "for the Alliance" in Cataclysm?

Main - Ekaterinae, 80 priest, enchanting/tailoring/fishing/cooking/archaeology
Alt - Clarissae, 31 shaman, alchemy/herbalism
Alt - Navarionae, 80 death knight, jewelcrafting/mining

So now I will hit the ground running for Garrosh and for Varian. It will be exciting to see all of the new content right away instead of waiting months or years or never seeing it at all. I look forward to building lots of guild rep with The Illuminati and the AIE subguild I get placed into. Now, I am officially ready for Cataclysm. Tick tick tick...

GeekyLeaks - Not Nearly As Compelling as WikiLeaks

2010-12-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

So Larisa found someone who called the leaked Blizzard document from this week a "Geeky Leak." Nice. But the internal memorandum for officers of Activision (in all likelihood) really only said three things of note. Absolutely none of them are a surprise to anyone who has followed either Blizzard or Activision for some period of time. Reviewing them in order of interest...

3. World of Warcraft will be released in Portugese - There is a budding market for video games and similar consumables in Brazil and surrounding countries, so why wouldn't a company get more of the action? If you view Activision as a company that cares about the bottom line more than anything else in the world, then this decision is a no-brainer. The game is at all time highs for subscriptions and the cash cow must grow to new markets to continue growing in the long term.

2. The next two WoW expansions are set for release in 1.5 year intervals from Cataclysm. Anybody who has followed Blizzard since the release of vanilla knows that they repeatedly say their goal is one expansion a year. While I think the quality would suffer in the face of the bottom line, the fact that the level cap only goes up 5 in Cataclysm is perhaps a sign that new expansions will be a little smaller on the whole and come in quicker intervals. One year is the goal, two years is where they are at, so of course 1.5 years is a reasonable goal if they are serious about getting this done. With Cataclysm revamping the game entirely, perhaps new continents and new revamped zones will not be necessary to enjoy the game for the next few years, which frees up development time.

1. The new MMO is slated for a late 2013 release. Again, this makes perfect sense coupled with the announcement that the next two expansions are supposed to be at 1.5 year intervals. WoW will likely be in decline no matter what Activision and Blizzard do after two more full expansions, so before the tide stems too much, better give the playerbase something better. Everything at Blizzard gets pushed back, so targeting late 2013 is really a signal that 2014 is the goal, allowing the fifth expansion to wow to have some "last hurrah" moments before a lot of the playerbase moves or splits time with the new intellectual property. WoW will not die, but it will not always pay the bills as well as it does. Activision again is all about the bottom line, so a new cash cow has to be made in a few years.

So all things told, there is absolutely nothing surprising about this leak other than it happened. As an attorney working in intellectual property every day, sometimes my livelihood depends on how good our NDA (non-disclosure agreements) are. Businesses can be gutted if patent protection is lost due to a leak, and so this violation of the Blizzard employee policies is not something I am happy to see. What if we learned something more shocking or important? Let's hope the loops close and the leaks stop.

I have the same opinion about WikiLeaks. While the people do have a right to know some things their government is doing, nobody needs to see internal e-mails and memos between friends and coworkers where people always tend to say things they never would publicly. It's the same in every work force, but when you are a representative of the United States government, your words can carry a lot of weight as far as radicals around the world are concerned. With instability in Korea reaching levels that are similar to the 1960's and China forcing its way into a top world power, these are uncomfortable times and such careless comments seeing the light of day may only pour fuel on a fire that is not necessary.

We are now t-minus 6 days until Cataclysm. Get ready, there's a real nasty dragon to slay!

A Thanksgiving Conundrum

2010-11-25T10:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (at least in America where it is celebrated this month)! I hope there is a turkey or ham and other feast items cooking up for all of you on this fine day, along with some football and family. This morning I've got a conundrum on my hands (see below), and despite taking a minor break from most things WoW, we are now two weeks away from the cataclysm content opening up in full glory. This week we received the shattering with all the old zone changes, and wow are Stormwind and Orgrimmar different (and beautiful). I have not even done much exploring outside of flying over Thousand Needles on my way to the revamped Ungoro Crater and the capital cities. There will be plenty of time to enjoy all the new zones though, so I'm not rushing through it.

So for a while I've been planning on either rerolling shaman as an Orc to have two healing classes on either side of the ledger. One main and one alt on each side for cataclysm, that was the goal. Right now I have the following setup including professions which are important:

Human Priest, 80, tailoring/enchanting/fishing/cooking (Alliance main)
Night Elf Druid, 80, alchemy/herbalism
Night Elf Death Knight, 80, jewelcrafting/mining
Blood Elf Paladin, 52, jewelcrafting/mining
Draenei Shaman, 31, herbalism/alchemy

I've tread this ground before, but my best moneymaking in the easiest way possible is bag making and transmuting/cutting gems. These markets never go away, nor would I expect them to. So my little slow money making group of three level 80's has made enough money for me to have a nice bankroll heading into cataclysm. Although there will not be a bag maker on the Horde side, I had always planned to stick with the self-sustaining JC/herbalism/mining/alchemy combo on both sides. I have really fallen in love with paladin as a leveling character, but I have started to heal some instances post 4.0.1 and all I have to say is, meh. I know there are a few more tools at endgame, but it definitely feels like I am a priest packing only greater heal and flash heal and a couple oh crap buttons with nothing else. No heal over time, no diversity, no real excitement. And while the character is a blast to play, I'm beginning to realize it is just not a main.

At the same time, I'd fallen completely in love with druid healing. The class does not have as many tools as priest, but it is very close. Plus the healing is just simply fun. I actually briefly considered making Ariel my main for cataclysm.

And then this morning it struck me straight in the face. Why be stuck with two classes that heal so similarly on both sides of the ledger? If I move the druid to be my Horde main instead of shaman, there are numerous benefits. For starters, I will have a character I am truly passionate about on both sides so I can really fire up my relationships with the guildies in both The Illuminati and AIE. I will also have a Horde 80 at cataclysm launch which means I can see all of the new 80-85 content on both factions, while I have still never even seen Outland or Northrend on the Horde side. And then there's the picture above. That's the troll druid flight form. How epic is that? Troll druids have awesome forms that outshine the night elf counterparts, although as a healer the night elf looks slightly better. Troll druids will be all over the place, but that's because they really are fresh and new and awesome. I would not want to be a tauren main, so this new race possibility is way more exciting than the orc shaman I was planning.

The downside is of course that I never want to spend actual cash on something I could avoid. However, I think the $30 investment will make cataclysm a way better game for me than it would be otherwise. I can then continue at my own pace with the paladin and shaman alts on their way to 85, and the teams will have the same professions I planned before. Plus Biancae can get a huge boost to her pursuit of jewelcrafting once Ariel comes over with bookoo bucks (probably would transfer with lots of ore, gems, and 15k gold). I am not rolling a worgen or goblin to be a main or a primary alt, so this could be how I maximize the value of cataclysm. What do you think?

Good, Bad, and Ugly: Halloween Edition

2010-10-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

Some changes were announced and implemented in the Cataclysm beta, and some late week happenings in both of my pursuits of relaxation highlight an interesting week in the life. As it turns out, it fits as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good - Although beta changes are never for sure, they at least show what direction the developers are willing to experiment or go back to. Battle resurrection (Rebirth) for druids was increased to a 30 minute cooldown without a reagent needed in Patch 4.0.1. This has been terribly annoying to those of us used to having it as an option every 1-2 attempts on a boss depending on fight length. It definitely stinks to have to wait 30 minutes if you pick an inopportune Lich King attempt to use the battle rez. Well now it looks like the cooldown is going back to 10 minutes. A welcome and good change for Ariel and all druids out there.

The Bad - And beta changes are not always nice. The only form of Chakra I have found terribly useful on Ekat is renew, which ups the HoT effects by 10% and can be extended another 3 seconds nearly indefinitely for every renew cast. While I have not played with the damage version too much, I am not impressed by the Prayer of Healing version, even for Holy. At best, it means you get one more Circle of Healing off in 30 seconds and improve your AoE heals slightly, but AoE spells are not supposed to be the huge focus in cataclysm fights. So I do not know what is meant by removing Chakra Renew, but it does not look good for Chakra.

The Ugly - Although I'm not connected in any meaningful way with either young man, a guild member of fellow blogger Aurdon committed suicide, leaving behind two kids and a wife. Meanwhile the college football world reels from the death of a Notre Dame student who was taping football practice up on a hydraulic scissor lift in high winds despite not thinking it was safe and not wanting to go up. Both of these stories rip my heart out as there's just no excuse for either death. A young man who was passionate about football and passionate about film is gone forever because someone made poor judgment and ordered him to go up on that lift in unsafe conditions. No matter how hard life gets, abandoning two little innocent children you brought into the world by taking your own life is completely senseless, no matter how hopeless you think you are. I know these words ring hollow to those actually dealing with depression and poor work environments, but there's just no reason for these deaths and the long weeks, months, years of suffering that the families will now go through. I have nothing to offer but my thoughts and prayers to both families, but remember when you are having fun raiding or watching college football this weekend...you have it a lot better than a lot of folks in the world and you shouldn't lose sight of that.

Whether you are partying, staying at home, or trick or treating this weekend, I hope it is a good one.

Kingslayer and Other Goodies

2010-10-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the infrequent posting friends, but what can you do? Life is busy and fun! The days are ticking down towards Cataclysm, and I've managed to get a lot of stuff done in game that I was hoping for. Navarionae got his What a Long Strange Trip achievement done for the 310% speed drake (now granting Master Flying). Doubt I'll do the grind on any other alliance characters, but I've had fun running Headless Horseman the past week on all characters. On the whole, the holidays have been redesigned to be a lot better than they used to be. The RNG nature of Hallow's End and especially Love is in The Air have been pretty much removed, and there really is no excuse to not have that faster flying speed if you put the time into it. Of course with that much time, you could farm 5000 gold, but that probably would not be as fun and varied as the time you spend on holidays.

The last entry I had was the breaking news of the guild size limit. Well Patch 4.0.1 dropped and the guild interface has not broken AIE. Thankfully that gives the guild a few weeks to get the addons and workarounds going. Alea Iacta Est, Taint, and Goon Squad are working together on addon software to allow guild alliance gchat basically so that when we split into 6, 10, however many sub guilds, we still have the community of gchat. This will be slightly more difficult to manage on the wow side, but the guild leadership took it in stride like everything else and are moving forward gracefully. AIE will not die in the face of Blizzard, and that's a good thing!

A while back I had a goal list for Cataclysm. Now that we have a solid release date a few weeks away, now is a good time to check in on how we are doing. Here's the bucket list...
1. Finish It's Been A Long Strange Journey on Navarionae (FINISHED)
2. Defeat Algalon the Observer in Ulduar-10 (not attempted)
3. Defeat Yogg-Saron in Ulduar-10 (failed twice more)
4. Defeat The Lich King in Icecrown Citadel (FINISHED - see below)
5. Reach level 80 on Arielae the druid (FINISHED)
6. Reach level 75 on Biancae the paladin (level 48)
7. Reach level 70 on Clarissae the shaman (level 30)
8. Buy epic flight on the final three leveling characters and have about 10k gold left (FINISHED, although Biancae needs it. 24k gold in bank)
9. Do the Linken Nintendo homage quest chain in case it goes away (FINISHED)
10. Classic Raider (FINISHED)

So all things considered, I have really hammered on that bucket list, especially recently. Last weekend, Ariel hit 80, Navar finished Long Strange Trip, and Ekat finished 3 raids for Classic Raider as well as Kingslayer. Probably the best weekend of wow I've ever played. I realize the more I play shamans, the more I feel "meh" about it. And I don't pay and spend all this time to feel meh. I love druid healing and priest healing and adore my leveling paladin, so I'll stick with them and Navar for the time being. Thus, other than downing the Ulduar final boss and getting Biancae into Northrend, my goals have been met. I hope your bucket list is progressing well too, but it's not too late!

Speaking of Arielae, like I said, she hit 80 last weekend. I already have ground up a 264 idol and 3 pieces of tier 10, plus the rest of the slots filled with ilvl 200 healing gear from heroics. It is incredibly easy to run through heroics for quick justice points now, and druid healing at 80 is incredibly fun. They almost have as many toys as priests, although only one talent spec to choose. I don't know how it will work with mana shortages, but right now, I keep 3 stacks of Lifebloom up on the tank and ticking, maybe add a Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth when the group needs healing. Healers are very overpowered right now, and mana is unlimited so it is hard to tell how things are going to work in Cataclysm. All that said, Arielae has come a long way in the week since hitting 80 and 2-healed Trial of the Crusader today. Therefore, if I have time to get her in ICC before Cataclysm, I might try it out just to see it.

And then there's Ekaterinae. On day one of last weekend's ICC raids, both of the guild groups got 11 bosses down, leaving Sunday night for Lich King only. The top raid team got him down quickly, but I was in group 2. Three of us had never seen the fight before and 3 more did not have their Kingslayer title. We started the night with a disc priest, a holy priest (me), and a resto shaman on heals. We found that we were really struggling with getting the val'kyr down in phase 2, so we swapped to a 6 DPS and 2 priest configuration. I stayed holy for a couple attempts and then I realized...having one disco priest waste all his mana bubbling everyone to negate infest was not good while I sat around with mana...and chakra was not doing much for us, as well as Guardian Spirit being useless pretty much. So I went disco to give us the double disco priest party. And all of a sudden, the attempts got into phase 3. Our closest attempt yet had us wipe at 14% (Lich King dies at 10%, for those not in the know) to Defile, the first time all night the "stupid" on the floor wiped us. We then had a couple of wipes in phase 1, showing our disgust with the near miss. Although we had reached the end of the raid period, we knew we could do it and we knew we were close. So we tried again...and sure enough, everything went right and we earned Kingslayer! I know I'm late to this proverbial party, but I'm happy to show off my own main sporting the Kingslayer title and defeating the last boss of an expansion before the new expansion!

Congrats to all of "team two" who persevered for over four hours and got Arthas down. This is either the first or second time we've had two Lich King kills as a guild in one week, so a momentous time. Cheers again to the guild and bring on Cataclysm!

Guild Achievement System Brings the Ban-Hammer on AIE

2010-10-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

As you will recall from my earlier series of articles on how to build a successful guild, I am a member of two very large guilds on Earthen Ring - US. My first guild on Alliance side is The Illuminati, which has 396 characters as of this writing. A very big guild, to be sure. But The Illuminati is dwarfed of course by Alea Iacta Est, my horde side guild better known as the largest guild in the game across all servers. AIE has 6792 characters right now and is a fantastic community of gamers who are a great resource for leveling, professions, grouping, and anything else you want to do in the game. There has always been some problems with AIE and the guild interface, which is only designed to handle 500 characters. Nevertheless, AIE got along just fine and nicely asked Blizzard to fix the problem if they could, despite it being very low priority.

However, a blue post yesterday shattered AIE and fellow mega-guilds like Taint, Goon Squad, and others. As of patch 4.0.1, which looks like it will be next Tuesday, all guilds will have a hard cap of 600 members. You will not be able to add more characters unless you are below 600. Which means AIE, as of next week, will not add another new character ever again. No alts, no rerolls, no friends and no players that have been removed for being inactive for a few months. Not one more player, unless AIE gets below 600 members, which will not happen until the servers stop running in all likelihood. So while AIE and other mega-guilds will not have their rosters fractured or culled through at this time, they also will stagnate from here on out in the existence of Azeroth.

While I disagree with blizzard on disallowing mega guilds after 6 years of setting a precedent with them in the game, the real problem is how they've brought this change about. There was literally no warning, and AIE is thrown into absolute chaos right now as the officers deal with another big challenge. I'm sure they will step up to the task and keep the guild moving on, but that's no excuse. The stated reason is actually that Blizzard cannot or does not want to handle the additional work of tracking individual statistics for more than 600 characters when figuring out guild achievements. Reading between the lines, they don't want to make people flock to mega-guilds who will earn guild achievements faster. Or if you take a pessimistic view, this is just a lame excuse for them to do something they have wanted to do for years, which is kill the mega guild.

However, AIE is one of the most active communities of WoW players because many of them listen to The Instance and talk actively about wow to their friends, more so probably than non-listeners of the major wow podcasts. While they throw around server load like it is a major concern, they are allowing AIE and other mega guilds to continue existing while fixing the guild interface and achievement problems for everyone, mega guilds included. So they fixed the problem, but undercut our guild at the same time. And make no mistake about it, there will be some kind of backlash, whether it be at Blizzcon where 300 AIE guildies or more are planning to attend, or in public forums such as blogs and podcasts. There will be public comment on this, even if it does only affect 0.1% of guilds (a misleading number because there are a massive amount of players in those guilds compared to the many bankalt guilds and personal guilds).

The real fix to the problem is good game design, and specifically good achievement and guild perk design. Guild perks from achievements should not be major draws for people to a guild, they should just be time savers and nifty other benefits that allow you to make the game slightly easier. Think of these like heirlooms, not talents that must be had by everyone. The achievements should be designed so all serious guilds including small raiding guilds can get all the available perks within a few months of cataclysm's release. Sure, the large guilds will get these perks a bit quicker, but that will not matter as long as the perks are not must-have items. The simple solution would have been to remove all mega guilds (defined as guilds with more than 600 members) from getting any realm-first type guild achievements. This levels the playing field for those with fewer members, and stops the world from becoming a bunch of mega guilds.

In reality, Blizzard has the power to make the guild interface work, as proven by their assertion that it will now work for guilds of all sizes post-cataclysm. However, this decision is a result of plain lazy achievement design. Remember, achievements were added to the game in WOTLK to give people something else to play for, something else to enjoy. Now achievements are being used as a pitiful excuse to slam some of the best communities in Azeroth. AIE has recently transcended warcraft and is moving into other games such as Eve online, and it's all because the community is supportive and great. Taint is a wonderful community of gay, lesbian, transgender players who support each other in game and out. And all the new players who come into cataclysm as wow 2.0 will never get to experience either of these communities. Now I understand there will be sister guilds and networked chat and people will prevail with workarounds, but it will not be the same as having one guild for all your members.

So lazy design in a relatively unimportant aspect of the game (achievements) now leads to the death of growth forever in AIE and other mega guilds. I was planning to move either my shaman or my druid over to Horde side with the paladin to join AIE and have two main healers on either side of the fence in cataclysm. However, I wanted to wait for the new race/class combos to make the switch and it is easier to level on the alliance side with the sugar momma Ekat and the sugar Daddy Navar paying for everything the alts need. However, if I cannot join AIE, I will not transfer that character. So that's $25 out of Blizzard's bank account. And who knows, my limited interaction with AIE may eventually drive me away from the game. I know I'm not alone in that sentiment, and this comes at a terrible time as people come back for cataclysm after the usual doldrums breaks and they will not have that community to return to. In fact, most people server transfer or faction transfer to get into AIe with their favorite characters, but that will not happen anymore. That's money out of the bank account for Blizzard. Plus, even guilds like The Illuminati will likely start putting limits on people to 1-2 characters maximum, which stinks when you want to participate in a lively guild chat.

In fact, that brings up another possibility. Perhaps Blizzard wants to limit guild size to limit the usefulness of guild chat access in the mobile auction house application. Perhaps they do not want to enable a facebook-or-AIM like instant messaging service for the mega guilds most likely to use the service for that purpose alone. Again, this looks like they are willing to give up moderate cash gains to remove the major users from loading a service and making them design servers and systems well.

Again, I do not want to paint this like they are making AIE shatter immediately. But this is a ridiculous and unwarranted decision that has been made for all the wrong reasons, and Blizzard is simply not being honest with their consumers. That's just not right. And while we may be a small percentage of the playerbase, hopefully we are vocal enough to let Blizzard know that this action is in poor judgment, much like the idea to force forum users to use only real ID's was. Life will go on, but this blindside tactic by Blizzard is shocking to those of us affected and will not be forgotten when we are making the all-important decision on whether the good outweighs the bad in this game to keep on paying that monthly subscription.

If I'm in a particularly grumpy mood, my apologies. My favorite guild member in my alliance guild quit the guild for reasons I'm none too thrilled with. I'm certainly not going to take it out on guild leadership because they are not slighting me at this point, but my sense of community in that guild has also been seriously shaken this week. So it's a real shame, but both my guilds are currently leaving me disappointed, despite all that is good about them. Until next time, don't let bad judgment happen to you, at least not without a fight.

Portals Gone!

2010-09-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

Wow.com is reporting tonight that in the beta, the portals in Dalaran and Shattrath have been removed and replaced by class trainers. While it will be nice to have a trainer readily available, this puts the focus back on the old world and may encourage you to actually set your hearthstone somewhere outside of Dalaran. While the portal system is much more convenient, I think I like this change as it will force new players to gain flightpaths instead of get a portal to Dalaran and have the world as their oyster. Plus it makes warlock summoning and mage portals relevant again outside of holidays.

