Resto Shaman - One Stop Guide to Mastering the Power of Nature

Morning blog lovers!

I got an email the other day asking me a few questions about healing as a Shaman. So instead of answering those specific questions; I thought I would just make a guide about Shamans and their restoration spec.

So lets get start mmmk?

Ding 80, Now what?

Exciting news and I congratulate you, however, you are now playing with the big boys. That means you have gear up to a respectable stat level in order to heal heroics properly and not get laughed at.

Have no fear because this is done very easily through gear that is BoE (Bind on Equip). Leatherworkers have some gear resto gear, both blue and epic. I highly recommend Revenant's Breastplate and Revenant's Treads. Both are epic and are made by a leatherworker. I spent about an hour and a half farming the mats for the Revenant's Treads and I bought the chest piece for 300g.

While you are in farm mode, go ahead and farm the mats for the Titansteel Guardian. Become friends with a tailor and get yourself a Wispcloak. I farmed the mats for both as RESTO! and it took just under two hours. With the blue items from the AH and the pieces you had crafted, you should now be properly geared to heal heroics without any major issues. First two badge items you want to grab is your shield and your neck piece. After those, its up in the air.

Once you have gotten the two badge items, (don't forget to enchant your gear!) you should be sitting somewhere along the following stats...

Health - 14.5k
Mana - 16k
MP5 - 300 while casting
Spell Power / Healing - 1500 unbuffed
Spell Haste - 285ish
Spell Crit - 15-20%ish

Once you obtained those stats, you are more then ready to start healing Naxxramas.

There is alot of good information out on the interwebs about gearing up a resto shaman. This site won't be blocked at your work place and contains some more good information on the gearing up subject.

Talents

This is pretty much the cookie cutter spec for a resto shaman. Is it perfect? No. Can points be swapped out? Of course they can. Look, we can argue and debate this until the next expansion, but the fact of the matter is to go what works for you.

In any resto build, you have 6 talent points that you can mess around with. Some shamans like the healing wave talent and the spell push back talent. Others like to use the improved reincarnation with enhanced weapons.

I loved instant ghostwolf talent so much while leveling it took me a long time to finally respecing out of it. Some shamans recommend getting the Enhancing totems talent and personally, I do not agree with it at all. Yes, it does give your tank a little bit more agility for dodge and strength for parry / shield block etc. It just isn't worth it considering there are a zillion Death Knights running around in my opinion. (DK's have a similar buff that servery makes our earth totem not as vaild)

Overall, get the basics and play around with those 6 points. That way you can find what works best for you. For Ulduar, I am going to try this spec, 0/13/58, it has points into our healing wave talent and improved reincarnation for less down in between wipes.

Glyphs

PvE restoration shaman glyphs are pretty straight forward. The glyphs that I am using are strictly for pve use. There are better choices if you are more focused on pvp, but I am not going to get involved with that at the moment.

Not that much has changed in the new patch and I have been rocking my glyphs since Wotlk came out back in November.

Major

1. Glyph of Earth Shield: Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%

My Earth Shield is hitting for 3.5k and is criting for 6k. Believe, it is worth the slot.

2. Glyph of Chain Heal: Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.

If you are raid healing or healing heroics, I think this makes your job easier and is worth the spot.

3A. Glyph of Healing Stream: Your Healing Stream Totem heals for an additional 20%

If you don't have any mana issues, I highly recommend this glyph for your last spot and here is why. In 3.1, our mana spring totem is now equal to 91 mp5, 109 mp5 talented, and effects the entire raid. This is the same as Paladin's Blessing of Wisdom. So if you have a Paladin in your raid that has the Improved BoW, (109 mp5), you should use the healing stream totem. Why not make it 20% better?

3B. Glyph of Water Mastery: the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 30%

That equals to about 30mp5 for the shaman, good stuff in my opinion.

3C. Glyph of Mana Tide Totem: Your Mana Tide Totem grants an additional 1% of each target's maximum mana each group member.

If you have over 20,000 mana, then this equals out to be an additional 67mp5 for your GROUP. I would only get this if your group / raid are having issues with mana. You can only drop it once per fight in 90% of boss fights. That is why I left this as a secondary choice, I would still go with the Water Mastery one if you are having any sort of mana issues....30 mp5 is nice.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: +20% more heals when your target has Earth Shield

This is a very popular glyph within the resto shaman community. Just because it is popular doesn't make it the best choice. This glyph actually gives less healing bonus then the first two I mentioned. Surprised? I was surprised too, so surprised I did some further investigating...

I'll be damn....its true

Minor

Glyph of Water Shield: Increases the number of charges on your Water Shield spell by 1.

The water shield glyph is still worth it even if you do not decide on getting the improved water shield talent in the restoration tree. Of course it would be as effective, but it wouldn't be pointless.

What stats are important to me?

This is a tricky subject. I say that because it really depends on a variety of things. Such as who you are assigned to heal, (healing assignments) and if you are healing in a raid or a heroic 5 man.

Overall its spell power>mp5>intellect>haste>crit

Mp5 and Intellect are VERY close and could easily be swapped. Again, it really depends on your role and what you are doing.

You could also make a good argument that intellect should be first due to this fact:

10 intellect = 6mp5, 3 crit, and 2 spell power. Intellect also gives you mana based on your mana pool, replenishment, mana spring totem, and your improve water shield procs.

I like to keep all my stats balanced and I try to stay away from having one of my stats being outrageous. A good example is that I do not like to have over 25% crit rating and I like to stay around 350-370 mp5 unbuffed. My spell power is currently 2000ish unbuffed and 2200 with earthliving weapon. Once I get around 2150 spell power unbuffed I am going to focus solely on intellect and haste.

This is just my thoughts on this subject though. I am interested in what real resto shaman raiders like Drug and Manchego think.

Gems

Gems are expensive right now due to 3.1 and duel specs....but that is no excuses not to use the blue quality gems! If you are having some money issues you should check out Mr. Gelvon's blog and get on it.

