Like all good Barrens chat channels, we rarely talk about Warcraft, and spend a lot more time analyzing what I did to your mom last night or the merits of Chuck Norris.
Here's a good one. Ever wonder what the person who did the voice of Pikachu looked like? Neither did I, but someone sent me this link and it's pretty funny watching a that sound come out of a grown woman. Enjoy!
With so much happening in the World of Warcraft, one might think I'd be tempted to just stay there and ignore the outside world...
...and you might be right.
Let's take a moment to review what's going on, shall we?
First, there seems to be a pretty big election coming up next week. I don't even want to start with what side of the fence everyone comes down on and why. All I can say is that everyone needs to stop drinking the cool-aid.
Second, the world is completely filled with idiots. Maybe this is bigger than my first point or even directly related to it, I don't know. It's probably common knowledge. I awoke to it recently, not because of any deep-seated revelation, but rather a sudden dawning. Guess I'm getting more cynical in my old age. I used to think that 90% of the people in the world were just "asleep at the wheel". Now I think that they're just complete morons. I'd go into my reasoning for this, but it would take too long and 90% of you wouldn't get it anyway.
Third, it's Halloween (Happy Halloween, btw). This means I'll be spending my evening trudging up and down neighborhoods with my kids while tons of soccer moms dressed like she-devils gallivant, trying to keep my eyes from bulging out and getting smacked by my wife. It's a trying time for any married male.
Fourth, there is nothing good on TV. I mean it. I'm so disappointed in the fall line-ups that I've taken to watching old reruns of House and NCIS (Abbey is hot). Even Heroes sucks. How disappointing is that?
Fifth, we're gearing up for Christmas here. Yep, that means I'll either spend the next 2 months watching the kids while the wife goes shopping, or I'll be along for the ride watching the kids while we go shopping with the wife. Joy.
Sixth, work is heating up. When other groups tend to be slowing down at the end of the year, my department is always busier. Why? Probably because everyone else is slow and has nothing better to do than to dump work on us.
That's about all I can think of at the moment.... My cynic seems to be either lightening up or slowing down.
At any rate, have a Happy Halloween and a safe one!
Since you last heard from me, my little ol' rogue is now 56, the priest is 64, and the pally is languishing at the Sunwell (at least until the expansion).
I've not been blogging because there is so very little to actually blog about. Sure, I could try to play keep-up with the fast and furious changes happening before Wrath, but why bother? It changes faster than I can type.
Bored? Yeah, still am. I left that little guild where I kept my pally because they really never did anything together. Never believe them when they advertise that they instance all the time. They lie.
I actually formed my own guild with some friends. We were all in another small guild together, but our guildmaster has since left/quit/gone-on-hiatus and no one had the ability to invite new people/alts or actually use the guild bank. Wasn't worth the effort of staying, so we formed our own. It's much easier to talk that way and we can actually party with other people. Imagine that! The novelty of it all.
I "finished" my pally. He's 70, 490 def, and approaching 120% mitigation. He just needs some lovin' via instancing. For that, I'm waiting on the rest of my guild to catch up and want to do it. Soooooo, now I've got a ton of time on my hands.
I tried working on the rogue, and I got him to 41, but I just don't feel it. He bores me to tears. Maybe I'll spec him to subtlety or something more interesting. Combat Swords is very efficient, but is rather boring.
So, failing that, I tried working on my priest and "finish" levelling him. He's sitting at 62 and I really ought to just push on ahead to 70. Again, I'm just not feeling it. He's just not my idea of a good time. Maybe he'll get some love when my guildies get to his level. I'll probably respec him to holy and use him primarily in instancing or grouping.
I tried druid again, but you know how much fun they are to play until you get cat form. It's very similar to visiting the dentist without the benefit of painkiller or insurance. I'll re-visit him later.
Bored, I started another new character. He's a hunter. Yeah, I've got one hunter to 70 already, so what would I possibly need with a second? Beats me. I've been asking myself that same question. I suppose I'm just inspired by the pics of the motorcycles for engineers, so I'm working on this one as an engineer. Lame, but I did really enjoy playing my hunter the first time. We'll see how this one goes, or if he ends up in the delete file too.
Here are some things we are looking at right now. You may not agree with them all, but I will share them with you in the hopes of making you feel better about your class, and maybe even getting you excited again. I also can't promise they are final because it's still the sort of thing we're wrestling with, and I don't want to disappoint anyone if it doesn't work out or we change our minds. Okay, massive caveats out of the way:
We'd like to do something else with Kings. I don't know that a core ability is the answer, but burying it deep in Prot, when Prot warriors would just as soon play with BoSanc, doesn't feel great either.
We'd like to mess around with the top 2 tiers of all 3 trees, still encouraging you to cross-spec a little, but making that initial bite into the upper tier more tasty instead of just an icky appetizer to get the what you really want down deeper.
I think Beacon of Light is starting to feel pretty good. It may be a little OP right now, but I think we can get it in a good place. (I'm sorry, but I don't know if you have the version I'm talking about or not.)
We'd like to get Vengeance back to 3 stacks, because that just feels more fun than 2. I can almost assure you that it won't be at 15% total damage -- that is hugely generous for 5 talent points, and would normally be budgeted at more like 15 talent points. If I had to guess, it will end up at something like 3 talent points for 1 / 2 / 3% that stacks up to 3 times (so 9% at 3 stacks). That is still over-inflated for 3 talent points. I understand that your dps used to depend on Vengeance. We'll just have to buff it in other ways. Death Knights will get the exact same treatment, whatever it ends up being.
JotW was changed to support the new party buff system and it needs to keep that role. That is one of the main reasons why a group would want to take a Ret pally over another dps class. I understand your mana was dependent on this ability. We'll just have to buff that in other ways as well. Having too many talents that just lower mana costs feel like a band-aid, so we'd rather not overdo that route. Instead we'd just like to make sure you have enough mana. The new Divine Plea is one mechanic here (it works more like Blood Rage than Evocate now), but it's not the only one.
