the Drewling N00bie

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

2009-10-04T15:04:00.000-07:00

Getting back to WoW after a month long hiatus has been nice. Trying to recall how things were in a fantasy land has been interesting, apparently you can drink memories away because I forgot alot of shit!!

It has been so nice to get back in touch with my guildmates, and to meet the new ones that have joined! Alot has happened in our guild, just before I left, our raid leader and main tank (Emfer) had to quit WoW indefinitely. Other people quit over needless self-created drama. Lots of good new people have joined!

As happy as I was to log in and chat with everyone, I was also sad logging off because Emfer is still gone. Emfer was a good dude, and usually the focus of my extremely perverse sense of humor, because he too is a perv and nothing I tried to insult him with could actually insult him.
He was also a seriously ass-kicking tank. One of my proudest WoW acheivements is the Champion of the Naaru title. I had tried Shattered Halls a few times to get this title finished, and always there was failure, or even sometimes I wouldnt get in a group because I'm not a mage and you need 3 mages for CC in SH (*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*)

Long story short it was one of the easiest heroic runs ever with Emfer. He held aggro on every mob, even all 8 in the 8 pull. Not only was I very impressed, I was also so disappointed in all other tanks for being such complete pussies.

I dug up any screenies I had to share, here they are.

Our first Auri kill and the night Emfer announced his retirement.
There's Matchstick and I gettin in there to sniff those panties.

Havin some beers around the campfire after Emfer's last raid

Me puking on Emfer's shoes one last time. LOL

A discussion about chat box addons

Busting on Emfer for requesting a paladin put up Frost resistance on Sarth.

I mentioned briefly in my last post that my account was hacked. i was racing to finish a webpage for my cousin (check it out, http://www.beachbodykelowna.com/ ) and in a hurry I downloaded something from an untrusted source. Finished the page then played WoW. WoW got gradually laggier and laggier, I went to reboot and was SOL for that as the virus had infected the master boot record.Luckily Blizz contacted me in the middle of that night via email to inform me my account was temp suspended, and compromised. I immediately changed all of my passwords from a secure computer at work as i had been online banking, credit card website, email, facebook..... None of this stuff was compromised before I changed the PWs leading me to wonder if it was a WoW virus and not a keylogger.

Anyways... I got all my crap back and then some, as the hacker used a bot program to farm ore and greens for hours in WG. I got 51 greens 5 stacks of Saronite and 1 stack of Titanium as surplus when my crap was returned.

The best part? The moron hacker logged onto my banker alt, vendored the items in mail from expired auctions, but forgot to check the AH for what I had up for sale and also FORGOT TO TAKE THE GOLD OFF MY BANKER. HAHAHAHA LOL what a fucking moron......

I leave you know with a couple screenies I found too of how I treat gold sellers. Gold sellers are the people that stole my account to acquire my gold to sell to an idiot that is too dumb and lazy to get rich on the AH.

Peace Out!

I'm still alive

2009-09-30T15:57:00.001-07:00

What a shitty month!!!

Financial troubles (from partying my savings away LOL), my brother lost ID and money in mexico then wound up in a hospital, WOW account got hacked, computer's hardrive died, and of course

Girl Troubles.

There was some good parts, the best being that all is calm now and if all goes well I'll log in to play WoW tonight!

And have time to actually post on my blog this weekend!

It's a celebration!!!!!!!

Wall of Text Crits you!

2009-08-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is copy/pasted from a thread I posted on Plusheal.com
http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3770

It's long, I know! I got a little carried away reminiscing about my guild experiences.
Anyways, here it is, wall of text!

Well to properly tell my tale I have to start in Norrath instead of Azeroth. In march 2000 I picked up my first MMORPG, Everquest, right around the time that the very first expansion had come out. That game was NOT easy at all back then, in fact it sucked how hard it was and I barely played for the first couple months, attaining a level maybe every other week. One day a random person invited me to their guild, having no reason not to join, I did.
For the life of me I cannot recall the name, it was something generic and random like "Western Legion" or something .
Anyways, my starting zone was a very isolated area, similar to Teldrassil, and one day I announced in guild chat that I was making the treacherous journey through the plains to get to the east commonlands, the most populous area in game as people sold their crap in chat there. (AH or worldwide trade chat did not exist, the trade spam was insane sometimes) They made me an officer to invite people on the way. I lost 2 levels (you lost XP as a death penalty) and it took me about 12 hours of gameplay to make it, but I got to the east and was promptly invited by some level 20s to join their guild.Being inexperienced to MMOs, and having barely any contact with my guild ever, I gquit and joined the new guild.

(I forget the name LOL)

One day our guildleader Suria quit, saying she was going to join a better guild but would be back after she got gear to help us all out. So off she went. We were all in mid 20's and she was the first to lvl 30 (60 was the cap at the time). I become an officer for organizing some events on weekends.2 months later she rejoins, with gear, but expects leadership back when we have had competent leadership(for a newb levelling guild, she threw a big hissy fit and gquit, so we reformed under a new name just to spite her and delete "her" guild.

Knights of Everdark

I transitioned into the vice-guildleader. I think my actual title was "man-at-arms" as I was to (politely) discipline people and ensure our rules of courtesy were followed. We blossomed into a decent sized guild of mostly level 40's. Another guild approached us about a merger, and the guildleader and I agreed it was the best way to advance quickly and level.

Misfits of Carnage

Under the merger all officers from KoE were grandfathered in. Only a couple of us stayed on as officers as the guild successfully made the transition from levelling guild to raiding guild-albeit with alot of blood sweat and tears. It was like a second job running our forums and webpage to teach players strats and info about game mechanics. I think the majority of players back then didn't use strat webpages at all. Internet+game just didnt compute, as soon as they'd think to lookup stuff about it, they would just login instead.
We did some decent raiding with alliance guilds and progressed, very slowly, but dammit we did it.
One day, our guildleader Kipani/Redew announced he was leaving the guild to join Legacy of Sorrow, the biggest most elitist guild on the server, and at the time one of the top 3 guilds in the game worldwide. (The core members went on to form Depraved on the Deathwing server, one of the top WoW guilds ever as well.)
Anyways, we were crushed, as most run ins any guildmates had ever had with LoS members were negative, there were lots of nice players in LoS too, but the real jerks were what stood out the most and it was like our guildleader had just left us to join the enemy.
2 months later he sold his toons and wasn't heard from again.
Morale was an alltime low, no one barely logged on and we dissolved the guild.

RIP, MoC - Wicked graphics, eh?

Guildless

I was guildless for about a year. The members from MoC went all over to the different allied guilds we used to raid with, I went sometimes but was kinda bummed out for awhile. I teamed up with an enchanter, Nadziona, and we were like a 2 man guild hehe. She and I became good friends in RL and have travelled to visit twice since then--I am in BC and she is in NYC so it's a far visit, but we are friends for life. The 3rd expansion came out in October 2002, Nadziona's toon was in crazy high demand because the level cap went up to 70 and enchanters were part of the holy trinity of EQ, Tank, Healer, Enchanter. She always saved me a spot and I got to meet alot of awesome players from raiding guilds and had my pick of which to join.

Nadziona and I both really liked alot of the people from Veil of Shadows, and a plus was that they were the underdog, a self made guild that was just about to break out as a "hardcore" raid guild. So we joined...

Veil of Shadows

awesome sig!

My love of the game was renewed, lots of great new friends, I had no role of leadership and just played for fun.Nadziona had to quit and left me her account, I 2 boxed with a program called EQWindows-which enabled me to tab back and forth between chars and I raided playing 2 toons at once. We backtracked pretty much all of the raid content in game up to the present stuff so I got to learn alot about raiding, but the problems began when we started edging up on the couple of guilds that were the true hardcore raid guilds.
They cockblocked us to no end. They would kill content we needed to progress and get keys into new raid zones (like how BT used to work) just so we couldnt edge up and be competition. We got tread on quite a few times and flame threads with 1000+ posts on the server boards were not uncommon. So we got tough and did everything back at the other guilds, as well as treated the guilds below us the same way, stealing their kills to block progression so we could compete with the top guilds.Well since the 3 or 4 guilds ahead of us hated us from our friction when we stepped up to become a raid guild, and now the guilds vying to become raid guilds were being stomped on by us in the same manner we had grown up---we became the server scapegoat on the flames boards.
Internal drama over how our guild treated other guilds tore us apart, but not before we cleared all content in game up to planes of power expansion (although technically we got the last boss killed a week after the next expansion) but it didnt matter, it felt like we had beat the game.Raiding the next expansion became tedious.
The guild retired from raiding and went casual with about 10 people online sometimes, down from over 100 people online sometimes at the peak of our raiding.Instanced raid zones were implemented to compete with WoW's looming release.Most of the raiders on the server took a break waiting for WoW, the lack of guild to guild competition that instanced raiding brought changed the game significantly and I think the most bitter players left simply for lack of something to fight over, and some of them really enjoyed drama and strife.
I raided with VoS from late 2002 until late 2004, I adamantly defended my friends, guildmates and officers on the server message boards, even though I strongly disagreed with some of the decisions that had been made. I logged in one day mid 2005 and found I had been guild kicked, despite many "retired" players being allowed to park their toons in the guild forever.
Despondant, I took a break from MMOs, very disappointed overall in my experience, but having learned alot about social interactions in MMOs but with still many friendships made and good times to look back on. I still keep in touch with some of the players I levelled with as a n00b and ended up raiding with.