Meta

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond: +21 Intellect and Chance to restore mana on spellcast

This meta gem is ONLY choice for resto shamans unless you have a redonkeyous amount of intellect. (3700!?!) I can't imagine anyone having that much intellect, so this meta gem is the way to go. The math geniuses over at elitist jerks says it averages around 60mp5. So yeah...awesome little gem =P

Red

Runed Scarlet Ruby or Luminous Monarch Topaz

Yellow

Brilliant Autumn's Glow or Luminous Monarch Topaz

Blue
You would only use this kind of gem to meet the requirement of the meta gem. I recommend Dazzling Forest Emerald. I guess you could use the straight +stamina if you are under 16k, but I don't recommend it.

Enchants

Head - Arcanum of Blissful Mending (30sp 8mp5 / The Wyrmrest Accord (revered) ) or Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (30sp 20 crit / Kirin Tor (revered) )

Go with the Wyrmrest rep first. That way you can can pick up a good pair of gloves while you are there.

Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Crag or Greater Inscription of the Storm (Exalted versions). Atleast get the Lesser Inscription of the Crag, they are almost as good and only take honored with the Sons of Hodir. FYI - You have to unlock the dailies.

Cloak - Greater Speed (23 haste rating)

Chest - Powerful Stats (+10 to all stats) or Super Stats (+8 to all stats)

Wrist - Superior Spell Power (+30 sp) or Greater Spell Power (+23 sp) Fur Lining (Leatherworker only / +67 Spell Power)

Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower (+28 sp)

Belt - Eternal Belt Buckle - Extra Gem

Legs - Sapphire Spellthread (+50 sp / +30 stam)

Feet - Greater Vitality (6mp5)

Shield - Greater Intellect (+25 intell)

Weapon - Mighty Spellpower (+63 sp)

Totems

Ahh yes, what makes a shaman a shaman...totems! As a resto shaman though, which ones do you use? That answer isn't as straight forward as you might think and you need to be aware in order to maximize your role as a raid buffer. First, lets go over what totems to drop if another shaman is in the raid.

Other Shamans in raid / group

If the other shaman is enhance, then they should have Enhancing totems talent and should be dropping Windfury, Strength of Earth, and Flametongue totems. As far as which air totem to drop, it is probably better that he drops mana spring and you handle healing stream. This is because of the new change in 3.1 that made our mana spring totem a base 91 mp5 untalented. Even though a resto mana spring totem should be 109 mp5, there is a much larger difference in our healing stream due to the fact that it is based off of spell power. Hopefully you have holy paladin in the raid for his blessing of wisdom, which if talent is the same as the resto shaman, 109 mp5. These do not stack..../sad panda

If the other shaman is elemental, then there is no reason to drop your flametongue totem. Elemental's have Totem of Wrath, which is a larger increase in spell power and will not stack with flametongue. I usually just take over what they do not, meaning that I drop the melee helpful totems along with healing stream.

You are just going to have to use your best judgement in deciding which totems to drop. Two important things to consider...

1. Compostion of your group / raid. If you are melee heavy or the top 5 dps is all melee classes, you might want to drop windfury over wrath of air.

2. Make sure your totems are not wasted or being overiden. We talked about this in regards to other shamans and holy paladins. Example is Death Knight's Horn of Winter. When this is activated it makes our Strength of the Earth totem pretty useless. Use Stoneskin totem to add some extra armor, plus it makes healing the tanks a little easier.

Can't really go wrong if you follow those two rules.

Macros

Instant big heal aka OH SNAPFIZZLE button

All resto shamans need a "OH SNAPFIZZLE" button. This is when someone in your raid / group needs an instant big heal. Through talents you are going to get the ability called Nature Swiftness. This makes any spell with a cast time under 10 seconds instant. Coupled with another resto talent, Tidal Force, and waa la....now you just have to put a macro to make it a button.

The two talents by itself with a healing wave cast should instantly heal someone for 10-14k (depending on spell power). You can also add trinkets into the mix and it is recommended.

Macro is as follows:

/stopcasting
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Tidal Force

13 is the upper trinket slot and 14 is the lower trinket slot. If you do not have a trinket that has a use, then the macro will just skip over it.

Interupts

This macro is useful for pvp and pve. It also comes in very handy for heroic 5 mans. Remember that less dmg that your group / raid is taking, the better. If you have a badie targeted, it will Earth Shock them. If you have a friendly targeted, it will earth shock its target.

/stopcasting
/cast [harm] Earth Shock; [target=targettarget, harm] Earth Shock

These are the only macros that I use. There are other ones out there that other shamans deem useful, but those two are the most useful in my opinion.

Addons

Addons are a big deal and help you do your job correctly. Even though it is slightly outdated, I wrote an article awhile back of all of my addons. Most of those addons are not necessary, but a few make our job extremely more efficient. I HIGHLY recommend downloading and using Clique for all healers, not just resto shamans.

Clique is very easy to setup and if used correctly, automatically makes you a better healer. Breakdown of the addon is that heals are casted by just moving your mouse over the raid frame or the toon portrait and pressing a certain keybind. You can setup which key you want to bind an ability

Alot of shamas swear by grid or healbot. I used the default UI and I do find. Now If I didn't have clique, I would be in major trouble.

Tips

1. Key bindings. Super important. Besides the key bindings I have setup for Clique, I also use the "~" key for Riptide, the "1" key for LHW, and the "2" key for HW. "G" is my OH SNAPFIZZLE button, and "T" is just Tidal Force.

2. Raid Healing. We have chain heal and because of this we make excellent raid healers. In fights where people are spread out, Chain heal loses its power. Howeer, melee can only spread out so far and because of this we are excellent in keeping that group up while we through a quick LHW to others.

3. Don't forget about your elementals! You might be thinking to yourself...well duh dude! I is no noob mmk? Well I am and I forget about my fire and earth elementals all the time. Blizzard buffed both of them substantially and they are definitely worth dropping during boss fights. Especially for all of the dps races in Ulduar.

4. Don't be afraid to fail. I have let many people die when they shouldn't have. Most of the time it was due to casting a chain heal (long cast) instead of using a Riptide+LHW (quick cast). Other times it has been due to me zoning out or just plain failing. Practice and repetition is key to perfecting anything, just try not to get discouraged and keep at it.

5. We can decurse! So do it! This may be another one of those dumb moments, but I have ran into MANY resto shamans that did not know they can decurse. Even better is setup your cleanse in clique to minimize the time the disease, curse, or poision is on. Very important and recommended.

