P is for Priest…

…Penance, Power Word: Shield, PvP, and Pwnage.

So I’ve done two things in the past month that I thought I’d never do. I stopped drinking coffee (at least regularly…but black tea ftw), and I have a dedicated PvP toon.

Muriel was my holy priest that was my main alt back in TBC. I used her to heal in Karazhan and Zul’Aman when we were short heals. She also did many heroic runs. I enjoyed her thorougly and after I leveled Jess to 80 and had some extra time I brought Muriel to Northrend. But somewhere around level 73 she stalled out. I leveled holy for a level or two, and then shadow, but could never quite get into it. I still can’t get into shadow. Maybe it’s because I don’t like the new “silly string” version of the mindflay animation. I missed Muriel and envied other priests, but had no desire to level another healer as I am quite content playing a resto shaman as my healer alt right now. However I did find myself fascinated with the new discipline tree. I wanted very much to try it, but I didn’t want to get tied down healing PUGs, and again I had no desire for another 80 healer. The solution? Alterac Valley. There I could heal to my heart’s content but with more flexibility since I could enter or exit a BG whenever I wanted.

So I specced her disc and leveled from 74 to 80 largely from experienced gained in AV. While waiting in the queue I would quest in my smite spec. Like a few other odd priests out there, I have a strange fascination with smite. Healing in a BG is great fun. Before I was never much into PvP. I did some BG with Jess during TBC to get some shoulders, and a decent staff for my frost mage, but that was it. More recently I’ve taken Jess into BGs off and on and I enjoy doing PvP as an arms warrior, and Keredria even talked me into doing arena for the first time the other night (5v5…don’t ask). But lately I’ve been enjoying pissing off Hordies with my little clothy. A disc priest has quick heals, single target and AoE dispels, an AoE fear, and of course bubbles bubbles bubbles. I might even dare to say that I might have gotten a little good at PvP.  And it’s interesting to have an alt that is entirely dedicated to PvP. The nice thing about doing non-arena PvP is that I don’t feel that I need to invest quite as much in this toon. Of course I am spending her honor as it accumulates and I have two pieces of the satin Deadly set, but I’m not buying her epic gems, uber enchants, or purples. I haven’t even purchased cold weather flying for her. I only splurged for the dual spec so that she’d have something to do while waiting for another BG.

Oh and I did switch her off-spec back to shadow, just to give it a fair chance should she get a chance to do abysmal DPS in a 5-man guild run sometime. But it’ll just make me sad. WTB glyph so that mindflay looks cool again.

 

Real people.

Keredria’s recent post about Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov’s WoW addiction hobby reminded me of a couple of recent posts by Ta-Nehesi Coates, contributing editor of The Atlantic about things to do while you are gaming, or why he can’t bring himself to brag about not owning a television:

“…one reason I’m unlikely to lead a brigade against television is because some of my happiest hours are spent prancing around as  a red-headed elf. When you’re a WoW-geek, it becomes difficult to argue for stigmatization…”

I remember when I was sitting in a coffee shop near a university and overheard bits of a conversation from a couple of very “normal” looking 20-something college students, a man and a woman, who talked casually about classes, apartments, life, and raiding. I remember how this startled me and then being startled at the fact that it startled me. Why should I react that way when I play WoW? I mean, I actually think I am fairly “normal” myself.

Your first shock with your first MMO is that the characters you meet in the game are played by real people. Your next shock is when you learn the people you meet in real life play the game.

But I’m still sick!

Here’s what Keredria sent me last night.

Sigh. Ok well I have several posts that I’ve been wanting to do, but I’ve been busy in real life and I am still getting over the plague flu. But here’s an update at least.

Progression. We’ve done all of Ulduar except Yogg-Saron and of course Algalon. I’d say we’ve got it on farm even though we don’t actively farm it much now. The Keepers can still make things exciting sometimes, and we’ve done Mimiron and General Vezax only a couple of times, but it’s clear that now it isn’t a matter of if we down a boss, but just if it will take one or a few attempts. We would still like to go back and do some of the hard modes, but we’ve not yet found time to work that in to our raiding schedule. I really enjoyed our progression in Ulduar. We hadn’t farmed Naxxramas all that much before we started working on Ulduar, and we wiped many times, especially on The Keepers, but it was hard honest work and it felt good that we were able to master the encounters up through General Vezax before the welfare epics became available in Patch 3.2. Also Ulduar is just a wonderful raid instance and well worth seeing through anyway. I’ve been meaning to write a retrospective of Ulduar but I’ve just not gotten around to it.

We’ve cleared Trial of the Crusader on normal mode each week for the past four weeks so it’s on farm. Soon I think we’ll try the heroic mode. It feels a bit meh after Ulduar, but I’m sure the heroic mode will be a significant challenge.

Onyxia and Koralon are pure fun. I like that we can do these little mini raids when we have an extra hour or so.

Jess has done pretty well in terms of gear. I have enough Emblems of Triumph to buy at least a couple pieces of Tier 9, but I’m still running around with my Tier 8 since I have four pieces of it. I guess some might argue that the 4-piece Tier 8 bonus isn’t all that great, and I’ll probably try mixing in some of the Tier 9 for hard mode ToC. Anub’arak was kind enough to cough up a nice sword and board for me.

Also GuildOx ranks us as #3 on Drenden for strict 10-man progression, although I’ll admit that part of the reason for that is because some other 10-man raiding guilds disqualified themselves by doing some 25-man PUGs.

Alts. I’ve had a chance to heal most of Ulduar and ToC with my resto shaman, Makawee. She’s got a good set of Tier 8 and 8.5 and some other good drops. I do like raid healing with the resto shaman, and of course everyone appreciates totems and Heroism. I’ve also leveled a kitty druid to 80. She is purely for fun. I’ll try to write a post about her soon. I’ve messed around a little with my 74 priest and my 70 mage but haven’t really gotten back into them.

PvP. Yes, Jess is doing some battlegrounds PvP. The last time I did any serious PvP was back in TBC days when I needed tanking shoulders for Jess and a staff for my mage. I’m still not as into it as many others in the guild, but I enjoy a bit of PvP from time to time, and I do like playing an arms warrior although it’s embarrassing that my kitty druid can do more DPS with welfare epics from Trial of the Champions.

Ok. Moar posts soon. I promise.

The Raidleader.

So Keredria has been encouraging me to write about guild mastering and/or raid leadering (i.e., what it’s like to have her for a back-seat guild master and raid leader). “Just write” she said. Easier said than done. Words are hard for warriors. But perhaps a little anecdote might better explain my style. Here’s the story of how I recruited our healadin Nicolause a couple of months ago.

Nicolause: I believe in the Alliance. The Alliance has made my toon. I leveled my paladin in the Alliance fashion. I got him gear, but –- I geared him to always heal for others. He was in a PUG, not a guild run. He went to Ulduar, it was very late. I didn’t protest. They wanted to try some of the harder bosses – The Keepers. They made me main tank healer. And then they tried to kill Freya. She resisted! She pwned all of us, like noobs. When it was done my gear was broken. My ego was shattered. My toon could not weep because, well, I forgot the emote. But I wept. Why did I weep? He was the light of life –- leet paladin. And now he will never be leet.

I went to the forums, like a good player. I tried to find a better PUG. These people that I pugged with criticized my healing -– for three pages. Three pages! I looked like a fool. And those people that I pugged with, now they just lol at me. Then I said to myself, “for progression I must go to Jessika.”

Jessika: Why did you go to the forums? Why didn’t you come to me first?

Nicolause: What do you want of me? Tell me anything, but do what I beg you to do.

Jessika: And what is that?

Nicolause whispers to Jessika.

Jessika: That I cannot do.

Nicolause: I’ll give you anything you ask!

Jessika: We’ve known each other for two expansions, but this is the first time you came to me for counsel, for help. I can’t remember the last time you invited me to tank a heroic, even though my healer is on your arena team. But let’s be frank here. You never wanted my leadership, and you were afraid to be under my command.

Nicolause: I didn’t want to wipe on hard content.

Jessika: I understand. You found paradise in Northrend, you had two good professions, made a little gold. People ran dailies with you and there were Naxxramas PUGs. And you didn’t need someone like me. But now you come to me and you say “Jessika give me progression,” but you don’t ask with respect. You don’t even think to call me Raidleader. Instead you come to me and you ask me to carry you through content, for gold.

Nicloause: I ask you for progression.

Jessika: But it is not progression if someone carries you.

Nicolause: Then I can work, as you work. How much shall I pay you?

Jessika: Nicolause…Nicolause. What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? Had you come to me in friendship, then these bosses that pwned you would be down this very day. And that by chance if an honest raider such as yourself should want more progression, then it would be our progression, and then others would respect you.

Nicolause: Be my guildy…Raidleader?

Nicolause kisses Jessika’s hand.

Jessika: Good.

Nicolause has joined the guild.

Some day, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to respecc for me. But until that day, accept this as a gift on our raiding day.

Nicolause: Thank you.

Jessika: Ishnu-dal-dieb.

Ok well maybe I made some of that up.

Prayers for rain.

One thing that has disappointed me about Northrend is the weather. Why does it never rain? Certainly if it can snow it must sometimes rain in some of the warmer zones? I always thought the rain in Azeroth looked, sounded, and felt fantastic. Even Outland was a bit of a disappointment. It does rain in Zangarmarsh, but never in other zones where you might expect it to like Terokkar Forrest and Nagrand. Does this bother anyone else? Well, I’m a bit odd perhaps in that I always like the rain.

You shatter me
Your grip on me
A hold on me
So dull it kills
You stifle me
Infectious sense
Of hopelessness and
Prayers for rain
I suffocate
I breathe in dirt
And nowhere shines
But desolate
And drab the hours all spent
On killing time again
All waiting for
The rain

I always loved the way Simon held his bass so low in performances. How about…

“I think it’s dark and it looks like rain” you said
“And the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world” you said
“And it’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead”
And then you smiled for a second

Robert Smith must play WoW. He’s probably a shadow priest. Anyway sorries about the 80’s flashback. Take a guess at what tape I had in the car this morning.

Bad blogging.

Sigh. I need to find some material for my blog other than giving a certain healer a hard time (although as far as I am concerned, that’s a pretty good muse). Mmmmm…how about three things I like this week?

1. Ehiopia Yirgacheffee coffee. It’s got caffeine, and it tastes good!

2. Aveda shampoo. Expensive, but smells good!

3. The video clip of the Sound of Music (Do-Re-Mi) flash mob in the Antwerpen-Centraal railway station. Makes Jess feel good.

Hmmm…that’s kinda boring (for you anyway). Suggestions?

You know that dream where you are raiding naked?

/readycheck

Keredria is not ready.

Makawee: What’s up K?

Keredria points discretely at her waist.

To Keredria: I don’t understand.

Keredria points again discretely at her waist.

To Keredria: You need a new [Eternal Belt Buckle]?

From Keredria: No.

Keredria gestures with a circular motion near her stomach.

To Keredria: Food buff? Everyone has one from what I can tell.

From Keredria: No.

To Keredria: Oh your new Tier 8.5 robe. Yeah I noticed that. Very nice.

From Keredria: Sigh. No.

To Keredria: Then what?

Keredria gestures insistently with both hands around her lower torso.

To Keredria: Uh, you’re pregnant?

Keredria glares at Makawee.

From Keredria: No you dummy! Your water shield has slipped! It’s spinning around your knees!

To Keredria: OMG! F***ing cheap mail garters!

Heh. Well actually that conversation never happened, but my water shield was indeed spinning around my knees. Bugs are amusing sometimes.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

Well, actually she does, and a sharp one at that. Please hop over to Tree of Life and wish Keredria well on her second blog anniversary.

Of the infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity.

– Susan Fenimore Cooper

If at first you don’t succeed at raiding…

…Keredria will tell you why.

Amirite?

Mana? Who needs mana.

I thought it might be fun to see if I can beat Keredria to a kill post. But I’m sure she’ll do it better anyway.

General Vezax went down for us after only a few attempts on a second night of working on him. Once everyone got the mechanics down this fight went really well. This was one of those rare times I respecced, picking up Improved Disciplines and the glyphs for Last Stand and Shield Wall to shorten my cooldowns for those abilities. It seemed to work great. I was always prepared for a Surge of Darkness and no kiting was necessary. Protection warriors ftw.

I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about our second attempt on General Vezax, so I got all “raid leadery” and starting giving very specific instructions for this fight — more so than usual. I even told Keredria what to do (although I’m not sure she listened). But whenever I get like this I think the raid gets more amused than anything, but again they like to humor me.

Druid duel.

Friday nights in Ulduar: Adults only.

How did things get this bad?

Exhibit A: Our warlock Buns is sporting her Jenkins title.

anonymous raider: You know, “Buns Jenkins” sounds like the name of a porn star.
Jess: But it wouldn’t be standard porn. It would be some sort of niche fetish porn.
anonymous raider: Maybe midget porn? Buns is a gnome after all.
Jess: So anybody want to play “hide the soulstone”?
Keredria: Jess!

Exhibit B: Someone puts down a Brazier of Dancing Flames while we buff up.

Chachi: I’d like to desecrate that fire!
Veloreynn: /emote cleans off Brazier of Dancing Flames.
Raid: ewww!

Exhibit C: During an Auriaya encounter, I was trying to get people to stack up on me while I was tanking her. I kept saying “please get on Jess!”.

anonymous raider: Jess, if I were any more on top of you we’d have to be married.
Jess: O.o

Blizzcon.

So Keredria wrote about our failed attempts in May and June to get tickets to Blizzcon. So here’s a little sour grapes: the top ten reasons why it’s best that we are not going to Blizzcon.

1. Veloreynn might stage a mass coup d’état and form a rival guild known as The Right Claw.
2. Drenden’s economy could collapse.
3. Assassination plots against us — the ugly side of guild drama.
4. Hotel coffee is too weak.
5. Disney has a 50-mile restraining order against us after we tried to do an “emblem run” through It’s a Small World. (It was the best AoE tanking evar.)
6. No costumes due to an acute duct tape allergy.
7. I’m not geared-up enough yet to tank Keredria’s stalkers.
8. The raid would fall apart without us stalling it periodically to argue silently via whispers about boss strategy.
9. We don’t want to steal the show from other bloggers.
10. Anaheim is too hot in August, and we are too cool for Blizzcon.

WTB sedatives for RL.

So last week our progression through Ulduar was a little slower than usual so we raided again Monday to do a couple of leftover bosses. Freya was one of them and took us a few attempts. I tend to get a little too excited during this encounter. The only problem we usually have with this encounter are the phases with the Snaplasher, Stormlasher, and Ancient Water Spirit adds. After a few attempts Keredria whispers me to let me know that I’m getting a little too excited on Vent and am sometimes mixing up the Snaplasher and Stormlasher when I call out for changes in targetting. Sigh. Words hard. Veloreynn commented that the funny (and maybe disturbing) thing was that despite the fact that I was getting them confused she still knew what I meant. Sigh again. Sometimes I think maybe I’m not necessary to lead the raid, but they are polite enough to humor me.

An odd thing about this Freya kill is that she didn’t spawn any exploding seed thingies. I’m not sure if that was a nerf or a bug. It would be a surprising thing to nerf since if a raid can get past the adds it’s a relatively simple fight.

Oh the guilt.

I love reincarnation when I am healing on my resto shaman. If I die at the fault of my own or, more likely, that of a tank, I can pop reincarnation, drink a mana pot, throw down a mana tide totem followed by a mana spring totem, refresh my mana shield, and I am good to go without having to beg some selfish druid for an innervate. But now I feel a bit guilty about it. Why? Well, my fellow shaman Stfushatner (heh) informed me that there is a price, not including the ankh:

Stfushatner: You know Jess, when you reincarnate, God kills a kitten.

Jess: Oh noes!

Please think of the kittehs.

Casting the WoW movie.

So we’ve heard that there will be a World of Warcraft movie, directed by Sam Raimi. No casting decisions have yet been announced. Of course Jessika will be in it, but who should play her? That’s easy: Aimee Mann. She’s perfect. Just look…add a pony tail, some facial tatoos, and some sexeh Ulduar plate, and it’s Jess! Ooooo…this could be a half-assed blog meme thingy! Is there anybody that could fully capture the essence of The Tree? Is there anyone with the Orcish virility of Ratshag?

Ulduar isn’t serious uldatime.

I didn’t get quite as much raiding in this week as I was out of town visiting family, but I did get a run in Saturday night, and we got Freya down for the first time. Woot! Anyways I have a couple of amusing screenshots. One is of me with Suzzy who came to heal instead of nuking that night since we were short a healer. We look quite similar. I think she must be a younger cousin or something. We’ve both been having back problems because of those silly dum dum pop maces that drop in Ulduar. I do like my Legacy of Thunder, although my Stoneguard is better for my posture.

The other screenshot is something most people will never see — Keredria dancing in human form. Oh she’ll dance in her animal and tree forms, but never human. She’s too classy for this. However my tanking was just so leet that night that she burst into dance before we started on Hodir. Heh. Actually she went AFK and someone popped some sort of item that makes everyone dance and I got a couple screenshots before she changed forms. Note my big ass mace.

WTB a tanking dummy.

By that I mean a target dummy for tanking, not tanking dumb people, or dumb tanks. Most DPS realize the utility of the target dummies for testing their rotation, but these are of limited utility for rage-based tanks (i.e., warriors and feral druids), because we generate nowhere near the rage we get when we are being beat on by a pack of trash mobs or a boss. I find that it’s better to engage one of the world elites that are roaming around Northrend, like those giants on the battlements around the Icecrown Citadel, or trash mobs in a lower level dungeon. But even then it’s not quite the same, because any mob that will hit hard enough to simulate the rage generation of a raid encounter is strong enough to kill me if I solo it. Ideally there would be a target dummy that hits as hard or nearly as hard as the mob it represents in terms of level, but doesn’t land a killing blow, but I don’t see that happening. I suppose maybe I’ll need to talk a healer into going with me, and then I can be their healing dummy.

Making Heroic Strike more heroic.

I wrote earlier about my issues with Heroic Strike. As we’ve progressed through Ulduar, threat has increasingly become an issue, particularly for encounters involving a lot of movement like Hodir. Now Cleave works very similarly to Heroic Strike, and I’ve found that I never have any difficulty remembering to use it, but I still find myself sometimes neglecting Heroic Strike. One reason why I think it’s easier (for me) to remember to use Cleave is that it provides a distinct graphical and auditory cue when it goes off. Heroic Strike is much more subtle. Now I can’t do much about changing the graphics (but see below), but I found that I could make Heroic Strike provide an auditory cue. First get yourself the Scrolling Combat Text (SCT) add-on. Modify it as you see fit, but add a custom event under SCT Custom Events. Here’s how it should look:

You can’t see the full path for the sound. It’s “Sound\Spells\CleaveTarget.wav” — the same sound as Cleave. If you want a different sound, pick one from a list of in-game sounds, or add your own. Note that I don’t have anything in the Display field. This is the text that would scroll across your screen when Heroic Strike goes off. This would provide you some graphical feedback for when Heroic Strike. If you use this option you may find it necessary to increase the scroll speed under SCT Animation, otherwise the sound will not go off for back-to-back Heroic Strikes until the text from the previous Heroic Strike is off the screen.

Where we play doesn’t feel so far away.

I play WoW at Keredria’s kitchen table. It’s convenient for tank-healer communication, and for when she wants to reach over and pat my head for being a good tank, or smack it for not trying hard enough.

Well, that’s not really true, but it feels like it sometimes.

You see, ever since Keredria got her new Mac she’s been having trouble with her vent. For reasons that she still hasn’t determined, her microphone randomly decides to pick up ambient noise even though she’s using push-to-talk. Often during a raid we can hear furious typing, something being set down on the table, sirens outside, cracking open another Pabst Blue Ribbon, or dancing in stiletto heels on the table in celebration of awesome heals (hot heels for HOT heals you know). Ok, maybe I made some of those up. Sometimes the sounds are a little ambiguous so I use my imagination. When this happens it makes Keredria very frustrated:

K: Can you still hear me?

Raid: Yes.

K: Damn it all to hell!

Heh. Actually the rest of us don’t mind. In fact we like it. Those little random sounds help bridge the distance and bring a raid that is spread across North America a little closer together. Also we can tell how many beers she’s had.

WoW wear & tear.

So last night my third headset died since I’ve started playing WoW (well, at least since I’ve started playing WoW with VOIP). This got me to thinking about the real life wear and tear of WoW (other than to our social/sexual/professional lives). For example, in addition to the clear need for me to buy headsets in bulk, on my laptop there is a crescent-shaped “stain” (for lack of a better word) where I rest the palm of my left hand while it hovers over the movement and frequently used number/function keys. If you look around your WoW-playing environment, what signs do you see that someone has spent WAY too many hours there and in Azeroth/Outland/Northrend?

My liner notes.

So when is WoW.com going to do a story on WoW song parodies? I’ll even save them the trouble of digging through the archives of Pretty in Plate. Here are the liner notes for Jessika’s greatest (and only) hits:

1. I Would Do Anything for Threat (But I Won’t Do That). This was my first and remains one of my favorites.
2. Can’t Crit This. It’s incomplete, a demo if you will, but I don’t think more is necessary. Ahhh…remember the days of the 490 def cap?
3. Tree of Life. How many trees have their own song? Tanks, if you want to get teh good heals, you gotta work for them.
4. The Newbie. I wrote much of this in my head while in the car after hearing The Freshman on the radio.
5. Let’s Do Lots of Dailies. Pet Shop Boys = win.
6. Badges for Nothing. My second Dire Straits parody. I want to do one for Romeo and Juliet (Romulo and Julianne) but it hasn’t quite come together yet. This one rocks.
7. Can You Read My Mind? This one is lacking for some reason. I wanted to write something kinda sappy and nostalgic, and at the time I really liked The Killers’ song, but it’s a bit meh.
8. Found Out About You. I really like the way this song came together. I was disappointed that I didn’t get a smart-ass comment from someone.
9. I’m in a Raid. Heh. Salty Jess. And yes, I’ve tried to do something with Jizz in my Pants — something about losing or gaining threat maybes.

