So, I was going to write about how awesome it is to raid right now in the buffed post-patch period and how much I'm enjoying raid-tanking as a Paladin right now, but, then, I saw this...
O_o
I was a finalist in the Blizzard 2010 Global Writing Contest!
I came this close to winning the contest! So exciting! Eeeek! I wish I could go to BlizzCon to meet the other writers and staff and stuff. But still - wow, this is the highest scale recognition of my writing so far.
I think it's a sign of some sort... but regardless, I'm so giddy and excited right now.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Relaxin'
It has been a quiet week or two in Warcraft for me. I decided to take a break from heroic Icecrown as I saw signs of burnout imminently flashing orange and red on the anger meter of the HUD that is my brain. Thankfully, my guildies decided to back me up on a side-winding detour into Ulduar to wrap up some achievements.
In addition, we saw a bunch of people get close to their mounts and spent the last night dragging them through the first half of the place picking up achievements and killing Algalon again for titles and the cool Rhonin quest and stuff.
Right now is a good time to do this sort of thing - relax, hang out, kill some bosses, make some money, grab some titles and achivements, earn some mounts... no stress, no fuss, no muss.
--
So, there is a lot of doom and gloom about Protection Paladins in Beta/PTR. Last time I checked, I played a Protection Paladin as my Main character of choice in this game we called World of Warcraft, so I grew concerned!
I downloaded the PTR, copied my main over, saw that I had an option to modify my character and decided to make him a Female Draenei, added an effeminate affectation to the name to make it less manly and jumped in! I spec'd away like crazy, fumed after finding no Glyphs on the Auction House, redid my tool bars, wept at the simple joy of pressing one button to buff an entire raid, fell in love with the high-detail, high-frame-count animation of my Draenei avatar, girded my loins, and queued up for a random.
As my feet landed in Utgarde Pinnacle, I immediately warned my cohorts that this was my first run on the PTR and to give me a bit of time with pulls to generate threat, and to please let me know if my threat was an issue. And then I proceeded to face-pull like a gibbering rabid warthog and finished the place with no deaths in about 12 minutes flat. No one pulled off of me at any point that I could see.
Without access to Inquisition, on AoE pulls I was more or less using:
With how fast trash died, I don't think I ever really had Vengeance scale up and bosses were dying pretty fast too so I didn't see really big numbers from my attacks at any point but I held threat fine. Also, getting up to 60k in heroics from just priest, druid and self-buffs was kinda sexy. I only had time for one run last night but it was enough to give me a lot of confidence and faith that when the patch drops, we'll be just fine.
Also, I might race-and-gender-change Joachim if I get too used to my tail-wagging friend on the PTR. That'd be something. O_o
--
Anyway. I'll be away from game (and possibly the blog) for a few days. Due to a real life thing happening tomorrow...
/mysterious_omen!
In addition, we saw a bunch of people get close to their mounts and spent the last night dragging them through the first half of the place picking up achievements and killing Algalon again for titles and the cool Rhonin quest and stuff.
Right now is a good time to do this sort of thing - relax, hang out, kill some bosses, make some money, grab some titles and achivements, earn some mounts... no stress, no fuss, no muss.
--
So, there is a lot of doom and gloom about Protection Paladins in Beta/PTR. Last time I checked, I played a Protection Paladin as my Main character of choice in this game we called World of Warcraft, so I grew concerned!
I downloaded the PTR, copied my main over, saw that I had an option to modify my character and decided to make him a Female Draenei, added an effeminate affectation to the name to make it less manly and jumped in! I spec'd away like crazy, fumed after finding no Glyphs on the Auction House, redid my tool bars, wept at the simple joy of pressing one button to buff an entire raid, fell in love with the high-detail, high-frame-count animation of my Draenei avatar, girded my loins, and queued up for a random.
As my feet landed in Utgarde Pinnacle, I immediately warned my cohorts that this was my first run on the PTR and to give me a bit of time with pulls to generate threat, and to please let me know if my threat was an issue. And then I proceeded to face-pull like a gibbering rabid warthog and finished the place with no deaths in about 12 minutes flat. No one pulled off of me at any point that I could see.
