Friday's Food for Thought - Recognition

Recognition - the state of being recognized

When I first started blogging it was solely out of boredom. I really really didn't except it to last more then a month or so. However, within a few weeks I got some blogger achievements and I thought that was really cool.

I always liked writing, but I know that I wasn't really good at it. I have to proof read my blog post ATLEAST 5 or 10 times to catch all of the error and grammar mistakes. If you follow my blog you know that I never catch them all lol.

Anyway, I been updating this blog multiple times a week for the past 5 months and I must say that I have meet some pretty cool people. By that I mean that I have meet some pretty coolbloggers. Fish wrote a post this week giving a shout out to some new bloggers that he actually knows in the game. His first paragraph in that post he said:

There are a lot of bloggers I feel like I know, Krizzlybear, the guys at WTFspaghetti, Darraxus, Gnomeageddon, Larissa, etc.

I pretty much feel that same way. Sometimes I will confuse myself and think that I am on the same server as those particular bloggers lol. If I have a question about there post, for a split second I think..."I will just ask them when I log on"

Then I have slap myself in the face and realize I am retarded. Did I mention that I do 95% of my blog writing and viewing between the hours of 2:00am and 7:00am? Sometime my mind plays
tricks lol

I have watched my blog grow from just a few hits a day to over 800 hits yesterday. Now that 800 hits blew my record of 112 hits out of the water and it was because I got linked in an article bywowinsider. Either way, I usually get around 70-100 hits a day when I actually update. I know to the bigger bloggers that isn't much, but for me....that is outrageous.

I would like to accept this award...

On of those bloggers that I was talking about earlier, (were I think we play on the same server lol) Cait from One Among Many, decided to give me an award. I must say, it feel good to be recognized by your peers. Especially one that is as well establish and admired likeCait. I remember what first drew me to her site was her awesome ULTIMATE BLOG, which I have had linked on my page ever since.

I also got tagged for the same "meme" by another awesome blogger, Kyrilean from Casual Hardcore. Our blog are pretty similar in that we don't really talk about just one subject...mostly just random WoW thoughts that cross our minds. I mean...whats better then random stuff about the game that we all are hopelessly additiced love? I will tell you

Nothing!

Thanks for the recognition guys....mucho appreciated

Rules for meme

1. Brag about said award and link back to individual passing said award to you. - check
2. Tag other bloggers and give them all said award.
3. Write 10 honest things about yourself since this is the "Honest Weblog Award"...

Recognizer

I am only going to give "my award" to three bloggers. Most of my blog roll have already done this meme, so that makes it a little more easier.

1. Player vs Developer Awesome blog. Talks about MMOs in general and overall a great site. Looking forward to hearing his 10 honest things...if he does it that is =P
2. Frost is the New Black One of the first blogs I ever read. I like this dude writing style and he usually has some good information about one of my favorite spec / class, the frostmage.
3. Sideshow and Syrana Just a good blog. I am interested in learning more about these bloggers.

10 Honest Facts

1. I am 23 years old
2. I have two cats that make me laugh daily with their crazyness
3. I live with my girlfriend and Darraxus's tips to getting her to play WoW did not work lol
4. I am a Cisco Certified Network Assoicate..../puke
5. I have never bought anything off of ebay
6. I love professional sports and I am one of the few Americans that actually enjoy futbol (soccer)
7. I am not afraid to admit to anyone that I am a certified NERD
8. My favorite fast food has to be White Castles....mmm....white castles...
9. I don't like working for a living...I need to win a million dollars so I can hang out all day and be lazy.
10. I am pretty excited about today being Friday....WOOT!
    

That's all I got for today. Enjoy your weekend and be safe, I'm WTFout of here....

Elemental Shaman - Spec, Gear, Stats, and Rotation

Morning blog lovers!

This subject has been on my mind since I spent a few days messing around with my choosen off spec for my resto shaman, elemental. All of this information that I am writing down is my take on the spec and what I think I should be doing.

I was pretty amazed that there isn't that much elemental information out there. There might be some on the offical wow forums, but my work blocks that site and I usually try to avoid that place whenever it is possible. Mostly due to shear dumbass-ery of the majority of people that post there. In either event, the only soild / updated information I found on elemental shamans in the blogmosphere is our good friend Ribeye. So check him out for some Shaman pew pew talk.

