Archive for January, 2009

Morality vs. Duty

January 31, 2009 at 2:07 am · Filed under Life, Other Blogs, WoW

Reading WoW blogs, it’s inevitable that you will have come across several posts lately regarding some Northrend quests. Gnomeageddon, Bigbearbutt, Critical QQ, and more have remarked on the quests in Northrend that are rather questionable in morality. The biggest one however, seems to be the Quest in Borean Tundra that has you torture information out of a prisoner.

First, I want to say that torture is of course wrong. Next, I want to completely contradict myself. If a person has information that is deemed either vital to the survival of another being or is necessary to prevent harm from falling upon others, it is my honest opinion that that information has to be extracted. By any means necessary (god, I’ve always wanted to say that).

This piece of garbage that’s been captured by the Kirin Tor is being held because his kind kidnapped and may also be torturing a leader of their’s. I wonder if there’s a Kalimdor Convention outlining the treatment of prisoners of war… Anyways, you have 2 choices in this case: Get the information from the prisoner quickly, or allow the captured leader to possibly die a horrible death (that’s not really said here but I doubt the mage hunters are going to say “Okay we’re done here. On your way,” pat her on the butt and send her home). Basically, you’re just doing that wuss of a Kirin Tor mage’s dirty work. He doesn’t have the stomach to do what needs to be done, so he asks you. Are you revolted? Are you disgusted? Does the quest go against your or your character’s moral code? If you answered no to the above questions, congrats and enjoy yourself. If you answered yes then I ask you one more question; Would you be willing to allow another being to die for your morals, for your own desire to keep your hands clean, for your revulsion at having to do what needs to be done? Kinda like a Catch 22 isn’t it (google it kiddies, I ain’t explaining it).

Big Bear Butt brings up another good point though. Add a choice. There are plenty of games out there that do this and each have consequences. In Fable 2, your behavior affects your purity and good/evilness and this affects your image but also, the choices you make affect the world around you. In the beginning of the game, if you choose to hand over some warrants you collected to a criminal, the part of the city you come back to later is a ghetto filled with thugs and hookers. If you hand the warrants to the guard that asked you to collect them, the city you come back to is a prosperous merchant quarter, and the guard (now sheriff) tells you that you’ll get a discount. It also unlocks the Bounty Hunter jobs. Adding these types of mechanics to the game gives it a more in-depth feeling and really hooks you into the game. For example: If you chose not to torture the guy, blizz could start another quest line where you actually find out the magister died due to the delay and, though you gain more experience due to a lengthier and more in-depth questline, you consequently lose rep with the Kirin Tor. Something like that would still feel good, even taking the rep penalty.

Unfortunately, I too was taken aback when this quest was given to me. I didn’t want to do it because it seemed…. out of place. WoW was never this dark before. It was always a tad more humorous and family friendly. Then I thought about it and decided I didn’t care (comes with not having a conscience) and tortured away. Of course, one look at the torture instrument decided me. He basically gives you a pointy stick. WTF am I gonna get from a pointy stick? Give me pliers and a dull serrated knife. Give me a chair and a length of rope with a weight at the end (thank you Casino Royale). Give me a car battery equipped with testicle clamps. Fuck! Giving me a pointy stick to torture someone with is like giving me a toothbrush and telling me to paint Warsong Hold. Bastard. So I pictured that it was like a cattle prod pointy stick instead. Zap zap zap. And there ya go.

Hey, it could have been worse. The mage could have said “I want you to use these pliers to take his fingernails off till he talks.”

 

(Btw, any bloggers that came here from the above linked posts, please feel free to delete the inevitable comment on your page. I just want to give examples and don’t know any other way to do so besides linking them.)

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So I lied…

January 30, 2009 at 5:47 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Yeah, I’m not posting something on the details of a raid from a dps’s perspective b/c… well… it depends on the dps. See a melee is only going to understand whether they have to get out of the way for something, a ranged may have a better idea of wth is going on. Honestly though, it depends on the person behind the toon.