I know this post is huge, but there was alot of information I wanted to inform the masses few followers about how to play a restoration shaman correctly. If you notice any glaring mistakes please say inform me in the comment section. Thanks for reading and now you should know how to master the power of nature....

....good luck with that shit =P

Referance for most information: http://elitistjerks.com

Death Knight Spec Reviews

3.1 Death Knight Spec Reviews
Now that I have gotten a bit of raid time in with the new content I am here to share with you my impressions of the specs I have tried.

Unholy dps

I have been enjoying this spec! At first I was not at all interested in having a permanent ghoul to rely on for dps, However with all the unholy talents buffing him, he stays up rather well. The short cooldown on army of the dead also really helps use it for multiple boss attempts. I think this spec is working well for my ilevel 200 gear and should only get better as I get more dps gear. I have not really been having any aggro issues (which is the reason some people prefer 12/0/59).

Tanking Specs & Ulduar

I must say I had high hopes for Frost tanking in 3.1. I knew it was getting a nerf but I thought it still looked strong. Well turns out the nerf really killed the playability of frost for me. This is the spec I took into Ulduar for our first attempts. We downed FL no problem and moved on to Ignis. If you haven't yet been, the trash before Ignis is harder than any boss in Naxx (imho). The bosses trashmobs were hitting me for 12k+ (in a 10 man!) All the extra avoidance and mitigation of frost didn't help me at all. When I had a bad string of avoidance I WOULD go down. In addition to this, my threat was not where it used to be. Maybe its the new rotation. I will admit I don't have the new frost rotation down nearly as well as I had the old one. Still, the whole time I felt fragile AND had aggro problems for the first time this expansion. On a positive note, Acclimation did stay stacked pretty much any time I needed it. The extra resists cause you to basically have 250+ resist in standard tank gear. I was resisting nearly 30% of all magic attacks. That's a big chunk of damage! We never did get any quality attempts at Ignis as things kept falling apart quickly. After probably 7 wipes we decide to move on. The real nail in this specs coffin for me came at Razorscale.

Razorscale as a fight is pretty much all about controlling the adds and avoiding raid damage. During the air phase adds continuously spawn from 3 locations (on the 10 man). So I have 2 spawn points to cover. Frost failed me here with the long cooldown on HB and the longer cooldown on DnD. It really made it hard to hold all the mobs I needed to while still picking up the new ones that spawned. We wiped quite a few times without ever getting Razorscale to the permanently grounded phase. When we finally get him grounded for good. I took a massive breath (and maybe stood in some fire...) and died.

We called the raid here and made another trip later in the week.

For our second trip into Ulduar I went with the blood tanking spec I had talked about. This seemed to work out much better. While I did seem to be taking more overall damage, It was all pretty steady and I did not seem to have as many OH S#%* moments as I did with frost. Blood also impressed me with the ability it has to aoe. It is no Unholy but I felt like a stronger aoe tank as blood than I did as Frost. Heart strike makes tanking two mobs just as easy as tanking one. Don't even have to change your rotation!. Also the blood spec isn't as talent bloated as frost and that allowed me to have the lowest cooldown possible on DnD. I don't know if it was the spec or what. but it only took 1 wipe to down him this time.

(on a somewhat related note: 47khp, thanks cooldowns!)


We moved on to the XT-002 Deconstructor. This so far has been my favorite fight in Ulduar. It really felt finely tuned. we had a few attempts wipe at very low percentage. When we finally killed him it felt like everyone really had to be on their game and work together perfectly.

Podcast!?!?

I have recently gotten into listining to WoW Podcasts (and podcasts in general). There are a few quality wow podcasts (Rawrcast, Warcraft Outsiders), But I really felt with the amount of poeple who play wow there is room for more. TheDoctor and I have been tossing around the idea of making a wtfspaghetti podcast! Is this something that would interest our readers? What type of topics would you most be interested in hearing about? Let us know in the comments section If you have any suggestions on topics or even if you think think its the worst idea you have ever heard of. Let us know!

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Random Thoughts

Morning blog lovers!

One of the main reason why I have a blog is so I can put down my random thoughts and try to make sense out of them. Sometimes it is completely useless, other times it actually helps me.

So WTF, here we go =D

• Patch 3.1.1 is suppose to come today and that is supposedly why we have extended maintenance. So many bugs to fix. Makes you wonder how many bugs / exploits they already fixed. Man....I would hate to look at that coding..../wrist. I guess the 6 figure salary would be worth it though =P


• Went back into Ulduar with a solid group of guildies. We took down Razorscale and that Big Whinny Robot. Only had 1 attempt on the Iron Council before people had to leave, which pissed me off because we were only in there for a little over an hour, but what can you do?


• The Big Whinny Robot was a pretty fun fight, it just takes coordination and alot of dps. We had 4 of our dps doing over 3k and the other two were doing about 2.7ish. We made beat the enrage timer by about 25 seconds and got an achievement for not letting any repair bots get to the boss. Win, Win =D


• I still haven't done the new boss in VoA. I would love to get a tier 8 just so I can say I have one lol. In fact, I would even like to have some of the new pvp gear. Have you seen the stamina on those things? Like 150 stam....redonkeyous


• I am in love with Ulduar trash mobs. Face rolling through trash mobs in Naxx for the past 4 months has made me forget that trash mobs used to be difficult. I absolutely love it. Nothing like rolling into a new "quarter" in Ulduar and seeing three normal sized dwarfs and thinking to myself....I bet these dudes are going to F around lol. I have heard horror stories about Mimiron trash...so that should be fun when we get there.


• It seems like my guild doesn't raid the same when I am not leading the raid, its crazy. I dont yell at people and I am not always talking on vent. So I have no idea why it is such a major difference, but there is. Loot drama, people dicking around, wiping, arguing about wiping in raid chat. Kinda sucks, but what can you do? Only thing I can think of is to find someone ASAP that can lead a 25 man raid and do it successfully. Any suggestions?


• I am now eligible to compete in the Argent Tournament. Thats right, Champion SON! lol. You get this vanity pet and I cant help but to feel bad. It calls you master and follows you around where ever you go. You can make it carry a flag lol....plus its this ugly orc / E.T. little bugger. Weirds me out lol


• Not sure why I was so excited about the tournament, there really isn't anything I want. I guess I could get another mount...that would be cool. One good thing is that this "event" is currently Blizzards little toy and I am sure that they will add cooler things to it. Plus you do make a good amount of gold doing the dailies.