Srsly, wtf?

One thing I do like about blogging is the feature where I can see what Google searches hit Pretty in Plate. Usually they aren’t very interesting, but today something caught my eye:

queen azshara topless

I’m speechless, but Jess is keeping her top on.

Matching staffs and Lemarchand’s box?

Here’s a couple of miscellaneous screen shots. First we have one of hunters, Chachi (his pet is named Joni), and his crit-chicken bedonkaboomkin wife, Indigogo. Awww…matching staffs!

The other is from a recent dinner with Moroes in Karazhan to get his secret recipe for mongoose. I’ve never noticed that cube hanging in the air before. What the hell is that?

Topping the meter!

I don’t know why people give me such a hard time when I heal our raids. I am topping the meter afterall.

Note to self: Having your graphics settings turned way down during the Razorscale encounter makes it a bit hard to see the fire on the ground. Thanks Paradise, and thanks Failboat.

The first rule of raiding.

Vel asked me the other day the secret to a good raid. Ok, she didn’t, but I have a good imagination. Mal taught me everything I know about leading a raid.

Jess: It ain’t all macros and meters little mage. You know what the first rule of raidin’ is? Well I suppose you do, since you already know what I’m about to say.

Vel: I do, but I like to hear you say it.

Jess: Love. You can know all the theorycrafting on the ‘net, but take a raid in an instance you don’t love, it’ll fall apart just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps it up when it ought to wipe, tells you it’s hurtin’ before it fails. Makes it a home.

Kosmic Keredria and a problem with a Gnomish transporter.

Here are some misc screenshots from a recent raid. First I present to you Kosmic Keredria. I think the headband really completes this new look for her.

The other screenshots are of our two Nelf rogues, Atania and Terrondris. We warned them to not use the transporter at the same time.

Lawl. WTF!?!?!?

Chealz FTW.

Here’s three healers on their way to the Assembly of Iron in Ulduar: Keredria (resto druid), Makawee (resto shaman), and Suzzy (holy/disc priest). Nkm the Molten Iron Construct killer is behind us (stop pinching our butts Nkm). Makawee is my alt. I think K and I were discussing how we were disappointed that our gear doesn’t match very well. Suzzy looks very good though. I was a little nervous to be working with two much more experienced healers that evening, but even K had to admit that my chain heals, or “chealz” as I’ve come to call them, much to the dismay of the guild (cue collective groan), can sometimes be quite helpful.

Has healing made me a better tank?

So today Keredria emails me to suggest that I do a post on how healing has (maybe) made me a better tank by seeing things from the “other side.” Of course it hadn’t occurred to her that maybe tanking has made me a better healer. Heh. Lately I’ve been doing a bit of raid healing on my resto shaman, Makawee. I’ve done a bit of Naxx as well as VoA and OS, and for the first time last night normal Ulduar. At first I couldn’t think of anything specific I do, or do differently, as a tank or healer that could be attributed to my experience in the other role. However I think that maybe  my healing experience has influenced my tanking attitude in terms of how I see my role in the raid. I see myself has having two general roles in the raid, in decreasing order of priority.

Make the job of the healers as easy as possible. This encompasses much of what we think tanks (should) do. We gear and spec ourselves appropriately, we hold aggro, we use our cooldowns when things get tight, we buff the raid (e.g., Commanding Shout) and debuff the boss (e.g., Demoralizing Shout, Thunder Clap). Our primary job is to help the healers by keeping ourselves and the raid from taking damage, and to survive the damage that we do take. It all seems obvious, but I think that some tanks get an attitude that they lead the attack and the raid supports them, when in fact it is the other way around. When it comes down to it, a tank is mostly crowd control with a few buffs and debuffs. However…

DPS. Yes, DPS. More so than before Wrath of the Lich King a tank can do a reasonable amount of DPS, and the relative amount of DPS is that much more in a 10-man raid. All raiders can remember wipes where there were just a few too many adds or the boss would have been dead had the raid put out just a little more damage. A tank should look at their abilities and think not just about holding aggro, but also about how they can maximize their DPS. A rotation is not just about generating threat, it’s about inflicting pain (which also leads to threat so that’s good!). But just as importantly a tank can often buff the raid and debuff the boss to increase the raid DPS.

So healing has given me a greater appreciation for how hard it can be to keep a raid alive, and has motivated me to make the job of the healers easier. Now if I can just get K to spec feral sometime…

The Lost Pole of the Covenant.

OMG I haz screenshotz! Here’s me and the tree chillin in Wintergrasp. The other day I was surprised to get the Jeweled Fishing Pole from the Dalaran fishing daily quest. It’s a bit gaudy to say the least, but who says your fishing outfit can’t have a little bling? Veloreynn however thinks the shape of it is rather obscene.

I’m still a noob.

Keredria tagged me to discuss my past noobishness. As she notes, I am still a noob, but that is fodder for her blog, not mine. I was quite a noob. When I started playing I was very much into the escapism and increasingly the social aspect of the game. I soloed mostly, did very few instances, and had no idea what raiding was. Here are some examples of my noobishness from those wonderful days in Teldrassil, Darkshore, and Ashenvale.

• It took me until maybe level 7 or so to understand that doing quests was maybe a more efficient method to earn experience.
• I spent some time trying to figure out how I could get a pet to fight with me. I didn’t realize this was a hunter-only ability.
• The first time I encountered an item that would become soulbound when I equipped it, I stopped. I thought being “soulbound” sounded bad.
• I wanted a bow in the worst way when I was in the Night Elf starting zones. It seemed like a good thing to have. Other people had them and seemed to use them to great effect. Of course, I didn’t realize that a hunter can make much better use of a bow than a warrior. I saved up so that I could eventually buy one from a vendor in Darnassus. And even after I realized that a bow wasn’t going to do much for me, I used it for a long time to pull mobs to me rather than using Charge.
• I thought a quiver/bandolier was necessary for carrying ammunition to use with a bow/gun. I did not realize that non-hunters were better off just carrying a small stack in a bag. But I did think that the quiver looked cool.
• I didn’t start auctioning stuff until maybe my late 20s. I vendored everything I didn’t use.
• I once bought a potion that stated that it increased healing. I thought that maybe I could take it to make Keredria’s heals more effective on me.
• It was a long time before I realized that Berserker Rage could be used to counter a fear after the fear had taken effect. I thought one had to hit Berserker Rage before the fear.
• I applied wizard oil to my sword. I thought it would enchant my sword to cause magical as well as physical damage.
• I thought that the gold you paid when you unlearned your talents was per talent point you unlearned.

Whoa! Raid LF3M. Now who should I take? Keredria, and…T-Pain.

If you’ve not seen/heard it yet, check out I’m On a Boat first and then you can sing along. Warning: There are MANY naughty words.

Aww shit, get your addons ready it’s about to go down
Everybody in the place click the ready check
But watch your motherfucking threat
We’re running this, let’s go

I’m in a raid
I’m in a raid
Everybody look at me ’cause I’m running in a raid
I’m in a raid
I’m in a raid
Take a good hard look at the motherfucking raid

I’m in a raid motherfucker take a look at me
We’ll be farming Ulduar soon I can guarantee
Raiding five nights, ever since Burning Crusade
You can’t stop me motherfucker ’cause I’m in a raid

Take a screenshot
I’m in a raid, bitch
We be drinking elixirs
Cause we’re so rich
I got my five deeps
And my three epic heals
I’m tanking Algalon, you in Northrend
Straight tanking seals

I’m riding on a big drake, doing heals and shit
The drake is flying, Maly is starting to sweat
But this ain’t Outland, this is leet as it gets
I’m in a raid, motherfucker, don’t you ever forget

I’m in a raid and
Progressing fast and
I got skillz so slick
That I should be banned
I’m the queen of the world
In a raid like Leeroy
If you’re wearing blues
Then you’re not with me, boy

Get the fuck up, this raid is real

Fuck 5s, I’m in a raid, motherfucker
Fuck BGs, I kill elites, motherfucker
I’m in the raid with my guild, motherfucker
The raid is so skilled, motherfucker

Hey ma, if you could see me now
Grinning ear to ear because I’m pwning WoW
Gonna take this raid to Arthas somehow
Like Ghostcrawler said, bring the player not the class

Yeah, never thought I’d be in a raid
It’s the best game that I’ve played
Yeah, Protection
Look at me, oh

Never thought I’d see the day
When a big raid would be kk
Believe me when I say
I got an upgrade

I’m in a raid
I’m in a raid
Everybody look at me ’cause I’m running in a raid
I’m in a raid
I’m in a raid
Take a good hard look at the motherfucking raid

OMG! The bunnehs! They are making it!

A few guildies thought it would be amusing to turn everyone into rabbits using some sort of Noblegarden thingy while we were waiting for our raid to form up. Then they got out their pet rabbits that proceeded to, as Vel said, “make it.” I love it when she talks dirty on vent.

So anyway after the bunny orgy we got ourselves into Ulduar. Friday and Saturday were our second and third nights in Ulduar. I wrote earlier about our first night. Our first attempt on Flame Leviathan was, well, interesting. We accidentally started it on hard mode. But after downing the four towers to deactivate the hard mode it was fine and we went on to try Razorscale. We gave him a few attempts but didn’t make much progress so we moved on to XT-002 Deconstructor which we proceeded to one-shot. That was a little disappointing. We had time for a few attempts on Ignis the Furnace Master, and were getting the fight down, but we ran out of time and called it a night. Saturday we had to wait awhile to fill the raid so we went dancing in Naxx for a bit and then went to Ulduar to work on Razorscale. I think it took us ten attempts before we finally got her. It was exhausting but it felt good. It felt good to work hard on something and to see the hard work pay off. My tanking fingers are very sore. The drops were…I forget…DPS stuff mainly.

As usual I forgot to take screenshots, but I know Keredria got some so look for them on her blog soon.

No heals.

So Jess had to go four days and three nights without heals while somebody was on vacation. I figured I’d see if I could make her feel just a tad guilty. Also I’ll throw in a little tribute to my favorite TV show. I know she won’t get it, but maybe a few browncoats out there will.

“You know, it’s funny…we went to Naxxramas never looking to come back, but it’s Northrend I couldn’t survive. You carried me through that raid, and now I need you to carry me just a little bit further, if you can. Tell my folks I wanted to do right by them and that I’m at peace and all. When you can’t run anymore you crawl, and when you can’t do that, well, yeah you know the rest.”

You have aggro.

Here are three words that have no place anywhere in the game, whether it be a chat channel or online forums.*

Retarded. Any parent can understand how trying it is or could be to have a child that is disabled and cannot experience life in the same way as others. To use this term as an insult is truly sad. If you really want to comment on someone’s lack of leet skillz, then go with a more archaic term like “idiot,” but probably it would be best if you just shut the fuck up.

Fag. Some people are gay. Some people aren’t. So what? Honestly why is someone being gay a big deal? The only problem with being gay is the shits who think “fag” is an insult. If you can’t deal with two men or two women in love and/or having sex, then it’s your sexual hang-up, not theirs.

Rape. I realize that rape is a gaming expression, but I’ve also seen less figurative uses of the term in WoW, and I’m sure many have seen “Sapped girls can’t say no.” Rape is a terrible crime. I have never been raped, and I do not know anyone who has (or if I do they’ve not told me), but it still greatly disturbs me that someone can make a joke out of it. Rape isn’t fucking funny, ever.

*To be clear, I am not calling for a ban on these words or suggesting that they cannot be used in a way that is not offensive. My issue is how they are used. This is upsetting to me.

Ulduar: The ponytail approves.

Watch for Jess in her next movie: Catapult Keredria from the Demolisher.

So The Left Claw made it’s first foray into Ulduar on Friday. We got the Flame Leviathan down with maybe three attempts. We had a good time with this encounter. I was driving a chopper and having a great time with it. Jess looks great on a chopper with her ponytail flapping in the wind. Ok, well maybe they don’t have that animation, but in my mind it was. Jess got herself some Flamewatch Armguards which are a nice little upgrade. We tried to get to Ignis the Furnace Master but wiped a few times on trash before we got a bad case of the sleepies and called it a night. We were not disappointed though. Most were pleased that the trash in Ulduar are actually a bit of a challenge.

Guild culture.

So for reasons that have nothing to do with WoW I recently found myself flipping through the book “Individualism and Collectivism” by Harry Triandis, a social psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He discusses research regarding two general dimensions that have been used to explain many cross-cultural differences in behavior. Very roughly speaking (I am not a social psychologist) these are individualism (focus is on the self) versus collectivism (focus is on the group), and vertical (inequality) versus horizontal (equality). Crossing these two dimensions yields four “archetypes” for lack of a better word. Some researchers have used these attributes to describe not just individuals and cultures but organizations as well. This got me thinking about how one might characterize World of Warcraft guilds.

• Vertical Individualism. Focus on the autonomous self, while seeing others as potentially different in status. This pattern is most common in the United States and France. A vertical individualist guild has members that are concerned largely with themselves rather than the guild as a whole, and there is a clear hierarchy of status (ranks) within the guild. It seems to me that a vertical individualist guild would not typically be a healthy or stable guild unless members near the top of the hierarchy could consistently motivate members to work together by identifying aligned goals (i.e., loot).
• Vertical Collectivism. The self is viewed as part of a group, but there are differences in status among the members of the group. Countries that demonstrate vertical collectivism include Greece and India. Guild members are focused more on the welfare of the guild over themselves, but the guild has a strict hierarchy. I think some larger hardcore raiding guilds could be characterized as vertical collectivist. Members of the guild want the guild to succeed, but a status hierarchy is necessary for organization.
• Horizontal Individualism. An autonomous self with equality in status among others. This pattern is found in Australia and Sweden. This might characterize some PvP and twink guilds rather than raiding guilds where individualism would not conflict with the objectives of the members and there is little nead of a hierarchy within the guild.
• Horizontal Collectivism. The self is viewed as part of a group where members of the group having equal status. This pattern is found in Israeli kibbutzim and some monastic orders. This would characterize some small raiding guilds of people who have a common goal and, except for maybe a crazy raid leader, equality of status. I would suggest that my guild is a horizontal collectivist guild.

Who am I?

Big patches always turn our virtual worlds upside down. Add-ons break or behave in very mysterious ways, abilities and talents are changed, and there are subtle undocumented and confusing differences in graphics and sounds. But for me the new dual-spec feature is, well, it’s just a bit unsettling. With the click of a button I go from a protection warrior to an arms warrior in 10 seconds. What was once a relatively expensive and time-consuming change of identity is now something that can be done quickly and casually with the click of a button or two.  I suppose it wouldn’t feel so odd if my off-spec was another tanking spec, which is something I may do in the future if that is needed for Ulduar. Dual-speccing is a feature that I welcome and I will use it and enjoy it, but it will take some getting used to. Is it just me?

The real problem with current WotLK raiding.

Haiku? I can’t even count!

Two memes in one day! Ratshag tagged me on this one, and Keredria wrote one for me. I’ll return the favor.

Epic gear, leet skillz
Trying hard to stay alive
She says try harder

Honest scrap.

Sigh. I sorta hate these things, but you can’t say “no” to Keredria. Anyways here are the rules:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Ok so some bloggers to tag. I won’t try to pick people who haven’t already been tagged. First a couple of podcasters: Alachia (please try her “meta” podcasts), and Renata of World of Warcast (the podcast I listen to while doing the dishes). She’s already been tagged, but I’ll tag Megan of Out of Mana anyway. Although I very rarely PvP, I admire people who are good at it. I’ll tag Dezdemone of Will Tank for Healz! and Anglachel of The Meatshield Diaries in an attempt to get them to post more, and Khol Drake of A Stab in the Dark just because he comments often on my blog. Oh and how about Auzura of Chick GM because, as she says, “playing like a girl rocks.”

Ten boring factoids about Jess:

1. I try to be a lacto-ovo pescetarian. So no “land meat” but if it lives in the sea and doesn’t have a blow hole, I will try to eat it.
2. I don’t know any languages other than English, and am rather ashamed about that. I have a great admiration for multilingual people.
3. Dancing makes me feel extremely self conscious. I’ve “fast danced” three times in my entire life, although I have repressed those memories. There isn’t enough alcohol in the world to make me do it again.
4. I have never been to a funeral. A few weeks ago I took an 18 year old cat to the veterinary hospital and had to have her put down. I’m still dealing with that.
5. The color of my eyes is ambiguous. They can be blue, green, or grey depending on what I am wearing.
6. I have one more degree than Keredria — four degrees from two different universities. The latter two are from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She’s secretly jealous.
7. I have a book contract with a major publisher. Writing has been slow.
8. I often prefer to think or talk about things rather than do them. I don’t call this procrastination. Rather I say I am more theoretical and less applied.
9. I am not very artistic in any way. I greatly admire people who are. However I’ve done a bit of fine art black and white photography in the past. My favorite cameras are a Rollei SL66 and a Mamiya 220.
10. I am significantly taller than Keredria. I have far fewer shoes.

Edit: Ooops. I originally had 11. No wonder we always have too many people signed-up for raids. I can’t count! I took one out. Yes, I know the rules are “at least 10,” but for some reason 11 seems pretentious to me.

Tuesday morning nerdsauce.

Jessika was heard to say the following when she first stepped off the boat at Howling Fjord.

Et Eärello Northrendenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn’ Ambar-metta.

Or at least until the next expansion comes out.

Dammit! Wrong slash.

Cognitive psychologists have documented a phenomenon known as interference in which a memory interferes with another memory. This problem is exacerbated when the stimuli are similar. So what does this have to do with WoW? Well I use a markup language called LaTeX, which has nothing to do with latex (that’s a different post altogether). Special commands in LaTeX start with a “\” so, for example, one might write \emph{italics} to put a word in italics, or \int_a^b f(x) dx to write an equation. But in WoW special commands begin with a “/” so, for example, we type /g if we want to type something to be broadcast on the guild channel or maybe /cast [target=Keredria] Sarcasm (Rank 7) in a macro. So some of the time my LaTeX doesn’t compile and my WoW commands and macros don’t work because I can’t seem to remember to use the correct slash, although at least I don’t get them confused with this one.

I am a conduit for the ancient forces of nature (again).

There was a time, not too long ago, when I thought I had lost all interest in playing a shaman. But you voted, and you were right. Makawee (that’s “mah-KAH-wee” not “make-a-wee”) the Draenei elemental shaman dinged 80 Sunday evening. I’m going to continue to focus on elemental, although I may try some raid healing as resto if we are short, and maybe even dabble a bit in enhancement if I pick up some nice gear for it along the way.

There are several things about shaman that I find very appealing. I enjoy the four-spell rotation of the elemental shaman (fire shock, lava burst, chain lightning, and lightning bolt), and it’s an impressive display of firepower. Alachia has a nice podcast about Shamanamins. She says that when one thinks of a shaman one thinks of a spiritual leader that uses subtle invocations of the elements, spirits, and nature. But a chain lightning proccing lightning overload is certainly not subtle. Ka-boom! And I like the utility. I like that I can be an effective off/emergency healer (chain heal ftw). And I like my totems. I like the micromanagement, and I like that my buffs are very obvious. Hey! You see that lava lamp sitting on the ground over there? That’s my buff to you! Feel the love! Feel it! Excuse me…ka-pow!

And sometimes I like a little change of personality online. I mean, there’s Jessika, and then there’s Makawee.

Iz not wurkin hard enuf.

The sixth screenshot. I see dead bosses!

Keredria tagged me to show the sixth screenshot from my screenshot directory. Currently my sixth screenshot happens to be from a recent fight with Loatheb. I was off-tanking him which is fairly routine. I was just keeping my buffs and debuffs up and hanging around waiting to tank him should the MT go down. During the fight I decided to swivel my camera view around and take a few screenshots. This one I had planned to use for a post on Keredria’s birthday but didn’t. You can see here doing her hallelujah healy thing next to Veloreynn and the triplets. I apologize for the messy GUI. I really need to clean it up.

Found out about you.

Here’s one based on a Gin Blossoms song. I so amuse myself sometimes.

Before the patch in case you don’t recall
I was tank and you were healz we pwned it all
Is there a way that I could die
That’s bad enough to make you /cry
All the tells you sent to me were lies
The months roll past the invite you declined
Did you heal me only by design?
Buffs and HOTs you cast on me
Seemed to come so easily
The heals I thought I’d won you’d give for free

Whispers from the off-tank
I heard about nights out in the BG
I found out about you

Rumors follow everywhere you raid
Like when you /gquit post burning crusade
You’re geared-up now and there’s no doubt
In all the guilds where you hang out
They know your spec and they know what you’re about

Whispers from the off-tank
I heard about nights out in the BG
I found out about you

A tank is all I think I could be
I get the healz too often on the LFG
You know it’s what I always feared
I /who your name and /inspect your gear
Your death knight’s over I watch you go offline

Whispers from the off-tank
I heard about nights out in the BG
I found out about you

Happy birthday Keredria.

Today is Keredria’s birthday. Two years ago, and only a few days after Jessika, Keredria was born. So I’ve been at a loss for what to post (as usual). Something funny? Something sentimental? A bit of both? As she noted things have been a little sad lately, so humor is out. Verse ftw. The following is from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers. I’m a huge Tolkien fan and am always very moved when I read certain parts. This is one of them. The attitude of the Entwife in the second and fourth stanzas seems very much like Keredria. Linger where your land is fair K.

