To Ratter and my Mooj

… except… Mooj you know if I could get an HK off you I will. *grin* Luckily we see each other in Dalaran more then in Wintergrasp.

/kiss to you both

Whispering In

It has been a few months since I did the move to the new guild. I wanted to reflect a little on what stood out.

Raid invites are not sent out, you whisper into the raid leader.

This actually took some time to get use too. Most raid leaders start inviting people who signed up. Sending out gold lettered personal invitation saying “We cordially invite you to grace us with your presence tonight.”

Instead, as a raider you need to actively whisper into the raid leader the word “invite”. Each raider needs to actively engage in WANTING to be there.

Think about this change… the raider has to be out of party. We have mentally started getting ready for raid. We are now thinking about raid, typically reagents, buff items, and last minute gear issues can all be addressed.

At first I was creeped out by this.

I come into this new guild, getting thought the application process, now I have to tell THEM I want to raid. Strangely it felt like an imposition. Like if you knocked on a friend’s door. You know you will be invited in. But you are polite about it. You wait for the sweep of the hand to let you in through the door.

Here you just barge open their door and make yourself comfortable.

It feels more like … a meeting.

Everyone has the appointment on their calendar. You accepted or declined as you choose. But it is still your responsibility to show up. Not only show up, but be prepared to do your part… novel but not really.

For the Rogue it is now about whispering the raid leader “invite” way way way before… like 40 minutes before raid. Something about him getting food and he might as well get an early start.

I am still getting use to it.

Saufang and Minions

Minions or pets are fine in the Saurfang fight.

This includes our minions, mage pets, hunter pets, and any other pets.

They are not affected by the blood at all.

My logs have not shown them taking blood damage. I have yet to find a combat log online that indicates a minion (no your fellow raiders as minions do not count) can be affected by the blood boil. If you have a link please share it with us… otherwise…

Any reports that minions cannot be used are greatly exaggerated.

Peel Those Melee Oranges Away

From other locks and caster friends, I am hearing a consistent complaint about the current state of their DPS. In these first ICC fights, they are absolutely melee friendly. So melee friendly that even Ghostcrawler acknowledged that they are melee friendly.

Like I have always said…
Melee don’t stack Intellect.

A warrior friend told me once, “The tank needs to move the boss out of the fire. The melee is not so smart and will stand in it.”

I figured that Blizzard saw this as truth. This truth is why they made these first fights the way they did.

I have toiled hours and then more hours reading, respeccing, messing with addons, ultimately trying everything to eek out a smidgen more DPS.

It is not just the fights.

All lock specs are getting a buff. Have gotten a buff. Are being buffed.

As a class, we are getting some attention.

Keep in mind Blizzard is making MASSIVE changes to the lock class in Cataclysm. There will come a point that messing with talents, they plan on wiping out, will not be cost or time effective. I actually thought this time was right now. These buffs were a pleasant surprise.

Let us remember that damage done in a fight is way more important then DPS. (I realized I tend to think damage done and type DPS.)

In the meantime, I am changing the way I look at meters.

Separate into 2 types of DPS.
1. The caster group. (boomkin, locks, mages, spriests.)
2. The melee and hunter group. (rogues, warriors, kitteh, ret pallies, pesky hunters.)

Where do I fall in the caster group? Am I in the top three?

For my 25s this change in how I thought about my damage done was HUGE. If I compare my damage with those in similar situations, then I am in the top three consistently, occasionally even first.

I can make adjustments. I can test things. I can pull out useful information. And get consistent feedback.

If someone is moving better than I, I can watch what they are doing.

If someone is not DPSing adds (*cough* Faid *cough*), it is easy to spot.

If you are getting frustrated with the damage done, make sure you are comparing yourself with those that have similar roles. No apples to oranges comparing.

In My Feed Reader

I am extremely behind in my reading. Even now, I have over 200 posts sitting there.

I just found out that Abi at Fear.Win was hanging up his lock robes. Following him to all his different blogs has always been entertaining. He gave great information on Destruction 'locks. He would address questions I was asking myself but to lazy to actually research. Thank you Abi for the time you gave to the warlock community.

To all the Rogues out there here is Spacebar Clown.