Work is almost over, which means I have to stop writing and actually finish up my work. Weaksauce I know! Have fun on this WONDERFUL maintenance day, hopefully it wont turn out like last week.

Until then, I'm WTFout!

Morning Morning Warcraft - Argent Tournament Dailies and Ulduar...

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!

What a weekend! I got zero playing time on Saturday and Sunday due to a friends wedding and my recovery from that wedding (cleansing . So I missed our guilds 25 man raid, however, I did play an outrageous amount of WoW on Friday.

Ulduar

Oh that is right, we went in there with an under-geared tank, druid healer, and sub-par dps. Of course we are going to melt faces right?!?

haha...anyway =P

The first vehicle fight was pretty cool. I was decided that I was going to be the motobike and skeet tar everywhere. We cleared all of the towers and attempted the boss. First shot we got em to 50%. Second shot we ran into some bad luck and wiped. Third shot we downed him. Took the screenshot and we were on our way.

Woot! It was a good feeling. Too bad it didn't last long lol....

Ignis the furnace master does not F around. His trash mobs are harder then any of the bosses in the four wings of Naxx...maybe even all of Naxxramas. Either way, they suck and we were not prepared for that.

Once we got use to what was going on and the trash's abilities, it wasn't horrible. Ignis is a bad dude and after many attempts and different strats, it just wasn't going to happen.

We head over to Razorscale...pretty fun fight. Pretty healing intensive and we were rocking 3 healers. What really killed us was the our DPS. The under-geared tank and druid healer were doing fine, but the overall dps was just lacking.

After a bunch of attempts, we decided to call it.

Overall thoughts...

Ulduar is a huge step up, which it should be. The only thing I was surprised about was the amount of damage that was pouring out and the trash mobs. Ulduar really makes Naxxramas look like child's play, I mean seriously....they do not even compare lol.

Going back in there today when I get home, should be fun.

Argent Tournament Dailies

If you haven't already, you should check out my earlier post about it and how to get started. Once you have already completed the opening chain, you have the ability to complete 7 dailies. Five of those dailies actually give you marks which you will need to rank up and unlock the next set of dailies.

Confused?

I was too, but after I unlocked the 7 dailys and got my path down. It was only a matter of taking 30 minutes out of my WoW day and actually do them. Due note that the unlocking phase has to due with the mounting combat. Right off the bat you should be able to do 2 of the dailies, A Chip off the old Ulduar Block and Jack Me Some Lumber.

Rankings

When you first unlock the dailies and complete them, you are given a quest to turn in 15 of the marks. When you turn these in you gain a rank. I am only on the second rank, but they do give you extra stuff to do. Such as, upping the ante on two of the quests and adding an additional quest.

Due note - You can only earn a maximum of 5 marks a day. Unless I am missing something, which I do not think I am. So just because you have an get an addition quest, Enemy at the Gates, does not mean that you are getting more marks. Weaksauce, I know...

Daily Route

This is my route that I take. I really need to get a better picture editing program other then paint....looks like a kindergartner made that...lol.

Anyway, number 4 is actually random and can be anyone of three quests. Blade Fit for a Champion, Worthy Weapon, and Edge of Winter. All very easy and require very little time involvement.

Overall Thought about Ulduar

Like I was saying before on the topic, we had a tank and a healer that was under-geared. Being so, they still did fine and was able to fill that role for the first four bosses. I think that you can not be under-geared when it comes to the DPS role.

DPS always plays a big role, but I think Naxxramas did not prepare your dpsers skill wise. You really need a minimum of 2.5k-2.8k dps. You dps should be putting out more along the lines of 3k-3.5k in order to be successful in this raid. That also means single target dps, not just aoe'n stuff down.

How did your guild fare in Ulduar? Looking forward to hearing about your situation and your exp in there. Until then though, I'm WTFout!

3.1 Death Knight Tank Spec

With the weekend quickly approaching I can only hope that blizzard fixes the instances servers to give me a chance to check out my tank specs prior to the big show. While it has been fun blowing things up it looks like I will still be needed to tank things.

Last time I gave you my version of a 3.1 Death Knight Dps spec and now I deliver the goods on tanking specs. When designing these specs I really tried to keep in mind what I have read about Ulduar boss fights. So far the consensus seems to be hard hitting bosses with lots of aoe. Magic damage seems to be pretty constant as well. With that in mind I give you 3.1 Tanking specs.

The first spec I give you is frost. I was a frost tank pre-patch and I really liked it. Frost is a bit more of a talent point sink than it used to be and it feels like I don't get points in everything I want. However frost as a spec does offer the most mitigation and avoidance with an extra 2% damage reduction (from all sources) 3% avoidance, and Acclamation for magic resist. A lot of the fights I have read about have periodic sources of magic damage or magic attacks from bosses that should keep this stacked pretty well at all times. If Acclimation doesnt turn out to be very usefull it will be dropped for points in bladed armor or to fill out morbidity. This is my first choice of spec and I think I will only be using blood of the bosses hit so hard in Ulduar that I absolutely need the 6% stam.

The blood spec I have here basically trades the goodies I listed above for 6% str and stam, the ability to parry direct damage spell attacks, and a 15% damage reduction to hits that take you below 35% once every 2 minutes. I have one floating point in the blood spec that could be used in a few different spots depending on the utility you want. Could take Hysteria for some increased dps (or tps if you use it on yourself). Rune Tap works for another healing pot every minute. My personal choice would probably be Mark of blood as it has a variety of cool uses and can heal the entire raid. (at least it used to heal my entire 5 man groups when I used it as leveling.)

Hopefully I get a chance to run Ulduar this weekend so I can give a description of these specs in action!

Full Ulduar Map and Boss list

Short and sweet

Enjoy, I will see you guys tomorrow. I'm WTFout!

3.1 - Argent Tournament and First Impressions

Morning blog lovers!

Well, well, well, here we all are. Overall, Blizzard had most of the realms down all day. My particular realm did not come up until around 8pm, 6 hours later then normal.