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Ugh, so tired…

January 29, 2009 at 10:56 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

After rereading my story from yesterday, I found around 8 or 9 things I wanted to fix. Though I like that the mage did come off as an elitist racist prick. Just too tired to edit now.

Anyways, working on a couple of posts. Gonna update maybe Saturday after our 10 man attempt at Sartharion +3. It seems like it’s going to hurt… alot.

Working on posting about raids from a dps perspective and how much it differs from a tank’s or healer’s perspective (inspired by a rogue yesterday telling me “I just stab shit”).

On a more serious note, poop is funny. That is all.

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The pathetic lower race…

January 29, 2009 at 2:28 am · Filed under Uncategorized

*Warning, this is an RP story post that I said I would start in this post. This is for amusement and entertainment. Please skip this if you don’t like these types of posts.*

Majick dismounted his wind rider and grimaced. The stink of sweaty tauren and orc filled the cramped space of this pathetically small outpost. Barely hiding his disgust for the unwashed flith, he began to mount his horse when he was stopped by a young orc warrior, clearly just starting his chosen career. To the mage’s surprise, the orc was able to speak with coherence and intelligence instead of the halting and struggling speech of most of his station.

“Mage, we need your help. There are two Alliance that are attacking the soldiers here.”

Majick’s eyes flashed and the air around him buzzed with energy, making the young warrior nervous. All undead detested those not of their kind, even their barely tolerated Horde allies. The mage, however, had a special hatred for the Alliance, having been attacked on more than one occassion throughout his long career.

“What are they orc?” The mage was far too old and had been through too many battles to rush headlong into a fight without information.

The orc nodded, clearly please with the Forsaken’s response.

“There is a dwarf hunter and a very large bear that we believe to be a druid. They are attacking members of our scout parties and several of the vendors in the area have been found dead in their stalls. I was able to observe the hunter however I was unable to determine his skill. He is far more advanced than I am to be sure” The orc looked somewhat distressed by this fact.

Majick nodded. The orc was far from a warrior’s prime, and was most likely less skilled than most in the area.

“I will find them and destroy them both, young orc, and I will savor it,” he hissed.

The warrior raised his eyebrows and nodded his head, stepping aside to allow the volatile mage pass.

Majick climbed atop his horse and began to leave the Crossroads when he was stopped by another orc warrior. This warrior was a pathetic excuse for a being, even for an orc. His armor was badly rusted and beaten and his body already going to soft at a young. His face had even less intelligence in it than most orcs. Majick believed he already knew where this conversation would go.

“You give me gold?” Majick recoiled from the strong smell of spirits on the fool’s breath before leaning forward and scowling.

“Move aside simpleton. You will get neither my gold nor my pity, but if you continue to hinder or pester me, I will gladly give you my wrath.” growled the undead, putting his power of the arcane behind his words to force them into the orc’s thick skull.

The orc hastily retreated and went to look for another to beg from. The undead sniffed, why the Dark Lady ever decided to ally with these beasts he would never know. He dug his heels into the fleshless sides of his warhorse to urge him on and left the began to scout the outer edges of the Crossroads.

The wizard looked around him, internally lamenting the fact that his component gathering brought him to the hot and glaring Barrens. If he had known, he may have thought twice before studying the art of glyphs.

So involved with his inner thoughts, he forgot he was scouting for Alliance and found a rather large boar rushing out at him. Majick dismounted quickly, trying to throw up a defensive shield before he was gored on one of the hated creatures tusks. The boar, however, was too close and lunged. The mage noted the boar and saw that it really posed no threat to him, simply stepping to the side as it charged past. He turned around and studied the animal as it recovered itself for a second pass, and then stopped. The boar was a normal boar, but of a slightly different variety than those found close by in durotar. This one actually looked like the ones that could be found in…

The mage’s eyes widened with realizing his own danger, he quickly threw up a defensive spell to shield himself, narrowly deflecting the arrow that had been shot at him. He turned and looked at the dwarf who had fired upon him and sneered. This was no threat to him, this dwarf was so far below his ability that disposing of him seemed less a chore and more a passing whim.