Thank you too, Forbearance for that link to Altaholics Anonymous that linked to this fun WoW movie. (… and I wonder why it takes me so long to get through my Feed Reader.)

Temerity Jane did a post on … men dangles … called Ladies: Are your mental naked men missing middles? In her funny and creative way it left me thinking … about men dangles. Don't think I ever called it a dangle before, I typically just say penis. The post and resulting conversation is a great look into women sexuality.

Maybe… just maybe … I will get my feed reader back to a reasonable place.

Moly’s World PvP Top 4

Moly was another Horde Hunter, I rolled over two years ago. It took me most of that two years to get to level 80 to raid.

There were BG distractions from 19-49. As for world PvP on a PvP server, it is far and few between.

I was keeping my eyes out for some. You hear all this talk about “care bear” servers. There is the /rawr and the stroking of their epeens about leveling on a PvP server.

I will tell you… it is scarce.

I didn’t have max level characters to call upon for aid. I killed or was killed by some of the Alliance that I came across. But, it would be huge levels between incidents.

A lot of times I couldn’t be bothered. *shrug* But if they bothered me, I would get a chance to practice my jump shot. *grin*

Leveling on a PvP realm did not feel like a feat of strength.

I will give you that I was not new to the game….but whatever. It was not this scary, painful, wondrous thing to do. It was just leveling. No real difference then on my “care bear” RP realm.

Thinking back, to my 80 levels here are some of my most memorable world PvP incidents. The last being my absolute favorite… it reinforces the creative use of game mechanics.

1. Taming Bellygrub

Remember hunters running all over the world getting pet abilities? At level 24, Bellygrub was the only boar with Gore 4. He resides in Redridge Mountains, not the easiest place for a lowbie Horde hunter to get to.

I ghost ran to Westfall. Logged out and back in so I could revive there. I was a lone naked blood elf in the graveyard. I died again … repeatedly.

Apparently there was Horde there messing with Alliance. Alliance called for help and their 70s had shown up. So I was in the middle of a 70s battle and … all I wanted to do was get to Bellygrub … zones away.

I whispered a 70 druid there killing Alliance about my predicament. He dragged them away to let me revive and run on my way.

2. Western Plaguelands

In an effort to make leveling interesting, I tried to focus on areas that I never did on Hydra. I had never quested in this zone.

I was tabbed out of warcraft. I was on wowhead looking for Diseased Wolves for the quest The Wildlife Suffers Too. (Yes, I remember the exact quest… Husband thinks it funny I can remember stuff like this but not names of people I just met.)

I suddenly hear myself getting attacked. I assumed it was wildlife.

It was wildlife alright … in the form of a ret pally.

My pet was faithfully gnawing on his leg. I was at half health. Pally wanted to play while I was afk.

Wing clip. Frost trap. Jump shot. Concussive shot. Kite. Heh. This hunter was trained covering the fields of Warsong.

What we have here is a hunter in quest greens you couldn’t kill with a head start. /lol

3. Hellfire

Off though the Dark Portal I went to Outland. You would think I would learn not to go AFK on the road. A rogue ganking was in order.

I just let it kill me.

If I remember correctly, I went to get a sandwich. I’m sure it was worth it.

4. Dragonblight

I was turning in a quest at Wyrmrest Temple. Hovering in the vendor area, I noticed an 80 Death Knight killing.

Who am I to disrupt his fun! MOR KILLING!

I got close enough to the DK so when he spread his diseases I would get it. Now in combat, I would share the diseases… with the guards. Well … heh… guard collecting was my fun.

Get disease and in combat… grab a few guards for the DK.

All the while I was flying around on my mount.

Hey! If I killed him, it would be only 1% durability loss. This way he got the 10%... kinda like I killed him 10 times over. Bwahahaha.

Precious All Grown Up

Festergut and Rotface down in 25 man.

Festergut was an exercise in raiders counting to three. Additionally a big thing was limiting who was calling out what.

Rotface was your own self awareness. We split up into 3 groups with the tank on one side. During a spew only one third of the dps had to move at any one time. A key was not getting frazzled as things got busy. Which with only three of us alive at the kill (*pats self on back*) we are still working on.

Mating blobs take forever to mate. DON’T move back into position until you are 100% sure it has left you to merge with the big blob. You can still do some moving dps at range.