2007

Late December, out of boredom I pick up a 10 day trial account for WoW, vowing not to involve myself like I did with EQ. I started a NE Huntard, as my toon in EQ was a Ranger and I figured they would be similar. I got bored of it quick, and tried out some of the free hack servers out there, which were likewise boring. (You'd spend 3 hours setting up your toon and then realize there was nothing to do)I started another 10 day trial in January 2008 and played a NE Druid, bought the game at the end of the trial and decided to try playing the "new" races, as historically, anything "new" in an MMO is usually OP. My BE Hunter became boring after a few levels as I was tired of bows and arrows, and the starting zone was a bit of an eyesore. So I tried out a spacegoat shaman, levelled to 21 in a week and completed every quest in the spacegoat starting area.

I went solo and refused many random guild invites. I never needed help with quests or levelling and trudged my way to the Outlands by March. (I have no sympathy for people that whine for instance runs or beggars, if I could do it all solo so can anyone else.)
One day while levelling to 62 in Hellfire Peninsula, I get asked to join a group to heal Ramparts, my very first instance run ever in WoW. I say sure but that I am an enhancement shaman. I dunno if they just didn't know, or didnt care, but off we went. I healed the instance just fine as enhance, I had been gearing for health and mana the entire time I levelled, and it was mainly my huge mana pool that enabled me to heal--that coupled with my experience healing in EQ, I shared account info with a longtime guildfriend that played a Cleric, so I would raid heal when he was not raiding, or use his toon for dungeons if we needed heals.
That first run was with Elinea, Loozah, and 2 others from Harvesters of Sorrow (I forget who exactly, neither stayed with HoS for long)They wanted me to join but I said not, not interested in a guild. (I was gonna hit max level and join the top raid guild at the time, Honor's Wrath)
A couple days later they invited me to run another instance, underbog I think it was, we did well and I finally caved to accepting the guild invite.

Harvesters of Sorrow

After a couple weeks, I was promoted to officer. I can't remember why, but we didn't have enough of a structure that it mattered or worried me. We were still a "levelling" guild at this point, mostly doing PVP for welfare epics. (Hell, I ended up doing Arena solely for welfare epics--the s5 gear was better PVE gear for enhance shaman than anything coming out of instances or Kara, I used to pull just under 1kdps in full s5 and the 2 badge fist weapons at the end of BC, topping meters 90% of the time)I met alot of good people that I still talk to often, (6 or 7 of us are even still guilded together now) Matchstick(formerly Bobmaccab) and his wife Vitas(formerly Elinea), Loozah, Bloodwynd, Cailitia, Laneus, Espirtu(Padislis), Ezmoth, Valval....I'm forgetting someone I know it.

good times in HoS

Slowly but surely we all made it to 70 and alot of the players in the guild learned tremendous amounts about game mechanics once we started using the ingame voice chat. It was the first time I had been able to speak directly with my guildmates and I attribute alot of the fun in WoW to this. So much used to get lost in the translation with EQ from type chatting or forum posts.Over the months, I stepped up a bit more as an officer, as did some of our other officers, we recruited enough good people to try a Kara raid, to which we promptly wiped repeatedly on the trash heading to the animal boss. Back to the drawing board.Soon we began raiding with ally guilds, mostly the now defunct MishMash Crew. One day our guildleader disappeared indefinitely, the remaining officers (myself included) made the choice to merge with MishMash Crew.

MishMash Crew

This was a "family guild" that now had a core of raiders that hit up Karazhan every week. It felt good knowing that the majority had NEVER raided before. I could be wrong but I think I am the only person that had ever raided before at this point. We eventually cleared Kara, but the guild had typical "Raid" growing pains.People that logged on twice a month expecting raid slots for their green geared lvl 69 toon, or people that did log on alot but simply never put in the effort to improve.As it were, I develloped a friendship with a shaman, Cereniti, from another guild, , and was spending more time in their vent chat than in our guild's as MishMash Crew had a language policy that I had no problem with ( there are kids listening ) but I had problems following. I swear alot. It's just how I talk when I'm having a good time, so I voluntarily removed my voice lol
One day I brought Cereniti to Karazhan with us to finish up the bone dragon Nightbane. She also play a priest, and was trying to help out a priest in our guild that was the guildleader's wife. Well our priest was spamming Circle of Healing or whatever and not hitting ANYONE with it because of the range.
(LOL!!)
Cereneti politely offered some advice, mentioning she too plays a priest and was actually told to F-off.It was a good thing the talents for 3.0 were out at the time, I topped the dps meter that fight and came in second on heals using every Maelstrom5 charge I had on chain healing the raid to pick up our priest's slack.MishMash was taking 3 days of raiding, sometimes 2 to clear Kara and were just starting to break into ZA because of always having 2 or 3 players not focused enough to remember the boss strats week to week. Guardians of Apocalypse were taking 2-3 hours to AoE clear Kara and 2-3 hours to clear ZA, and they were not much better geared so it was frustrating experiencing the difference, as I would go to GoA raids and join their Magth and Gruuls runs every week.So I joined. I still had great friends in MishMash but I was having most of my fun ingame with Guardians of Apocalypse --- not because of raids, because of the humour in vent and sick jokes.

Guardians of Apocalypse

I did not know what I was getting myself into. Lets just say the personal drama in this guild escalated daily. With the young sense of humour this guild had, came young sense of morals. Everyone was close to 20, some younger, except for myself and 2 others.WotLK came out and we stopped raiding to lvl, and people couldnt get along even while levelling. I took off solo mostly, hit lvl 75 within 3 days of the expansion coming out and was on course to be on of the first 50 players on the server to hit 80, I figured it would take a week. The drama from the guild, and the lack of inclusion on running instances left me feeling alienated and I took a break, giving up the race to 80.One day I login and there is no one in guild, they all joined a different guild, Phase 3 so I choose to part ways with that bunch. 2 weeks later all those from GoA left P3 and formed Facepalm. Nuff said for those who know Facepalm.Guildless I go again, with a sour taste in my mouth from a guilded experience...

Guildless

I levelled to 80 solo, skipping doing any instance runs. I never went to Howling Fjord but I cleared every quest from all the other zones solo. Even the 5 man group ones, and yes, every single one. Enhancement Shaman are probably the easiest classes to level besides hunters. Earth/Fire pet + Spirit Wolves + insta cast self heals + heroism makes alot of things possible that other classes can't do.I attended my first Naxx10 raid a couple weeks after hitting 80 with the MishMash Crew. I missed my friends there, so I rejoined

MishMash Crew

Well I was back "home" with my buddies and it felt good, but home was not to last long. Tensions over who could raid and who couldnt were splitting the guild. The same people that whine for help were whining for help with group quests (despite there being hundreds of other players actually DOING those quests already)One day I was explaining to Cailitia about the post office losing my passport and making me cancel a trip to NYC to celebrate my 30th. in describing my emotions, I said I was "Hella pissed" and oh boy was that a spark that ignited a big fire.A rogue in our guild snapped on me in guildchat. I responded with an apology and a request to make future outbursts private whispers. She /gquit, logged onto all her alts, removed them, and did the same with her husband and sons toons, about a dozen toons all told.While the gquit messages were flying by in guild chat there began an arguement over wether "hella pissed" is a swear or not. I was under the impression that anything on TV during prime hours was ok, a PG-13 language filter.Well the frictions that been develloping exploded with some 20+ members quitting the guild.Again, I was bummed out on MMOs and took a short break, I logged in about a week later to find I had been kicked from mishmash crew, but didnt really care as all of my friends wound up forming a new guild I joined but went on RL vacation for a month and wasnt on to be a part of forming new rules or anything.I met some great players in MishMash, many of whom I am still guilded with to this day.

One of the Good Guys

I came back to find many familiar faces from MishMash had now joined OotGG.
I was very, very surprised to see the Guildleader from MM was now also the GL of OotGG, as he was a major proponent of the language rule and I was under the impression that we wanted to do 2 things differently in this guild ; raid and swear.I was made an officer one day because the Gl had noticed my hefty contributions to the guildbank.Slowly but surely, history repeated itself. The guild had one basic rule only. We are a raid guild, no alts.But it was just a rule, not a reality. As an officer among some 12+ officers (I think nearly half the guild was officers at this point) I was one of the few to step up and get some shit organized. Mostly it was Matchstick researching ideas to distribute loot and establish some rules but the bottom line was we had "too many chiefs, not enough indians".At every corner of progress we were met with resistance from some people that just didn't get it. There were some things I did not 100% support, but I only 90% supported. No one knows this until now because I am not gonna bring up a useless pointless discussion on something that is hardly important, unfortunately not everyone wants to avoid nitpicking in the interest of simplicity and progress.
OotGG became MishMash v2, we even got some morons whining for raid spots in their green quested gear, and people whining for help with quests.
One day a couple of the core raiders quit and the rest followed suit.
The MishMash exodus had also repeated, but this time we were prepared thanks to Matchstick, our guildleader now..