Was I upset? Did I feel like the world was ending? Was I tempted to bang my head against the wall multiple times? Unfortunately, all of the answers to those questions are no. I was excited the whole day and I was a little bummed that they were down as long as they were down....

blah blah blah right? Lets get into real reason why you are here, WoW Talk with a little bit of WTF sprinkled on top.....

.....right lol

First Impressions

I upgraded my PC a few weeks after WotLK came out. Everything works perfectly and I run my video settings pretty high. I usually get around 40 frames per second while I was in Dalaran. Today when I logged on my server, Dalaran was as packed as I have ever seen it. You couldn't even see that damn ground there were so many people.

So I bounced out of there with the quickness and headed to the place I thought would have the least amount of people, Thunder Bluff. Ahh yes, it was much better here.....but it was still pretty packed. Usually that place is a ghost town, completely opposite on this night lol.

Anywho...

I spent the 1k gold and got my duel spec. Put my talents where I wanted them and then setup my bars the way I wanted it for both of my chosen specs, elemental and resto.

Speaking of mods, I was super excited that my bar mod, domino's, was unfazed from the new patch. In fact all of the mods that I use actually worked with the new patch. I totally thought I was going to have to spend some time and mess with it. Pleasant surprise it was indeed.

New interfaces

I am not sure if you realized it our not, but the "LFG" (Looking for Group) interface has changed dramatically. It now shows what roles you can do, such as healer, dps, or meat head(tank =P). While this is kinda nice, I do not like it at all. I was a big fan of the old interface and I am not liking this change. Hopefully my opinion will change once I get used to the new interface. Yeah, keyword being "hopefully"....I am going with the positive outlook with this one lol.

Talent interface

I like it. It is very simply and user friendly. I also like how it saves your bar setup. It saved the way I had my resto bar setup when I switched to elemental and vice a versa. Pretty neat.

Argent Tournament


This place is wild! Nothing funnier then a cow rolling around on top of a over-sized chicken lol. I know I was confused when it came to this so I am going to shead a little light and try to answer the questions I had. Hopefully it will help you out.

First, where is this place and how do I get there?














Take a look at this map. The tournament is at the NE corner of Icecrown, an area in Northrend. Right when you first roll into the camp, you will see two quest givers. These are daily quests that that send you to different places around Northrend to collect stones and lumber. I will get into these later.

If you are entering the camp from the main path, go to the left (west) and follow it around and you will see a big tent. It is here that you will get a quest. That quest is the first in the chain to unlocking the new dailies. It wants you to go to your factions tent, located on the eastern side of the place.

It is here where you get 3 additional quests for the mounted combat. Once you get those quests, go outside and you should see a bunch of mounts. You need to equip your pole and jump on one of these mounts.














From there, go to the location I pointed on the map using my awesome paint skills. It is there where you will find Jeran Lockwood, Rugan Steelbelly, and Valis Windchaser. You will use your new skills on the target dummies. After you complete those 3, you unlock a daily and also unlock a new quest chain.

And then??

I wasn't able to do anymore because I had to come into work....weaksauce right? I know! There is so much more I could talk about but sadly, I am too busy at work to continue. I guess I will just wrap it up and save it for another post....

/sniffle

Before I finish, I want to leave you with something to chuckle at...(that is what she said lol)

Anyway...I bring to you...

WTFspahgetti's Weekly Dumb!

I think everyone knows someone like this guy....poor bastard is just way to stupid for his own good. Enjoy and as always, it is work safe.

Have fun trying to fish up the turtle mount and enjoy the rest of what the new patch has to offer. I am WTFout of here.

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - 3.1 DK Spec, Glyphs, Rotation

3.1 is upon us!

I'm having an identity crisis! I am feeling the need to put up big numbers and try and top damage meters. Maybe I am growing gun shy from to many hits to the face while tanking. (You try it without a shield!) Whatever the reason is I have been dieing to try out dps.

Unholy Dps Spec

With dual spec and a new raid instance on the way, I figure maybe some of you aspiring death knights would like to know a decent talent specialization for PvE Dps. Well look no further, after much research and a bit of personal insight I give you my dps spec of choice. Pretty standard really. I do forgo improved unholy presence in favor of filling out necrosis.

Rotation

Rotation for this spec is pretty simple really. You apply your diseases and use Blood Strike x2 and Scourge Strike.
Your next rotation you can fire off Scourge Strike x3. Then you hope that your glyph of Scourge strike procs your diseases. Ideally you end up coming up with a rotation that looks a lot like Scourge Strike, Blood Strike x2, Scourge Strike. The next time your runes come off cooldown we are back to Scourge Strike x3. Whenever your scourge strike glyph does not keep diseases refreshed you have to reapply your diseases. This whole time you are dumping runic power so that it does not cap.

A priority list for the rotation would look something like this:

1. Keep Diseases up.
2. Do Not cap runic power. (If unholy blight is up, deathcoil)
3. Scourge Strike
4. Bloodstrike

Another important bit of knowledge to have is that you will want to use your gargoyle cooldown as often as possible for max dps. At the same time, It is best to pop Gargoyle when you have as many buffs as possible. (pro tip: Use it AFTER bloodlust, while you still have the actuall buff)

Glyphs

As you can see I went with Glyph of the Ghoul, Dark Death, and Scourge Strike.
If you do not have 4 piece t7 then you may want to use the Unholy Blight glyph instead of Dark Death.


Well, Blizzard said they would provide an update 15 minutes ago. Time to check that out!

Monday Morning Warcraft - The Return!

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!

As you probably already know, I work nights, the graveyard shift. The reason for the shift is to deal with European operations. Now, when the entire UK is on vacation, I pretty much just sit on my ass and do ABSOLUTELY nothing.

You are probably thinking, wow, that's freaking awesome. Not really. Its rather boring. So what to do with all of this extra time??? While bring back Monday Morning Warcraft from its hibernation of course!

WTFspaghetti's 15 man choir - "Ceeeelebrate good times, CMON!" /dance

I feel that. Lets get this crackin...WTF style!

Alchemy, Cooking, Fishing and my Laziness

During my leveling up to 80 phase, about 4 months ago. I dinged 80 and had cooking and alchemy around 425ish. I did the cooking daily almost every day and I was always making exilirs and pots for guildies in raids.