The Spec...

The heart and soul of any class in our world.....of warcraft. Personally, I usually do not like going with "cookie cutter" specs. However, in the world of elemental shaman there are very few points to play around with, especially if you are planning to raid.

This "cookie cutter" pve spec is 57/14/0. I have a unblocked talent calulator for all of you working in corporate america located here.

If your job does have this talent calulator blocked, they are probably on to you and your wow addiction. I wouldn't recommend reading anything gaming related, your job might depend on it lol.

In the elemental tree, the only talents you are passing up are pvp oriented. Take Eye of the Storm talent for example. You spend 3 talent points and you do not suffer push back from damaging attacks 69% of the time. Alot of elemental shamans would take this talent because on paper it sounds good. That would be a mistake for a couple of reasons.

First, fully talented and in correct gear, your two main damage spells take less then 1.5 seconds to cast.

Secondly, you should not be taking damage. If you do take damage, its not going to be long before you get your cast off....its less then 1.5 seconds! What is a whooping 69% going to do? Enless you are going for pvp spec, don't take this talent. Instead use it for something that would be more helpful to your role as dps, such as Lighting Overload.

One last note on the spec section is to make sure you are putting those 14 points into the Enhancment tree. 10% more intellect, 5% more crit, 30% more spell power with flametongue weapon, and 45% less mana with our shock spells IS ESSENTIAL to the build.

Gear

Say it with me, the fastest way to increase my dps is to reach the hit cap. One more time so I know it sticks with you.

The fastest way to increase my dps is to reach the hit cap.

I just can not stress how important it is to reach the hit cap as an elemental shaman. You will see your dps soar by atleast 500 DPS. That is the minumum it will increase too...I know when I reached the hit cap, my dps went from 1700-1800 to 2600-2700. It is that important and should be your number 1 goal when gearing.

I meantion this in an article I wrote last week, but I will say it again. There are only 8 pieces of mail gear that has spell hit on it. Go over to toomanyalts and check out his list. He wrote it better than I can...that is for sure!

Depending on what you plan on doing, the hit cap ranges. Let me explain...

5 man heroic bosses - 79 spell hit to be capped (with talents)
10 man raid bosses - 368 spell hit to be capped (with talents)
25 man raid bosses - 368 spell hit to be capped (with talents)

Stats

Like I said at the begining of the article, there isn't too much information I found on pve elemental shamans. So I am going off what I think would be best for the class.

Elemental Shamans have always been a high crit, low spell damage class. With all of the changes to the elemental tree in 3.0.9, that has changed in my opinion. I look at my elemental shaman like I would look at any dps caster class. It is all about the spell power. With our spec, it is important to remember that we want our crit to be as high as possible in order to take full advantage of our talents and abilities.

With that being said, I would rank your stats as follows...

Spell Hit>Spell Power>Crit>Haste>Intellect

Could people argue my list? Of course and I want them too. However, you can not deny that if you gear your shaman with those weighted stats in mind....you will be fine. Personally, I don't think you should ever go under 25% crit rating. I like to have my crit in the 30% range if it is at all possible, but 25% isn't terrible.

In my current elemental set, I have 1900 spell power, 26% crit, and 280ish haste. When you take into consideration our talents and that we can not avoid mp5 on most of our gear. You should never have to worry about mana regeneration.

Rotation

Here is the good stuff. Now you are hit capped and ready to melt faces. However, what rotation will maximize your dps? That is a great question and here is what I have found through my experiments.

Start with flame shock and immediately start pushing out those lighting bolts. Wait until your flame shock is almost off cool down and cast lava burst. Right after that hits, flame shock again. Now you want to push out those lighting bolts until the lava burst is off cool down. Then you just repeat.

Of course you are going to use trinkets and other cool downs in the process, but that is the basic rotation I have had the most success with.

Quick tips

• You want your flame shock to run its course and have lava burst hit it at the last possible second. This is extremely important if you care about getting every ounce of dps output you can. Through testing, when I did not let flame shock run its course or just didn't pay too much attention to it. I did about 200-250 less dps then when I kept an eye out for it. , Nothing game changing or major but if you are a good player, you want that extra dps.
• When a group of bad guys gets pulled by your tank(s), you want to pick 1 mob that you are going to focus on. You then want to use chain lighting every time its off of cool down. The extra aoe will help your group take down the mobs and make your dps numbers look alot nicer.
• When If you pull aggro, use thunderstorm to kick them back to the tank. Sometimes I would purposely try to pull aggro just to use that ability lol...its fun

I have not played around with the elemental gyphs, but I will get into that another time.