The dwarf recognized this at the same time and, eyes filling with fright, frantically chanted a quick spell and fired another arrow. Majick could tell what this one was, a funny little hunter spell that put their target to sleep. Majick smiled as the arrow impacted and the spell fizzled, unable to put the undead mage into a sleep.

The dwarf dropped his bow and turned to run.

“Fool” Majick laughed. “Have you never faced THE FORSAKEN!?”

With that he sent a bolt of arcane energy into the dwarf’s body, ripping his life from him in less than a second. The mage walked over the body, sending out a small final explosion to dispatch the hunter’s pet.

As he passed the body, a roar ripped through the savannah. He turn to find a tremendous bear ripping the throat of a guard out and turning to face him. He smiled, this must be our druid friend, I suppose we could toy with our food first. The bear had been fighting the guards for some time while someone close to Majick’s level of ability would have easily dispatched them.

“Come then druid, I am eager to feast on your corpse.” Spoken in his best common.

The druid roared again and replied “I will tear the unlife from your carcass, abomination.” And with that said, the druid charged. The mage watched as the bear cam closer and closer and at the last possible second, he froze the ground around him, trapping the druid in ice. The druid howled in rage. Majick shook his head, a more experienced druid would have shifted to a smaller form and simply slipped out of the ice, this one was far too young to present any amusement. He reached out and patted the bears head, careful to pull away  before he was bitten.

He slowly began to walk away and cast a slowing spell on his victim, watching as the bear struggled to catch up to him. He laughed and walked right next to it and then cut it with his small dagger. This caused no real harm to the druid but demonstrated that the elf had gotten in over their head. The druid realized this and that they were being toyed with and said a silent prayer right before a barrage of arcane energy tore into the bear, ripping it from the world of the living in a wave of agony.

Majick smiled and walked over to the corpse that had turned back into the Night Elf female. He dropped down into a crouch and breathed deep the smell of death before enjoying his feast. Night elves always tasted best.

 

A mass of steel and cold dead flesh shifted far away as the cries of comrades falling reached him. He picked up his blue hued glowing warsword and began to walk in the direction of the Barrens…

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Yay, creative-ity-ness!

January 28, 2009 at 11:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

This post inspired me to start my own little story since I loves it when people make WoW stories. Probably up later today. For now: this!

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Mage Blogs Away!

January 28, 2009 at 3:37 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Gnomeaggedon (think Gnome+ Armageddon, not like me when I first saw his name and thought of a short, bearded dinosaur) had a “Clayton’s Post”. And, in my normal lazy-assed style, instead of a real post, I decided to piggy back his a point all you happy little mages that are accidentally pulling up my blog in the direction of some actual mage blogs.

Click here to be enlightened, cur!

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Lets bring the mage out!

January 27, 2009 at 12:46 am · Filed under Addons, Mage, WoW

So I started leveling my mage again. It is decidedly more fun to nuke the shit out of monsters while they slowly run at you than it is to jump on them and bite them (ok, maybe not THAT much more fun.)

But, dear 1.5 average readers, I am at an impasse. You see, I am currently leveling my mage frost, and although I do love the frost nukes, I have to wonder if Arcane might not be the better bet. I’ve watched our mages switch from the frostfire spec to arcane and watched their numbers absolutely sky rocket. I’m not talk about a difference of 3200 to 3300 or some number like that that may have more to do with gear, this is a whole new type of ass whooping. Our arcane mages were pumping out around 4400-4500 dps on sartharion on saturday (we downed him+1 with 20 people for 2 achievements, woot).