Section XII

Matchstick set up guild rules that cover all the bases from previous issues and basically implemented all the ideas people had been mulling over in OotGG.
Funny how once the rules were there and it was accept them or dont join, we've had pretty much zero issues on the rules, and no nitpicking on details just for sake of voicing an opinion.
At first we had issues with numbers, and filled raid spots with friends from a few other guilds. One such guild crumbled and merged with us.
We now have a successful raid guild with 30ish adults, we have many that have played together through thick and thin from guild to guild. It's nice to have the family guild atmosphere, but a raid guild work-ethic. I couldn't ask for a better group of people and one year ago I would never have believed it would be possible to be in a raid guild with such nice people.

me(left) trying not to laugh at how tiny Matchstick is (TEE HEE!)

New totems aren't so bad after all

2009-08-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

Well it seems I was a little pre-emptive in judging the utility of the new totem bar. I had updated all of my addons and hadn't realized that Dominos had incorporated a totem bar with the new format, and I now blame Dominos for making it suck.

Regardless, shortly after making my first "new totems" post yesterday I read on plusheal that a beta version of Totem Timers was functional with the new totem UI. Yay!!!

It works great, and has some improvements to the weapon imbue timer/cast thingy. I'll post a screenie when I get home from werk.

You can click-drag totems from TT the same way the spellbook works, but this is wholly unnecessary as it's super easy to make totem sets. Right click the "Call" you want and the according totems come up. Right click a totem of a particular school to set it to the "Call" that was selected.

Get TT beta and you will be lovin it like JT when he sold out to McDicks!!

Mmmmm, McTotems....

p.s. Thanks to Ruune from http://shambling.wordpress.com/ and an anonymous commentor for mentioning that the default Totem UI is working for them. Had i not serendipitously figured it out myself last night, I may not have known otherwise except for you 2, so thank you! :)

The new totem bar sucks ass

2009-08-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Ok first before we even discuss totems I need to stress that the Gem Faqts is incomplete for 3.2 as there have been a number of mixed colored gems added. For the most part, the gem chart is accurate and the rest of the information on how to max gem your toon still holds true.
Moving on;

The new totems interface sucks ass (for now at least).The only thing I like is the ability to drop all 4 totems at once, other than that things are cumbersome and NOT an improvement.
Previously, I used Totem Timers addon.

Quite simply you hover your mouse over an elemental school (earth, fire, water, air) and all the totems in that school would pop up. You would left click on a totem to cast it, but even better, you would right click on a totem to add it to the "All in One" totem macro.I'd pick a lineup of totems and mash the Totem macro as I approached melee range and wouldnt really waste any GCD time other than having to refresh the totems 5mins later.99% of the time I run Imp. Windfury totem, Imp. Strength of Earth, Healing totem and Imp. Flametongue (to boost buffs) and most of the time pull up flametounge to drop Magma Totem.If I had to run mana spring, or cleansing totem, or a resist totem I can simply right click the totem I want and it's added to "the macro".

Nowadays if I want to add a mana spring or a cleansing totem to my totem lineup, I have to click drag the icon for said totem onto my new totem bar, and this is where the problem is....Where is the totem icon gonna come from? I have to root around in my spellbook because I have no desire to have a huge grid of every available totem on my screen just so I can click-drag them over to the new totem bar situationally.

I do have the situational totems on my action bar so I can mash numpad7 for a quick grounding totem, or mash ctrl+num4 to drop a stoneclaw totem when I am questing on foot and too lazy to kill something, and I could drag over my cleansing totem onto the new totem bar for use in a lineup, but then if I need to refresh it in a hurry, it won't be there on my memorized keyboard hotkey ( I like to refresh cleansing as needed, rather than wait on the pulse if the timing was bad on a poison)

I really don't see a need for multiple "Totem sets", in my mind there is only one "totem set"-the one I am dropping.As such I only use Call of the Ancestors, I have no use for the other 2 calls other than being lazy and keeping my resto totem lineup saved on one of them.

Everything will be fine when Totem Timers addon incorporates their right click feature into creating a "Call of XX" or allows the totem icons to be click-dragged the same manner as the icons in the spellbook. Until then I shall QQ.

Gem Faqts Addendum

2009-07-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've updated the gem chart from this post to cover somethings I overlooked and some things I was not aware of. Thanks to Lilitharien & Janaan for info on Discipline Priests and Blkthunder for noticing an oversight with tanks gemming in red slots. (thanks plusheal.com!)

I'd like to reiterate that this chart is about gemming for MAX capacity, so generally this follows a pattern of max EP values (equivalency points), and one of the 4 exceptions to gemming differently is in the case of balancing stats.
With this in mind I want to mention healer meta gems, and why Ember has been added as an option (and possibly an upgrade) to the Insightful meta. The reason is that it is increasingly trivialized for healers to manage mana with Ulduar gear. I think even with Naxx 25 gear this is nearly the case. My healset is mostly naxx 25 and I don't really have mana issues on any Ulduar fights and I am far from the best geared healer. I will hold off til 3.2 to replace the Insightful with Ember altogether, afterall the chart is about maxxing out and those too lazy to read the instructions will just have to suffer with gemming Ember metas prematurely.

Lastly, not a single Enhancement Shaman noticed my obvious dupe of making Agi the #1 gem for us. This is probably because not a single enhancement shaman actually reads this blog..
Anyways, gems your Enh Sham alt for ATK after capping Exp and Hit !!!

As a sidenote I'd like to mention that I FINALLY have a helmet worth wearing. I've always hidden the helmet as it has always made me look super gay. I'm not homophobic. Even my gay brethren don't want to look super-gay (unless it's the moustache parade)

I used to rock the Cinched Mullet(with a blade at the end)

This way I could whip my head around like a rabid mustang for extra dps, slashing and whinnying like the wildest of horses. The good times, they were good.

Sometimes I tried my helmets, but invariably, Blizz would let me down.

They tried to make me look like Batman, when clearly, I don't wear hockey pads.

Finally, last week I got a helmet from Ulduar that is the 1st helm badass enough to don my dome.

I dont care what its called or what the stats are because clearly, it is Bad-Ass, and I sound like Darth Vader when I wear it.
Something my guildmates may not be fond of in Vent............
Whatever, I AM UR FATHER!!!!!!

Minor update to my macros

2009-07-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

I've updated the macros section to mention some lines I've added to a previous macro.

This one allows me to see my Spirit Wolves stats on the pet tab of the paperdoll screen, as well as letting me zoom my camera back an extra 15 yards. Finally, it prevents those annoying error messages from blocking my screen. I was getting tired of getting spammed with 'Spell not Ready' or 'Invalid Target' or 'Out of Range' or 'Delete Urself Noob'

Anyways, here she is-- the "Boobies Macro." Because boobies are awesome.

/run if not oldHasPetUI then oldHasPetUI = HasPetUI; HasPetUI = function() return true, false; end end PetTab_Update() ToggleCharacter("PetPaperDollFrame")
/console cameradistancemaxfactor 1000
/run UIErrorsFrame:Hide();

Shaman Get Beefed Up

2009-07-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's always seemed like shaman were a bout half a patch behind the rest of the classes, leading to alot of QQ mostly. I'm not one to cry about things, unless were talking the "fetal position in the shower" scene that played out after my high school prom. (she made me feel so violated!)

With 3.2 looming, it looks like things may change, with many classes feeling nerfed, but finally shaman rejoicing with nothing but improvements. I'd like to share my thoughts on some of the changes...

I know, I'm right on top of the cutting edge in what's going on 2 weeks ago in WoW.

* A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.

I like this because I won't have to waste so much time dropping totems. That is really the only improvement this will provide as I use Totem Timers addon. I suspect that I'll still be using Totem Timers addon if they update for 3.2, the new UI for this appears a little clunky, check it out here at Ailis' Blog I'm interested to find out if Totem Timers will be the addon for this or if plain old Dominos or Bartender will do. Either way I'm gonna be wanting this smaller and opaque and out of the way.

* All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
Love it. I clung to my s5 gloves way too long to keep this effect, not a huge deal for enhance, but elementals should be lovin this. Mostly a PvP change, although I have taken Frozen Power once or twice to help DKs control the sparks on Maly, this would make that alot easier.

* Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
Just in time for me to drop mining for blacksmithing, yet keep the same amount of health.

* Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
Awesome. Just awesome. Great news for all specs alike, Chain Heal is probably the most used heal of Enhance and Elementals that care about the raid and help top up health from time to time.

* Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
Meh. PvP is srz bzniss.. Will be nice for levelling shaman though, of course

* Talents

o Enhancement
+ Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman's attack power, down from 30%.
I love it. With about 6.5k attack power on raids, the 30% mana regen was overkill. I'd be at full mana and still have 10sec left on Shamanistic Rage. 15% will still easily bring me to full mana, but now I can use this twice as often. This will be nice as I can add Nova Totem to a rotation, and use Chain Lightning alot more often instead of having to conserve mana with Lightning Bolt sometimes. This is mostly a PvP change for the 30% damage reduction Shamanistic Rage gives

o Restoration
+ Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
Very nice. This will reduce alot more damage as it applies to spell damage too.

+ Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
Funny how it's mostly discussed in Resto circles just because it's in the "resto" tree of talents. Very nice change for Enhancement and Elementals. Restos already have Cleanse Spirit and would never use this spell. Ever.

+ Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
Meh. PvP

+ Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
Awesome. It's rare a shaman will spit out 2 Healing Wave spells on a target in a row, unless main tank healing. Even then it'll be rare. Now the first spell will be awesome instead of only a 2nd one being once, up 25% from the previous 18% too.

+ Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
Meh. Pvp

+ Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
Bleh. PvP. I guess some shaman might raid with this, but why???

+ Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
Niiiice. Very Niiiiice.

+ Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
Good change. The previous haste on LHW was so fast it was wasted. Unhasted it will still cast hella fast and the crit throughput will more than makeup for it.

+ Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.
Luvely, just luvely. Refreshing Water Shield was a serious pain in the arse. And more mana returns on chain heals will be sweet.

Overall the buffs to resto are very nice, and well needed for the top end game. Most guilds are reporting a noticable lag in shaman performance as the jack of all trades, yet master of none. Those guilds with the luxury of being choosy on who they take on 25 mans are taking the other 3 healers over a shaman.

I like Shaman healing because in a pinch I can fill any role effectively, the improvements will just make doing that easier as I don't foresee big results until new content comes out. The resto shaman is being tweaked to use the Jesus Beam more effectively, the only problem is that there are not a lot of occasions in Ulduar where you can take full advantage of chain heal spamming, or a chain heal rotation.

Peace Out!

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

America is Awesome! Thanks for football, pornos and crack-cocaine! (just kidding hehe)

You may ask why I didn't do a Canada Day post.

It's because I was drunk as fuck.

Gem Faqts. Part Deux

2009-07-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

As a jewelcrafter I get asked to cut gems for people all the time. It's pretty rare that people know which gem to get cut, and I end up making suggestions alot. If I did not, you would see pug tanks out there with spirit gems, I kid you not. It would have happened had I not intervened.

So to make it easy I have a cheat sheet of what gems are best for what class. It was a bit incomplete, as well as not fully updated for WotLK. I've finally updated it for 3.1

Before you check out the chart I ask that you consider a few things first;

I assume you know how gemming works.
If you are not sure you know it, check out my first gem post HERE , in which I make idle promises to post this chart in short order.Now you know I procrastinate. Whatever lol.

I assume you are Hit and Expertise and Defense capped.
If you are not sure, check my post on hitting things properly HERE, special thanks to Dr. Steve Brule. Defense is only for tanks, of course. I don't have any posts on Defensive caps and what they do/how they work, but this should be self explanatory, be uncrittable at least or else please stop tanking, kk thx.

I assume you wish to max out your toon.
The best gems for your class means you will be stacking one gem exclusively. If you are a healer, you may be gemming differently, depending on your situation. If you find yourself running OOM really badly, you may be choosing Mp5 gems rather than stacking up the Spellpower. Generally though, a well geared toon has fairly balanced stats and will be gemming to max out their capabilities.Maxing out involves considering results after buffs. I.E. A Strength based melee will always take STR over Attack because it is affected by Blessing of Kings.

Maxing out will generally mean stacking one single stat, I.E. the same gem in all slots.

There are only 4 exceptions, in order of occurance frequency, on why someone would not take the single gem that maxes out their class/spec.

♠You need to gem for expertise or hit, or defense

♠You need some other colored gems to fulfill your meta gem requirement. A Siren's Tear (+6 all stats) can be a viable gem to fulfill this need for some classes, but is not indicated in the chart.

♠You are desperately outbalanced and need to stack up Mp5

♠You have some super awesome socket bonus. This one will probably never happen. Socket bonuses are nice but very very rarely outperform gemming to max your toon.

Without further ado, here is the Best in Slot gems list. The top gem for each class is indicated with an asterisk *
Stack that gem in every slot with only the 4 exceptions

click to enlarge

It should be noted that if you are a Feral Cat Druid, Armor Pen will only outperform Agility gems if you are over 300 ArP. This is not difficult to attain, and the vast majority of kitty-cats will be gemming for ArP.

As if you didn't already know, the stats that gems have are inherit in their colors. What you may not know is that the mixed colored gems take stats from their primary colored gems. For example, Blue gems will have Sta/ Spirit / Mp5 or Spell Pen. Now if you mix a yellow or red with a blue to get purple or green, the purple or green ones will ALWAYS have Sta / Spirit / Mp5 or Spell Pen in addition to whatever stat comes from the "color tree" of the other gem, be it red or yellow.

There are not mixes for all stats, for example, there is not a purple gem with Armor Pen and Mp5, despite Armor Pen being a "red color tree" stat, and Mp5 being a "blue" stat.

Gems of a certain stat will always have the same suffix, except for Unique quality gems.
Any gem named "Delicate" is going to be a pure Agility gem no matter what expansion it came from and no matter what quality it is.

If I made any glaring errors, please let me know
Peace Out Dawgs!

[Edit: Thanks to Cazenovia for noticing an error with resto/balance druids blue gem choice,
Lilitharien for help on healer Metas, Lilitharien and Janaan on Discipline Priest info and Blkthunder for tank gem info ]

1st healing post EVAR

2009-07-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Not really sure why I've never made a healing post yet. Maybe because I just don't have much to say about it that is interesting, until I made a couple observations last night on my way to honing my healing skills.I've played a healer lots over the years, but mostly dps roles.

My WoW healing experience extends to healing instances specced enhance while levelling in BC (I gear for sta/mana when levelling so running OOM was not a problem ever) Then when I began raiding Kara I collected a decent healing offset and consistently competed for top healing spot on the charts with another shaman I used to raid with lots. ( I know, healing meters dont mean much, but they do tell you something)

These days I heal when there are no healers or we are short. I've healed most of the heroics, and most of the naxx fights.I've got mostly Naxx gear (10 and 25) for my healing set, although I am still rocking a couple blues and a titansteel crafted mace. Fully buffed with food and flasks I'm rockin about 2450SP 28%crit and 650mp5 (lower while casting of course, I forget how much though) so I've got decent gear but I worry about falling far behind as our healing team is mostly in all 25man naxx and 25 Ulduar gear. I figure I am about 80-90% as well geared as the other healers. It's not a big worry but I wanted to see some numbers to determine where I can improve, and how I stack up next to the "real healers", other than gearwise. I ran Recount last night while we learned the Iron Council encounter (read-wipefest)

Here is a couple general observations, from a healing melee's perspective.

It's friggin difficult to Stay-Out-Of-The-Fucking-Fire when you are staring at health bars.
It was like watching hummingbirds on crack play tennis, my eyes had to flit back and forth from health bars to checking where I was standing to keep in range and out of the fucking fire every second (on GCDs of course) Nonetheless, I did stay out of the fucking fire, except on our last attempt, I turned to run, lagged graphically and instead wound up turning a full 360 and ran back into the fucking fire. DOH!!

I can healz!
I was consistently middle of the pack for total heals on each fight, and bottom 3 for overheals. The overheals doesnt mean much because I was on raid heals, but it was still nice to see. I was pretty much white-knuckling my mouse in focus to make sure Earthshield never dropped and that I always had Riptide up on someone. I realized I need to check out PowerAuras addon or something to keep track of CDs for me on riptide, mana totem and nature's swiftness.

1 healer makes the difference.
Usually I've been going heals if we have a rough time on Ignis. Everytime I do everything goes much more smoothly. Same thing last night too on the Iron COuncil, we were running it with 22 or 23 people, another healer logged on and our healing team had a much easier time.I know it seems redundant and overly obvious to observe what a difference 1 more healer makes, I just never appreciated it so much until I was on the heal team and we got 1 more in there to help, I've always been that 1 more guy to join and help.

Good Healers Heal Themselves.
Without exception, on every boss fight, every healer had themselves as their 2nd or 3rd most healed target. Each also had a tank as the most healed target even if they were on raid heals.I guess at face value it could seem selfish for healers to look out for Numero Uno and heal themselves first, but it's the first reaction I suppose. It's also the quickest way for healers to keep themselves alive, and thereby keep the raid alive.

Peace Out! (I'm so gangsta)

UI Spring Cleaning Finalized

2009-06-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

Well it's that time of the month again, and no I do not mean to say I was a little crabby and emotional last week.