Deep Ret and deep Prot need 1 or 2 more cool talents. We'll carve out room by bundling or just swapping out some of the current talents.
I hope you take this little view into our current thought process in the spirit that it's given. Sometimes we regret talking about stuff that isn't final because it ends up coming back to bite us. But I also thought it wouldn't hurt to cheer you up a little either, so hopefully something I've said will do that.
Beautiful. I'm really hoping these changes help fix some of the bloat that infests all three trees.
Paladins (especially Prot) are about to receive a heaping-helping of love, come 3.02. What am I talking about? I'm talking about me some Blessing of Sanctuary.
Yes, the red-headed step child of Protection Paladins everywhere. This once, much-maligned (and rightfully so) step you HAD to take to get Holy Shield is actually going to be useful in the future. Not only useful, it's going to be freaking amazing!
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana.
That's right, boys and girls, BoSanc will actually keep our little blue rage bars juiced. Not only that, but it will help give us a little more raid utility because we can give this pretty little buff to other tanks and have it not only be useful, but very welcome.
Alrighty then. I went ahead with my planned spec changes last night, and even with the loss of Reckoning, my dps did not drop significantly, though my survivability went way up.
At this point, my defense is too high at 421. While this isn't a problem, per se, I'm shooting for fair and balanced stats, so I need to drop this back down to 415, probably by regemming when I get the extra cash and the inclination to do so.
Running Recount, I did notice that on average about 58% of my damage is pure melee and 15% Holy Shield. My Seal/Judgment of Righteousness together only account for about 8%, which surprised me. My shield spike accounts for about as much damage as Seal of Righteousness, or about 5%. Third place went to Ret aura with 10%. So, I can switch to Seal/Judgment of Light or some other Seal/Judgment without feeling I'm losing significant dps, 'cause I'm not. (And when I say significant dps, I'm talking about maybe 10 or so. Prot pally dps is definitely something to sneeze at.)
So I hit 66 on my Pally last night. I finally got the opportunity to dig some of that armor out of my bank that I've been holding onto for a while (most found with another character--I just kept it. And yes, I really do plan that far in advance.)
I'm sporting 413 defense, just in excess of 9500 armor and 8700 health. Not too shabby for 66 (the Armory apparently isn't completely up-to-date. It still shows 65.) Now I'm starting to see why protection specced Paladins opt out of Reckoning. You honestly get hit so little, that the chances of it proccing are very slim indeed.
So, I'm now looking at re-speccing into more of a "pure" protection build. I dug around and most point to this. That looks more-or-less like what I planned, but there are some differences that have me scratching my head.
Blessing of Kings (BoK) is the most requested buff I have. I use it myself on a regular basis. That extra 10% to all stats is a beautiful thing and comes in handy when you know that you're going to be tanking something where just a little edge is all the difference between an impossible fight and a do-able one.
Spell Warding isn't much, but as Han said, "Short help is better than none, Chewie." That extra 4% less spell damage adds up pretty quickly when fighting multiple casters and bosses.
On the other hand, an extra 5% weapon damage sounds good on paper, but really it's kind of pointless IMHO. Let's face it, pally's don't hold agro with their damage. In fact, my damage is downright pitiful. In the areas like Nagrand, when Horde has the Halaa blessing and I do have the extra 5% damage, honestly I can't tell much of a difference. I mean, I might hit for 125 white damage ordinarily. Now I'm hitting for 131! Woohoo! I'm cooking with gas now, sweetheart!
Really, and for giving up Kings and Spell Warding, I'm not even getting that much. It's really only a 3% boost. So what gives? Hell, I'm probably getting a 3% damage boost from Kings anyway by bumping my stats 10%. Lord knows I'm getting much better mitigation, and isn't that the name of the game for prot pally's?
Warlocks got to crazy land with the % modifiers to their damage output (specifically with Demonic Sacrafice), that's been toned down. Warlocks should never be able to out DPS a Mage with no pet out. Alike a Hunter, their pet should factor into their total damage output. Warlocks that sacrifice pretty much all utility talents should come very close to Mage DPS, but those who invest in group/raid utility should be lower.
Admittedly, the title of this post has nothing to do with the post itself. A friend just told me the story of how his wife came up with 'raging man-bitch' and it tickled me.
The first thing that comes to mind is when my little group was still fresh in the game. We'd been playing a few weeks and had gotten our merry little band up to the 20's. I was a night elf druid, my wife played a night elf hunter, my brother-in-law a gnome mage, one friend played a human rogue, and the other played a night elf warrior. Boldly we adventured in Red Ridge, slaying and playing.
We took the quest to kill Tharil'zun and commenced the carnage. Hacking and slashing our way into him, we form up in the small area in front of him to formulate our plan. It's decided that our rogue will sneak in behind Tharil'zun's group and will sap him, once that occurs, our warrior will charge in and we'll burn down his helpers before he wakes. Sounds good on paper doesn't it?
Our sneaky rogue makes his way behind the group without any real issues, and just as he's about to sap the orc, he steps in a campfire located just behind him. In those days, whenever a mob saw a rogue in stealth, some exclamation point-like animation would appear over their heads. When our rogue stepped into the fire, every mob standing there got that animation, and they turned around and proceeded to pound the stuffing out of him. Our group was laughing so hard that none of us could move, much less rescue our rogue, who died a gruesome death. My friend that played the warrior still laughs whenever someone walks up to him and goes "poof!"
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Another time, with a pick-up group in Dead Mines, as we cleared the dungeon we hit a snag with a new mage. Standing atop the walkway leading down into the foundry area, a mage that was with us decided that the goblins at the bottom were within reach of his fireballs. Without consulting the group, he commenced lobbing fireballs. Our friend the warrior looked over at him and asked, "What do you think you're doing?" very calmly. The mage, unaware that he has just pulled the entire room says that he's just trying to kill a few before we have to go down there. The warrior just sits down and says that we no longer have to worry about going down there anymore, they'll be up here in a second. The wipe was short but painful.