After seeing this absolutely ridiculous amount of dps, I couldn’t resist. I had to level my mage. It just couldn’t be helped. But how shall I level? Do I want to continue bringing the freeze, or melt faces with Arcane? I’ll do a bit more research on this and maybe get into a couple builds and etcetera so that those who stumble on this page don’t think it’s an absolute waste of time.

Edit: So I made the switch, I decided to try out my own arcane spec for soloing. For those of you wondering, the normal Arcane Raid Spec is here. It maximizes your dps with Elemental Precision and Icy Veins. The normal spell rotation (oh god the mana sucking horror) is Arcane Blast x3> Arcane Missiles> Arcane Barrage. This is tricky, Arcane Barrage must be cast before the final missile is sent, otherwise it won’t get the buff.

Sure, it’s not the most mana friendly for soloing but with Evocation on a 2 minute cooldown, it’s just too tempting. For raiding situations where there’s no AOE, you’d want to use Evoc at the very last second of Ivy Veins, the channeling time will be shorter that way, but if there’s a lot of AOE, use that Evoc in conjunction with a full icy veins to prevent interruption, you’ll need the full Evoc.

Oh, and Torment the Weak just makes me weep with joy. While soling, can you think of a time when you don’t slow an enemy? I can’t. And in raids? I guarantee there’s a slow effect on the boss or trash. Thunderclap for warriors, Infected Wound for druids, and some Judgement for Pallies will slow the target. It doesn’t just mean “slow” as in a snare, it also means their attack speed, isn’t that tasty?

I’ll post here when I try it out in leveling finally, right now trying to level herbalism and inscription.

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Tanking Threat and me

January 24, 2009 at 3:29 am · Filed under Druid, Raids, Tanking, WoW

Every good tank knows threat. Threat is what makes you stand up to that mob and say “Hey bitch, right here!”

But, how does one develop threat? So used to trying to hold threat off of super zealous dps last night, I ran in on Patchwerk (43k hp druid offtank thank you) and started unloading on him like I was trying to MT. Of course, that caused me to gain initial threat. The paladin tank picked him up easy enough off me once I realized the error of my ways but I still felt like a nub. (In my defense I was drinking to dull the pain in my mouth from my relatively botched wisdom teeth removal). Oops.

In another instance, while tanking some things, I find myself actually having to work at staying above the dps.  I decided it’s time to focus on my rotation.

The rotation really depends on the boss fight. If you’re doing something like Sapphiron, Noth, or Heigan; lacerate is more trouble than it’s worth. The bleed effect is going to wear off. Your best bet is to swipe with maul and mangle and FF whenever the cooldown is up (btw, don’t bother with FF if a moonkin w/ imp FF is in the raid, it’ll just waste precious moments in hitting a dead button and having the “A more powerful spell is already active” message come up.

Now, on more stationary bosses where they aren’t going to run away, lacerate can be included.

 

Usually on Sapph my rotation looks something like this:

FF (moonkin usually hasn’t thrown his at the very beginning so it gives you some nice initial threat.)> Mangle> Maul+ Lacerate x2> Mangle> Lacerate+ Maul x 3> Mangle> Swipe +maul x2> Mangle

Basically lacerate+maul between mangles until a 5 stack, then swipe+ maul between mangles, only lacerating to refresh the stack. FF should be used in there as well but I’m nearly always raiding with an Imp. FF moonkin so I never get to use it. None stationary fights look something like this:

Mangle> Swipe + Maul x2>rinse>repeat for eternity.

Using this rotation I don’t have any issues with threat and can usually moderate around 4.6k tps at the least.

Now… I don’t use Imp. Mangle. I know, I can’t believe me either. But it kinda makes sense. Mangle is now not that big a deal. I read on Thinktank (wowthinktank.blogspot.com) that at the threat per second difference is tiny and without that tiny little bit of threat you can put some points in more cat friendly talents to help your raid when you aren’t tanking(let’s face it, they’d rather you dps Thaddius than the prot warrior). My cat dps (while awful) went up around 300 by switching a few talents around (I can’t remember what okay? I’m sorry but I know I took the one that reduces Shred’s energy cost). 