Make no mistake about it, there will be plenty of gnashing of teeth over this change. But it is for the better, if you want the world to feel more like a world and not just a portal jump. I'm not asking for Eve-sized travel here, just more realistic travel. And yes, there will still be some portals to the blasted lands for Outland and to caverns of time from dalaran, which will enable crafty players to learn new portal jumping tricks of the trade.

Ariel has hit 75 this week and continues to grind some battlegrounds and some instances for the xp. It is fun to heal your way through the levels, although it can be a bit repetitive at certain levels. I forgot that Coren is level 78 and up only, which sucks when you are level 75 and have all the other brewfest achievements done! Ahh well.

The Great Emblem and Badge Trade-Up

2010-09-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

The huge announcement last week from Blizzard regarding cataclysm was that the currency tab will be cleaned up significantly in Patch 4.0. All of your badges from TBC and emblems from WOTLK, as wel as Stone Keepers Shards and battleground marks will be converted over to the new points system. Basically Emblems of Triumph and Frost will be converted at respcective ratios to the lower level of dungeon points, while all the PvP currency will be converted to the lower level of PvP gear points. Everything lower level will be converted to some amount of gold. While the payoff may not be significant in the long run, the change will finally remove all those confusing levels of emblems and useless badges and so on.

This move fits in with cataclysm's overall reboot theme where things are simplified and streamlined. We already knew that all points in the "lower tier" would already just be marked up to the new lower tier whenever a new raid instance or PvP patch comes out. No longer will you be forced to trade down points or emblems or badges from level to level just to make them useful. For instance, if you have all the triumph gear you can buy, then you have to trade down every emblem 3 times to get to heroism emblems, which can buy heirlooms and epic gems. That will no longer be the case, and thank goodness.

Two things interest me in this scenario. First, will the mounts from WOTLK that were buyable with emblems stay in the game at an oldschool vendor who sells things that now get converted to a point value? The 200 emblem mammoth is not worth the effort to some, but perhaps there will still be an opportunity to buy it later when you have used up all your point purchases and have extra left over.

Second, is it worth it to stock up on your emblems now to buy some heroic-level gear to start cataclysm off with (once you hit level 85)? I wonder if the point conversion rate will be so minimal that even the biggest stockpilers can only get 2-3 pieces of gear at the end of the day. While this means very little market value for people like me that are not bothering to start stockpiling emblems, I kind of hope this is the case. I do not think you should be able to sandbag resources such as emblems and frozen orbs and get unexpected benefits in a later expansion. Frozen Orb vendor was a nice change because it was within the same expansion. I doubt that I feel the same way about grinding your way to cataclysm gear now in WOTLK.

My apologies for not updating more regularly, but it is football season and you know I'm over on Southern College Sports doing my best. So I'm enjoying the doldrums and waitign eagerly for Cataclysm, just like you.

Doldrums and Rampant Speculation

2010-09-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

Well these are officially the summer doldrums of WoW. While there are still a ton of people around during weekend hours, you can tell we're in the end of an expansion with very little pugging overall and not much excitement. However, that may change as we have Harvest Festival coming up this week followed immediately by Brewfest. Not much longer and we'll be back into Hallow's End. Furthermore, the 4.0 events have begun with Operation Gnomeregan and the Saving Echo Isles world events beginning. I have not had a chance to do the Horde event but I will soon and then I will report back some thoughts. The short of it is...I hope this is not it. I want to have this story be entertaining and updated every 2-3 weeks leading up to release date.

Guild rosters have also been taking a hit, including my Alliance side guild. My real life work finally slowed down a bit but my hobbies ramp up a bit in the fall thanks to sportswriting (www.scstrek.blogspot.com and www.southerncollegesports.com if you happen to be interested). This weekend for instance I spent all day Saturday driving to and from and in South Bend for the Michigan-ND game. Then Sunday the family was out so I got a chance to play WoW for a few hours. It was a great little reload and I'm close to getting Old World Raider. The druid is at 74, the paladin at 45, and the shaman hit 30 yesterday. I'd like to say they would all still get into Northrend with the druid at 80 by cata launch, but it's likely not going to happen. Ahh well, seeing the old world revamped is not such a bad thing for players like me.

Speaking of Cataclysm release dates, the buzz in the community is huge now that the Gnomeregan and Echo Isles events went up with 4.0 on the public test realms. Everyone is speculating on whether these events mean we are a month away or a few months away. Blizzard certainly appears to be on track for the 2010 release they promised, and I can't help but imagine they will have the game out prior to Black Friday. In fact, their usual second or third week of November release seems to work well and that's when I think you will see the game. Should be some exciting times even if it comes out closer to Christmas, but I'd hate to see the families dealing with missing folks on that week!

Where's Jimmy?

Oh don't bother him, Cataclysm came out. :-)

But doesn't he want his Christmas gifts??

He said Santa ended the world and he's in heaven.

And so on. In other gaming news, our Pathfinder group finally made it into the crypt, which is really more of a tower, which is really more of a big number puzzle. I like number puzzles, but I believe the GM being a mathematician will have me outclassed on this one. Time to start begging for hints next month! It's so interesting playing an RPG after being only RP'ing in WoW for so long. And very little at that. It's too bad the game does not connote more of that feeling, but there's nothing like sitting at a table, even if it is a digital table, with a group of people and hammering out battles with imagination.

So that's what is going on in the game. AIE is growing as usual and I have to commend the guys on The Instance and the AIE Podcast, both of which have put out fantastic content during the doldrums. If you are not listening, you really should check them out. Every other WoW podcast I've ever heard pales in comparison to Scott and Randy, but maybe there are some recommendations of things I have not heard out there yet. You can never have too many podcasts!

Cataclysm - November 16, 2010.

Happy Second Anniversary to The Illuminati!

2010-08-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

Hello again everyone. Well it's that time of year again, when both my guilds celebrate their anniversaries with big events. The AIE crew did their Summer of Love week last week with tons of great events I may get into next time. On the Illuminati side, you may recall that I came up just short in the running for the officer position to run these events, but I threw in my thoughts and my hat with the wonderful person who did get the job, Soph. I could go into details about the planning, but needless to say Soph put a ton of work into her first event and our guild leader as well as two of us who volunteered to be commanders had many comments on her drafts and hopefully guided her correctly to improve the event.

Phase one of the event was a meeting in Shattrath where we sent pairs of two members off to a new server to level to 5, catch some fish or kill some creatures, and then turn in their gold winnings to Soph to buy a pet for her, when they could move on in teams of 4 back on our server to phase 2. Here's some kickoff pictures in Shatt.

Our unflappable leader and her commander, both in wedding dresses.

About half the group, maybe more of the 35 participants.

Phase 2 of the competition sent teams of 3-5 back and forth from commander to commander in various locations in Azeroth (Zangarmarsh, Elwynn Forest, and Ungoro Crater) with riddles to solve to go get items from low-level instance bosses in about 5 instances. Then the finish line was in Twilight Grove in Duskwood where our fearless leader had set herself up again. I drew the best location in Azeroth, the crystal cave in Ungoro...but probably the worst RP role for me, the war general commander. Get down maggot and give me 20! Anyway,...here's my view of most of the evening, and it is very pleasant.

Pretty colors...

And your friendly commander in the back.

So here are four of the riddles, see for yourself if you can figure them out! These are fantastic nuggets and all the credit goes to Soph on these, as the rest of us had nothing to do with them as far as I know. The idea was to gear up one of your toons for a big battle to come (level up, gear up, profit!)

QUEST 1
Flower Power:
A message from Soph:

I know this might come as a shock, but there is another with my name.
To her shop many do not flock in a land of the past near Festival Lane

Get your guildfrond a lily held-in-the-off-hand.
Similar to a Darkmoon bloom, but of a different brand.

Make sure not to let Arthas talk or back through the inn you will walk.
The instance you must not activate, do not hasten the plagued citizen's fates.
----------------------------------------------------------
QUEST 2
Neck Respect:

Provide yourself with an amulet that suites your mood
Are you lonely, compassionate, hungry, or is your scent just plain rude?

Find the troll that can help you with your Tikbalang and get any item that'll set you apart from the gang.
He claims his Amulets are "Amazing", but do pay attention to his phrasing.

Should you go to the upper city I will look upon you with pity.
------------------------------------------------------------------
QUEST 3
Robe Probe:

There is a Fanglord out there
With such beautiful blue hair.
His robes of deer hair
I wish he would share.

He dwells in a land near the shore
Of plants and water it is poor
go to the place where few have been
and get yourself some moccasin.

Find him where the caverns wail
take a wrong turn and you might fail.
---------------------------------------------------------
QUEST 4
Obscene Machine:

Though triathlons are all brawn I find physical activity to be quite a yawn.
Here is a mini-equation with just enough information.
Hope you aced all your courses, if not feel free to use outside sources!

A= the symbol for the 16th element of the periodic table
B= the opposite roll of greed
C= the 19th letter of the alphabet
D= Oruko Saki is his real name; Splinter's enemy

A=C

(A+B)'C + (D)=
Provide yourself with something Buzzworthy from him... it?

You'll discover this being where you'd find Van Cleef
Go get 'em and give 'em some grief.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

So then once a team found their way to Duskwood they had to locate Soph, who like I said was hanging out with the world dragon spawn point in Twilight Grove. Once everyone finished the quests we all gathered for a party and prizes. Thansk to all the generous donors of the guild once again for giving very valuable gifts for everyone to share!

It's like a hot tub time machine moonwell!

More hot tub fun while we waited for the grand finale.

Prizes and fireworks! What could be better?

Then once all the prizes were handed out for good costumes, good RP commanders (not me), good RP teams, and winning racers, it was time for our semiannual knighting ceremony. While the first two of these ceremonies took place in Feralas on the Twin Spires, we had a star-wars ending type setting with everyone lined up on opposite sides of the ramp up to the portal to the emerald dream. Then the officers stood up top amongst all the flares and called up our newest knights, also known as the grump club and the veteran members of the The Illuminati. Here are some pictures from some of the knighting ceremony, although the flares do make it hard to see a bit!

Congratulations to all our newest Knights. I did not vote on you guys, but I believe the decisions were all correct and warranted. And congratulations to Soph for having such a well-received first event. Now that the big hitter is done, Ekat has a little something up her sleeve pre-Cataclysm. More on that later, but needless to say, just because I'm not an officer doesn't mean it will stop me from running some fun stuff floating about in the old noggin. Stay tuned...

Or as a proper Illuminati "Trials of the Illuminated" participant would say in Ungoro Crater, /salute and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Team Update July 2010

2010-07-27T19:51:00.001-07:00

Well it has been some time since I did a team update, and I have managed a bit of playtime recently so some movement has occurred. The main Ekaterinae has one more weekly quest to go for her tier 10 shoulders, which will fully equip her in 251 and higher gear in every slot but wand. I actually missed the weekly this week so ahh well. Navarionae has continued gem cutting epics that Ariel transmutes and he has pushed the team over 20k gold. Although a big chunk of that is soon to be eaten because...

The Tree is in Northrend! Oh noes! I have healed probably 7 PUG Utgarde Keep thus far and I've seen everything from groups outright rude to healers to a Kingslayer tanking for a friend. I think I cast 4 heals that mattered the whole time. And by four I mean zero. Anyway, Ariel is grinding those instances and is mostly through 70 which means epic flight is coming soon and will perhaps cause some questing to be done too. However, I really like grinding one instance a day for xp.

Biancae has also been burning through rested time and has cleared most of STV out finally. She is working in Dustwallow for a bit longer although at level 43, she is really starting to think about Tanaris. So the horde main is moving on up and wow is retribution hard to die with. She's never out of mana to heal and she does a lot of damage. It's wonderful.

Clarissae is still parked in the late 20's. No movement there.

I also got to see Ruby Sanctum for 20 minutes last night. I thought the first mini boss was a nice challenge and I want to see the rest of it even though it seems the overall reaction is blah. That just might be the summertime, which is keeping me busy. Plus another business trip next week on top of Grand Prix Columbus (my one MTG tournament this year) and I won't be online much. However, check out my sports site (linked in the blogroll) for new college football articles starting up last week. Woot!

Do You Believe in Precognition?

2010-07-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

Precognition (from the Latin præ-, “prior to,” + cognitio, “acquiring knowledge”), also called future sight,[1] refers to perception that involves the acquisition of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information.

So a little non-wow entry today, although I will briefly report that Ariel has hit 69 and discovered what everyone probably goes through once. I had not discovered that when you dual spec at 40, your spells for the non-active spec DO NOT UPDATE when you train like normal. I had no clue but I always trained in Feral so instances seemed pretty hard but not out of the questions in TBC. Then my first forays into UK were failures and the second tank was nice enough to point out that my rejuv was not ticking for enough. So I check and sure enough, I'm 5 ranks behind schedule on Rejuvenation and even more/less ranks behind in every healing spell. This turned me from terrible into overpowered, so please note this when you dual spec early!

Now going back to the definition above, I'm a person who has beliefs and all but I've never really considered precognition seriously. But sometimes coincidence is so strong that you really have to wonder if sometimes you just get sent a message somehow. So last night I wake up in a cold sweat at 5 AM after a lengthy dream about losing my wallet and having my identity and my money stolen. I had trouble shaking it but I managed to get back to sleep. I even told my friends online about it this morning when I went into work.

I get a call from my wife later in the day that says her bank card was declined. This is terribly embarrassing, especially for people who have some money in the bank in savings like we do. So while we run at about $500-700 in the banking account at our low point each month, we never get so close to overdraft. But sure enough, I log onto online banking and we are overdrafted for like $250. I start to look at the transactions and starting last night around 1 AM in the morning, there were some suspicious transactions that happened with my wife's bank card. These escalated today when the account was overdrafted. So we obviously called the bank and she'll be getting a new card, I'll dispute the charges and the bank assures me we'll get the money back. However, as I find out this news I'm half-pissed and half-creeped-out because of my dream. Could that have somehow been precognition?

I indeed had absolutely no reasonable way to know the events that were happening to our bank account. Even had I logged onto online banking at that hour, I would have not realized the first transactions were bogus. I'm the kind of skeptic that would just chalk this up to random coincidence, but the dream was so strong. I have woken up in a sweat from a dream only about 4-5 times in the last decade. It's not pleasant. And it is unbelievably rare for me to remember a dream so vividly like I did this time, so perhaps there's just something in the brain synapses that makes connections and has some level of future sight. It certainly is creepy if that is true, I mean imagine the power of the human brain if we could harness that.

So while I may be in a bad mood about this banking trouble for the next few days, I will forget about this aspect of the incident far before I forget the strange coincidence that makes me wonder: Is Precognition Real?

The Good and the Bad

2010-07-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

It seems like since the Blizzard HQ has lifted the veil on the Beta information in Cataclysm, all hell has broken loose like the stock market. Every other day there is good news and then every other day there's bad news. This week the good and bad has been notable, so I got drawn out for a midweek entry! We'll start with the bad news doc...

Blizzard decided that the next step in the Real ID revolution is to force all posters on the official forums to use their Real ID's and thus their real names! Now take a moment to think about all the forums that have been on the internet for two decades, and think about why people are so drawn to them. It's the anonymity within a community, and making a name for yourself outside your real identity. I'm sure there are some professional community forums with real name ID's, but the vast overwhelming majority is anonymous user names. And that's how it should be because discussing things on a hotbed like Blizzard official forums opens yourself up to stalkers and attackers and general douche-bags.

So it begs the question as Larisa so elonquently put it...did Blizzard forget to do a reality check before announcing this change? Despite one day of overwhelming negative reaction from the blogging community, they are still not backpedaling much in the blue posts today. And then, in the most ironic twist, Blizzard has tried to decide that the blue posters will not use their real names "because it will be detrimental to our employee's security." Oh really? Maybe you think it's not just the blue posters that have hate mail and psychos coming their way?

As Larisa and most others concluded, this is a terrible idea. When real identities are forced, the forums will slowly die if they are not truly dead already. One hopes that Blizzard's infatuation with Real ID does not taint them so much that they make moves that will definitely make people run away from the community. Although there will likely be more traffic and comments in blogs then, which is a good thing! Silver lining...

Time to turn to the good news. The talent system is being overhauled after Blizzard listened to alpha and beta players who let them know that the talent overhauls were not good enough. And truly, looking at the proposed changes, they were not. The problem was that no matter how much you try to do, with 51 point top line talents, the talent trees were unnecessarily bloated and always would be. So now the revamp has been announced. I'd link the blue post but it is way to long to quote here. The overview is that you will be locked into a talent tree at level 10 by your choice until you put 31 talent points into it, which will happen at level 70 because talents are coming every other level instead of every level. The mastery bonuses are coming in a little quicker including at level 10 since you are locked to what you want to specialize in. I agree with this change considering the new LFG system, and assuming you can still switch specs at level 40. All the crappy talents can finally go away and the system can be simplified to be much better and more streamlined.

With the overall additions over time to the game, sometimes you have to pare away to make it better. And this is a good choice here. It sounds like Mastery will be it's own separate stat on gear as well which converts to something useful to you once you have Mastery trained at level 78 or beyond. So while Blizzard has made one crazy decision, they have made one great decision. One would hope the way they listened to their customers in the talent tree paring will be the same way they eventually approach the Real ID forum issue. Making your customers safe and happy is the primary goal in any business, and that's where the focus at Blizzard needs to be right now.

PostNote - I was not selected for the officer position in my guild. While I was disappointed, I was apparently second place behind someone who is far more connected and social, and she is such a sweet person that I know the position will succeed. Additionally, the guild leader gave me full authority to join forces with her and help her make things great, so I've chosen to pitch in that way and I'll obviously report on our big fun events as they come along. The first one is August 15, but no details allowed! there might be guildies around you know.

Public Service Announcement - Real ID

2010-07-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

So Real ID has been live for a couple of weeks now, and the controversy has hit a fever pitch in some areas while other people rejoice at lost connections coming back into touch. For me personally, I saw the system as a good opportunity to keep in touch with the real life friends I joined the game to keep in touch with. Nothing more, nothing less. So when one of my two close friends (who plays either on other servers/factions a lot or other Blizzard games) who the system would be best for me to use it with refused initially to use the system, I balked. Well needless to say that someone accepted a friend request this weekend and then while nobody else was online went through three hours of trying to use parental controls and such, freaking out over the features of Real ID.

The entire problem appears to be what is called "friends of friends." Basically if you've ever been on Facebook you will understand that you can set up your facebook profile to be shown only to friends or to friends of friends (default). Most people do not understand this default and so get freaked out when a boss or employer can look up your information despite not being friends with you. So the facebook controversy has spread through the web and while they fixed their system to allow more control, Blizzard still has this Real ID system in its infancy. Hence my buddy freaks out because his account and all his toons are exposed to "10 million people."

That's not how the system works. All you can see in the friends of friends list (and that's only if you click twice to get into that information for a particular player) is a list of real names in no particular order. No identifiers, no toon names, no email addresses, no nothing else. Just a list of names. Hence, if you have a friends list of maybe 5-10 people, they are all pretty anonymous. There's no real privacy risk here, unless you don't want your friends to bother you when you are on a toon that is your getaway from it all. But that being said, there's one simple rule I have to share with all of you using Real ID.

KEEP TRACK OF YOUR FRIENDS LIST AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVEN'T ADDED ANYONE STUPID!!!

In the example I just gave you, if you don't want to be bothered when on a getaway toon, do not give your Real ID to guild members or people you will likely be getting away from. If they are your true friends, you should be able to tell them that you are not wantign to chat or group at the moment and they would respect your wishes. Obviously if they do not respect those simple wishes, then they shouldn't be your Real ID friend. Arguably they shouldn't be your facebook friend either, but that's a whole different can of worms that I do not regulate well myself.

There's already one horror story out there for Real ID about stalking just 10 days after the system goes live. You can read it for yourself by Googling the Real ID stalker incident, but here's the short version. Girl adds boyfriend and a couple other people on her Real ID list. Her boyfriend is a moron who adds every guildie who will accept him even though he knows few of them in real life. One of such guildies is a little teenager who has been basically separated from grouping with the girlfriend because he's a harassing jerk. Teenager sees boyfriend's friends of friends list has only one female name on it, he googles this name, and calls the girlfriend at work. Oh the horror! What can we do to stop this crazy train?

OK snap out of it, chicken little. First off, the girlfriend should immediately drop the boyfriend from her Real ID friends list because he is not keeping a responsible friends list. You'll be able to tell by monitoring your friends' lists every once in a while, as if one balloons up dramatically you should drop them. Especially if there's some reason you can be identified in a plain old list of names and you have reason (like a guild stalker) to not be known, then be careful! Second off, if this story is true, and with 10 million people it probably is, the girl should call the cops on this dumbass. He wants to be a general stalking douchebag, let him learn a valuable life lesson about respecting authority and the rule of law. Don't go write a big internet story telling people Real ID is broken because you made bad decisions and then did not handle the consequences as effectively as you could have.

