Risk and Reward or Risk and Fail?

That is the question I am asking myself right now. Ever since my return to WoW from my break, I have been looking for a guild to join. I want to join a guild for multiple reasons, but mostly to raid and experience content.

I did an experiment on my Mage last week, I joined a guild that I knew exactly zero people in. A slight change in my real life schedule and I can make their raid times, so I figured F it. I wrote an article about it located here.

I never really liked the guild much and after not getting a spot in this weeks raid, I have the feeling that I am a safe net for them, a certified bench warmer. Doesn't matter if I am the first person to sign up, they have a group they run with every week and I will only get invited if one of them doesn't show up.

I know I told myself that I was ok with this, but I am not. So my journey continues to find another guild that I can have a raiding spot in.

If you read my post yesterday you know that I rediscovered how much I like healing on my shaman.

See where I am going with this? No? Continue!

I was super tired when I got to work yesterday. So tired that right when I got in I immediately attempted to take a nap. My computer chair at work is not comfy at all...its rather blows to try to take sleep in.

So after about 5 minutes of attempting to take a nap, I decided to try to stay awake. I went to the plusheal forums and started looking around.

They have a section for guilds recruitment and for people to searching for guilds. I clicked on a link labeled "AoE Donkey Bombers LF Healers" only because I was so intrigued on WTF a Donkey Bomber is..

Anyway, they are a fairly new guild composed of real life friends and in game friends. They were in a 25 man raiding guild, but split off and decided to conquer 10 mans. Well, they beat all of the 10 man content and have about 20 or active players. The goal being 30 active people to run 2 groups of 10 man and 1 25 man raid.

I decided to check out their website and I was delighted on what I saw. These guys definitely know what they are doing, most of them have the achievement for 3 drakes up OS. They are very organized and well structure.

They application process is exactly how it should be, very detailed and strict. I started to fill out an application mostly to stay awake at work. I spent probably 2 hours or so filling the application out and making it look all pretty.

I took time and gave truthful, detailed, and descriptive answers just to see what they would say about it. I really wasn't excepting much. To my suprise though, they replied first thing in the morning...about 3 or so hours after I posted it.

They wanted to ask me some questions and talk to me. I gave them my email address and they said they would be contacting me.

This is where they really impressed me..

I got critted by their wall of text that the dude emailed me. I wont post the whole email but I will say that he gave me 4 solid paragraphs about what I should expect out of this guild and what he excepts out of me. He gave me a background of the guild and its future plans.

Then he wrote the following...

I talked with our Shaman guru, he pretty lives and breathes Shammy. He looked at your armory profile and said that you seemed to know how to make good decisions in regards to gear so he has no questions just yet. I though have a few questions for you.

Scenario 1

You have a 25-man raid where you have a MT, OT, 6 healers, and the rest dps. You have a resto shammy, 2 holy pallies, 2 disc priests, one of which has is dual spec'd holy, and 1 druid. You are engaged in a boss fight where you will be anticipating heavy raid damage. How would you delegate healing assignments?

Scenario 2

You're running a 10 man raid with 2 resto shammys, and one holy paladin. How would you set up your groups to optimize totems, and how would assignents go?

As a resto shaman,can you spec differently in order to put out more efficient single target healing as opposed to AoE healing? If so, can you show me the different specs? Also, when you typically run 10 or 25 man content, how many healers do you normally bring along? Do you have any questions for us?

Hopefully I don't scare you off with the wall of text. By the way, what blog are you running? Look forward to hearing back from you.

Well if I wouldn't be damned. This dude and his guild is for real people! I f'n love it and you know I am up to challenge to answer his scenarios...Oh fo sho!

So you want to know my reply?

I guess this is a WoW blog uh? Maybe the information that I write down will help absolutely noone someone right?

...

Yup, moving on

My respose

Scenario 1

You have a 25-man raid where you have a MT, OT, 6 healers, and the rest dps. You have a resto shammy, 2 holy pallies, 2 disc priests, one of which has is dual spec'd holy, and 1 druid. You are engaged in a boss fight where you will be anticipating heavy raid damage. How would you delegate healing assignments?

Holy Paladins: One will beacon the MT, the other one will beacon the OT. The one that beacon'd the the OT will then be assigned to raid heals.

Priests: I would have one of the disc priest use his holy spec. The holy spec would then be assigned to heal the raid. The disc priest would handle keeping the MT up with the other paladin handling the OT.

Resto Shaman: Would be on raid healing duty as primary, and tank duty as a secondary. With the new changes to Resto Shaman, we now have very good raid heals and also have alot of ultility to be a strong single target healer. I would assign the shaman to mostly cover the melee dps, that way it will get the tank(s) as well. It is important that you keep an eye on both of the tanks incase they need help.

Resto Druid: First off, I would just like to say that I think that restro druids are the best healers in the game imo. A good restro druid will do wonders for your raid and they especially excel at raid healing. I would assign the druid to raid healing specializing in ranged casters. If the fight involved alot of movement, I would probably reconsider, but given your scenario I am just going to consider a slighty non-moving raid encounter.

With my setup the raid healers would be the holy paladin, holy priest, druid. I guess the resto shaman would be consider raiding healing due to healing the melee along with the tanks.

My Tank healers would be the disc priest, holy paladin, and again...little bit of the shaman.

Scenario 2

You're running a 10 man raid with 2 resto shammys, and one holy paladin. How would you set up your groups to optimize totems, and how would assignents go?

Since your question was very generic, I won't get into detail about different type of encounters that a full raid can have.

I would assign the holy paladin to heal the MT and beacon the OT. Have one of the resto shamans use gear that favors pieces with crit, MP5, INT and SP. Crit should be at least at 28-30% self buffed (which is pretty high). That way with raid buffs it should be around 35%. This is important for a single healer to keep up ancestral healing and have enough throughput to also help out raid healing. This way they should be able to handle and balance both duties with ease.

