18 Questions - A Response to a Tag

Morning blog lovers

Last week I got tagged by Ruhtra over at Holy Shock. Nothing spectacular, just a some questions about healing and my thoughts on the subject. So if you don't like reading about Shaman healing, I will still try to add some entertain value to this post and my answers.

Such as this random quote...

When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car.

I know, I know, that was distasteful...but don't act like you didn't chuckle a little bit.

I won't tell anyone...me promise

Anyway....onward to the questions!

1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Teknizzle, Shaman, Restoration

2. What is your primary group healing environment? (ie raids, 5 man, PVP)

Raiding. I used to be a 10 man healer solely, but I have since moved on to the 25 mans. At this point, all 5 mans are a joke to heal with everyone over geared for them. I usually ask the tank to take off his pants and tank to make things interesting, but most of the time they think I am joking.

So I mostly dps when I heal 5 mans. Riptide + totems are sufficient most of the time.

3. What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

My favorite healing spell is Riptide. I know, its not chain heal...

Ok, you're right...its chain heal. I like seeing lots of numbers and in a 25 man raiding encounter like the Twins Val'kyr fight in ToC....it really makes me giggle uncontrollably. Especially if you been stacking haste like a fat kid stacks pancakes during the early morning special at IHOP.

4. What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Well, Shamans don't have a ton in there arsenal, but I would say that I use Healing Wave the least.

Riptide + Lesser Healing Wave isn't as fast as it used to be, but it gives me 30% more chance to crit. A crit gives the person I was healing a 10% less physical dmg buff....so I tend to try and kept that buff up at all times.

I use Healing Wave alot, but it would definitely rank lower then my other spells in terms of use.

5. What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

The buffs we bring and how much we rock face in terms of healing assignments. Raid, single target, free lance...we excel at all of them.

Not to mention all the buffs we give people with our totems. Need more haste Mr. Caster? Sure...here is 3% more haste...nbd.

Need 200 more spell power? I got you. What about more strength/ap? Yeah, thats right...you know the big sexy cow has your back.

6. In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best healing assignment (in general) for you?

That all depends on your healing core and what classes you have. Truthfully, the best healing assignment for me as a Shaman is the melee group (including healing the tanks, but not on tank duty solely) and free lancing.

When I say free lancing I mean just an extra healer doing whatever is needed. I don't dislike straight raid healing or single target healing, but I think the best healing assignment for me is to take care of the melee group while doing my own thing for everyone else.

7. What healing class do you enjoy healing with the most and why?

I don't really have an opinion on this one really. In a 25 man I like to have atleast one good druid and some sort of priest for fort. Other then that I could care less.

All healing classes bring something to the table and if the player is skilled, it should be smooth no matter the combo.

8. What healing class do you least enjoy (hate) healing with and why?

Well, like I just said...I don't have an opinion. As long as the healer is skilled and knows what to do. If I had to pick one I would say Paladins because there are just too many of them who are down right horrible...atleast on my server.

9. What is your worst habit as a healer?

Not paying attention to my own health bar...lol. Sometimes I just get into that mode of looking at health bars and because of my UI setup....usually in 5 mans...I forget about myself lol.

I used to do this all the time when I first started healing 5 mans, but now it rarely happens.

10. What is your biggest peeve in a group environment when healing?

People killing themselves and then blaming the healing core or myself. Look, I will take the blame if something is my fault. However, when people run out of my line of sight or stand in fire for too long and die. Then they talk shit about the healers?!?

I start seeing red and the nerd rage comes out of me. I am not proud of this, but my nerd rage has single handedly destroyed a 25 man pug before. As well as countless 5 mans and a few 10 mans.

You know the kind...everyone is doing good. We are killing shit for over an hour with no wipes. Then we wipe twice on a boss. Some dumbass wants to blame everything on the healing core.

The other healers (aka normal people) just let it slide because they don't want piss anyone off and have them leave the raid....

WELL F THAT!

I will start it off with a sarcastic comment like..."yeah...you healers fail. I can't believe you let all those people that were standing in the fire die...."

That will get it started and depending on how far the guy who originally made the comment takes it, is how far we are going.