So to my readers who may want to add me as a Real ID friend, I say nay nay. It's nothing personal, but I keep my friends list to a select few real life friends. People who have reason to know my email address and people who will be responsible with their own friends list. If you wanted to look me up and you had my name, fair enough go ahead and call. But be prepared to face the consequences. And that's the end of the story.

So while I'm unhappy with a friend for buying into the internet freak out about the latest way Blizzard is invading our privacy and ruining the game, life moves on. Keep yourself safe out there, but realize everyone is not out to get you.

WOW is Dying?

2010-06-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

My apologies for not hitting my usual one entry per weekend routine, but as I said last week Origins was going on and I got my game on for four days in real life. It was a fantastic break from work and well needed. I thought about writing an entry yesterday for the benefit of my server called "what to do with 24 hours of WoW downtime" but I figure if you need to be told to go outside, maybe you should stop playing the Wii.

Larisa brings up a good topic today: WoW is dying. To summarize:

"Is there any existing game that has received as many death sentences as WoW? I doubt it. WoW has been "dying" almost since it was launched, if you would listen to the community."

Unlike her conclusion that WoW is not dying, I actually think it is. Now this is not the doom and gloom that the posters on their way out with a ragequit on the forums allude to, but World of Warcraft is back on the decline. I suspect with Cataclysm that Activision-Blizzard will be able to get a slight bump in subscription numbers again for a while, but WoW 2.0 is basically a pretty rehash of a game many have been playing for 4-5 years at this point. While it is true that many players like me who came in late to the party will be sticking around for the foreseeable future, on the whole I almost guarantee blizzard will have trouble ever reaching their peak subscription numbers again.

Every two years this topic becomes in vogue because players run out of things to do and walk away because it is summertime at the end of an expansion. The sheer fact of the matter is many people will go away to Starcraft II and Diablo III, but Blizzard is keeping our community aspect of their games together by enacting Real ID chat across realms and games. That is the real reason most of us pay $15 a month: the community of friends. Last night I tried out Real ID chat while I was on a horde character speaking to an alliance character. This is a fantastic addition to the game and will bring together our group of four real life friends again. Plus if there's any more deep relationships I end up with on the horde side, I can talk to them while spending most of my time alliance side.

So Blizzard is essentially acknowledging that people are drifting away as they must after this long in a game. There's only so many hours you can do the same thing, even if you are doing different raid bosses or different battlegrounds. Console game developers would give their souls to hold a player's interest for one-tenth the amount of time the average wow players spends in Azeroth. The players will slowly move out of the game and the subscriber numbers will decline, but very slowly over the next 2-3 expansions of the game. Then I suspect the game will be replaced and support will disappear. But to Blizzard it will not matter as their profit machine will shift to the next MMO, and so will the playerbase (even if it is not to the legendary extent of World of Warcraft).

The real reason WoW will die is that Blizzard wants it to die. They may not want it to die anytime soon, but eventually they will want to support their new IP. If Blizzard maintained the same level of support and advertising for the game as they have now, the game would probably stabilize around 3-4 million subscribers just like Magic the Gathering stabilized in the CCG market by being consistently the best product out there. MTG does not have peak numbers, but they have a steady playerbase and that works for a game that does not need replaced with card sets moving in and out every few months. But while cards stay at the same level of coolness over 20 years, computer games age quickly and need to be wholesale replaced. Cataclysm is a stopgap, and WoW will die.

Nevertheless, that should not stop us from enjoying the game at its peak or near its peak. This is a beautiful game that will only get better in the coming year, and we are blessed to see Blizzard resetting the deck and not letting things go stagnant at this point. While Larisa is wrong, so are all the ragequitters on the forums that think everyone should follow them like little lambs. No sir. People come and go, but the community will stay as long as Blizzard wants them to. There may just be a few more barseats available at the Legerdemain Lounge next year, and anybody who lags in Dalaran can agree that's OK.

Sidenote - no word on the officer decision, but it sounds like a tough one. I suspect I'm out of the real running because of my real life obligations keeping me away from game some nights, but you never know. Stay tuned...

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

Well I think I had one of the better father's days I will ever have today. It all started with waking up and sitting at the computer for a bit of WoW time. Now it was nothing special, just leveling my horde paladin in Stranglethorn Vale some more, but it's like my weekend coffee. So I'm already off to a good start when my daughter comes in wearing a shirt that says...

Big Sister

We only have one child, so this was our long awaited word that my wife is pregnant again. So I'll be a dad once again here in about 8 months. My daughter helps me bang on the keyboard in STV for a few minutes, just hanging with dad. Then we finally got out to King's Island with my in-laws and Kelley and my father in law head off to the waterpark with the little ones while my mother in law, brother in law, and his girlfriend all went on some rides for the morning. Now last summer I let myself get mighty down about not fitting on a couple of rides including the new Diamondback supercoaster (the walk of shame out of the coaster car is sad, for sure). But I have been working out since February and I know I'm seeing some minor results in the health department.

So we get to the first of the rides I could not fit on last year and while the thing has the most awkward seats you'll ever sit in, I had little issue. Then we grabbed lunch and spent some time in the waterpark, hanging out with my daughter in the wave pool. After that it was time for a couple kiddy rides and we capped the night with Diamondback. It's definitely a close fit as I cannot have anything in my pockets thanks to the contoured seats, but I can get on! And the supercoaster is definitely a good one even if it doesn't live up to the super-hype it gets. However, it is definitely one of the best rides in the park (I also tried another unique coaster where you hang belly down and face first like Superman). But all in all, as silly as it may seem, this is the first time I know I'm seeing results with the gym. Getting healthy means I can enjoy many more father's days.

So finding out we're having another baby, spending time with the daughter without giving a hoot about work for a day, and seeing some results on my health regime. What a great day. I hope all the fathers out there had just as prosperous of a father's day. Cheers!

By the way, don't know if I'll have much to say next week wow related as I am headed to Origins Game Fair again. This will be my 8th Origins in 9 years, missing one for my wedding. Looking forward to seeing my favorite kind of games and their latest developments. Also will be shaking down my Goblin Charbelcher deck in MTG Legacy in preparation for the Grand Prix pro-level tournament coming through Ohio next month. So lots of good times, even if they are not in Azeroth. I applied for a leadership position in my alliance guild, so perhaps I'll have good news in game regarding that next week (and even if not, I'm sure we'll find someone great to fill the officer opening).

The Fall of Archaeology

2010-06-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

A very interesting Cataclysm Press Release came out to the public this week and there are some huge changes to the next expansion. Instead of a full ten levels with new talents at the end and such, a new secondary profession archaeology was supposed to be linked with Path of the Titans, a new way to customize and improve your characters. The whole gist, if you did not know about it beforehand, was that you go dig up some lore artifacts and such all over Azeroth and benefit by getting additional skills to customize your character. But Path of the Titans has been nixed for Cataclysm, which means archaeology is completely optional (Blizzard said so themselves).

And just like that, one of the nifty selling points of Cataclysm is gone. While I appreciate that the new secondary profession will be a nifty way to learn some more lore, it basically comes into the game as the new fishing, which is to say, completely useless. At least cooking and first aid have uses from time to time (cooking moreso than anything). I like fishing as a timewaster, and without any motivation to take on another secondary profession, I'll maybe just ignore it completely. Which is bad because not only did Blizzard plan big things for it, they spent countless hours of development dollars on this profession which will immediately be useless.

To "make up" for this cutting off the new profession at the knees, the announcement also said Inscription will be getting a makeover to some extent because it did not work out as well as planned. It's hard to match the success of Jewelcrafting, it really is. So now there will be medium level glyphs, which sounds profitable for scribes. But then they also announced that once you know a glyph, it will go into a list like a spell list and be reusable after every respec. Just like that, the profitability of Inscription just died a painful death. Sure, new glyphs will be marketable for a couple weeks, but it's just not going to matter anymore if you buy them once and forget about them. As a non-scribe, I'm OK with these changes but feel bad for those who expected more out of the profession and leveled it.

The other major news is also not good, as the guild leveling process stays in the game but without guild talents and guild currency. While this could have caused some serious issues for both my guilds as the largest guilds on each faction of Earthen Ring, I thought it was a brilliant move to add a way to really customize yourself for PvP or raiding or whatever it is you do. It appears between starcraft II and the beginning of diablo III, Azeroth just could not get enough development time for Blizzard to keep all their expectations.

This will certainly worry the Chicken Little mentalities out there who think the sky is falling because Blizzard is moving in more and more ways to monetize WoW (highlighted recently by the $3/month remote auction house going live). However, people must realize that Cataclysm is not dead and the game is not dead because of these changes. It would have been nice to have archaeology better, but you have to focus on the important things and that's developing good PvP and raiding content as well as really sparkling new zones and changes to the base world of Azeroth. That's a massive undertaking, and I hope by cutting these admittedly fringe benefits out of Cataclysm, it means what blizzard does deliver will be outstanding. The game is on the downslide, but that does not mean that blizzard is looking to ruin their reputation with bad product.

So all in all, I'm a bit disappointed in the news, but life goes on. The fanatics over the stupid dance studio are still bickering, but there's more important things in the game than professions and more important things in life than features in a video game. So complain today, but look ahead to tomorrow, when the content hopefully is as good as we've come to expect.

LFG Report - The Burning Crusade

2010-06-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

So in the continuing escapades of Azeroth, I've been spending a fair bit of time on Arielae the tree. The one thing I'm doing on my main is hunting Baron Rivendare's mount, while also getting Argent Dawn reputation. I'm up to about 17k through revered, so it will not be long before I have a snazzy new title for getting Argent Dawn and Argent Crusade each to exalted. I've basically decided that if I don't get the mount in the next 3 runs or so, I'm probably not going to go crazy trying to get it when there's no more Argent Dawn rep to worry about. I like knocking out two birds with one stone, but I'm also not terribly attached to mounts other than carpets. Although I would hunt Ashes of Alar for no other reason, but that's such a pain instance to get people to grind correctly.

The money vault is up to about 13.5k gold again after spending 2k powerleveling Alchemy the second Ariel hit 65 to 450. She's now turning an epic zircon or ruby every day with her daily transmute and Navar is cutting the gems every weekend, which according to my friend who also does this business, turns about 1000 gold per week for very minimal effort. I do not know how much money you need for Cataclysm, but I do know I'm not concerned with building up gold with just 3 minutes a day. Which leaves the focus on leveling, and right now, particularly the druid.

LFG in The Burning Crusade is very interesting. It turns out that healers are almost always insta-queue into an instance, which is very nice for those of us who love healing. However, like all LFG, there's ups and downs. For the first few runs through the Hellfire instances, there was not too much trouble getting through the instances with a couple exceptions. My theory is that death knight tanks are still a little hesitant to jump in at this point as I did not see many DK tanks, and most people have some experience with the Hellfire instances as they are so easily incorporated into Hellfire Peninsula questing.

However, I've recently moved into 3 levels of mostly coilfang reservoir instances and the failures rose to a level that forced me into cat form and nagrand to kill some mobs for a while for Nesingwary. It's always fun to release some tension by whacking on some mobs in melee, so I might have done it anyway, but it doesn't look good for LFG in the middle of Burning Crusade content. I think there's a couple of factors which contribute to the much higher fail rate. First is that the instances are quite a bit longer than their Hellfire counterparts, which gives groups more opportunity to fail. On top of that, it is exceedingly difficult and annoying to rez run back through the lake and the pipe back to the instance, assuming the group members are even aware of how to do this (and many are not, which is a group killer).

Second is the rise of DK tanks at this level. Perhaps they get some good tank gear in their Hellfire runs and they decide to jump in the pool, literally, in this set of instances. However, I've seen everything from tanking in blood presence and unholy spec to a complete failure to understand that Death and Decay is a good aggro-building ability. And it's 2/3 of runs with DK tanks, so their usual failures rip up groups on a regular basis. Considering the hassle of running back, one wipe generally breaks the group. It had been nearly a week since I finished underbog until this morning, when I had a paladin tank once again. I don't know that I'll get too upset with DK tanks learning how to play in The Burning Crusade, but it can be very frustrating when the blame runs around a group and you have to requeue.

The one time I got into an Auchenai instance, I lasted one pull as the tank pulled two packs of mobs and I could not quite keep up. The tank moaned about what a terrible healer, and I told him have fun waiting for another one in the queue and dropped group. I don't play the game to be berated for your lack of pulling skill, even if I did contribute to the wipe in that occasion. I'll report more on Auchenai once I get in there again, but I really only have a negative impression of coilfang and a positive impression of hellfire at this point.

So is this experience unique to me, or is this how LFG works for leveling toons in Outland? I'm only a little over 2 levels away from Utgarde Keep, and to be honest, I'm looking forward to knowing every pull inside and out again. It helps you plan and know how much damage you will need to handle. I've also learned very well how to mix the druid healing spells, which are very interesting at this level. The levels and the dings keep coming on, and I can feel the paladin getting excited as she's next to garner heavy attention once Ariel hits 80.

One final point: profitability of Baron runs increases substantially when I disenchant all the blues and greens that drop. I've also grabbed three random epic weapons off trash in the last three runs, which have sold for a pretty penny. Nifty to make profit off level 60 achievement content.

Has Blizzard found raiding perfection?

2010-05-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

Back in the old wild west days of vanilla and Burning Crusade, Blizzard tinkered with how to tune endgame raiding instances to make them challenging enough for the most elite guilds formed in the world while also making the content accessible. As it turns out, their solution was t make progessively harder and harder raids until they ended up with Sunwell, which is still damn hard on 80's in my humble opinion. Sunwell was basically impossible, and that's if you could even get to it! I played when Karazhan was the opening endgame raid and that place was brutal. But it was a far cry from the instances leading up to the Sunwell.

Then to cater to the masses Blizzard would bring the nerf hammer down hard on these raids, especially right before a new expansion. Thus, Sunwell became hard but doable with a serious raid team while other TBC raids beame truly useful to 50-70% of the raiding population. And so the cycle continued into Wrath of the Lich King, where Blizzard dedicated themselves to making the endgame more accessible. Thus, they made the rehashed Naxxramas not all that hard to open the door to more people. Ulduar continued the trend to a degree, but Ulduar also had some very legitimately hard bosses as well. But without a nerf hammer, the only way this content ever gets easier is by overgearing it, which became instantly possible with Trial of the Champion, which was a joke to hold us over.

All in all, this system basically pulled a Goldilocks. First, it was too darn hard for anybody to enjoy except for an elite few. Then, they made it too darn easy by nerfing it completely in one fell swoop or making the instances weaker. How could you find a middle ground that fit both the goals of catering to the real pros of Warcraft and achieve maximum exposure to endgame raiding? Along comes Icecrown Citadel to save the day.

Although there has been much hemming and hawing every month about the new 5% bump in the raid bonus, Icecrown has kept the attention of raiders for many months because they gated the content out every 3-4 weeks initially and then have increased everyone's healing/damage by 5% every month or so until they reach 30%. Now 30% is a nerf on the order of the old nerfs of content, but by slowly rolling these out it gives raid teams that maybe get discouraged on a certain fight a chance to get that extra bit of DPS or healing necessary to finish the fight and move on. Even at 10%, not many raid teams had downed Arthas. Once 15% hit though, many of your better raid teams got him down and as time goes on, this is a much more enjoyable progression than just a nerf at the end. Plus you can turn it off if your raid team wants to challenge themselves. What a brilliant system we have here.

Do you cater to the hardcore pros? Yes by not only allowing them to raid the content as normally designed forever, but also allowing them to prove themselves by making the content too hard for most guilds initially. Do you cater to the regular raiders? Yes because you give them a continuing sense of accomplishment as things get slightly easier every month and they move forward. Do you cater to the masses? Yes because eventually you still get those people into ICC where they can down a few bosses even if they cannot get them all.

So while other changes may be positive or negative like getting 10 man and 25 man raiding on the same weekly cooldown, I really like the concept of extending the longevity of dungeons like Ulduar and ICC with this progressive buff over time. In my raid team that I'm not a regular on, we struggled mightily with Marrowgar and Saurfang at 0%. Then at 5% we really had issues at Festergut and Rotface. Just as we started getting those down, we hit 10% and starting taking on Blood Princes and Professor. In our last guild run at 15%, we downed 8 bosses, leaving only Blood Queen, Putricide, Sindragosa, and Lichy to go. Now that we have 20% I highly suspect our weekly run will get to Sindragosa and start learning that fight more. And once we get to 30%, we will likely have learned enough about the Lich King encounter to down it in a hard battle. We're not elite, and this has been a blast for us.

So all in all, I think this experiment has worked perfectly. I just hope they do not tweak a good thing in Cataclysm!

Time for Tank Advice

2010-05-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the short entry in advance but something needs to be said. Listen up well tanks, for while I love you dearly, sometimes you drive me up the wall. And I'm looking specifically at the three errors of three kinds of tanks.

1. PALADINS LISTEN UP! Just because you have an ability than gives you some mana back for effective healing, it DOES NOT MEAN that me using Power Word Shield is a mistake with you. Keep in mind this is what makes a priest unique and perhaps a better healer in an expert's hands, is the diversity of tools including shields. And if you run out of mana, drink! For goodness sakes, healers should not be the only people who drink in a party all the time, and the benefit to your mana regeneration is not all that big a difference. Please stop telling all the other priests in the world differently, forcing those of us who know what we're doing to reteach them their own class when we raid with them.

2. DEATH KNIGHTS LISTEN UP! You have a little ability called Death Grip. Now I know when you starting playing the class people complained about your silly antics with the grip. However, it's there for a reason, such as pulling a caster to you and gaining aggro on it. If you don't snag a caster right away and it is out of Death and Decay range, GUESS WHO IS GETTING NUKED IN WET PAPER TOWEL ARMOR? Me! So pay attention to your aggro bar and don't be afraid to Death Grip!

3. most importantly, WARRIORS, FOR THE LOVE OF AZEROTH, LISTEN UP!!! I know you guys missed out on the patch notes while being all self-centered on Titan's Grip and how Death Knights were making you obsolete blah blah blah. But let me make it clear for you. POWER WORD SHIELD DOES NOT, DOES NOT, DOES NOT!!! AFFECT YOUR RAGE GENERATION IN ANY WAY. NONE! Read the Patch 3.2 notes if you do not believe me. The problem has been fixed, and we can now heal you like every other tank. Stop, please stop telling priests otherwise. You are W-R-O-N-G. And for the record, you are still more enjoyable to heal than Death Knights.

So there you go. I hope you tanks were listening up. And now that I've pissed off 95% of the tanks on the servers, I'll go bum a ride from my favorite teddy bear tank. Until the druids do something that makes me insane anyway.

Crafting a Profession Team

2010-05-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've treaded this topic before, but I know it is one I think about a lot. Once I came into the game at the end of The Burning Crusade, I just picked Tailoring and Skinning on my main, a priest, because that seemed like what a priest would do to get by. As time went on, I decided that my group of friends did not have a dedicated enchanter, so I leveled that up as I went along despite the expense of not having a true gathering profession.

After getting Ekaterinae to endgame, it was time to select what I wanted to do with alt characters. As you will likely remember if you've been following this blog, I fell in love with healing and tanking to a lesser extent, but not DPS unless I needed a break. So I decided to level a healer team, two healers on each side of the aisle and one DK on alliance-side just because. With the classes selected, the only other real consideration outside of which classes to play one each side was how to best set up a team of professions to garner the most profit for the team expenses and also take care of my character needs. Here's my setup:

Alliance
Ekaterinae has Tailoring and Enchanting
Navarionae has Jewelcrafting and Mining
Arielae has Alchemy and Herbalism

I feel like the things I spend the most repeated money on for my raiding character Ekaterinae is flasks, gems, and enchants (as well as gear when necessary). As you can see, each of my characters plays a vital role in giving me one of those things, although my Alchemist is still leveling up so I still buy flasks. However, everything is set up to benefit the priest in the best way possible, while also providing side benefits for making money with JC and Tailoring bags mostly. I may also dabble in the flask market eventually. Oh and Ekaterinae also is a maxed out fisher and cook, meaning she makes fish feasts all the time. So I think this mix of professions is good enough for me.

Of the things I'm lacking, none of them seem all that important, although I do not think these professions are bad. they just do not help me reach my own goals. Engineering is fun and I tried it for a while, but it has no great endgame benefits. Blacksmithing and Leatherworking are helpful if you have characters that raid a lot in those armor proficiencies, but Ekaterinae remains my only raiding toon for a reason. Hence, Tailoring is it for me. Plus, making bags for profit is much better for me than armor kits or weapons. Inscription is nifty, but you do not need to switch glyphs that often and I see it as another tax like the 50g whenever you respec, which I do occasionally to have Shadow in the mix. And Skinning is just a placeholder unless you have no better ways to make extra cash and if yo have a leatherworker.