Ent:
When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

Entwife:
When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;
When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid;
When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,
I’ll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.

Ent:
When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold
Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;
When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!

Entwife:
When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;
When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;
When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,
I’ll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!

Ent:
When Winter comes, the winter wild that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain
I’ll look for thee, and call to thee; I’ll come to thee again!

Entwife:
When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;
I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again:
Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!

Both:
Together we will take the road that leads into the West,
And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.

OMG /played

Two years ago today I started playing WoW and Jessika was born. I told Keredria last night that I was having trouble thinking of something to post today. I asked if she wanted to be a guest blogger — she could even make fun of me, on my own blog! She laughed. I told her I was serious. She suggested that I write a post about how awesome she is. I think she beat me to it.

So here I am. There is no way I would have even imagined two years ago that I’d be where I am now: Tank (I didn’t even know what tank was.), guild master (I figured I’d just solo as I’m not very social.), level 70/80 (I didn’t think I’d go beyond playing the trial version for a few days.), raid leader (What’s a raid?), and blogger (And like do what? Write song parodies? Pfft.)

So will I be playing this game a year from now? I was talking to my friend Vel last night and she asked that question of herself. I told her she sure as hell better be.

I need to put Pandora on something besides the 80’s.

An 80's 5-man.

Fail.

Verb.

1. To be wanting to; to be insufficient for; to disappoint; to desert.
2. To miss of attaining; to lose.
3. To run heroic Obsidium Sanctum, have the Tier 7 warrior gloves drop, and pass on the roll forgetting (until reminded too late by your smarter healer) that heroic raids drop better Tier gear than normal raids.

I should be working (harder).

Just four words…

…Red Sword of Courage! Ka-ching! Dropped on only my second run through heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.

/gleeclap

Updates: As I mentioned in the comments, our other protection warrior Bigal picked it up the next day. Congrats! And then the next night I tanked heroic UP a third time and picked up another Red Sword of Courage. Now I can bring two swords with different enchants. Crazy.

Ph***ed-up Loot Phriday

Northrend helms with horns. The worst must be the mail helms like this one. WTF? And what is up with the reservoir tip on that thing? One look at one of those on your partner’s protection warrior would be enough to switch your hinges.

Couldn’t Heroic Strike look more, well, heroic?

Here is the generic description of Heroic Strike:

A strong attack that increases melee damage by X and causes a high amount of threat. (Ranks 10 and up cause Y additional damage against dazed targets.)

Essentially it allows you to buff your next auto-attack to cause more damage and more threat. Heroic strike is used by protection warriors to increase their threat. It’s sometimes called a “rage dump” because it costs rage but causes the next auto-attack to not generate any rage. Thus it is something that is used when there is a surplus of rage and another more efficient ability in terms of threat per rage is not available. Fury warriors also use Heroic Strike to enhance their auto-attacks when Bloodthirst and Whirlwind are on cooldown, ideally only if they will still have enough rage to use those abilities when they come off cooldown. Heroic Strike is rarely useful for Arms warriors because of the unpredictability of their rotation.

Heroic Strike was terribly confusing for me when I was a young warrior because it was hard to see it doing anything. It doesn’t make a sound, the animation of a Heroic Strike is subtle (at least for female Night Elves) and it isn’t an instant attack or a channeled ability like, for example, Execute or Slam, respectively. It simply buffs your next auto-attack which could happen anywhere between immediately after you queue it up to 3+ seconds later, depending on the speed of your weapon(s). Now nearly two years later and at 80 I have a good understanding and appreciation for Heroic Strike, especially when I tank, but I still wish there was more feedback from its use. Cleave, which is like Heroic Strike but hits two nearby enemies simultaneously, does have a clear and recognizable animation. I can see very clearly when I have cleaved and thus when I can decide if I want to queue up another. I wish that there was a more clear animation, maybe similar to but distinct from that of Cleave, so that I can see when a Heroic Strike has landed (also, it would just look cool…many of our attacks are too visually subtle as it is).

I tried programming my Scrolling Combat Text addon to say “Heroic Strike!” but it just isn’t the same. Maybe I need some sort of macro to at least show others that I’m doing something, well, heroic:

/say I’m trying harder Keredria!
/cast Heroic Strike

Major undocumented change for protection warriors in 3.0.8.

Vigilance now makes a sound and has an associated graphic for the target. Woot! (Actually, it did bother me before that nobody could see I cared enough about someone to put it on them.)

An alt poll.

Before WotLK I spent quite a bit of time on some alts. I wasn’t interested in going DPS with Jess and our progression was a bit slow so I had lots of time to play them. But now my time and patience for leveling an alt is a bit limited. One reason is that I’ve been trying arms and fury specs with Jess for fun so in a way while Jess the protection warrior is my main, Jess the DPS warrior is my alt. Another reason is that the grind from 70 to 80 was just too recent and so I’m not very excited about doing many of these quests again. Also we are progressing through the content much faster so I have less time to play an alt and by the time I do level her up to 80 she’ll be farther behind. However I am still interested in having at least one 80 alt. Which should I choose and why?

I didn’t blink my eyes for six minutes.

That was the comment of our combat rogue Atania after we finally managed to down Heigan the Unclean for the first time.

Friday and Saturday were The Left Claw’s first venture into into Naxxramas. Friday night we started on the Arachnid Quarter. We managed to get Anub’Rekhan and Grand Widow Faerlina down with only a couple attempts each. Maexxna proved to be a bit more difficult. Once we got our positioning down so that healers and ranged were in range of the boss, tank, and cocooned victims, we were losing tanks to the frenzy phase. It was a bit more than just two healers could handle, even with our shadowpriest doing backup healing at that point.

Saturday night we returned with a third healer and downed Maexxna with one attempt and then we began working on the Plague Quarter. We were very amused with ourselves that we could not down the Stoneskin Gargoyles until we were finally able to time burst damage when they approached 30% health. Our first attempt on Noth the Plaguebringer took 16 minutes. We downed him on the second attempt in a little less time. Finally we came to Heigan the Unclean. I’d been looking forward to this fight. It’s more fun to explain than Shade of Aran. It took maybe five attempts before everyone learned to dance well enough. If I may brag a little, I had the dance down quite well, but then I had watched a few videos of the encounter beforehand so I had maybe a better idea of what to do. I adore this fight.  We didn’t have time for Loatheb but I am confident we’ll see him (her? how can you tell?) soon.

The drops were mostly caster stuff. I did pick up the Wraith Spear off Maexxna which should work reasonably well when I spec arms. I realize it’s itemized optimally for a hunter, but we didn’t have any hunters with us.

I forgot to take screenshots. I’m sure Keredria will have some up soon.

Back to raiding.

Truth is, I thought it mattered. I thought that raiding mattered. But does it? Bollocks! Not compared to how raiders matter.

Last night was The Left Claw’s first Wrath of the Lich King raid. We attempted Obsidian Sanctum. We were not able to defeat Sartharion but we got very very close. I think it went well despite the fact that we were not familiar with the encounter and had only two healers. It was interesting to return to raiding. There were some of the familiar elements of raiding: the excitement, the tension, the strategy discussions, the whispered criticism suggestions, but it was also noticably more casual than our first forays into Karazhan.

Soon we’ll be making our first venture into Naxxramas. I suspect that will go well. I’ll try to report on that raid and remember to take a few pics.

On a successful tank-healer relationship.

Since it went public, many folks have asked me about the secrets of a successful tank-healer relationship. Well, ok, nobody asked but I know you want to know. A healthy tank-healer relationship is not unlike a healthy marriage. The foundation of your relationship is chemistry and history, but there are other important elements. For one it is useful if you know each other well in real life so that there is a distinction not only between your game identity and your real life identity, but also in the relationships between those identities and those of your partner. Even if you’ve never met in real life, at least there is some connection outside the game. Little things like remembering and honoring birthdays and anniversaries go a long way. And if you are able you might even write a little poem or song for each other. It also helps to not always be serious — joke around and be playful. The tank-healer relationship defines who you are as a tank or a healer, and you support one another because of your complementary roles, but just as importantly that support is unconditional:

[W:To] [Keredria]: i sent you a bunch more spice. you don’t need to cook it all up for me. it’s just there for you to use as you want
[W:From] [Keredria]: kk i will parcel it out to you on my discretion…
[W:To] [Keredria]: lol
[W:From] [Keredria]: based on performance

Sleepy Jess.

Why is Jess sleepy? Well that big heavy Wyrmclaw Battleaxe might have something to do with it. The Left Claw is a small guild with three tanks, so we take turns tanking and DPS. It’s been an interesting challenge for me to improve my gear and performance to become, at best, adequate. And I get some encouragement like “well, you’re almost doing as much DPS as the tank” and “maybe you should try harder.” Of course a certain resto druid is fortunate I didn’t take screenshots of recount summaries when she specced boomkin for a recent heroic Utgarde Keep run. I think she was too busy dancing. Boomkin got back.

My preference lately has been for arms. I like the randomness of it. It does take a bit of practice to do good DPS with arms because of the intricate timings and rage management. (If you are interested in PvE arms in WotLK I highly recommend you read this.) Fury is just terribly boring for me, and I get frustrated listening to all the misses from the autoattacks. But I plan to give fury another try once they make the change to Bloodsurge, and maybe pick up a pair of new swords for it. I want to enjoy fury, but I’m just not there yet.

The other reason why Jess is tired is that she’s been spending quite a bit of time trying to organize her bank. Because of the different hit caps for arms and fury, and because I’m still not sure about the best combination of hit, crit, attack power, and armor penetration, I’ve been keeping quite a collection of gear in the bank.

Can you read my mind?

I’ve had The Killers’ Read My Mind in the queue for a parody for some time. The theme of the song (or at least my interpretation of it) goes reasonably well with a bit of nostalgia I’ve been feeling for our Karazhan runs — even the difficult times. The parody is for my guildies who’ve always been very good at reading my mind, and thus keeping me from losing it. I’m not totally satisfied with how this one came out. It’s too pretentious, but then so is the original song.

In the middle of Shattrath
Just trying to make up my mind
You say you want to progress and
You say we’re falling behind

Can you read my mind?
Can you read my mind?

I never really gave up on
Upgrading from this Tier 3 gear
I’ve read the wiki page
I’ve got a little rage
We’re going to turn this raid around

Can you read my mind?
Can you read my mind?

A clusmy wipe, a stressful run
Let’s buff again, it’s all in fun?
A subtle \hug that no one reads
A couple pots and a nightmare seed

Oh well I don’t mind if you don’t mind
Because we don’t shine if we don’t grind
Before you stone, can you read my mind?

It’s frustrating how the raid goes down
On Shade everytime
But we ride up to the front of the instance
Because we’re here to unwind

Can you read my mind?
Can you read my mind?

The ghostly ball, the Menagerie
The Maiden’s hall, the Library
The dinner guests, the wreath of fire
The game of chess, then up the spire

Oh well I don’t mind if you don’t mind
Because we don’t shine if we don’t grind
Before you stone can you tell me what you find
When you read my mind

Running up the ramps until we fall
That is a really low wall
Woman unlock the gate, we’re good to go
I won’t move in that fire again

She said I don’t mind if you don’t mind
‘Cause we don’t shine if we don’t grind

Put your buff on me
Put your buff on me
Put your buff on me

The stars are blazing like earthstone diamonds
Cut out of the sun
When you read my mind

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Who ordered the ass platter with a side of noobsauce?

Several of us have dinged 80 in the past week or two so we’ve been getting our collective butts into heroics for some good ol’ tanking, spanking, and back-seat tanking healing. Heroic Utgarde Keep and The Nexus were very doable. Ahn’kahet was ok except for the last two bosses. We couldn’t get the adds down in time on Jedoga Shadowseeker to avoid her getting the damage buff, and we couldn’t get the tree down during Herald Volazj’s insanity phase. So we went next door to try Azjol-Nerub and we couldn’t even get past the adds on the first boss, but in our defense we were a bit sleepy at that point. Last night we tried Gundrak and could not down the first boss, although we got close. We couldn’t deal with the snakes. Unfortunately I suggested that maybe we needed better DPS for that encounter, and now I have to find a really good Christmas present for our mage Veloreynn to make up for such blasphemy. So after a good 50g repair bill there we tried Halls of Lightning which was fine until we got to Loken. We made several attempts on him before giving up. I blame myself for that one. I was tired and wasn’t able to position him effectively after we ran to avoid his lightning nova. The strategies I’ve read suggest a back-and-forth movement with him, but is it viable to maybe move in increments out into the next room and then in a circle? It seems like that would be more reliable than trying to flip him around each time.

Well, I’m not complaining (too much). It’s a nice challenge.

Giants, airplanes, and bears..oh my!

\documentclass[11pt]{blogpost}

\begin{document}

\begin{rant}

I’m sorry, but I really don’t enjoy the “vehicles” of WotLK. I know many people do, and there are only so many types of quests that Blizzard can develop within the constraints of the game, but the vehicle stuff just isn’t my cup of pungent seal whey. I enjoy my toons and doing things through my toons. But once my toon hops on a vehicle the game changes. It isn’t about my toon anymore. It’s just me. It’s not the same game. I suppose some folks enjoy the diversion, but I don’t. Also, I suck at vehicle quests. Maybe everyone does the first few times, but I’m not terrible motivated to get better at them. Not yet anyway.

\end{rant}

\end{document}

Old and busted: Outland stockings and thongs. New hotness: Northrend turtlenecks.

I picked up Wing Commander’s Breastplate last night in The Oculus for my DPS set. Take a look at it via the “View in 3D” option. Jess looks great in it, and it keeps her warm.

While I am on the topic of Northrend fashion, I do have one gripe: tabards. Tabards usually look ok on a toon that wears leggings, and if your leggings are a bit on the skanky side it may be a necessity. But in my opinion tabards look horrible on clothies with robes. There are some great looking robes that are ruined by a tacky tabard. This is unfortunately because now wearing a faction’s tabard in an instance will earn reputation with that faction. Maybe blizzard should implement a feature where we can opt to not show the tabard we are wearing as we can with helms and cloaks.

Tinkering with DPS.

Before the recent patch I had no interest trying DPS with Jess. I leveled up to my mid 60s as a very very bad fury warrior. But at some point I decided that I wanted to get in touch with some other facets of my inner warrior. My intention is still to focus on protection/tanking, but I have come to enjoy DPS as a diversion, and it also works out well for us since we are a small guild and (amazingly) often have too many tanks and healers but not enough DPS for impromptu 5-mans.

I like arms. I really do. Running around with a big two-hander (axe) strapped to my back is very sexy. The combat is exciting. There’s lot to do (charge, rend, slam, mortal strike, and overpower all on a regular basis, not to mention some of the more specialized abilities) and several frequent procs (deep wounds, taste for blood, and sudden death). For this reason arms doesn’t feel very different from protection. Arms is nice for solo work, but I also find it fun in an instance. Sweeping strikes and bladestorm are great for trash (if you have a good tank), and it’s fun to try to get the perfect rotation on a boss. I prefer to stay in Battle Stance, stance-dancing only to pop recklessness.

I’m still working on fury. Of course Titan’s grip is very sexy, although the anally-retentive part of me wishes my axes matched. I have to admit that I probably haven’t given fury enough time, but I find it a bit dull. From what I understand it’s basically auto-attacks with bloodthirst and whirlwind when they are available, the occasional slam when bloodsurge procs, and heroic strike if there is enough rage. I read recently that some folks use slam as part of their regular rotation now that with Titan’s grip the weapons a fury warrior wields are usually very slow. I’ll have to give that a try. But I suppose the (apparent) simplicity of the fury rotation is maybe also its advantage. It is more reliable and less prone to human error than arms, so it can often provide higher sustained damage.

The one thing I don’t like about both arms and fury is that, compared to protection, I am much more fragile. My DPS as a protection warrior is somewhat lower, but my surviviability is amazing, and in the long run it may be just as efficient for solo work as arms or fury since I rarely need to eat, bandage, or run back to my corpse.

A quiet morning of mourning.

With Keredria’s help I upgaded my tanking weapon from King’s Defender to the Hammer of Quiet Mourning, a quest reward from a group quest in Zul’Drak. The hammer also replaces my trash tanking weapon, the Cleaver of the Unforgiving from Zul’Aman. There are actually three weapons from that group quest that are viable tanking weapons for a protection warrior, but in my opinion the hammer is the best choice statistically. The hammer is maybe the best weapon for a protection warrior before setting foot in a heroic or raid except for the Eternally Folded Blade. However as Keredria noted, the name is fitting as I was a bit bummed about my new mace. Why? Two reasons. One is that it is REALLY ugly. It’s a f***ing log. I am embarrased to be seen with it in Dalaran. The other was that the experience of getting it was very anticlimatic.  I remember when I did the long quest chains in Shadowmoon Valley, also with Keredria’s help, to get Grom’tor’s Charge. That was epic and a fun tank-healer bonding experience. But the log quest was too quick and easy.

The worst nerf to shadow priests.

One of those little nice things in life…

…is coming online on a weekend morning to do a bit of grinding, with a cup of good coffee next to me, and seeing my friends online doing the same.

I drink good coffee every morning

Comes from a place that’s far away

And when I’m done I feel like talking

Without you here there is less to say

88 lines about 44 toons (or less).

Our relationships with our toons are not unlike real-life relationships. Well, maybe they are and I am just weird. But I’ve found that my relationships with my toons can be categorized in much the same way that we might categorize real-life romantic relationships.

• The Soulmate. You have a very deep and unique connection with this toon. And despite considerable self-analysis, you still find it difficult to explain exactly why. You have a long shared history together and friends in common which add strength to an already profoundly deep relationship. For me this is my protection warrior and first toon, Jessika.
• The Off-Soulmate. This is the could-have-been. There is definitely a connection there, and you imagine that had things been different they could have been your soulmate toon. But as long as you have your soulmate toon they will be very special but not your main. For me this is my holy priest, Muriel.
• The Trophy Toon. This toon is all about appearance. They look good. Their gear looks sharp. They do very well on the meters despite the fact that your relationship is not as deep and so you haven’t invested as much in them. For me this is my frost mage, Aksana, who due to the strange mechanics of frost mages does relatively good DPS despite her gear, and looks damn good doing it.
• Just for Fun. Here’s a toon that you just enjoy playing. You know that you won’t raid with them or even level them up all the way, but the relationship is fun and stress-free. There’s nothing awkward about your relationship, but nothing deep either. For me it’s my beastmaster hunter, Suvi.
• The Failed Relationship. Here’s one that just didn’t work out. You lost interest and eventually had the courage to call it quits. In retrospect you saw it coming, but at the time it was somewhat fun and you found it hard to abandon the relationship until it became more trouble than it was worth. For me it is my elemental shaman, Makawee.
• A Little Action on the Side. Here’s the toon that maybe your guildies don’t know about. The toon is guildless, in another guild, another server, or maybe even the other faction. They excite you, but you feel a little guilty that they do because it feels cheap. For me it is my blood elf affliction warlock, Sula. You can tell from her gear that I don’t respect her.

Argh! I can’t do it. I’m a tank.

I’ve wanted to try being a DPS warrior. I’m a tank and will always be a tank, but DPS looks like a fun hobby for leveling, grinding, 5-mans, and maybe PvP. I played around with arms on the PTR and really enjoyed it. I have two Gorehowls in the bank just screaming for a Titan’s Grip fury spec. With the ability to have dual specs combined with an addon that will let me save custom button profiles, it will be easier than ever to switch between tanking and DPS. But for some reason I just can’t get myself to to it! Argh! I want to but everytime I get near the warrior trainer Jess starts to pout.

I haz issues.

Nerf raiding.

So after a few days of complete chaos as we respecced and reset our addons and macros, we decided to give the patch a 10-claw spin. Friday night was Karazhan. Saturday and Sunday nights it was Zul’Aman (since it reset Sunday morning). Full clears. We one-shotted everything. I really dislike the use of the term “rape” in gaming, but I guess that’s how those raids could be described. Before the patch we had Karazhan on farm, although the upper-Karazhan bosses would sometimes require a couple attempts if we got unlucky or sloppy. In Zul’Aman we’d only mastered Nalorakk and Akil’zon. We’d made a few attempts on Jan’alai but hadn’t come very close to downing him. Now Zul’Aman is about as challenging as Karazhan was before the patch. I understand Blizzard’s rationale for the nerf. They wanted to give raiding guilds that were stuck before the patch a chance for further progression and to see more content before the expansion. However for small guilds like ours that don’t have the numbers for 25-man content, it leaves us a bit stuck.

We were hooked, and now we are on the patch.

Patches suck. Yes, the new talents/abilities and changes to game mechanics are fun, but there is a significant amount of headache that goes along with having to deal with this many changes at once, particularly if you heavily into addons and modifying your interface. I spent a significant amount of time trying to resolve a couple of problems, so I decided to share with you my solutions just in case one of my three readers was experiencing a similar problem.

The first issue I had was that I desperately needed a new action bar addon. My beloved Trinity Bars 2 was in no way patch-friendly. Fortunately the author of Trinity Bars 2 is developing a new addon called Macaroon that is a (relatively) patch-friendly replacement. It’s still in development but it works, and it is easier to configure.

The other issue that was giving me fits was that I was finding that WoW would not save all of my settings. A couple that I remember is that it would not remember which addons I had asked to have loaded the last time I played, or my audio settings. I discovered that if I exited the game by returning to the login screen rather than just selecting Exit Game after hitting ESC, it would save my settings. This wasn’t a problem for me before. I am not sure if it is due to the patch itself or because the patch moved my WoW directory from Program Files to Users (I am using Vista).

Revenge of the squirrels.