It's the weekend, and since I only work 2 weeks each month, I only work 2 weekends each month. The weekend around here is a time to catch up on laziness, watching movies and pirated TV series (seen every episode of Entourage, Dexter, Prison Break, and Heroes in the past few months)
Oh yeah, and it's when I get off my lazy ass and post some blog stuff.

Without further ado, my 99% finalized UI.

click to enlarge

1)Pitbull Unit Frames 3.0
I tweaked this around a little to shrink evrything down to consume less screen space, yet provide the same functionality I got out of this addon before, plus some extras. Of course one of my favorite features is the display of incoming heals, which I made more responsive by having health bars move in chunks instead of a smooth fluid fill.

As a sidenote of some of the yummy features I didnt mention in my first UI post, the totem icons you see in this are can be individually clicked to cancel a specific totem.
The melee stats you see above my health bar are courtesy of an addon called Tiny Melee Stats. You can set them to whatever stats you want. I've got Attack Power, Crit and MH/OH weapon speeds.

1a)group health, I usually disable this on raids if I can remember to. I wish I could get pitbull to have 2 seperate config setups for raiding and regular 5man groups.

1b) Raid health bars. Yay! I cleaned this up alot, and setup debuffs to show a huge icon for ones I can cure only.

1c) Nothing here at the moment as I'm not targetting everything,so check this picture out.
'Nuff said?There is a tiny cast bar under my targets mana bar, but as you can see under the Focus target there is a huge focus target cast bar. This is an awesome addon called ACB - "something" Casting Bar. I forget what the "A" stands for. Probably A is for Awesome. More on this addon later.

2)Dominos
Shrunk this sucker down LOTS as well as having removed alot of old useless macros, and spells that I never use, or can easily access otherwise. The stuff over here is my main set of "ready" spells that are often used, but not always used.
A nice feature of Dominos is spell range checking. If my target is out of range the keybind lettering will turn from white to bright red.

p.s. I'm an ArrowKeys/numpad player. If you look real close you can see my keybinds on the buttons. The top bar is bound to Numpad 1-9, as well as Numpad . * and -The bottom row is the same buttons but just hold down CTRL. One day I'll make a post exalting the virtues of setting up your keyboard this way versus using the super lame default WASD most games force on you like an overzealous drunk quarterback with the star cheerleader.

2a) my potion belt. Nuff said. The empty space to the right of here is where the red "dismount" button appears when I am on a vehicle. Just right of there are my main spells, bound to Insert, Home, Pageup, Delete, End and PageDown.
Just above that is my big giant "YOU ARE ATTACKING, DUMDUM" button that flashes red when I have autoattack engaged. This is my biggest newb weakness and always will be. Further down to the right are other important and often used macros.

2b) this is nearly faded out completely, but pops to full alpha on mouseover. Has all tradeskills, lesser used spells and macros.
As a sidenote I made a new awesome macro I named "Better WoW" that I use everytime I login or reload my UI. I'll add it to my macros post because I dont have access to the macro lines, but I can say what it does. It'll enable you to zoom your camera view back an extra 15 yards and give you a much better overview of fights, it'll disable the WOW error messages that spam in red saying invalid target, spell not ready etc. etc. I get bad lag sometimes so I mash my buttons before the cooldown is ready and get a ton of these red messages normally.The last thing the macro does is enable a view of my spirit wolves pet stats in the paper doll char screen. With this I found out my pets are better than hunter pets (and there is 2 of them to boot!)

3) This area has a few things going on here that you cannot see in this screenie so I'll add some little pics to explain. Curently you can see my pet bar, and faded above that are cooldown markers for Enhancement Shaman courtesy of Totem Timers addon.
I used to use the Shock and Awe cooldown bars but I am not accustomed to looking at bars as much as the default blizzard "clockspin" cooldown indicator.
Just to the right of the clockcooldowns is the Shock and Awe priority indicator that helps me cast the optimal spell based on cooldowns, and charges of maelstrom 5.

Ready to blast some lightning as you can see!!
The only bar cooldown I did keep from Shock and Awe is the Spirit Wolves cooldown bar

The other part missing in the main screenshot is ACB.

As you can see I have a huge casting bar for my target in the middle of the screen for easy interrupts. This cast bar also tells me when I successfully interrupted.The thing I like best about ACB is that within the cast bar, a green area appears on the far right end of the bar to indicate my casting time difference due to server lag.
This is super helpful when I am casting a heal as I can move before the heal appears to finish casting, thus increasing my reaction time to Staying-Out-Of-The-Fucking-Fire by about a quarter of a second.
STAY OUT OF THE FUCKING FIRE!!! It's impossible to say this too much.

4) Totem Timers
As previously stated, this is the best totem addon BY FAR.
The numbers indicate how many in the raid are out of that particular totems' range.
The red dot on the mana spring totem means I am out of it's range, which is fine in this case because I must have been feeling retarded to put up mana spring when I have BoW...There is a fancy-schmancy Reincarnation timer with Ankh counter, a shield timer and a weapon buff timer/clicker.
Left Click, Right Click or hold shift and click either for all 4 weapon buffs. Ok technically there are 5 buffs but who in the blue fuck uses Rockbiter?? I dont even know how to cast that spell on my weapons with this current UI, and for good reason.

5) Simple Threat Meter.
I like this one, less bulk and resources than Omen, and it simplifies aggro.

You hit 100% and you have aggro. Not like Omen where you have to hit 110% if you are in melee range or 130% at spell casting range or any of that bullshit. It does the math to convert that 110%-130% for you to a simple 100%Only downside is you cant see how others are doing for aggro, but I stopped caring about that ages ago. You are responsible for your own aggro. I'd much rather rez and laugh at someone after they die than have to tell them what to do and drop threat.

6)Skada Damage Meter.
I love it. I hate it. Uses less resources than Recount because you can tell it not to track every minute stat like rage/mana gained (who cares?) and do just the basics. I set it to Dispels, Damage, and Heals. Sadly the UI for Skada is clunky and stupid and tough to get used to. I am not currently using this anymore in favor of WWS or Recount if my framerate is good.

7) Satrina Buff Frames
This one is Excellent. Customizable in every way, can do everything Elkano's (you can set satrina to show bars instead of boxes) or Buffalo can do, and it does those things better.The best part is hovering over a buff shows who gave it to you.
NO MORE SLACKING OFF YOU LAZY FUCKING PALADINS!!! Now I can call you out by name to get the buffz I lack!

8)Sexy Mini Map
It is sexy, but I have plenty of sexy to go around, therefore this is not necessary and I am not currently using it. It was a resource hog. I just want to shrink the damn minimap. Still hunting for an addon that does this but does not make a square minimap. The reason is that I have the map set to rotate and the square ones don't work if you rotate them.

9)It's not currently shown, but this is where Deadly Boss Mods timer bars rest, and then jump down in front of my Totem Timer CDs/Shock and Awe area when they are on short timers. I shrunk these down quite a bit and played with DBM setting to get it just right.

Long timer ------------------------Short Timer (check the main pic of my UI to understand where these appear)

Well I'm almost as tired of writing this shit as you are tired of reading it. Off to make a sammich and eat cookies.
MMMMmmmm, maybe I'll make a cookie sammich /drool

The Daedalus Project

2009-06-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

Whilst reminiscing about Everquest, I've been looking up all the excellent webpages I had frequented years ago, before taking an MMO break and forgetting most of them. Well browsing has jogged my memory and I'd like to share a web project I was actively participating in during my tenure with Everquest. (I make it sound like a job, and it almost was!)

Anyways, it a shit load of demographic research of MMO players that was mostly centered on Everquest, as it was the most popular MMO

Check it out! It's still very very pertinent information to WoW!

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

or for a more basic intro to the site try
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html

And grats me on 2 posts in a day! Maybe I'll atone for my slacking off last month and gain some readers lolololol

UI Spring Cleaning

2009-06-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

Spring is nearly over, and for those of us compulsive procrastinators, that signifies the time to maybe think about spring cleaning before it's called summer cleaning. Since I've been meaning to spruce up my UI a little, I am going to share my experiences at getting more of what I want from my UI.

I'll go through my current UI and discuss the pros and cons, and what I am planning to change.

click to enlarge

1)Pitbull Unit Frames 3
One of my "must have" mods, although I am going to check out Vuhdo, it sounds like it can accomplish what I want, I am also gonna check out Pitbull 4, apparently it doesnt have an options UI that has thousands of ways to modify it.What I have now is bar fade on raid members out of heal range, hp/mana in numerical form--an easy way to gear check someone.
It shows incoming heals on a target as you can see on Emfer and Tembell in the screenshot)Health bars flash and change from green to red as health drops, making for very easy mouseover healing.I want to change this so that the bars are smaller, and neater along the edge of my screen.I would also like to re-enable cast bars so I know who is casting what, but I have that part disabled in an attempt to keep over 10fps during 25 mans. I also want to get my unit frames more responsive to debuffs for cleansing duty so that I can get rid of Decursive altogether (it's usually under my buffs but is disabled for Maly as it is not needed.)

at 1A I have target info. You cannot see it at the moment, but just below my health bar is where my pet's bar would go, and just right of my health bar is the target's bar. It's empty because the power spark I had targetted had just died, and I was switching targets back to Malygos.What you see currently is my Focus target (emfer) and the focus' target. Just above the focus is where my actual target would be, as well as a bar of my target's target.
I want to clean these up to make them smaller, and tighter along the edge of my screen. I'm also going to have these bars show or not show buffs/debuffs depending on which bar---my focus target's target is not going to have any info other than a health bar and a name, whereas my actual target is going to have every shred of info possible.

at 1b I have pet health bars. These are going to be either removed completely or changed to very very tiny health bars tucked along the right side of the screen.