Now the key question is what to do to set up the same success or Horde-side. Right now my shaman is alliance just to make it easier to handle the costs, and she will transfer any extra money my paladin may need to finish things off when she goes Horde-side in Cataclysm. However, I'm struggling with what professions to focus on. I'm definitely going to be a paladin main over there, so I think maybe a mix of Blacksmithing, JC, Enchanting, and Mining (because having the two professions that require mining without mining is silly). So I think I will level Mining/JC on Biancae and Mining/Blacksmithing on Clarissae. Unless there's some reason to have blacksmithing on the person wearing the gear (BoP? I need some recipe guides). Then at endgame I will swap to enchanting on Biancae, giving me the ultimate JC/Enchanting bonuses. I will lack the ability to make money off bags and will have to buy flasks, but it's a small matter as I've lived that way Alliance-side for so long. And to be honest, my Horde-side followings will likely never be more important to me than my Alliance-side travels.

Anybody have thoughts on this? Perhaps you have an elite set of professions to support your raiding or top PvP characters, and maybe you just do what's fun. But I like having a synergetic team, and I think this is my decision. Hence, I've not only crafted a healer team but a profession team.

The Weird Things You See

2010-05-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Short entry since I have to go off to class (last day I can say that as Monday it's back to work!), but it strikes me as funny how sometimes you see weird coincidences in your world. I'm in a weeklong intensive USPTO bar exam prep course this week, and as usual the male to female ratio is slanted towards the males. There's 11 guys and 3 ladies, to be exact.

So one of the ladies is from Belgium, and it finally dawned on me who she reminded me of yesterday afternoon. Her facial expressions, her mannerisms, etc are dead-on Felicia Day, at least as seen in The Guild. And although the similarities for the other two women are more superficial, we have an asian woman who dresses like Tinkerbella and a blonde white woman who is similar in appearance to Clara. Creepy, no? The Guild has invaded my patent bar class!

We don't have a Vork, sadly. If we did, I would make them take a picture because that would be a very creepy "real life looks like the movies/TV/webshow" circumstance!

So happy this course is over in one more day. Then 3 months of worrisome test prep up to another bar exam, which will hopefully be my last one. These are not for the light of heart (college exam = 5-man, law school exam = 5-man heroic, bar exam = 25-man hardmode raiding, for those wanting a comparison).

Also, I finished School of Hard Knocks last night, which means Navar is still on track for his proto in Hallow's End. That achievement is by far the worst holiday achievement because it helps nobody. It teaches you to play the battlegrounds in a bad way, and opens up PvE players to absolute ridicule and harassment from those of us who enjoy PvP occasionally or a lot. But 90% of the holiday events are true bliss, so I'll put up with Blizzard's crap on this one.

With 310% mounts being purchaseable in Cata, I believe Navar will be my last holiday hunter. I'd rather redo the stuff on Ekat than take new characters through a grind for no benefit outside a snazzy looking proto drake.

The Bucket List - Wrath of the Lich King

2010-04-30T04:45:00.000-07:00

Cataclysm is coming, as if you could not tell from all the stories and blog entries here and everywhere else in the warcraft community. Every time a new expansion comes out, players who have been around for a couple years or more try to get some goals accomplished before the new expansion hits and takes up all their attention. For my four friends who caused me to join the game, they each are in very different places and have their own important lists. The most active of those players is now at 92 mounts and is hunting the 100 mount achievement, as well as 35-40k gold to pay for his 2-3 characters jumping right into Cataclysm material. Another is taking a break from the game (very common at this point in the expansion), another has long since quit and is playing Starcraft II, and the last is trying to find his direction in the game before Cata. I tried to take stock of what I wanted to do before Cataclysm, and had trouble deciding! However, here's my bucket list for Wrath so far.

1. Finish It's Been A Long Strange Journey on Navarionae
2. Defeat Algalon the Observer in Ulduar-10 (Ekat)
3. Defeat Yogg-Saron in Ulduar-10 (Ekat)
4. Defeat The Lich King in Icecrown Citadel (Ekat)
5. Reach level 80 on Arielae the druid
6. Reach level 75 on Biancae the paladin
7. Reach level 70 on Clarissae the shaman
8. Buy epic flight on the final three leveling characters and have about 10k gold left
9. Do the Linken Nintendo homage quest chain in case it goes away
10. TBD

I'm sure there will be more little things on the list, but those are the major things I'd like to see done. I doubt it will happen, but it is good to have a list publicly.

So how about you? Do you have a bucket list to complete before the world changes forever in Cataclysm?

The Raiding Game Changes Forever

2010-04-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

I had a bachelor weekend this weekend, so what did I do? I got into both of my guild raids of course! For a few weeks my Alliance guild has been running the weekly raid on Wednesday or Thursday, ICC-10 on either Saturday or Sunday, and ICC-25 on the other weekend day. Which means I ripped through Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship, Saurfang, Festergut, and Rotface on Saturday (and chewed glass on Dreamwalker). Sunday I ripped through the 10-man version of the same six bosses, and then we chewed glass on Professor and got him to 8%.

And here's the thing. While I enjoyed the opportunity to run with many different people and have many more opportunities at gear, I cannot imagine doing that repeat job every weekend or even very often. So then today's bomb dropped on raiding in Cataclysm, and it's one we should have seen coming. Here's the blue post.

We're designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we'll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They'll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.

Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards
10- and 25-player (normal difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
10- and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you're able to gather the people. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.

Of course the blogging network has fired up within twelve hours of the announcement. Two voices I value almost above all others in the community have already asked the question...will anybody continue to run 25 man content? While Blizzard promises quicker emblems and more gear for 25 mans, right now 25 man content drops 4 pieces of gear (16%) while 10 man content drops 2 pieces (20%). I expect this to be evened out or maybe only switched in the other direction to 6 pieces of gear. Bottom line - I expect gearing through 25 man content to be not that much faster than 10 man. So where do they stand?

Larisa at PPI says...
So where do I stand in this? Well, since I'm a 25 man raider myself and would like to remain so if possible, it's hardly a surprise that I look at this from the 25-mans-must-have-better-rewards perspective. This doesn't mean that I don't like 10 man raiding or that I somehow look down to it. I enjoy 10 mans immensely - especially since they normally offer better teamwork in a more closely knit group. And I have full respect for those who prefer it to 25 mans - with special kudos to the 10-man-gear-only strict guilds. But at the same time I believe that the law of the least resistance is what basically rules WoW and if the incentives aren't enough the 25 man raiding will die off, which I think would be a shame.

And Matticus at WoM says...
Please, do not screw over the players who prefer to do 25s. I believe some of the extra rewards are badges, loot, and gold. The extra gold is nice and all but for most organizations, it isn’t a problem. Having extra badges will speed up the gearing process for sure. On the other hand, what some players seem to have forgotten is that there is only 10 players allowed. Someone’s inevitably going to have to sit. 25s feel a little more accommodating, and dare I say it, more forgiving. With more players, you get access to more outs to help put you over the top during encounters. In addition, don’t forget about Kae’s point on difficulty. The reason that 10’s are perceived as easy is that players often run them overgeared. Doing ICC 10 with ICC 25 gear made it that much easier. But we’re using the same gear now. I know that for now, I’m still committed to 25 man raiding into Cataclysm.

Now to be fair, both of those players are part of solid 25 man raiding guilds. It comes as no surprise that they are cautious when approaching a change like this. If the goal is to get more people access to the best content in the game (raiding), then this is a good change. However, these players like the feel of what they are used to and don't want it taken away by a core group of players who are the best 10 in a 25 man guild, leaving the rest out cold to progress more slowly. There's just something "epic" about getting 5 times as many people as a normal group together to take down an enemy.

However, I have a suggestion for Blizzard that could make this change even better. I do not know the answer to forcing people into 25 man raids over equal 10 man raids. If you want to tune 10 and 25 man versions, then you should also tune a 40 man version and give special achievements/mounts/etc. for taking on the epic challenge of a 40 man raid. From an organizational standpoint, I know 25 is a nightmare and 40 is even worse. But I'm not suggesting guilds outside of a superguild run 40 man content often or even regularly...I'm talking about the best raiding guilds on a server coming together occasionally to feel truly epic. Heck, maybe put these on a special once a month timer. One of the greatest things I've ever done in this game is taken down the world dragon in the middle of Duskwood. Another is For The Alliance. Take this opportunity to let raiders of all styles enjoy raiding the way they like.

After all, the vast majority of people will be running 10 man content most of the time now anyway. Let's not lose the epic feel of the game. Go for it blizzard and see what happens!

Oh and for the record, this past weekend showed my thoughts on raiding twice. Fun once in a great while, but I hate that people who play more 25's than me are always better geared by leaps and bounds. I think some fights are truly harder on 10 man, and it will be nice to have the same gear for both so nobody trivializes 10 man content anymore. I do hope the most solid big guilds keep running 25 mans though it will be tough to convince raiders during the chewing glass point. Hopefully Blizzard makes 10 man truly just as hard so that there's no upside to ripping apart your 25 man guild.

Homogenization and How It Affects Healers

2010-04-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

The WoW community has now had a while to stew or shout about the class changes announced for Cataclysm. While these changes are subject to removal or modification during the beta testing phase that will be upcoming, on the whole, we know the direction Blizzard wants to go with Azeroth. Considering all the changes to the core stats on gear and the old world itself, this could be a very different game in 2011. A relaunch of sorts to let Blizzard enjoy new subscribers and probably at least 5-6 more years of prosperity before moving to another MMO.

With the massive reduction in number of stats and complications, cries have come out about class homogenization. Some class representatives think they are losing what makes them different, and in the case of death knights where all three classes could tank, that is true to some extent. However, for healers the evidence is right there on the table in multiple ways. But is class homogenization a good thing?

The first major restructuring for healers came in the basic healing spells available to each healing class. For classes like shaman and priest, there were spells like Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Heal, and Heal, that became completely obsolete at endgame. Blizzard does not like that, and so in Cataclysm each class will have three baseline heals: an expensive inefficient fast heal, a medium output medium speed heal, and a massive output large cost heal. This will give every class the same basic ability to take on any healing task.

As far as pruning out the useless spells in the spellbook, I like this change. Furthermore, for people like me who love healing with different classes, this will give us a sense of normalcy when we swap over to an alt or switch main characters. Right now sometimes I can feel lost with the druid set of heals compared to the big toolbox of priests, so it would be good to put 1-2-3 as pretty much the same thing on my bars for each character. As long as the remaining abilities on top of these baselines do not become too similar, it will continue to be desirable to play all the different healing classes. Overall I'm in favor of this change.

The second major restructuring is the changing of dispel mechanics. While this change was focused on PvP balance, the changes will definitely affect how you construct your raids as healers are now the only characters that can dispel (sorry retribution paladins and shadow priests). All "brainless" dispel-over-time abilities like abolish poison and Mass Dispel are going away in favor of one single cleanse or dispel spell for each class. The spell will handle 3/5 of the debuffs in the game, and so obviously you will need to keep a list handy of which classes can handle which debuffs. Here's the take:

Druids can dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses
Paladins can dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison
Priests can dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and diseases
Shamans can dispel defensive magic, curses, and posion

I'm going to take a middle road with this change overall. As far as PvP, it is nice that all healers you bring along will be able to remove the polymorphs and other debuffs that knock your teammates out (when it's not aimed at the healers of course). However, I seriously question the outright removal of AoE dispels and dispel-over-time spells. For healers that are already tasked with quite a bit in raids, forcing us to proactively remove those pesky debuffs every time they pop up individually for each raid member just makes the job more difficult. However, at least there will only be one dispel button for all dispel actions now, so perhaps it will be better than I think. From the PvE perspective, I still just do not like the implications of removing some of the nifty different dispel utility, and it probably comes from being a priest who got all the toys.

Every healing class will have more clearly defined gear now that spirit will be the baseline mana regeneration statistic for everyone. Spellpower will only be present on weapons, but that should keep other people away from our weapons at least. It will be much simpler to figure out how to customize your gear when the relevant stats are limited to intellect, spirit, haste, and crit. This in combination with the repurposing ability to shift some stats around on your gear will make it possible for you to be very unique in your playstyle. This is a very good change.

And that's about all we have. Evidence to the contrary still shows paladins having better tank-saving tools, druids still being the masters of heal over time, priests being a jack of all trades, and shamans bringing the most added utility to any raid. Perhaps the homogenization claims are a little overblown with healers. Also, even if we are somewhat homogenized, in guilds with raid spot competition, this should reward those who play better, not those who play the right class. However, I do not want all four of my healers to become the same because the different styles of play in Azeroth is what makes the game engaging for hours beyond the first character. I hope this is as close as we come to each other in the healer field.

Verdict - Good for now, but no more!

Cataclysm Changes - Paladin

2010-04-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Well the paladin healers had to wait only an extra five days past all the other classes to hear how the spells and talents would change, but the analysis had to wait an extra week from me since work sent me off to DC for a few days and the hotel had no wireless. At $500 a night. Ouch! I suppose I got to see the White House by being so close, but not much time for tourism when in DC for work. So let's get on it, albeit a little bit late!

The only low-level certain heal to be added has yet to be named, but it will be the equivalent of Greater Heal. The new setup will match the other three healing classes, with a fast yet inefficient role being played by Flash of Light, and an intermediate heal being played by Holy Light. I've always felt Holy Light was more of a Greater Heal equivalent, but apparently there will be something bigger. The basic three-tier toolbox is now the same for all healing classes, giving players of multiple healers like myself some level of familiar backbone spells. I'll speak my thoughts about this homogenization later, but overall it is probably a good thing.

Also, Sacred Shield will be modified to be a 30 minute long spell on one target. For a class that already is pigeonholed a bit into tank healing, this is not a step in the right direction. However, the blue post in the very same line spoke of improving the Holy Paladin toolbox to make them better raid healers. I was hoping for a bit more proof of that direction for paladins, but it appears we will need to wait a bit longer for those new spells in the toolbox.

Also the final dispel mechanic of the healing classes is Cleanse, which will remove defensive magic, diseases, and posions. A minor change for Paladins but nothing too major to get used to. Again, I'll give some thoughts a bit later about the standardization or homogenization of the dispel mechanics. One other note is that Blizzard wants Holy Shock to be a core healing spell for all paladins. The balance of the hybrid healing/damage spells is always interesting, so perhaps Holy Shock will continue to enable the shockadin players to do something completely different.

The Cataclysm level abilities feature Healing Hands at level 83. Healing Hands is a six second long AoE heal with a relatively short range. It is not a channeled spell though, so the paladin healer will be able to cast other heals while "radiating" small AoE heals. This is precisely the kind of spell holydins have not had in their toolbox. While it stinks that they will wait until nearly endgame to get it, this is a step in the right direction. The spell is currently tuned with a 15 second cooldown, so it will only be up 40% of the time at most.

The new endgame spell is called Guardian of Ancient Kings at level 85, and basically this is a summoned guardian who does something different for each spec of paladin for 30 seconds. For Holy paladins, the guardian will heal the most wounded ally in the area. I do not anticipate this will be a massive heal, but it will make paladin raid healing more automatic and clutch. I still believe more needs to be added to the toolbox for paladin raid healing, but the two Cataclysm level spells are a step in the right direction.

The top level Mastery bonus is Critical Healing Effect, which is no surprise for this class. This passive ability will further increase the healing output of critical hits. As usual, expect paladin heals to be happy to pack on some extra crit to maximize most of their healing spells.

On the whole, paladins have to be happy with the changes to their class coming in Cataclysm. While the changes may not be as spicy as shamans or earth-shattering as druids, it is good that paladins will basically double their amount of healing spells and join the other non-priest healing classes in utility. As I mentioned earlier, I believe there will be even more coming down the pipeline during the beta phase of Cataclysm, which makes it a great time to pick up a paladin healer and try it out if you have stayed away thus far. Also, paladins are one of the most enjoyable classes to level, so I strongly encourage you to join me in leveling those paladins.

Cataclysm Changes - Druid

2010-04-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

Well here I thought the druid changes may be more interesting than priest and shaman changes, but I was W-R-O-N-G. You see, Blizzard thinks resto druids have enough to play with already, which means perhaps this is a nod to priests having a truly biggest toolbox than the other healing classes. Or maybe druids do have more than enough to play with, but I know at level 60 that this does not seem to be the case. So on the whole, I am disappointed with no new spells coming to resto shamans considering all the new toys the other three druid roles are getting.

However, there is one bit of big news. I mean...BIG.

Yes that's right, Tree of Life will no longer be your passive state but a cooldown-based ability. This means druids will finally be returned to heal as much as other classes without needed to be in tree form all the time. You will finally be able to admire your gear (not so important), and you will not automatically be target number 1 anymore in PvP based on appearance alone. This will revolutionize the battleground experience for trees, who always get picked on. Plus this may be the new "different spell" for druids, in that they can enter tree form to really be clutch for 30 seconds or however long the ability lasts. Perhaps not the game-changer that heroism is for shamans, but I imagine this could be a similar result for endgame raiding.

Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic like all other healing classes, but the same dispels remain for curses and poison. Plus HoT's will benefit from haste, which will help tremendously. Speaking of heal over time spells, a new talent called Efflorescence will cause a bed of healing flowers to sprout beneath targets you critically heal with regrowth. This means that melee could get bonus heals just for standing next to a tank, and could make resto druids better tank healers.

Which leaves us with the mastery top level bonus, which is called HoT Scale Healing. What an original name, Blizzard, honestly. However, the ability is nice as it will be the heal over time equivalent of the shaman mastery, increasing the effectiveness of HoT spells for targets with less health. Again, making a druid healer more clutch, but perhaps to a lesser degree since it is heal over time spells.

So that's it. Hopefully I stretched that lack of news to a full entry here, and I think the extra week of paladin work will give us more to talk about next weekend. So far, druids have the biggest appearance change, but shamans and priests have to be a bit more happy looking forward to cataclysm. See you next time!

Cataclysm Changes - Priest

2010-04-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

Late last night the Priest changes were release at a time which only benefits Oceanic realms. But there was a lot to digest, since we have two healing specs in one class here. As a priest main, my only hope was to stay more versatile than other healing classes (because unlike the other three classes, we cannot tank or put out two very distinct types of DPS) and for Power Word Barrier to come back into the fold. Shielding is a cool mechanic, but only having one shield in PWS is not all that interesting after a while.

Well let's start with the new spells for both discipline and holy. The only low-level change for both is Heal, which will bring the priest back in line with the shaman changes we heard yesterday. Basically Blizzard wants a big heal which is Greater Heal, a fast but inefficient heal in Flash Heal, and a mid-range heal when you do not need the speed or the power in Heal. The current Lesser Heal and Heal are useless, so I think this is a good change that will make all the healing classes at least similar on a baseline level. Especially for priests, there's a ton more.

Healing priests will also get Mind Spike at level 81, which will be a nice quick damage dealing spell that does not require you to ramp up like normal shadow DPS. I think this will be competitive with Smite if you are discipline, but Smite is probably still better for holy. Not that important of a spell, and shadow really got nothing but this so kind of disappointed for them.

Inner Will is learned at level 83 and it is good and bad. The good is that Inner Fire now has another option and both of these have no charges. The bad is that Inner Will is very situational by only boosting run speed and mana cost of instant cast spells. This could be good for a shield-happy priest, but those are supposed to go out of style in Cataclysm with mana conservation being key. I cannot see you using Inner Will very much over the armor buff and spellpower buff of Inner Fire.

And now the bomb drops. The level 85 ability for all priests is called Leap of Faith, but it will forever be known as Life Grip or LG. LG is essentially a death knight's death grip for friendly targets. This has a 45 second cooldown, but it will be used to pull people out of fire, out of aggro, and out of focus in PvP. This seems like a perfect counter to death grip in PvP, and I'm happy that priests got what is probably the coolest ability in the game for their own needs. Plus this will be so much better than Levitate for screwing with people. However, I see many priest bloggers terribly unhappy because not only are DPS characters not allowed to dispel anymore, but now priests will be expected to save bad DPS from themselves. I don't see it like that. Bad DPS will still not be healed or life gripped. Sorry. If you are stupid, we'll let you die. Plain and simple.

Speaking of dispels, priests don't change as they will still dispel offensive magic and diseases with defensive magic (which every healer can dispel now). Mass Dispel and Abolish Disease are gone like a shaman's totem, which is kind of sad but fair. Also divine spirit is gone but who cares...less candles to buy.

With the simplification of stats, they are now making heal over time effects benefit from crit and haste stats. Haste will not shorten the duration but give more ticks, which is nice. Another interesting thing Blizzard said is that Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing heal of choice. And apparently discipline priests are not being successful tank healers enough (what?), so they are considering adding a more powerful PW:Shield for tank use only essentially. I still cannot imagine a discipline priest not relying on PWS and Penance to the detriment of everything else since G-Heal is not currently talented by discipline. Maybe this will change in Cataclysm to for Greater Heal over Penance. This will be a very interesting development.