It is a bad habit, but F it....I am a healer. Without me you would still be standing in Dalaran with a thumb up your nose waiting for the raid to find a healer.

ok...end rant....NEXT!!!

11. Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PVE healing?

I do. Given the same gear I think I will be able to hang with anyone given the situation. The Druid 4 piece T9 set bonus is slightly OP and even in the best gear I don't think I could touch 7k HPS in a 25 man.

12. What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I know a few Shamans on my server that are excellent healers, so I armory them to see what they are doing. I do research at places like "plus heal" and Elitist Jerks. Healing meters, ect...

13. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That people think that we are not good single target healers and that we can only be assigned to the raid.

You can say what you will about other Shaman failing at it, but that is because they didn't know how to do it or were geared completely wrong.

14. What do you think is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

Urm....

I would have to say learning how to balance your stats and how your stats actually work. Basic theorycrafting.

15. What add-ons or macros (if any) do you use to aid you in healing?

I can not live without clique. Seriously....if I don't have that little addon, you might as well consider me dps, because I have gotten so accustom to it that my hps would DROP dramatically.

18. Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats or do you stack some much higher than others? Why?

Mostly a balance. I do have several sets of healing gear that I wear depending on the healing assignment and the situation. Such as a mana regen set, throughput set, raiding healing set, ect.

There was a few more, but I didn't like the questions or I felt like I was repeating myself. If I had to tag someone I would be interested to hear Kry over at Casual Hardcore responses. Only because he has a healer of every class I think....

Until next time, I'm WTFout!

Shaman Teir 10 is Finally Here!!!

Nope

I am sorry for getting you excited and letting you down. I know, that was mean. Here, have a brownie and take 50% off coupon to I.H.O.P. as a token of my apology.

But when I saw this picture here I felt an overall feeling of /sigh


I hope it becomes the most badass out of all of them after keeping us waiting this long. I mean, cmon! We already knew lore, new races, and the destruction of the world as we know was going to happen 2 months before they released the information at blizzcon this year.

Can't we get a glimpse of WTF the shaman tier 10 looks like? Do you think they even started to draw it up yet? My guess is that there first proto-type was fail, so they had to start all over.

Maybe this is a good sign....yes....think positive.

Sunday Update

• Added new poll. I know that Dwarfs are going to win, but I figured that I would leave it up to the people. Again...Dwarfs ftw...fyi
  
• Updated the Shout Out of the Week, Sideshow and Syrana are going to get some love from me. They really run a fantastic blog.
• I got tagged by Holy Shock. Expect to see my 20 questions about Shaman healing this week.
  
• I also tried Aion out for a week and will have an article comparing WoW to Aion. What my thoughts and experiences were about them, ect.
  
• Plus, you know that I got a ton of stuff to tell you about what the hell I have been doing in WoW. Pssst...I have come down with a slight case of Altism.
  
• My St. Louis Rams are playing in about 8 minutes and this might be the only chance we have to win a game this season. So with that note, I'm WTFout!
  
  

Breaking News!

Today is Oct 29th 2009.

Exactly one year ago I started my blog and made my very first post.

Larisa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn, which is now blocked by my work, was my very first comment about a month or so after I started writing.

One of the blog's contributor's, P, has since stopped writing for WTFspaghetti after we took about a 2 month hiatus from WoW back in the summer. He is still alive and he stills loves you all. He just isn't motivated to write anything about WoW. Maybe this will make him write something and make a comeback lol.

Around February, P, Potts, and myself started a raiding guild. We wanted it to be a serious-casual raiding guild and for the most part it succeeded...but it was short lived and couldn't stand the test of time. It lasted about 4 months...which thinking back on it now...doesn't seem like that long at all lol.

Guild leadership is fun and I have meet some awesome people that I still talk to to this day because of that guild....but I couldn't even take it after 4 months lol. It took the love that I have for the game away....

It is not as easy as it looks or seems...give your GM, RL, or officers some love for doing it...especially if they been doing it for a long time and have been successful.

I have seen many bloggers quit WoW and / or blogging during my year in the blogmosphere. A few that come to mind that I really enjoyed was a blog ran by a guy in Germany and OneAmongMany. There has been many others...such as Too Many Alts...I refuse to take that blog off of my blog roll until I see the site go down or he says why he quit.