Without access to Inquisition, on AoE pulls I was more or less using:
- Avenger's Shield
- Holy Wrath
- Consecrate
- Hammer of the Righteous
- And I was tab-spreading Judgments around willy-nilley
- Avenger's Shield
- Crusader Strike
- Shield of the Righteous (at 2 to 3 - I didn't pay too close attention to Holy Power, honestly)
- Judgment
- Holy Wrath
- Consecrate
With how fast trash died, I don't think I ever really had Vengeance scale up and bosses were dying pretty fast too so I didn't see really big numbers from my attacks at any point but I held threat fine. Also, getting up to 60k in heroics from just priest, druid and self-buffs was kinda sexy. I only had time for one run last night but it was enough to give me a lot of confidence and faith that when the patch drops, we'll be just fine.
Also, I might race-and-gender-change Joachim if I get too used to my tail-wagging friend on the PTR. That'd be something. O_o
--
Anyway. I'll be away from game (and possibly the blog) for a few days. Due to a real life thing happening tomorrow...
/mysterious_omen!
Monday, October 4, 2010
Well, that was unexpected
What a great night. Amazing guildies and friends gathered together to helping knock this out tonight. That's one thing marked off my to-do list!
Thank you, guys. :-) I owe you guys a song.
Thank you, guys. :-) I owe you guys a song.
No Time
Just when I'm so close to wrapping up a bunch of stuff in game, is when work and personal life are piling up to make it impossible for me to even log into game.
Aargh.
But even now that the official date for Cata has been pushed to Dec. 7, I don't know that all this content will sit around and wait for me to finish it. So... before Deathwing devours us all, I need to finish up at least the following on my Paladin:
But lately, I'm lucky to be able to get on twice a week to raid... I was hoping to hit Cata with more than 100k gold, but I'm sitting on just 54k and I doubt I'll be able to double that in a couple of months. Bah. My virtual life is slowing down!
Aargh.
But even now that the official date for Cata has been pushed to Dec. 7, I don't know that all this content will sit around and wait for me to finish it. So... before Deathwing devours us all, I need to finish up at least the following on my Paladin:
- Get at least 35 Exalted reps (and finish up the Z'G grind - only need 2 more solo clears!)
- Start working towards 3,000 quests done so I can pick up that title
- Start collecting more Heroic Kills for that title
- Finish up Glory of the Raider (10)
- Finish up Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10)
- Finish up Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10)
But lately, I'm lucky to be able to get on twice a week to raid... I was hoping to hit Cata with more than 100k gold, but I'm sitting on just 54k and I doubt I'll be able to double that in a couple of months. Bah. My virtual life is slowing down!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sexism and Racism in my Warcraft
Every time I turn around lately, I seem to be running into stereotypes about Warcraft that I would love to deny but I just can't. Warcraft players are immature, racist, homophobic, sexist, misogynists and I want to say, no. My guild isn't. My friends aren't.
Maybe we're a subset, because goddamn, the rest of the community is an exercise in depression.
There are guilds out there that reject you as a raider if you're a woman (read their application requirements). Which. I don't know. The name and the aggressively anti-gender attitude is upsetting but whatever. Their loss. I'd certainly never apply or play with them.
We're so used to terms like "rape" and "fag" being used in PvP and Raiding environments that we just accept them now and create a hostile environment for people who're hurt by them.
When I see people writing feminist blogs about Warcraft and the issues at hand, when I see other blog entries grappling with the impact that casual use of worlds like rape - which, by the way, in a word, promises horrific and very specific violence against a particular gender - I don't understand why the rest of the Warcraft community doesn't want to stand up and say, "Fuck this, I'm not going to tolerate someone using these terms in my guild, in my raid, in my presence, period."
And the thing is, if that happens in my raid, I can step up and tell that person to shut up and if they contest me on it, I will kick them. Hell, before I do a thing, my Guild Leader who's an amazing feminist woman herself, will probably have that person on their ass outside the instance portal.
We won't tolerate homophobia, or sexism, or misogyny in our raids, not because we play with a lot of women, and not because we have people of all sexualities in our raids, but because it's just fucking wrong.
Guild raids are a controlled environment, I'm in a raid with my guildies, and my friends, and they'll back me up. Things are different when you PuG. If I'm in a PuG where I see a lot of this happening, I will drop and go find a non hostile environment. But a few weeks ago, I ran into a different kind of environment and my reaction there was really unexpected.
Halfway through an ICC 25, someone began to sing a Skinhead songs. If you're interested, it was the words to a song called, "The White Man Marches On" that this person wanted to share with us. Look them up.