However, I was too F'n lazy to actually level them up past the 425 marker. I am happy to say that I finally stopped being a noob and leveled both of my professions to 440. Hopefully it won't be another 3 months until I get around to leveling the last 10 points. I am pretty excited that I can now make the 4 main WotLK flasks. Before, I would always rock a battle and guardian exilir. However, this past week I found out that it is so much easier to just make one flask and I would be set for the entire raid time.

I am going to make an solid effort this week to level up my fishing to 400 so I can fish somewhere besides Org. Currently, my fishing skill is only 277. It is going to take ALOT of time and effort if I plan on getting my fishing level to 400 this week. In all reality, I highly doubt this will happen. Who knows though....its kinda possible =P

The Raiding Front

This was probably the worst raiding weekend our guild has had in awhile. I kinda knew it was going to happen due to the holiday, but it wasn't SO bad. We did clear Naxxramas 25 man in two days and 10 man Naxxramas in about 3 hours. We went into Malygos on Friday and got him to phase 3 with almost 5 minutes left!!

Tell me why we didn't kill him? Freaking unbelievable. After 3 times in a row of getting to phase 3 with just under 5 minutes left to kill him, I called it. Too much inexperience with that one.

As the guild leader, it is kinda hard to decide what exactly to say to your guilies when they failed. I don't want to come off mean or hateful with a 50 DKP MINUS! Then again, I don't want to say screw it, no big deal. I just said over vent that they really needed to slow down and concentrate on whats going on. Everyone's learning curve is different, just need practice and have more focus.

Not a terrible speech lol....I had to say something though. One of our officers has the worst luck in that place. He has never actually killed Malygos even though he has been there 4-5 times. Funny thing about it is that he actually knows what to do and executes properly...he just always seems to go with the most inexperience guildies.

I am an Elitist?

After reading over what I just said....I couldn't help but to notice what I am sounding like. Am I turning into an elitist? Lets investigate.

Wikipedia states:
term is often used to describe people as out of touch with the Average Joe. The implication is that the alleged elitist person or group thinks they are better than everyone else, and therefore put themselves before others. It could be seen as a synonym for snob.

Am I out of touch with the average joe? I would like to think that I am not, but hell, I might be. I try to find out the type of players / people that visit my site with polls and reading through comments. I think I have a good graps on it, but like I said....who really knows.

Do I think that I am better then everybody else in regards to WoW. No. However, I do get upset when things don't go right and we end up doing silly things. Like wiping on phase 3 in Malygos or wiping five times to the Instructor in heroic Naxxramas. Does that mean that I think I am better then everyone else? I think it does a little bit. I would be a liar if I said it didn't.

Take this into consideration. I stated earlier that

"this weekend was the worst weekend our guild has had in a long time"

I then went on to say that we cleared 25 man Naxxramas. If another blogger would have said that and I read it a few weeks ago. I would think to myself, PFT, silly elitist...always complaining about something.

Pretty wild how that transformation happens. What do you guys think about that whole situation? Do you think that I am an elitist? What about yourself? What kind of opinion do you have about yourself in regards to elitism in WoW?

That is pretty much it for today. The rumors are flying around the world (of warcraft) about patch 3.1 dropping this Tuesday. Make sure you finish downloading that 750mb patch before patch day. I bet downloading it on patch day is going to as fun as leveling my fishing from 277 to 400, lol =P

Woot to that. Until then people, I'm WTFout!

fo shizzle (RIP BRK)

Friday Food for Thought - First Ulduar Boss and you

Morning blog lovers!

TGIF!

Wooohooo. Unfortunately my weekend is filled with crap to do and I am going to have very little time to do anything wow related. I am pretty much a sad panda. That is ok though, hopefully my guild will clear heroic naxx without me leading it, only time will tell....

Uldaur? Udaur? Ulduar, there we go

That is right, the new raid instance is right around the corner, how exciting! I have been reading alot about this new place and its 14 bosses. Seems like Blizzard has decided to make the first boss in here a vehicle fight! I know, I know, your excited right?

/end sarcasm

Flame Leviathan is his name and he is a HUGE rebot that you don't actually tank, but kite around. There are three types of vehicles used in this encounter - motor bike, siege tankers, and siege catapults. In the 25 man version, you can only have a maximum of 5 of each.. That means that 10 people in the raid are going to have to be passengers on the sieges.

But have no fear, you have stuff to do as well.

Lets back track a little though. When the event begins, you actually have to go through a gauntlet. I think this is blizzards way of getting you used to the controls of your vehicle because unlike the Malygos fight, there isn't any sort of daily quest to get you "used" to the controls. This gauntlet is rather easy and should be a breeze due to the lack of raid damage that is going out.

This doesn't mean that you can't wipe, just means that you shouldn't =P

Item level issue with the vehicles

Lets make this clear. The higher item level gear you have, the stronger the vehicle is going to be. That does not mean that it goes off of any stats, just item level. Confused? ok...an example then.

You are a caster. You are a good little raider so you are hit capped. Once you get into your vehicle, it doesn't matter if you are hit capped or have zero hit. Your stats dont matter, only the item level of your gear. Still not 100% clear? Bring on another example!

You are a tank. You are a good little meat head, so you have 35-40k hp buffed. Once you get into your vehicle of choice, it didn't matter if you have 10k hp. Your stats don't matter, only the item level of your gear. 100% clear now? Fantastic!

Lets do some math and find out exactly what the difference is.

Me? do math? I am too lazy for that lol. Have no fear! Ferrante, a Death Knight in The Goon Squad on Kel'Thuzad did that math for us. Yay Ferrante! Lets see what he came up with.

Shirt, tabard, offhand, and ranged/relic slots do not affect vehicle scaling. This does mean an ilvl 226 1 hand weapon is better than an ilvl 213 2 hander.

Enchants and gems do not affect it either, it is based solely off item level. - An ilvl 200 blue is equivalent to an ilvl 187 epic.

Experimenting with other combos of blue/epic gear gave me reasonable confidence that a blue item is equivalent to an epic 13 levels lower. An empty slot is equivalent to an ilvl 0 epic this does mean equipping an ilvl 0 blue such as Insignia of the Scourge will be worse than having nothing at all in the slot.