Now we get to the spec-specific abilities. We'll start with discipline, which Blizzard hopes to improve for single-target healing. I feel like discipline is just simply better at that already, but maybe not. They are indeed bringing PW:Barrier into the game at long last. This will be like the Healing Rains of Shaman but with the obvious priest twist of being preventive. The discipline mastery top ability will be Absorption, which will improve all shield strength. This is an obvious development choice for the shield spec, and while it is not original, it is good.

For holy, they claim that holy should be more interesting to play (it's already pretty close in my opinion), and that holy should be better in PvP. One new talent for holy will be called Chakra and will put the holy priest in an improved healing state if they cast Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. This sounds like when you need to put through more thoroughput or focus on one task, you will be better at it. Adding another layer to the biggest set of healing spells any class has already. Chakra is another good change. The holy top level mastery is called Radiance, which will add a small HoT effect to targeted healing spells. This is a nice benefit that will make top level holy priests feel a bit more like they can compete with divine aegis for discipline.

So while the overall changes for priests are not as groundbreaking as shaman healers, the changes are mostly good and interesting. And I suspect Life Grip will be the talk of the town for Cataclysm abilities like Death Grip was the signature of death knights early on. So two classes in for the healer changes, and so far I have to say kudos. I wish shadow priests did not get such a shaft, but maybe everyone else changing will make shadow priests interesting and unique somehow.

Next up are druids tomorrow. Thankfully we only care about the tree parts over here, but that class will likely be thick with changes due to fitting all 3 or 4 roles (if you count ranged and melee DPS separately). See you then!

Cataclysm Changes - Shaman

2010-04-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

It appears Cataclysm is closer and closer, as blizzard has finished up their beta changes to all the classes except Paladins, which they are close on. So for the next three days we will get detailed class changes coming to the other 9 classes, and here at Healer Trek we will have it covered for you from the healer side. The first day brings us Shaman and Priest changes (sometime, Priest changes are still not announced as of 11 PM). The Shaman changes are more than enough to keep us occupied though.

Let's begin with the new spells being added at lower levels for Restoration Shamans. At level 4, a Shaman will get Healing Wave, as the current spell with that name will become Greater Healing Wave. Considering there is a Lesser Healing Wave, this will set up shamans with the same basic toolbox as priests with "Heal". This is not a major change but it may give the shaman more flexibility if the new Healing Wave is like a Flash Heal for a priest. This could be a good change or it could be worthless.

The second spell a shaman will learn is Unleashed Weapon, which will work like a paladin's judgement. You have the Windfury/Flametongue/Earthliving Weapon on and then you can release it for a special ability with Unleashed Weapon. The healing on is Earthliving Weapon, which will release to heal the shaman slightly and buff the next healing spell by 20%. This could be critical in some close fights, and it brings more strategy to healing.

The third spell is a rehash from a previous new spell called Spirit Link. Essentially Spirit Link links your target with two or more nearby targets, causing damage to be spread among the targets. This is a nifty idea that may allow a DPS to transfer hard hits to a tank in certain circumstances. Or on especially hard fights for a tank, you can spread the damage out a bit and then AoE heal. Again, this is adding more strategy and interest to healing.

Now we turn to Cataclysm level abilities. At level 83 you will receive Healing Rains
which is an AoE heal over time spell that you put down like a lightwell, except the healing happens automatically to all characters in the area for 10 seconds. This will obviously be a new complement to Chain Heal, and may allow the shaman to be an even more efficient raid healer. This would be the most exciting new spell if not for...

Spiritwalker's Grace at level 85. This is a self-target buff that allows you to avoid spellcasting interruption for 10 seconds due to MOVEMENT. Yes, a shaman will be able to cast all their heals on the move for 10 seconds, with a cooldown of 2 minutes. On current fights like Professor Putricide and Marrowgar, this would be a godsend. As it is, I think this is a much better endgame healing ability than the class has ever had. And again, the spells are encouraging smarter and more strategic play, something I am all for.

All in all, these changes alone make shaman healing quite a bit more versatile, like priests. It makes me, as a priest main, more excited about leveling my shaman Clara. But we're not quite done yet.

Each of the healing classes is changing to have one dispel mechanic for two of the four kinds of negative buffs in the game. This is a nerf for shamans, who will only be able to remove curses and magic (no more poison removal and no more brainless cleansing Totem). Blizzard wants you to actively monitor and remove debuffs, and this will bring shamans in line with everyone else. I agree with this change despite the fact that it is a nerf.

The mastery top level for resto shamans is called Deep Healing, which will give progressive bonuses to healing targets based on how much life they have. Thus, a tank at 5% will receive much more bonus healing than a tank at 95%. Without knowing the endgame mastery of other healing classes, it is hard to say where this will stack up. But it looks like resto shamans are going to become more "clutch".

That sums it up, and this is just for restoration shamans! There are tons of changes coming down the pipe, but that makes sense since this expansion is basically dubbed WoW 2.0. I think these changes will make restoration shamans far more versatile and powerful, but only time will tell if the other classes see a similar overhaul. One healing class down, and we're feeling very good so far about Cataclysm.

next up will be Priests tomorrow, my expertise. I'm kind of hoping for the return of Power Word Barrier, honestly. But priests are very balanced already, so it's just small stuff in all likelihood.

Question about Recount

2010-04-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

Slightly fuller entry below. However, I'm experiencing what I think is a glitch with Recount but I have no way I know of to test it. I do not think Recount is properly counting my healing spells. I can sit and spam cast and watch recount not move, and it's happened for months. However, now that I raided with our guild leadership (who takes it very seriously), I kept getting called out for not pushing out enough heals. The discipline priest in our raid was not so much more geared than me that he should be healing twice as much as I do when you count shields, but that's what is coming back. There were a couple fights where I cast Circle of Healing every cooldown and Prayer of Healing a few times and couldn't beat someone casting Flash heals and Penance. That does not make sense since we both gem for spell power.

I started paying closer attention and when I would cast CoH, I'd see the six green numbers pop up on screen from 3500-5500 let's say, meaning the total jump on recount should be 25-30k. Yet it moves like 5k, if that. Is there a way to calibrate or test recount to ensure that I'm not being screwed over in the eyes of my guild and raid leadership?

If I'm just not doing it right, that's fine. But I just have a sinking feeling it is not that, and if that holds Ekat out of raids, I'm seriously bothered by it.

Help. All comments are welcomed.

Raiding at a Top Level Again

2010-04-06T17:39:00.001-07:00

Well I told myself if Ekaterinae got selected for the top group or more experienced group of 10-man ICC in my guild which runs two weekly ICC-10 runs, I would splurge on the Sandals of Consecration. I'm not going to pay 23 emblems for the tailoring pattern and 115 more emblems of frost to make the boots, so I bought all of the primordial saronite off the auction house and dropped about 8,000 gold total on the shoes. However, Lord Marrowgar kept not dropping his cloth boots and the Sandals are a bigger upgrade. Well I got into Team Vowain and so I jumped my gearscore from 5302 to 5452 in one day by getting my second Tier 10 piece with emblems and having a guildie make the sandals to replace my poor ilvl 213 boots from Naxx-25.

Then it was time for ICC. While I was still on the low-geared side for Team Vowain, we did pretty well overall despite having a tough night by their standards. They have downed 9 of the 13 bosses in ICC thus far, and we got 7 down on this run. Professor Putricide escaped us but that was likely because we had two people new to the fight including me trying to 2-heal it. For the first time I saw Rotface, Festergut, and the Blood Prince Council fall. Each fight is challenging but not as bad as it seemed before thanks to the 10% buffs. I'm all jazzed up for another two weekends of raiding ICC while my wife and daughter visit family in Colorado in a couple weeks. I'm becoming more confident and I even went Holy spec for the first time in ages.

Trust me, it took a while to get back to the only spec I thought I would ever have before dual spec. But I think I've got it figured back out and was happy to raid heal effectively again.

So how are you doing in ICC?

A Beginning and an Ending

2010-03-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

(written from the perspective of Ekaterinae)
---------------------------

"Is there anything I can take for this headache?" I moaned as I collapsed back into the fireside chair.

"Hey look on the bright side, you don't have to stitch up your robes too much tonight Ekat" replied Cazaldora, who had also taken up a spot by the fireside with cicero.

"I suppose, but I don't know if I will ever shake that atrocious laugh. It shakes you down to the core, drives you insane. And that was with the help of the Keepers. Just how will we manage alone in the darkness?" I questioned.

Cazaldora mused for a moment and took a long sip from her cup of tea. "We gained enough knowledge and experience to deal with less help than we had. We will overcome that demon god with his laughter, as we must to save Azeroth from extinction."

"Yes I know" I agreed. "I just need to recharge and put on a good face when we do take our strike force in there. There's nothing more disheartening than a discouraged leader."

"Well it's almost time to set up the team, so I think I will go to bed and think about my final decisions" Cazaldora stated as she rolled onto her feet.

As Cazaldora strided out of the room, I turned my attention back to the crackling flames in the fire. I found myself lost in the warmth and the flickering light, entrancing me and soothing my mind from the vicious intrusions of Yogg-Saron. Although my eyelids became very heavy, I couldn't help but detect a welcome tingle on the back of my neck that indicated Gaurin had arrived at the fireside.

"So are you ready to prove yourself to the Keepers of Ulduar?" Gaurin asked.

"I think so, although I am not looking forward to rejecting their help in the darkness of the prison of Yogg-Saron" I replied. "How about you?"

Gaurin took a long pause at that point, so I turned to face him. I could see something wrong in his eyes. "Well that's what I came over to talk about."

"What's wrong? I want you by our side, and I need you by my side, as a buoy to life our spirits in the darkness like you did tonight." I pleaded.

"It's not just this task. You will be absolutely fine with Caz, and you certainly do not need me. It's more than that." At this point Gaurin looked down to the scars on his hands. "You know I've been toying with the idea of retirement for a long time, and I just cannot neglect the urge to go make a life and have a family away from the edge of the battle. I do not know what challenges await us in the future, but in the plains of Westfall, I can rest and do those things long neglected."

"You've always been there for me, my closest companion on the front lines, chuga. It will not be the same without you" I opined.

Gaurin smiled "No it will not be, but we survived the loss of Gabranth and you'll survive my loss. After all, I will still be reachable, just not right here on the front with you. You are still young and full of battle ahead of you. In fact, I know you will do great things in Ulduar and then in Icecrown Citadel. Where you go from there is unclear, but I know you will return to a safe Azeroth as a triumphant champion."

I looked in his eyes to see if there was any glimmer of regret, or any hope of changing his mind. It was clear that was not going to happen. "I certainly hope so. Have you told Caz?"

"No, but as one of my closest companions out here, I'm sure she knows already. In fact, she probably knew before I did." Gaurin nodded toward her sleeping quarters and added "you know, she's in there right now and will be up all night thinking and re-thinking tonight's battle and the group you will return to Ulduar with."

I shook my head in affirmation. "Yeah, but that's why she is such a good leader."

Gaurin stood to leave, "I need to go pack my bags, as I've always hated goodbyes."

I let him get two paces away before leaping up and grabbing him in a huge embrace. I couldn't help myself from tearing up as I whispered "Thanks for everything, chuga, and please be safe in your journey back home."

Gaurin paused a moment before returning the embrace. "I'm not the one you should be worried about now. Wish Averlaine my best when you see her again. We may have had our differences, but she deserves to know that I always respected her and I hope she can be helpful to you in this hunt."

At this point, I could feel the hot tears running onto my cheeks as I released Gaurin from a literal bear-hug. "Alright, will do. Goodbye, friend."

As Gaurin retreated from view, I turned back to the fire. I expected to feel a deep emptiness sucking me into a tempestous sea of loss, but somehow getting engaged with the crackling flames again kept me afloat. It may be an ending for another close friend on the front lines, but it is only the beginning of the hunt for Algalon.

to be continued...

Patch 3.3.3 goes live with one big surprise

2010-03-28T16:18:00.000-07:00

Two straight entries about being a tree! You'd think I was a tree hugger all of a sudden. But in game, I suppose I am. Ariel dinged a shocking 6 times in maybe 4 to 4.5 hours of gameplay this weekend. She also managed to level herbalism and alchemy in that amount of time to nearly 300 apiece. How did this happen at such a high level? Well when Patch 3.3.3 went live this week, the Call to Arms weekly holidays became more relevant thanks to honor bonuses being implemented for running the chosen weekend battleground. So I jumped into my first ever battleground at level 51 on Thursday night and I figured out how AV works.

After turning in some quests to get to 52, I parked myself in Feralas and sat in the queue while I herbed during the weekend play sessions. With the Call to Arms bonus, the first time you win AV in a day you get about 60% of a level instantly. After that each win is worth about 30-35% instantly. Add to that the 30k experience for capturing the four towers and killing the first general, and you rack up a lot of xp in a mighty hurry. So even when the battles turned into so-called "turtles" a couple of times, it's still more experience per hour than LFG, which takes longer to pop in the 50's, also known as Black Rock Depths levels. So without much effort, Ariel is now level 58. Such a perfect time for the Call to Arms weekend, and now I can skip into Outland and enjoy the questing and instances there. So good progress made.

Ekat also ran a couple raids, saw 25 man Yogg-Saron finally but did not down him. We came very close but ran out of time. I got the first waitlist spot for ICC-10 unfortunately again, so I jumped into the impromptu third run again and we got 3 bosses down without too much trouble. No loot, but I'm about 4-5 emblems away from a second tier piece. So my main also continues on her path.

Arielae - The Boss has focused on You!

2010-03-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well the time has come and gone for interest in Navarionae, and considering he is not a healer, that should not come as a surprise. Thus, with Ekat simply raiding and doing frost dailies and Navar basically becoming a JC daily fiend and moneymaker DK, it is time to shift the focus back to the next leveling character. In this case, Arielae gets the focus because she is highest in the levels. In fact, she has now outpaced Bia and Clara by a wide margin. She hit level 50 this weekend, which is my third character to reach that level, and she has built up some good Feral Cat DPS gear and some good healing gear along the way. But the reason I wrote this short entry (other than saying ding 50) is to say one simple thing...

TREE FORM IS AWESOME!

It's been a very long time since I got a new form, as Dire Bear and Cat and all those come in the first 20-25 levels as I remember. I had to respec a bit to fit in Tree of Life, but wow what a difference in my first random dungeon right after getting the Tree. All of a sudden, the healing game changed as Rejuvenation runs at all times on the tank and you cut it short at the end of the duration with Swiftmend for a massive instant heal. Mana is becoming less of an issue, and the heals are more powerful and swift. I'm sure the druid class still will wax and wane in strength through the levels, but Tree form now makes me feel like a natural healer again.

I've actually blown through rested time and now likely have to turn a bit more attention over to Bia and Clara again. However, Ariel is on the fast track and will certainly be my 3rd level 80 in a short while.

Also, the header of the blog has been updated to reflect some new pretty gear and heirlooms on Ariel and Bia. The team is above 17k gold, by pretty much making bags and cutting a couple epic gems when the raw material price is low. I need a tad over 25k to pay for all the leveling expenses of the three upcoming healers, so the business keeps churning.

My Very First PUG Story

2010-03-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Well it seems like everyone who has run a dungeon daily using the random dungeon LFG feature has found the terrible fail pick up group from time to time. And some of those transcend bad. They are so bad you tell all your friends about how awful this was, and how could this be? Well for those of us who PUG regularly, we get used to the normal bad that might send someone over the edge. However, there are still players out there who would top the incompetency charts if Recount kept track of that. I've probably even run into those before, but we've persevered in most cases and I've only ever been kicked from one group of spanish-speaking people who did not know how to do the fights in Pit of Saron and so blamed the english-speaking healer. Well I finally have a story, and it's only a week late for the contest my Horde guild ran to give away a Battered Hilt for the best fail PUG story. (Ok it's not THAT good, but it feels like it when it happens to you).

The other back note to the story is that after getting stuck with tons of Halls of Stone, my second hate hate hate instance is Nexus as it pops over 50% of the time for my daily LFG. It's ridiculous. I've never gotten Oculus at all, but Nexus, oh my all the time. Never thought I could grow to hate it, but sure enough, do it enough and you do. Going into this Sunday's LFG, I had done Nexus monday, dropped it Tuesday when tired, done it Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

So LFG pops and it is Pit of Saron in progress. Not a good sign. Well they were still on the trash leading up to the first boss, so I suppose it was a DC and not a fail group. We get up to Garfrost which requires basically one thing for your group. Stand behind saronite to get out of LOS so healers can keep up. If you do not and you are not a tank, you will die. Plain and simple. Well the first time the saronite fell in a bad place and the DPS never "found it" although the healer (me) was standing behind it. We tried again and same problem. I instructed the group of the strategy and the next pull, the saronite fell right beneath the boss. And the tank did not kite the boss away so we could get out of the AoE damage. Wipe wipe wipe. I had wanted to drop after the second wipe but I waited because my LFG timer was still high. At this point my timer was 2 minutes, so I dropped group.

After a requeue, the Nexus screen pops up. Somehow I'm not surprised. Karma bites me right in the tail. So we zone in and it's a beartank and some low-geared DPS. No big deal, I've had this group before plenty of times. Well despite the bear tank being nearly as well geared as me (which means likely ICC experience), this tank set a new record for failure of situational awareness. I don't think this bear could be nicknamed anything other than tunnel vision. Here's just a sample...

Scenario 1 - throughout the instance, there are patrolling packs of mobs around stationary ones. For some reason it seemed like every pack of patrolling mobs was completely ignored by the tank as he pulled a pack right as a pat approached. Hence, we had a ton of hard pulls. It did not matter because the tank and I were well geared, but still, it makes things a lot harder than it has to be.

Scenario 2 - a little later in the instance we are on the ramps and platforms in Anomalus's area. As every hunter knows or should know, jumping off the ramps is not what your pets do, so they always pull a pack of mobs behind the party if youd o not dismiss them. Over half the time we just deal with the mobs, but the hunter typically needs help if they are not overgeared. And we had a hunter who left his pet out. So while I trailed the group, I saw the hunter turn back to help his pet, I threw a couple heals and ran after the tank, who kept pulling. Then the hunter dies and the mobs come all the way up the platforms and catch up with us. Despite positioning myself on the other side of the platform, the tank somehow doesn't realize I've got aggro and runs up and pulls the boss. I end up having to fight off the mobs myself and we barely survive Anomalus.

Scenario 3 - After clearing Omorok, there is one big tree guy right at the doorway to Omorok's area that you can skip if you hug the wall. Well again the bear is charging ahead and the rest of us cleat except the hunter's pet. Well this time the hunter wises up and FEIGNS DEATH right next to me. So I get stunned and then pummeled to death. Meanwhile, the tank has engaged Keristraza the last boss.

As it turns out, one of the DPS saves the group because he was a paladin who knew how to use a healing spell. I ran back in and got to the boss just in time to cast 3 spells before she died, and the hunter DEMANDED A REZ. Needless to say, I dropped group having "earned" my frost emblems. How this tank ever gets through an instance with that level of tunnel vision I'll never know.

Protip #1 - If you feign death so a healer can die for your mistake, run back for goodness sake.
Protip #2 - If you are a tank and you don't understand the concept of situational awareness or keeping threat off the healer, you need to learn to play.

Tier 10 Changes in Mid-Flight

2010-03-07T14:07:00.000-08:00

When Tier gear is spoiled for a new raid patch, there's always tons of speculation and commentary on the new bonuses you get for collecting 2 or 4 of the 5 possible pieces of gear in the set. In fact, it is common for the masses and the theorycrafters to get the developers to change a Tier bonus before it goes live or tweak a bonus where the original bonus announced is not great or does not work well. For every single class and role within that class, Blizzard is challenged to come up with 2 new bonuses every single raid tier, and they try to mix in a lot more than just passive 5% buffs to a spell. So in my short time seeing the endgame, I've experienced firsthand the joys of Tier 7, 8, 9, and now 10. Now there were a lot of things grabbing my attention for frost emblems, including the tier 10 stuff. In fact, I started by saving up 95 emblems for the headpiece. But then I looked at the tier bonuses and it was just more efficient for me to make much more needed changes with my next emblems to the belt slot, although cape and trinket were also huge upgrade possibilities. I just could not justify even getting a second piece of tier 10 for the admittedly good Flash Heal bonus over the bigger bump in stats from the belt. So perhaps I'm not one to talk about Tier. However, this week Blizzard also let out on the PTR (public test realm) for Patch 3.3.3 a new 4-piece set bonus for healing priests. Here's the rundown currently.