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach and no matter how much I want to say now that I pressed that push to talk and said, "Kick him or I'll drop," I sat there petrified instead. A second of stunned silence passed and then Vent broke up with scattered giggles, a few people moaned that "now some bleeding hearts will drop raid" and then the Raid Lead chuckled, and said, "Someone is griefing us, let's just keep going."
And they went on with jokes that were maybe less overt but no less hurtful.
Now, I've been gaybashed in the real world, I've been racially attacked, never physically, but I've had someone walk up to me and a friend of mine and threatened to fuck us fags up if they ever saw us on campus again just because they thought we were gay. Right after 9/11 my family faced a fair amount of discrimination in small upstate-NY towns. My Caucasian wife of six years is frequently assumed to be alone when we're out together.
This sort of experience - vocal violence, aggressive discrimination, casual but unintentional racism - is not something new to me. I felt like I knew how to handle myself in these circumstances, in these situations, but in that raid, I didn't.
I shut down. I didn't say anything. It was just so bleak and depressing. Nobody else said anything about it other than to build on it without being quite so outrageous. I don't know why it bugged me so much, or the way it affected me, but really, I felt even more emasculated that I didn't do or say anything, so I stood there for a bit while they kept pulling trash, and then I just dropped raid and logged out.
Maybe it was the level of violence that the song was promising. Maybe it was something about the casual way in which twenty-four other people took this threat. I don't know.
This doesn't take a lot of effort to work out. Language has power, it affects us in profound ways, and if you don't stand up for your friends and colleagues, then you're letting these insensitive people victimize them.
I don't want to see this sort of sexist and racist and homophobic behavior continue. I don't know that I can really make a difference other than to control the limited environment in which I have influence, but Goddamnit, I'm sick of the casual way these words are used. When words become a casual part of speech and language, they become acceptable, and the person hearing those words is forced to accept them as part of a chain of abuse.
These things are not casual. They never were.
Maybe we're a subset, because goddamn, the rest of the community is an exercise in depression.
There are guilds out there that reject you as a raider if you're a woman (read their application requirements). Which. I don't know. The name and the aggressively anti-gender attitude is upsetting but whatever. Their loss. I'd certainly never apply or play with them.
We're so used to terms like "rape" and "fag" being used in PvP and Raiding environments that we just accept them now and create a hostile environment for people who're hurt by them.
When I see people writing feminist blogs about Warcraft and the issues at hand, when I see other blog entries grappling with the impact that casual use of worlds like rape - which, by the way, in a word, promises horrific and very specific violence against a particular gender - I don't understand why the rest of the Warcraft community doesn't want to stand up and say, "Fuck this, I'm not going to tolerate someone using these terms in my guild, in my raid, in my presence, period."
And the thing is, if that happens in my raid, I can step up and tell that person to shut up and if they contest me on it, I will kick them. Hell, before I do a thing, my Guild Leader who's an amazing feminist woman herself, will probably have that person on their ass outside the instance portal.
We won't tolerate homophobia, or sexism, or misogyny in our raids, not because we play with a lot of women, and not because we have people of all sexualities in our raids, but because it's just fucking wrong.
Guild raids are a controlled environment, I'm in a raid with my guildies, and my friends, and they'll back me up. Things are different when you PuG. If I'm in a PuG where I see a lot of this happening, I will drop and go find a non hostile environment. But a few weeks ago, I ran into a different kind of environment and my reaction there was really unexpected.
Halfway through an ICC 25, someone began to sing a Skinhead songs. If you're interested, it was the words to a song called, "The White Man Marches On" that this person wanted to share with us. Look them up.
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach and no matter how much I want to say now that I pressed that push to talk and said, "Kick him or I'll drop," I sat there petrified instead. A second of stunned silence passed and then Vent broke up with scattered giggles, a few people moaned that "now some bleeding hearts will drop raid" and then the Raid Lead chuckled, and said, "Someone is griefing us, let's just keep going."
And they went on with jokes that were maybe less overt but no less hurtful.
Now, I've been gaybashed in the real world, I've been racially attacked, never physically, but I've had someone walk up to me and a friend of mine and threatened to fuck us fags up if they ever saw us on campus again just because they thought we were gay. Right after 9/11 my family faced a fair amount of discrimination in small upstate-NY towns. My Caucasian wife of six years is frequently assumed to be alone when we're out together.