Empirically, taking the average ilvl of your gear (subtract 13 for each blue, 26 for each green)and dividing by 15 (total number of applicable slots), then subtracting 170 will give you the percent increase of the health points of your vehicle compared to base - it cannot be decreased though (naked is a 0% increase).

Thus: All ilvl 200 epic gear => 200-170 => 30% increase in vehicle hp. All 226 would be a 56% increase,

I did some limited testing of vehicle damage:

Naked: 2148 average attack with 171 attacks Avg 213
Gear: 3038 average attack with 160 attacks 3038/2148 = 41.4% so that seems to be within the margin of error for the expected value of 43%

Confused? I'm not going to lie and say that I get all of it, but I get the idea.

So now, back to that big ass robot that drops our preciousshess.

The boss will attack one of the siege tankers for 30 seconds and then switch to another one. The moto bikes need to lay down tar which slows the boss down. The siege catapults are going to lite the tar on fire and the tankers are going to kite him through it.

And that is the boss fight in a nutshell. Of course there is a boat load of other things that are going on, but I am not going to get into that now. For a full strategy and a video of the encounter, check this site. Good stuff I tell yeah, only the best stuff for the readers of WTF lol.

So...like...what vehicle suites me best?

Great question. The answer is simple, I have no F'n clue lol. From reading the description and watching the strat, I kinda want to try out the moto bike one. Seems like my kinda of role lol. Try not die cuz of low hp, zoom in and out and drop black tar. Pew Pew when I get the chance, seems fun, but who really knows.

Getting catapulted on top of the boss also seems very entertaining. Nothing like a big ass cow flying through the air and landing on top of a giant robot.

What about you guys? Which siege vehicle would you like to try out?

Until then people, I'm WTFout!

Don't Hate the Playa

Morning blog lovers!

Yesterday I told you about how much time I had to sleep before work. How did it work out?

Yeah....I called off lol. I got a metric ton of sleep and I am SUPER refreshed for the day ahead of me.

The main reason for this post is to mention some new additions to my blog roll. To be on my blog roll, lets face it. They have to be unique, funny, or information, and they all have to be entertaining. I think that these 3 blogs fit the bill and I welcome them to my blog roll.

Without any further interuptions!

Skrooge - Skrooge is on the mission to make THA CASHMONEY. He reminds me a little of the Greedy Goblin, but cooler. His post are informational and harilous. Check him out....funny little gnome he is.

miss elf - Long time blogger and there is a reason, she good at what she does. Lots of good information for Mages and all other classes of WoW.

Shadowy Goodness - New blogger and started for the same reasons why I did. I found out that he is on my server, yet I do not know what faction he is. He has some pretty funny posts so I figured, what the hell. Maybe I will bring his blog into a bigger light.

Until next time blog lovers, I'm WTFout!

Google Reader FTW!

Thanks to an awesome email sent to me by one of my viewers. I have now restored my original post using the power of google reader. I lost my comments, but I am glad that it is back up there.

I appreciate you taking time out of your day and emailing that, mucho appreciated Marleen.

Currently, I have been awake for 26 hours, 42 minutes, and 38 seconds. I have to be at work at exactly 4 hours, 11 minutes. Which gives me less then 3 hours of sleep before I have to drag myself out of bed and to work.

Hope my alarm actually wakes me up lol

Until next time, I'm WTFout!

Sleep 1, Blogspot 0

GRRR

So here I am at work cleaning up my site a little bit. I go to the edit post option and then something happened....I got really sleepy....

So now, 2 or 3 minutes have pasted and I am zoned out in a half wake state. I try to wake myself up by deleting two draft posts I have saved.

No big deal right?

Expect I deleted an actually post!!!! My most recent one at that...

I just spent the last 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get it back and I have come to the realization that I can't....

So now I am wide awake, pissed off, and I am down my most recent post.

My sleepy half wake ass has won this battle with blogspot. This place, blogspot, has failed me however. How can they not have a restore button or atleast a prompt stating "HEY, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE THIS?"

That might have saved my most recent post....highly doubtful....

I have also run into numberous issues with my post in regard to blogspot acting like tard. Could this be the straw that broke my back in regards to keeping my blog at blogspot? I have always thought about moving over to wordpress. I have heard nothing but good things from other bloggers that have done it. More customization options, multiple pages, some neat gadgets, and the ability to RESTORE deleted posts!

So far I have been blogging for 7 months and have over 85 posts here at blogspot. It would be a pretty big operation to move everything over. Then you have to think about your readers and how they would be affected...all of the people that have you on their blog roll would have to be changed....plus its alot of work...

bah....this blows.

What do you guys think? Stick it out with blogspot or go to "where the grass seems greener" at wordpress? I would appreciate your comment if you do. Thanks for reading, sorry about the rant...<3

/endrant

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!

Friday's Food for Thought - Naxx Haikus , Ideal Raider

to update the blog
random thoughts exist, friday
abe freed the slaves

This may seem a little stream-of-thought. No prose written out and meticulosly edited. (only half -assed editing goes on here at wtf!) I want to discuss a lot of different subjects today. I'll start with WoW as that is why most everyone who comes here, comes here. (you like that??!?!)

Naxx Fights in Haiku form:

Anub' Rekhan: Kill the adds quickly
Tank kite, Heals avoid silence
kill more adds, loot boss

Grand Widow: Stop enrage,kill adds
What makes this Widow so grand?
take pity on her spouse

Maexxna: Big spider scares me
kill spiders, web wrap, web spray
I always die here


Noth: Tank adds, D P S
decurse, decurse, decurse, NOW!
why have we wiped here?

Heigan: Dance if we want to
You died? Feel shame. We finish
Leave your friends behind

Loatheb: Timing your heals here
wait for it! wait for it! NOW!
get spore, d p s


I will try to do the rest of them some time next week. That is assuming that 3.1 is not out, because we all know that our blogging is often related inversely to the amount we play. If 3.1 comes out I expect to be off dpsing somewhere or trying out new tanking specs. But hey, maybe then you will get actual information out of my ramblings (wishful thinking).