OLD BONUS - Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

NEW BONUS - Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

My jaw hit the floor when I saw this proposed change. Why, you ask? Well because until the past two weekends, I had not been raiding. So when healing a 5-man heroic that you overgear usually, you get into habits to make things more convenient or easy. For me, it was running discipline spec with Power Word Shield, Renew, and Prayer of Mending as my main weapons with Penance when I need a big heal. Thus, I am not exactly efficient but I cover most damage coming in without needing to rely on being reactive. So if there's two spells I cast an absolute ton, it's PWS and Renew. If this change goes live, this set bonus would be a real boon to my play style in 5-mans, which is what I do most of the time.

To be fair, the most effective raid healing as discipline does not use renew. Hell, even holy spec priests do not use renew a lot, especially when a druid is around. Rejuvenation is more efficient on mana by saving overheals and is just plain better than renew, even with holy talents boosting renew. Thus, the key spell for both specs is Flash Heal. However, that has already been boosted in the two-piece bonus, so we have to have some placeholder match for PWS and it's renew. The upshot is that for regular raiders who maximize their healing output, the new four set bonus is actually a downgrade! This may be hard to believe, but the blog universe has pretty much confirmed that those who have the 4-set bonus now know it boosts them more than a passive 5% bonus to PWS and Renew. Of course healing is not always about thoroughput, but when it is, that's when you need to shine. Put bluntly, when you are at your best, the old bonus is better.

So why is blizzard proposing a change then? Well for one, a lot of people are not saavy with macros and add ons that would allow them to know every time the old 4 piece bonus procs. Thus, they waste a lot of golden opportunities to use the bonus and that indeed makes a passive bonus more appealing. I myself am just getting in the hang of using two very powerful trinkets with an equip benefit and a use benefit every 2 minutes or so. But with a simple addon, you can have some indication on par with the light flashes that happen when a holy-spec priest has a free Flash Heal proc waiting. So that's no excuse, but the masses appear to be complaining or like me, just not buying tier 10 with their emblems. Although I had other reasons for upgrading elsewhere in my own gear progression, I can see if Blizzard sees very few priests using the 4 piece healing bonus then there must be something wrong. So they make a change. Or at least propose to make a change.

So even though this change favors the casuals and my own playing strategy, in the week of commentary that has passed since the announcement, I've gone from excited to totally against this change. Part of this is principle. Sometimes Blizzard makes tweaks that do not work, but that does not mean we should get our way as a playerbase every single time something happens that is minor, such as a tier bonus flopping. If something truly flopped, maybe you revisit it in a future tier. To make a change halfway into the heat of the ICC raiding cycle that completely changes the Tier-buying game makes everyone in favor of the change throw up their arms in disgust as all their precious emblems to date have been spent elsewhere. And if the normal person plays about as much as I do, then they only have 2-3 pieces of frost emblem gear so far. In time, we will all get the gear we want with the frost emblems, but for some people this change makes them feel awful about choices they made on old information. Usually tier bonuses do not change except in drastic circumstances, and the priest nation is now dealing with the potential consequences of that drastic action.

This is like pulling the rug out from under someone, and not unlike the changes to frost orbs. However, where frost orbs were not a huge deal, the end tier gear in an expansion is a big deal. Plus it is actually a downgrade for the best priests in the game. While the masses rejoice, they rejoice for a change they never got to experience before the change. This is like catering to the uneducated masses in politics, which happens but leads to very bad results usually. So although it is just a tier bonus, priests just got nerfed. And the tier bonus that went live in 3.3 is in fact not the tier bonus that people will go away into Cataclysm with. This is a bad change any way you slice it, and one I hope does not hit priests or any other class in the future.

Priest Tier 10 Changes...yay or nay?

An Interesting Twist of Fate

2010-03-01T18:59:00.001-08:00

So I had a full weekend of bachelor time in the house this weekend without a honey-do list, which is probably an occurrence that will not repeat itself too often over the course of time. This was a well-needed chance to rest up and recharge the batteries for real without any guilt for being selfish with the me time. Did I accomplish anything over the weekend? Well I did some dishes and grocery shopping, but seriously, it was the just not caring that made things perfect. By a poor dash of luck, my guild was only running one raid this weekend because it was our 1.5 year anniversary and we promote veteran members to "knight" every 6 months for some very outstanding guildies. Or at least I like to think so as I was knighted 6 months ago! There were some fun events planned including a costume contest and a human dart contest (which I finished second in, argh!). Some very nifty outfits by the guild members, and a testament to all the detail that Blizzard puts into gear at all levels.

We also had a guild olympics event since seemingly half our guild is Canadian. The battle was to full clear Naxx in the quickest time. Just like the hockey game that ended the real Olympics, this battle was close right up to the end. Team Canada won by 20 seconds, which is astounding considering that we're talking about an 80-90 minute time window! I was a bit disappointed to be left out of the fun on that, but I was on team 2 for the 10-man ICC runs the next day so I consoled myself with a PUG VoA run since we finally won wintergrasp. This was my first look at the new boss, and while he is kind of healing intensive, there's nothing hard at all about this fight. Kind of disappointing really.

Well we get the boss down and the priest tier 10 DPS pants drop. Not PvP pants! Well there was another priest in the raid but obviously we both roll and I win with an 11. What a crappy winning roll! She asks if I want to sell it, but I cannot afford to with my first ICC coming up the next day. I also had accumulated just enough badges after VoA to buy a massive belt upgrade with frost badges. These two upgrades literally jumped my gearscore nearly 200 points in 10 minutes. Awesomeness!

The weird twist of fate comes in that we go to Icecrown Citadel and we do very well for the guild's second team. We downed all four bosses in the lower spire and made an attempt at Festergut after downing the two Gluth pets. We also downed a miniboss on the ramparts for the raid weekly quest, thereby racking up the emblems (like 16 or 18 total). However, absolutely zero cloth pieces dropped despite having 1 warlock and 3 priests in the raid! Normally I would be truly pissed because of wasting a bunch of gold on a progression raid with no benefit, but I was just on such a high after the raid. I think this was a confluence of four things.

1. It had been absolutely forever since I progression raided. After grinding out essentially two tier 10 level pieces by 2 badges per day (some days) and 5 badges per week (most weeks), to just immediately get 20 badges was thrilling. Plus I finally got to see past Lord Marrowgar, who is clearly the hardest boss in the lower spire in my humble opinion. I got to bring utility to the raid being the only real dedicated tank healer but also having the shadow spec back in the mix for the fourth boss when you need more DPS to knock down Blood Beasts. I think the last time I progression raided was ONE TIME in ToC-10. That's right, two raids ago for me was in Ulduar. Scary, no? Well there's just something fun about overcoming tough tasks together and progressing against the endgame, and I lost that feeling until yesterday.

2. I did get an upgrade, albeit a silly one. I blew through neutral and most of friendly in the Ashen Verdict rep grind, getting the first level of the awesome rings they give. So, while it's not a huge upgrade, I feel like I'm finally moving towards the best ring in the game right now.

3. The people. This is not a knock on Team A, but let's face it, Team A will always be more serious about progression raiding. And that's OK because I can take it seriously. But Team B has slightly less expectations and some really sweet personalities. Despite not raiding much for the past 4 months, I gelled with people I knew in the run and many people I did not know well. The main tank and I threw barbs in vent at each other for fun and we got along so well it's as if I've been running with him for ages. Furthermore, I was rusty...I made a mistake on gunship that wiped us and made a mistake and facepulled the third pull of the instance. Yet nobody yelled at me or told me to get my crap together, and others made mistakes as well, but it was no big deal. We kept at it and triumphed together. It made me truly proud to be a part of that group and makes me want to come back for more!

4. I got a chance to see a slight glimpse into the guild inner circle this past weekend (no, absolutely no details on how or substance...that's not proper). And let me just say I am thoroughly impressed with the guild officers and how they conduct business. It makes me feel very hopeful about the continued future of the guild that started right before I joined the game. It's just like the partners in my law firm. I have no idea how many tough decisions they have to deal with this this kind of economy, but I know if I did ever happen to be a fly on the wall (will never happen) I would probably find that we have the same kind of strong leaders in that group. Or at least I figure this is the case after seeing how we're still doing OK and hopefully starting to come out of the recession. One can be hopeful! But that's not here nor there. The point is, I saw a new side of our leaders that made me appreciate them even more.

So all in all, I never would have thought that I would luck into gear when I was out of ICC on the weekend, but that's how it goes sometimes. I sure hope I can find time to build some more relationships like this in the future. Of course helping Mikola run the Ulduar hard mode events is one way to keep this going, so let's hope that goes well.

The Hunt Begins

2010-02-24T18:10:00.000-08:00

(written from the perspective of Ekaterinae)
---------------------

Another long day of training done, I sat down at the fireside of the guild hall of The Illuminati. Although all I wanted to do was sleep, there's always work to be done when preparing to tackle the greatest menace Azeroth has ever seen in the Lich King. Tonight there's some stitching that needs to be done to repair my robe, as well as a few pieces of armor to enchant for my fellow warriors.

Two of my closest friends joined me at the fireside. Cazaldora curled up next to her favorite companion Cicero, while Gaurin popped into the chair next to me after another shapeshift. As Cazaldora worked on some gemstones with her simple grinder, Gaurin began sharing tales of taking on all the trials of our latest triumph in the Trial of the Crusader. Although the primary lieutenant of the Lich King Anub'Arak had finally been dealt with once and for all, I knew Gaurin was just trying to cheer us up from the days of drudgery since that triumph. However, all that will change as the newly formed Ashen Verdict is poised to lead us into Icecrown Citadel for the final battle.

Just then, a hooded figure veiled in shadow came bursting through the doors of the guild hall. "I come seeking The Illuminati."

Ruach, a fellow healer and one of the leaders of our guild stepped forward. "Aye, you have found The Illuminati. What is so important that brings you to our halls?"

The mysterious figure paused briefly, "The Leadership of the Alliance has a special assignment that must be completed, and they believe The Illuminati is the right group for the task. You must go back into the mighty halls of Ulduar and..."

Ruach interrupted the visitor - "Ulduar? But we are making final preparations for the most important battle in the history of Azeroth! We cannot turn our backs once more to the Lich King and play with the keepers of the old gods. And who are you to order us away from our destiny?"

Although you couldn't see her face, I could read the frustration growing in the visitor's voice: "Well to be honest I don't know that you are up to the task, but when the kings of the Alliance insist, you do not say no. While the Lich King is a grave threat, the entire existence of Azeroth is at risk from a far greater enemy."

Cazaldora looked up from her newly cut rubies to say "A far greater enemy? This whole time we have been tracking down and eliminating all the agents and friends of the Lich King. The first minion Kel'Thuzad and his necropolis Naxxramas have fallen. Arthas's closest ally Anub'Arak has been slain. And even the old god Yogg-Saron has been killed, cutting off the endless supply of corruption and Saronite Ore for the Scourge. Why would we ever need to go back into the prison of a dead old god who poses no threat?"

The visitor snapped back "You are supremely arrogant if you think you've killed an old god for good. but that's neither here nor there. The entire world may be destroyed thanks to the careless actions of your group in taking down Loken, and although your own stupidity is to blame"

Cazaldora jumped into action with Cicero bounding towards the visitor...

"SILENCE!" The room fell as quiet as death as Vowain, the esteemed leader of the guild stepped into the front of the room. "While you shall not come into our halls and insult us, please explain what the leaders would have us do."

Continuing on, the visitor explained: "Although Loken was indeed the Watcher of Yogg-Saron who became corrupted and allowed Ulduar to fall, he also served a more important role than any of the other watchers. You see, Loken was in constant communication with the Titans who imprisoned Yogg-Saron. The Titans allow us to inhabit Azeroth and keep any corruption in check. When Loken was slain in the Halls of Lightning, that connection with the Titans was severed, and they have sent Algalon the Observer to determine if Azeroth has been overcome with corruption. With the Lich King's minions all over this continent, Algalon will certainly re-originate Azeroth to remove the corruption forever unless we can stop him."

Cazaldora, having calmed down slightly, now looked upon the visitor with genuine curiosity. "By re-originating Azeroth, do you mean wiping all life off the planet?"

"Yes" the visitor answered sharply. "As you can see, there is just slightly more on the line than the battle we face in Icecrown."

Vowain inquired "so Algalon is residing in Ulduar?"

The visitor shook her head. "Not exactly...Algalon has set himself up in the Celestial Planetarium, which is only accessible with the blessing and sigils of the remaining Keepers Freya, Mimiron, Thorim, and Hodir. Unlike when you faced these Watchers before, now you must convince them you are worthy of the task of taking on Algalon. To do so, you will need to defeat the bosses of Ulduar again, this time in such a way that impresses them."

Ruach stepped in "But how do we know you are not just making this story up and working for Arthas instead of our kings?"

With a heavy sigh, the hooded visitor slowly pulled back the hood covering her visage. A hushed gasp filled the room as the light revealed the face of Averlaine, a holy paladin who previously joined and left the ranks of The Illuminati.

"You? How can we trust you who left us on the steps of the Crusader's Coliseum?" whispered Vowain.

"I do what I must for the improvement of Azeroth, whether that is directly assisting the kings of the Alliance or leading warriors of the Horde into battle. The Light does not discriminate about the means to the end, and you of all people should understand that Vow."

Although Vowain was clearly hesitant to commit himself to the words of Averlaine, some of us were quite a bit closer to the paladin and could tell the honesty in her voice. With a quick glance at Gaurin and myself, Cazaldora stepped forward once again. "I trust you as always Averlaine. I will lead this battle on behalf of the the Alliance and The Illuminati, and I am certain we will be proud to lend some of our very best warriors for this highly important task while Vowain continues to prepare for the siege upon Icecrown Citadel."

With a surge of pride and renewed purpose, I jumped up from my stitchwork at the fireside. "I indeed will join Cazaldora in this battle to save Azeroth. I know with the power of the light and the holy spirit, we will prevail over this Algalon."

If only I could be so sure in my heart of hearts. But putting on a good face to support my close ally was crucial. I turned and prayed for support from other members of the guild. Sure enough, a few other proud and strong warriors stepped up immediately behind Cazaldora and myself. Among them were Arturias the warrior, Graystreak the mage, Atleen the paladin, Rhodaria the shaman, Lucivelle the mage, Miraelle the druid, Sihnon the hunter, Allastra the warlock, and Eukari the death knight. All of a sudden, I knew we could succeed.

With another quick nod to Gaurin, I turned and gave a quick wink to Cazaldora.

The Hunt Is On...

The Money-Making Game Changes

2010-02-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

Patch 3.3.3 surprisingly jumped onto the PTR (public test realms) this week, and there are quite a few spicy changes. None of these will come as a huge shock to those who've been around long enough to see a full expansion cycle through, but many people like myself jumped in right before WOTLK and so this is new to us. Basically, towards the end of an expansion many things which required rep grinds or many craftable items that had big cooldowns on them lose these rep requirements and cooldowns. This happens because not only are these items very outclassed by the gear you can grind up quickly at the end of an expansion, but also we are preparing the crafting professions for being powerleveled through by new artisans. After all, can you imagine the grind of having to wait on cooldown cloth to level the last bit of vanilla tailoring, and the same for BC, and the same for WOTLK, before you ever got to Catacylsm tailoring? Well that is what is going on.

More specifically, the four day cooldown on specialty cloth (Spellweave, Moonshroud, and Ebonweave) is being removed. Also, the one day cooldown on Titansteel is being removed. To balance one item that would become too cheap otherwise, a SEVEN day cooldown is being added to Glacial Bag, which requires 4 Moonshroud and 4 Ebonweave to make. My initial reaction to these changes was kind of gut-wrenching, because I've been replenishing the gold pile I spent (probably 10-12k) on Navarionae with Titansteel and of course continued specialty cloth production. But on the other hand, these items have cooled down significantly since their high caused by the ICC Patch 3.3. So it is not like these were raking in ludicrous amounts of money anymore. In any event, if you have stockpiles of these items, there is absolutely no reason not to post them on the AH in moderate amounts over the next couple weeks to get your cooldown profits before they disappear.

For my own personal money-making game, I realized I had become too robotic again in relying on cooldowns. Now that those are going away, I started investigating what else I could do, other than the sporadic Netherweave Bag market. Well my handy dandy new 450 JC toon has a ton of options. He did wait until being able to buy the pattern for Chaotic Skyflare Diamond to level JC to 450, but he just exhausted his supply of those from leveling. Those bring in about 20 gold per cut on average, and they sell in decent amounts. I decided to take a shot at the moon with a caster skyflare diamond (Ember) that is really the best for casters. If it sells as the market indicates, it will be a monster 70-80 gold per cut.

Furthermore, I will keep on grinding the JC daily to get tokens for some recipes, but in my needs for Ekat and Navar I pretty much have two of the best selling epic patterns already bought (Solid blue for stam, which every tank stacks; and Runed red for spellpower, which many casters stack). Just by being in Dalaran yesterday at the right time, I was able to cut two Runed Cardinal Rubies for someone and they tipped 60 gold. I also have been trying to run WG on Ekat because Navar needs the last elder to open up for the Lunar Festival, and she always ends up staying for 10 minutes to fish afterwards. Fish Feasts sell like candy too. So in my own ways, I will continue to profit without the use of cooldowns and you should too.

Another 3.3.3 change that's coming is a Frozen Orb vendor. Yes, all those Frozen Orbs that have been useless for months now will be spent at a vendor for any eternal or upgraded to upper level orbs. I have vendored the vast majority of mine, which now turns out to be a mistake as 5 gold is less than what eternals are worth. On the bright side, this should crash the eternal market slightly on the more expensive eternals (sorry transmuting Alchemists). However, the dark side to this is that ninja need rolling on Frozen Orbs will jump significantly. It's already happened to me twice this weekend after only happening 2-4 times over the past few weeks. So be on your guard, because the greedy will be rolling need a lot more now.

On the team front, Arielae has now dinged 45 and Biancae 32, so the alts are back into play now that the first alt is pretty well-established as an 80 tank.

Achievement Hunting Vol. 6: Lunar Festival

2010-02-16T18:10:00.001-08:00

Well this is just a crazy time of year, with Love is in the Air running simultaneously with the Lunar Festival. However, last year was a lot worse as the last week of Lunar Festival coincided with the 6 day Love holiday, and people went crazy trying to finish both at the same time. Thankfully with the changes to Love is in the Air, you should have been able to clear that out in the first week. If not, a few more daily quests should get the job done over the last 4 days of that holiday. The Lunar Festival is bar none the most straightforward and time consuming holiday there is, even topping the travel fun in Hallow's End. The basic idea is going and respecting a bunch of Elders who appear in spotlights all over the world. Let's cover the achievements in our usual fashion.

The holiday can be started in any major capital of either faction. You will find an elder and a starter quest that asks you to set off some fireworks to celebrate the occasion. These cost a handful of silver, but not much for any toon, even low leveled. Then you will receive an invitation to Moonglade, normally the home of druids only. In Moonglade you will find a festival area and a festival vendor inside the town. You should head this way early in the holiday, espeically if you are low level for reasons set out below.

1. Frenzied Firecracker - you need to purchase 10 firecrackers for some silver from the vendors in the major cities and then set off the firecrackers within 30 seconds. You do need to target the ground somewhere for each one, so it is better if you put the firecrackers on your action bar. Still, very easy to do right away.

2. The Rocket's Red Glare - if you finished Love is in the Air, then this will be familiar. You buy 10 rockets and set them off in 25 seconds. The rockets just cost a few silver from the same city vendor you got the firecrackers from, so again, you should have this achievement in a minute.

3. Elune's Blessing - Although Omen is a level 80 dog in Moonglade with tons and tons of health, the first week of the festival is full of people summoning and killing him. All you have to do is be around when Omen is killed, as everyone in the vicinity can walk into the moonglow spotlight when he dies to receive Omen's blessing, finishing the quest and the achievement. Thus, go to Moonglade this week, as Omen is very hard to see killed in the last half of this very long holiday.

4. Elders of the Alliance - This is speaking from Alliance perspective, so if Horde just swap the factions. As mentioned above, there are elders all over the world you visit and each gives you a Coin of Ancestry. There coins can be used to buy firecracker packages and six colorful outfits in Moonglade, but you'll only need 30-35 for all that fun. However, there are 75 elders to find and the four in your faction's capital cities are the easiest.

5. Elders of Eastern Kingdoms - There are 17 elders hiding in nearly every zone of the Eastern Kingdoms. There are slightly fewer elders here than in Kalimdor and the flight paths for both factions generally put you in better position to get to these elders. Probably the hardest elder to get to in this lot is Moonstrike in Scholomance (outside the instance).

6. Lunar Festival Finery - You need to purchase a dress or suit for 5 Coins of Ancestry. It's probably a good time to take a break after doing Eastern Kingdoms and before tackling Kalimdor, as the grind of travel is easy to wear on you. Plus with the brightly colorful clothes you can be styling as you ride your ground mount all over the world.