The other resto shaman should be focusing on raid healing only. Gear should favor high intel, haste, and mp5. This should make the shaman shines in every fight where you cast a lot of spells per minute and require a lot of chain heals over a long time.

Overall - Your healing team should be working together as a team and figure out what the best combo will work for them. All about team work, but this is how I would assign them overall.

Talents

The spec that I am currently rocking is in my opinion the most intelligent spec a raiding shaman should have. The only other spec a raiding resto shaman should have is 0/13/58. The only difference is that you are trading mana regen for spell power.

Even though raid mp5 has been nerfted, we still received a +25% increase to our own mp5 due to our gear.

The difference is very situational and how comfortable you are with your own mana regen. If you are having issues with your own mana regen, taking the mp5 talent over the sp is the way to go. If you are not having issues with mana regen, I suggest you go with the additional sp due to that fact that Resto Shaman gear itemization goes as follows...

spell power>intellect>mp5>haste>crit

With glyphs like Glyph of Water Mastery (the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 30%) available, you would probably see how it is better to go for the sp talent over the mp5 talent.

Is the Risk Worth it?

I received a reply back from him stating that I did get accepted into the guild, but a guild "test" run would be needed. So that would be the first risk. I transfer my shaman to his server and go on this "test" run. I screw up and they say don't invite me or I don't make a big enough impression on them and they don't invite me to raid, but I get to wear the guild tag.

Another risk is would be that they are a newer guild. They have only been together raiding as a guild for a little over a month. The long a guild has been together, the better they have a staying together.

Risk number 3 isn't really a risk at all, but I will say it anyway. Missing my own server and my real life friends that I play with. I will still have my mage and all of my alts, so I would still be able to play with them...but I don't know...just doesn't feel right not having my healer avialable if they need him. I am leveling a druid, currently level 51, and I do have plans to make his spec resto. So I will have a healer in due time.

Some other risks in no particular order would be not having my alchemist and people not knowing who I am on my current server. I am not known on the server for my Mage or any of my other alts....I am known for my Shaman. Not that I am well known or anything hah.

The Reward?

The reward would be joining up with an intelligent group of raiders that know how to play their class and completely rock face in raids. Not to mention meeting new people and making new relationships.

One part of the game that I need to in order to enjoy WoW is raiding. I don't need it all of the time, but I do need it. I love going into a place I have never been, learning the strats, and conquering all that stand in my way. The teamwork you and the rest of your raid have to do in order to take down a boss is something that I miss ALOT. So gaining these things would be worth it in my opinion.

I will still be around on my current server, just not on my Shaman.

Role play much?

Thats right biatches! The server is a role playing server lol. I am thinking about making my name something super ghetto and taking on that character while I am on that server lol.

I never role played in WoW, but I think it would be funny to be a Cow Tauren named Detroitbusstop. I can say I'm from the streets of Thunder Bluff and where I'm from, people get murda eva day son! Talk about my childhood growing up in the hood supporting my people by selling herbs and pimpin heifers. You know, just tryin to SURVIVE!

haha...

Good times. No, I am not being serious, I am not a role player. It would be funny thing to do one day though lol.

WTFspaghetti's Dumb of the Week

You knew it was coming...I would tell in your...uh...eyes? Anyway, yeah, this weeks weekly dumb is a winner in my book. All I can do is laugh. As always, the link is work safe.

Song of the Day

"Rapper's Delight"
Erick Sermon, Keith Murray & Redman


Quote of the Day

“Don’t do drugs, don’t have unprotected sex, don’t be violent. Leave that to me"
-Eminem

Till next time people, I'm WTFout!

Thursday Morning Ramblings...

Holla, holla, holla, blog lovers!

Its Thursday and for most of you that means that the weekend is almost here, hooray! This is my second full week working 4 days a week, 10 hours a day. So when I get off today, I am on my weekend. Double hooray!

You are probably thinking 1 of 2 things right now...

1. You SOB! I don't want to hear that you have a 3 day weekend. I still have to work, so STFU mmmmk?
2. ZOMGFISHSTICKS! 3 days off in a row every week, how fantastic is that?

First is understood, I don't mean to rub it in and make you feel like punching a baby in the face. Secondly, its not fantastic until you are actually on your days off. The four days that I do work suck ass and are only filled with sleep, food, the word "fuck", and drive time to and from work.

I didn't even have time to watch "The Notebook" marathon on Lifetime today. OMG, I can't believe I missed the pain, anger, sadness, and of course the LOVE that is in this epic movie.

...

In fact I woke up today to my girlfriend watching this movie. She looked at me while I was standing there in my boxers, half wake, and said "Babe, The Notebook is on and its a marathon!"

She said it such a way that she expected me to glee with excitement, go get some popcorn, a bottle of wine, and a box of kleenex while I cuddle up next to her under the covers.

Guess how that went?

Yup, right back to bed for the next 2 hours lol

I swear this blog post is going to be about warcraft though....me promise.

Lets get into shall we?

Where is my people???



WTFspaghetti's 15 man choir: "LETTTS BREAK IT ON DOWNNNNN!!"



Random Thoughts about WoW

Onyxia 10 and 25 man? Come again??

So I was going through my google reader and I noticed a story on wow.com about Onyxia returns in Patch 3.2.2!

How badass is that? For those of you at work that can't access wow.com or if you just don't want to click the link, I will give you the cliff notes.....I know, I know...I rock face.

WoW's 5 year anniversary is coming up in November and to commemorate it, they are releasing a new 10 and 25 man instance of the dirty ho. There is going to be new purples, some of which will look just like the old teir 2 helms from vanilla WoW. wow.com also stated that one of the new items will be a 310 flying mount modeled after the Onyxia herself.