So for the past few weeks we’ve been running heroic Magisters’ Terrace a bit. (Well, ok, who am I kidding? We’ve been running it almost nightly.) Unlike the other heroics it’s still a bit of a challenge and there is some good loot to be had. The first time it was tough, but by the second time we tried it we felt like we had it down. After that we could clear it without too much difficulty except for the occasional butt pull. But lately it’s been kicking our ass. The first boss is cake, but the remaining bosses seem to giving us serious difficulties when before we might only need a couple attempts. We had to give up last night after wiping a few times on Kael’thas (we’d already had a very tough time with Delrissa). It’s been a bit frustrating. We aren’t quite sure why we are now having difficulties where before we would blow through this instance. We do have a theory though. We like to kill the squirrels in MGT. We aren’t normally critter killers (although I do admit I like to harvest a few crab legs for dinner in The Steamvaults), but perhaps out of frustration we like to smack around the squirrels in MGT when running back after a wipe. Our theory is that there is a hidden variable in the game. The more squirrels we kill the harder the bosses get.

I think that after last night’s run we all agree that it is good timing that the patch is coming out today. We’ll take a break from MGT and do some easier heroics to get used to the changes in our talents and the game mechanics before going back to kill some squirrels.

Ugh, keybindings.

The one thing about the upcoming patch that has me the most concerned is keybindings. I spent a lot of time developing my current keybindings, but now I have to accommodate shockwave and three abilities (charge, mocking blow, and berserker rage) that before were built into rarely used stance-dance macros since until now they could not be used in defensive stance. What to do? I currently use mostly keys 1-4 and F1-F4 for regularly used tanking abilities (heroic strike, devastate, shield slam, revenge, cleave, concussion blow, shield bash, shield block), taunt is bound to the ~ key, and my shouts, cooldowns, macros, and less regularly used abilities like shield reflect and disarm occupy number of function keys farther down the right of the keyboard. I do have thunderclap and demoralizing shout bound to the left and right motions of my scroll wheel. After the patch I think shockwave may take the place of demoralizing shout, and I may bind R to charge (putting my whisper reply on T), and maybe use F for  intervene, or maybe the other way around. Perhaps I’ll put berseker rage on 6 next to bloodrage which is on 5. It may be reasonable to have mocking blow tied to a macro like

/use Taunt
/use Mocking Blow

for those cases where taunt is on cooldown or is resisted. Bloodrage and berserker rage could also be used in a nice opening macro combined with either heroic throw, shoot, or charge (hell, three different opening macros).

Ugh.

Anyway I’d be curious about the keybindings of other protection warriors, and how they are going to accommodate the additional abilities.

Bust out the pets.

When we are facing a particularly difficult and frustrating boss, we like to get out our pets. From a tactical point of view it isn’t advantagous, and it can even be problematic given that it clutters-up the screen and can lead to errors in mouse targetting. But they boost morale. We are a tad superstitious sometimes.

The Left Claw has entered Gruul’s Lair.

We finally got around to trying out first 25-man raid in collaboration with some friends in The Captain’s Crew and a few other good friends including Suzzy and Ratshag. We defeated High King Maulgar and his friends in a few attempts, and got Gruul himself down to about 10% on our best attempt. Given that most of us had not been to Gruul’s Lair before, and that the two guilds had not worked together before, it went quite well in my opinion.

A 25-man raid is many orders of magnitude more intense than our cozy 10-man raids. Right now it feels like the morning after a big party — but a fun party. I think I drank too many flasks. I need more aspirin and coffee.

My pre-expansion goals, or lack thereof.

Veneretio from Tanking Tips asked me recently about my pre-expansion goals. Frankly I don’t have any other than to liquidate some mats and mentally rearrange my keybindings. I should explain that we are a very small and tight guild. We have Karazhan on farm (except for Netherspite — we just never got around to him) and are able to do the first two bosses in Zul’Aman but haven’t had the opportunity to work much beyond that. We aren’t even close to having enough for a 25-man raid. We are currently trying to put together something with another guild but even then it has been a struggle to come up with enough people. So I guess that is a goal, but I won’t be devastated (or even sundered) if it doesn’t work out. Thus the timing of the expansion is very good for us. The guild may expand in the future to the point where 25-man guild raids may be viable at 80, but fortunately there will be more content for the 10-man casually-hardcore raids.

Raiders got back.

I’ve written about the fun of facepulls before. Another phenomenon we encounter more often than we’d like but nevertheless find amusing is what we call the “butt pull” (aka, “ass aggro”). This is when someone backs into or, less often, strafes into the aggro radius of other mobs. This is something that is usually done by the DPS or healer(s), but careful positioning by the tank can sometimes help avoid it. Our rogue Atania sometimes needs to ask the tank to move a mob a bit so that her “ass isn’t hanging out.” Magister’s Terrace is an example of an instance where butt pulls are likely.

(I was going to do a quick search to see if other WoW players have used this term, but I think “butt pull” is maybe something I just shouldn’t Google.)

To the Blizzard employees responsible for the changes for protection warriors.

I want to have your Nelf warrior bebehs…tons of them. I’m too busy having the time of my life grinding mobs for fun on the Elemental Plateau on the PTR, sword & board, while in defensive stance, and with tanking gear to come up with a coherent post about my thoughts about the (proposed) changes to protection warriors.

May Elune bless you for the rest of your days.

Jess

P.S. Lots of bebehs…all with little white ponytails. Very cute.

P.P.S. Any chance I could maybe dual-wield shields?

Yes, Veloreynn, I can read. Stop casting Arcane Intellect on me.

So I recently got tagged by Ratshag for this. I honestly can’t remember if I’ve read some of those, but I think I remember reading the following.

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Forever by Judy Blume
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Sex by Madonna
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Blubber by Judy Blume
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
• Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

As for the challenge to read something new on this list…well there are several that look quite tempting, although to be honest I don’t know if I’ll find the time this week. Can Harper’s count?

Consider yourself tagged Keredria.

DJ Jazzy K.

Keredria turned our most recent Karazhan raid into a dance party. Based on a post on World of Matticus, she played music over vent before or after our encounters. She used several of the suggestions given on that post. She also played Wreath of Fire by Big Bear Butt for Shade of Aran, and I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred for Prince given the way he likes to strut around. I suggested Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits (one of my favorite songs) after we did Opera since we got the Romulo and Julianne encounter. After we downed Prince, Veloreynn put in a special request for Dancing Queen for me/Jess.

Happy birthday to (the) Tree of Life.

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Well not that old, but another year, another ring. Head over to Tree of Life my fellow tree-huggers to congratulate my leet healer Keredria (and the only resto druid with her own song) on a year of blogging.

I’m a twig.

I’ve had a bit of “blogger’s block” lately. There are some things I’ve wanted to write about but the posts haven’t come together. But Keredria’s latest post about noobishness reminded me of something.

A couple of us have healing alts. Imdestiny, our shadow priest, has a new resto druid, Tygira. Keredria has taken her on as her apprentice. Now I have a human holy priest, Muriel. Now statistically Muriel is a better healer than Tygira due to superior gear. However while Keredria has given Tygira the loving title of “bebeh tree,” she refers to Muriel as a “twig.” I protested this but Keredria said that it is because Muriel is not a druid. Now I don’t think that I am a great healer, and certainly nowhere near as good as our main healers, but I think I am ok. However I showed my noobishness the other night when in preparation for assault on Nightbane Keredria slipped me some mana oil followed by a “/s noob healer.” Oh the embarrassment. Despite the many times that Muriel has gone OOM or nearly so on such encounters, and despite the many bottles of mana oil Muriel made herself and stuffed in the bank while training enchanting, it never occurred to me to lube my Nightstaff of the Everliving. /sigh

A new one for the list.

Last night we were doing Shade of Aran and I was, as usual, in berserker stance to pummel his spell casts. I don’t normally pay much attention to my damage but for some reason I did last night, and I came up with a new entry for my list of wishes.

1. World peace.
2. Immortality.
3. Ability to use execute while in defensive stance.

Claws cut loose.

After running the daily heroic (Ramps) the other night me (as Muriel, holy priest) and a few of my guildies (Atania the combat rogue, Imdestiny the shadow priest, Veloreynn the fire mage, and Wutan the protection paladin) caught a show in World’s End Tavern in Lower City in Shattrath. I think someone went home with the bassist but I won’t say who.

Oh noes. I needz 2 git out.

So I was flipping through this week’s issue of The New Yorker and I came across this cartoon. I stared at it for a long time. Not only was I unable to find it funny, I was unable to even understand it. Eventually I realized that I was reading “cc” as “crowd control” instead of “carbon copy.”

Facepalms & facepulls.

We’ve been raiding Karazhan since March. We aren’t clearing the place in one night, Nightbane still gives us trouble, and we haven’t downed Netherspite yet (never had the time to really work on him), but it’s now routine for us and isn’t considered progression raiding anymore. Not only are we much better at raiding Karazhan, we are also considerably less careful. My good friend Wutan the protection paladin and I like to sometimes see how quickly we can clear through trash. Once upon a time we took as few mobs as possible — often double-tanking a single mob. Now it’s as many as we can reach. This drives Atania the threat-conscious rogue crazy. “Uh, who is MT?” Our response: “Whoever has aggro.” Also we have adopted the following rule:

Adds that don’t result in a wipe or the death of significant raid members (i.e., tanks and healers) are not adds. It’s called chain pulling.

We also have set I think a our own little pre-WotLK achievement goal for Karazhan:

Karazhan Facepull Champions: Kill every boss in Karazhan after a facepull.

Our latest facepull was last night. I was going to off-tank Maiden. Everyone was in position and I was getting ready to run in after Wutan had aggro. I figured I wasn’t close enough to provoke Maiden since Atania was closer. Of course it didn’t occur to me then that Atania was stealthed.

Karazhan was once quite stressful for us. Well it was for me. Last night Keredria was teasing me about how I used to freak out when the ghostly stewards would make me drunk. “I’m going down!” I would scream. Now when I say I’m going to die she simply says “no you’re not” with a her “you big baby” tone of voice.

I think the silly mistakes actually make a farming raid more fun whether they be facepulls, falling to your death in the library section, or accidentally shooting the audience during the Opera event.

Because I love you guys but hate the forums.

Well, some forums are ok — perhaps I am just lazy. Anyway I have a macro problem. I am trying to create a mouseover devastate macro. I’ve toyed with these in the past. Now I think that at one point I had come up with a version of the macro where if I my mouse was over a mob that was out of range it would devastate my current target rather than trying to devastate the mouseover target only to tell me that it is out of range. I find this very appealing because sometimes I lose track of my mouse when tanking and I don’t want to have it tell me “out of range” when really want to devastate my current target. Another reason why I want this functionality is that I want to use the same button for both “normal” devastate as well as “mouseover” devastate. I’m not sure if that is a great idea, but I want to experiment with it.

Imma QQ now.

On the side I’ve been leveling an elemental shaman after being inspired to try a dps hybrid class with the potential to heal. Until 60 it was relatively easy going once I got to about 40. Now in the past I hadn’t paid my attention to experience. Of course I knew that the amount of experience to level increases with level, and that the amount of experience rewarded from quests was increased recently for levels 20-60, and I knew that the amount of experience necessary to level from 60-70 was quite a bit more, relatively, but I had no idea just how much more until I dinged 60. Until I recently updated my interface with Trinity Bars I just had that experience bar at the bottom of my screen and usually only considered experience-to-next-level in terms of a percentage or the number of “bubbles.” But that bar is gone now with my new interface so I enabled a bar with the X-Perl Unitframes add-on to display the amount of experience gained at a given level and the amount of experience necessary to level. OMFG! Almost 500K experience to 61?!?!!!!! A simple graph from WoW Wiki makes it all too clear.

I am not sure how I managed to level three other toons to 70 and not realize how significant the change was from levels 1-60 to levels 60-70. Perhaps it was because I was leveling toons for distinct roles that I wanted to try (tank, dps, and healer). I am not sure what I am going to do with my shaman. I already have a dps  caster. Enhancement doesn’t appeal to me. And I’m quite happy healing with my holy priest. Maybe Makawee will need to take a little vacation at Honor Hold until I get inspired again or find some novel role for her. PvP perhaps?

Sometimes you just get lucky.

Prince Malchezaar saved my life Saturday night. We had a pattern of infernal drops during the third phase that put me too far away from the raid but also penned me in. I started to move across the infernals’ blast radius while popping all my cooldowns to get in range of the healers, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to make it. But then Prince did his knock-back thing and tossed me over the infernals and to precisely where I needed to be relative to the raid. Nice.

Incidentally, I have yet to see the warrior/priest/druid Tier 4 token drop from Prince.

I want my MGT.

Like most of you I did my time grinding Shattered Sun Offensive reputation. It isn’t much fun for a protection warrior, even in DPS gear. I heard that if you are really leet you’d just run Magister’s Terrace over and over again for reputation, ideally on heroic mode for the extra reputation, badges, and loot. So I wrote a little parody about it. Here’s a link to the video for the original song. This isn’t my first Dire Straits song parody.

Badges for Nothing

Now look at them raiders
That’s the way you do it
You get your rep running MGT
That ain’t grinding
That’s the way you do it
Badges for nothin and the loot’s for free
Now that ain’t grinding
That’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys are leet
Maybe get an upgrade for your mainhand weapon
Maybe get an upgrade for your feet

We gotta kill these Dawnblade Blood Elfs
Grinding nagas to get their keys
We gotta bomb these Legion forces
We gotta bomb for these NPCs

See the hardcore raider with the epics and the title
Yeah buddy, he runs for fun
That hardcore raider got his own hawkstrider
That hardcore raider he’s “…of the Shattered Sun”

We gotta kill these Dawnblade Blood Elfs
Grinding nagas to get their keys
We gotta bomb the Legion forces
We gotta bomb for these NPCs

I shoulda learned to make mooncloth
I shoulda learned how to mine some rocks
Look at that healer, she’s got it going in the portal
Man we could have some HoTs
And I’m out here…what’s that? Karazhan raiding?
But I’m out killing naga and freeing murloc slaves
Oh that ain’t grinding
That’s the way you do it
Get your badges for nothing and the loot’s for free

We gotta kill these Dawnblade Blood Elfs
Grinding nags to get their keys
We gotta bomb the Legion forces
We gotta bomb for these NPCs

Now that ain’t grinding
You get your rep running MGT
That ain’t grinding
That’s the way you do it
Badges for nothin and the loot’s for free

Confessions of an anxious parent.

I have four children — all daughters. Jessika was my first and, admittedly, my favorite. She has always been a quiet and modest tomboy, but she is prone to great fits of rage when her friends, for whom she has great compassion, are in danger. For a long time I thought that one child would be enough, but eventually Aksana was born. She is very different from Jessika. She is cold and intellectual, with a dark and sometimes risqué sense of humor. She has always had a taste for power. At first I was worried that her motivations were purely selfish, but I learned that this was the only way that Aksana knew how to help her friends. Muriel spent much of her childhood and adolescence focused on her studies at seminary but was always acutely aware of the pains our enemies inflicted upon her two older sisters. She wanted to help them. She knew that there were ways that she could fight back like her sister Aksana. Classes in the dark arts existed at her seminary, although they were rarely discussed and were not listed in the official course catalogs, but she decided that perhaps her greatest gift was one of healing. Makawee was a bit of a surprise — a “caboose baby” I suppose. She has characteristics of all three of her older sisters. Like Jessika she has a great respect for arms and armor. And like Muriel she has a gift for healing. However I think that she will follow in Aksana’s footsteps.

Jessika, Aksana, and Muriel are all now settled in Outland. They are finished with their training and are fairly self sufficient financially. This has given me more time to spend with Makawee. But I have become concerned about the family’s impending move to Northrend. All four girls will need my help so that they may continue their training, and I am sure there will be significant financial needs as well. I love them all, but I will have to make some difficult choices. I think quite naturally that Jessika, the eldest, will be my priority, but it will be difficult to neglect the others and to decide how to divide what little extra time I will have among them.

Another Intervene macro.

Here’s a little macro I came up with yesterday and tested in Karazhan. I’m not the first to suggest this but I haven’t seen it discussed much.

/cast Taunt
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene

Essentially this macro will Taunt or Intervene depending on the range of the target (assuming you have sufficient rage and your cooldowns are up). If the target is within 5 yards it will be taunted, and if the target is between 8 and 25 yards away, it will be intervened. Furthermore after doing an Intervene you can hit the macro again to Taunt. What I like about this macro is that it puts together a couple of abilities that are similar in purpose so that I can economize a bit on keybindings and keyboard space. I find that I am more likely to use an ability effectively if it is easier to reach. I’ve always had Taunt bound the one of my best keys (tilde), and now I have Intervene in an easy to reach place. Of course I realize that I could also use keybindings for multiple abilities by using macros with modifiers, but for myself I’ve found that I am not very good about hitting modifiers quickly in the heat of battle.

Keep in mind that there are some limitations of this macro. You need to still be careful about the range. You may really want to Taunt a target but if it is in the Intervene range you may find yourself moved to a spot less convenient from where you started. And given the ranges of Taunt and Intervene there is a 3 yard dead zone (5 to 8 yards) where you can’t do either.

Incidentally, didn’t they fix Intervene so that it would automatically select target of target so that the extra conditions in the standard intervene macro are unnecessary? That is, doesn’t

/cast Intervene

now work the same as

/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene?

I thought this was changed in a patch but I haven’t had a chance to test it.

It’s progression mon.

Last night we made our second assault on Zul’Aman. Actually given our gear we probably should have returned to Zul’Aman much earlier. We’d gone once before several weeks ago and made it less than gracefully to the first boss (trouble with the last pull) and made two attempts on Nalorakk before calling it a night. Last night we one-shotted Nalorakk and downed Akil’zon after three attempts. We started clearing the trash to Jan’alai but folks were getting tired. I hadn’t even noticed that my sword was nearly broke. Have you ever tried to hold aggro with a fist and shield? The drops were shoulders for our hunter Niobar and a chest piece for our healadin Ashratum.

After Karazhan Zul’Aman seems very relaxed and quick — good casual raidng.

Too much information!

Is anybody else overwhelmed with the amount of information now coming out regarding The Wrath of the Lich King? I can’t help but wonder about my toons and how they might change with the expansion. I don’t see many changes for my holy priest or my elemental shaman. I will be interested to see if frost will be a viable spec for raiding or if I will want to switch to fire or arcane. But the changes in the mechanics of tanking in general and in the talents and abilities of (protection) warriors are quite considerable. It would seem that tanks are getting perhaps the largest overhaul of all the classes/roles. I wonder what they are going to do to balance the three existing tank classes after the removal of crushing blows from the game.

Jessika’s WoW-free vacation.

Part of the reason for the gap in posts lately is that I was away from WoW for a whole week! I did a bit of vacationing in Oregon. Of course even though I couldn’t play WoW, my mind was still there. Here are a few screen shots.

The Oregon Dunes are reminiscent of Tanaris.

I got a good picture of a Sand Gnome.

I also visited Crater Lake. They say it was caused by a volcano, but personally I think this is what is left after our fire mage Veloreynn nuked a boss or something.

Near Bend I also found what looked like the remnants of Veloreynn’s work. Smokey the Bear would like to have a talk with you Vel.

New trash tanking philosophy.

Karazhan isn’t up to code.

I hope we are not the only raid that has more deaths due to falls than trash in the library section of Karazhan.

Should we talk about the weather?

Yet another 80’s music reference. Hmmm…are those women topless? I never noticed that before. (It’ll be fun to count the clicks on that link in my log.)

Anyway, after reading this article in WoW Insider I was reflecting on my feelings toward Outland — specifically the ambience. The surreal quality of Outland zones is fun, but there always seemed to be something missing that I could not quite put my finger on. But then this morning I was grinding through some Bloodsail Buccaneers on a beach in Stranglethorn Vale with my Draenei shaman when it started to rain. But it wasn’t just rain, it was a tropical rainstorm with horizontal gusts of wind and rain as well. It was fantastic! Then it occurred to me that that is what is missing in Outland — weather. Does the weather ever change in Outland? Also aside from Nagrand is there any noticable difference between day and night in Outland? I understand that someplace like Outland may not have normal weather patterns like in Azeroth, but at least Nagrand and Terokkar should have some rain, and maybe there could be electrical/mana/nether storms in some of the other zones. I’m imagine we’ll see some fun weather patterns in Northrend.

Ouch! Those are sharp!

So much for those celebratory group hugs after a boss kill. And what’s with the flame coming out the top!? I’m a little worried about my ears getting singed. If the shoulders drop off of Netherspite now I am going to shove them up his…well…somewhere where they’ll always be blocking the red beam.

WTB new dance.

I’m looking forward to the possibility of new dances. The Alizee thing for female Nelfs is getting a bit old. It’s a sexy dance we she does it, but the Nelf version is just slutty. We need something that is sexy and classy. May I suggest Flamenco?

OMG! Get out of the way! I have to PvP really badly!

So Keredria brought to my attention these shoulders after reading this post on BBB. They would be a considerable upgrade from my Shoulderguards of the Bold. Now I tried PvP a few times with Jess and really disliked it, but everything else I have is purple and I caught my guildies snickering about my shoulders a few times now, so I decided to bite the adamantium bullet and grind some honor.

The shoulders cost 20 Arathi Basin thingies, so I started there. Interesting, although not terribly productive given that the Alliance so rarely wins AB. I had to (re)learn how to fight in battle and berserker stance and use abilities that I rarely use while tanking like rend and hamstring. Of course I am a PvE-geared tank so I don’t die quickly, and although I don’t do much damage I can annoy people just by getting in their face. I like to go for casters since I can interrupt spells with both shield bash and concussion blow. I spent maybe 10 minutes just going back and forth with a holy paladin. After the fight was over (I died) she thanked me. Maybe she was being sarcastic but I like to think she had a good time. A few of my guildies came in with me and we all got on vent and had a fun time. Keredria said that she thinks of me as the bowling ball that they throw at the Horde pins. She wrote an amusing post about how we tried to save the corn.