7. Elders of Kalimdor - This is the same grind as Eastern Kingdoms, with 21 elders instead of 17. And a couple of these elders are incredibly hard to get to if you have never opened up the zones and flight paths. The most difficult is Elder Brightspear in Winterspring, as you need to have the tunnel opened to you in order to get there a first time. Hopefully you have enough time to get on this right away, as nothing should hold you back with three weeks to get things like this done.

8. 50 Coins of Ancestry - If you've been following along this path roughly and getting some instance coins as well, you will hit the last of the coin of ancestry achievements and the one you need for the meta, which is 50. This just happens by a function of you needing to get all 75 anyways, so this is a throwaway.

9. Elders of Northrend - There are 18 more elders in Northrend, and I guess elders don't visit Outland because it's not Azeroth proper. In any event, these are probably easier than the previous ones for high levels because you can use your flying mount. If nothing else, these will go quicker.

10. Elders of the Horde - This would be the opposite faction, which you should do during the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor runs. However, each of these are a real pain, especially early in the holiday where PvP players will be griefing those trying to get the elder coins. These are also right in the busy holiday sections of each city, so it will be hard to not run into people. Nevertheless, this is easier than most PvP holiday achievements overall.

11. Elders of the Dungeons - And now we come to the meat of the matter. As you travel around the world, you also need to drop into some instances and tear through them to find Elders hiding somewhere inside. Seven of these dungeons are in Northrend and you can run most of them on normal, and six more in the old world should be easy for level 80 characters. You will need to be level 80 anyways because one coin is in Utgarde Pinnacle and another is only available in heroic Gundrak. These will be the hardest two coins to get, and I have a friend who failed to get these coins last year, which led to them wiping out all his achievements this year and he's got to do it all over again. So beware, don't take on the task unless you are ready to commit the time to finish it.

And that's all there is! This is so straightforward it is hard to jazz up 7 straight entries about "go find coins". But nevertheless, you will not be alone. In fact, my two tips are these. First, you should travel with a buddy if possible to keep you company. If that person happens to be a hunter who can make you move faster, so be it. The second tip is although discovery on your own is fun, this holiday is really one you should follow a guide so that you don't waste time backtracking. The best online guide is Wowhead as usual: http://www.wowhead.com/?guide=lunar-festival. However, there are also a couple addons that can help as well. Use the guides, save some time, especially if you are crazy enough to run this holiday on more than one toon. I will be completing this on Navar, but it has not changed from when Ekat did it and I wish you the best of luck. Congrats to new Elders and to those who finish Long Strange Trip on this holiday for their drake.

Again, let me know if there are any non-holiday achievements you want me to speak about, especially considering we have a long break to Noblegarden. See you next time!

Building A Successful Guild Part 4: Secure Your Valuables!

2010-02-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to the Successful Guild Building series! In part 1, I described how the foundation of a guild is the guild leadership, who must be strong or else everything else crumbles. In part 2, I looked at the parallels between framing the different rooms in a house and in a guild, setting up proper avenues for members to enjoy all the various aspects of the game. In part 3, I detailed how the outside appearances of your guild caused by your website and current member conduct affects recruitment and retention of guild members. Now we come to the fourth part of this five-part series on how to build a successful guild, and more specifically, securing the guild.

One of the most crucial details in constructing a house is figuring out what provisions you will make to secure the valuable possessions and people inside the house both when you are home and when you are away. You can have a beautiful house with well-sized rooms and a good foundation, but without some sort of security system, all of this can be for naught with just one bad guy. Continuing the metaphor, the same is true of your well-constructed guild in Warcraft. One only has to look on the major websites covering WoW or the official forums to see many tales of guild drama and people stealing loots from groups and guilds, also known as ninjas. Just like the robbers and burglars in real life, the ninjas are in your realm and they are always looking for a chance to strike at your weaknesses. So how do you keep them out?

The first step in securing a house is installing door sensors and window contacts to communicate with a security system controller. This way, you know when things are moving in and out of the house through all the possible entryways. In a similar fashion, guild leaders must set a framework for protecting guild assets, usually held in a guild bank. Thankfully blizzard has programmed in many ways to keep track of guild banks so that guild leaderships can implement security procedures easily. The first thing you will notice is the log tab on every bank tab the guild purchases. This is not a thing to be ignored, as you can check every day or two and see which members in the guild are removing items from the guild bank. Ideally, you will have an officer who takes care of keeping the bank organized, and that person needs to check the logs to ensure any suspicious activity (a toon always taking things out of the gbank every day, taking high-value things, etc.) is noticed and brought to the attention of the officers immediately.

Additionally, limits may be placed on how many items you can let a character remove from a guild tab per day. This can range all the way from unlimited to no access at all, thereby allowing you to tailor your level of security. Another method of protecting the guild bank is limiting access to trial or new members. Whenever a member joins a guild, they join at the lowest rank. You should, at a minimum, organize your guild into three ranks: officers, full members, and new/trial members. Full members have moderate or normal access to the guild bank, while new/trial members should have zero access. This can be set in the bank and guild settings for each membership level you have set up. Taking these simple steps when setting up your guild can stop most ninjas right in their tracks.

One example from my days with The Illuminati illustrates this point nicely. We had a new member come in on a Saturday morning a few months ago, and they were talkative and generally nice in gchat. The person even ran a couple instances that morning with other guild members to try and start building relationships. Then just a few hours later, he asks in gchat "why can't I pull these mana pots from the guild bank?" So I and a couple of officers explained the no access policy during the new member period, and the guy flipped out in gchat. "I don't want to be a part of a group that doesn't trust people...this is just not the right fit for me..." He then quit the guild shortly thereafter. It was so painfully clear that the whole time, he was hoping to loot the guild bank and run off with the generous contributions of many others. But just by putting the security system in place, it kept a disaster from happening.

Once you have the contacts and sensors installed in a house, the next important step is USING the system. You'd be surprised how many people forget to turn their security system on at the keypad before they leave the house. In fact, when my car was broken into in real life a few months ago, the cop was surprised that it was an actual break in because he had not had any thefts where the doors were locked in six months! For a guild, that enforcement is easy because once you set your guild bank security settings, they stay in place. However, the use of an officer to organize the guild bank and make sure items that need to stay in "Request Only" tabs do so. However, just like in my story above, you have to make it clear to your officers that these bank rules are to be strictly enforced at all times! There's a reason you went to all the hassle of protecting these digital goods in the first place, and you do not want to waste that effort.

There is another kind of ninja thief in Warcraft, and that is the account hacker. Whether by shoddy account-sharing or dealing with gold sellers, even your full-fledged members and officers can become prone to this hacking phenomenon. When it happens to an officer in a guild, the guild bank is just as vulnerable as the personal bank, AND Blizzard is less likely to replace an entire guild bank worth of goods because you failed to protect them. Malicious people may also try to take over your website and use your ventrilo server, so you need to be careful with who is entrusted with guild information. Thankfully blizzard has provided an easy solution to this problem as well.

This little guy here is a Corehound pet, and he is only active on accounts with active authenticators. The authenticator requires an owner to put in an extra 8-digit code while logging in, and this code changes continuously for each authenticator. This makes accounts with an authenticator nearly unhackable. Therefore, anybody with full access to the guild information and supplies (and the ability to invite members who may turn out to be ninjas) all can be secured from intrusion by requiring an authenticator on every office account. This is not much of a burden as the authenticators are cheap and the corehound can be checked every month to ensure the officers continue to use the authenticator. Full members may get hacked, but the damage they can cause is hopefully limited to a few stacks of items in the bank, and usually a hacked member will inform guild leadership within 1 day of the hacking. However, I highly recommend requiring officers to use authenticators to fully enable the security provisions you have put into place.

With the size of both of my guilds, the security systems are in place and working well to prevent an attack of the ninja. In AIE, the guild bank is not a huge focus of the guild because there are way more people in the guild than a practical guild bank can handle. However, to enter AIE you do have to go through a trial period where you have little access to guild chat and no access to the guild bank. AIE also purges the guild roster of inactive people after a period of time, and recently placed the Authenticator Requirement into place for all officers. Thus, even in a guild of thousands of members, AIE is protected from the smallest ninjas that may try to wreck the guild.

The Illuminati works on a much more reasonable scale of membership, but this guild is more than big enough to be a valuable thing to steal from. The Illuminati has a full six guild bank tabs, and the guild bankers organizes the items into those tabs from raw materials to pre-northrend to northrend and then to high-value raiding materials. Full members are allowed to take 3 stacks per day for the low level items, 1 stack per day of the northrend items, and must request any epic gems and eternals. New members have no access whatsoever, and this keeps the guild savings protected from any ninjas or hacked accounts. While I am currently unaware of any officer policy for authenticators, the guild roster and officer roster is maintained by removing inactive members in each field. Therefore, The Illuminati also deters the potential thieves from looting the guild's bounty.

So with just a few easy steps, all the hard work you have done as a guild building gold and materials to help raiders and new toons can be protected. Security might seem like something unimportant you can get around to, but you never know with people coming in and out of the guild when a ninja will arrive. Like the guy who tried to ninja the bank if The Illuminati, sometimes they are the nicest people and start off building relationships with guild members. Always stay vigilant and keep your officers vigilant as well. Keeping your guild out of the drama threads on the forums and news reporting websites will help ensure the continued success of your guild.

We only have one more installment of this Successful Guild series, and I hope to have that finished up very soon. Until next time, keep your guild safe and secure!

Achievement Hunting Vol. 5: Fool for Love

2010-02-09T18:08:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is but a few days away in real life, and Blizzard also celebrates this Hallmark holiday. If you want to complete What A Long Strange Trip and get your 310% flying speed mount, then this is just another step on the way. Many people failed to finish this meta achievement last year, but the event has been radically updated. I would go so far as to say this event is twice as good as the previous incarnation, maybe more if you are trying for the meta. The RNG luck is largely removed, and thank goodness. Let's jump into the 12 achievements you now need to become a fool for love!

1. Charming - one of the quests that you can find in any major city will require you to give a charm bracelet to the local faction leader. You will receive a care package that allows you to harvest charms from all mobs you kill of a non-gray level. So basically you have to harvest 120 charms to make 12 bracelets, which you can use for a couple other achievements along the way. This is simply a farming session of level appropriate mobs, and find your own favorite spot. I might suggest going into normal mode CoS if you are an endgame toon and just avoid the spawned elites in the first wave. The zombies continuously respawn and pop charms at the best rate I've seen for easy-to-kill mobs. And it wouldn't be Valentine's Day without some zombies!

2. Nation of Adoration - After making a bunch of charm bracelets, now you can put them to use. Every city has one of those daily quests to give a bracelet to the faction leader. A quick journey by boat or by airship to all four cities will get you 20 Love Tokens (which are important as explained below) and this achievement.

3. Sweet Tooth - The basic way the holiday works now is that there are seven daily quests you can do for 35 Love Tokens a day. The 4 bracelets, spraying 10 people with perfume, killing some mobs in Crystalsong Forest, and killing the new holiday boss in Shadowfang Keep. You can buy a box of chocolates from the vendors in every city for 10 of these Love Tokens, which gives you at least one of four different kinds of chocolate. Eat one of each and this achievement is yours.

4. Shafted! - And this begins the many awkwardly-named achievements this holiday season. You can also buy 5 Silver Shafted Arrow from the vendors for 5 Love Tokens. You will need 10 total, so 10 Love Tokens necessary. Then you shoot 10 random people who do not have a noncombat pet already, and the arrow will provide them with a miniature goblin cupid pet. This can be done very shortly by hanging around the vendors.

5. The Rocket's Pink Glare - this should be familiar if you have done other holiday achievements which require you to buy rockets and shoot them off. Here you will need to pay another 10 Love Tokens and shoot off the 10 love rockets within a 20 second time frame. Best to do this one away form the vendors and lag-prone zones to ensure you get it done on the first try.

6. Be Mine! - This was the bane of many in Love is in the Air 2009. You see, last year you had to go to a guard every hour and get a random gift from them, of which you needed things like the candy bags you can now purchase for 2 Love Tokens. Instead of being stuck on RNG, you can easily buy 3-5 bags of these candies and be almost assured of getting all 8. Plus, these are tradeable between players. Therefore, this went from one of the hardest achievements to get to one of the easiest. Or at least as easy as all these others where you buy and you are done.

7. Lonely? - This is sort of analogous to the Frosty Shake in Winter's Veil. you need to sit with someone who has laid out a Romantic Picnic Basket (10 Love Tokens) and eat a Buttermilk Delight from the box of chocolates you bought earlier. This is pretty simple, but you do need to be in Dalaran and you do need to coordinate with someone else to get the achievement. Still, it's not much more than the other 10 Love Token achievements.

8. Flirt With Disaster - The next purchase you need to make from the vendors is 15 Handfuls of Rose Petals for 15 Love Tokens. As you can see, you will need some serious daily completion, but it's not as bad as it could be (Noblegarden comes to mind). You will need one of these handfuls and some liquor from your local inn or pub. Then you get smashed and throw the handful on a traveling vendor in Ironforge or Undercity and then /kiss them. If you liked Bresfest, you'll enjoy this. By the way Horde members, don't try to buy liquor in Undercity, as they don't have it apparently.

9. Fistful of Love - Hey now, keep the fisting to a minimum! This is the stereotypical do something to 10 race/class combinations, in this case throw a handful of rose petals on 11 combinations. I have not completed this yet on Navar, but Troll Rogue is definitely the one that will drive Alliance players up a wall. No matter, with 2 full weeks instead of 6 days in the holiday this year, you should be able to handle finding all the necessary combinations in time.

10. Dangerous Love - Now we come to the achievements you need to be near level 80 to complete. At the end of the major quest chain for the holiday, two daily quests pop up for high level toons. One of these is Crushing the Crown, which requires you to take a quick flight down to Crystalsong Forest and kill 5 mobs and throw a bomb into a wagon. Very quick and simple, and you will fight lag more than the mobs.

11. I Pitied The Fool - The PVP achievement this holiday is actually very easy and not all full of PVP. You have to buy 5 Love Fools or share them with guildies and friends (they only last a few seconds), and at 10 Love Tokens apiece, it's probably easier to find help than grind it out. In any event, once you have the Love Fools, you must go to five places and /pity them. Arathi Basin blacksmith, Battle Ring of Gurubashi Arena in STV, Wintergrasp, Culling of Stratholme, and Naxxramas. You do need to form a raid with a friend to do the Naxxramas one, but that's not a huge deal for most. More travel than anything.

12. My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose - Just like the Winter's Veil hats, you will need to obtain a bouquet of red or ebon roses from a boss in a 5-man WOTLK dungeon. these can be run on normal mode so that you can farm a boss five times for everyone in a group. Prince Keleseth is the first boss of Utgarde Keep and is the easiest to farm. The other two bosses which drop roses are the Maiden of Grief in HoS and Prince Taldaram in Old Kingdom. Both of these bosses are harder to get to, but if you have luck in your daily heroic, you may not need to farm these separately.

With the redesign to the holiday, you can be done with the dailies if you are diligent in just 3-4 days. No random RNG, no annoying hour long debuffs to wear out, you are always doing something. Also, the new bosses drop some nice level 226 neckpieces which I picked up on both my 80's on day 1...and the bosses also have a pet and a mount like the Headless Horseman. This set of bosses is quite a bit harder, requiring either CC or at least two tank-capable toons per group and good cordination of neutralizer elixirs and staying out of puddles. Two thumbs up to extending this holiday to two weeks and all the changes. On the whole, this is also one of the easiest holiday meta-achievements to get finished. So go get it done, as the second week of this holiday coincides with the first week of Lunar Festival this year, and you'll want to jump into that quickly if last year is any indication.

If you have any comments on this or any other achievement hunter entry, please comment. Also, if there's another achievement that's not holiday related that you want to know about, let me know and I'll find time to fit it in for you! Until next time, cheers to the achievement junkies!

Auction on the Go? Oh no...

2010-02-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well it's not often in recent times that something drags me out of the cave to write during the week. But today in all the jumble of the final part of the last content patch of WOTLK coming out, Blizzard dropped casually some mighty big news. Continuing with the line of paid services that have rolled out over the past 12 months, blizzard is now developing Auction House capability for the Armory online and the Armory app on iphone. Here's the full announcement for reference:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we've been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they're not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we're designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what's available in-game. Players have been requesting -- and we've been hoping to implement -- a feature like this for a long time, and we're excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don't have an exact release date yet. It's important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we'll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won't disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won't release it until it meets the quality standards that we've set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We'll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

So what we have here looks very cool on the surface. For any budding WoW businessman, now you can jump in and carry on your business when you are riding the train to work, or during a lunch break without needing to install Azeroth on a work computer or some other covert operation. You can become the Greedy Goblin you've always wanted to be! In fact, Gevlon may never get any real life work done again as he conquers the servers via his iphone or the online armory. I have to admit, I'd love to take care of the business aspect of my gaming in down moments, but then again, I don't have many down moments with the career I chose. In any event, this is bringing more convenience to the game.

However, there is something slightly troubling about this announcement. The first thing is the fact that this is different from all the other paid services. You see, race change is just changing some minor racial abilities and appearance, faction change is pretty much the same thing on a slightly larger level, pets are completely non-functional additions, server transfer is simply a change of venue for those with friends or other reasons to move. The point is, everything you can currently pay for does not affect the game in any substantial fashion. Despite this, the people (including myself) questioned if these microtransactions for real money were a trip down a slippery slope. Perhaps today shows us that indeed, if this is a slippery slope, we're headed right down it on a big old sleigh.

Being able to access the auction house with full functionality from out of the game takes a substantial part of the game and provides access to it for a fee. This "premium" service is another microtransaction, but one that has serious effects on the game world. Rather than just changing your outward appearance or your companions, now you can buy and sell gear and goods at any time you have access to your iphone, which means these people will have a serious market advantage over those who play the market and do not pay for premium service. Make no mistake about it: even if you are not active in the auction house economy, lots of people on your sevrer are and it drives the valuation of all the items you collect in the game. Giving some people more market access on this level could radically change the economy of tradeskills, a vital part of the game.

Furthermore, this is just another way for the gold selling companies to easily sneak their transactions through the system. Rather than needing to farm up gold on various different servers, they can just sell via online out-of-game transactions now that they have access to the auction house without logging in. If Blizzard tries to stop these sham-type transactions, it will completely kill legitimate passing of cash between your toons on opposite factions via the neutral auction house and the help of one buddy. Furthermore, it undermines any deterrance Blizzard currently has in going after gold sellers and account hackers. Perhaps mandatory authenticators and battle.net accounts will help this, but the gold sellers have to be rejoicing over this, and that is not a good thing.

Yet again, we come back to the slippery slope. You see, the argument for Blizzard in the earlier microtransactions was that these cash for play items were not affecting the game and making players better than one another based solely on their wealth out of the game. Make no bones about it...the battle daily in the markets is a fun game to play and I take part. But if someone wants to pay extra money to have extra market access and run everyone else out, then they will be the kings of the game as they will set the prices for many important in-game items. This leads to real advantages in the game, and is not all that different from paying cash for epic gear. In fact, with this system in place, there's no stopping Blizzard from moving towards a pay for epics model. While it's their game and their choice, this type of game is exactly what many people playing WoW believe makes Azeroth better than many competing MMO's. Real world wealth has no meaning in Azeroth, but that's about to change. Let the slide down that slippery slope continue.

Only time will tell how this new feature of the digital world comes to pass, and just what Blizzard means by premium. Perhaps Blizzard thinks this is the next step to keep people happy, or maybe they are like a winner at the casino who is cashing out while they still can before moving onto the next conquest. Let's hope for the former and pray against the latter.

Building A Successful Guild Part 3: The Outside Appearances

2010-01-31T18:49:00.000-08:00

Well it has been quite some time since this series was going, so it seems appropriate to give some link love! In part 1, I described how the foundation of a guild is the guild leadership, who must be strong or else everything else crumbles. In part 2, I looked at the parallels between framing the different rooms in a house and in a guild, setting up proper avenues for members to enjoy all the various aspects of the game. Now we come to the third part of this five-part series on how to build a successful guild, and more specifically, the outside appearances.

When constructing a house, you pour the foundation and frame the sides and the rooms, and then the fun really begins. As all the details you see every day start going into place, the outside of the house also becomes finished. As seen above, this includes everything from the entry doors to the siding to the roof. Even as the inside of the house stays far from finished, the outside takes shape and becomes an inviting appearance of home. The outside appearance of a guild is just as crucial as the outside appearance of a house.

Although a guild may have a group of friends who come together and grab all their in-game friends to get the roster going, every guild needs some form of recruitment because people inevitably move in and out of guilds, servers, and Azeroth itself. Whether you have your eyes on becoming a huge guild like the two I happen to be a member of, or just sustain a certain number of members, keeping a beautiful outside appearance is important. This will allow you to bring in new members and in the case of a raiding guild, have your pick of a number of people when you need that important resto shaman slot filled (or whatever else). So what do you need to do in order to have this inviting outside appearance?