This sort of experience - vocal violence, aggressive discrimination, casual but unintentional racism - is not something new to me. I felt like I knew how to handle myself in these circumstances, in these situations, but in that raid, I didn't.
I shut down. I didn't say anything. It was just so bleak and depressing. Nobody else said anything about it other than to build on it without being quite so outrageous. I don't know why it bugged me so much, or the way it affected me, but really, I felt even more emasculated that I didn't do or say anything, so I stood there for a bit while they kept pulling trash, and then I just dropped raid and logged out.
Maybe it was the level of violence that the song was promising. Maybe it was something about the casual way in which twenty-four other people took this threat. I don't know.
This doesn't take a lot of effort to work out. Language has power, it affects us in profound ways, and if you don't stand up for your friends and colleagues, then you're letting these insensitive people victimize them.
I don't want to see this sort of sexist and racist and homophobic behavior continue. I don't know that I can really make a difference other than to control the limited environment in which I have influence, but Goddamnit, I'm sick of the casual way these words are used. When words become a casual part of speech and language, they become acceptable, and the person hearing those words is forced to accept them as part of a chain of abuse.
These things are not casual. They never were.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Greatness
Last week's raid was disastrously under-attended but this week we had a full guild run with a couple of folks who came out of the shadows to lend a hand and we cleanly knocked out 8 hard modes and the Full House achievement on Lady Deathwhisper after one false start.
Took just over 3 hours and every boss was a one-shot except for Lady Deathwhisper (took one wipe to figure out how to taunt swap the boss), Blood Princes (tweaked our strategy to go for 2 tanks instead of 3 and it worked just fine, three wipes later, when I stopped exploding the healers or pulling an extra boss) and Dream Walker Valethria (where one of our healers had a misstep but the kill came on the second pull and was super, super clean.)
I think these nine bosses are easy mode at this point. Of course, I'm nervous and excited about Thursday - will everyone show up again? With this team, even with the inexperience and the slightly lower gear-curve, I'm confident we can knock out the last two bosses standing in our way. I've been giving a lot of thought on how to kill Sindragosa and Putricide on Heroic, and I have what seem to be solid strats in mind based on the way other folks have done them.
If Thursday doesn't pan out, I might just extend the lockout since I'm really bored of even the hard-mode bosses and while I enjoy watching guildies get tier tokens, I also want progression at this point, and we've proven our prowess with the nine bosses already. We know how to do this shit. Seeing the guild work last night was really gratifying. The folks we've brought in and our veterans are performing at a very high level and our healers and DPS are just off the charts. Absolutely amazing work across the board.
But at this late, late stage of the game, with so many of us within grasp of the final prize, it's time to bring the beacon in. The next two bosses I kill will be Heroic Putricide and Heroic Sindragosa.
Took just over 3 hours and every boss was a one-shot except for Lady Deathwhisper (took one wipe to figure out how to taunt swap the boss), Blood Princes (tweaked our strategy to go for 2 tanks instead of 3 and it worked just fine, three wipes later, when I stopped exploding the healers or pulling an extra boss) and Dream Walker Valethria (where one of our healers had a misstep but the kill came on the second pull and was super, super clean.)
I think these nine bosses are easy mode at this point. Of course, I'm nervous and excited about Thursday - will everyone show up again? With this team, even with the inexperience and the slightly lower gear-curve, I'm confident we can knock out the last two bosses standing in our way. I've been giving a lot of thought on how to kill Sindragosa and Putricide on Heroic, and I have what seem to be solid strats in mind based on the way other folks have done them.
If Thursday doesn't pan out, I might just extend the lockout since I'm really bored of even the hard-mode bosses and while I enjoy watching guildies get tier tokens, I also want progression at this point, and we've proven our prowess with the nine bosses already. We know how to do this shit. Seeing the guild work last night was really gratifying. The folks we've brought in and our veterans are performing at a very high level and our healers and DPS are just off the charts. Absolutely amazing work across the board.
But at this late, late stage of the game, with so many of us within grasp of the final prize, it's time to bring the beacon in. The next two bosses I kill will be Heroic Putricide and Heroic Sindragosa.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Tankadining in Cataclysm
This week was a clusterfuck of scheduling issues and half my raid having RL blow up in their faces. Still killed half the raid on Heroic. Not too terrible. So, I'm going to talk about Cataclysm Paladin Tanking Talents.
I'm feelin' this 3/31/7 build.
