Because Pike Did It

So apparently Pike decided that it was time for her to talk about being a Resto Druid. She does a great job (but she's Pike, what did you expect?) and should STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT GOSH.

But Pike talked Resto Druids. My job, therefore, is obviously to talk about my BM Hunter, Sugarcake. Except, well, while Pike actually knows what she's talking about, I'm running around going "OH MAN HOW DOES THIS WORK CRAP MY PET IS DEAD WHY IS MY DPS SO LOW GUYS STOP MAKING FUN OF ME."

Sugarcake has been 80 less than two weeks and probably doesn't deserve all the gear she has. She also needs new pants. I've actually been looking over Pike's hunters' armories to get a basic idea of gemming, skimming through her articles, trying to find a Google search for BM hunter information that isn't a millenia old and adjusting my bars and rotation, but the actual time I can put into her is limited due to also, you know, working on Grad School stuffs. Which sucks, 'cause, I mean, Huntering is way more important than that obviously. I need to get my priorities in order.

As a side note, did you know levelling pets sucks? I'm trying to get Cinnamon, my Devilsaur, to 80. I did every single Nessingwary hunt and kill quest from start to achievement and my Devilsaur went from a bar and a half into 77 to a bar and a half away from 78. Not one level after massacring about 100 animals. And as soon as Cinnamon is 80, I need to get my wolf, Sprinkles, there from 75. Augh.

Until I get this huntard thing figured out and start doing at least 3k DPS consistently, I've respec'd three times, picked up Improved Hunter's Mark and glyphed it, so there's a reason to take me along besides pity, as long as there's another hunter. I'm messing around with FemaleDwarf.Com (how appropriate!) but my inexperience with spreadsheets (you can't really spreadsheet a healer) has me more often than not going "That's great! How come I can't do that..." and scratching my head in confusion.

I have learned a lot though. Like, putting Cinnamon on aggressive when Anub'arak burrows in ToC is hilarious and fun while removing the need to manually target the scarabs while also knocking down frost orbs. I need to tell Cinnamon to "Stay" at the bottom of the stairs in Thorim's gauntlet so he'll despawn when I jump down. Paletress likes to nuke him which, while really sucking for my DPS, is I suppose better for the group as a whole (especially PUGs). Koralon likes to set him on fire? Everyone stop beating up Cinnamon, geez.

I have also learned that someone's hunter is an orb hog. Yes, you. Jerk.

For now, I'll deal with Sugar being on the receiving end of all the jokes (my Resto Druid did 1.7k DPS and I was told "Congratulations, you've out DPS'd your hunter!" Her DPS is not that bad, butt heads). I'll keep working on her when I have time, adjusting her as I go, and trying out these things called "macros" perhaps. Besides my Bestial Wrath/Rapid Fire/Mark of Supremacy smash macro.

That one's fun.

EDIT: Stop is following the crowd as well. I wonder if this is gonna keep chaining? Whatever you do, don't jump off a bridge, Pike. At least two people would follow you!

Behind the Learning Curve

This post's alternate title is "Everything you already knew about Arena that I'm just catching up on." Because I'm a total and complete scrub who, as my boyfriend ever so gently puts it, has "no PvP instincts whatsoever."

So! I've been doing arena for two weeks now after stopping in the dying throes of Burning Crusade, I'm a winner all over the world as of last night, and with such triumphant traveling comes this great knowledge I will now impart unto you. Ready for it?

1. Not Understanding How Your Partner Can Help You Will Lose Games
So, Warriors have this thing called Bladestorm where they spin like a top and smash into you and hit a lot and hard. You can't Root them, you can't Cyclone them (or my unlucky Immunes were flukes!) you just have to run away. Or, you know, drag them by your Warrior partner who can disarm them and make them simply a pretty, ineffectual spinning ballerina. And if you don't know this? Well, unless you can get away, you're kind of probably maybe going to die (it hurts). Guess what? I died.