It has been like 6 months since an update though...I hope he is ok....

That brings up a good point. If you have a solid readership of your blog and you decide to quit. Man up and say so.

Moving on

What else has happen in the past year?

Oh yeah....I actually meet a blogger in real life. Fish from gnomewarriorisanoxymoron was in my hometown and he came over to my house and partied with us.

That was probably the craziest thing ever in regards to the past year with my blog. I actually meet a person over the internet because of my blog.

Wild and craziness right?

At some point I decided that it was a good idea to get a 15 man, African American Choir to join me on my blog. They bring the flavor and set the mood for most of my post and DON'T act like you don't like em!

Overall Thoughts....

If you enjoy to write or think you might enjoy writing and you play WoW. There is a huge blogmosphere filled with thousands of people searching google for wow related stuff. I got a solid readership just by commenting, some link love, and trying to atleast write 2-3 post a week.

Before I knew it this site is a year old with 156 posts and over 120,000 unique views.

With all the crazy stuff that went on over the past year in regards to my WoW career...

I wonder what the future holds for WTFspaghetti???

Isn't that a famous quote? I mean without the WTFspaghetti part lol.

Got to throw a random funny picture in here somewhere right? I think that has become my theme some where down the line....

Best Race/Class Combo??

That is the question people.

There is alot of combos to choose from and in the upcoming expansion there will be even more.

Lets just say that Dwarf Shamans are not going to be high on my list for this lol. I am still scratching my head on that one...

Anyway, right...best race/class combinations. Lets start discussing...

and when I say discussing I mean giving you my opinion...fyi

Horde

Orc

I really don't like any class combined with Orcs. Warlock and Rogues are out of place with this race. Hunters aren't too bad for orcs and neither are Shamans, but when you think of a big, ugly, drooling Orc...what do you think of?

I think of a meat head. So I am going to say the best class combo will be warrior or a DK. Either one really...as long as they are wearing heavy armor and getting beat about the face I am ok with it.

Tauren

Hunters and Shamans make the most sense to me. However, who doesn't love a BIG ASS COW swinging a big bloody weapon at his enemy? I might be bias, but I am going to go with Tauren Shaman for the whole nature, tree-loving thing they got going on. Shamans are the wise man of their tribe...and who wouldn't trust a big furry cow that shares his herbs with you?

Plus, Tauren hunter's animations are weird and awkward.

Undead

Hands down is Warlock. I am not even going to go into the rest of the possibilities. They are Undead...they are suppose to be evil and one in touch with their demons.

Troll

This one is hard. I don't play Trolls and I don't know many that do. I have no idea what the best combo is with this race.

Priest? Mage?

eh...sure?

Blood Elfs

Mages. Isn't that the whole reason why they bounced from the Nightelfs? I do like BE's being Rogues and who doesn't like a high-lighted hair, Ret Paladin?

Overall

For the Horde I am going to say that the best Race/Class combination based on Lore, common sense, and overall badassness has to be...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Undead Warlocks. Jong the Ret Pally coming in a close second only because he turned into a Human though.

Seriously though, you can't argue with an Undead Warlock can you? I am sure you can, for christ sake if you are a reader of this blog I know you can.

So do it, prove me wrong...what do you think about the Horde and the best Race / Class combo?

Patch 3.3 and My Thoughts in Pictures

This post is all about patch 3.3 and the pictures of all the new stuff that is going to come out. There isn't any spoilers in this post unless you don't want to know what some of the new tier or bosses look like....So enjoy!

Tier Sets

First off, I think that Warlock's new tier looks amazing. Creepy scare crow, clown, serial killer looking mofos! I mean, they even made the gnome's look creepy. Out of all the tier sets that are out there currently, I think that the green or red version of this looks the best hands down.

Then we have the good old Mages. Hooray! They look ok, not as badass as the locks, but they still look good. I especially like how the Undead and Troll look in the red version. The other versions look too much like Warlocks in my opinion.

Red suits us well...

Paladins...I mean...I don't know what to say. You guys look like a cross between a Ghostbuster, Robo-Cop, and a Firefighter.