The blob tank did at one time point out that I was “tiny”. The blobs are as big as I am. Making him (pally cleanse) not able to find me to scrub the goo off to make the blob. I was quite grateful that I had muted myself in vent… I don’t think I said anything nice.

I pretty much had this fight mechanics down early on. One thing this let me do while learning it in a group was concentrate on my dots. I am still extremely frustrated in how low my dps is.

Lock dps is lower then we should be. I am not making this up. Ghostcrawler said something and then it was reinforced by Zarhym. 

No excuses!!

I am constantly looking at what I can do to improve. I look at addons, talents, rotation, priorties and movement. Good places to start are www.raider101.com (Help us keep it updated!!) and The Warlocks Den. Of course there is always Elitist Jerks.

Oh! Oh! OH!

I am very excited to be raiding as affliction once again. I would have held out during the whole replenishment debacle but my healers had asked me to bring replenishment to the raids. MOR DOTS once again.

This actually was a good thing. When they merged the siphon life ability with corruption I really missed the extra few seconds of movement. Learning to stand still to dps as Destruction and then going back to Affliction doesn’t make me miss it so much.

Precious the pig dog is mine!

Long time readers will remember my Horde hunter Iridium was the first “Name that Pet” over on Petopia.  (This sent me down memory lane to when Husband and I met in WSG. I won. *grin*) The result was my new pet being named Precious. I am so proud that he grew up so big and raid killing!

Wow Head’s Completion Tracker

There is a new wowhead.com feature called Completion Tracker. It is in bata but looks really smooth.

You can find how to use it here on the wowhead.com site. You simply download the wowhead client and it will collect the information when you log into your character.

It adds mounts, companions, recipes, and quests to your profile on wowhead.com. Ratter showed me this new feature. I have yet to mess with it beyond clicking around his information.

Here is Hydra’s without the added information.
Here is Ratshag’s with the added information.

You are able to see all the data outside of wow. In great wowhead fashion it is easy to sort, search, and click around in.

My first thought was the easy to click on tabs will help for planning the next steps you need to do to complete Loremaster. *cough* Oathbreaker *cough*

How I Stopped Keyboard Turning

While poking around one of the guild forums I found an old post about keyboard turning. There was a link to a wow.com topic.

I started out as a keyboard turner.

The games I initially played on the PC were not first person shooters, but strategy games. If I wanted to shoot something I would do that on my console games.

Even on the Warcraft site it immediately encourages keyboard turning by saying “Use the W, A, S, D keys to move around the world.”

So that is what I did…

Then I quickly figured out I needed to strafe. Keeping what I was attacking in front of me. It let me watch the fight in more detail.

The wow.com article linked to wikipedia which had an animation to show just how dps can move around a target.

First, I key-bound the left strafe to the Q key and right strafe to the E key. This enabled me to move forward at a 45 degree angle at a running pace, to exclusively strafe, and to move more effectively.

I ran into a big problem quickly. Holding down ability keys 1-0 plus moving was a pain. In a tough battle I was crossing my hands over. I was looking at keys to hit the buttons. It was still a mess. Plus I was not utilizing my right hand, my most dominate, efficiently.

Next, I moved off all movement keys onto my ten key. I added as a secondary key-binding to movements the 7, 8, 9, 4, 5, and 6 keys. This worked extremely well.

This is actually how the Rogue plays. He has always been faster with the 10 key. You can key-bind all your movement to your right hand, this includes jump. This frees up a significant amount of buttons for abilities using your left hand. ProTip don’t use the Num Lock or Esc as a key binding, that is just silliness. So this worked out extremely well.

The problem I was having with the 10 key was jump shots on my hunters. I would actually lift my hand off the 10 key onto the mouse and then execute the shot then move my hand back. Again the back and forth would cause me to loose my spot on the 10-key making me look down to adjust my finger positioning.

Then, I started to move with my mouse. I had a standard two button mouse with a scroll wheel. I key-bound autorun to the scroll click, so I could be lazy and not always hold down both buttons. I was back to using the Q and E key to strafe, plus the S key for back. Ugg. That was not going to work either.

Finally, I am at the point of using me the Belkin n52te and Razor Lachesis. Both peripherals come with buttons galore. Both of which I didn’t expect to change my game as much as they did.