I am pretty excited about it really. Back in the old days of vanilla WoW, the 40 man version of Onyxia was my favorite and first raid EVER! It felt good to kill that ho after spending weeks on her attunement quest chain.

Plus, my all time favorite favorite loot that I ever received, the Quel'Serrar, was forged with Onyxia's blod and fire breath. Thinking back on it, Blizzard did a great job on setting up that quest line for the Quel'Serrar. It started with a book, which you could have bought from the AH or get as a drop. Then go on a journey that lead you through multiple 5 mans and ended with killing Onyxia.

You had to get Onyxia to fire breath on the blade, then go pick it up and stab her with it. Then she had to be killed, because if you wiped. You have to start the whole thing over again!!

It was epic and if you succeeded, you got a badass tanking blade. Blizzard really needs start doing those again. They are freaking awesome and make me miss the good old days of vanilla..../sniffle.

WoW Goals for this Weekend

I am not sure if I am going to have alot of time for WoW this weekend. Alot of stuff going on in my real life. I am getting my home appliances delivered on Saturday. My water heater installed on Friday.

Plus, its 2 year anniversary with my girlfriend and she has been telling me that she has "stuff" planned. Speaking of which, I got to find some time to go get her something...yes, I must not forget that lol.

• I definitely want to try out the 10 man version of TOC. It sounds easy and after reading Shy's write up on it, I am now positive that I can do it.
• I need to do the heroic daily on my Mage and continue to gain as many champion seals that I can get my hands on. That way I can get my additional 10% xp chest for my little druid.
• Which brings me to leveling my druid to 45. This is going to be tough, but I think I can get it accomplished. Right now he is 39.5 with no blue bar, so with all the things going on in my real life....it could be difficult. Fuck it though, its still a goal lol.

WTF's Weekly Dumb!

That's right, I know you have missed it just as much as I have. I mean, who doesn't like laughing at dumb criminals? Anyway, this dipshit wins for this week. The link is work safe....me promise.

Song of the day

Mest
"Moving On"
Wasting Time

Check out the video on the work friendly video site, Daily Motion.

Quote(s) of the day

“I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”
-Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)

New Poll Question

Don't be scared! Minds like mine need to know! Go go gadet vote...thing...uh?

That's it for me, until next time...I'm WTFout!

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Success!

Morning blog lovers

What is going on with everyone on this fine Tuesday morning? For the first time in a few months, the evil the good people at Blizzard decided to just do some rolling restarts instead of a full maintenance day. Do note that the supernatural beings Blizzard did also state that "may" have to do some additional maintenance on some realms.

So who really knows....

First things first, I want to give a shout out to Drug over at Shields Up!. He gave me an honest scrap reward after I already posted mine. So much thanks goes out to him....and btw Drug, you don't trust me enough to babysit your cat or mow your lawn?!? LOL...whatever that means, I still got a kick out of it and it definitely made me chuckle lol. So lets get down to busy mmk?? WTFstyle!

REFRIGD-A-RAIDER-RAIDER /HEADBANG!

The weekend comes and goes by way too fast, we all know this. So how did our raids go this weekend? I couldn't have been happier. Seriously....our guild is really starting to actually look and feel like a real guild.

Friday raid begins by 1 shotting 10 man Malygos and clearing out 10 man Naxxramas in 3.5 hours. Coolest thing about this is that it was all done by guildies. Some people only had time to go to Malygos, and had to drop out. No problem, we had multiple 80s online that were willing to go. We also had a few people that had to drop out during the Naxxramas raid. Same thing goes, they dropped and was immediately filled with a guildie.

Heroic Naxxramas part 1

Saturday started off a little rough. We had to pug 5 people into our raid, 2 which were tanks. We started about 20 minutes late, which is a huge pet peeve of mine...but what can you do? Anywho, our dps was amazing. The lowest DPS class was doing 3.1 dps, freaking awesome in my opinion. We cleared the Spider, Construct, and Military wings in 1 hour and 40 minutes, one shotted everything.

We had some people signed up for Sunday, so we decided to call it until then. The puggers were super pissed, but oh well, that is the chance you get when you are pugging. We then broke off and did a 20 man OS run for the achievement. Which I will say, was alot easier then ANY 25 man pug I was in...so that was pretty neat.

Heroic Naxxramas part 2

Sunday started off great, alot of people were on and were willing to finish the 25 man raid. We had a full guild run minus 1 pug healer. We one shotted the plague quarter and actually almost had the heroic safety dance! However, one of our healer's wife plays until he gets home (30 mins after raid time) and she died to the DANCE.

So this is the first time I have ever made it this far in heroic Naxxramas. The 25 man version of the Saph is the exact same except for more curses. We actually wiped once, but killed him on the second attempt. One of the cool things about being one of the three guild leaders is that you pretty much guaranteed the heroic key to Malygos, so that was cool and I am now "keyed" for heroic Maly.

So now the big boi, Mr. KT. I was a little worred about whole mind control aspect of the fight, but overall I liked our chances. This raid was full with guild members and they all know what to do.

Phase 1 went smoothly and was super easy.
Phase 2 went smoothly and was slightly harder due to the mind control and aggro wipe, but wasn't that bad.
Phase 3 was sloppy because one our tanks died and his adds were rolling around 1 shotting clothies for a second lol.

However, we 1 shotted him and I can now say that our guild, Explicit, has cleared 25 man Naxxramas. It was a good feeling, even though my shield didn't dropped lol.

Weekly Dumb

Back by popular demand, its WTFspaghetti's weekly dumb! This lady is pretty freaking awesome. Judging my her mug shot, she was destined to be in my weekly dumb report. Check out the story here. This story is work safe, I promise.