EDIT: For more information and corrections to my article. Please check out the comment section. It has ALOT of great information in regard to Elemental Shamans (gyphs, rotation correction, gear, helpful links, talents corrections, ect...)

Champion of the Frozen Wa...so close!

Morning blog lovers!

I could blame my lack of updates on numerous things. Such as, there hasn't been much to talk about or running a guild and the guild website takes up alot more of my blogging time. However, it is really just pure laziness on my part.

I know, I know, I fail. I went from 4 or 5 posts a week down to 2-3 and the only excuse I have is laziness. Oh well, I am still glad to see that my readers reader is checking in everyday. Mucho appreciation for that.

Nough with the boring stuff, lets dive into some WoWtalk mmk?

Shameless Guild Plug

As most of you already know, I am one of the GMs of my guild. We formed about a month ago and we have been recruiting ever since. We have cleared 10 man Naxxramas with two separate groups and have been running 25 mans.

For some reason or another, we can not seem to have a FULL 25 man guild run. We always end up pugging 5-6 people and due to this fact it is mostly a fail. We can clear spider, plague, military, but ALWAYS run into issues with Thaddius. Anyway, we raid Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday mornings. 10am to 2pm CST. Come check us out if you are interested.

I bored you with that so I can tell you about this....

Malygos

Our guild has been working on him and it hasn't been too bad...but we still don't have a kill under our belts. We usually always make it to the 3rd phase, but cant beat the enrage timer. We are going to go back in there on Friday with a better strategy and I have a good feeling that we are going to pwn his ass.

There are all sorts of strategies and videos floating around the Internet. The best one that I found comes from our favorite dwarf priest blogger, Matticus. His post has a diagram and a simple strategy that seems like a winner. I recommend checking out his blog, there is always interesting posts. Check out that Eye of Eternity strategy here.

The fight through my eyes

The first phase is simple enough. The only thing I don't like about this phase is that it almost forces you to take a death knight with you to stack the orbs. If your dps is high, then you can do it without one, but DKs make it so much easier.

Once phase 2 begins, you have to kill all of the adds and run around to different magic shells that spawn. Easy enough, but can be annoying for a healer and I hate that there is some sort of random factor to this fight.

Once phase 3 begins, Malygos will destroy the platform you are on and you will fall onto the drakes! You will use these drakes to kill Malygo and once you are use to it, its not a big deal at all.

I definitely freaked out hardcore the first time we made it to phase 3 lol. I knew all I had to do was to do the sequence of 1-1-2, wait for 60 energy and repeat. Simple! I got this! Well, due to the fact that I was freaking out, that sequence changed to 1-1-1-1-2.

Followed by me cursing. Then I finally got it together and pressed 1-1-2.

Then 1-2-1-1-1-2....then more cursing lol

Good times. Hopefully we will finally get our first kill under our belts on Friday. I know with our people it wasn't a matter of skill, but a poor strategy. With a new strategy, I can't help but feel confident.

Champion of the Frozen Waste

When Wotlk came out, I never thought that I would clear Naxxramas and I never thought I would step foot into The Eye of Eternity. So I never gave thought to getting the title, "Champion of the Frozen Waste". Now that my guild is on the edge of killing Malygos, I took a look what I need to complete that achievement and get my title.

I need to kill Loken from halls of lighting and kill the last boss in the oculus. I remember a few months ago I went into heroic halls of lighting as a under-geared healer. My group was filled with top end guilds and we had no problems until Loken. He destroyed us over and over again. We tried to run away but we always died from the 14-15k aoe blast.

I swore I would never go back into that place. So I stepped back into HoL and it was super easy. I know that I am epic'd out but still...it was super easy. I think that I could have even healed through Loken's aoe blast....Blizzard must have nerfed it.

Same thing with Oculus, it wasn't that bad either. Now both of these groups were with guildies, but still. It was easy mode once we figured out what we had to do for drake fight.


