Ninja! ?

T: Why did you NEED that roll?

D: no answer

T: You realize that was a caster staff? And you can’t use staves?

D: but no one else needed.

Oh dear. I don’t pick up on these things too often because I don’t have the loot-rolls in my chat box. I always click Greed, and on the rare occasions i don’t I open a bag to see if I won. It keeps the text spam low as our guild leader gets upset when we ‘ignore’ his chatting because its lost in loot/party spam.

The hunter was screaming “Ninja” (talk about a role reversal) but what i had stumbled upon was a genuine new player. Over the course of this run I’d be explaining TPS vs DPS, raid icons, and what stats the player should be looking for.

Three wings of Dire Maw, and the player kept getting better and better… the one thing I couldn’t help with was the rotation, no idea what warriors have on their bars these days.

Still, not a bad run. Three wings, three levels.

 

Long Lost Update

A long time ago, on a server far, far away a guild went into melt-down.

The guild was based on RL friendships, and when they exploded, so too did the guild. The online downside of this was that all those 80’s kind of went to waste. My tank is still out there in 80 Epics, never to see Mt Hyjal, the shaman (as nerfed as Elemental has been) doesn’t get the joy of being lost at sea. Worst of all my other servers are getting the login love, and my Alliance have overtaken my Hordies.

I feel dirty

No more. I had left them there, untouched in the hope that maybe things would repair themselves. Definitely not going to happen after all this time, so time to wake up the Troll, Orc and Blood Elf and get cracking………………. wonder if the guild got deleted?

 

Might be posting again semi-regularly.

Huntard Alert

Huntards.

There was a reason that name was coined, and you know what? I know who coined it.

Prot-Pally’s.

Yep, as a budding Prot Pally, having finally bought my little man out of retirement and back to the blocking-with-my-face/body role of Tanking, I have learnt again to hate hunters.

There seem to be two school of hunter activity (its possible there is a third, but I have yet to see it).

The first is for the hunters trapped in an instance (usually Heroic) where the party barely has the gear to survive. When faced with this situation the hunter is apparently psychologically incapable of comprehending that mobs that get past the tank should be picked up. Instead it is apparently important to DPS down the aggro controlled mobs, and let the healer take lessons in sodomy 101. – Yes I know I have to pick it up, but that can’t always be done instantly due to Cool Downs, Stuns, Fears or simply being blinded by close up spell-graphic bombardment.

This is of course combines with misdirect to pull groups onto the tank without allowing a lead time so the tank can set up trash-groups to take full advantage of The Frisbee, Consecrate, and the Hammer. Time is lost due to wipes and running from mob to mob.

The second is for hunters trapped in an instance (usually heroic) where the party barely has to work to clear the dungeon. When faced with this situation the easily bored huntard rushes in, sometimes with misdirect, and shatters easily manageable groups into scattered rabble so that they spread across the zone without allowing any lead time for the tank to set up trash-groups to take full advantage of The Frisbee, Consecrate, and the Hammer.

Thus run time is significantly delayed and the Pally is forced to stop and drink regularly, during which time the hunter usually pulls another group and suddenly discovers that 5 toons may easily over power the instance, but a Tank and Healer are needed to achieve this.

I Tank. I DPS. I am starting to Heal. I have yet to meet a bad/irritating healer while Tanking. I have yet to meet a bad/irritating healer while DPSing.

As a Tank if I die it is usually because a) we are outmatched and don’t understand the fight or b) the critter just isn’t dying fast enough.

As a DPS if I die it is because a) I drew too much aggro (which is MY fault) or b) a wipe because we are outmatched and don’t understand the fight. In either case the Healer should never be blamed, nor should the Tank ever be blamed.

Yet whenever there is a pre-pubescent whiner in the party you can bet your bottom dollar its a brain-dead DPS.

Heads up guys, if the tank is struggling, throttle back! Its not rocket science. Let the tank keep aggro, let the healer worry about keeping him alive. Also HEAL YOURSELF!!! The healer has better things to worry about then healing you because you were stupid enough to stand in the black/purple/burny stuff.

Bring pots and bandages. Use those life-stealing abilities. If you die as DPS it’s your own fault.

It’s always awesome to have good DPS, it makes the fights go faster, thus puts less pressure on the Healer which in turn puts less pressure on the Tank. DPS is the retarded younger brother of the group, you can be carried. We’re nice to you, but we can always get replacement.

PS To Healers out there, if the warlock out there is above 50% health, there is no real need to heal them, they probably got that way via Life-tap and can easily regain it by doing damage.

Vampire Chronicle Reset

Shriveled souls wrapped in blood drenched flesh are all that remain of the humans that have become Kindred, yet even the dead can die…..  

Australia’s Kindred population Vampire: the Requiem is getting a re-boot. With rule changes related to challenges, and experience accrual coming in everyone gets to pack their favorite bloodsucker off to parts unknown or have them fall to the killer flu sweeping the world.

Our Camarilla chronicle isn’t at an end, but the characters are, and a whole new generation gets to come in to a continent devoid of vampires.