Song of the day

Feel Good (featuring Serj Tankian and Morgan Lander)
HED PE
Broke
2000

Quote of the day

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
-Al Capone

You guys have a great rest of your day. Thanks for reading and until next time, I'm WTFout!

Monday Morning Warcraft - A Weekend Full of Win

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illustrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385 at yahoo dot com

Morning blog lovers!

The weekend came and past. Damn that was quick!

Seriously, that is why I don't like my weekends to be full with stuff to do. The weekend seems to last longer when you have absolutely nothing planned. I will say this though, it was fun. The UFC fight and the Super Bowl were both this weekend and I was only disappointed in one of them.

UFC fight, Bj Penn and GSP. First of all, the card in general seemed to be lacking a little bit. The main fight really wasn't a fight at all either, Bj Penn got SERVED. I wouldn't ever think that I would see Penn throw in the towel, but when he did I couldn't blame him. He was getting worked on every level and overall it was a little disappointing because I been waiting for this fight for a long time.

Super Bowl was, as I hoped, a good game and a great time. I couldn't stay for all of it because I had to get a nap in before I went to work, but it was an awesome game and I applaud to that. My stomach is in alot of pain from all of the variety of food that I ate. Ugh...seriously, it still feels pretty bad....moving on to a different subject.

The Super Bowl commericals that I saw were pretty good. I really want to see the new G.I. Joe movie when it comes out solely for the badass factor. Anyway, here is a link to view all of the Super Bowl Ads 2009. Remember, with businesses paying 3 million dollars for a 30 second air time, its safe to assume that they went all out. By the way, Congrats to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the most winning franchise in NFL history. (6 Super Bowls titles)

Ok ok, now on to the good stuff. O yes, lets begin the WoW Talk!!!

WTFspaghetti's 15 man choir - Haaaaalleluuuujah!

Thats what I am talking about.

First things first, I dinged 80 with my Mage on Friday. Yay for me, I now have a dps and a healing class to mess around with at max level. Next is my tank, Paladin, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Welcome back to the Stage of History, FIGHT! (Mage style)

It was nice having my Mage being my second 80 because I had ALOT of upgrades waiting for him in the bank. I also got my tailoring up to 440 and now I am sporting my ebonweave robe and gloves.

I also took an hour out of my day farmed the mats for my Deathchill Cloak which is WELL worth it. I was rocking about 1500-1600 dps in heroics before my cloak. I am now around 1700-1800 with just the cloak added. Anytime your dps goes up 200 from one item, it is a WIN.

Currently, I am obsessed with hit rating. I am at work so I can't check exactly what my hit is currently, but I know it is atleast 250-270ish. Which works out to about 7 or 8% of my 17% that I need for raiding. With my talents, I am rocking 14% which is good for everything besides raid bosses. Spell Hit has always been a bit of a mystery to me because I never really raided with my Mage in TBC, so I am not calming to be an expert at it at all. I would check out Player vs Developer's post, he sounds like he knows what he is talking about. I have it permanently linked on my page under the Mage section, but here it is again.

Overall, I am pretty excited about getting my Mage to 80 and doing this thing they call, damage dealing. We shall see how it works out.

Naxxramas

O yes, O yes. I know you been waiting seating on the edge of your seats waiting for me to talk about our guilds progression in Naxxramas.

/end sarcaism

Well, it went how it should go. Learn from your mistakes and collect the loot.

I am happy to report that my guild is downed 11 out of the 15 bosses in Naxxramas. We would have taken out Gluth, but due to the Super Bowl we had to call it. Which was complete weaksauce, but hey...Some of us had a party to prepare for =P

It seems like we finally have a stable group of people that are going every week instead of 3-4 different people a week. This makes a HUGE difference in regards to progression and it has been showing.

We rolled in the Death Knight quarter and cleared that place out within an hour or so. The Four Horseman fight wasn't too bad, pretty simple actually. I was super surprised how easy Gothik was...I mean when we 1 shot a new boss, you know it was SIMPLE lol. With the Four Horsemen, it only took us 3 or 4 tries before everyone was on the same page. (2 of the 4 wipes were due to one person)

Overall, I am looking forward to clearing the rest of the Construct Quarter and start on the last two bosses, Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. Now you might be reading this and think to yourself, GOD, they must suck...Naxx 10 man is ezmode LAWL

I will kindly have to agree, but for us its challenging enough and that is all that matters. Especially when you are in a super causal guild and have limited playing time.

In other news...

~Monday Morning Madness~

• Guild made a solid attempt on 1 drake up during OS


• We decided to leave Tenebron up, the one with whelps, and I think that was our first mistake


• Everyone did what they were suppose to do, we just couldn't get it done. I think next week we are going to try with Vespiron up. His debuff is alot more manageable I'm sure (25% less HP)


• It really gives you a sense on exactly how hard 3 drakes up on 10 man OS really is....I really couldn't imagine healing or dpsing it. Talk about some coorindation....


• So the Lunar Festival is going on and as I mention in my other post, I am having some major issues chosen which toon to do it with. My oldest toon, Mage, or the toon that is the newest and already has one of the world event titles.


• I have decided, even though I don't do any sort of role playing, that I have to get the "Elder" title on my Mage. It is the right thing to do in my mind, even though I know its crazy lol.


• I haven't decided if I should get the title on both or not.....I probably should....eh...who knows. More to come on this subject at a later date lol


• I been saying all last week that my T7 shoulders are going to drop, well they didn't. Three weeks in a row the same shoulders (Rogue, Death Knight, Druid, Mage) dropped...weakness

Quote of the day
“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”
- Malcolm X

Song of the day
"Magic Carpet Ride"
The Second
Steppenwolf

"Magic Carpet Ride"? You might asking yourself...