Now only Malygos stands in my way. That SOB will go down and I will get my title. ITS ON!!!

If you are reading this that means more then likely you read my entire article. I salute you and thank you for reading.

Until next time blog lovers...I'm WTFout of here

Friday Food for Thought - Off spec fun!

Morning blog lovers,

TGIF!

Best part about this weekend is that I have nothing planned in real life. My girlfriend is having a "girls night" on Saturday, so I guess I will just have a night out with the fellas. Or play wow and pwn noobs all night while they are watching chick flick movies and drinking flavored vodka in the next room.

Ahh the possibilities!

Lets get this WoW blog going shall we? Can I get a hallelujah ??

WTFspaghetti's 15 man Choir: HAAALLEELUJAH!

damn right

I say, we can dance, we can dance

I am happy to say that it finally happened. Our whole 10 man raid actually knew how to dance! That is right, I got the 10 man raid achievement,

I was really starting to worry that I wouldn't get it. I have already done Naxxramas probably 15-20+ times and no matter what someone always dies. So, now I am going after the 25 man version of this achievement. Although, getting that achievement is going to be highly unlikely if you ask me, but we shall see.

Elemental Shaman project

Ever since I first found out about this duel spec aspect that Blizzard has been working on, I have been actively collecting off spec gear. The off spec I choose for my resto shaman is elemental. I mostly choose this because I absolutely hate playing a melee shaman. It is not fun for me for some weird reason. I know that enhance shaman kick ass and bring good DPS and debuffs to raids, but I can't stand it.

Only thing that sucks about elemental spec shamans, is that they required a SILLY amount of hit gear. Ribeye, over at toomanyalts, has an excellent post about the gear you need to reach the hit cap for elemental shamans. Many shamans think that Blizzard just got done taking bong rips when they developed elemental shaman gear. There are only 8 mail pieces in the game that have some sort of spell hit rating! So yeah, don't be afraid to wear cloth ok?

But Doctor, what exactly is the hit cap for elemental shamans?
5 man heroic bosses - 79 spell hit to be capped
10 man raid bosses - 368 spell hit to be capped
25 man raid bosses - 368 spell hit to be capped

If you are in a group with a boomkin or a shadow priest, that number drops from 368 down to 289. 289 is still pretty nuts, but it is definitely not that hard to reach with out sacrificing your main stats, spell power and crit.

So with all my elemental gear on, I am rocking 350 spell hit, 1900 spell power, and 23% to crit self-buffed. I can switch out a belt and rock 285 spell hit, 2100 spell power, and 25% to crit. With those stats I went into heroic 5 man and ended up doing around 2100 dps. I went in there with our top dps hunter and he ended up doing 2400 dps and was SUPER PISSED that I was even that close in my off spec gear. Kinda comical lol

I wanted to really test out my dps output so I did a pug 25 man OS raid. For the first few trash pull and the first two drakes, I was rocking 2900-3000 DPS and I was loving it. However, after the main boss died, my overall dps looked like this..

Not bad, certainly could work on a few things. It has made me pretty excited overall about the duel spec though. I hit 1 button and change from healing one boss, to dpsing the other. Pretty neat.

I planned on talking about elemental spell rotation, but I have run out of time. So until next time blog lovers, I'm WTFout!

A.D.I.D.A.S

/headbang

Morning blog lovers!

Still trying to get back into the swing of things since my vacation in the south. So my apologizes for the lack of updates. It also doesn't help that there isn't much going on to blog about these days. Most people are nervously awaiting the day when 3.1 goes live and I am sure that the releasing will cause my blogstorming to go up a notch.

A new "meme" has been spotted around the blogmosphere and our friends over at Sideshow and Syrana has tagged us.

Before I get into that, I want to ask, who came up with the name "meme"? The word "meme" just seems so weird in my opinion. Who knows....either way...back to reality....

It was actually pretty tough. I thought it would be easy but then I found myself writing stuff and then deleting it immediately. After many different angles and thoughts, I finally decided to stick with something simple.

















Over at Out of Mana, in the comment section of this particular meme, one made me laugh pretty hard. "On the road of the Arcane, there are those who make sheep, and those who fuck them. Mages wanted." LOL...Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back comes to mind when I read that lol...good times I tell ya.