Sounds a bit dire, but for those of us that have characters that have been active for a while we get a massive experience benefit, Membership Class x 10 and + 3 per month the character was active.

So this time I’m two-gunning it, entering the game with two distinctly different character concepts so I can fully explore the game (mostly via email this time around). I have the fearless hedonist, out for fun at any cost, and the political monster, promoting the faith of the fallen.

WoW World Events

Rabbit

There are events in WoW that make sense. The sumnmer and winter festivals can all be tied in with the worlds lore, childrens week makes an excellent tie-in to a war torn world where orphans must be the norm rather then the exception. Brewfest? I can certainly see how a world in conflict would turn this into a major event. Now we have Noblegarden.

Between Noblegarden and Valentines……… I mean seriously WTF? How on earth does finding chocolate eggs, EXPLODING chocolate eggs laid by a pink montreme evolve? I get that people like Easter, but people also like WoW because it isn’t the real world, so why, oh why, do we have to drag every half-arsed, commercially created festival into WoW?

Okay maybe I’m bitter because it 250+ eggs before my dress dropped. That was with my horde shaman, which I guess makes sense, we horde are being penalized for taking up such a wimpy, gay, festival. My Night Elf Death Knight (don’t get me started on how DK’s screw with the Lore) got the achievements in record time however. maybe the intrinsic girlishness of the festival meshes well with an undead killing-machine that bounces on the spot in spontaneous moments of sickly cuteness….

Then of course is the nasty rumour that Blizzard is taking Drakes away from the achievements. Way to screw the casual gamer, the PvPer and the explorer. Remember folks, if you’re not a raider you’re apparently a ‘lesser’ player.

Dumbing down WoW

Okay I get it, Arena is where its at, e-peen vs, e-peen with QQ for the loser. Its Blizzards baby and the holy grail of Warcraft is the eternally shifting class balances that keeps people interested and desperately trying to level the superclass of the month. No biggie; its obvious that the PvE game has be relegated to a simple, ‘how-you-get-to-Arena-and-End-Raids-process’ and that its been made so simple that a six year old could do it between naps.

I get it. PvP is the Blizzard cash cow. It’s what most of the players want, and its where all of the development focus goes. That doesn’t mean I haven’t got an axe to grind though… in fact I have many axes, swords, and daggers and I have a surplus of whetstones to boot!

Do you know why?

You probably do but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because nothing friggin sells, nothing sells because the levelling process happens so quickly and easily that you never have to gear up. The sporadic quest greens you get are more then enough to push you along in turbo-levelling mode, and heavens forbid that you actually might have to complete more then 50% of the quests in a zone before you DING!

Remember when the quests sent us to strange new places, funky new bits of scenery and pop-reference? Remember when you followed a quest chain for the story rather then abandoned it halfway along because it went grey? Remember when levelling gave a sense of accomplishment rather then the mildly irritating calculations of X more till level 80?

Zul-frak had a hammer once, you had to go to an out-of-the-way but extremely scenic area call hinterlands to get it… in order to summon the mommy hydra. Now? Just ring the damn gong… who needs to go to a place that looks cool and who needs an item that makes this a living world rather then just a long version of mario-kart. Mauradaron (crappiest dungeon ever, but that’s not the point) you no longer have to slog through those first two painful areas to get the sceptre that allows you to start at the halfway point from then on. Yes the instance is easier now, yes it’s less annoying. Downside is that there is less of a sense of achievement, and content is simply ignored.

I know WoW has never been exactly challenging, but we don’t have to be spoon fed every-bloody-thing. There were once cool quests to get class-specific powers and items. There were elite zones outside dungeons Horde and Alliance were distinct. Now the new-and-improved World of Warcraft is far more vanilla then Vanilla WoW ever was….

Sweet leaping jebus blizzard! I come here to immerse myself in a game world, to escape from life. If I wanted to battle other humans in a small area without story or context I’d play a FPS. If I wanted to spend all my time getting the right set of gear for the right encounter I’d play Dress-Up Barbie. Sure Arena’s are nice, but why does WoW have to become another starcraft. Lots of combat but no world to speak of.

Give me back my fantasy world, give me something to challenge me, give me back my MMORPG.

3.1 First Impressions

Kudos, as always, to Blizzard for the new content… but could you please stop fucking up the old content?

Remember Nessingwary? Remember the Epic quests to single-handedly put entire species on the endangered list?

Remember the feel of being the animal worlds’ equivalent of a Reaper hyped up on Caffeine after a really bad day reaping?

Guess what…. nerfed.

That’s right Nessingwary has been castrated because we all know that WoW players are fluffy little vegetarians girls that faint at the idea of a skinning profession and are all card carrying members of PETA in real life. (no offence meant to the actual fluffy little vegetarian girls…. of whom I’m quite fond)

But still… what’s next? No more mining skills because it encourages the exploitation of mother earth…err… I mean mother Azeroth. Oh no… Don’t rain of fire on that marauding pack of murlocs, there might be a rare red-spotted swamp gurgler leading them.

For the love of god…. (troll gods of course)… what’s next? The quest to castrate Nessingwary? Lead Thrall to elocution lessons? Take 20 pink ribbons and cure the new King of his misogynistic tendencies?