..."thedoctor, what made me pick that song?"

Well I will tell you in the form of a picture

O ya, you know you are jealous =P

Until next time, let your loot be phat and your repair bills low. I'm WTFout of here!

fo shizzie

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Delimmas, Advice, and Randomness!

Morning blog lovers!

Ahh yes, its Tuesday and you guess it, maintenance day. Nothing to look forward to when I get off of work in 4 hours. I guess I could go to the grocery store or something, but its a winter wonderland where I live. So I will probably go home and screw around for an hour, then go to bed.

God, isn't that exciting stuff! I have been told many times that my life is so interesting and fun....makes you wonder what the hell ever happen to those times lol.

Ahhh...yes, the good old times.

/end daydream

Dilemma for the week

• I dinged level 79 on my mage right before the servers went down last night.
  
  
• Lunar Festival is in full swing and I have not collected one coin on my shaman.
  

Doesn't seem like a dilemma to you? Its a pretty big one for me actually. I am super excited to grind my mage one more level to get 80 so I can start pimping him out. However, I am all about world events since I found out if you complete them all you get a proto-drake! Also, I have completed the past two (Hallow's End and Winter's Veil) so I might as well right?

So now you see why I am struggling with this...

My heart tells me to level my mage, but my brain is telling it to STFU and do the Lunar event because its timed. I guess I just have to bite the bullet and take a break from leveling my mage and start collecting coins with my shaman. I am a little upset about it, but it will be worth it...

...I think.

What do you guys think I should do?

In Other News...

• I have decided that my Shaman's T7 shoulders are dropping this weekend in Naxxramas.
  


• Yup, its going down and I will be DAMNED if I get out rolled by a hunter or a warrior. I haven't gotten anything out of Naxx in 3 weeks and our hunters have gotten a few upgrades....So I am going to have to but the voodoo curse on them
  

WTFspaghetti's Resident Troll Voodoo Witch Doctor creates [Elixir of Horrible /Roll]x2

• O yes, these will come in handy..../evil laugh
  

WTFspaghetti's ID10T of the week (work friendly)

• What does an 11 month old child, the police, and 500 illegal plants have in common lol?
  

Tip of the week

• Alot of people are doing the current world event, Lunar Festival. Some of the quests want you to go into your opposing factions major cities and find an NPC.


• This means that you have about a 98% chance that you are going to die. Yes, from other players, but also from npc guards.


• Make your repair bill cheaper by getting pretty much naked and pick yourself up some invisible pots. You will thank me later and yes, I accept payment in gold. =P
  

Quote of the day

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

-Oliver Wendell Houston Homles Jr

Song of the day

Ignition Remix
R. Kelly
Chocolate Factory
2003

That's right, I went there...R. Kelly baby! You know he was found Not Guilty right? Guess the jury decided that wasn't him on the video...

Anyway.....

Thanks for reading guys and gals. I hope your loot is phat and your repair bills are low, I'm WTFout of here.

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Feed back is Welcomed!

Morning blog lovers, whats happening?

Another Tuesday, another confirmed extended maintenance morning. As far as we know, patch 3.0.8 is not going live today, of course that could always change. I am actually kinda glad for once really. I have alot of chores around the house that need to be taken care of....they actually should have been taken care of weeks ago....

• Take down the Christmas Tree or pwn some noobs?
• Clean the house (Like REALLY clean the house, not just straighting) or melt some faces?
• Pick up cat tranquilizers from vet or raid Naxxaramas?

Ok, I know what you are thinking...wtf cat tranquilizers? No, I am not some freak that does experiments on cats or likes to play tricks on them and get them HIGH. I actually have a long hair cat that I get groomed once a year and he F'N hates it. So I have to get him all drugged up and feeling good before hand lol.

Anyway, so ya....back to my point. That is why I am looking forward to this mornings maintenance. Must get some thing accomplished, some real life "Dailies" if you will lol

That is the life of a wowhead thought right?

Weekly Poll

This week the weekly poll asked which tanking class do you like the best? More then 2/3rds of the vote were for Paladins. Now I could have just alot of Pallies that view the site, but that is highly unlikely.

I am really not that surprised, but it brings up a great point. No one wants CC anymore. Everyone just wants to zone in and steam roll the place with all of the uber AoE PWNAGE. I must admit, it is nice. Especially when you have already done the instance a number of times.

In an hour and 30 minutes today, I completed 4 heroics, Timed CoT, AN, Gun'drak, and Drak'Tharon. Warrior tank, 2 unholy death knights and a ret pally = equals ezmode for a restro shaman.

Now that I think about it though, every tanking class besides druids (currently getting fixed in 3.0.8) are pretty well equipped for AoE tanking. I guess people prefer Paladins because they are the most equipped to handle aoe tanking maybe? What do you guys think??

Thoughts on merging guilds

Very interesting subject matter and I would love to hear from you guys. I would especially like to hear from you if you have done or been apart of such an event. Its kind of a weird thing, its a very simple concept but has alot of complicated matters in it.

Just to name a couple of the complications:

1. Who is going to lead? I like the idea of a council, but someone is still going to have the rank of Guild Leader
2. Ground rules - Big question mark. To make the merger work, you have to come up with and agree on the rules. What about alts? What about the people whose main toons are lowbies?
3. Raid times - Major factor of course.
4. Drama - One of the coolest things about my guild is that there is ZERO drama. We are all too laid back to worry about drama. I would hate for a merger to happen and drama breaks out. That would be the definition of suck.

Why do the merger? Whats the point?

The point would be to make a better guild then the one you are currently in.

There are many positives to have more max level toons in your guild in my opinion. This allows for more guild runs, more toons equals more professions to use without worrying about getting scammed or tipping.