2. Panicking Gets You Killed
Yes, the warlock just crit you for 10k despite your Resilience. Yes, he's also got DoTs ticking. Running in a straight line away from him when you could simply LoS him by jumping off the platform because you're in a state of blind "OSHI-" panic is not going to help. It's going to get you killed. Just like the slow-running bimbo who trips and falls in front of the axe murderer, only you don't even have to trip because the fire can SEE YOU.

3. Talking Is Really Important
Unless you and your partner are telepathically mind-linked, you kind of have to speak up about what you're going to do. I have trouble with this. I think of my arena partner/boyfriend as all knowing (he can be quite scary with how often he gets unsaid stuff right, too) and so I just...well, I don't speak up. He can obviously see I'm dying to the Rogue behind the boxes while he's trying to focus down the Paladin because I've already had to use my trinket once and Barkskin is also down. OBVIOUSLY. I am working on this.

4. Cyclone Is Awesome. Cyclone Also Sucks.
Forgetting to use Cyclone is a terrible thing. Cyclone is "rigged" in that you can stop someone in their tracks, wasting their cooldowns and healing, get away from them and frustrate them. Knowing when to use it requires some experience and communication with your partner. I once Cycloned a Ret Paladin for the full duration of his wings cooldown. We lost that game, but at least I felt like I may have pissed him off. But you can also completely screw the game over by Cycloning a target just as your partner pops all his cooldowns, and then you've got a full duration immune target laughing his ass off at you.

5. Warlock Priest teams are EVIL
Warlocks hit like a truck. My HoTs are getting eaten and dispelled off all the time. I can't keep anything on my partner. I HATE THEM.

Moving on...

6. Just Because Your Comp Is Really Powerful Doesn't Mean You Can Completely Faceroll
Last night we went into a match against a Priest/Mage, supposedly one of the toughest combinations to beat. I mentally resigned myself to this being a doomed "practice match" where I'd just try to keep myself and my partner alive as long as I could.

And then we won. I LoS'd, kited, Bashed, Cycloned, Rooted, Moonfired, Insect Swarmed, and, of course, Healed my limbs off (it is hard to kite with no limbs) and my Warrior partner smashed in faces with his brand new Aesir's Edge and did his Warrior thing (see point number 1) and we won. Though we are in the little leagues (have only played 20 games so far, so we haven't exactly broken into the area where you start losing points), knowing that powerful comps are truly killable at least makes me feel a bit better.

7. WARLOCKS SUCK
Do you guys just get used to winning games in the first ten seconds? I mean, holy crap. I'm also looking at you, Enhance Shamans. I've only met one of you my first week but you just exploded everything into a pile of sticky gore.

But at least I'm wondering "WTF do I do to live through this??" instead of crying "AMG NERF NAO QQ"

Loot Rules Make PUGs Complicated

Every weekend, at 12PM server (3PM Eastern), I run a 25 Tournament of the Crusader for guild alts, applicants, raiders who were sat/unable to make the main raid, and, inevitably, PUGs. These runs have been very successful, and even on the worst week we never failed to down Anub'arak. Now I have people whisper me throughout the week, people I barely know, to ask "When is the raid? Is it always at the same time? Can I have a calendar invite?" and I check up on their gear and achievements (I don't require full achievements but I like to see at least some ten man experience) and then I say "sure" and add them to the list.

To make my life "easier" I came up with some simple loot rules, and had them approved by my guild leader (as it is technically a guild run). The rules are as follows:

1. Your main spec is what you are here as. If it is for your offspec, you do not roll unless no one needs it mainspec.
2. Roll for patterns only if you have the skill to make it. Does not count against you.
3. When you have won a piece of gear, people who have not won anything will be given preference over you. I am keeping track.
4. If everyone rolling for an item has won something, it will be given out normally (highest roll wins).
5. Crusader orbs are reserved, All other loot is fair game.
6. If you win an item uncontested it does not count against you but don't be greedy.
7. Do not talk in raid while loot is going out.