Again one of the most important things you can have is a good website. Maybe someone on your guild sees players of your guild in Dalaran or groups with them in random instance groups, and they want to find out more about the guild behind this person. A simple google search of the guild name will hopefully lead them to your website, which you set up with various communication channels as previously discussed. But just as important as the forum discussions is the front page and what your first impression will be. If you are a raiding guild, there should be proof of your progress right there on the front page. If you are a casual guild, find a way to put your guild personality into the home page. Perhaps the guild schedule of events, or some member-submitted pictures, all adds to the overall effect. There should be some single person in charge of the website who puts their all into it, so that you encourage more contact from potential guild members and show off your guild to the world.

Just like in a house, these things on your webpage are windows into your special world of the guild. It does not matter if the inside of your guild currently looks well put together...

or if you have a bit of a mess on your hands...

These windows are what potential recruits will look at in order to see if they want to add your guild tag to their character. Another way to form a good appearance is the conduct of your members in Azeroth. There should be some conduct policy put into place, as you do not want your members being the guys in tradechat sustaining the "anal chuck norris" conversation. Indeed, how your members behave when they are not in your presence reflects on all of you, and you need to find a way to communicate that message to members. The best window to view what a guild is like is to see how their members operate in the game. If you have members who helpfully answer questions in tradechat, pitch in to help people while questing, and treat people well in instances, your guild will be very well-though of. We all know the guilds on our own servers that you would not want to be associated with because they get made fun of in tradechat or people just hate them for various reasons. Thus, maintaining your outside appearance must be a hybrid effort between your website and the conduct of your current members. After all, they would like to meet new people and make more friends, presumably, so this should be a top priority.

In Alea Iacta Est, this challenge can be more unique thanks to the size of the guild. In fact, AIE has people in every walk of life and ends up having members at the forefront of every scene in the game, whether it is Arena, Battlegrounds, Raiding, City Raids, or RP Events. AIE has a fantastic website, which links in some news on the front page, has clearly defined information for interested recruits, and links to the things that bring most people into the guild, that being The Instance podcast and the related forums. Once someone clicks around the website, they will see that AIE has little groups of people doing everything, and this information invites people right in to experience it. The forums are the real selling point though, as you can see just how special the community is. For example, one of the guild members passed away recently, and the outpouring of emotions and heartfelt responses are enough to shake you at your core. You don't expect a group of people gaming to come together like a family, but AIE manages to do so and shows it right off for anyone willing to look in the windows. As for in-game conduct, the leadership keeps their ears to the ground and takes care of problems that crop up quickly and efficiently. When reports came in that certain guild members were acting rudely in the new LFG system, the leadership jumped into action, finding out who was being offensive and encouraging members strongly to be ambassadors of the guild everywhere they went. While it is true that AIE's size causes the guild to be viewed unfairly at times, once you look in the windows and give the guild a chance, you see how great it is. The guild keeps growing thanks to the outside appearances, and it's a good thing.

Meanwhile over on alliance-side, The Illuminati has taken a recent stance of staying about the size they are. We already are the biggest guild on the server for the alliance, and the guild leadership wants to keep a tight-knit sense of community on some level. Nevertheless, people come and go all the time and it all starts with the website. The Illuminati website clearly shows the main raid progression and schedule, snapshots from guild members, and some recent forum posts so a visitor can jump right into what is going on right now. The forums might not be as well-traveled as others, but the website invites people in to see what we're all about. In game, the Illuminati has not really needed to keep a conduct policy per se, but the guild leadership will take action to make sure nobody in the guild is doing anything silly in the world like treating people badly or unnecessarily spamming trade chat. These efforts continue to bring in the recruits to refill the membership rolls when others must pass along out of the guild for various reasons.

So the outside appearance of a house and a guild can invite people in and keep your public guild reputation positive. This not only helps bring in new members, it also helps your members join pick up groups for raids and things, because their guild tag starts to carry a positive meaning or connotation. The best compliment I've ever heard in game for our guild is being added to an endgame PUG raid because some other guild members had left this raid leader with a good impression of us. As the series continues to the final two parts, we will look next time into protecting or securing your guild. See you next time!

A Tale of Two Heroics

2010-01-23T11:02:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the recent look at the armory, this week's big news is that my team has finally become a team of more than one level 80! Navarionae has been approaching the mark for a few weeks now, and the instance leveling has been a fantastic way for him to get easy tanking experience while also leveling at a reasonable pace. Once he hit the upper half of level 79, he logged a final instance run, which was CoS and finished up with some Icecrown questing to break through the final ding. I just had enough time to train his level 80 abilities and left the gear and other stuff for another day.

Well trying to figure out the calculus of how to get ready for tanking endgame content turns out to be quite annoying. You see, with healers, it's all about intellect and spellpower. We do not have to worry about hit, and we certainly don't have to worry about things like expertise, defense, and total health pools. We only have to hope our tank can figure all that out. What makes thing more complex is that defense rating does not correspond with the numbers on the gear. So if you get a neck piece that has 24 defense, your defense rating only goes up 5-7. When you ask people what you need to do to get ready to tank a heroic, even my closest tank friend says "you need def cap which is 535 for heroics and 540 for raids" and "you should have a health pool of 26k unbuffed." Apparently these people forgot how hard it is to find gear prior to running said heroics or grinding said emblems. I was able to get a great 245 tanking ring from the triumph emblems during daily regular instances, but even with buying gear on the auction house and putting all enchants and things together, I struggled to get past about 520 def. Not to mention putting every gem towards defense means my health pool is middling around the 20-22k range. In other words, the calculus says I will be hit with the occasional critical hit in a health pool that cannot soak it up well. Yikes.

Yet again, learning how to be a tank makes you appreciate those people who do it all the time even more. Perhaps with the changes to gear stats in Cataclysm (defense is going away), tanks will not be as hard-pressed to figure it out. I still think tanks now forget how hard it is to get defense capped and enough stamina on the entry level gear to endgame. Nevertheless, I was so geeked out over being able to run two daily heroics that I figured, well...let's just see what happens. After all, I should be locked out from the really hard stuff. I finished up by filling the final glyph spot on Navar and doing some business with my banker, then into the queue we went.

The first instance that pops is UK. Breathing easy, sigh of relief. Was actually with four guildies from another server, and two of them were clearly carrying two relatively new 80's. I died a couple of times along the way, which slowed down the run but at least we did not wipe. Some funny moments like after we beat the Prince and took out 5 iceblocks, someone asks "I did not get iceblocked, why no achievement?" Much giggles were had by all. Two of the other members of the group were death knights, so I asked for some helpful tips and they were glad to help. I think they were just happy they did not get silence or a drama queen in their fifth slot. After downing Ingvar, they asked for another run but I declined, saying I need to get over to my other character and grind up badges. So one success in the book.

Logged over, popped into LFG, and up comes a loading screen I have not seen in a very long time. That's right, the wait for Oculus to pop is finally over. I explain to my groupmates that it's been a while, so apologies in advance if things are a bit sketchy. But I do know how to use a drake. On the bright side, the other four people stayed and the group pretty clearly overgeared the place. So we got going and there were some dicey moments, but our DPS was very solid and things were just going down with ease. As we're approaching the next to last boss with like 8 minutes on the timer, I realize...hey we've got a damn good shot at the "Make It Count" achievement. And sure enough, the last two bosses went down with 3 minutes to spare, which is amazing considering we really did not rush through the instance at all. No drake in the extra cache, but not complaining about a new achievement and an easy Oculus run.

And here's the kicker. The minor detail I left out is that I queue'd up first on Ekat, second on Navar. Yes, that's right. My first ever heroic on Navar was Oculus. Not only that, but I got an achievement I don't yet have on Ekat, partially because the instance has never popped for her. We had such a fantastic group, it apparently did not matter that I had a DPS-level health pool. I got 2 of the 4 people complimenting me at the end of the Oculus run via whispers, and anybody who understands the tank shortage on our battlegroup understands why they would be nurturing. But they seriously gave good feedback and said I was doing very well for someone who dinged 80 yesterday (and got the "dungeon and raid emblem" achievement off the first boss). So there you have it.

I believe despite Blizzard's sick sense of humor, there is a Santa Claus. Must be if I can tank heroic Oculus and have a group good enough to carry me.

I did get a little more help from my real life friends who tank more, including putting together a Titansteel Destroyer and some epic crafted gear. Heroic number two was H-OK, which went fine until my computer crashed. It does this from time to time and I cannot figure out why. Most annoying thing ever with the new system, as people are very quick to replace. Too quick, I think. I log back on in 2 minutes and I'm replaced, even as a tank. Ahh well, at least it went pretty well up until the disconnect, so it's more of a disgust with the circumstances than with the tanking.

Oddly enough I've farmed ToC 4 times since hitting 80 on regular mode, trying to get the 3-4 good tanking pieces from there. I have very bad luck with drops so far, but I'm also really struggling there. So it's clear that I have a lot to figure out as a tank, but there's only so much you can do with this gear. It seems weird, but maybe heroics are OK for me at this point, despite my low health pool. I can only get better by getting gear, and that seems to be the best way. I'll just have to deal with the ego trouncing when people get mad at me for not being the most uber-tank ever.

In the end, it's really nice to have another 80. His next projects other than gearing are getting more mining done and leveling up jewelcrafting. It's definitely expensive hitting 80, but thankfully none of my other characters is needing to spend much gold right now. Plus, leveling J/C will give me more market bang. Until next time, may your Oculus groups be good enough to carry tanks like me!

Now Entering - The Twilight Zone

2010-01-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

I'd like to say I have a real substantive entry for this weekend, but alas, I worked a full day today and so it just has not had time to happen. Maybe tomorrow when we catch up on 4 hours of 24. Woot to good television being back in style. Anyways, when I logged in tonight to take care of some business, there was someone in dalaran spamming for a Obsidian Sanctum plus 3 drakes zerg raid. Now that most people are starting to hit ICC gear, the DPS is enough to even take down 25 man Sartharion if the group is well coordinated. Nevertheless, you still do not see a ton of people going to the trouble because it is still difficult. So I jumped in and despite not having only Triumph gear, I got in because they need a tank healer and my DPS does not matter. So off we go to OS.

Well everyone gets buffed up and we get the "this might take a couple tries" speech from the raid organizer. And then something magical happens. We get everything going very well and nobody dies to the flame wall and we literally kill Sarth right before he despawns because the tenth person in the raid had died. But a win is a win! Then since we 1-shot that, we grabbed 15 more people and started a struggle for the 25 man version. We died maybe 10 times, but 5 of those were silly wipes that were not legitimate pulls. We always got him below 500k health so we knew we could do it, and we finally got everything to work with Army of the Dead cast before the pull, Heroism at the pull, and me going Holy so we had 1 disc healer and 1 holy. I actually think it made a difference as Guardian Spirit and Spirit of Redemption into Hymn of Hope kept enough people alive to get just enough DPS. I think we all let out a big cheer in vent as we had PUG'd one of the harder achievements. It's really too bad it was getting late, as this group has aspirations on the Immortal and Undying titles from Naxx, and I think we had a group to give it a good attempt.

In any event, I'm out a little bit of cash for repair bills but I have 60 more hard-earned achievement points and one of my long term goals is crossed off the list. Oh and two titles to go with it. You may now call me...

Twilight Vanquisher Ekaterinae of the Nightfall!!!

In other news, Navar is over 40% through level 79, and he also did a little mining runs to hit up 450 mining. He will drop skinning soon and pick up jewelcrafting. He'll be well behind the times, but he does have some ore built up and should not have to mine too much more to powerlevel that profession. That will finally give me an easier path with enchanting and gems, the two must-haves for gearing. Although I do have a major hook-up from Caz anytime I need gems, so it's not a huge deal. I just don't want skinning anymore and jewelcrafting is the most useful thing a miner can be profit-wise.

So when you least expect it, you may be presented with an opportunity. If this happens, run to it and maybe it will turn into something special!

Comings and Goings: What Every WoW Business Needs

2010-01-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

Well the team is coming along nicely, but there have been a few things that have bothered me over the course of time. Just small things about organizing all the various items our toons accumulate over the course of time. Additionally, my group of IRL friends had made a bank guild of our own when we thought we might use it to easily share things. However, for whatever reason, it never much worked for two of the group members and only the real big businessman among us who put the whole thing together used it a lot. Well the other two IRL friends dropped from the guild and so the guildmaster decided to clear it out and make it his own personal guild bank. While I had heard of these things before, I had no clue why or how one would go about this.

So I'm still in the guild in question, or I should say, my Alliance banker was. I logged in today to take care of some business and I decided to see what had become of the old guild bank. Well here is what I was greeted with:

Now keep in mind the owner of the guild has about 35k gold and has a small team of focused toons. 2 that get a lot of playtime, 2 that get some, and one in the works. Sounds a lot like my team, and I was about at 10k gold this week myself. But anyways, the upside is that this player has exactly what I'm building towards for a team of toons. So seeing the ridiculous amounts of enchanting materials and bars of ore and food made me somewhat jealous but not so much of the materials as of the ability to just have anything he needs one click away and saved up in one place.

Right now my team keeps their own materials individually, so Ekat's bank is ridiculously stacked with shards and dust and she really cannot keep old world stuff at all to help out the leveling healers. She also has three Frostweave bags full of holiday specialty items and pretty clothes from tailoring. So merely holding onto things like cloth have been relegated to the bank toon already, who had bank tab bags full of cloth. The other toons did not quite have the same problem yet, but Navar is getting full of stuff from his mining and I'm sure it is just a matter of time before I want those ores and some herbs from random characters for someone else. In addition, I was never really happy about having a level 1 bank alt because only characters above level 10 are really saved for protection in the Blizzard database from what I hear. Even with an authenticator, if something ever happened to my bank alt, I would be devastated. I also happen to have two 20-30 level characters unguilded and not getting any play. So let's figure this guild thing out.

Well I had no idea where to start, but I seemed to remember seeing a guild master listed the last time I clicked on a guard looking for something in a city. Sure enough, they are listed for your convenience there. The stormwind version is located right up by the front gate, which is convenient because you can recruit within tradechat in the city or in the popular starting zone of Elwynn Forest. You only need 10 silver to pick up a guild charter, and then you need to get 9 characters to sign your charter. This is the "fun" part. Now I realize why I keep seeing people begging for guild charter signatures! Like anything else in the game, the easy way to procure these signatures is by paying a bit of gold, like 5 gold per signature. On a busy weekend day like today, that worked like a charm in Goldshire because that's where the characters are who really need the gold and are most likely unguilded. Although I met a couple unsavory characters in the process, I let my cute blueberry warrior (who will never see serious play again) pay about 40 gold out to finish the charter for The AE Team guild. Return to the guild master and then the guild will be formed, at which point you can boot all your help from the guild and voila, you have your own personal guild.

The bank tabs are very expensive, so I only got the first three for now. I could see once everyone gets leveled going to 4-5, but 3 will work just fine for now. I then spent a while shipping everything over from all the characters to the brand new bank alt, who now sports a very snazzy lovely black dress in Stormwind City. So while I may not delete Aebanky right away, I figure it is only a matter of time before the pink pigtail gnome warlock goes away from the loading screen forever. Setting up my tabs to currently hold cloth, herbs/shards, and gems/ore will allow my team to stock up all they need for the professions I intend to have maxed out (Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, and Tailoring).

This may be an obvious step for most players, especially ones like me who learned a lot from Gevlon's blog. Nevertheless, this solves the problems of storage space, organization, having a bank alt of a reasonable level, and keeping my bank alt looking stylin'. Yes, I consider pink pigtailed gnomes and blue hooved aliens kind of hot. At least for the not so sexy job of banking and auctioning. So if you see a good looking bank alt in SW on our server, be sure to say hello! Or in other words, welcome back Aenariel to The AE Team.

Will questing become obsolete?

2010-01-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

Welcome back, and I hope you had a great New Year's Day. I have gotten my workload at work back to manageable, although there will be some long hours in the front of January to keep on top of it all. I'm not complaining as I'm well ahead of my pace last year which led to stress all year long. But that's neither here nor there. I initially took the new Looking For Group interface as I always do, which is beat the crap out of playing the game with Ekat and then eventually come around to the other characters. Ekaterinae zoomed right up to three pieces of tier 9 and a couple new triumph badge rings as well as over 50 frost emblems in a hurry by doing the daily heroic. However, running out of triumph badge purchases (I have maybe 3 more upgrades I can make) and the slow grind for frost badges has me turning back to my main goal before Cataclysm, which is to level the team ASAP. Well one problem is I never really want to sit and quest, especially because I have to learn cat form on Arielae or Enhancement on Clarissae. But then I'm not prepared when I jump into a rare instance. But now that all has changed.

So this weekend I dusted off each of the healer alts and queued them up. It had been a long time since we cleared out the rested time, and it usually takes a long time now to clear even 2 of the rested time bars. However, Arielae goes to SM's graveyard a few times, Biancae goes to SM's library a few times, and Clarissae shows up in a Gnomeregan run where we actually cleared the place like a machine. Sure, there were ups and downs because each was geared and spec'd not to heal, but each did an admirable job once I got my healing legs underneath me. Admittedly it is not that hard with only 2-3 healing spells, but you have to be real careful with mana which is something I pretty much ignore on Ekat now. So now it appears totally possible after burning through rested time on all three that I will be able to reach my goals by abusing the LFG system with toons other than Ekat from now on. I will still try and collect my frost badges, but I'm not much of a raider and that will not be changing.

A quick recap. Arielae is totally talented Feral, and she has three healing spells. One of these is a HoT, which I hear is the big deal for druid healing. This turns out to be true as she is much more mana efficient when she does not have to use one of the big heals. The first run she went on the tank picked up way more than she could handle and ended up dropping group after complaining about not getting heals (while I was drinking after the pull!). While I was a bit offput by this, I tried again and had much better success with a tank that did not pull lots of mobs at once. In fact, I went to another instance beyond rested time and got my first Uldaman experience. I now have a couple of healing pieces waiting for me to ding 38 and 40, and some other healing gear I've picked up to make things tons better. I actually regenerate mana now! Arielae sits well over halfway through level 37, dinging twice on the weekend.

Biancae found a bit of help in an Illuminati guildie of all places. You see, someone I'd never seen before in the guild was asking for money alliance side in trade for money horde side, because they have an 80 mage and an 80 priest on Horde. As it turns out, I've had to beg my one friend who plays Horde for netherweave bags and have struggled to build up 5-6 gold. So I jumped on the opportunity and we may do more trades in the future...but Biancae finally has over 100 gold and little bit of breathing room. Her experiences were all in Graveyard and most were as DPS (she's still talented Retribution and apparently we're not as hard up for healers Horde-side). I actually like the melee DPS on her so I don't have any problem doing that for now, especially with only 2 healing spells and of course the major cooldown heals. Biancae also dinged twice over the weekend to hit 31 and got another major help from my new Horde-Alliance leveling business partner by getting a port to Dalaran. Now she can jump around the world a lot easier than before.

Clarissae currently has three healing spells, but one of them is Gift of the Naaru which is on a 3 minute CD. Nevertheless, at this level it is very nice to have a HoT available. She also struggled a bit with the mana in Gnomeregan, but the tank was god and realized the problems I was having since I was building up some intellect-type gear. She has some more work to do on that front, but I never felt completely helpless which is good. After the run I respec'd her over to Resto and need to figure out the water and fire totem quests to have access to more totems. she also dinged once up to 26 and is within a few mobs of 27 if I remember correctly.

So that's where the team is. I believe I will continue to grind off rested time on Navar so that I can get the plate heirlooms over to Biancae so she can move even faster. He's grinded past the ding 76 and is trucking along now mostly in Violet Hold. While I was beginning to wonder if I would ever play these others enough to get them towards endgame, now I just want rested time to build up ASAP so I can get them in there more!

Also two questions come to mind, one of which I titled the article by and may get into more detail on later. First, should I take the plunge and respec to Holy and Resto now that it's clear I can level while healing instances? I really have no need for questing except for maybe gold, but Ekat has a nice business going for that. I guess the real question is whether questing is now obsolete for me and other leveling characters like me. It seems so much faster to just jump in a queue and get going on bosses, plus the game is more fun that way. Perhaps if I hit a really bad instance I'll go questing for a while, but when Gnomeregan is fun...is anything possible? I think maybe questing becomes obsolete, which means I can respec to my Holy and Resto without being terribly slow at leveling.

Also just noticed that Lunar Festival got moved from this part of January back into February. Plus Love is in the Air will run for 2 full weeks, the second week at the same time as Lunar. So we'll have a bit more time to focus on Icecrown or leveling or whatever before we get back to the achievement hunting on Navar. Welcome 2010!