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Recently, as we leveled up our new Horde characters on our new server, one of my friends was working on his Blood Elf Paladin. When he hit 60, he wanted to go get his charger. Now, I had never leveled a Horde paladin before, but I remembered what a bitch the quest was on the Alliance side. Not looking forward to this, I and a few other guildies broke into Stratholme to help complete his quest. Quickly we desecrated the little church. Once we completed that the following conversation took place:
Me: OK, what next?" Paladin: Next? Me: Yeah, where do we go next? Scholomance? Paladin: Dude, what are you talking about? We're done. Me: Bullsh*t. Go get the rest of the quest. There's got to be more. Warrior: No, man, that's really it. Warlock: No, dude, we're done. Me: Are you sh*tting me? The Alliance version was a thousand times harder? That can't be all of the quest. Quit messing with me guys! All: Seriously, that's it.
I didn't believe them for the rest of the day. I actually looked it up to verify what they were telling me. I still get a little pissed when I think of how easy that quest is compared to the Alliance version (even though I recently benefited myself from the ease of it).
OK, so you've got 5 level 70's with all the gear you want (right now), your raid group has basically quit raiding because lack of people on-line, you don't want to think about another alt, much less actually level one, and you're bored out of your skull while playing, yet you follow all the new Wrath of the Lich King info like a crack-head looking for a fix. Sounds like you've got the pre-Wrath Blahs to me.
What can one do to alleviate these symptoms? I have a few ideas....
Go to war with the Cenarian Expedition and use misdirection on some nubs in Orgrimmar (only works if you're a hunter).
Create an Alliance/Horde alt and spam their trade channel with "anal [whatever]" messages (admitedly this does get old quickly).
Roll a warrior and see how fast you can level while naked and barehanded.
Roll a new character on an RP server, join an emo guild, and whine about how bored you are.
Log onto the forums and find the oldest thread you can manage. Respond to it in a very serious manner, and watch as others respond before realizing how old the thread you resurrected is.
Take up a new instrument and serenade your guildmates over ventrilo with your amazing new hobby.
There are many ways to avoid boredom and I'd love to hear from others who have other creative methods.
I was at lunch with a buddy the other day and was telling him about the engineering mounts being introduced in Wrath. If you've been hiding under a rock, you might not of heard of this yet, but I doubt it. It was pretty big news.
Blizz is not only ramping up big-time for Wrath, but they're actually listening and responding to their players!
I don't know if you've been keeping up with the beta changes, but you should at least drop by the hunter boards there. I've never seen so much blue on one page. It's like Ghostcrawler opened up a vein or something (crabs...blue blood, oh nevermind).
10. A Tauren warrior, a Blood Elf priest and a Forsaken warlock are captured by the Alliance during a raid. All are sentenced to the “march of death.” They are taken to Tanaris, striped down to a lion cloth and told that they must make their way across the desert to Gadgetzan. If they die, so be it, if they lived, the ordeal of the trek would be their punishment. As a last request, each is given a choice of one food item to carry. “I’ll take a watermelon” says the Tauren, “I can drink it’s juices and then eat it to sustain me through the journey.” “I’ll take a coconut,” scoffs the Blood Elf, “It’s lighter than a watermelon and will sustain me just the same.” The Forsaken looks for a moment at the other two and then turns to the guards and says: “Can I have just a fork?”
9. How do you make a dead gnome float? Take one dead gnome and two scoops of ice cream...
8. How many Gnomes does it take to paint your wall? It depends on how hard you throw them.
7. An alliance army is marching across the barrens to raid Orgrimmar when a Shaman comes running up and makes a rude gesture at the General. The General points to two of his soldiers and orders them to kill the Shaman. The Shaman runs away round a mountain and the soldiers follow. After a few minutes the Shaman comes back with no sign of the Alliance soldiers. He insults the General who promptly sends ten officers to kill the Shaman. The Shaman runs round the hill and returns again. The General getting very annoyed orders forty men to kill the shaman. They all chase him round the hill and for ten minutes nothing happens. Then one badly wounded soldier comes back limping and says "Sir, it was a trap! There's two of them!"
6. What's the difference between a Gnome and a trampoline? You take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline.
5. An elf, human and dwarf walk into a bar, and all order a beer. Suddenly the elf sees there's a fly in his beer, so he pushes it away in disgust and leaves the bar. Then the human also notices a fly in his beer, so he picks it out and drinks the beer. Then the dwarf sees a fly in his beer. He picks it up, holds it over his glass and yells: 'Spit it all out, ya lil bastard!'
4. How many druids does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but he has to wait 30 mins for the cooldown to end.
3. A father and his son from westfall are visiting Stormwind for their first time. They see the sights, and eventually stumble upon the Deeprun Tram. Puzzled by what this contraption is, they watch as a fat ugly old wench gets on the tram and sits down. The tram whisks her away off down the tunnel. The pair stand talking for a few minutes when the tram arrives back. A beautiful, semi clad Night Elf steps from the tram and walks off into Stormwind. The pair look at each other amazed, before the father says: "Son....fetch your mother!".