Stuff I'm skipping:
Reckoning - same ol' reasoning. More swings might be good for threat, but parry-haste will wind up making us take more damage. No, thanks.
Guarded By The Light - I just hate having to heal myself as a tank. That's not my job. I'll pop Sacred Shield every now and again if I don't have a paladin healer but really, putting up a piddly shield doesn't thrill me when I can use my Holy Power for a Shield of Righteousness/Holy Shield instead.
Eye For An Eye: Magical Attacks only? I'm not the world's biggest fan of reflective damage anyway and this seems like a purely PvP talent an a shitty one at that.
Stuff I'm ambivalent about taking:
Improved Judgment: Ranged attacks? It will be good for trash, but I think I'd rather spend 2 points elsewhere than to pick up something that is useless on most boss fights. Still, I want to get Pursuit of Justice so I guess I have no choice in the matter as Eye For An Eye is even worse.
Divinity: 6% increase to incoming heals? I don't know where the theorycraft hammer will land on this, it could be a lot or it could be a little depending on what healing numbres look like. I dabbled a little bit with the current iteration of this talent before dropping it completely and didn't miss it, but in the current build, I don't know where else I would drop points. More threat in Retribution? I don't know. I feel like I want to focus on survival first and then worry about threat as I need to. This is really big "menh" for me.
Stuff that has left me scratching my head:
Shield of the Righteous and Holy Shield make it seem like you no longer need to maintain Holy Shield - it is instead, a constant source of Block chance every time Shield of the Righteous is used.
So I guess that mean our rotation is starting to look like...
On an AoE pull (yeah, yeah, I know, no more AoE, we'll see how that goes), you drop a Consecrate, Avenging Wrath, Hammer, Judgment, Shield of the Righteous and go from there and as long as DPS gives you 3 or 4 GCDs I doubt agro would be an issue from there.
I also find it interesting that Shield of the Templar drops the cool-down of Avenging Wrath by a minute so that it can be used up to 3 times in a really tight 5 or 6 minute long fight. Is Blizzard expecting Tankadins to pop wings during fights more often to gain agro leads and then pop it again on CDs as a way of staying ahead of blistering DPS? I hope so, I'm a fan of aggressively pushing my DPS without giving up on my survivability (I can manage ~4.5k on H:BQL now, while our top DPS caps around 21k for that fight). Really looking forward to this.
Compared to our current rotation of Judgment, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of the Righteous, Consecration and Holy Shield, it's not unfamiliar. If we just had different tools for AoE and single target, it wouldn't feel like much of a change, but the big, big difference are the procs.
Avenger's Shield popping up randomly and Shield of the Righteous crits when you don't have a full bar of Holy Power ready - decisions on the fly! Chaos! Excitement!
*runs around screaming*
I'm feelin' this 3/31/7 build.
Stuff I'm skipping:
Reckoning - same ol' reasoning. More swings might be good for threat, but parry-haste will wind up making us take more damage. No, thanks.
Guarded By The Light - I just hate having to heal myself as a tank. That's not my job. I'll pop Sacred Shield every now and again if I don't have a paladin healer but really, putting up a piddly shield doesn't thrill me when I can use my Holy Power for a Shield of Righteousness/Holy Shield instead.
Eye For An Eye: Magical Attacks only? I'm not the world's biggest fan of reflective damage anyway and this seems like a purely PvP talent an a shitty one at that.
Stuff I'm ambivalent about taking:
Improved Judgment: Ranged attacks? It will be good for trash, but I think I'd rather spend 2 points elsewhere than to pick up something that is useless on most boss fights. Still, I want to get Pursuit of Justice so I guess I have no choice in the matter as Eye For An Eye is even worse.
Divinity: 6% increase to incoming heals? I don't know where the theorycraft hammer will land on this, it could be a lot or it could be a little depending on what healing numbres look like. I dabbled a little bit with the current iteration of this talent before dropping it completely and didn't miss it, but in the current build, I don't know where else I would drop points. More threat in Retribution? I don't know. I feel like I want to focus on survival first and then worry about threat as I need to. This is really big "menh" for me.
Stuff that has left me scratching my head:
Shield of the Righteous and Holy Shield make it seem like you no longer need to maintain Holy Shield - it is instead, a constant source of Block chance every time Shield of the Righteous is used.
So I guess that mean our rotation is starting to look like...