Ok, now to see what some of my favorite bloggers come up with.

• Larissa, the pigtailed gnome
• Ixobelle, the token Japanese blogger
• ~One Among Many~
• Esdras from Indecisive Priest
• Last but not least, Kyrilean from Casual Hardcore

Rules

On the road of X, there is(are) Y and Z.

INSERTWITTYCOMMENT Wanted.

DK Tanking Nerfs, 3.1 Spec

QQ Time.

I try to make sure my posts are constructive. I try to keep an objective eye towards balance when considering my class and WoW at large. BUT sometimes you see those patch notes and the sheer volume of the nerfs overwhelms. The DK class is getting a major design overhaul. Not a single one of the changes is a buff. Tanking is getting hit especially hard. Getting hit even harder is Frost tanking...

I'll give you one guess as to what my role and spec are on my DK.

So i have spent the last week and a half or so going through the 5 Stages of Nerfs (based on the Kübler-Ross model for 5 Stages of Grief)

1. Denial: "They aren't going to nerf tanks. Everyone likes tanks! Its those DPS DK's that are the problem, no wait its those darn PvPer's"

2. Anger: " Why me?!?! Were the warlock nerfs of Vanilla and TBC not enough?!?! First my warlock, then my priest, now my DK?!?! Blizzard is out to get me. Those damn warrior tanks at tankspot are responsible!"

3. Bargaining: "Just let me keep my cooldowns! No? Ok, how bout my avoidance? No again? Ok, how bout my threat? that too? Bloodsuckers..."

4. Depression: "I'm going to quit. I am going to re-roll. ok maybe just respec..."

5. Acceptance: "Ok so maybe tanking KT and the adds at the same time is a bit OP. Maybe I shouldn't be able to hold aggro over an OT on a secondary target"

But by god it was fun while it lasted.

Really though I do believe the nerfs are going to have to be tuned down or DK's will be quite underpowered compared to the other tanks.

As it stands in live we take more damage than other tanks when our cooldowns are not up, and much less when they are active. So they are removing one of the cooldowns, nerfing the effect of one and doubling the cooldown on the remaining abilities. They are giving us nothing to make this up. Net result= we take more damage than other tanks.

In live our avoidance from talents is 15% percent 18% if frost. thats 8% above what other classes get (except druids who we are 5% above) On test they have removed 10% parry from talents. If the idea was to balance the avoidance all tanks get from talents, how come DK's are now behind the curve?

I'm rambling a bit here but what is the deal with howling blast? Blizzard obviously has no clue what they want to do with this spell. 10 second cooldown? No cooldown. 5 second cooldown. Back to 10 second cooldown. Double damage to diseased targets? 50% damage to diseased enemy's? no extra damage to diseased targets? Causes disease on targets?

I logged on to the PTR yesterday and Howling blast was on a 10 second cooldown and according to the tool tip it did full damage to targets regardless of diseases. In practice the ability still did more damage when the targets were diseased but it wasn't the huge disparity that we have on live. It also crits for far less than in live. Not to mention the cooldown was doubled.
Frost isn't looking very strong...



Unholy the way to go?

With the nerf to Frost's primary AOE and tanking cooldowns coming in 3.1 it looks like I will be changing over to a different tanking spec. While blood has gotten many improvements I still feel it lacks in aoe and damage mitigation/avoidance. Unholy was always a solid tanking spec that was only short in the single target threat department.

I had gotten the impression that blizzard wanted less unholy DK's, but with the frost nerfs I feel I am being pigeonholed into Unholy as an all around tanking spec. This may turn out to be a good thing! I have had the feeling that my avoidance is reaching levels where Boneshield will start to have some nice up time. On top of that i hardly use Unbreakable Armor as it is and I see the new version as a sheild block that doesn't block as much damage and is only up for 15 seconds every two minutes. I'll Pass.

As I said before Unholy's single target threat was the only shortcoming of the unholy tanking spec. As of now on the PTR scourge strike is hitting quite a bit harder than it is on live. Buffing the unholy tree's main single target attack should help with single target threat right?