On the Raiding/Guild front: I finally got a chance to try Maly! It was a fun fight. We spent a few hours in there wiping and never actually cleared him, But it was good to experience a new fight (Naxx is getting WAY boring). Our troubles, as with most groups, came about in phase 3. We got pretty close one time but people started dieing and letting stacks drop. I am confident that I will be able to kill him within the next week. I sure hope we do because I would really like to get Champion of the Frozen wastes before 3.1.

I am very happy with the progress of our guild. It seems to me that 80% (number pulled directly from my ass) of running a raiding guild is in finding the right people. When you get a solid core of people everything seems to go smooth. The most important thing you can do is have a vision for what you want the guild to become, and recruit those who fit the mold.

Fish over at Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron had a post that says there are two types of raiders, that while flawed did hold a lot of truth. He basically said that one type of player is constantly looking to improve there toon through any means possible and the second type of player is basically a social player who goes to raids because they enjoy the people they raid with. He calls the first type of player a gear whore and claims he wouldn't want to be in a guild with them.

The main issue I take here is the connection he draws between improvement and gear. While obviously an important factor when talking about character progression or improvement, gear is not the end all be all of improvement. Take for example a hunter in our guild. Over the course of a month, with minimal gear upgrades, went from doing sub-par dps to topping the charts. Huge improvement. very little of it gear related.

I think the issue I take with people not in his group is that if their performance is bad or even average, they will often blame it on gear.
"If only I had more epics I would do more dps" Instead of trying to improve their rotation, cooldown usage, or even spec.


Fish has since updated his thoughts to a two variables of raiders (which I like much more)
The ideal raider has high motivation to improve, AND enjoys the company of their fellow raiders.

Real Life

With the economy in the toilet, I have been of the mind that it is a great time to be broke. If you do not own any stocks, or have a 401k. Then a lot of this mess doesn't directly affect you (me). Now though I am feeling a bit of the heat. My job is cutting hours. Voluntarily at first, and then possibly involuntarily. While this might give me more time for WoW, This is NOT a good thing. The writing is on the wall and I really don't want to have to find a new job during this economic downturn.

It is OK though. For I have the answer! Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense
Would give a whole new meaning to the term "green jobs"

Well at least the economy isn't as messed up as our judicial system! Sexting
teenagers with naked pictures of classmates possibly charged with child porn. The girls who took the pictures of themselves getting charged with distributing child porn.

My only question, Where were these girls when I was a teen?

When Recrutiment goes bad...

Morning blog lovers!

I must warn you, this is more of a rant post unfortunately.

If you follow my blog you know that I am one of my guild founding fathers and guild leaders. A raiding guild isn't going to go far without people and due to this fact we have been non stop recruiting.

We believe in quality players over quantity, because of this we force everyone besides people who are just social / casual to fill out an application. Our application isn't very long and from start to finish it shouldn't take over 10 minutes. No big deal right?

WRONG

I am super amazed of all of the people that refuse to fill out an application on the website. I think that 99% of them think they are too good and should be able to join ANY guild. Look, I don't care if you have cleared Naxxramas and Maylgos. I don't care if you can do 3k dps and have (insert redonkeyous number here) spell power / attack power / crit.

That is not why we have the application process. If you refuse to follow one of the MOST basic rules of the guild, then why in the hell would we want you?

Raid Signups

Another problem that some people seem to have is how we sign up for raids. We have a guild website and we have ALOT of good and useful information there, so we have decided to use it as a place to sign up for raids.

It will force people that want to raid to go to the website. This greatly helps with member interaction in our forums and it also gives them a chance to read all the useful information.

Again, some people are just too lazy or think that they are too cool to sign up for raids.....its unbelievable. Now I would understand if we werent a good guild or just starting off...but we ARE a good guild and we raid frequently. Two 10 man groups clear Naxxramas and Malygos weekly and we are working on 25 mans. (need more skilled raiders)

Typical conversation with "I think I am too good" type of recruit:

Potential Recruit: I can make your times, I can do 3.5k dps and I have 4k attack power

Myself: Do you have any raiding experience?

Potential Recruit: Duh! I have cleared all content. I am not a noob, I know how to raid ok?

Myself: ok...well, do you mind filling out an application or signing up for raids on a website?

(bare minimum 2 minutes pass)

Potential Recruit: yeah...I don't sign up for raids on websites. About the application, that probably isn't going to work for me. Believe me, I am not someone you want to pass up!

Myself: Sorry this isn't going to work out, we are looking for a certain type of raider. Good luck in your search.

Potential Recruit: lol...wow...ok...good luck wiping on VoA

It seriously dumbfounds me. Moving on...

I got called a Terrorist...

Yes, I got called a terrorist. I didn't even know what to say...the worst part about it is that the person that called me this, was a US solider.

WTFspaghetti's 15 man choir: "WHHHHAT THEEE EFFFF EF EF EF?!?!"

This gentlemen informed me he can make our raid times and he is interested in joining our guild. I shift+click his name and he is guildless...ok...lets investigate shall we?

Myself: Do you have any raiding experience?

Solider: Sure do, cleared most of Naxx, I have not cleared Malygos.

Myself: Have you been in a raiding guild before?

Solider: O ya, a really good one too..Represent. It fell apart because the guild leader stopped raiding and kicked a few people.

Myself: Eww...Represent uh? I never liked the guild leader, he was a pretty big douche bag

Solider: You say eww, but we had FULL 25 man guild runs. The guild leader is an awesome tank.

(aggravated now because my recruitment macro said looking to "fill our 25 mans")

Myself: Well, I have talked to him before and he raided with us once. He was a douche bag to us and he didn't perform like a good tank in my opinion. He probably treated his guild mates alot
nicer.

Solider: Well I have played with this guy for awhile. He has become my friend and as a US solider myself, I have the most up most respect for him. Anyone that would say those things is as bad as the terrorists that we are fighting in this war. Please don't talk to me anymore, I am no longer interested in your guild.

Myself: /ignore Solider

First off, screw that guy. I love and respect our troops and for him to say something like that to me over a conversation in a video game is a huge douche move. Secondly, WTF? A TERRORIST?

/sigh

It really pissed me off and discouraged me from playing for the night. I logged off and did some reading with my girlfriend. I also got a few hours of naptime before I had to go to work.

Sorry for the rant....F'n terrorist.....who would have thought...do I atleast get a title?

/end rant