- Crusader Strike for single targets, Hammer of the Righteous for multiple targets (30% weapon damage = useless for bosses)
- Judgment (Seal of Truth for bosses due to scale-up time, Seal of Righteousness for multiple target)
- Avenger's Shield (Procs! Procs! I love procs!)
- Consecration (with Hallowed Ground, mana cost becomes 17% so while not spamable it can be a longer term part of our spell toolkit depending on the damage output)
- Shield of the Righteous (at 3 stacks) to proc Holy Shield
On an AoE pull (yeah, yeah, I know, no more AoE, we'll see how that goes), you drop a Consecrate, Avenging Wrath, Hammer, Judgment, Shield of the Righteous and go from there and as long as DPS gives you 3 or 4 GCDs I doubt agro would be an issue from there.
I also find it interesting that Shield of the Templar drops the cool-down of Avenging Wrath by a minute so that it can be used up to 3 times in a really tight 5 or 6 minute long fight. Is Blizzard expecting Tankadins to pop wings during fights more often to gain agro leads and then pop it again on CDs as a way of staying ahead of blistering DPS? I hope so, I'm a fan of aggressively pushing my DPS without giving up on my survivability (I can manage ~4.5k on H:BQL now, while our top DPS caps around 21k for that fight). Really looking forward to this.
Compared to our current rotation of Judgment, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of the Righteous, Consecration and Holy Shield, it's not unfamiliar. If we just had different tools for AoE and single target, it wouldn't feel like much of a change, but the big, big difference are the procs.
Avenger's Shield popping up randomly and Shield of the Righteous crits when you don't have a full bar of Holy Power ready - decisions on the fly! Chaos! Excitement!
*runs around screaming*
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Farming Hardmodes
Last night proved that we're getting our sea-legs with the Hard Modes. Seven bosses killed on Hard Mode including two end-wing bosses, and we only skipped out on doing Princes on Hard Mode because our raid comp wasn't really ideal (we were missing a 3rd tank - tried to range-tank it a couple of times but we kept loosing the Shadow Priest during Keleseth's empowered phase and as raid time was counting down, I just wanted to get another kill off of BQL so we just killed them.)
It wasn't just the fact that we cleared seven hard modes in 3 hours last night but the fact that we one-shot just about every one except for Saurfang (1 wipe) and Rotface (2 wipes, mostly 'cuz I was distracted and mistaunted the boss while Big Ooze ate healers. GG, Saif. Total fail.) After the raid, one of our members said that we just about cleared as much on hard modes last night as we did on normal modes most nights. That was a good point, and had we not wiped as much as we did, I'm sure we could have cleared through DWV as well and I think we're on track for a 9/12 Hard Mode night next Tuesday. /flex!
Of course, that leaves the two nasty buggers still undefeated - Le Bon Professeur still lives on as does Sindi. The two hard modes we haven't mastered yet, and our Thursday night this week is messy due to an unexpected absence from two of our top players which means we're probably going to just clear the remaining bosses on normal mode and maybe pick up achievements for folks that need it.
But last night was a solid, solid performance and being short 1 person, we brought in two undergeared people (an awesome if undergear healer we're wooing and a social guildie who has recently returned after a long beeak) both of whom performed incredibly well so really, we were a tad bit handicapped but pulled off some awesome kills - Saurfang went down with only 2 marks and a minute left on the meter (2 healing this makes it so much easier), Festergut died before he could cast a second Blight (even with 3 healees), BQL was sub-10% going into her second air phase - so that was some really, really solid DPS and performance.
I'm super happy with our progression right now. And to top it all off, Lana'thel was kind enough to give me my first Sanctified token. Maybe she will even relent to my repeated requests for a date next week...
It wasn't just the fact that we cleared seven hard modes in 3 hours last night but the fact that we one-shot just about every one except for Saurfang (1 wipe) and Rotface (2 wipes, mostly 'cuz I was distracted and mistaunted the boss while Big Ooze ate healers. GG, Saif. Total fail.) After the raid, one of our members said that we just about cleared as much on hard modes last night as we did on normal modes most nights. That was a good point, and had we not wiped as much as we did, I'm sure we could have cleared through DWV as well and I think we're on track for a 9/12 Hard Mode night next Tuesday. /flex!