I give this a huge thumbs down...

Raid Bosses and How They Look...



All I got to say is WTF is the Lich King doing in that Citadel?!? Jesus...I knew that he was sick, but I didn't know that the Lich King was FREAK!

Look at the madness he is creating! He must be stopped...


Again...IF the Lich King didn't create this freaky looking Jack Rabbit, then where in the hell do you meet someone that looks likes this? In a bar? Night Club? Bingo night? WTF!

Nothing could have of prepared me for the next one....

I am not even sure that if I had the chance to fight this boss that I would....its just too creepy and freaky....

.

.

.

.



I know...

I was freaked out just as much when I realized she wields a chicken wing as a club...

Damn the Lich King! DAMN YOU!!!!

Saturday's Video Post - Aion, is it worth it?

As you probably already know, there is a new game out. Rather its a new MMORPG game out that is trying to give WoW some competition.

I was never a fan of the others, such as WAR, LoTRs, or Star Wars. They all have some potential and I am sure that they are fun, but its not enough to break my WoW addiction.

I have a few friends that are playing Aion and overall they love it. It is a grind leveling, just as in WoW. However, the game looks amazing and is really trying to balance the different classes out to make it more of a skill based game rather then a gear or another class owning another.

I just watched this gameplay video on youtube. Its mostly pvp encounters and I must say...

I kinda want to try it out...

What do you guys think



EDIT: I can't get the video to fit correctly, so after 5 minutes of trying I am going to say F it. FYI

Thrusday Throwback! Old School Lag Monsters

As you all know, I am a loser have been playing this game since roughly 2004.

Yes, I am an old fart in regards to the game. I like to think of myself as an old wise fart though, yeah...that sounds much better right?

Today I am not going to talk about my guild issues, or my alts, or raid encounters. I have been getting a little bored talking about the same ol' shit for the past couple of weeks. I feel like if I keep it up, I am going to lose readers.

Why is readers important? Because when I see a comment or look at my google analytics and see all the views I get...it makes me giggle uncontrollably.

So today is just a fun post about the World of Warcraft and how different it used to be. Its funny when you think about it because in all reality, the things that I am going to mention today, I didn't mind during the time.

However, now that Blizzard has made the change....

I would probably shit a brick and be ranting and raving all day about how much it sucks.

So without any further ramblings, lets get this thing started off.

/music

WTFspaghetii's 15 man Choir:

"OOooooOoooOooOOOOOOh

FO

shizzzzle!"

The Lag Monsters that were Orgrimmar and Ironforge...

Oh yes, young ones...gather around. Today I am going to tell you about a time where the biggest lag monsters were not highly populated areas like AV.

No, no. They were worst then Shattarah and they made Dalaran look like an open ground in Deadwind before Karazhan was was even thought of...

(ooooooo.....ahhhhhhhh)

Yes, its true. See back in Vanilla WoW, if you wanted to use the Auction House, you only had one choice to go. If you were horde, then you would have to go to Orgrimmar. If you were the alliance, then you would have to go to Ironforge.

It was a cluster-fuc...I mean it was THE mecca of the WoW community. On a high populated server during the busy times, sometimes even the best internet connection couldn't with stand the all mighty power of those lag monsters. There were times when I start walking up the hill to Ironforge on my trusted Ram and I could feel the lag creeping on me like a hungry, black spider seeking his next move for its meal...

SPLAT!!

Yeah...a spider...it was that creepy

When I could finally see the front doors of IF, the lag was decent due to all the people dueling each other. However, this didn't phase you because you were harden. You knew it was going to be there and you got used to it.

Once you walk in the doors and moved around the corner to where the main AH was, not even the most harden veterans of WoW couldn't help but to feel its wrath.

lol...

Seriously though...it sucked ass. It wasn't so bad during off times or even when it was semi busy if you had a decent computer. However, during the high times of the server, everyone was lagging. No one complained because that is the way it always was.

That wasn't even the worst part about having one AH for the faction. It was the fact that there wasn't linked trade chat.

Oh yeah...no linked trade chat, no LFG channel that you can jump in and sell your items / services that way. If you wanted to make money in WoW, you had to go to IF or Org because that is where everybody hung out. It would be pointless to sell items in the other cities trade chat because, again, they weren't linked.