2. A dwarf goes into a bar in Stormwind and orders four beers. He starts drinking them, one sip each at a time, and after about a half hour he's finished all four, pays, and leaves. The next day he returns, doing the same thing. The bartender looks at him funny, but pours the four drinks and serves them. He drinks them the same way, until he finishes all four, pays, and leaves again. The third day, when the dwarf returns, the barkeep can't take it anymore. "If you drink the beers one at a time, they'll all be cold and won't get flat at the end. Why do you want all four at the same time?" The dwarf explains: I have a brother in Ironforge, one in Booty Bay, and one who lives on Theramore Isle. We can't get together as much as we want, so at the same time each day we all go to a bar and order a round. We drink 'em all and pretend we're all at a bar together". The barkeeper nods and serves four beers. Nobody else disturbs the dwarf while he finishes off the four beers. The next day the dwarf comes into the bar, but only orders three beers. Silence falls. Nobody at the bar can look the poor dwarf in the eye. Finally, the barkeeper walks over to try to console him. "I'm so sorry for your loss. Do you want to talk about it? tell us what happened to your fourth brother". The dwarf looks confused for a moment, then bursts out laughing. "It's not what you think!!! I just quit drinking today!"
1. A mighty Orc warrior walks into a tavern to order a drink, and he notices standing on the keys of a nearby piano was a Gnome. A very short Gnome, short for even for one of his kind. And immediately the Gnome starts running up and down the piano keys, dancing, cartwheeling and somersaulting, flawlessly landing on the correct keys time and time again. The music he produced was incredible. This little gnome was just brilliant! So astonished, the orc walked up to the bartender and asked, "that little gnome is amazing, where did you get him?" He looked at the Orc and smiled. "Oh I was given this fancy bottle as payment by one of my customers a while back. Upon polishing it, this genie popped out and offered me a single wish. I've had that little guy ever since. Makes me a fortune." Very curious now the orc asked if he still has this magic bottle, and is excited when the bartender pulls it out from under the table and offers it to him. "Knock yourself out." Eagerly he accepts the bottle and starts rubbing it, and just as the bartender had claimed, a genie popped out. The magical being stared at the orc and announced, "you have one wish! Make it now!" Thinking for a few moments, he decided not to be too greedy and just ask for something he had needed for a while. "Okay, Genie. I wish for a nice new axe!" "Granted!" he said, clapping his hands the vanishing in a puff of smoke. After the smoke cleared the orc found himself holding a nice new pair of slacks. Angry now, he glared at the bartender. "What's going on?! I didn't ask for nice new slacks, I asked for a nice new axe!" He smiled back before replying. "You think I asked for a ten inch pianist?"
Druids have had a chip on their shoulders about tanking/dps'ing since I started playing the game in '05. At that time, they couldn't do either. My first character was a druid, and feral sounded cool on paper, so that's what I went with. Oh, my naivete knew no bounds! Let me just put it this way, I couldn't get a group to help me blow my nose.
With 2.0 and BC, feral druids got a massive change and were actually viable tanks and dps. With the right gear, feral tanks are massively tough. Sure, crushing blows still suck, but they've got the hit points to take 'em. And dps of feral kitties is a beautiful thing now. Sure, they're not rogues, but they sure can dish it out.
With the changes being made in the Wrath beta, feral druids have been sweating. Until recently, they've been worried about statements made by Blizzard reps, especially omissions, when they talk about tank classes. Some have made mention of warriors, paladins, and death knights, but failed to mention druids. This made lots of people nervous. Now, Ghostcrawler has been allaying some of those concerns.
The changes made to things like armor were done mostly to solve itemization problems. We didn't make them to nerf Ferals (or anyone). We did them because we started to consider bosses who needed to drop 30 different pieces of armor (or tokens to trade for them or whatever) because classes and even specs were heading off into distinct niches. You'll get something to make up for it. No, you aren't there yet.
We're not entirely happy with the way the Feral ended up in BC. The idea was that you could be a decent tank and a decent melee dps class, so Ferals were something you wanted to bring if you weren't the kind of guild that swapped different people out for every boss. But I don't think "convenience factor" is ultimately a great value to bring to a raid. The problem was we were kind of stuck because if we made Ferals end-game tanks and amazing melee, then the rogues were screwed, because they couldn't go respec to tank or heal.
But now we have a chance to add some new talents, and we'd like for some of them to be the kind that let a druid declare that she is more of a cat or more of a bear. It doesn't have to be shoehorning two whole talent trees into one, but even offering a few choices would go a long way.
I didn't mean to sound condescending. The pot example was to offer that we haven't forgotten about bears. My point was NOT: hey, you lost armor but gee you got health stones, so why all the QQing? It was cool to see those big armor numbers on bears, and we have some plans for how to replace them (and not just with pots).
The DK gets a lot of attention because it has a lot of catching up to do. There were no DKs in UBRS or MC or TK or even Arathi Basin. Nobody knows how their abilities and power system are going to work so we feel like we have to cover a lot of the ground that was explored literally years ago for some of these other classes.
We will be really disappointed if there aren't bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that if not consistently as high as rouges, are at least a lot closer than they are now. (Source)
Hopefully this will help still the fears of my tanking brothers and sisters. After all, you shouldn't be afraid of anything if you tank with your face.
Before MMO's, before good video RPG's (well, not all of them, but the bulk), we used to sit around with pens, paper, and a slew of plastic in various geometric shapes and role play. We had books by the score for reference, multiple character sheets detailing the complete history of the characters, Mountain Dew by the case, Cheetos, and rich imaginations.
I wouldn't trade today'sMMO's and modern RPG's for those days, but we did manage to have quite a bit of fun.
I've been thinking of writing some of those adventures down in web comic form, and I might sometime, but some are worth sharing here and now.
Once, a band of intrepid adventurers found themselves trapped within the nefarious realms of Ravenloft. This is known by my group as 'the place where characters go to die'. As DM (GM these days, I hear), that was certainly not my intention, but I always did enjoy providing my players with a bit of a challenge. First, they found themselves on the isle of Dr. Moreux (sadly, I didn't even make that up--it was an honest-to-God store-bought module). Things progressed steadily with our cast of characters. First, was the priest, who upon being brought to Ravenloft (and was directly responsible for our cast of characters going to Ravenloft), was turning evil. Next, her bodyguard, a monk of intimidating physical prowess. On the team were also an intrepid warrior with an equally intrepid appetite; a ranger with a dubious wisdom score (reflected by his player), a light mage (he only used powers that worked with light), a greedy and highly aggressive dwarf (although, I'm not certain there are any other kinds), and various and assundry supporting characters.