Of course, that leaves the two nasty buggers still undefeated - Le Bon Professeur still lives on as does Sindi. The two hard modes we haven't mastered yet, and our Thursday night this week is messy due to an unexpected absence from two of our top players which means we're probably going to just clear the remaining bosses on normal mode and maybe pick up achievements for folks that need it.
But last night was a solid, solid performance and being short 1 person, we brought in two undergeared people (an awesome if undergear healer we're wooing and a social guildie who has recently returned after a long beeak) both of whom performed incredibly well so really, we were a tad bit handicapped but pulled off some awesome kills - Saurfang went down with only 2 marks and a minute left on the meter (2 healing this makes it so much easier), Festergut died before he could cast a second Blight (even with 3 healees), BQL was sub-10% going into her second air phase - so that was some really, really solid DPS and performance.
I'm super happy with our progression right now. And to top it all off, Lana'thel was kind enough to give me my first Sanctified token. Maybe she will even relent to my repeated requests for a date next week...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Writing in a hurry
As some of you might know, Blizzard's annual writing contest was running for the last few weeks/months and as the last couple of years, I planned to submit but this time, I actually made a run of it. I had an idea in mind, and I worked out the general arc and characters, and wrote about 2000 words - roughly the first third of it - a couple of weeks ago and kept mulling the rest of it over and over, thinking I had until the end of the month to wrap it up.
Some providence inspired me to check on the date yesterday morning and I realized with a shock that the submission deadline was in fact last night at midnight.
I spent my lunch break at work desperately churning out another 2000 words to get two-thirds of the way and then work and an after-work engagement kept me busy. I got home around nine, logged into game, ran into Halls of Reflection for inspiration and with the music of that dungeon over my headphones, wrote the rest of it (with some encouragement from a couple of guildies) and then gave it a quick draft and posted it off just before midnight.
I'm pretty pleased with the story, and if I might take a segue from Warcraft for a second, it is the first new short story that I've started and finished in some time. Writing has been a hobby of mine for a while and I've had some minor success with it (a couple of short plays I wrote wound up in a tiny off-broadway production, and a couple of short-stories I wrote wound up in some small-time press magazines) but I've been going through some serious writers block for a bit over a year now and this was a very gratifying way to break through that wall.
After submitting the story and getting a confirmation letter back from Blizzard, I sent the story out to a few friends and it seems to be doing well with them, so I have my fingers crossed.
I'm feeling pretty pumped to continue working on some of my own material and if anything should come of this Blizzard submission, well, I certainly wouldn't mind writing for my favorite game, as you might imagine. :-)
Some providence inspired me to check on the date yesterday morning and I realized with a shock that the submission deadline was in fact last night at midnight.
I spent my lunch break at work desperately churning out another 2000 words to get two-thirds of the way and then work and an after-work engagement kept me busy. I got home around nine, logged into game, ran into Halls of Reflection for inspiration and with the music of that dungeon over my headphones, wrote the rest of it (with some encouragement from a couple of guildies) and then gave it a quick draft and posted it off just before midnight.
I'm pretty pleased with the story, and if I might take a segue from Warcraft for a second, it is the first new short story that I've started and finished in some time. Writing has been a hobby of mine for a while and I've had some minor success with it (a couple of short plays I wrote wound up in a tiny off-broadway production, and a couple of short-stories I wrote wound up in some small-time press magazines) but I've been going through some serious writers block for a bit over a year now and this was a very gratifying way to break through that wall.
After submitting the story and getting a confirmation letter back from Blizzard, I sent the story out to a few friends and it seems to be doing well with them, so I have my fingers crossed.
I'm feeling pretty pumped to continue working on some of my own material and if anything should come of this Blizzard submission, well, I certainly wouldn't mind writing for my favorite game, as you might imagine. :-)
Friday, August 20, 2010
PuG - how to and how not to
I was puttering around on my Forsaken Death Knight yesterday afternoon and as I tend to do while puttering, I left myself in the Raid Browser as Tank/DPS on the unlikely chance that someone might need me.
You see, with my raiding and guild obligations Alliance side, I don't really want to commit to a Horde guild as I will always put my Alliance guild and toons first, so I don't think it's fair for me to join a guild with an alt. I can see it working out if I can find a raiding guild that does weekend work only or something, and while I don't mind PuGing - it can lead to fun and excitement and meeting great people - in the end of the day, I play this game to raid with friends.