I’m only a few short of the 20 AB thingies, so I’ve been doing Alterac Valley for honor since (a) we tend to win AV more than any other BG so more honor and (b) a tank can actually be useful there. I usually just try to make my way to Galv and/or Drek, although sometimes I have to play Bowling-for-Hordies if I get stuck at a choke point. Turtles suck although I just played an AV BG where a few of us were able to turn around a bad turtle by breaking through the horde position at IBGY. We took everything south of IBGY and took down Drek with a small but effective crew with me tanking. I still don’t know much about PvP and resilience and such, but tank and spank? That I can do.

So it’s been better than I anticipated, but once I have those shoulders Jess isn’t going back.

Miscellaneous news & observations.

• If you are like me and started playing WoW after TBC came out, head out to Eastern Plaguelands and check out Naxxramus floating above Plaguewood (NW part of Eastern Plaguelands). I never noticed it on my first two toons that I brought through there. I would suggest you do it soon because it’s going to be moved when WotLK comes out. It makes me regret that I missed some of the pre-TBC raid content, but then I’m not really hardcore enough to get to those late endgame instances.
• We did Zul’Aman for the first time last week. We didn’t have much luck but we did have fun. Ghostlands is so eerily beautiful and the ambient music is wonderful. I enjoyed leveling my now neglected Blood Elf warlock through there.
• My human priest Muriel hit 70 about a week ago, respecced holy, and finished her primal mooncloth set. I’ve healed a few normal 70ish instances, one heroic (Underbog), and filled-in as the second of two healers on our first attempt at Netherspite. That gave me nightmares. You are not prepared! Very true.
• The spell animation for Prayer of Mending looks utterly cool. They need to use this for some new offensive spell in the holy school.
• I’ve started playing again with my Draenei shaman, Makawee. Why a shaman? Simple. Throwing lightning is totally cool and I want to wear kilts. Also she looks great — greyish-white dreadlocks and dark skin. I should have named her Storm. Keredria’s shadow priest is about the same level so we’ve been doing a little questing together. I realize that the most efficient spec for leveling a shaman is enhancement, but I’m trying elemental.
• It’s ironic perhaps since my main is a protection warrior, but I prefer magic over melee for my alts. I’ve done mage, warlock, priest, and now shaman. If I were to start another toon I’d try balance druid — i.e., “crit chicken” — but to me the moonkin form looks so silly. Shouldn’t the animal form for a nuker be something more menacing? Maybe something like those lightning-casting serpents in Blade’s Edge Mountains?

Time to go shopping. Advice?

After tonight I will have a touch over 100 badges. I’ve had my eye on the Chestplate of Stoicism to replace my Vindicator’s Hauberk, but I thought I’d make a quick post before I decide to see if anyone else has some ideas. Check me out on the Armory.

Off-tanking weapon choice?

So as I sit here in the Blasted Lands training-up two-handed axes and swords, just for the hell of it, I am wondering about the optimal weapon choice for a protection warrior for off-tanking. I’m talking about situations where there’s another tank that has aggro so I am just there to do damage. Is is better to dual-wield or go with a two-handed weapon as a protection warrior? Clearly the choice would depend in part on the weapons, but what other issues should one consider? Devastate spamming is only possible with one/main-handed weapons, and it enhances the DPS of other melee classes, but is there any argument to using a two-hander with heroic strikes and slams? I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion of the DPS of dual-wielding versus two-handers for fury and arms warriors, but nothing really for the soloing or off-tanking protection warrior.

Move dammit!

I’ve been spending a bit of time lately reflecting on warrior tanks. Of course there is considerable discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of tank, generally and in given situations. But lately I have been thinking specifically about the different styles of tanking. I think that for any tank to be a good tank, regardless of their class, they must master their own particular abilities and thus their style of tanking. The rest is just statistical.

Lately I have been trying to master my movement-related abilities: charge, intervene, and intercept. Let me summarize them here for a review.

Charge. Charge an enemy, generate 15 rage (at max rank), and stun it for 1 sec. Cannot be used in combat. Requires Battle Stance. I find this to be a good opener if it’s safe to do without getting adds, and some of that rage can be carried over into defensive stance. I also like to use this when off-tanking.

Intervene. Run at high speed towards a party member, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack made against them in the next 10 seconds. Requires Defensive Stance. Clearly this can be used to save the butt of someone that has gotten aggro on a mob that is out of melee range, but I find it useful for just making quick movements from one point to another, provided the point I want to get to is occupied by a party/raid, member.

Intercept. Charge an enemy, causing 105 damage (at max rank) and stunning it for 3 sec. Requires Berserker Stance. This can be used as an alternative to Charge if I want a longer stun (at the cost of more rage). But unlike charge it can be used while in combat so it’s useful when tanking multiple mobs that are spread out or when chasing after a mob that has gotten out of melee range. I find this useful for getting aggro back on a mob that has escaped me or simply moving on to the next target in the kill order, provided I have surplus rage.

These abilities set warriors apart from druids, who have only feral charge which is similar to intercept, and paladins who have no movement-related abilities. Each moves the warrior from one point to another, quickly, but also has one or more side-effects such as damage/threat, rage generation, stun, or the protection of party/raid member. On paper these abilities look great but in practice I find them a bit more tricky to use. The reason is that the correct execution of any of these abilities requires the right stance, range, and rage (for Intervene and Intercept). Unfortunately for the wildlife and ogres of Nagrand I have been spending a bit of time practicing my use of Charge and Intercept to exercise my keybindings and judgment of rage and range. I’ve found the following macro quite useful.

#showtooltip Charge
/cast [stance:1,nocombat] Charge; [stance:3] Intercept
/stopcasting
/cast [stance:1/3] Defensive Stance; [nocombat] Battle Stance; Berserker Stance

This is a combination of two macros. Depending on whether or not you are in combat it will switch you to the appropriate stance on the first click, then on the second click cast either Charge or Intercept and then (usually) switch you back to Defensive Stance. I’ve bound this to the E key, and I have Intervene bound to the Q key (thus near my movement keys and not far from my ability keys). But I’ve also put all three abilities up on a custom action bar so that I can see whether I have the appropriate range and rage to use it and to monitor their cooldowns.

(To be honest I still don’t like the feel of stance-dancing. It feels to me like too much of a kludge. I wish we had something more elegant like shadow priests who simply shift out of shadowform if they try to cast a spell from the holy school. But then I suppose we’d have to make a macro to switch back into Defensive Stance.)

Karazhan update.

Some miscellaneous points updates and observations:

• It’s official. We have Shade of Aran on farm. Somehow we just got this fight. We didn’t try anything different. We just somehow got it. This was perhaps the greatest achievement of the last week. Prince is just business. He has some tokens we’d like to have. But Shade…that was personal.
• We finally downed Prince Malchezaar. As Keredria observed I’m a bit sad about it actually.
• We tried Nightbane a few times after downing Prince since we still had some time left on our flasks. Ouch.
• I finally picked up Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch. Nice. This boosts my dodge to over 25%.
• I need to work more on an aggro/dps gear set. As my gear has improved my increased avoidance/mitigation has led to more rage starvation, particularly on trash. Also I do a bit of off-tanking. Things like Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch may have to stay in the pack except for bosses.
• I need to work more on threat generation. Our DPS is generating quite a bit more threat compared to when we first entered Karazhan. Actually Prince taught me quite a bit about improving my rotation. Of course he makes me pretty mad which helps.

Let’s do lots of dailies.

My priest Muriel is nearly 70. She’ll be a healer. I’ve already started looking at what I may need to do to make her viable for Karazhan and heroics as a backup healer. Ugh. Apologies to the Pet Shop Boys.

Reputation (Let’s Do Lots of Dailies)

I’ve had enough of pugging and noobs wiping on the trash
My mount is parked outside, I’m afraid it isn’t fast
I’m looking for a partner, someone who makes more threat
Ask yourself this question, do you want to get rep?

I’ve got the heals, you’ve got the stam
Let’s do lots of dailies
You’ve got the health, I’ve got the heals
Let’s do lots of dailies

You can tell I’m well-geared, I’m done with spamming trade
My specialty is mooncloth, I could be doing raids
I can customize my addons — healbot, grid, and clique
If you’ve got the inclination, I’m your healy chick

Oh, there’s a lot of reputation
If you know where to grind it, you know?
There’s a lot of reptuation
We’ll have to pug I’ll admit
I hate this shit

I’ve got the heals, you’ve got the stam
Let’s do lots of dailies
You’ve got the health, I’ve got the heals
Let’s do lots of dailies
Let’s do lots of — dailies
Dailies

You can see I’m holy-specced, I know what I can do
How’d you feel about it, come tank a run or two
I’m looking for a partner, regardless of your class
Think about it srsly, solo’s a pain in the ass

Let’s — got the heals
Make — got the stam
Let’s do lots of dailies
Let’s — you’ve got the health
Make — I’ve got the heals
Let’s do lots of dailies

I’ve got the heals, you’ve got the stam
Let’s do lots of dailies
You’ve got the health, I’ve got the heals
Dailies

My alternative lifestyle.

Yeah don’t get excited. This is about alts.

I currently have two toons that are raid-viable for Karazhan: Jessika the protection warrior and Aksana the frost mage. Muriel is my priest, currently shadow at level 67 to level but will respec to holy/healing at 70. Jessika is still very much my main but my Aksana has seen quite a bit of action in Karazhan and heroics. I suspect Muriel will too when she hits 70 since we are often short healers. There are advantages and disadvantages to having more than one toon that are at about the same gear level, particularly when those toons can fulfill different rolls in a party/raid. The flexibility is an advantage. I can fill more than one kind of slot in a party/raid (i.e., tank, dps, or healer) depending on what is needed. This is an advantage for me as a person, since I can better help a party/raid and attend more runs than someone with only one viable toon. But this is a disadvantage for my toons because the badges I have earned are spread out between different toons. While Jessika and Aksana together currently have maybe 150 badges, neither of them alone has enough to purchase a decent upgrade. I think maybe my toons are mad at me.

My GUI center.

I’ve been steadily working on my GUI to enhance my tanking. In particular I’ve been trying to put as much information as possible near the center of the screen while still keeping it fairly uncluttered. I have now what I think is a fairly nice setup, at least for me. I use IceHUD which is similar to several other addons which displays bars that “bracket” your toon with information like your health and mana/rage/energy, the health and mana of the target, and also the identity of the target. IceHUD includes some other nice features such as castbars for you and the target, and buffs and debuffs. I also use Quartz with castbars for me and my target and a bar for the global cooldown. Recently I started using Trinity Bars 2.0. I placed five very small buttons just below the center of my screen for heroic strike, devastate, shield slam, shield block, and revenge. I did this so that I can easily monitor the availability and cooldowns of my key tanking abilities. Of course there is some redundancy in the information provided by these addons and others that I use like X-Perl Unit Frames and several cooldown timers, but information redundancy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Of course once I did that I couldn’t resist the temptation to start customizing my entire screen.

Edit: I’m having trouble getting WordPress to do a thumbnail, but here’s a link to a screen shot. This is “solo mode.” For raiding I have a few more buttons for special macros and consumables.

It isn’t Prince Malchezaar alone that bothers me, it’s those damned legions he commands!

It had to happen to us eventually: the infamous 1% wipe. It was our third time working on Prince Malchezaar and my first time tanking him. A couple times we lost a few folks to the shadow nova, but usually it was unlucky infernal placement that got us. On the 1% wipe we had an infernal drop between me and the rest of the raid. I had a very nice spot to tank him between three infernals in a triangle around me, but unfortunately I was out of range of the healers. I regret that I hadn’t attempted to run through an infernal’s blast radius to get closer to the raid. I believe we have the gear for this fight. I think it may be a matter of learning how to move collectively to avoid the infernals while keeping the correct distance between the main tank and the healers.

Shade of Aran down, again, barely.

Shade of Aran: “Who are you? What do you want? Stay away from me!”

Dear Shade of Aran,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice several evenings in Karazhan for whatever it is that you drop. But we think you are crazy to make us tell you who we are. You see us as you want to see us — in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a caster, and a hunter, and a rogue, a healer, and a tank. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Left Claw

(80’s pop culture reference FTW!)

Holy hand grenade of Antioch.

So since I finished my SSO dailies I have had some time to play around with my human priest alt Muriel between heroics and raids. She was a holy healer for about 10 levels, grinding experience from PUGs in SM, ZF, and BRD. I enjoyed that quite a bit but I specced her back to shadow after PUGs got scarce. I have played her off and on since then, but then one day I dinged 58 so I figured I might as well take her all the way to 70. I do enjoy the unique DPS style of shadow, but since I already have a level 70 DPS toon (my Draenei frost mage, Aksana), and because we already have a good shadow priest in the guild, that I would maybe try a bit of healing. She’s already producing primal mooncloth for the set so I am committed. Currently she is working her way through Terokkar Forest at level 64. Of course many priests, including those who intend to heal at 70, level as shadow, but at level 60 I respecced to holy thinking that I might grind-out some experience in instances again. However I rarely play her when I have large segments of free time so she’s been questing most of the time. Interestingly I’ve found that if one spends extra talent points in the holy tree that enhance holy DPS that a holy priest is not unlike a slightly gimped arcane mage — good burst damage but poor mana efficiency. My typical pull is power word: shield, holy fire, and spam smite till the mob is dead, sometimes finishing it off with a power word: death (I know it’s more mana efficient to wand the mob to death but I love power word: death). I throw-in a power word: pain if I need a bit more damage. So I am running around Outland as a kind of “holy mage” with really good healing, and I really enjoy it!

The holy priest class/spec still feels very fresh and interesting to me, and there is still quite a bit to learn about her. This is something I very much enjoy about WoW. There is quite a bit to learn about content, but there is also much to learn about your toon.

The prince said, “Who is she Molly? What kind of woman is it who believes — who knows, for I saw her face — that she can cure wounds with a touch, and who weeps without tears?” Molly went on about her work, still humming to herself. “Any woman can weep without tears,” she answered over her shoulder, “and most can heal with her hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that’s riddle enough.”

It’s a bit like sex.

For me there have been some funny incidents of abashment as a WoW player. Interesting I compare these feelings to those I had when sex first became, well, less theoretical and more applied.* Once I had to go to a computer game store to purchase a WoW “gift card” because my subscription had elapsed. (The bank had changed my card for security reasons but I was unable to get WoW to accept my new card.) I felt very exposed and embarrassed about buying the card — it felt like I was making my first purchase of birth control. I really did have the thought that I might explain to the clerk that the card was not for me (of course) but for someone else. And for some reason after using it I filed the card away in with my other bank and membership cards only to have it accidentally fall out in front of another store clerk and several customers. There it was for them to clearly see — I was MMO-active. Then there was the first time we tried using voice on WoW. It felt like such a leap of intimacy with people with whom I had played with for months already but had only communicated with by text. Our relationship had suddenly changed in a dramatic and irreversible way. The next day I went out to buy a headset and wondered the whole time if the clerk knew that I was buying it for WoW. After all the patch for the built-in voice chat had just come out the day before. How could he not know? But I had to get the headset. My relationship with my guildies had reached a new level. We had finally “done it.”

* For the confused WoW player, “sex” is an activity engaged by two consenting adults that is a physical expression of affection. It usually takes place during auctioneer scans, traversing some of the longer flight paths, or when the servers are offline on Tuesday mornings.

My 15 minutes.

Ratshag kindly emailed Keredria and me a link to this WoW Insider article. Note who is in the picture.

A better Berserker Rage stance-dance macro?

We’ve been giving some serious thought to trying Nightbane soon so I’ve been reading up on strategy and playing with the standard Berserker Rage stance-dance macro to counter fears. If you’ve used this macro or variations of it you know that with three clicks it puts you in Berserker Stance, casts Berserker Rage, and then puts you back into Defensive Stance. One thing that bothers me about this macro is that if you happen to click it four or more times, which I could see happening in the heat of battle, it starts the sequence over again so you could find yourself in the very unfortunate position of being in Berserker Stance while tanking. So I have been playing around with the following:

#showtooltip Berserker Rage
/castsequence reset=30 Berserker Stance, Berserker Rage, Defensive Stance, Defensive Stance

This macro does the same thing, but if you keep spamming it it does nothing until 30 seconds elapse (the cooldown of Berserker Rage). Thus you do not run the risk of switching back to Berserker Stance by accident if you spam the macro more than three times. There is one risk, however. If you do hit the macro again before 30 seconds have elapsed it will reset the timer, so you do need to pay attention to the cooldown. Also I should note that unlike the usual macro this one does nothing if you are not in Defensive Stance. It is strictly a tanking macro.

Anyway this is still experimental so please don’t assume that it is foolproof, but I thought I would put it out there for people to try, criticize, and maybe improve. Also I am not quite sure why the second Defensive Stance is necessary, so if somebody could explain that too me I would be grateful.

Truly pretty in plate.

Here is Jess. The shield will be replaced soon by the epic SSO rep reward, although I prefer the look of my Netherwing Protector’s Shield. The shoulders don’t quite match and the belt is a little off (both pre-Karazhan blues). The boots, leggings, gauntlets, bracers, and sword are all drops acquired in Karazhan in the past month or so. I love the color of the plate that drops from Karazhan. Oh the stats are pretty good too.

King’s Defender.

Oh yeah baby.

We returned to Karazhan Friday night to continue where we had left on Thursday. Thursday we cleared Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, and Opera (first time for us for Romulo and Julianne). Tonight it was Curator, we downed Shade of Aran for the first time (finally!), we tried Illhoof for the first time ever and killed him on the second try, and of course we did Chess where I got myself just a bit of an upgrade. Oh and we made one attempt on Prince before the trash re-spawned and we called it a night. In addition to King’s Defender there were some good drops for the healers and rogues. Overall a very good run.

Tree of Life.

I’ve always liked “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits. I’d thought about doing a parody of “Feed the Trees” by Belly, but I like this better.

Here comes Keredria healing 5-mans, raid groups
Restoration druid, she’s such a deal
Here comes K she’s a real life woman
Down in Karazhan, trying to keep it real
She got the lifebloom, she got the regrowth
Oh yeah the girl can heal
Innervation, rejuvenation
And turning all her fishies into a meal

She do the spell that abolishes the poison
She do the spell that gives me life
She is the tree, she is the Tree of Life
Yeah she is the Tree of Life

Here come Keredria, she’ll make you thorny
Hand me down my tanking sword
Here comes Keredria with gear and glory
Epics and bitchin’ blues
She got the lifebloom, she got the regrowth
Oh yeah the girl can heal
Innervation, rejuvenation
And turning all her fishies into a meal

She do the spell that abolishes the poison
She do the spell that gives me life
She is the tree, she is the Tree of Life
Yeah she is the Tree of Life

Here comes Keredria healing 5-mans, raid groups
Restoration druid, she’s such a deal
Here comes K she’s a real life woman
Down in Karazhan, trying to keep it real
She got the lifebloom, she got the regrowth
Oh yeah the girl can heal
Innervation, rejuvenation
And turning all her fishies into a meal

And after all the raiding and heroics
Just try to remember why you’re still alive
She is the tree, she is the Tree of Life
Yeah she is the Tree of Life

Revered & geared.

So I’ve been a good little tank and have been doing my SSO dailies. This morning I hit revered and promptly picked up Inuuro’s Blade for tanking and The Sunbreaker and Bombardier’s Blade for soloing — a significant improvement over dual-wielding Grom’tor’s Charge and Blackout Truncheon which will help with grinding to exalted. As for tanking, I am going to have a hard time giving up the axe. We’ve been through a lot together. The extra stamina and agility are still very attractive, and my DPS haven’t been getting aggro off me unless something goes horribly wrong in a pull, but I suppose that if my DPS are holding back at all due to threat I may have to sacrifice it for the extra threat I can generate with the sword.

The Newbie.

My apologies to The Verve Pipe.

The Newbie

When we were new we knew everything
She a rogue who rarely ever watched her threat
Now we’re corpse running, sobbing with our toons on the floor
Stop a raid dead with a pricey repair debt

I can’t be held responsible
She crit twice with her mace
I won’t be held responsible
She got aggro in the first place

For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were leet and we’d be able to compete
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever wipe on this boss
We were merely newbies

Our main tank took a week’s vacation to forget her
His healer did a week of dailies for rep she wanted
And now he’s guilt stricken sobbing with his shield on the floor
Thinks about her now and how he never really taunted, says

I can’t be held responsible
She crit twice with her mace
I won’t be held responsible
She got aggro in the first place

For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were leet and we’d be able to compete
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever wipe on this boss
We were merely newbies

hey yeah
hey yeah
hey yeah

We’ve tried to wash our hands of all of this
We never talk about our lacking skill or gear
Or how we were corpse running with our toons on the floor
We fell to a boss when we tried not to slip, we’d say

I can’t be held responsible
She crit twice with her mace
I won’t be held responsible
She got aggro in the first place

For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were leet and we’d be able to compete
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever wipe on this boss
We were merely newbies

For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were leet and we’d be able to compete
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever wipe on this boss
We were merely newbies
We were merely newbies
We were merely newbies

The WoW hangover.

Ugh. Due to real life constraints I usually cannot start anything serious in WoW earlier than 7:00 PM my time which means if I am raiding with Jess or decide to do a “quick” heroic with Aksana after my dailies I can easily be up till 1:00 or 1:30. Now I realize for some people that isn’t a big deal at all, but real life also gets me up at 7:00 AM at the latest most mornings. The combination of the two results in what I like to call the World of Warcraft Hangover:

Symptoms:

• general fatigue
• throbbing eye sockets
• sore ears (glasses + cheap headset = ouch)
• sore back
• cramped fingers
• really f*****-up dreams

Nevertheless Saturday and Sunday mornings me and a few of my guildies are online with our morning coffee for a little hair of the dog (link for those of you not familiar with that expression).