Things began going wrong with our adventurers almost at once. Shipwrecked in a foreign world, they were greeted warmly enough by the inhabitants of the island they found themselves on. The one thing they were warned of was to stay in their rooms at night. While most had no problems with this, our always-hungry warrior made the mistake of being caught in the kitchen at night (he was so tall that while raiding the fridge, he hit his head on a bunch of pots and pans hanging on overhead racks, alerting the staff). Thus, our adventurers were taken to confront the Dr., where he offered to make them part of his half-human, half-animal staff. Needless to say, they had no desire to become permanent residents. Fighting their way toward the shore and their almost-finished boat, the ranger stayed behind to 'cover their tracks'. Mind you, the rest of the group is running flat-out, the stronger ones carrying the weaker under their arms running like their heads were on fire and their asses were catching, and the ranger stays behind to cover their tracks. Did I mention the Dr.'s half-human, half-animal staff was pursuing them? Well anyway, as he swept their tracks aside, the ranger was caught and eaten. The rest of the company made it to the boat and got away cleanly - sans all their gear.
Next, our intrepid adventurers stumbled into the realm of a death knight, Lord Soth of Dragonlance fame. First, one of the original sailors who survived the shipwreck decides to join the group (in lieu of the ranger, who died a horrible death). Surviving many bands of roving bandits (and stealing all their loot to replace their own), our band of adventurers set off for the mysterious castle they'd heard so much of from the gypsies (who warned them to stay away), the townspeople (who warned them to stay away), and the bandits (after being defeated, warned them to stay away). Bravely, they stormed their way to the retirement home of Lord Soth.
First, as you can imagine, it's hard to get good help for a death knight, so the place appeared deserted. The location of the castle didn't help. Placed atop a high cliff separated by a yawning chasm, allowing egress only across a rotten, wooden drawbridge, Soth apparently didn't want a lot of visitors anyway. Intrepidly trekking across sed rotting bridge, our surly dwarf and ex-sailor-ranger-replacement get into a fight. The dwarf quickly grew annoyed and threw the sailor off the bridge into the mist filled chasm below. Thus ended the career of the sailor-who-replaced-the-ranger. Luckily, we had another sailor who agreed to join the party in his place. So, our party, evil cleric, monk bodyguard of evil cleric, hungry warrior, surly dwarf, light mage, and clueless sailor-who-replaced-the sailor-who-replaced-the clueless-ranger enter the castle (who they still don't know belongs to LORD FREAKIN' SOTH!!!).
The first floor of the castle appeared completely deserted, with the exception of a doppelganger who had turned cannibalistic and would eat anything that crossed its path. Fortunately, our hungry warrior had enough food to share and quickly turned the doppelganger into a pet (as long as the food lasted anyway). So, to the second floor our brave group went. Finding nothing of interest here except a rather large overgrown indoor garden with a strange, open winding spiral staircase going up through the center, our group decided the action must be upstairs, so up they want. On the third floor though, they met up with the stuff of nightmares.
From the walls, tunneled a type of bipedal bug, dropping all around our group with intentions of evil, they came. Our brave adventurers quickly warmed to the fight, though. The warrior unsheathed his sword, the dwarf limbered his long disused axe, the priest cackled gleefully in the throes of her spreading insanity, the monk began protecting her, the sailor used his sword, and the light mage blinded himself casting a spell (spell failure). Tumbling back down the stairwell, the light mage ended up at the bottom both blind and with the breath knocked out of him. Up above, his team-mates did not fare so well. Quickly it was discovered that their weapons had no affect what-so-ever upon the man-bug-things.
Tired of not being able to hurt his opponent, our surly dwarf threw away his trusty axe, grabbed one of the bugs and jumped out the stairwell. Down below, the light mage was coming to his senses, when he spied a curious thing: a dwarf holding a man-bug hurtling directly toward him. Unable to move in time (failed saving throw), the dwarf and man-bug land atop the light mage, knocking him senseless once more. The positive thing though was that the trip down beneath an angry dwarf did seem to harm the bug. Noting this above, the monk and warrior turned to each other, shrugged, and grabbed their own bugs toward the edge of the stairwell. Below, the dwarf got up, seeing his own man-bug still was alive, began dragging it back up the stairs to have another go. The man-bugs struggled mightily, but our heroes prevailed, not before turning the light mage into tapioca by landing on him repeatedly and Dungeons and Dragons into professional wrestling, but they eventually succeeded. They did manage to lose the evil cleric in the process, but most considered this a small loss as she was probably only trying to get them all killed anyway.
With their mighty foes dispatched (and the light mage bandaged and ambulatory), onward into the tower they bravely crept. Oddly enough, the next floor seemed to be entirely made of sleeping quarters. They opened the first door to both the surprise of the party and of the creature on the other side: a banshee. What's the first response of a surprised female? That's right, she screamed. One of the party was cursed. Shaken but not stirred, our group continues to the next room. At the door, our brave sailor suggests listening at the door before opening it. Nothing. They open the door, surprising another banshee who screams and curses another party member before disappearing. This happens yet another time. Finally, at the third door the sailor listens at, the monk grows tired of him attempting to listen for something that has no corporeal form and can't make noise, so he opens the door quickly, shoves the sailor inside, and closes it quickly. The sailor was the unfortunate recipient of a death curse this time. The only good thing (I suppose) was that it was not immediate. Undaunted, our group continued.