Another major reason for having a bigger guild and will definitely one of the major goals of the POSSIBLE merger, is the fact that we can setup 25 man raids. We could also have two solid 10 man raids setup as well.

In conclusion...

I think that it would be a great idea if it is pulled off correctly. The main reason why I am in my current guild is not for gear or a raid spot or anything like that at all. It is solely for the people that I have meet and become friends with.

If another small guild that already has some ties with our guild and is at the same spot progression wise. Why not merge?

I have this linked permantely on my page, but here it is again. Great read about building a successful guild from the number 1 priest blogger in da world, Matticus.

I would love to hear from you guys on this, what do you think about all of this? Don't be shy!

Song of the day
"Hypnotize"
Notorious B.I.G.
Life After Death

Quote of the day
"Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening"
-Barbara Tober

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - DK tanking...the In's and the Out's

It's that time again! While we all anxiously await the servers coming up, I sit here contemplating my Death Knight:

I Finally hit the defense soft cap thanks to the Waistguard of Living Iron. Time to start tanking heroics. I need 3 more defense rating to be un-critable during a raid. That should be easily accomplished once the servers come back up and I get the tanking runeforge. My next major gearing concern will be stacking stamina. A lot of stamina should come from replacing my high defense blues with something a bit more rounded (Read: Epics).

I am more undecided than ever on what to spec for tanking. Unholy is losing some of its luster with the heavily nerfed bone shield. Blood gets a boost but will it be enough? Frost was a solid tanking spec pre-patch and is getting better aoe threat with the removal of howling blast cooldown.

My only concern with frost tanking is the fact that i have already ran across a few mobs in instances that a frost immune. Nothing to get your party killed faster than mobs that are immune to 3/4 of your damage and abilities. I am also not sold on frost tanking cooldowns. UNbreakable armor is UNderwhelming, sure it seems nice on paper until you realize that it only works against physical damage, and even then 25% more armor is not a very high mitigation increase.

Compared to bone shield giving you a flat 20% mitigation against ALL damage. Not to mention the fact that bonesheild can last longer at high avoidance levels.

Blood comes in as the dark horse. Vampiric Blood is very strong and lasts longer than either of the other tanking cooldowns. However, it doesnt actually mitigate or avoid anything. With Vampiric Blood you are heavily reliant on the healers to take advantage of the buff. If your healers are stunned, silenced, or otherwise incapacitated your fancy tanking cooldown just did nothing to prevent what could be a wipe. Even after your healer dies you can pop bonesheild or Unbreakable armor to try and whittle away the last of a mobs hitpoints, With Vamp blood you have nothing.


The current plan is 12/51/8 It came down to 1 simple thing, Economics. I am already glyiphed for frost and the gold reserves are to low to be going out and re-glyiphing.

Blood Talents:
Blade Turning- A must have tanking talent. 10% parry that is up almost all the time.
Bladed Armor- Looks to be pretty good for threat, as a Tank I expect to have a lot of armor =)
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization- Another threat boost 4% may not seem like much but that is to every swing/attack.

Frost Talents:
Toughness- A must have tanking talent.
Imp. Icy Touch, Icy Talons, and Imp. Icey talons- Reduces enemy attack speed (avoidance/mitigation) and increases my attack speed (threat). The point in Imp. Icy Talons is because as a tank I KNOW I will be grouping, and a boost to the dps on my run means a faster run for everyone.
Black Ice- More damage/threat. Yes Please
Annihilation- Obliterate is the Frost/Unholy attack you use on single targets as frost. We can't have that taking our disease off!
Lich Borne- I really didn't want to put a point here, but hey tanking cooldowns are tanking cooldowns and I needed a point to move further up the tree.
Frigid Dreadplate- 3% avoidance active all the time (even while stunned) I'm Sold.
Chill of the Grave- Need that runic power to fire off your Frost strikes
Deathchill- Another one that I didn't really want to spend the point in, But a crit howling blast for 5k+ on all enemies is a great way to start an aoe pull.
Rime- Extra crit and resource free aoe damage. nuff said.
Howling Blast- The Frost AOE. It is getting its cooldown removed in 3.0.8. It already does 20% of my damage in a typical instance run...
Blood of the North- Who cares about blood strike damage? Needed for frost rotations ( 2 frost runes just isn't enough =)
Unbreakable Armor- Tanking cooldown, sub-par in my mind, But hey we are down here anyway.
Frost Strike- Frost RP dump, hits like a truck.
Guile of the Gorefiend- I'll take bigger crits and extra time on cooldown you use almost every pull.
Tundra Stalker- The requisite flat damage increase of the tree.
Hungering Cold- After getting the goodies I wanted from blood and unholy I had a point left over. Seems more useful than one point spent in the other options. Very situational. Arguably very cool as well!

Unholy Talents:
Anticipation- Another must have tanking talent.
Morbidity- The one thing i missed the most when I had 0 points in Unholy. Waiting for DND to cooldown is annoying, and can cause problems when you need to group up waves of enemies.


If you see flaws in my reasoning or something glaringly wrong with this build please let me know.

Song of the Day
Bang Bang
Dispatch
Bang Bang [Bomber]

P.S: I just got an Iphone. The thing is amazing, I have some nice WoW apps on there but if you have any favorite apps drop me a line so I can check them out!

Addon's - A User Interface discussion...

Morning blog lovers,

I hope you guys had a safe New Year's Eve and are fully recovered now that it is Friday.

I am off but I can not log in to WoW because the past 10 minutes I have been waiting in queue. Now I am number 221 and I am projected 23 more minutes of wait time.

Awesome

On a positive note, I now have time to write a fairly quick blog post so I can pretend that I am entertaining the masses that view me site =P

So on WITH IT THEN - WTFspaghetti style

Now, I am no uber elite raider like our friend Drug at Shield's Up. So my UI (User Interface) does not have to meet the needs for any specific purpose. For the longest time I took pride in the fact that I did not use ANY mods or add-ons, but the original UI that Blizzard created for us.