Venting about vent.

Well not really venting I guess, but I have an issue with it. I just cannot shut up when we raid. This may be justified somewhat by the fact of being the raid leader and main tank, but I do realize that I go overboard sometimes. One of the Pillars of a Great Tank is

Before you say something be sure that whatever you say is better than silence.

I am horrible about this. I am a fairly introverted person, although not pathologically so. But something I have noticed about myself is that when I am talking about something that interests me and/or I am with friends I open-up quite a bit, sometimes too much. I am lucky that the raid is as patient with me as they are (or maybe they just mute me until we get to a boss).

Damn dailies.

I’ve done daily quests from time to time with my frost mage Aksana for a little extra income. With a frost mage they are terribly easy. But just recently I started doing them with Jess. Oh the pain! One reason for this exercise in masochism was that I needed two more Badges of Justice to get Slikk’s Cloak of Placation based on the recommendation of some folks that commented on an earlier post. I just barely managed to get two Badges of Justice after two days of dailies. The last one came off the last daily I did late last night. But I am very happy with the cloak. Not only is it a good tanking cloak, but it looks great with the gear I’ve been picking up in Karazhan lately. The other reason is that the SSO rep may be useful if I don’t get the right drops in the near future. Keredria kindly helped me with some quests last night on the Isle of Quel’Danas. The only thing more pathetic than a protection warrior trying to do DPS is having their moonfire-spamming healer pull aggro off them repeatedly.

Sad tank.

Tanks get very attached to their healers. So I am a bit down right now because TLC lost its holy priest healer Suzzy. She had to leave because our raid times were not working for her in real life. I don’t want her to feel guilty about having to leave. It is understandable, but that does not mean I have to like it. /pout

So now I need to see if I can recruit another healer. Suzzy will be hard to replace because (a) she is very good and (b) she is a hoot to play with. I’ve thought about leveling up my priest for raid healing, but that would put Jess out of the raid, and I am not sure Keredria is going to let me do that.

Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!

So I have 33 Badges of Justice. Now the part I hate. I could spend them right now on a shield upgrade, or save them for something else. Ideas? Here’s my current gear. Right now we are working on Karazhan. We can clear up through Curator relatively easily.

Why a warrior/tank?

We’ve been taking a little break from raiding Karazhan, so I’ve had more time to be introspective (well, at least as introspective as my int will allow). Lately I’ve been thinking about why I decided to roll a warrior, and why I ultimately decided to become a protection warrior (i.e., tank). When I created Jessika I decided on a warrior for two simple reasons. One was that in my experience with other games warriors were relatively simple to play and a bit more durable than casters. I was a bit intimidated by the complexity of WoW so I figured that something (seemingly) simple would be best. At the time I wasn’t even sure I would continue to play once my free trial was over. The other reason was that warriors are not restricted by gear. I liked the idea that I could use anything (well, other than caster off-hands and wands) I happened to find.

Around the time I started questing in Darkshore I started making some friends and joined a guild (the same one I am still in today), so I was going to have to stay with Jessika since I wanted very much to keep up with my new friends. Also I had gotten a bit attached to her. So I leveled and allocated talent points without too much thought. I probably made it to 40 without really understanding what tanking was let alone how to do it. I did my first respec to fury in my 40s (after a rather bad attempt on ZF) and started dual-wielding. However I did start to learn how to tank and go “sword & board.” That was largely because of Keredria. She was the first pure healer I had met. Keredria made me want to become a better tank. After running SM and Uldaman with her I came to truly understand and appreciate the role of tank and healer in a 5-man.

I stayed fury until my mid 60’s in Outland. I had heard of course about how protection was THE way to go at endgame, and neither fury nor arms had much appeal to me. When I did instance it was always with Keredria as healer, and I figured that even though it would make leveling harder for me, if she could level specced healing the least I could do was spec protection. It was hard at first. The decrease in my DPS was noticeable. But Keredria and I did a lot of quests together those last few levels and quite a few for gear after reaching 70. It always amused us that although it took a long time for us to kill things, we could do it without much risk to ourselves, including elites and 3+ person group quests. It was actually quite a bit of fun. It would probably not be an understatement to say that Keredria can take quite a bit of the blame/credit for making and keeping me tanky.

So here I am at early endgame (Karazhan). I main tank. It is rewarding to have such a central role in a raid. The main tank is the center of attention, both from the mobs/bosses and the healers (although my healers like to remind me that they own me, not the other way around). I have a little diagram I like to use to explain why I get all tingly about tanking:

mobs -> me <- healers

I guess DPS fits in there somewhere. How could you not love that?

Absolutely bad-asses!

I love the sound of 10 people applying buffs at the very beginning of a raid. It always reminds me of these two minutes from Aliens.

Stay frosty.

Hey baby, spec me out.

Lately I have been giving some serious thought to a minor change in my spec. My current spec is a 12/5/44 which is a classic protection spec with a slight bias toward rage efficiency/generation. But I am now considering a 8/7/46 in favor of some damage reduction via improved demoralizing shout and a 5 sec extension of shield wall.  My thinking is that I am not having trouble with rage efficiency/generation anymore, so it might be worthwhile to get more melee damage reduction from demoralizing shout and a few more seconds out of shield wall. We are currently working through Karazhan. Does this sound reasonable or are there other point allocations that I should consider?

Curator is no longer operational.

So tonight was to be our second attempt on The Curator…one last attempt before the reset. It was a horrible start for a raid. I was very late, there were two partial wipes after the ghosts were accidentally aggroed near the back door, a couple people accidentally ported back to Stormwind thinking a portal was a mage table, and I think somebody fell off the bridge. But we finally made it to The Curator and were standing around the far end of the room discussing strategy when I backed up a bit too close to him and aggroed him prematurely. However we actually killed him! That was only our third attempt on The Curator. He dropped some healing mail which our paladin took for his healing set, and some Tier 4 gloves that were won by our hunter. I was so embarrassed because I had not researched the trash or the next bosses because I figured we’d be spending the night working on The Curator. We worked a bit on trash in the next room. It was a good thing we did because we got two epic BOP drops off the trash: the Boots of Evasion for our paladin (they dropped for me the previous night) and some gloves for our mage (they are for a frost mage and she is fire, but she took them anyway on the off chance she decides to change her spec). Eventually I know we are going to hit an encounter that is going to take us longer to work out. I really thought it was going to be The Curator. Of course maybe we just got lucky.

There’s no business like show business.

To reward everyone for downing the Maiden of Virtue the other night I took everyone to the opera. So we donned our best blues and epics and head out to Karazhan to catch a late show. We didn’t have tickets so we had to be a bit strong-handed with the ushers and some theater geeks after we snuck backstage (there were no empty seats left in the house). Unfortunately the show was a bit of a disappointment — very derivative. I can see why the New York Times panned it. Also the actress that played Dorothee couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag. However we got to keep some props for souveniers: some nice slippers for our mage and a helmet for our paladin.

So after that it was off to meet The Curator. Honestly I didn’t think we would get that far in one evening and hadn’t even extensively researched the trash, but we did make two good attempts, the second of which brought him down to about 29%. As is the experience with most folks I think we need to work a bit on our rotations and gear to get enough mana and DPS for the fight.

We had two other really good drops. The Boots of Elusion dropped for me off some of The Curator’s trash. Not bad at all. Our legendary drop was a shadow priest. She had been running with us for a couple of weeks now and decided that, against her better judgment, she wanted to join TLC.

Hopefully Keredria will have some screenshots up soon.

O hai! U R 4 farm k?

We returned to Karazhan last night for the first time after the last reset. This began our second week of raiding Karazhan. We’d made two runs the previous week resulting in successful attempts on Attumen and Moroes, but a failed attempt on Maiden. We downed Attumen with only a little difficulty this time. There was one clumsy wipe due to a botched aggro acquisition when he spawned. My fault I think — we were doing so much DPS that I didn’t call out for the DPS and healing to stop in time. Attuman dropped the Vambraces of Courage (again!) for our protection paladin Wutan, and the Gloves of Saintly Blessings for our holy priest Suzzy. Moroes was easy. We trap-kited the protection warrior and kept the holy paladin shackled while burning down the shadow priest and arms warrior, and then Moroes. One very lucky rogue got the Emerald Ripper. The other drop was the Belt of Gale Force. It’s more of a resto shaman piece probably but our paladin picked it up to use for off-healing until he finds something better. So we declared Attuman and Moroes as being officially on farm status and moved on to the Maiden of Virtue.

Maiden gave us a very hard time before, but we had a shadow priest in place of a melee DPS (rogue) from the last attempt so we decided to give her another try. There were a few wipes due to some bad luck and some positioning issues, but eventually we got it worked out and took her down on maybe the 5th try with no deaths. This is a tough fight for the healers. Keredria healed me and whomever else she could. Suzzy managed healing and did all the dispels. Wutan put on some healing gear and healed me through the repentance, using Blessing of Sacrifice too keep himself up. This is not a tough boss to tank. The only thing I did differently here was to keep my spell reflection up for when she tried to cast holy fire on me. It just gets a little tense during the 12 seconds of repentance. What was funny was that we did this with only nine people. One of our rogues (Daihiro) fell asleep. Maiden dropped the the Gloves of Quickening for our hunter Niobar (who has been very lucky with drops lately…the Truestrike Ring dropped off some trash earlier that night), and the Bands of Nefarious Deeds which was an upgrade for our shadow priest.

Maiden is still frustrating. My nerves were a little frazzled by the end of the evening. I’m afraid I even snapped at my healer. Before our last fight we were all in position Keredria said “go” and I yelled that only I get to say that. I was genuinely afraid that somebody would strike before I had a chance to get aggro, but I should have known that they all knew better.

Our crew this time was me (protection warrior), protection paladin off-tanking and off-healing, feral druid off-tanking/healing/dps, resto druid, holy priest, shadow priest, mage, and two rogues. All of us pledged to come back every week for the rest of our gaming lives and kill Maiden for giving us such a hard time.

A painful lesson in the importance of shield block.

Every (good) warrior tank knows how critical shield block is to tanking — particularly end-game bosses. Provided we keep it up it and are properly geared and specced it makes us immune to crushing blows. It is perhaps the defining ability of the warrior tank (paladins can also become immune to crushing blows but the gear requirements are very steep, and feral druids cannot become immune to crushing blows). Tanks are constantly spamming shield block throughout a fight to counter any crushing blows. It is something I do more or less automatically now so perhaps I take it for granted. But last night I got a very painful lesson in what happens when you don’t use shield block. We were making our first attempt on the Maiden of Virtue on Karazhan. I wanted to keep her centered in the room so I decided to use my charge stance-dance macro that shifts me to battle stance, casts charge, and then shifts me back to defensive stance. So I did this and died in less than 10 seconds. I thought that maybe I had caught a holy fire DoT that had not been dispelled in time, but when I looked back at my combat log I saw two crushing blows back-to-back that I had not managed to block. Ouch…that is embarrassing. How did I manage to not block two crushing blows? I quickly saw what happened. I had somehow not successfully switched back to defensive stance, and thus could not shield block despite the fact that I was by instinct hitting the key for it (shield block only works in defensive stance). Lesson learned.

Do not weep, Maiden, for war is kind.

As several people who knew the fight observed our group composition was probably not optimal for the Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan. We had four melee DPS (three rogues and a feral druid), only two full healers, and only two ranged DPS (hunter and mage). A protection paladin was standing outside the AoE to help dispel the holy fire DoT and back-up heal. We even tried having someone else tank while I brought in my frost mage to increase the ranged DPS. But as Keredria observed it may not be our time to do this boss, but we will be back.

“Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.“

But that being said I think everyone did well.

Since Karazhan is now reset we’ll likely return to farm Attumen and Moroes for some drops and maybe try a different encounter.

Oh noes, Moroes!

Tonight was our first real attempt on Moroes (we tried once the first night we were in Karazhan after taking down Attumen but we were short one person and it was very late). We killed him on our 5th or 6th attempt — nobody remembers for sure. On several attempts we took him down to nearly 1% even after losing DPS and/or a healer. The last time it went very well. We were all alive and at full health when Moroes went down. We are all very giddy. I don’t think anybody is going to have an easy time falling asleep tonight. Everyone did exceptionally well.

If you are curious our raid consisted of me (prot warrior), a protection paladin, a holy priest, a resto druid, a feral druid, a fire mage, a marksman/survival hunter, and three rogues. The adds were the holy priest, the arms warrior, the retribution paladin, and the protection warrior.

Ok off to bed. I am sure Keredria will have a more amusing account of our dinner with Moroes soon.

A bad omen.

Like many folks we were furiously trying to get a threat meter working on Tuesday. We were really freaking out because it was to be our first time in Karazhan. I’ve used Omen in the past and liked it fine, although I have never tried KTM. We found the new version of Omen that was supposed to work with patch 2.4, but from the start people had problems with it. Even getting it working has been a challenge. So for those of you that are having problems with it there is a nice article on WoW Insider regarding the new version of Omen and some of the problems with it, as well as some possible solutions.

First night in Karazhan.

So despite a late start and some difficulties with threat meters due to the patch we made what I think is a reasonable first attempt at Karazhan. It took a little time to get down the pacing for clearing the trash up to Attumen & Midnight before they re-spawned. Attumen and Midnight took three tries. Our only difficulty there was when Attumen spawns. We then cleared the trash up to Moroes and made a good first attempt on him (despite being one person short since one of our rogues had fallen asleep). I think we would have had a good chance at taking him down if a shackle had not broken giving an add the opportunity to mind control the off-tank. Everyone performed very well, although Keredria isn’t speaking to me now because she wanted a full-clear the first night and she said that if we didn’t get it she would blame the raid leader. /sigh

Oh and I got the Vambraces of Courage off Attumen.

Edit: I’ve replayed that fight many times in my mind, but just now I realized something. The off-tank was not mind-controlled. Somebody said that afterwards which is why I picked-up on it but now I realized that certainly wasn’t it because none of the adds mind control. I now remember what happened: I got gouged and our off-tank got blinded. When you are blind you wander around aimlessly a bit which can feel like a mind control. I guess we’ll need to work on getting the blind cleansed ASAP.

Raid leader.

So somehow I became de facto raid leader for the first incursion into Karazhan tonight for The Left Claw (assuming the server doesn’t barf if 2.4 goes live). TLC has always been very casual and egalitarian, but as we’ve approached “K-day” I’ve found that whenever I talk to someone about specs and roles in the raid the conversation ultimately ends with them saying “whatever you decide.”

I’m pretty sure it is going to be brutal, but we’ll learn and adapt, and I think it will be fun.

The Karazhan Krew.

It’s been slow going lately. We are a very small guild and just barely have enough for Karazhan if we bring in three friends from outside the guild (although they may join the guild in the future). We are a very tight group so open recruiting or merging with a larger guild just haven’t been options for us. So it’s been a bit of a challenge to put together 10 people for Karazhan. Right now we have me (protection warrior & main tank), feral druid (off-tank/dps), paladin (specced as needed), two resto druids including Keredria, two shadow priests, a hunter, a rogue, and a mage. I realize this probably isn’t ideal, and for some of the encounters we may need to change the composition of the group.

There isn’t much else new to report. Jess has been relatively inactive lately — she’s more or less on vacation until Karazhan unless she is needed otherwise. Our paladin is serving as our main tank now for regular 5-mans and is doing a great job at it. Having the extra tank has given me more time to work on my frost mage. She is also keyed for Karazhan so I may bring her in if necessary. Oh and I am now the (acting) GM of The Left Claw. Our GM has been afk for several months now for personal reasons. It’s been an interesting experience. Our guild is very close and casual but I can’t help but feel a certain responsibility for moving the guild forward in terms of progression — hence my current obsession with Karazhan.

Too many tanks. Advice?

So we are (still) getting ready for Karazhan. We are a small guild with a few friends outside so our class choices are a bit limited. Right now I am trying to figure out what to do with three tanks: me (prot warrior), a feral druid, and a paladin. From what I understand you need a main tank and off-tank in Karazhan. Given my gear and that I can’t very easily be geared to do DPS we assumed that I should main tank. So what should we do with the druid and paladin? Both have pretty good pre-Karazhan tanking gear. I think that the paladin may have a better healing set, but maybe not enough to meet the stats for a main healer. Right now we have two resto druids for healers — a bit unusual I know, but they are well geared and we have a shadow priest for shackles. So should the paladin off-tank with the feral druid doing DPS, or visa versa? And if the paladin is not an off-tank should he spec/gear for DPS or as some sort of hybrid?

What is the appeal of WoW?

Raiding? Loot? PvP? Admit it guys…two three words: hawt nerdy gurlz.

The reason why arcane blast sucks.

My Draenei mage dinged 70 this weekend so I have been doing some research on end-game mage specs. With the right spec and gear, arcane blast can do significant damage when used correctly in a spell rotation. But I just can’t bring myself to use it. Why? IMHO it looks dumb. I want to see frost, fire, or arcane energy shooting from my fingertips. That is what being a mage is all about — burning-down mobs and bosses with as much flair as possible. Mages are not meant to be subtle. Subtlety is for shadow priests and maybe affliction warlocks. The only thing that isn’t subtle about AB is that female Draenei mages look like they are having back spasms when they cast it.

A confession.

I have a mage. A Draenei frost mage. She’s level 69. Lately I have doing more pew-pew than tanking.

Ok I can explain. In terms of personnel we are getting very close to the point of having a good crew for Karazhan. But until then there hasn’t been much for Jess to do. Don’t get me wrong — Jess is still my main and I won’t ever give up tanking (and even if I did I’m sure Keredria would bash me with my own shield until I changed my double-digit int mind). It’s just that it’s nice to try another play style and to see hits land for over 1K for a change.

Aksana is deep frost which is a fantastic spec in my opinion — chill effects, frequent and hard-hitting crits, awesome AoE, some good cooldowns, oh-crap options, and very reasonable mana efficiency. It is worth it for the shatter combo alone (and BTW, if you have points in frostbite you can very ften pull-off one of these without having to use your frost nova or your water elemental’s freeze). I was happy to read on Spicytuna that deep frost and arcane frost are quite viable for endgame as well. I’m not sure how far I will be able to take her once she is 70, but for now she’s more fun than an ample supply of butter and goblin jumper cables.

Tanks…do you heal?

One of my favorite alts is a human holy priest (currently level 51). I find healing very satisfying. Although the role of a healer seems very different from that of a tank, in some ways they are quite similar — neither are specced or geared for damage, and both are there to protect the other party/raid members from harm/death (albeit in different ways). Perhaps another similarity is that (good) tanks and healers are often in high demand, and when they do their job well often reap heaps of praise. It’s always nice to feel needed and appreciated.

So tanks…do you heal? Why or why not? And healers…do you tank? Why or why not?

Special K.

(Ok let me try this again. I accidentally deleted the original post when I was trying to edit it. Also Keredria’s comments keep getting caught in my spam filter. I’m still trying to teach it to like her. Try using fewer four-letter words and risqué comments this time K.)

It’s interesting how we use names in WoW. For example, I am “Jess” even when I am playing an alt which is somewhat confusing to folks that don’t know who is who. We also often shorten names for convenience. For example, Daihiro = D, Atania = A (unless we are grouping with our feral druid friend Adamas in which case he is A and Atania is Ata), Wutan = Wut (woot wut!), Jessika = Jess, and Keredria = K. So the impetus of this post was that I was grocery shopping the other day when I came across a box of Special K cereal. That amused me, as did the screen shot I found at Wikipedia. Isn’t that the kind of gear that clothies find themselves wearing from time to time? K is a “hotty” — as in HoT = heal-over-time. (Perhaps I should have left this post deleted. No more bad jokes…I promise.)

Alas for Azshara.

I love Azshara. It’s an absolutely fantastic looking zone. I’d like to have a house there and another near the beach in Darkshore. Regrettably there isn’t much to do there. There are few quests other than some class quests. The fishing is good, and there is some thorium to be had. But the lack of activity in Azshara is part of its appeal for me. It’s one of the few places in Azeroth and Outland that still feels very large and real for me like when I first started playing the game. Perhaps Blizzard will someday make Timbermaw Hold a new instance, but part of me hopes they don’t.

My jerk tips.

Somehow it took me until quite recently to discover Women of Warcraft. No, it isn’t a special issue of a mens’ magazine. It’s a blog and vidcast. The vidcast often features a “jerk tip” segment concerning tips dealing with, well, jerks (sometimes by being a jerk). Here are a couple of anecdotal jerk tips.

• When Aksana (my Draenei mage) was somewhere in her early 20s I came across a high-level Orc rogue killing the quest givers by the bridge into Westfall (I later learned he was level 70). He /taunts, and I /laugh and /mad, he /flirts, and then I /flirt, and so on. He must have been quite entranced by my gorgeous hooves because he never noticed the level 70 human warlock that came up behind him.
• I was killing harpies with Sula, my Belf warlock, in the Charred Vale in the Stonetalon Mountains. There was a human warrior there, completely naked except for a weapon, who thought it was fun to follow me around and “help.” He was a few levels higher than the harpies so the lack of armor didn’t seem to be a problem, and my Voidwalker was getting a good bit of the aggro anyway. So I sent my Void into a group of harpies, but turned-off his taunt and recalled him just before he struck the harpies. As you might expect the warrior got all the aggro. I really wanted him to come back and try it again as I was going to get out my succubus and have her use her soothing kiss ability to keep her from getting aggro, but the warrior didn’t seem so interested in helping me after his long corpse run.