Notified by the wailing of the banshees, a group of animated suits of armor show up. Unfortunately, our group really wasn't geared well enough for this and couldn't put a dint into the things. Running away and barricading themselves in a room, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the animated armor attempted to break the door down. Finally, the warrior cried, "If only I had a flametongue!". The dwarf looked thoughtful for a moment and began to dig around in his knapsack. Moments later, he produces a long sword and says, "You mean like this?" Struck dumb, the warrior nods and takes the weapon. The monk looks at the dwarf and asks, "Why did you have that?" The dwarf responds that since they gathered all this loot from the bandits, and no one else seemed interested, he took it all and kept it. He'd been using the flametongue as a tent stake and something to light his pipe with in the evenings. Using the newly acquired magic loot, they quickly made short-work of the invading animated armor. Bolding continuing on, they go to the next level...
...Where apparently Soth has raised himself a garbage disposal called a blood elemental. The group struggles against Soth's garbage disposal, but alas, it escapes out a window, but not before killing the hapless sailor and gorging on his body. Luckily, a gypsy boy that had been following the group at a discreet distance came forward to take his place.
It was here that our brave group of adventurers decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and that if the garbage disposal had kicked their asses, it was perhaps best if they did not confront the castle's master.
And that, my friends, is the tale of our brave group in Ravenloft. There are other adventures, other stories, but those are for another day.
As you can see, this is not exactly the sort of thing one would see in an MMO or other computerized RPG, and that's a shame because those were some really great times. I'm not saying that there can't be great times in a computerized game, but it is different. Later, I'll post about some of our adventures online.
Paladin changes in the Wrath beta have been coming hard and fast. Lots of changes have been for the better, lots are 'meh'. I'm going to take a quick look at some of these.
This list comes from the beta forums, via Rill (much kudos).
Changes:
Holy Wrath is Instant.
Lay on Hands is 20 min cooldown instead of 1 hr. Also costs no mana.
Divine Intervention is a 20 min cooldown instead of 1 hr.
Ranks of all Seal Spells have been removed. There is just one rank now that scales with level/gear depending on the seal.
Seal of Wisdom and Light scale with Spell Power.
All Seal spells now last 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds and are no longer consumed when casting a Judgement spell.
Blessing of Freedom changed to Hand of Freedom. 25 second cooldown, immunity to movement imparing effects for 10 seconds.
Blessing of Protection changed to Hand of Protection. Same effect.
Blessing of Sacrafice changed to Hand of Sacrafice. 2 min cooldown, lasts 12 seconds. Transfers 30% of the damage taken by the target, to the caster.
Blessing of Salvation changed to Hand of Salvation. 2 min cooldown, lasts 10 seconds. Reduces the target's threat by 2% every second for 10 secons.
Righteous Fury changed to increase threat by 90% instead of 60%.
Avenging Wrath now increases all damage and healing caused by 20% for 20 seconds instead of just damage by 30%.
Hammer of Wrath's animation speed increased and is a .5 second cast and affected by haste. Can now be used by targets at 35% health instead of 20%.
Retribution Aura damage increased. Example: rank 6 causes 26 holy damage in live. In beta causes 62 holy damage.
Judgements are currently affected by global cooldown.
Divine Shield and Divine Protection cooldowns are no longer linked.
Forbearance timer increased to 3 minutes from 1 minute.
Divine Protection now only has one rank. Additionally, Divine Protection will absorb 50% of all damage and reduce your attack speed by 50%. Duration increased to 12 seconds.
The following spells now scale with spell power and attack power: Consecration, Exorcism, Judgement of Wisdom/Light/Justice.
Righteous Defense no longer costs mana and the global cooldown has been removed.
Seal of Blood now increases Judgement damage by 45% of weapon damage.
Seal of Command now increases Judgement damage by 30% of weapon damage, 60% on stunned targets.
Seal of the Crusader has been removed. The effects of Judgement of the Crusader have been folded into all relevant abilities.
Seal of Righteousness deals damage based on weapons peed plus an amount based on attack power and spell power, increases Judgement damage by 25%.
Seal of Vengeance damage over time effect duration increased to 18 seconds and now applies its effect on every swing, causes damage based on attack power and spell power, and increases Judgement damage by 10% per stack of the damage over time effect.
Summon Warhorse and Summon Charger mana cost removed and no longer causes a global cooldown.
Removals:
Judgement has been removed. (See Judgement Notes further down)
Forbearance has been removed from Avenging Wrath.
Seal of the Crusader has been removed. (*sniffle* We had such good times!)
Additions:
Judgement of Wisdom (see Judgement Notes further down) - Appears to give you mana back when cast. Might be a bug. Checked to see if it was just Judgements of the Wise kicking in but it does it with or without it.
Judgement of Justice (see Judgement Notes further down) - Still works as if you had cast seal of justice and judged it. Except you don't have to cast seal of justice before judging anymore.
Judgement of Light (see Judgement Notes further down) - Still works as if you had cast seal of light and judged it. Except you don't need to cast seal of light before judging anymore.
Seal of the Martyr - Alliance version of Seal of Blood.
Seal of Corruption - Horde version of Seal of Vengeance.
Divine Plea - 5 minute cooldown. Channeled 6 sec cast. While Channeling this spell you gain 50% of your total mana. Animation is a blue book and fist that hovers over your head while you kneel and channel the spell. Requires level 71. Currently affected by haste.
Sacred Shield - 40yd range, 35 mana, instant cast. Uknown cooldown, requires level 80. Each time the target takes damage they gain Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 seconds.
Shield of Righteousness - 6 second cooldown, instant cast, requires shields, requires level 75. Slam the target with your shield, causing holy damage equal to 200% of your block value. High threat.
Talent Specific Notes http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents2.html
Changes:
Holy
Spiritual Focus moved to T1 from T2.
Divine Intellect moved to T2 from T1.
Divine Strength moved to Protection T1.
Healing Light moved to T2 from T3.
Unyielding Faith moved to T2 from T3. Increased the resists % from 5/10 to 15/30.