There was no way around it. If you didn't want to use the AH and just sell your items via the trade chat, you still had to go there.

Keep in mind there was no dailies, battlegrounds didn't drop any money, and there wasn't a ton of quests you can do for cash. If you wanted money, you knew what you had to do.

Into the lag monster you go....

Diversity Fun and Heroic Trial of the Crusader

Good morning Hola blog lovers!

Yeah...no morning post for me this week. My job, being the big bad corporate power house that it is, decided to make everyone of its I.T employees go through "Diversity Training". So I got moved from my normal shift, 12am-10am, to the dreaded 1st shift...7am-4pm.

Well, yesterday I got hella diversified! After spending 7 hours in a meeting room talking about each other's differences and how to blend and communicate better, I felt like....well, lets not get into how I felt lol.

This is a little off topic, but I still think it is a good story that may make you giggle uncontrollably.

During one of our "games" in diversity training, the facilitator put of very large pieces of paper label with different social and race groups.

Example - Black Male, Black Female, Jewish people, Fat people, Old People, Gamers, East Indians, White Male, White Female...ect

There was probably about 15 of these labels. He then gives us a magic maker and tells us to go to each one and write down a negative stereotypes that you have HEARD before.

Now...

What is someone suppose to do in this situation? This is a meeting room filled with 30+ people, all different cultures and races. Our discussion is suppose to be kept confidential, but still...I don't want to put down EVERYTHING that I have heard about a certain stereotype lol. I have a friend, and I am sure that everyone does, that knows about 50 different names / negative stereotypes for each...I can't write them all down.

Everyone in the room was pretty awkward about doing it, but we all did it. Some of them were silly...such as a white male can't jump and/or dance. Some of them were weird...like fat people are dumb(wtfmate?!?)...and some of them pretty spot on. Such as the generation Y, 1980-2000, was spoiled, lazy, and felt a sense of entitlement...ect.

After everyone was done the facilitator, a college professor in socialogly and communications, spent about 1.5 hours breaking down why we have these views on certain groups of people....it was pretty freaking interesting really. I am just glad I got through it lol. It could have been alot worse for me lol.

Just thought I would share that piece of fantastic useless information with you guys before I get into the real reason why you read this blog.

No, no, I don't have any more of my special brownies. Maybe on Friday...yeah...ok, see you guys then...

...damn druggies

Go Go Gadget WoW

Alot has happened since the last time I talked about my WoW career. I was still a trial member of 25 man raiding guild that has been on the server since Vanilla. After 3 raids and answering some more questions on there fourm I got offically invited to a bench position.

Now, the bench position in this guild is very interesting because it really doesn't mean that your a bench spot. The ranking goes like this..

Alt-->Friends-->Bench-->Raider-->GM

There are only 14 people in the guild with the raider rank...so I am not sure what to think about my "bench" rank. Also, we did a 10 man Ony and 10 ToC run on Friday and they took me over 2 "raider" ranked people that wanted to go. So I am confused on what it means...but so far I am really liking it.

Another thing that is interesting about this guild is that there is no officers, just the GM and co-GM. They are a wife/husband combination and truthfully, I like it alot. One of the best guilds that I was ever apart of during Vanilla WoW was ran by a wife/husband combination.

They decided to take a week off of raiding and realized that they missed taking walks togethers and eatting ice cream. So they quit WoW and ninja'd the gbank lol. The guild quickly fell apart afterwards....maybe 2 weeks before it was completely done.

Hopefully that won't happen with this guild otherwise I feel that I might have to say F RAIDING and go back to leveling my Driud.

Heroic Trial of the Crusader

So yeah...last night my guild decided to roll into the heroic 10 man version of ToCr. I have been reading alot of posts from bloggers about this and it is really split down the middle.

Some don't agree that it is that hard, others think its too hard, and then there is a small percentage that thinks it PERFECT!

...well almost perfect.

Northrend Beast

1st phase - "Big Spear Dude"

I didn't think that this guy was too bad. He has more HP and hits harder and you have to kill him before the two worms come...which is like 3 mins if I am not mistakened. The snoblods and the random fires hurt alot more and must be killed or moved out of ASAP.