Baby got crits!

I’ve tried a variety of classes and I’ve found that I’m not really a DPS person. I enjoy tanking and healing more. The rewards are perhaps not quite as tangible as the white and yellow numbers flashing over the heads of mobs, but I just get a bit more from keeping aggro and landing heals. However, I must admit that with my Draenei frost mage Aksana (now level 65) I can definitely see the appeal of a DPS class. Why? Well let me tell you…

I like big crits and I cannot lie
You other mages can’t deny
That when a mobs goes down frozen hard in place
Or burned to ash if that’s your taste
They get sheeped, and you want to attack
But the tank can’t get aggro back
Deep in the instance I’m running
I’m hooked and I can’t stop spamming
…and so on…

Easy tanking.

Tanking is hard work — particularly when it comes to keeping aggro on multiple mobs. I often look forward to a boss fight after fighting through several pulls of trash for that reason. Also from what I have read multi-mob tanking is a bit harder for a protection warrior than a feral druid or paladin. We can do it, and do it well (and better than some people think), but it takes a bit of skill and work. However I’ve found that some instances are fairly easy to tank because of the lack of multi-mob pulls. Arcatraz is one. Here you are often dealing with single trash mobs that are fun because they are like mini bosses, each with their own particular abilities. The other is Black Morass. BM has the reputation of being a pain, but if your group knows what to do it’s very easy to tank since the usually strategy is to let an off-tank and/or DPS deal with the non-elite adds while the tank deals with the elite at each portal and the bosses of course.

Of course my experience with these instances till now is only normal mode. I can’t speak to the trash tanking difficulty of these instances in heroic mode.

This is it.

It was one year ago today that I started playing WoW. Today is Jessika’s “birthday.” I had thought quite a bit about what I would write in this post — perhaps something about how I got into the game, my initial reactions to it, and my progression (or lack of it). But I will save those for later posts. The one thing I have thought about quite a bit but for which I have not found the words is what WoW has meant to me socially. It’s given me to opportunity to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones, which for me is by far the most serendipitous and rewarding aspect of this game.

All keyed-up and nowhere to go.

We finally finished the quest line for getting keyed for Karazhan. It wasn’t that we were having trouble with the instances. We are well within the recommended parameters for starting Karazhan in terms of gear, so the instances we needed to do were not particularly challenging (once we learned them). We just had not gotten around to it. Now we have the difficult problem of not having enough people in our guild for a 10-person raid. I am going to need to see if we can find another small guild that would be willing to do Karazhan cooperatively. I am hoping that by already having a tank and healer to offer this may work, but I realize the difficulties and potential problems of coordinating a raid, let alone one involving more than one guild.

I rewarded myself for finishing the Karazhan keying quest line with the Helm of the Stalwart Defender (not quite 700g on the AH). This is a reasonably good upgrade from my Myrmidon’s Headdress.

’cause I’ve heard it in your pleasure songs…

…that I will turn to dust.

I really enjoy the ambient music in WoW. They’ve done a nice job of matching the music to the zone. Nagrand is somewhat pleasant (the zone reminds me of the set from Teletubbies), whereas Netherstorm has this trippy Hearts of Space thing going (good place to just chill).

Personality.

Keredria recently had a post regarding the relationship between one’s personality and the type of character they play. My friend Wutan recently forwarded me a fun post from World of Matticus (nice blog btw, when do I get to do my 20 questions?) regarding the 10+3 personalities every guild leader needs around. Since our guild is a bit small right now several of us are going to need to have multiple personalities I guess. I am going to have a good time thinking about who is what.

Mmmmm…mongoose.

I’m feeling that the time may come soon to put the ultimate chant of chants on me axe. Right now I have a rather unexciting +7 damage on my axe and new threat mace. I think many folks would wait for a better weapon but we’re not progressing very fast right now and I have some extra gold. Unfortunately I don’t think the mongoose “effect” will be visible on Grom’tor’s Charge as it has it its own built-in glow. I’m not really that big on weapon glows, but having a visible endgame enchant is a nice signal to others that you are serious about tanking (like when I whip out my gyro-balanced khorium destroyer). It’s not just how you look but also the message you send to other players by your appearance.

Nature Documentary Narrator: “Today we are tracking the elusive female Night Elf Protection Warrior, a very rare specimen. The one we are watching today, which researchers have named “Jessika,” has only recently reached maturity as we can tell by her equipment — a mixture of rare and epic armor and weapons. And oh look! That distinct greenish white flashing on her main-hand weapon is the distinct sign of a mongoose enchantment. It’s a clear sign that she is in defensive stance and is ready to tank. And just in time too! A human rogue has noticed the enchantment is slowly approaching in an attempt to invite Jess into a PUG. This is a rarely witnessed event in nature. Attempts to PUG “nelf” tanks in captivity have been largely unsuccessful. He will need to be careful though, because even when in her own element she will be reluctant to group outside her guild.”

A nice PUG.

Yesterday I had written an entry about a couple of bad PUG experiences (well, specifically two players), but immediately after posting it I decided to delete it. That just isn’t my style. Instead I’d like to write about a good PUG experience.

I was invited to tank a group through the Shadow Labyrinth by a human holy priest I had met a day or two earlier when I helped her and some others with that elite Gronn in the Barrier Hills above Shattrath. They had lost their tank after killing the first boss in SL. She was very polite and I had been meaning to try to tank PUGs more so I figured that this was a good opportunity for me to be more social. You should understand that while Jess has done PUGs before it’s always been with at least one, and usually two or three other people I know very well, and almost always with Keredria healing. So this was a very new experience for me. I joined the group (rogue, warlock, hunter, and the priest) and we made good progress through SL until we got to Murmur. After some bad luck and a few wipes we decided to call it a night and let folks grab the fragment, but everyone was in good spirits and appreciative of each other — overall a very nice experience. A few ty, yw, and lol go a long way.

A little bonus for me was that I picked up the Blackout Truncheon which, once properly socketed, may make a good threat weapon for trash (my tanking weapon is Grom’tor’s Charge).

There she goes…

…there she goes again.

So less than a week ago my Draenei frost mage Aksana dinged 58 and headed to Outland. I’m in no hurry to level her, but groups for old world instances after Blackrock Depths are nearly nonexistent (I feel very sorry for paladins and warlocks trying to get groups for Dire Maul, Scholomance, and Stratholme for their epic mount quests), so I figured it was time for her to step through the Dark Portal. It’s a strange feeling. Every hurdle with Jessika (first mount, 58, epic mount, 70) seemed like such a big deal. I miss that excitement, but she still has quite a bit to do, including very soon funding Aksana’s epic mount!

A tank healing!?

I love healing. I have a human holy priest (level 41) who was shadow until about 38, but after doing a PUG as a healer in the Scarlet Monastery I respecced her to holy with all talent points in healing-related talents. Since then I’ve done PUGs in SM so many times that Keredria decided that she is going to call me/her “Scarlet.” I even did a very successful PUG through Zul’Farrak. There are many advantages to being a healer: you get more PUG invites, you (usually) get heaps of praise, and you get into higher-level instances earlier since level restrictions matter less for a healer than a tank or DPS class/spec. But what is it that is so addictive about healing? When it comes down to it healing is somewhat like a very complicated game of whac-a-mole, except instead of moles a healer “whacks” damage, and gets their choice of “mallet” — i.e., healing spell. For example, you can hit slow and hard (e.g., greater heal), fast and light (e.g., flash heal), or maybe hit all the “moles” simultaneously (e.g., prayer of healing). There are even different kinds of “moles” to whack other than damage: disease, magic, curses, and/or poison, depending on the class. Of course there’s much more to it than that (e.g., mana and threat management, buffs, and utility), but when we’re knee-deep in Scarlet Crusade zealots — well, all I can say is that I am going to win me that over-sized teddy bear.

Tanking…it’s all the rage.

Anyone can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not easy. — Aristotle

Non-tanks need to understand the importance of rage to a warrior or (bear form) druid tank. Rage is for us not unlike mana or energy — it is the currency we spend to use our abilities. But unlike mana or energy we start with none of it whatsoever. For the warrior at rest and at the beginning of combat rage is zero and so all of her abilities are unavailable except for the three stance-dependent 30-minute cooldowns, three abilities that are used to assist in generating rage (charge, bloodrage, and berserker rage), and taunt. A tank gets most of their rage from hitting and getting hit. The amount of rage gained depends on damage, and since the DPS of a protection warrior is usually pathetic, most of their rage comes from being hit. Something to keep in mind is what I like to call the “Cycle of Tanking” which is aggro -> rage -> threat -> aggro. Help keep the cycle going! With that in mind here are some things for non-tanks to consider:

• The beginning of a fight is a critical time with respect to rage generation. Although some rage can be generated by using bloodrage (or less often charge), it is very important that the tank get to engage the mobs in melee to generate sufficient rage to generate enough threat to secure aggro. Other players should NOT engage the enemy before the tank unless they are doing crowd control. Without this initial input of aggro from mobs beating on the tank they will be incapable of generating sufficient threat.
• A rogue’s stunlock is a fantastic technique, but in group PvE it should be treated as kind of off-tanking method. A mob that is stunlocked while attacking the tank is not contributing rage. Doomilias has a very nice post about stunlocking and tanking.
• There is a tendency for some players to attempt to help “protect” the tank by pulling one or more mobs off and engaging them directly. However tanks absolutely love being targeted by several melee mobs because it generates a good deal of rage. Tanks have the gear, abilities, and talents to take a serious beating (with a good healer). Do not off-tank unless that is your job.
• Respect the kill order. Not only is a good kill order an efficient way to take down a group of mobs while minimizing damage, it also maximizes the tank’s rage since usually all or most mobs will be attacking the tank.

Tanking from the perspective of my alts.

Lately I’ve been spending a bit of time with my alts. I am having a good time leisurely leveling them mainly by doing PUGs. I never had the confidence to PUG with Jessika, and I am still very reluctant to PUG her, but with my caster alts I have been having quite a bit of fun. It seems like it is harder to find PUGs before endgame than it used to be, maybe because many folks have either left the game or are focusing on endgame, but I do find that when I do get in a PUG that the other players are very often also on their alts and so are experienced and professional but also relaxed.

I’ve wanted to write about the adventures of my alts for some time, but since this is a tanking blog I will also mention what I have learned or experienced about tanking from their perspective.

• Aksana the Draenai Frost Mage (54). Aksana has been doing Sunken Temple and Blackrock Depths. Frost AoE works very well in these instances, particularly with 3 points in improved blizzard. The chilling effect or rooting effects of my spells helps prevent mobs from getting away from the tank, and with ice barrier, ice block, and my water elemental I am able to hold my own if he loses it (for a time). A couple of times I have run with one or two other mages. Talk about AoE madness!
• Sula the Blood Elf Affliction Warlock (44). I have only recently had the opportunity to PUG with Sula, and it has taken me some time to figure out how play her effectively in a group. Usually I’ll have the imp out passive and phase shifted for Blood Pact and Dark Pact, so that I am free to DoT and nuke as I please. For pulls where mobs need to go down fast I will summon my succubus for some extra DPS. I haven’t quite figured out if Curse of Agony is worth it given that it does its damage over a long period of time, with most of the damage near the end. One aspect of the affliction warlock that is fun is that by drain tanking I can make a reasonably good off-tank. I’ve even off-tanked a few bosses when things got crazy.
• Muriel the Human Holy Priest (40). Muriel is 100% healer. All talent points are currently in healing-oriented talents in the holy tree. I am having a lot of fun running her through the Scarlet Monastery. My objective now is to get Whitemane’s Chapeau because I think it would look great with my Robe of Doan and Mantle of Doan! LOL! I am very fashion-conscious, in part to make-up for the fact that Jessika looks like she got her gear from Goodwill. I am very much enjoying healing. Keredria told me that she overheard somebody say that the best gear item for a tank is a (good) healer. It’s certainly true. One bit of advice I can give (and remind myself) is that THE most important statistic to a tank is not health, armor, or defense, but their healer’s mana. Keep her mana bar blue and she’ll be true to you.

Update from the twinked 70 protection warrior.

I must apologize for not writing more lately. I’m a horrible blogger I guess. But having been recently plugged on Tanking Tips I feel it’s time for an update. Jessika hasn’t been very active lately due to the periodic absences of some key personnel. However this has given time for our paladin (Wutan) to level up. He is nearly 70 now and will be a valuable asset in either a hybrid/utility role or as a tank or healer replacement as necessary. We did FINALLY do Escape From Durnholde Keep in preparation for The Black Morass. OMG am I rusty! Unfortunately we wiped on the final boss, and even though Keredria was able to run back in time to nuke him down (healer nuking FTW) the escort quest was not completed so we’ll be going back again soon.

As I have mentioned in earlier entries I have been gradually upgrading Jessika’s gear via items I have purchased off the AH or had crafted. Veneretio has an excellent post about very good protection warrior gear you can get without setting foot in Karazhan. If you are like me and haven’t been earning badges from heroics yet there are still some nice BOE items that you can purchase or have crafted. So far I have bought the Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer, the Bracers of the Green Fortress, the Cloak of Eternity, and yesterday I was very fortunate to find the Band of Impenetrable Defenses for sale for 180g which is a very good price. The extra defense will allow me to move some items and gems around in favor of stamina or other means of damage avoidance/mitigation. I suppose that with enough money it is possible to twink a 70! Head on over to Tree of Life and look at Keredria, our twinked 70 resto druid.

/y HAWT HEALZ LFG

So lately I’ve been playing my alts a bit. After spending some time with my frost mage, affliction warlock, and even a new shaman, I returned to my well-rested ugly little human shadow priest, Muriel. I managed to level her up to 39, and found that she was getting a little easier, perhaps due to some additional talents to increase shadow damage. But then on a whim I decided to try healing in some PUGs doing Scarlet Monastery. OMG! I’ve always had a great respect for healers, but I never knew it was so much fun! Between two PUGs in one night I healed through the Library, Armory, and Cathedral wings of the Scarlet Monastery, and I got the Robe of Doan which looks absolutely fantastic on Muriel! Right now I am studying the holy tree to spec her as very PUG-friendly healer. I still want to try Shadowform when I hit 40+, and a shadow spec may be useful for leveling her when I can’t find good PUGs, but I think hawt holy healz may be the way to go.

Fashion issues.

With help from Atania and Keredria I took on Socrethar to complete the quest Deathblow to the Legion for some Aldor reputation. It’s a group quest with 5 players suggested, but we did it with three. It was a LONG fight for just three (about 10 minutes) and Keredria used two innervates and a couple mana pots just to be safe, but other than that it wasn’t terribly eventful, and my health dropped dangerously low only once and I think it was because I neglected to have shield block up to catch a crit or crushing blow. (Incidentally, doing these group quests with just tank, healer, and maybe one DPS seems to me to be a great test of tank and healer gear as well as your ability rotations.) The additional rep was enough to put me at revered with the Aldor so that I could purchase the Vindicator’s Hauberk. It’s a nice chest piece, but I have some fashion issues. First of all the color. Keredria remarked that from a distance the pale portion on and above my breasts makes it look like I am bare-chested. Nice. Secondly, what’s up with that pinkish section in the middle? It looks like I am wearing a scarf. Sigh.

I suck at blogging.

Oh well. Here’s an update.

• Jessika hasn’t seen much action lately due to Keredria’s long absence. Jess don’t play (much) when the tree is away, but Atania and I did PUG Mana Tombs with three folks in their mid-60s. I needed to go back and get the Flesh Beast’s Metal Greaves. They are better than the tanking boots I had been using, but they look absolutely horrible with the rest of my gear. Why is it that my boots have to be so bulky while my “plate” pants are skin-tight? Jess looks like she is wearing metal moon boots.
• I caught a nasty bug which forced me to cancel most of my work-related activities for a few days, but when I was not sleeping I was sitting in bed leveling my Draenai mage to 50. I finally settled on a deep frost spec. It works wonderfully for soloing, and is nice for PUGs where the tank and/or healer are a little unreliable. Chill effects of frost spells slow mobs to give the tank more time to regain aggro, and the ice barrier and ice block talents can save your cloth-wearing butt if he doesn’t. I plan to take her slowly through her 50s to experience some of the instances that I largely skipped when leveling Jess.
• I leveled my Blood Elf affliction warlock to 40 because I was getting VERY tired of walking. I’m very happy with my felsteed, and dark pact is nice too. I couple of levels before that I took her on her first instance run. I ran the library and armory wings of the Scarlett Monastery with a heavily twinked level 45 rogue, three locks in their mid 30s, and level 30-something mage. I’ve never been in a party with more than one caster (other than a healer). It was crazy, but fun.
• So I was inspired to roll-up a Draenai shaman so that I could be a conduit for the ancient forces of nature. I am leaning toward an elemental spec. I realize the enhancement spec is easier for leveling, but an enhancement shaman seems very similar to a fury warrior and I already did that when leveling Jess, and I prefer casters when I am not tanking. I don’t have any serious plans for this toon and I doubt I will get her past her mid 30s, but it seems like a fun class. I’m also now thinking about trying a paladin because they are so sexy!

I would do anything for threat (but I won’t do that).

Ok so my last post mentioned Total Eclipse of the Heart which was written by Jim Steinman, who has also written and produced for Meat Loaf. So that reminded me of Meat Loaf’s epic I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That), which I’ve always rather liked. So what is below is the product of that and the desire to avoid working on what I should be working on. It was a little difficult since there are several different versions of the song. This is a hybrid of the version from the video, and a live performance. The first part more closely matches the video, but I like the more extended dialogue between the singer and the woman in the live version.

It’s still a bit rough but I need to get it off my desktop so I can do some real work. /sigh. I think I need to get back into an instance soon.

I Would Do Anything for Threat (But I Won’t Do That)

I would do anything for threat
I’d PUG right into hell and back
I would do anything for threat
I’ll never loose aggro to you and that’s a fact

But I’ll never forget the rage I have right now
Oh no…no way
I would do anything for threat
Oh I would do anything for threat
I would do anything for threat
But I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

Some runs it don’t come easy
Some runs it don’t come hard
Some runs it don’t come at all and these are the runs that never end
Some runs the boss casts fire
Some runs the boss casts ice
Some runs he’s like nothing I’ve ever tanked before or will again

Maybe I’m crazy
But it’s crazy and I’m sure
I know the healer can heal me
No one else can heal me but her

As long as the rogue is sapping
As long as the hunter’s trapping
As long as nightmares are coming true
You’d better believe it!

That I would do anything for threat
And I’ll be there until the final boss
I would do anything for threat
And I’ll promise that it won’t be a loss

I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t get to the end
Tonight…

I would do anything for threat
Oh I would do anything for threat
I would do anything for threat
But I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

I would do anything for threat
So my guildies won’t have to fret
But just I won’t do that

(repeat)

But I’ll never stop taunting the way I taunt right now, no way
I would do anything for threat
Oh I would do anything for threat
I would do anything for threat
But I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

Some days I pray for healing
Some days I pray for hots
Some days I just pray to the gods of sword and board and flasks ‘n pots

Here I’m tanking, that’s where I’m qualified by build
That’s my one and only, my one and only service to the guild

As long as the fire is raining
As long as the lock is draining
As long as your dots are landing true
You’d better believe it!

I would do anything for threat
And you know it’s true and that’s a fact
I would do anything for threat
I they’ll never been no turning back

I’ll never tank ‘em better than I tank ‘em with blues, so leet, so leet
I would do anything for threat
Oh I would do anything for threat
I would do anything for threat
But I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

I would do anything for threat
So my guildies won’t have to fret
But just I won’t do that

(repeat)

But I’ll never be happy with just blues every night of my life, no way
I would do anything for threat
But I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

Mage:
Will you build threat up so I can burn mobs down?
Will you keep us all from rocking back to town?
Will you do it ’cause I won’t spec cold?

Tank:
I can do that
I can do that

Hunter:
Will you keep the aggro? Will you hold it tight?
Will you protect my life, I’m so sick of getting wiped
Can you make it all a little less old?

Tank:
I can do that
I can do that

Rogue:
Will you get out your shield and do you job?
Will you let me backstab every trash mob?
Can you sunder mobs so that I can pwn?

Tank:
I can do that
Oh I can do that

Shadow Priest:
Will you help with every group quest I need?
Can you do without a holy priest if I make them bleed?
Will you keep aggro if all my mind blasts crit?

Tank:
I can do that
Oh I can do that

Warlock:
After a while you’ll not want to taunt
It was a brief experiment with talent points in prot
And you’ll see that it’s time to respec

Tank:
I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

Healer:
I know the instances, I’ve been around
You’ll lose the aggo and we’ll all fall down
And sooner or later you’ll be pugging around

Tank:
I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

Anything for threat
Oh I would do anything for threat
I would do anything for threat
But I won’t do that
No I won’t do that

Turn around bright eyes.

I’ve always liked Jessika’s glowy eyes. I wish my eyes would glow like that. Her eyes remind me of the video for Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart (I’m a sucker for power ballads). The song has been covered many times but perhaps the most interesting is by Hurra Torpedo.

Well I couldn’t think of a good title or lead-in but here’s an update:

• Jess has been relatively inactive lately other than a bit of fishing. I have many stacks of [Spicy Crawdad] now for instances. I got my hands on the [Weather-Beaten Journal] ASAP to learn the new Find Fish skill. (Mainly because I wanted to see if I could get it before Keredria. Yay me!) It’s actually quite handy. I’ve done a little combat to evaluate the new change to devastate. My DPS has increased significantly, and I am expecting it to work nicely while tanking.