Then after awhile I started to use super simple add-ons like damage meter, CT Raid, KTM Threat meter, ect. However, three and a half years of playing wow and I have never changed or messed with the action bars.

Then comes my Shaman with entirely WAY too many spells to keep track of and organized. So I was forced to finally take the plunge and get some sort of bar mods.

So here is a couple pictures of my UI

Domino's - Pretty neat bar mod that give the end user complete and utter control. Height, width, location, and it works with all of the new vehicles that are in the Xpan. Would recommend to anyone.

SunArt - This mod is strictly to make my UI a little cleaner. It provides a spot to put my action bars and there are plenty of options that come with it. Such as different skins, transparency options, and like I said before....it just makes your UI look a little neater. Atleast in my opinion.

Item Rack - One of my favorite mods of all time. If you carry another set of gear with you and switch it out every now in then. You know it sucks to put every item in one by one. Item rack allows you to hit one button to equip all of your gear. My shaman has 4 different combinations that I use regularly. One mp5 heavy, one crit heavy, one for pvp, and one set that consists of my main healing gear.

Prat - Simple, its a mod makes your chat more user friendly. You can actually use your mouse scroll to go up and down. You can highlight text and it has a time stamp for all messages. After using this mod for the past 4-5 months, it is definitely a must.

Sexymap - Im too sexy for my map, too sexy for my map..... right ....Ok, back to reality.

SexyMap is another one of my mods that I use for strictly to make my UI look, well sexy lol. Lots of cool options come with this mod as well. One of my favorites is the transparent skin that rotates clockwise. Another cool feature is that it gives you the option to hide all of those map icons (you know the little circles that are on the border? minimap, time, bgs, ctraid) until you scroll over it with your mouse. Pretty neat in my opinion.

Overall, my mods take up a total of 3.59 mbs. Super low amount that shouldn't break your system.

What mods do you guys use? Are you a mod freak? What about a stone cold anti-mod cowboy...

...whoa, did I just said "stone cold anti-mod cowboy"? Who says that lol? I think that is queue that I need to end this post and go to bed.

Quote of the day
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they most certainly work for all they get
-Frederick Douglass

Song of the day
Slacker
Tech N9ne
Absolute Power

As bigredkitty would say, fo shizzle

Random thoughts on everything 80....

• As a casual player, I am having alot of trouble finding enough time to get things accomplished in game.
  
  
• The past couple weeks I think I have crossed the threshold of causal player to semi-hardcore player. I haven't decided if this is a good or a bad thing, but I am leaning towards bad.
  


• Raiding in Wrath has been enjoyable for the most part. My favorite part about raiding is actually getting to see the content. Purples are always fun, but there is something about seeing and actually playing the content that makes raiding worth it to me.
  
  
• I need a new dps meter. I am not sure what mine is called but it has been getting some wild numbers lately. Any recommendations?
  
  
• As far as I know, there isn't any Tuesday maintenance on 12/30/08. This means that the upcoming patch, 3.0.8, will not be going live. I could be wrong, but they usually post it before I leave for work and I checked right before I left.
  
  
• Voidwalker boss in Violet Hold is hard to do on heroic when two of your dps are doing below 800 dps. After 4 wipes I left the group, I am too broke to be paying for repair bills. It was the second day in a row that I fail the heroic daily due to things out of my control.
  
  
• Wintergrasp is WILD. The only time I did it was with some of my guildies to open the 10 and 25 man instance and I must say...WTFlag. We had 6 FULL raid groups attacking this place through a single hole. I was amazed that we ended up taking it and overall I will give it a 8.5 out of 10.
  
  
• This Wintergrasp raid, The Vault, is very simple. Reminds me of Gruuls except much easier. Three trash pulls and bam, boss time. Tank and spank with a enrage time of 5 minutes. Its a dps race, so pew pew and burn him down. Collect your random piece of T7 and on your way.
  
  
• Even though we did it with no drakes, Obsidian Sanctum was alot of fun. Well tuned fight in my opinion, GGBlizzard
  
  


• Did Naxxramas for the very first time today. Did very well in the short time we had.
  
  
• Cleared the Spider and 2/3rds of the Plauge quater. Of course I didn't get any loot, I completely fail at getting drops, but it was really fun to see how everything looked and how the fights were.
  
  
• CoH priests do so much healing its REDONKEYOUS. Two restro shaman, similar skilled and geared, were getting DOUBLED by the CoH priest in regards to overall healing in Nax. DOUBLED! WTFspaghetti is up with that uh? I remember reading something that said they are going to get nerf because of this and I didn't understand until now...good lord.
  
  
• When the expansion first came out, I created and play a DK for the first two days. Since then I have not touched him and I am starting to get an itch to play him again. I dont know if I really want to with my pally and mage sitting in Northrend with full blue bars. I need to do some deep soul searching with this!
  
  

Quote of the Day
"If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane"
- Jimmy Buffet

Song of the day
Shine
Cashmoney Millionaires
2001

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Evil tricks that make me chuckle..../evil laugh

Tuesday Maintenance sucks for people in my situation. I work from Midnight til 8am, so my main playing time during the week is from 9am - noonish.

So on Tuesdays I usually do adult stuff like clean the house, go to the bank, check myspace, watch TV...you know...grown up things....but today I decided to write a post in the blog.

So lets get this going - wtfspaghetti style!

Today when I was reading through the various blogs that I like, I noticed a post from our friends at Noobding. The post was about a evil / funny trick he did to an Ally that was annoying him. I suggest you go read it - I chuckled

It got me thinking of all of the neat / evil tricks that are in the game that make others mad and make you laugh. I have decided to compile a list. The ones that are marked with an * are the ones that I have done in my years playing wow.