We wiped about 3 times here, but after that we were getting him with about 10 seconds left before the worms came. Healers had mana and the tanks didn't have the impale...awesome.

2nd phase - "Two Big, Fugly Worms"

These guys weren't too difficult either. The hardest part was killing the big spear dude and transitioning to the worms with the "impale" debuff still on the tanks. One time our tank, 45khp, went from about 95-96% health and 2 seconds later he was dead. The impale ticked twice and each worm hit him once lol. All I did was move from where I was standing from the first guy to position myself better to heal for the two worms...I look up and bam...dead tank.

We wiped about 3 times here as well, but it wasn't terrible. I think phase one was harder then phase two because our dps had to be in sync and pew pewing its ass off. Where as phase 2 is still more about control and not failing at the mechanics.

3rd phase - "Is that a F'N Yeti?!?"

Yeah, that is a big ass yeti. This is the easiest of all the phases, you just don't get a speed buff and he can / will one shot your tank if he goes enraged.

He was at like 15% and he turned big and red and 2 shotted our tank. The off tank grabbed him and our healing corp kept him alive until we killed him. It was fun and challenged me just enough to make me feel good about completing it.

The gear is also sick...nothing dropped for a healer, but damn...there was some super hot melee dps pieces.

Lord Jaraxxus

Now this, was a very fun and challenging fight. Only thing different really is that you have to dps the nether portals and kill them as QUICKLY as possible so you do not get more then one Mistress out at a time. This does take ALOT of quick and power dps.

We were rocking three healers, but we didn't have the dps to burn the portal down fast enough. We probably wiped about 4-5 times before deciding that I am going to go elemental. I took off my healing gear and put on the ownage gear!

We so got this....

...yeah, still wiped due to not enough heals. But that portal went down with the quickness!!

We tried a couple more times and our 2 healers had the mana...they just couldn't keep up with the damage. Especially during the Inferno phase. So my sexy cow ass decided that...

1. I was going to stay elemental.
   
2. I would pew pew the big bad demon until the portal came
   
3. Pew pew the portal and mistress
4. Continue to pew pew the demon lord with thoughts of hate
   
5. Then use my fantastic chain heals to heal during the inferno phase.

Not only did it work, but it was probably one of the funniest fights that I have been apart of. Hands down the funniest 10 man fights I have ever been apart of.

Faction Champs

I am not going to get into too much with this encounter...they just whopped our ass. We killed 2 of them once...but it was too late and too many of us were already dead ><. Overall

I think that the heroic version is pretty difficult and challenging. That being said I absolutely love it and I hope that Blizzard doesn't nerf it in the future. If everyone is paying attention, doing there job, and properly geared...there shouldn't be a reason why you shouldn't beat it...atleast the first few bosses anyway.

I have read that heroic Anub is NO JOKE. I mean you only get 6 ice things the entire fight? WTFmate!

I know there has been some articles over at Matticus's and replys from Larisa and others about how easy the game has gotten.

Well F that...Heroic ToC is not easy mmmk? I am not going to go off on a rant about it, but I am just saying...before saying that game is too easy, please beat heroic toc on either 10 man or 25.

That is all

Until next time, I'm WTFout!!

FreakOUT!!

Morning people!

It's Saturday and here at WTFspaghetti we like to make fun of people. It's not hateful or mean. We don't drag it on and try make things uncomfortable for the person...but if its funny and there is a video of it...

Well then we are not to blame. We are just media and our job is to let our viewers know WTF is going on in the WORLD!!!


...of warcraft.


In this particular video, the teenager has just found out that his mom has cancelled his WoW account.

It is called the wow freakout...please enjoy, I know I did lol.



But WAIT!

There is more videos of this kid. He really does have an anger issue and his brother loves fucking with him...its kinda mean but I would probably do the exact same thing if I was his brother lol.

You know you would too...enjoy the follow up as well, where he has been up in a tree for 4 hours...

lol



Have a good weekend guys!

I will leave you with one of my favorite bands of all time, Everclear. Here is one of my favorite songs by them...the video makes me laugh on how old it looks lol. Makes me feel F'N old...