I’ll tell you what’s next.

• The hunter class is being eliminated due to its exploitation of animals.

• Dwarven females are going to be encouraged to play naked because they should be ‘proud of who they are‘

• Trolls and undead will be hidden away because of their cannibalistic tendencies

• Both factions will make peace with the burning legion because they are ‘just misunderstood‘

• Gnomes will only be allowed to quest in male/female pairs so that they can’t fall prey to their homoerotic urges (we’ve all seen Lord of the Rings)

• … and death knights will have their ‘rise-from-the-dead-as-a-ghoul‘ ability removed in case it offends fundamental Christians… oh wait… already happened.

I feel so violated….

So actual changes… Talent trees have been dumbed down, grinding has been reduced, RET Paladins still need a serious Nerf, classes are still unbalanced, classes are loosing more and more individuality despite the unbalance issues, old crafted gear that no one will ever buy has been upgraded, Unholy DK’s got a nerf (mentioned in the last bullet point) that removes  the only ability that differentiated them from a cut-&-paste Paladin clone.

But its really Nessingwary that chafes my ass….

Repost on CC from Holy Hammers

There’s been a lot of rambling about crowd control and Paladins. Some people (mostly ones not playing paladins) complain that Tankadins are always smashing their cc and generally not cooperating.

The reasons for this are many, and varied. However I haven’t seen a good post about when cc is good for a Tankadin, so I’ve decided to continue that trend by writing a bad post about when cc is useful for a Tankadin.

The situations where a Pally needs cc are limited.

1. Fighting two big critters at a time. By this I mean when the group is supposed to be pulling only a single massive mob to pound on and gets two with a miss-pull or patrol. In this instance cc away as the big guy can probably dish out more damage then a poorly geared pally can handle.

2. The mobs are casters. Casters don’t spend time pounding on the Pally physically. That means the pally isn’t doing damage to them, and the damage they are doing with spells is probably eating a hole in the Pally’s hit points. CC these buggers, the Pally will get less manna from healing, but it will make the healers happy.

3. Runners. Runners are bad okay. If the Pally can pull ’em back great and he’ll probably do so and break your cc at the same time. Just don’t sheep runners, we spent all that time pounding them to the edge of death so that they flee in terror, there is no point just letting them heal up in wool-form.

Repost on Stuns from Holy Hammers

There is a school of thought that says anything that is stunned or crowd controlled isn’t doing damage to the party, it is therefore better to stun then DPS.

This is false. Warlocks, Hunters and Rogues I’m looking at you now!

I’m a Tank. I’m a Paladin Tank. This means if something isn’t hitting me then it’s not taking damage. Instead of my passive-aggressive holy damage enraging the beastie beyond the limits of self-control it just stands there with a dumb look on its face… like George Bush facing a word with more then two syllables.

Stunning is Bad…. that stunned beastie isn’t getting aggro from me, it’s getting aggro from the Healer who is keeping me alive. That’s right, that squishy little tissue wearer with the survivability of a goldfish in a blast furnace is rising on the Trash Mobs “to eat” list. This is NOT COOL, this does not make Big Daddy Hammer happy, and when that occurs he feels like shoving that mauve hammer so far up your……. um…… got a little carried away there.

In summary, if you can stun it, Ipso facto it’s probably a trash mob. If it’s a trash mob and you have a Tankadin at the fore then you probably shouldn’t stun it.

WoW on Easy Mode

Blizzard is understandably proud of its end-game content. I mean once you’ve wandered into the Halls of Lightning and actually looked at the instance rather then just concentrating on the mobs, you can see the awesome artwork that has been done in this game. Naturally if you code all this eye-candy, then you want folks to see it ASAP, there is a hell of a lot of content in the game if you crawl up from level 1, so here comes the Death Knight.

As an aside, with the accelerated leveling that comes from more XP per kill, blue bar, and more XP per quest, I don’t believe it is possible to experience all the old content while still keeping to zones and quests of appropriate level.

The Death Knight can be defined as WoW on easy mode. Worried about physical damage? You’re wearing plate and can pop up Frost Aura. Worried about magical damage? You can pop up an anti-magic field that looks like the little cousin of Dalran’s old magical shield. Want to be DPS, sure go blood and heal yourself at the same time. Want to be a Tank, pop up your Frost Aura. Want to do AoE then unholy is the path for you. Seriously its so easy even a hunter player could do it :p

Death Knight is the swiss army knife of the WoW world. Soling 2 beasties 3 levels higher then themselves without raising a sweat, soloing all those annoying Dragon Blight and Ice Crown group quests without relying on the fickle attendance of other classes. Add herbalism and skinning and you get a self-heal and extra crit to round off your awesomeness to new heights of pretentious wankery.

Of course by the time you get to 10 mans, and raid content you tend to be the unwelcome kid at the party. All that alone time has given you the social skills of a cheeto’s guzzling nerd living in their mothers basement and never seeing the light of day…….. oh…….. didn’t mean to go there.

Okay, I’m off…… to play one of my three Death Knights….. oh…… 😦