I know I wont be able think of all of them, feel free to add.

1. Fishing - Works best with hunters, but warlocks and DKs can do this as well. You go to a low level area, particularly one that does not automatically flag lowbies for pvp...IE Goldshire, Tristal Glades, Barrens, ect. You put your pet on defense mode in a high traffic area and hide. The lowbie will come up and be confused. Ever hear of the expression, curiosity killed the cat? You got it...he attacks your pet and he gets marked for pvp. Now you camp him and /golfclap.
   
   
2. *Portal Fun - Open the wrong portal or 2 portals on top of each other. Best way to trick people is to say at the end of the run..."Hey guys, you want a port to Shat/Dalaran?". Then you wait a second so they will get ansisy....finally you open a portal to TB or Silvermoon City and they get teleported to a far away land. My new favorite is Stonard. Most of the time this works on atleast one of the group members lol. You can also play a game with people...open a portal to Dalaran and then a portal to Stonard right on top of each other. They have about a 50% chance of going to Dalaran...pretty funny stuff IMO.
   
   
3. Mind Control - Pretty straight forward. Mind control people off of high places. I know priests did this alot back in the day of Blackrock Mountain. You can also duel someone on a boat or blimp. When they accept it, you mind control them off. If you time it right you can have them miss the trip. Unfortunetly, I learned this one the hard way >.<
   
   
4. *Water Walking Chaos - In Northrend, there are two instances that have a very high fall into a body of water, UK and Azjol Nerub. Cast the Walking Walking spell on them right when they jump off and then act like you dont know what happen when they die. DKs and Shaman can do this evil trick lol
   
   
5. Divine Intervention - Pick out a lowbie or someone that you think is new to the game. The best way to find is in the capital city. Cast DI on them and watch the confusion..../evil laugh

All of these tricks are pretty a-hole moves and I am not saying that you should go be a dick. I am simply stating them in a neutral format. I have to admit, it is always fun to mess with people. Especially if you know them in real life lol

Song of the day
Superman
Goldfinger
Punk Rock

Quote of the day
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty
- George Burns (1896-1996)

"The Hallowed" and Ret Pallies

Good morning - another fantastic day around the job place. I am bored and tired....decided instead of sleeping on the job I would attempt to stay awake...seems like a plan so far lol.

I was the guy that told everyone that achievements are stupid and that I would never do them. Now I find myself attempting to complete all of the holiday world events so I can get one of those rare / cool looking photo-drake. So I went off on my journey and completed everything for the hallows end event except the achievement that forced you to farm the Headless Horseman over and over and over again.....

Yes, I know you know it...the actual name of the achievement is escaping me but it consisted of obtaining a Hallowed Helm and a Sinister Squashling. I been farming the HH everyday since the event started....that is 5 summons a day for the past 14 days.

Lets do some math...14 x 5 = 70...So I killed this headless horseman fool 70 times only never to see the Hallowed Helm drop. Pretty funny actually ~ I was getting worried that I spent all that time doing the other achievements only not to get the title because of "RDM" loot.

All is well though (I know you care) I finally got a Hallowed Helm from a trick or treat bag today. So that is one holiday event down, now only what? 10 more to go? woot

This is a screenshot of a AB - This is to show how overpowered Ret Pallies are right now....lol. I raided as holy with my pally until the new talents came out. I respeced to Ret and I have mostly green gear with a few Kara hunter gear pieces. My weapon is also a blue polearm from reg Mech.

I couldn't even imagine the carnage and destruction I would inflict on noobs if I actually had some half way decent gear and a good weapon. I have completely stopped playing my Restro Shaman and my Frost Mage....Ret pallies are just way to fun right now.

I hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween. I have a couple parties I am going to attend and I hope I arrive home safe.

Song of the day

"ddevil"

Performed by System of a Down

Quote of the day

"I shut my eyes in order to see"

-Paul Gauguin

Random funny pic of the day

Layoffs, economy and ROCK AND ROLL!

Good morning blog lovers...its freaking 1:40am and I am writing this solely to keep awake. I work at a data center and my shift is midnight til 8 o'clock AM....so ya...back to the blog eh?

So after 160 layoffs in the IT department at my job due to the AMAZING economy, I am still employed! Yay for me right? One might believe that because of this close call to my financial stability I would start cutting back on "wants" and start saving even more for my "needs". Well, I completely agree with that....however....Guitar Hero World Tour came out this week and I gave in to my urges to ROCK FACE!!

Obviously the coolest part of this version of GH is the drum kit. It has a total of five color coded pads, three drums and 2 elevated cymbals. It’s by far the closest thing to actually purchasing a real drum set. It was very simple and quick to put together and the elevated cymbals really give it a unique and realistic feel. I found it much more fun and enjoyable then its competitor, Rock band's version.

I will say this however....ITS FREAKING HARD lol. The beginner and the easy levels go to slow for my liking and don't keep the beat of the song in my opinion. Medium difficultly is where I am currently and I think my average score has to be like 85% notes hit.

I really couldn't imagine playing expert, but that is the goal most definitely. Especially after I read an article from Travis Barker - One of the celebrity drummers that help develop the drums and the game play...

“Especially on the expert levels of Guitar Hero, where you’re nailing every note for note, it’s absolutely like playing what the drummer in that band is playing.”

So basically....IF I become an EPIC pro GH Drummer, I could potentially become a rock star and have massive, drug enduced orgies with my groupies.....im DOWN...isn't this game only rated Teen? Just wait until the ESRB hears this!

Song of the Day - Rock

"Hey Mister"

performed by Custom

Quote of the day

"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends"

- Japanese Proverb

Random funny picture of the day