2)Deadly Boss ModsGonna resize and reposition this addon, as well as eliminate the occurance of double messages about the Power Spark (this occurs in alot of encounters)

3)I usually use elkano's buff bars, and keep decursive tucked away here. I also usually have a minimap mod that makes it square, smaller and neater, but I have those all disabled for Maly to up my framerate. I'm not sure what I will do here, because it will all depend on my framerate.
I used to have a mega wicked UI but then I began raiding exclusively 25mans and the framelag was horrendous, I had been used to 10man where I could use every bells-and-whistles addon out there.The Ugly buff are on my current UI is fallout from not assembling a proper 25 man UI yet.

4)Totem Timers
This addon rules for shaman, and is hands down the best totem addon out there. Just because someone likes an addon better does not make it better. I have tried every totem addon and quite simply TT can do everything the others can do, and way, way more. And it's configurable to also do as little as you'd like.4a is also from Totem Timers, my plan is to resize and move all parts of Totem Timers to somewhere neater on the screen, as well as shrinking it further and fading it more.

5)Shock and Awe
The awesomest Enhancement Shaman specific addon out there. Audio warnings of when certain spells are ready or down, cooldown tracking and a simple rotation advisor.All I'm gonna do is resize and reposition this one, it's pretty much perfect as is.

6)Omen
What needs to be said about Omen? It's a raiding must. Just gonna resize and tuck this one away better, and make it more see-through.

7)Dominos
Super awesome action bar mod. Allows you to place a bar of any size or shape anywhere on the screen. Also certain spell buttons fade if your target is out of range. I'm gonna revamp this one ALOT. As you can see from the domino buttons, I have the top bar keybound to Numpad 1-9, as well as Numpad., Numpad* and Numpad-.The next row down is all the same buttons but with CTRL as a modifier, next row down from there is ALT as modifier, and the 6 buttons on the bottom left corner are bound to my mouse.
Alot of the spells I have on the action bar don't need to be there, so they wont be. Also I'm gonna resize and reposition this area.

7a is kinda like the batman utility belt of potions and stuff. Somehow it has become a placeholding area for professions, that is gonna change. The f5-f6 "potion belt" is gonna get shrunk and the professions are getting their own action bar that will be tiny, and fade to invisible unless I mouseover it.

7b I'm gonna give this a go at removing it. Noobish as it sounds this is simply a big huge button that I never click, but use to see if my autoattack is on.(it flashes red when I am attacking) Since I exclusively auto-attack with my Stormstrike macro I dont really need this at all anymore.

7c this has been my random area of "oh fuck, I have no room to put a button for that!"So I'm gonna not be so lazy and delete half of these buttons, and reorganize the rest.

8) This is where recount goes, but I turned it off for higher framerate and used /combatlog + WWS instead.

So basically, much like Ricky's 1979 Chrysler New York,or my old Dodge Ram, my UI works but it has some issues and is absolutely butt-assed ugly.

Hopefully the "After" comparison will be like my old and new vehicle. A 1982 Hunk-Of-Detroit-Pig-Iron vs the sensible sporty mid-sized SUV I got a couple weeks ago. I'm driving a Soccer Mom vehicle :*( DING!

p.s. to those that have asked, I promise to get the best in slot gems list done this week, along with some "those were the good old days" posts about Everquest

All I wanna do is BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

2009-06-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a torrid month of partying, driving and partying more.

I took 3 weeks off to go camping in Jasper and then visit my brother in Vancouver (bought a new vehicle there Woot!) and then head off to Sasquatch Music Festival in central Washington ( OMFG it was so awesome ) and then back to Vancouver and then to Kelowna, and then back to Jasper.....

I thought somewhere in there I'd have time to post on this web log but I was either too drunk, too hungover, too busy or too tired.

All I wanna do is sleep in, play WoW and drool--which is what I will do on Tuesday when I start my next week off.

So anyways, I logged in this past Tuesday for raids that went smashingly well.

Just before I went on vacation, my guild had a falling out seperation of the serious raiders and the casual players. I was worried things would be a rocky road but I seem to have missed out on the worst of it and things and going along very well with the new guild. Most of my best WOW friends found their way to Section XII (the new guild) and we've been kicking butt quite nicely with Naxx 25 clears that get quicker and quicker, some nice progression in Ulduar 25.

This week's Naxx run got SNAFU'd by tired people, with a full raid we wiped 4 or 5 times vowing to return for vengeance the next day. So Thursday we logged in and promptly 1 shotted KT with 19 in the raid. Vengeance indeed.

Next up was Maly 25, a long time thorn in our collective sides. After 3 or 4 wipes on phase 3 we
got it down and spanked his pee pee.

Great Job!

(this is a pic of Tim and Eric at Sasquatch in the comedy tent. These guys are friggin
hilarious!)

Ulduar, at last

2009-05-13T16:37:00.001-07:00

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty much lazier than furniture. I apologize for the slow updates but I've been busy at work this week (read: I've watched 36 hours of Prison Break since last Saturday, while getting paid, I love my job)

I'm starting 3 weeks vacation tomorrow so I'll find time to finish the gems faqts, a long with as many alcoholic beverages I can find. I'm gonna party hard enough to make Robert Downey Jr.'s habits look like a brace-faced sophomore cheerleader giggly on Zima.

In WoW related issues, our guild is finally moving into Ulduar, we probed around on 10 man lately to learn some strats and take them to 25 man. (yay heroic flame leviathan down)I haven't been on much to participate, except for the other night when logged in and got asked to help down Ignis (yay guild first)

I like the fight, we steam rolled him by tanking him in the water and just blasted away. I died to a slag-pot and reincarnated (found out after I could have healed myself lol) so that's why my total dmg output is 3rd but my dps is numero uno. I'm not gonna lie, I like being #1 dps. After killing the boss, it is my goal. I'm competitive with guildmates, but I still do everything I can to help them up their dps too, be it gear/talent advice, or passing on gear someone else may need more. If every dps vies for top slot, the whole raid benefits, as long as no one is being stupid about it. I'm not gonna pull up my flametongue totem at the detriment of the raid just so my personal dps goes up by using magma totem.

just after the fight: note the cooldowns on reincarnate and weapon buffs.

We took under 7 mins and I died/reincarnated under 3 minutes ago. and Woot! 4.1k dps

In other news, I've tried the argent tournament thingy, and I hate it. It sucks. It's not hard and it requires no skill or strategy.I've dug out a pic of the double middle finger Angry Dread's (from before I got the pink pinwheel.)

So here's to you Argent Tournament

Gem Faqts. Part One

2009-05-07T16:30:00.000-07:00

Think fast.What's the first thing you do when you get new gear?

If you said "masturbate" then go to the penalty box and feel shame.

If you said BLING BLING, then allow me to help. You are on your own with the first answer, Perv!

Gemming and enchanting your gear for maximum stats can vastly improve your gameplay. Here's the basics to maximize your gem set.

With one exception, any colored gem can go in any slot.

The exception is Meta gems, which can only go in a Meta slot. Meta gems will have a requirement to be activated. For instance, if your meta gem says it requires 2 blue gems, then that means within all of the rest of the gear you are wearing, you must have 2 blue gems equipped to activate the meta.

Secondary colored gems count as 2 different colors. A purple counts as a red and a blue. An orange counts as a yellow and a red. A green counts as a yellow and a blue.

So if you had a Meta gem that required you to have a red and a blue gem, you could equip just one single purple gem and the Meta requirements will be fulfilled.

The first thing to consider when gemming is the meta requirement. If you are a jewelcrafter you are in luck because the dragon's eye gems count as every color all at once, and since you can (and will!) wear 3 of them, any Meta requirement is trivialized.

The second thing to consider is maxing out your important stats. This comes before going for slot bonuses, but the slot bonuses need to be considered if they are going to give your 'most important stats'. I'll use a dps class as an example. For the majority of DPS classes, maxing the hit rating is pound for pound the highest dps increase. If you have a red socket bonus that adds +8attack power, but your hit is not capped, you better put a yellow hit gem in there and forego the attack power.

Learning about EP ratings (Equivalency Points) is very helpful when deciding which socket bonuses to give up. (I'll explain EP ratings more in depth soon, but basically it is assigning a value to your stats, i.e. lets say Hit is twice as important as Crit so every 1 Hit would be worth 4 points and every 1 Crit would be worth 2 points. EP values are very helpful when trying to decide between pieces of gear, or gems!)