Which is another thing I have a problem with, since when has melee deeps become so complicated? Isn’t tanking supposed to be more difficult. Instead, now tanking is a swipe+ maul fest of bad and cats have to remember sequences of 90 some possibilities to get mediocre dps while mages can scorch spam and hot streak their way to 3k dps (no, that’s not exaggerating, someone pulled that off last night on Patch on a dare). I hope Ulduar has some tanking challenges, sheesh.

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Guild Drama,why do we put up with it…

January 21, 2009 at 2:22 am · Filed under Raids, WoW

You’ve all seen it. Things are 100% fine. Everyone is coasting along, then something happens. It can happen in one of two ways. 1.) Someone is gradually grating everyone’s nerves by being a jerk, sucking, goofing off in inappropriate times or in an inappropriate manner, or all of the above; or 2.) something happens to just set someone off. It seems like this is becoming worse and worse lately in all guilds since I see a lot of bloggers blogging about it. Is it because the content in WotLK is basically done for the moment? Whatever the reason, it can get bad.

The guild I’m in, The Synergized, is a casual, family-friendly guild. Family-friendly meaning that we don’t allow cussing and inappropriate talk in guild raids, guild chat, or vent. It’s just not allowed. “Wait, but Moo… you cuz like a truck driver….” Fuck you, this isn’t in guild. Reason being that some people have kids in the guild and don’t want them to see rolling lines of type of cuss words. I understand there’s a language filter, I know it’s there for a reason. That’s beside the point. The rules have been in effect for a very very long time, we aren’t going to just up and change them because someone wants to type out cuss words.

Now, I say we’re casual in the sense that raiding is not our #1 priority. We’re a friendly guild. We mostly all like to raid but we really like to keep it laid back. We don’t snap out on people if they are sub-par at dps. We don’t tell people that they need to be on all for every raid. We raid 3 hours a night, 4 nights a week and if you can’t make it, just let us know and it’s cool. We’ve made it to #12 on the server like this and I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment when the guilds above you and several spots below you are serious raiding guilds. My point is that we have never been hardcore serious before and I don’t think we have plans to be in the future.

Now, enter guild drama. I woke up on sunday in a slight haze as my night time pain killers were wearing off (wisdom teeth got pulled last week). I signed on to do some dailies. So we’re chatting, being friendly, etc. etc. There’s 2 officers, me and another, and another officer on his alt. So someone says “damn” in guild chat. It’s not that big a deal. We had let it go before but now ask nicely not to say it in guild chat. Apparently, this was far too much to ask. Commence a 45 minute long conversation where this one member argues with me about whether or not he should be allowed to say it. I wasn’t debating about whether “damn” is a cuss word mind you. I actually agreed that it wasn’t that bad of a word. No, what I was arguing about was the fact that this guildy, instead of acknowledging an officer asking him not to say something (she explained it very nicely too, some members find it offensive so please don’t do it) and maybe stating that he didn’t agree with it but okay, he chose instead to debate with us (then just me, and then other guildies who came online to the conversation) about whether it was a good rule (mind you, we ask you to agree with the rules first). After a very long time, we settled down and he basically told me he’d do it anyway and I told him that he’d most likely be kicked.

Now, I don’t care about the cuss words myself. I could care less if someone said “shit” in g chat. The point is respect. It’s respect for the guildies who don’t want to see it. It’s respect for the guildies who have kids that may be online. It’s respect for the damn rules of the guild you signed up for. Is it too much to ask? Not in my opinion. But some people don’t get it. It’s not the words I care about, it’s the guildies. If I bend the rules to make you happy, I can upset another guildy. So the rules are there. Obey or get the fuck out. The guy didn’t get kicked, though the GL gave me the option. I said he deserved 1 more chance but there have been other complaints about him so he’s on probation. 1 more strike.