Simple, straightforward, macro'd and spammed at the beginning of every raid before the first pull. Crusader orbs are reserved because, since this is technically a guild run, they're transferred to the guild bank where they are then distributed to raiders who need them for crafting raid gear. Also, this ensures they get used, whereas the first time I tried it with Runed Orbs, they were later found on the auction house when I had stated to please only roll if you need them for crafting.

Lesson Learned.

You would think with such a set of rules, loot would be a relatively simple thing to distribute. Yet every. single. week. something comes up to give me a pixellated headache. Regular members of the raid try to tweak my rules by adding things like "if you fail, you get no loot." Which would be fine if a) I was a competent judge of all class failures and successes and b) you didn't wait til the !@#$ encounter started to modify my loot rules. And yet there's pressure for me to add that clause in, as everyone hates for loot to go to people who pulled aggro on the worms and got the raid spewed or ran out with Incinerate so people couldn't heal them or blew everyone up on Twins.

I'm pretty sure that's going to bring about plenty of arbitrary and opinion-oriented loot arguments, so I'm still fenced about that.

And then there's things like item trading. Last week, someone who had used their main spec roll then decided to trade the piece to another raider, without telling me at the time that they had decided to pass. This other raider narrowly missed beating someone else out for a main spec roll, and I only know about it because the original person later rolled and won on a trophy, and when I went to pass them the whole thing came to light. So now I need to make a clause about trading items and using your main spec roll because this is just annoying, honestly.

It seems the more rules you have, the more rules you need. And every week I get someone(s) unhappy over pixels. It's the most ridiculous thing ever. I've given my loot away to other people without returning my own main spec roll. I've watched items that would have been amazing upgrades for Bellbell vanish into the inventory of a healer who did half her healing and gone "Oh well." So perhaps it's just my damage, but getting so many complaints week after week over loot confuses me.

Or maybe my damage is that, despite this, I continue to set these raids up every week...

Lord Jaraxxus, Hardmode (25)

This fight against Lord Jaraxxus is one of the easier fights in Tournament of the Grand Crusader. There are, of course, a few changes designed to make the fight more difficult. Those are:

1. Mistress of Pain will now cast Mistress's Kiss.
2. The Portals and Volcanoes that spawn adds must be DPS'd down before they will stop spawning adds.
3. Everything hits/ticks harder.
   

Setup
Before the start of the fight, you want to arrange your healers and ranged DPS in a circle around the outside of the middle. Don't stand on the points of the stars; they're misleading and too far removed from the raid on the opposite side of the circle. Stand a little away from the inner ring, inside the triangles. Separate your healers first, then your ranged DPS; ranged should stand on healers, no more than two to a healer. The boss should be tanked in the middle, and after the pull it should look something like this:


Obviously, you can utilize the triangles that work the best for you, this is just an example. As you do this more and more, you'll notice healers and DPS getting territorial over their triangles. This is perfectly natural. After all, the Northeast triangle is mine, and my DPS is Francesco the mage and occasionally a Warlock. It's my spot.

Before you pull make sure your ranged directly South and your melee stand away from the boss so they don't get smacked in the face and one-shot.

Execution
Once the boss is pulled, a lot of the fight depends on your DPS and their ability to change targets quickly to the portal/volcano and DPS it down so there are not too many adds. It's especially important for the portals, as more than one Mistress of Pain can lock up your healers very quickly, especially if you're running with a bunch of Paladins. The Kiss can be counteracted, true; just target Jaraxxus or a Mistress and start casting Starfire as a Druid, or a Shadow spell for a Priest or a Fire spell for a Shaman (remember, it has to have a cast time!). Paladins, only having Holy spells, are SoL as soon as Kiss lands on them. Their choices are to cast something, take the interrupt and the damage but be locked out for less time, or to sit out the fifteen seconds of the debuff, which is not recommended.

More Mistresses equal more Kisses equal more locked out healers, as even Priests, Shamans and Druids can become accidentally locked out if the Kiss lands on them while they're in the middle of casting something. If your DPS is having trouble getting the portals down while only spawning one Mistress, consider going to five healers and having an extra DPS; we did this for our first kills and, despite the loss of one healer, it was easier without the Mistress running rampant.