• I’ve been playing with Aksana a bit lately — now level 44. She was originally a fire mage but i respecced her to full frost to try it out. Frost is very nice for solo (although not as mana efficient as I had hoped), and I imagine it would be useful for PvP, but for instances I have to go with fire. I am trying to decide if some sort of elementalist build would be viable because I do love frost bolts, particularly when they are enhanced by permafrost, but it’s hard to give up any points in fire now, and I don’t need the slowing effects in an instance usually. There’s nothing like having my party members yell “holy crap!” when they see a string of crits from me. The power is…intoxicating. Last night we did a bit of Maraudon (I specced back to fire) with some alts from The Left Claw and a couple of outsiders. We didn’t make it very deep before we had to call it a night but we had a good time.

• Sula has been seeing a bit more attention since my friends have been off-line more lately. She’s level 34 now and still full affliction. I respecced her slightly to max out fel concentration so she could drain-tank a bit better. I’m also enjoying my fel puppy. I go out of my way to find casters. Another thing I enjoy about Sula is that she’s my only Horde toon so she’s financially independent. I find trying to make money part of the appeal of WoW.

Hmmm…I just noticed that my favorite alts also have glowy eyes. Every now and then I get a little bit terrified and then I see the look in their eyes.

Getting in the mood.

So I haven’t played much WoW in the past few days other than to check the auctions. I’ve been unusually busy in RL, and also I haven’t been much in the mood.

“What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.”

Yeah Gurney, I know. But mood — specifically rage — is for tanking. If you haven’t played a warrior or a druid in bear form you may be unfamiliar with how rage works. Rage is to warriors as energy is to rogues or mana is to casters. But unlike energy or mana we default to an empty rage bar. We acquire rage largely by hitting, getting hit, and a few skills and talents. So I was amused (and a little disturbed) to learn that I can get a little rage “fix” between fights by popping critters. That’s useful but it just doesn’t seem right.

Is a blurry line a line?

After having spent more hours than I care to admit playing WoW, not to mention the mental energy I spend thinking about WoW, my mind is having some difficulty distinguishing between real life and game life. Here are some examples:

• Doing the dishes and holding a cleaver in one hand and a bread knife in the other, thinking to myself “I could dual-wield these bad boys.”
• Seeing a hawk soaring in thermals and thinking to myself “there’s Keredria in flight form…I wonder what she’s up to out here.”
• Trying to select a bottle of wine for a dinner party and thinking to myself “well, the one I really want is a bit pricey, but I’ve made good money lately on adamantite ore so why not splurge a bit.”
• Trying a new recipe for dinner and thinking “I hope this levels my cooking skill.”

But anecdotes about the tricks our minds play on us aside, the blurry line between real life and game life is often so blurry that it isn’t a line anymore. Alachia has some wonderful podcasts about the WoW metaverse.

You’ll be the captain, and I’ll be no one.

The Left Claw isn’t so much a guild as it is a bunch of folks who enjoy WoW largely because they’ve made some friends here. We often tease him, but I am grateful to our guild master Daihiro for selflessly committing himself to that environment for us, and so I tend to feel as though I owe one to you. Thanks D.

490 defense. Can’t crit this!

I’m almost there. I just need to pick up a ring (quest reward in Shadowmoon Valley) and move around a few gems. So this morning I “composed” this little ditty:

My, my, my, my elite mobs hit my toon
Makes me say “oh my Elune”
Thank you for blessing me
With 490 def and a resto tree
I aggro but they can’t kill
A night she-elf warrior from Teldrassil
I’m the one
they hit
But this is a tank oh you can’t crit

Can’t crit this!

Stop! Jessika time! My apologies to MC Hammer. If you don’t know or recall the original tune look here.

Jessika’s got a gun.

So I broke down and bought a Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer. Keredria has been getting leet purplz healing gear crafted left and right so I figured it was my turn to show my dedication to tanking. From what I have read and seen it is perhaps the best ranged weapon for tanks until you get to Black Temple: +27 stamina (+3 more with a yellow gem), a gem slot, and a nice bit of damage (148-275) for some extra threat on a pull or to drop a runner. Jess had never even wielded a gun before, but 300+ rounds and a few less critters in Dun Morogh later and I think she has a feel for it.

It looks absolutely absurd — very scifi with flashy green lighting effects when it shoots. I miss my bow already, but we tanks must sacrifice fashion for function.

Update: I found a nice place to train ranged weapons. You can plink all you want at the infernals outside of Wildhammer Stronghold without getting aggro.

Gearing up. /help

I am hoping that a few of the tanks that read this blog (ok, maybe one or two at best) could give me a little feedback on my gear. Since reaching 70 I have spent some time milking Outland for quest rewards. I also purchased a few things. Here is a link to me in the Armory (I usually stay in my tanking gear now). Keep in mind that the shield will soon be replaced by the Netherwing Protector’s Shield. Also I have been neglecting getting enchants, and I will take care of that shortly, but thoughts on those are also welcome. Currently I am running only pre-Karazhan and non-heroic 5-man instances because (a) I am a wimp and (b) we are waiting for a few other people to get leveled and/or geared-up (this means you Daihiro), but I’d like to get to the point where I am ready for Karazhan and maybe some of the easier heroics.

A tank’s alts.

 

Aksana (Draenai Fire Mage). Aksana was my first alt and is currently level 40 (yay no more walking!). I have to admit that I find the mage a bit tiring to solo (although no more so than a warrior), but I do so enjoy playing her in a 5-man (lately I’ve been doing some runs through Scarlett Monastery with some other alts). Playing a mage is an interesting contrast to a tank. For a tank the primary objective is to hold aggro. DPS is quite secondary. But for a mage the primary objective is DPS (and some occasional CC and dispelling) while avoiding aggro. I enjoy trying to choose and time my spells to maximize damage while just barely avoiding getting aggro off the tank or melee members of my party. Also it’s fun seeing the fight from “behind the front lines” for a change.

Compared to Jessika, Aksana is quite extroverted, charming, and a bit of a flirt. You don’t have to be shy when you have that much firepower. She’s got some great lines. “Look at my hoof! Does this crack look infected to you?” Yeah, it isn’t her hooves you are looking at eh?

Muriel (Human Shadow Priest). I started a priest with the intention of trying my hand at a healer. Also I was interested in what looked to me like a challenging class. Priests are a bit tough going until you get to about 20, but after that they grind like a dream if you spec shadow (no sitting on my butt charging mana with spirit tap). Muriel is level 31 now (I just had to get Mind Control). I’ve tried my hand at healing in groups a few times. As a tank I have a great appreciation for the role of a healer, so it is interesting to actually try it for a change. I must admit though that I find it hard to resist handing-out some Shadow Word:Pain, a Mind Flay on a runner, or a Mind Blast for a killing shot (I want my spirit tap dammit!).

Muriel hasn’t developed much of a personality yet. I’ve tried to give her a bit of a dark side by outfitting her in black, but the goodly priest side keeps coming out. She does have a little bit of a gypsy thing going though.

Sula (Blood Elf Affliction Warlock). Unfortunately Sula has been neglected lately. I got her to level 30 but she’s been there for some time now. My friends and I have Alliance mains so we are often there instead of Horde-side. I think the warlock is my favorite caster class. I love the versatility of their spells and the dynamics of the energy exchange of a warlock. A warlock can sacrifice her own health for more mana, drain the health or mana of a mob, sacrifice her own health to heal a pet, drain mana from a pet, and even do an AOE at the risk of killing herself. I love having my own personal tank (i.e. Voidwalker)! A warlock is a small party wrapped-up in one toon (tank, healer, DPS, and some utility) and fun to solo, but I’m interested in someday trying her out in a 5-man.

Sula has some serious attitude — she’s got this snobbish sorority girl thing going. She’s everything Jessika is not. She’s way too pretty and cool to be bothered getting her hands dirty/bloody. She’d rather send in the pet, cast a few DOTs, and then do her nails while waiting for the fight to be over. She’s so belfy!

It is interesting perhaps that a tank’s alts are all clothy casters. I’ve thought seriously about a balance druid, but at this point I don’t know if I have the time or energy to level another toon to their 20’s. Also I am having a hard time designing a Night Elf that doesn’t look like one of my friends since most of them have nelf mains.

 

Intervene.

I had been having trouble using intervene effectively. For those who don’t know intervene is the ability to “run at high speed towards a party member, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack made against them.” Warriors pick this up at 70 and it only works in Defensive Stance. There are two difficulties with using it. It only works when the range to your friendly target is between 8 and 25 yards, which is a fairly narrow window, and you need to target the friendly target (or your target’s target with the help of a standard macro) to use it. The range restriction we tanks will just need to live with, but for targeting I wrote a my own macro which works great:

/cast [target=Keredria] Intervene;

Keredria of course is our resto druid and the one that is most likely to need an intervene (I associated the macro with the Tree of Life icon — I call it my “save K’s butt macro”). I might add that I find intervene useful not just for intervening attacks, but also as an easy way to find and get close to somebody quickly. It works even when the friendly target is not under attack or while not in combat.

Weekend update with Jessika.

As usual Keredria beat me to it, but here’s an update from the tank’s perspective.

• We did Shadow Labyrinth for the first time, but we had Adamas along with us to show us the ropes. Adamas is a good friend from way back (first on my friends list) and a hell of a feral druid. He helped us with setting up pulls and strategy for the bosses. It was very useful to have an off-tank and backup-healer. It was great when he did a battle rez for Keredria during our fight with the second boss. We had very little difficulty with the first two bosses, but we couldn’t seem to dish out enough dps with the third boss (we’ll be back Grandmaster Vorpil). But despite that I am feeling better about my skills.
• We finally got around to trying the Headless Horseman. I was there for only a couple of fights while the others farmed him until nobody was left to summon. I didn’t miss much more than some fun since he doesn’t drop anything of much value for tanks. Keredria upgraded both of her rings. Because of that I will forgive her (this time) for healing another tank.
• Our rogues are fine-tuning their gear and specs. Atania reached 70 recently and Daihiro is getting close. Watching these two in action is awesome. I love the “snick-snick” sound of dual-dagger-wielding, and a good stun-lock is just amazing. Unfortunately for those of us that are specced and geared specifically for instances the rogues have acquired a taste for PvP. Hopefully they won’t get too hardcore.
• Sometime back with Keredria’s help I worked through most of a couple of quest chains in Shadowmoon Valley for some gear upgrades: Grom’tor’s Charge and the Netherwing Protector’s Shield. I was finally able to get Grom’tor’s Charge and am very happy with it. Once I get the shield I’ll move around a few gems and get myself un-critable. Special thanks to Brigin for bringing these excellent pre-Karazhan tanking items to my attention.

The (dys)function of a guild.

Recently I came across episodes of The Guild. I find these quite amusing. Fortunately the members of The Left Claw, albeit peculiar in their own ways, don’t resemble any of these characters.

The actress that plays Codex looked strangely familiar to me when I first saw the videos. Then looking at her bio I learned that she played a “slayer in training” on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. I am a HUGE Buffy fan. Jessika was inspired by Buffy — the destined but reluctant girl warrior.

In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

I’ve aggroed myself.

I have not been very pleased with my tanking lately. As I mentioned in a previous post we got seriously spanked in Sethekk Halls, and then the other evening I got spanked several times by Mogor while helping out in The Ring of Blood in Nagrand. These don’t seem to me like mobs that should be as difficult for me as they have been. I’m guessing the issue might be one of timing my shield blocks and, when appropriate, spell reflects, but I need to study my combat log more closely in the future to be sure.

So I have managed to aggro myself. My rage bar fills up, I sunder myself to dump the rage and then just end up securing aggro and building-up rage again. I guess that is what they call “beating yourself up.” Sometimes when I have a bit more rage then I know what to do with I spam noisy flashy Thunder Claps. Today while driving in to work I played The Cure as loud as I could stand.

Tanking lessons learned (but trying to remember).

In the spirit of Keredria’s post on healing lessons, I thought I would list here some lessons I learned about tanking (as a protection warrior). The lessons have been easily learned but not always remembered.

• Love thyself. It is easy for me to get caught-up with getting and maintaining aggro on mobs or a boss (I am an aggro whore), but I can’t tank as a wisp. I need to keep reminding myself to hit my shield block when it becomes available, keep commanding shout up, and use my pots, trinkets, and last stand.
• Love thy healer. It goes without saying that a tank needs and protects their healer. But that is not enough. It is critical for me to know where my healer is at all times and be ready to come to her aid — particularly when there is the possibility of an aggro reset. Furthermore when it comes to protecting my healer everyone else is disposable. If a rogue or caster gets aggro, they are on their own if the healer is threatened. And unless somebody does something very stupid, if my healer dies it is my fault. Period.
• Know thy enemy. Because the tank is responsible for pulling and managing aggro, the responsibility of making tactical decisions often falls on me. Thus it is important for me to know what mobs/bosses can and will do, and what can and can’t be done to mobs/bosses. Research pays-off.
• Know thy friends. I need to have a good understanding of the abilities and limitations of the other members of my party. Again, research pays-off.
• Know and use thy environment. One of the great benefits of having aggro is that I can often control where a mob/boss will be. In some cases — particularly with bosses — I can move the fight to a location that will be to our advantage. I am a tank, not a turret. I need to get it in my head that I have treads.

Dead Keredia.

In a failed attempt to take down Dimensius the All-Devouring in Netherstorm we wiped and Keredria was killed while attempting to shift to flight form outside Manaforge Ultris. Her body was left floating in the air out of reach for her to rez. Here’s a screenshot (click on the thumbnail). Poor Keredria. It was a hard weekend for her.

Update: Well we did manage to take down Dimensius after calling in a hunter. This is a tough fight if you don’t have some really good dps to take down Dimensius’ health before the NPC tank goes down. That’s the other thing — I didn’t get to tank until the end when the NPC died so I felt a bit useless. I was able to spell reflect a few shadowbolts but I missed the timing on one and it was enough to kill me (Keredria had already run out of mana healing the NPC so my health was down anyway).

Sethekk sukketh.

We had two runs through normal Sethekk Halls this weekend. The first night with Keredria (resto druid), Daihiro (combat rogue), and two outsiders: a mage and a rogue. The second night we had Atania (combat rogue) and a hunter with us. This instance was somewhat difficult for us. Two things were giving us trouble: the Sethekk Prophets and the second boss Talon King Ikiss. The Prophets seemed unusually difficult to sap, and their fear caused problems if I lost aggro on mobs that would go for Keredria. Sometimes I was able to shield bash or bring up spell reflection in time, but the cast time for their fear spell is very short so the timing was difficult. Talon King Ikiss was particularly frustrating. We knew how to detect and avoid his arcane blast, but I had difficulty getting aggro afterwards before he’d take down Keredria, and Keredria was having trouble clearing the blast because she’s slower in tree form. We are going to have to work a bit on our strategy. Also if and when we go in again we may try using the doorway instead of the columns to avoid the arcane blast. But it may be some time before we step into Sethekk Halls again as Keredria made it quite clear she’s not going to go back without a very good reason. It was not a healer-friendly instance. She often died before me which is not how it should be in my opinion. From the perspective of tank and healer this was a wake-up call: our gear is improving but we need to work more on our game.

However there were some gains despite our repair bills and depleted stock of pots and scrolls. We got some rep with lower city and xp for Atania and Daihiro. I picked up Terokk’s Quill as a quest reward. I haven’t done two-handers much but I’ll play with this for a bit while running solo. I like the fact that it matches my red and black solo gear! Keredria selected The Saga of Terokk which is a nice off-hand for her to use until we find her something better. But best of all the Shoulderpads of Assassination dropped (Atania won the roll). It is a relatively rare drop from Talon King Ikiss and a sweet blue for a rogue.

There were a couple of funny moments in Sethekk Halls. The first night we got into a fight where all but two mobs died (a Prophet and I think a shaman) and everyone in the party except Keredria and me. We got locked into a non-ending cycle of aggro, fear, and heal. I couldn’t dish out quite enough dps to take down the mobs due to their fears and healing (although in retrospect I might have switched to dps gear), but they couldn’t take us down either. This went on for some time until our rogue came back to help me take down the mobs. The second night we had a rather amusing wipe due to the fact that Atania approached four mobs in an attempt to sap one but neglected to activate her stealth! LOL! I’m not sure who was more surprised, her or the mobs.

Grinding.

Last night Keredria and I were grinding for Arakkoa feathers in Terokkar Forest to get our reputation with the Lower City faction up to honored. Of course these are dropped, somewhat reluctantly, by various Arakkoa mobs.

 

 

These guys remind me of the Skeksis from the “muppet” movie The Dark Crystal. It may only be our imagination but it seems like they drop a lot of greens. By the end of the evening we both had bags full of greens to sell or have disenchanted by Daihiro’s overworked enchanter alt.

Starman mentioned on an episode of the World of Warcast podcast that if you do have to do some heaving grinding it is good to get a “grinding buddy.” This is very true. Grinding was much less monotonous and seemed to go by faster after Keredria and I joined up. Once again, Tank-Healer team FTW!

 

Early endgame.

So The Left Claw is moving from the “Breakfast Club” misc-bunch-of-people-bond-together stage to the “St. Elmo’s Fire” what-the-hell-do-I-do-with-myself-now stage (but with very little drama and no sex, although I think Sebastian tried to pinch my butt). I think Jess is Ally Sheedy / Allison Reynolds / Leslie Hunter, but perhaps somebody should slap me before I slip in another Brat Pack reference.

There have already been discussions of getting keyed for Karazhan, reputation grinds, and the crafting of epics. However we are still questing a few blues from Outland and getting our pre-70s leveled-up. Hey hey hey hey! Don’t you forget about me!

A protection warrior does PvP.

Last night we (Atania, Daihiro, Keredria, and myself) did the The Ring of Blood quest line in Nagrand (new daggers for the rogues, a bat-staff for Keredria, and a nice chunk of change). Afterwards on the way to Telaar the others got mixed up in some PvP between Halaa and Garadar. An Undead warlock and a Tauren shaman were giving my guildies some grief so I switched to solo gear and went to see if I could help out.

I have done very little PvP. It is hard for me to get out of the tanking mindset (I think I actually tried to taunt), and I am not used to using warrior abilities for PvP (e.g., it didn’t occur to me to use charge or intercept, but I did remember to use hamstring). I am not sure how effective a protection warrior can be at PvP. The rogues were doing great of course, and although Keredria was in her healing gear she was able spam nukes because of her deep mana pool in addition to healing. I suppose at the very least I can be a diversion, and with my high health and damage mitigation I can survive a bit longer.

Being versus playing Jess.

Not much has been happening lately. The rogues haven’t been on much, and Keredria and Sebastian have been out of town, so no instance runs or questing since I loathe PUGs and find solo questing at 70 a bit dull. That leaves rep grinding (sucks) and fishing (enjoyable and therapeutic, but you can only fish so much).

From this I came to realize how my attitude toward the game and Jess changes when my WoW friends are on- or off-line. When they are on I am Jess, whereas when they are off I am just playing her. I’m don’t know how to better explain it, but I do know that I’d rather be Jess.

Why I love rogues.

I love rogues. Well, specifically Left Claw rogues. As a tank I find working with rogues a delight. Why?

• Rogues generate less threat, so I have less trouble keeping aggro.
• When a rogue does get aggro, they are usually close by so I don’t have to go very far to reestablish aggro.
• Provided they don’t have aggro, rogues attack from behind which gives me better visibility.
• Rogues have long-term crowd control (sap), short-term crowd control (cheap shot), and the ability to interrupt casters (kick) — all of which help me manage aggro with trash mobs.

Our current 5-man group consists of a protection warrior (me), a restoration druid (Keredria) and three combat rogues (Atania, Daihiro, and Molkster). In action it’s a beautiful thing: me building threat and maintaining aggro on the mobs/boss, the rogues attacking from the flanks and behind, and Keredria healing. They are like a pack of hungry cubs with their mother lion. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to keep them all in line (in our last instance run Keredria referred to me as the “mom”), but it’s fun.

Of course I realize there are limitations to a rogue-only DPS component in a 5-man. No off-tank, no ranged dps, no backup healer, and limited crowd control for non-humanoids, but we get by for now.

This drop rate sucks!

Well I promised myself that I wouldn’t dwell on technical stuff, but here’s something I’ve been wondering about. We are all familiar with annoyingly low drop rates. You are out killing mobs to get r of something, but not every mob drops it. I wonder how Blizzard has programmed the randomness of the drops. If we assume that each mob drops the item with probability p, and that the probability of a drop on for mob t does not depend on whether the previous t-1 mobs dropped, the probability that you will need to kill k mobs to get r items might be determined by a negative binomial distribution so that the probability is

where Γ represents the gamma function which simplifies to a factorial since r and k are integers. If this is true then on average it will take r(1-p)/p mobs to get your r drops, but of course the actual number of mobs required can vary significantly from person to person. But I wonder if this is true. Is the drop probability constant from mob to mob (assuming all mobs are of the same type of course)? And does the probability of a given mob dropping depend on how many items have dropped already? The latter might be possible if Blizzard wanted to keep people from getting too frustrated (given the number of players, some would have to endure a VERY long grinding session just by chance). It is possible to test this empirically, but I have better things to do.

/sigh

I’m not sure why I am doing this. Perhaps it is to amuse my guildies. Perhaps it is to amuse myself. Perhaps because Keredria makes it look like fun. Perhaps because when I look at /played I realize that the WoW-verse has become a significant part of my life, both temporally and socially, and thus in need of some self-reflection and analysis, which against better judgment will be made public here (for my and my guildies’ amusement).

Jessika is a Night Elf protection warrior — primary (only?) tank of a tiny guild (un)known as The Left Claw on Drenden. And I, the anonymous narrator, am Jessika — usually just “Jess” to my WoW friends (no it is not my real name). This blog is about us, our WoW friends, and the WoW-verse.

So what do I do now? /help