The 3rd thing to consider when max gemming is which gem in which slot. Once you know which stats you need to max out (Hit, Defense, whatever) This was sort of mentioned in step 2, but really does deserve it's own spot in the "things to consider" list. In my case I am capped out on Expertise and Hit, but nearly every gear upgrade has me shuffling around gems to keep at the cap yet expand into other stats whenever possible.

Stay tuned for a list of best in slot gems for every class/build, and I may have time for MSPaint.

Mid-Crisis Life Post

2009-05-06T00:31:00.000-07:00

I'm nearly done my spasm of excitement for the year, and to be honest, I am loser drunk right now so I'll keep this short and sweet.

Since last month I've partied/gotten drunk in various locales of Hinton, Jasper, Edmonton- all in Alberta. Kelowna and Vancouver in British Columbia. Toronto in Onterrible, Yonkers and Manhatten in New York. Next week is gonna be camping in Jasper, Sasquatch Music Fest in Washington, more Kelowna, more Vancouver.

I'll start work again on Thursday and I can assure you many hilarities based on MSPaint, WoWnoobery and I'll put together a best in slot gem list that will make ur dance floor go POP. Gem FAQs FTW

I wear my heart on my sleeve and I wish it had an anchor.

YYYYAAAAAANNRRRRNNNGGGGGYYYYYAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

2009-04-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

No one can holler like Arnold Schwartzenegger. Or so I thought until I tried to commit myself to lazyniess today and login to WoW. Tried being the operative word. I couldnt log in and erupted in a roar that would make Ahnuld cower for sure.

I guess they have been having billing issues with people's credit cards cancelling for no reason. Well that is me, and now it says my card is not a valid number. I just wanted to work on getting fat, on this, my first day off in over 3 weeks. (a week partying in New York does not count as a day off, I had to work hard at it)

Off I am to Walmart to get a gamecard. I hate Walmart. The high cost of low prices sickens me. That and the inevitable 3 year old I will see running around in a diaper, no parents to be seen, Kool-Aid stains around the mouth, rocking a mullet and carrying a baby bottle full of diet coke.
At least I am going home tomorrow and off to Vancouver this weekend to shop for a new truck. (read:get wasted in Vancouver-- I'm not an alcoholic, they go to meetings and I don't have time for that shit.)

As bad as Walmart is I'd rather get dressed and go there than wait an hour on the phone for Blizzard. I tried calling them already and it was not a winning call. Mazes of recordings and robotic queue time readings.

Macros - The only time that touching less is better

2009-04-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Incorporating macros into your arsenal can not only vastly improve your gameplay, but also puts alot of aspects of the game on easy mode.I'm a lazy fuck, so naturally having to do less key pressing while doing more in game is something that appeals to me like a midget-hooker on a coke binge appeals to Jeremy Piven.

Since my computer sucks, especially during 25 man raids, I try and use macros as often as possible instead of an addon that bogs down my system, and kills my dudes.I'm going to share some of my favorite and most used macros, because you're gonna share your chips, pop and chocolate bar with me, right???? (aka the Trailer Park Dietary Trifecta)

I'll start with some non-shaman specific macros in hopes of luring you in with interest so you can see just how totally fucken awesome the shaman macros are too. Then you will feel jealous of Shamanses, naturally.

In all macros with trinkets, I use the name of the trinket rather than /use 13 or /use 14The reason for this is that I don't always have my trinkets in the same slots due to changing gear from swapping specs.

Location Coordinates - The next time you give someone a location and they cry like a little ninny because they havent got a location addon, you can end their snivelling by sharing this macro that spits out your zone location

/script SetMapToCurrentZone() local x,y=GetPlayerMapPosition("player") DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(format("%s, %s: %.1f, %.1f",GetZoneText(),GetSubZoneText(),x*100,y*100)

All in one Mounts- this lets you use one button for all mounts, it will put priority on your flying mount, but summon a ground mount if flying is not available. It will also dismount you if you are mounted

/script local m=GetZoneText() if (m=="Dalaran" or m=="Wintergrasp") and (GetSubZoneText()~="Krasus' Landing") then CallCompanion("MOUNT", 2);end
/use [flyable,nomounted] FLYINGMOUNTNAME; [nomounted] GROUNDMOUNTNAME
/dismount

in "CallCompanion" change the "2" to the position of your preferred land mount in your mounts tab. Insert proper mount names where it says to.

Healing Macros; These will cast said heal in the following order of targets; 1) your mouseover target 2)your target 3) your target's target (great for topping up the tank if you are dps) 4) your self
it will also pop your healing trinkets if you have them equipped

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists] [target=help,exists] [target=targettarget,help,exists] [target=player] Chain Heal
/useitem TrinketNameHere

simply remove "chain heal" and replace with HW or LHW or Riptide or whatever your healing spell is called. This also works for cleansing spells. This is the ultimate healing macro, it makes healing MUCH easier, and saves some resources by not needing to use an addon for mouseover healing. I combine mouseover macros with Pitbull unit frames and Dominos action bar addon and get pretty much every functionality of clique or grid.

Max Camera Distance; See more of whats going on around you!

/console cameradistancemaxfactor 1000

Shaman Macros

Dynamic Run Speed; This will mount you on your flying pet. If you are in a zone where flying is disabled it will put you on your ground mount. If you are in combat if will Ghost Wolf you. finally if you are mounted or shapeshifted, it will dismount you or return you to normal form.It is not compatible with Dalaran or Wintergrasp zones, unfortunately.

#showtooltip
/cast [combat,nomounted][button:2][modifier] Ghost Wolf
/cast [nostance,nocombat,flyable] FLYINGMOUNTNAME
/cast [nostance,nocombat,noflyable] GROUNDMOUNTNAME
/dismount [mounted]
/cancelform [stance]

Instant Cast Crit Heal; This will cast a heal instantly that will also crit. It will target your mouseover first, then if no target it will go for your actual target. If you are attacking something, it will then heal your target's target. Finally it will heal you if no target is selected. It will also pop your healing trinkets.

#showtooltip
#show Nature's Swiftness
/cast tidal force /cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists] [target=help,exists] [target=targettarget,help,exists] [target=player] Healing Wave
/useitem TRINKETNAME

Dynamic Purge; this macro will cast purge 1st on your mouseovered target, or your target, and finally, if neither of those exist, it will purge your target's target ( great for healers)

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,harm,exists] [target=harm,exists] [target=targettarget,harm,exists] Purge

Dynamic Earth Shock ; I use this one as healing or Elemental. It will interrupt your mouseover target, if not then it will interrupt your target. Finally it will earth shock your target's target for if you are healing a tank for example

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,harm,exists] [target=harm,exists] [target=targettarget,harm,exists] Earth Shock

Enhancement Shaman Macros featuring Enhancement Pride lettering

{Updated!} Boobies Macro

/run if not oldHasPetUI then oldHasPetUI = HasPetUI; HasPetUI = function() return true, false; end end PetTab_Update() ToggleCharacter("PetPaperDollFrame")
/console cameradistancemaxfactor 1000
/run UIErrorsFrame:Hide();

This one will show you a pet tab under the character screen. Useful for checking the stats on the spirit wolves, since they scale with a shaman's stats. Also allows you to zoom camera back another 15 yards and blocks WoW error message spam. So Awesome!!

Stormstrike Macro: this one will make you start attacking, it will use your AP trinket(s), in this case my Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood. The best part though is that is will cast Stormstrike, or use Lava Lash when Stormstrike is on cooldown.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=8 Stormstrike, Lava Lash
/startattack
/stopcasting
/use Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood
/stopcasting

Dynamic Interrupts; This one will cast earth shock or use bash (3sec stun from feral pets) to interrupt casting IF earthshock is on cooldown. It also pops your trinket as you want trinkets up as much as possible ( I remove the trinket line for PVP)

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Earth Shock, Bash
/stopcasting
/use Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood

Free Movement/Feral Spirit; this one summons your pets and if you double hit the macro it will pop spirit walk, giving a huge runspeed boost and freeing the shaman from all movement impairing effects. I use stopcasting lines in case I was casting a hex or a heal and need to remove a runspeed impairment asap.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Feral Spirit
/stopcasting
/cast Spirit Walk

So there you have it, sexy time macros. Now you are ready to unleash some nerd code on the World of Warcrack!!

Heroic Naxx Tenants Evicted

2009-04-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

After several wipes, the Kel'Thuzad make-over went down like a frat girl with her own supply of roofies. It was awesome to finally get him to cooperate, we made him our bitch and named her Suzy.