Believe me, any girl whose signature kink is the 360 Pain Spike isn't someone you want to be locking lips with, extra arms or no.

Getting the volcanoes down quickly is also important, as too many Infernals can start wrecking your raid. A couple ticks of their channeled AoE followed by a chain lightning from Jaraxxus and you could be looking at a lot of dead people. Get away from them, even if you have to abandon your spot. Your spot will be there when the infernal goes away, I promise. Unless someone dumped fire in it, and then maybe you should think of getting a new spot, because your spot currently sucks.

Your tank will round them up, the DPS will knock them down (no interrupts for their inferno nor banishes to keep them in line; you have to just work with them), and things will go back to business as usual. Healing Incinerates is of paramount importance because if people blow up, so does the raid, even more so than in normal. Likely, if not everyone dies, a lot of people will be dead at the end. If people are locked out from Kiss, heal the Incinerated people harder. Blow your cooldowns because the tank won't or shouldn't need them. Just get them healed ASAP.

Make sure you run out when you're affected by Legion Flame, so you're not dropping fire on your group or the melee or wherever you are with fire. However, please realize: you don't have to run all the way to the wall! Get to the outside of the group, then start this rotation: pause. drop a patch of fire. move. pause. drop a patch of fire. move. repeat from the beginning until the debuff is gone. It's not a constant drop, and running all the way to the outside just leaves a perforated trail of fire through the raid and you start ranging healers, as opposed to leaving a nice, consolidated patch outside the ranged that's easy to avoid and not nearly so hazardous to your health. And, for goodness's sake, don't run out for Incinerate. Recognize the difference! Red Fire means STOP, Green Fire means GO.

That's it! Adjust to AoE's and fire, don't get locked up by the Kiss if you can help it, and heal! Then he should die and you'll be ready to face the Faction Champions.


Yes there are a lot of bones. This was our first kill. Subsequent kills have been far more successful and bone-less, unless you count having to get a DK to respec for corpse explosion just so we could clear out the boss's annoying, non-despawning corpses.

Where You Been, Bell?

I know, I haven't posted in a while. I've been sick. Sick sick sick sick sick but not actually sick. Weird sick. Like, random bouts of exhaustion sick. I'm not even sure what to label it but it's getting to be rather annoying. I do not enjoy sitting there, doing something like playing or writing a paper, and then just suddenly being sore and exhausted out of nowhere. Not. Fun.

In other news my Hunter is 80 and I'm at a complete loss as to what to do with her. I bought her BoE bracers, respec'd her BM spec to "different BM" and spent five minutes looking for Skoll, and then I was like "Well, now what?" My DPS will be absolutely terrible, so...probably if I do heroics at all, the guild will be carrying me. Which is kind of mean, so we'll see what I decide to do. And yes, I know, I could improve my DPS simply switching to MM or Survival but I don't want to. She is my alt for fun and I'm going to play her how I want.

My boyfriend's warrior has been 80 for about a month now, so we're going to try Arena once I stop failing. Not having done Arena since BC has made me incredibly terrible and rusty. I was never really pro before (doing Arena casually), but I have a lot more to work with now and so, we'll see. Lots of skirmishes in my future.

I'm going to write those guides and posts as soon as I can, cross my heart, I'm just having some issues with this walking-dead-random-sleepiness thing. If it doesn't clear up soon I'm going to have to go to the medical center on campus (bleah), but I try to avoid that as they're not the best medical professionals you can come by, and I don't want to really be around sick people (my perpetually ill roommate is enough, thanks).

We'll have to see. In the meantime, check out my new puppy!


Aw.

Been A Long Time In Coming

The podcast from The Elitists featuring me and Sylly is up!

I just want to say I am easily embarrassed, public speaking is not my thing, and I ramble on most incoherently. So please go enjoy it, and laugh at my expense. It's okay, I give you permission! Sylly was awesome though.

Also, if you're thinking something is weird about what I said in regards to the haste cap, a full post is coming, so don't worry about it. All will be explained. I know what I said isn't the real "haste cap" but I get nervous on the microphone and I didn't explain it right!