So anyway, I was herbing away when I get a whisper - "Tank for ICC 10? Marrowgar is down." I do my usual Litmus Test - pop the person's name into Wow-head and peruse their gear/raid stats, and he'd done 8 or 9 bosses in ICC a few times, so I figure he is a professional PuGer. I accept his invite, zone in, click "Accept" when I'm asked to enter into the lockout and am sealed to this raid.
Happily I put on my tank gear, take my flask, eat my food, log into Vent, and start jumping up and down, ready to pull. That's when I realize with slow dawning horror that this will not be productive. That I have, in fact, thrown away my raid lockout for nothing. For one, my co-tank with massively better gear than me but in the same spec as me is doing far less damage than I am. The Raid Lead isn't leading so much as telling people when to pull. The DPS is non-existent and there are two healers, one of whom drops raid after one pull of the boss that lasts seven minutes to get to phase 2 at which point I explode the second I stop chaining cool downs.
Mind bogglingly, the raid leader then says he has time for one more pull and I just about have to induce a stroke in myself to keep from punching that press to talk key and screaming, "What the fuck?"
Disgusting.
Later in the night, my normal Alliance raid was short three people due to massive log-in issues that plagued my entire Battlegroup and I wound up PuGing and did a mixed bag of Heroic and Normal mode kills. I actually wound up with a couple of upgrades that I had been looking for, for a long time. And as usual, after we had killed 9 bosses in 2 hours at the end of the night, the PuGers whispered me kindly, asking me if we were looking for recruits.
Why can't I PuG for my guild's counterparts Horde side? Anyone on Moon Guard need a part-time Tank/DPS DK? I swear I don't suck.
On top of that, some roster issues are starting to nag on me, wherein I've had our Shadow Priest sub-healing hard modes for our Resto-Shaman who's on a sabbatical and he's getting antsy to get back to his normal spec and is tired of keeping up two gear sets, so I've sent an e-mail off to the Shammy to see what her status is.
Little, minor issues like these are starting to pile up. I might need an officer meeting soon to sort this shit out!
You see, with my raiding and guild obligations Alliance side, I don't really want to commit to a Horde guild as I will always put my Alliance guild and toons first, so I don't think it's fair for me to join a guild with an alt. I can see it working out if I can find a raiding guild that does weekend work only or something, and while I don't mind PuGing - it can lead to fun and excitement and meeting great people - in the end of the day, I play this game to raid with friends.
So anyway, I was herbing away when I get a whisper - "Tank for ICC 10? Marrowgar is down." I do my usual Litmus Test - pop the person's name into Wow-head and peruse their gear/raid stats, and he'd done 8 or 9 bosses in ICC a few times, so I figure he is a professional PuGer. I accept his invite, zone in, click "Accept" when I'm asked to enter into the lockout and am sealed to this raid.
Happily I put on my tank gear, take my flask, eat my food, log into Vent, and start jumping up and down, ready to pull. That's when I realize with slow dawning horror that this will not be productive. That I have, in fact, thrown away my raid lockout for nothing. For one, my co-tank with massively better gear than me but in the same spec as me is doing far less damage than I am. The Raid Lead isn't leading so much as telling people when to pull. The DPS is non-existent and there are two healers, one of whom drops raid after one pull of the boss that lasts seven minutes to get to phase 2 at which point I explode the second I stop chaining cool downs.
Mind bogglingly, the raid leader then says he has time for one more pull and I just about have to induce a stroke in myself to keep from punching that press to talk key and screaming, "What the fuck?"
Disgusting.
Later in the night, my normal Alliance raid was short three people due to massive log-in issues that plagued my entire Battlegroup and I wound up PuGing and did a mixed bag of Heroic and Normal mode kills. I actually wound up with a couple of upgrades that I had been looking for, for a long time. And as usual, after we had killed 9 bosses in 2 hours at the end of the night, the PuGers whispered me kindly, asking me if we were looking for recruits.
Why can't I PuG for my guild's counterparts Horde side? Anyone on Moon Guard need a part-time Tank/DPS DK? I swear I don't suck.
On top of that, some roster issues are starting to nag on me, wherein I've had our Shadow Priest sub-healing hard modes for our Resto-Shaman who's on a sabbatical and he's getting antsy to get back to his normal spec and is tired of keeping up two gear sets, so I've sent an e-mail off to the Shammy to see what her status is.
Little, minor issues like these are starting to pile up. I might need an officer meeting soon to sort this shit out!
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