 

Now another instance of drama. The same damn day, later in Nax, we steamrolled the remainder. We only had military quarter and then the last 2. Raid time was set at 6 server. At 6 server, for the last 2 weeks or so, we’ve started invites. This sunday they started early because our GL wasn’t on so we wanted to get in faster. So invites go out and at exactly 6 server our MT, who I always thought was a pretty cool guy, starts calling out who isn’t there. Look, I get that you’re impatient but that’s fucking annoying. And he kept doing it. Throughout the entire instance, he was fast pulling. The guy is an amazing tank, don’t get me wrong. He’d pull a group, I’d run in and pick a few off him, he’d start pulling right after. That’s how I like to pull. But his attitude started to grate our, I say our b/c I wasn’t the only one. He was acting like he was suddenly the god of the raid, and what he says goes. It was annoying. I couldn’t figure out why he was acting this way. Then it hit me, the GL wasn’t on. It’s apparently a ”be a prick for free” card. It was fine though, he was just grating nerves with his attitude, it wasn’t like he was being insulting… Well, until we downed Kel’thuzad. Now, we 1 shot the entire raid. No wipes. We had rogues and DKs up front interrupting, the tank was helping. After the raid, the tank throws up the interrupt meter showing that the rogue and he were the top 2 interrupters. Next in line was a DK with 6, then our ret pally. Firstly, it needed to be addressed because our tank died once during the fight (luckily there was a save by one of our DKs till a B-rez was thrown) and he was still second, fourth in line was our ret pally who has a 60 second cd on his interrupt. Why did our dks have so much trouble? This could have been addressed in a calm or civil manner. What happens? “You guys freaking fail, look at these interrupts”… Oh great. So one of our DKs, the one with 6 interrupts, tries to explain why it might be difficult for them to interrupt. Who fires back at him and attacks him? The tank? Nope. Another DK. One that either wasn’t on the meters or had 1 interrupt, I don’t know who it was. Pandemonium ensues. Oh ho ho though. Our guild leader managed to sneak onto vent right before the last fight and listen in (while he waited for the 15 minute long server queue) and managed to break it up somewhat.

 

Now here’s the main problem. If we kick the people who start the problems, we start discord. Their friends decide they’ll leave too. Then we have open raid spots that we need to recruit to fill or train new people for. If we don’t, then we say this is okay and that the drama they cause is not a problem since there are no repurcussions. I personally, just feel like playing an alt tonight instead of raiding, drama has sucked the fun right out of the game for me.

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3.0.8 wtf?

January 14, 2009 at 1:06 am · Filed under Uncategorized

There’s speculation about whether 3.0.8 is going to drop today… I don’t care. If it does, it does. If it doesn’t, I get a few more minutes to play WoW tonight. I have trouble getting excited for any patch. I’m aware of changes, I’m aware of how they affect my class and others. But… You know what I’m marginally excited about? Opening clams while on a mount or in flight and stacking them. I know, I know. It’s stupid but I remember getting on a flight on my first ever character (night elf hunter… yeah) and wondering why the hell I couldn’t open my clam. Does my toon need both hands to hold onto the reins or something? And why don’t they stack? They aren’t gear. So since this was 3 years ago or so (how long has it been?), I kinda like this change because it reminds me of when the game was all new and shiny.

I’d talk about the other changes but who really wants to hear them? You can find them on WoWinsider or on World of Warcraft or MMOChampion and many many more.

I will, however, say that the armor nerf to druids is a good and bad thing. Some druids are getting armor capped already just from running Nax, OS, and heroics. That’s like getting capped coming out of T4 in BC, it shouldn’t be happening. The only reason it’s bad is because we will now have less mitigation than other tanks for a little while, we’ll need to seriously focus on ilevel and armor on our leather items from here on out, blues just ain’t gonna cut it anymore.

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