I use the movement pad on the n52 to strafe. I use the mouse to move my character and camera angle. I autorun with the scroll wheel click. I back up with the center top button. And my genius was when I key-bound the M key for map to the center bottom button.

Only time I touch the keyboard now is to type. So yes, when Hydra is not moving or hopping around it is because I am typing someone. Unfortunately, concentrating on the keyboard for typing has not improved my spelling or grammar.

With all this work to move it is no wonder why I get so pissed when I get caught in the fire. On that note, I will still laugh at you if you back up out of the fire. If you are lucky I will not call you out in vent for doing it.

Why not Mount Up?

I am trying to encourage my guild to regularly run Obsidian Sanctum three Drakes(OS3D) 10 and 25 mans to farm drakes. Currently this is my most frustrating thing in game. I don’t think people understand why mounts can be more important then farming gear.
(This topic makes me incoherent so bear with me on this list.)

1) Your gear will be replaced in the next patch.
2) There are always more emblems.
3) You know there is another expansion coming.
4) Cool weapons only get worn in Dalaran. How many Warglaves do you see running Icecrown now?
5) For an ICC geared group it is the fastest 20 minutes boss kill you will see. Heck TOC gear is good too.
6) It takes longer to get the group together then to kill the dragon.
7) It takes longer to kill trash then to kill the dragon.
8) Killing OS3D is about as long as the queue is for DPS to run their daily heroic on their own.
9) People are STILL farming mounts out of places like Stratholme, Zul'gurub, and Sethekk Halls.
10) How many runs of holiday bosses have you been on for mounts? Your guild?
11) Do you still go to Utgarde Pinnacle and think “Maybe the Blue Proto-Drake will drop this time?”
12) The more you complain about it the less you understand the value of loot.
13) Mounts are billboards of what your guild is doing.
14) How long do you think Blizzard is going to keep this GUARANTEED mount drop in the game?

Mounts and titles are the few things your character takes with you as you move from expansion to expansion.

I see one of my Shammies riding around on his Phoenix. It truly is one of the most beautiful mounts in game.  Beyond that I see a raider that ran Tempest Keep.

I see my Swift White Hawkstrider. It think about how excited the group was to see it drop. I know how much fun it was to run heroic Magister’s Terrace and strategize before killing the PvP boss.

To this day I still get shit for not giving the Headless Horseman’s Steed to Husband. The mount dropped on his birthday. F-k you all … you weren’t going to pass. I know I didn’t. *grin*

When my Mom-in-law hit 80 and started doing Heroics I set up a group for The Culling of Stratholme. It was not for gear upgrades. It was for the Bronze Drake. I was glad I was able to give that gift to her. A few days later she even thanked me again. She still loves flying around on it a great deal.

When I see someone on a Red Proto-Drake, Violet Proto-Drake, Ironbound Proto-Drake, or Rusted Proto-Drake, I see all the achievements completed to get one. When they are level 85 they will still have that one thing that said “Yea I did it”.

These simple things are marketing for guild recruitment.

Mounts are your billboards for your recruitment officers. It really tells where your guild is at in content. Also,  what your raiders are motivated to complete.

Are the groups I am raiding with lazy, bored, distracted, or complete jackasses? I don’t think so. But … really… I have no true idea why you would not help farm the drakes for raiders when the last run of OS3D took 20 minutes.

One Liners

Don’t ask me to spec tank. If I do I will be able to make a water slide from the Warrior tears. ~ The DK Tank

Glyph of Mirror Image
Now there are FIVE more mages then necessary. Please make it stop. ~Hydra

The landscape is beautiful. Next time you are taking a long flight path take it all in. Hide your game UI with Alt+Z and scroll in so your camera is first person. Enjoy the fabulous views that is Warcraft.

Grobbulus Instructions
Poop near the wall. Pooping on or next to your friends will make them no longer your friends. ~Hydra

Show your helm once and a while. Particularly when you don’t like it. Granted in Northrend they will think you are into S&M. After a while you will appreciate your ability to turn off your helm that much more.

How I have scared those raiders on vent.
*loud gasp*
Oh my gosh I LOOOooooove your hair.

If we could figure out how to make a boss mechanic require tea bagging our guild would one shot the boss in record time.