Improved Lay on Hands now increased armor bonus of the target by 50% instead of 15% and the duration reduced to only 15 secs instead of 2 min. Also reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 4 minutes instead of 20 minutes.
Illumination moved to T3 from T4
Improved Concentration Aura moved to T4 holy instead of protection.
Pure of Heart now reduces the duration of curse and diseases by 50% instead of increases resistance by 15%.
Holy Shock has had damage/healing increased, mana decreased, range increased, cooldown decreased.
Protection
Divine Strength moved to T1, from Holy T1.
Anticipation moved to T1 from T3. Now increases your Dodge by 5% instead of your Defense by 20.
Stoicism moved to T2 from T4. % increased.
Redoubt moved to T2 from T1.
Toughness moved to T3 from T2. Increased % of bonus armor value from 10% to 20%.
Improved Righteous Fury no longer increases threat.
Improved Hammer of Justice decreases the cooldown by 30 seconds instead of 15.
Improved Concentration Aura moved to Holy.
Improved Devotion Aura moved to T4 from T1. Now increases healing effects on targets with Devo aura by 3%. Also increases armor bonus by 50% instead of 40%. Also uses 3 talents instead of 5.
Retribution
Improved Blessing of Might now increases AP bonus by 50% instead of 20%.
Vindication is now 2 points instead of 3 and decreases stats by 20% instead of 15%.
Pursuit of Justice is now 2 points instead of 3 and reduces chance to be hit by spells by 2% instead of 3%.
Eye for an Eye Eye for an Eye: All criticals against you cause 10/20% of the damage taken to the attacker as well, instead of 15/30% damage return for spell attacks only.
Divine Purpose changed to reduces chance to be hit by ranged/spell by 3% and reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 30%.
Repentance duration increased to 1 minute PvE, 10 seconds PvP.
Fanaticism increased crit strike chance of judgements to 25% instead of 15%.
Removals:
Protection
Precision removed.
Retribution
Sanctity Aura has been removed.
Improved Sanctity Aura has been removed.
Improved Seal of the Crusader has been removed.
Sanctified Judgement has been removed.
Additions:
Holy
Seals of the Pure, T1, 5 points
Blessed Hands, T5, 2 points
Infusion of Light, T8, 2 points
Sacred Cleansing, T9, 3 points
Enlightened Judgements, T9, 2 points
Judgements of the Pure, T10, 5 points
Beacon of Light, T11, 1 point
Protection
Divine Guardian, T4, 2 points
Touched by the Light, T9, 3 points
Guarded by the Light, T9, 2 points
Shield of the Templar, T10, 3 points
Judgements of the Just, T10, 2 points
Hammer of the Righteous, T11, 1 point
Retribution
Heart of the Crusader, T2, 3 points
Sanctified Retribution, T5, 1 point
Sheath of Light, T5, 3 points
Judgements of the Wise, T6 3 points
Sanctified Wrath, T8, 2 points
Swift Retribution, T9, 3 points
The Art of War, T9, 3 points
Righteous Vengeance, T10, 5 points
Divine Storm, T11, 1 point
Judgement Notes
The Judgement spell has been removed. Now, you have three Judgement spells. Judgement of Justice, Judgement of Wisdom, and Judgement of Light. When you cast a seal, you are able to cast one of the three judgements. When you cast the judgement, you get the effect of the judgement itself plus your seal will judge the target as well. However, you no longer have to recast your seal after using a judgement spell. (May be a bug?)
Example:I cast Seal of Command. I cast Judgement of Wisdom on my target. My target will then have the effect of Judgement of Wisdom but they also took damage as if I had judged command on them too.
Currently, doing a judgement with any seal will deal various amounts of holy damage. Unsure if there are plans to change that or not.
Keep in mind, these changes are just the Paladin changes!!! It's almost like a completely new class by itself. It's obvious that Blizzard has give a LOT of thought about how to make the Paladin better and it shows. Will all these changes make it out of beta? No way. Some are too powerful, some are about useless. There's a lot of good feedback on the beta forums for the devs to chew on. Ghostwalker is already gathering some info and giving ideas on the info s/he would like to see.
I'm hoping to get a beta invite. I'd sure like the opportunity to tell them that Prot damage needs to scale better if nothing else.
I thought the idea of the Death Knight having a cool looking flying mount was awesome. Well, it's available for the beta testers and the reality doesn't quite match the expectations.
I'm working from home today, and wouldn't you know it, it's the busiest day my department has seen all year.
The guild I'm a part of is a small, family guild. When I say family, I really mean it. Most of the members are an actual family, and the rest are all friends. That's a terrific situation when you're a part of an active group. Everyone knows one-another, there's a lot of kidding around and good-natured fun, and everyone has fun. But what happens when it all starts to fall apart?
Currently, we have about 45 members in this guild. They're all either mains or alts, so in effect, there's really only about 15 real people playing those 45. When everyone logged in regularly, getting help for quests or doing instances was not a problem. Now, people seem to have the pre-Wrath blahs or other, more personal, things are going on in their lives, so at most we might have 3-4 people logging in at once. And because of different schedules, even trying to complete the easiest group quests becomes an exercise in frustration.
I was enticed to this guild by some friends. I had taken a hiatus from the game for a few months late last year, and when I came back, my friends had all moved to a different server. I have no idea why they did the move, but they did, and if I wanted to play with them, I had to pick up sticks too.
Now, because there's no one playing anymore, I'm bored and tired of trying to schedule things for people who never show up.
I guess I'm ready to move on. I've been finding myself looking at guild recruitments posted on the server forum for a few weeks, and I finally took the leap and put in an application yesterday.
I feel bad that I will be leaving my home for so long, but what else can you do when you feel your guild has abandoned you?
"Varanis of Silvermoon (NSFW) said in the Wrath forums that he's willing to pony up his beta key to the best WoW pick-up line." And let me tell you, some of them are fantastic.