Now go have a good laugh!

I'm Offering a Service; Do You Want It?

So, over the past few weeks, besides raiding, studying, writing and, on occasion, sleeping, I've been approached numerous times (four or five) to look over a Restoration Druid from every angle, and asked "What am I/what is he/what is she doing wrong, and how can it be improved?" I was provided with World of Logs data, armory information, and sometimes even anecdotes. I went in, looked over all the information, made my suggestions, and then later was given positive feedback, on the few who gave any.

All of what I said above was to ask: do you guys (aka my readers) feel this is a service worth offering, would you partake in it, and how would you feel about some "stranger" on the internet looking over your Druid and going "OMG WHAT DID YOU DO"?

There's always a danger when offering this kind of service, as well. Often times, what I advocate will require major regemming, respecing, enchanting and glyphing. I may make gear recommendations that will cost badges or gold. And after all that, if the Druid in question doesn't improve, well, I'll have no way of knowing if I messed up or if they did, because I'm not going to be able to roll an 80 on every server and follow them around to check up on their progress.

The other thing is, it can take me a lot of time to do these. They are not uninvolved processes unless the Druid is perfectly done (and I have no idea why they would be coming to me for advice) or near-perfect with just a few tweaks. And the ones I have gotten so far...are not near-perfect, so they take an hour or more to sort through and then give suggestions. Especially as I try to give reasons behind these suggestions so there is understanding in the future, rather than just giving them the answers and them having to return later.

And what would I do with it? Many people might prefer not to show their Druid's Pauper to Princess transformation to the internet, so my abilities to blog about it could be limited. I would, in essence, spend hours on individual Druids, teaching them how to gear and gem and enchant, with no benefit to myself other than perhaps a rather delighted person on the other end of my e-mail/IM/Skype. I suppose it sounds a little selfish to say "what do I get out of helping you" but when they take over an hour of work for each individual, you have to think of your own personal time, what you're taking away from to perform a service that isn't saving baby seals or racing for the cure (things which you only get a personal sense of satisfaction from at the time, but are definitely worthwhile).

I bounced this idea off of one of the people who asked me to look over his guild's two Restoration Druids, and he suggested I make it a paid service. In some ways, this makes sense. Give me some amount of money and I'll go over your Druid and pound out all the details. It could be a flat price or a price per thing you want me to go over. And man, if there is a real demand for this it would be insanely nice to have some pocket money, or just be able to pay off an application fee here and there for grad school.

But I'm not an "expert," I don't do theorycrafting. I practice implementation and see what works in the game and I do research, but I can't do my own math; I wouldn't know where to start. I know what works in the game, around where you should be to do what, but I can't sit there and give you the formulas behind different mechanics. And maybe people don't want formulas and would rather just have "this is what works for me, this is what we're downing ToC 25 hardmodes with, this should work for you." And that's awesome because that's what I do.

I also feel uncomfortable using my blog to make money, as weird as it sounds. Yeah, if the guys at Project Lore offered me a job, you can bet I'd snap it up in a heartbeat and brag to everybody who wasn't sick of me yet about being paid to play til I was blue in the face. I had Google's AdSense up for maybe ten minutes before I couldn't figure out how to shutdown the gold farming, power levellng ads and shut them off in disgust. I get offers from people to place ads on my blog, and I am rather clueless as to what to tell them, as I don't really know if I like the idea of ads on my blog, even if they're legitimate and WoW related. Why? I don't know. They look weird or something. But that is not the point!

This all wraps up to me wanting to know the answers to a few questions:

1. Does this sound like a service you would use?
2. Would you use it for yourself or your guild?
3. Would you allow the transformation to be posted on this blog?
4. Would you pay for it?
5. What would you consider a reasonable price?
6. Would your answer to question 3 change depending on if it was free or not?
   

I'm just testing the water here; I want to know what you guys think. And, man, how often do you get actually asked for your opinion and it's really, really wanted and not just fodder for the other side to push theirs on a pedestal? Not very often.