What can I say other than that I really love this fight as an enhancement shaman, our utility is unsurpassable. I didnt have much of a chance at topping the dps charts because I was saving my maelstrom5 charges for insta-chain heals on the iceblocks, saved earthshock to interrupt frostbolt and was turning mind-controlled people into froggies. I still managed to pump out respectable DPS too, but can't wait for a new computer. Running at 8fps is no fun when you have to react instead of just execute. Still though, when we beat him I was 2nd on interrupts, #1 on first heal on iceblocks (11 saves!) and landed about half a dozen hexes.
The first couple of attempts went poorly when the adds popped in phase 3, and we had issues with poorly placed melee. Some were not always making sure to be at max melee range, shrinking the 10yard box for the others. A couple of the attempts I barely got a shot in from staying back, not wanting to bunch with 3 other melee and not wanting to iceblock our tank --- although he still got iceblocked twice over the evening. Not trying to blame the other melee, I was guilty of poor placement early on too, but then I pulled my socks up on the last couple attempts, and ended up losing some focus trying to direct the other melee. Our winning attempt we got lucky because overall the melee were quite sloppy again.Things to learn from but really I can't complain since we finally layed a whuppins on KT.

I got the weapon I'd been drooling about too, only to find it looks like a pink glowing pinwheel, a common children's toy. This is not a complaint, I LOVE IT. It goes very well with my man-dress, although doesnt look quite as cool as dual wielding the Angry Dread, mace of the middle-finger salute. At least I still have Angry Dread in the offhand to show my FuckYOU to the bosses of Ulduar.

Hit Rating or: How I Learned To Stop Missing And DPS

2009-04-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

Please welsome my first ever guest poster, Dr. Steve Brule, to inform us on hit rating.
-Nomasun

I'm Steve Brule
Did you know that hit rating is pretty much the top dps stat for ALL dps classes until you hit your cap? If you don't like beating up on your bad guy, then do what I do, Kill Em With Kindness , dummy!

Another technique you can use is to hit them every time you cast or swing your weapon. Here's the hit caps for all of the classes so you can know how to hit them?

Physical Hit is 32.79 for 1%, Spell Hit is 26.23 for 1%

For all classes, take 1%, or 33 / 26 hit off your hit cap requirement if you are Draenei.

Casters ;this means Mages, Warlocks, Shamanses, Oomkins, and Shadowy Priests.
You need 17% hit, or 447 hit rating to never miss with your spells. This varies with by class because of hit talents and debuffs.
Oomkin, 263 hit 10%
ShadPriest 280 11%
Mage 447 17% Ice Mage 368 14%
Shaman 420 16%( 447 cap for horde) / 331 13% for Elemental Shaman (368 for Horde)
Warlock 368 14% Demonology 447 17%

Hunter 263 8% Marksman 197 6%

Melee
Deathknight 263 - 8% Dual wield - Dont dual wield, Sure you Can do it but it's like wearing a bowlers hat in public. Nobody wears a bowlers hat, welcome to the 90's!!
Kitty Cat Druid 263 8%
Paladin 263 8%
Warrior 296 9% (cap your yellow damage) Titan's Grip 368 14%
Rogues --input needed, its changing at the moment --cap your poisons, about 320 hit.. WHo cares about rogues anyways. [Edit-the verdict is in, it's 315hit cap]

Except for Melee classes, where Expertise is equally important (Get 26 expertise) Capping your hit is point for point the top dps increase you can get. With 0 hit rating, adding 27 hit, or reducing your chance to miss by 1% can yield up to a 1.2% increase in your total damage output. Thats way way WAAAYY more than any of your other dps stats can give you Turkey!!

Another thing you can do if you dont believe me about hit rating is check this out. Next time you get attacked by a crazy raper, just play possum!

I'm Steve Brule, Last Resort!!!

Thanks Steve,
I just wanted to add that the hit ratings are not considering raid buffs which affect your hit chance. Hit debuffs do not stack. There is a chart below with info, not really sure why it's so far down there. Warm up yer mousewheel and Scroll Down!!

Class	Talent	Tree	Hit chance	Notes
Druid	Balance of Power	Balance, Tier 6	+ 2% per point, 4% max	All spells
Druid	Improved Faerie Fire	Balance, Tier 7	+ 1% per point, 3% max	Target debuff*
Death Knight	Virulence	Unholy, Tier 1	+ 1% per point, 3% max	All spells
Mage	Precision	Frost, Tier 2	+ 1% per point, 3% max	All spells
Mage	Arcane Focus	Arcane, Tier 1	+ 1% per point, 3% max	Arcane spells only
Priest	Misery	Shadow, Tier 8	+ 1% per point, 3% max	Target debuff*
Priest	Shadow Focus	Shadow, Tier 2	+ 1% per point, 3% max	Shadow spells only
Shaman	Elemental Precision	Elemental, Tier 6	+ 1% per point, 3% max	Fire, Frost, and Nature spells
Warlock	Suppression	Affliction, Tier 1	+ 1% per point, 3% max	All spells

Loot, the root all evil.

2009-04-24T14:16:00.001-07:00

Bitching about loot is the raiding guild's national past-time. Not to sound like I played uphill barefooted in the snow but being an experienced MMO player I've seen plenty of guild drama, and the majority comes from fighting over loot. That and fighting over who gets to be my best friend for the day.

Our guild has recently switched to a system called Suicide Kings. Aptly named because there is a list of raid members that bid on loot, and if you are the top positioned bidder, you win the loot, and "suicide" yourself to the bottom of the list. It's very nice and there is an addon that handles an ongoing list onto which we insert new raid members at the bottom. (people at the bottom still get loot quite regularily, and are not at the bottom for long anyways) It was working marvelously, and we would /roll on gear no one bid on for offsets, with a provision that your mainspec cannot roll on offset rolls ever, to avoid people not bidding and getting the loot with a roll and keeping their list position.

With dual spec, and only 3 nights of raiding Naxx25 to see the results, I can tell we are going to need a system to handle offset bidding, or allow people to use their bids on offset gear. Some people are already wanting to go offspec for gear because their main spec would gain only minor upgrades on their last few pieces of 10man gear.

On top of this source of drama, there was already the underlying gripes some people had with the suicide system in the first place. Issues like; Tanks and healers need the best gear so we can progress faster. Offset gear is useless to me because all my specs are dps. I miss all the minor upgrades saving my bid for the big gear. I miss out on big gear because I bid on every piece that is the slightest upgrade. This porridge is too hot. My chair is lumpy. It burns when I pee. My parents are disappointed in my choice of lifestyle. Waa paa pwa, and so on and so forth

Can you see the trend? Thankfully my guildmates are all adults and these issues are being handled peacefully and whatnot. It's better to hear everyone's concerns and ideas, at least we are dealing with issues instead of bottling them up for an explosion. It's really nowhere near as bad as it would be with a different group of people and I've seen it go south alot of times with lesser mortals.
I just hate having to discuss any of it in general. Every system of loot distribution is going to have downsides, and will always have people that dont like certain parts about it. I have no preference really, other than to choose rules which will minimize drama and maximize shutting up about loot rules.

my PVPness is hard

2009-04-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't participated in any PVP since Wotlk first came out. ( I checked out WG and the new BG) And I havent been on a serious arena team since the beginning of season 5. Looking at some of the tools available now to an enhancement shaman I am convinced that I can contribute to a 2v2 or 3v3 team that will break out of my previous best team rating of 1750. I know it's not a masterful number but being an enhance shammy in the arena back then was no slice of pie, and I bet it's still a pain in the ass.

Here is the typical situation in arena for Enhancement Shaman.

Match begins. Blow all cooldowns. Die. Of course this isn't the case for all enhancement shaman in the arena, just the vast majority of them.

Fears aside, I am planning on getting some entry level pvp gear next week off and get an arena team going again!Looking forward to rooting opponents in place with iceblock, hexing the other guy and generally disturbing the peace with my Dawgs bashing casters and siccing balls. Everything I am reading on forums is suggesting enh shaman should still go resto like the rest of the world and piss of their enemies, but I never said I liked playing on easy mode.
Hard PVPness indeed.

3.1 impressions- My head pretty much asploded

2009-04-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

I love the patch, hence my homage to asploding heads as I launch my first foray into web logging. (I fucking hate the word 'blog', and stay off my damn lawn !!)
Don't worry though, I am not some head asploding fanatic, and truly hope to never experience an exploding head.

I had just returned from a week of partying in Manhattan, I could not wait to check out the game additions this past Tuesday, a full week behind the rest of the world.
Having unleashed my sinful and debaucherous ways with a guild member while in NYC, I got to hear that a) they finally did 3.1 and, b) it fucking represents.

The best part so far is Never, Ever running out of mana. Only other real noticeable diference is doing alot more dps. (just like everyone else though) Other than that there are no discernable differences.

If not for lack of priests last night we would have steamrolled Naxx. And I think it was the first time ever that we've saved military wing for last lol. Overall raid dps is up 20% on some fights, making bosses drop faster than a former catholic-school-girl's panties.

And lets not get started on dual spec. Finally I can come out of the closet as a healer whenever I want. /limpwrist

Lovely changes.

First Post

2009-04-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

yay me, maybe I won't be so bored at work.

Oh wait, yes I will. My bad.