Vikhammer of Uther: "Hey baby, shouldn't your body be purple? Because it's totally epic."
Ohmehgahd of Alexstrasza: "I lost my lips, can I borrow yours?"
Whoru of Durotan: "Your gear may be epic, but your body is without a doubt Legendary!"
Foxtehhammer of Kael'thas: "Nice pants, baby. What's the drop rate?"
Tyranar of Hyjal: "Hey baby, thats my heart you just rolled on, and it's BoP."
Resarcio of Scilla: "I know theres a bad case of Thunder Clap going around, but don't worry...I spec'd Protection."
Won't my wife be surprised when I ask her what the drop rate of her pants is?
Why don't people like to play hunters in Arenas? Probably because they get sick of looking at a character stunned into oblivion and dead seconds later.
Love it or hate it, if it makes it out of beta, it should be interesting. It will definitely make raiding tougher (unless they re-tune things to make potions less necessary).
MMO-Champion has got the latest on the WotLK beta build, and it includes some lovin' druids have been asking for for ages. Unfortunately, these changes come from the new profession Inscription, but short help is better than none, Chewie.
Some of the other information released showed us some new blacksmith loving, the flying mount for death knights, and other various and a sundry updates.
At least I've already got the something blue (or actually,rather a lot of them).
Over the weekend, I grew curious about something as I leveled my pally. I've leveled a pally before, but that was when I didn't know as much about the game, so I did it badly. Now that I'm a little more wise about the rules, I'm paying attention to the little esoterica such as my defense, block, parry, dodge, etc. In other words, I'm watching my mitigation, something near and dear to every tank's heart.
I've noticed while playing that I tend to avoid most of the damage coming my way by either blocking it, parrying it, or dodging it. Needless to say, this really helps on the old repair bills. But what I'm curious about, is how good is my mitigation now and how do I tell if something is an upgrade?
After a little searching, I came across TankPoints. It's an older addon that hasn't been updated in over a year. Regardless, it doesn't seem to care (no error messages so far) and seems to work just fine. I'll keep playing with it and will let you know how it goes.
On the other side, WoWInsider posted a review of an addon called GoGoMount. It sounds about perfect for my needs, and probably for yours as well. What it does is macro all your possible mount solutions to one button and chooses the appropriate one for the occasion. That includes travel forms for druids and shamans as well. I'll test it out later, but if it works as anticipated, I should be able to free up some buttons on all my guys/girls.
Update: Chris suggested Ratingbuster. I'm going to give it a try next because while TankPoints gives some good info, it's a little on the esoteric side because you've got to decipher what it's trying to tell you (and I'm afraid that the info might be out of date).
Update 2: Upon checking, I already use RatingBuster. It is an awesome addon that I have enjoyed for a while and it actually works well with TP.
I don't know if you've been keeping up with all the beta information for Wrath, but I've been watching the beta forums for new information and what the players think about the changes.
Last night, I was standing in Orgrimmar dealing with some profession/leveling stuff, and someone started something in Trade chat that caught like wildfire. Now this may have happened before on other servers or the one I play on, but this was the first I had heard of it.
I'm not quite certain what to call it, per se, so let's just be descriptive, shall we?
"Anal" linking.
The person would first say "anal" in chat and then provide a link to either an item or ability.
Examples: anal [Fishing], anal [Prospecting], anal [Ring of Conquest], anal [Rod of Terror], ... You get the idea.
Most people found it amusing, so obviously it kept going. I didn't mind it myself and thought it pretty funny, if juvenile (it's OK to be juvenile sometimes, regardless of what people tell you). Some protested heavily. At any rate, I left Org to pursue the next level. An hour later, I come back and it's still going on.
I mean, it's not Chuck Norris, but still, things may be getting out of hand. Trade isn't used as much for trade as it is inane stuff and insulting each others mothers.
I know you are as excited about Wrath of the Lich King as I. I've been snapping up every bit of news that came out of the alpha and now the beta testing.
The latest tidbit that Blizzard has released are the new talent trees.
I'm looking forward to playing with these later. More to the point, I'm really looking forward to Wrath.
These days, while waiting with baited breath for the coming of Wrath, I can be found leveling my Pally. I'm enjoying the protection-spec grindage, especially in light (no pun intended) of the last character I worked on. A rogue.
I don't know what it is, but I just get bored to tears leveling rogues. This newest attempt is the highest I've ever gotten a rogue (39), but it's not that much past my last attempt (36). I don't know what it is about rogue that bores me. My first character ever was a druid, and a feral one at that. I played feral before it was viable or even cool. After getting her to max level, you'd think playing a rogue would be lots of fun, too. Alas, I just find other things to do, excuses really, to avoid playing my rogue.
I loved leveling my hunter. Great characters for building wealth quickly on a new server. I liked leveling my shadow priest. Lots of fun, especially in a group. I love my warlock; I can unleash my own inner tormentor when she rolls along (killing every single innocent level 1 rabbit that crosses her path). As I said previously, I love my Pally. Tons of fun to solo because you generally want to pull the world. But the rogue ... I just don't know.
Anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what I can do to level my rogue and avoid mind-numbing depression?
You can always find me here, at lovely scenic Camp Taurajo, just south of Barrens chat.
This blog will be mostly dedicated to World of Warcraft information, though there will be items of interest from other games and related genres from time-to-time.
I'll be sending out the invites, so join up and we'll PUG the crap out of this thing.
OK, so you've got 5 level 70's with all the gear you want (right now), your raid group has basically quit raiding because lack of people on-line, you don't want to think about another alt, much less actually level one, and you're bored out of your skull while playing, yet you follow all the new Wrath of the Lich King info like a crack-head looking for a fix. Sounds like you've got the pre-Wrath Blahs to me.
The new feral form: the Jackalope!
Picture courtesy of Theris
Aquaman fulfills the traditional role of hunter in Arenas
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