Blood does still hold some attraction for tanking. If blizzard buffs death strike to be comparative with obliterate damage, then I could see giving it a shot. The self healing portion of death strike can really add to aoe aggro (the spec's main weakness) as long as the healing isn't being wasted. I really liked the play style of blood, to me it flowed so much better than unholy. The lack of aoe threat is a big turn off for me though. I enjoy having everything beating on me during aoe pulls!

I am sure there are a lot more changes to come on the PTR and we won't really know more until closer to patch day. I for one am hoping that they re-think some of these changes.

New Look, Same Old Spaghetti

Morning blog lovers!

God it feels good to say that again. I am happy to say that I have survived my 2 weeks in hell and I am back on my normal working shift, HOORAY!

WTFspaghetti 15 man choir: "HaaalllleluJAH!!"

Damn right! As you can probably tell, I decided to change a few things around and try out a new look. I kinda like it, only time will tell if it starts growing on me or not. When I was thinking, what picture can I put with the title of my post? So I googled "new look" and up popped poor old Britney Spears lol. Can you say "Winner"? lol

Pew Pew Lazer Bolts!!

On Monday, we ran our second 10 man Naxxramas group. I wasn't sure how well it was going to work out because it was our first time running our second 10 man group. To my surprise, we had 6 guildies that were not saved to our first one. I actually got the chance to DPS using my arcane spec mage and I got to say, he is a pwner!

On the average boss, I did about 2,300 dps and overall I finished second place to our hunter with 2,600 dps. It was fun. It was definitely a big change from playing whack a mole with the healer bars and I liked it. Loatheb was by far the most fun I had dps'ing a fight. With the spore buff I was rocking 80% to crit. I was hitting that SOB with 9k pulses from my arcane missiles, which is just awesome to see those big yellow numbers.

We started that place out with a bang too. We completed the achievement, Arachnophobia, which is a clearing of the spider wing in 20 minutes or less. It wasn't even that hard really, we even did it with 3 healers. The trick is not to loot any of the bosses until you kill the last boss. Then you go back and pick up your loot, pretty fun.

Overall, it was just fun to change roles and dps instead of healing the raid. Things I normally do on my shaman, such as kitting gluth's zombie chows, running around like a crazy man cleansing and healing on Sapphiron, and never having really worry about mana. I was managing my mana hardcore, blowing shit up, and trying to make the healers job easier by not standing in the poison / fire / blizzard / void zone / WTF 50 DKP MINUS!!!

Good times indeed. Here is a few more things that been going on with my little world of warcraft.

1. Made a Death Knight out of boredom. The main goal was to actually try and learn how a DK works and I got myself addicted to the SOB. I am pretty much in love with unholy spec and the overall, overpower-ness of the Death Knight. I know they are just going to be nerfed and nerfed till the new expansion comes, but that does not bother me currently. I am having too much fun with it.
   
   
2. When having too much fun goes bad. Ya, I had 260 heroic badges on my Shaman and absolutely nothing to buy with them. I already have everything I need for my main spec, restoration, and everything I could use for my off spec, elemental. So I spend 100 heroic badges on the "Bind on Account" plate gear for my new Death Knight. Perfect case of when having too much fun with an alt goes bad. Now I have to play this DK so those badges aren't a complete waste.
   
   
3. I have a pretty decent elemental set, but I have never played or been spec'd elemental. I know it looks fun and I want to try it...I just haven't yet. Pretty weird now that I think about it...Maybe the reason why I haven't tried it is my lack of balls, who knows.
   
   
4. I want Maylgos DEAD before 3.1 goes live. I watch a video on tankspot, but it was from the tanks perspective. Trying to find a good article to read about it that wouldn't be blocked by my job, know any good ones? Please share!
   
   
5. I have been slacking on my lack of knowledge about 3.1 patch changes. I really need to get on that so I can relay that information to you guys...I'm a failing you guys.../sadpanda

I guess I will go look some of that stuff up now. Glad to be back on my normal shift and hopefully you are too! haha, atleast you have something to read while you are bored at school or work.

Until next time, I'm WTFout!

Week 2, Day 8: Dear blog lovers...

Afternoon blog lovers,

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you know that I have been stuck in hell. The weather is horrible but to my surprise, the food is fantastic.

I tried a couple times to get away and make a post, but that has been highly difficult due to the strick rules and policies here.

Another interesting thing I found here in hell is that it is rather cold. I have been wearing my jacket and long sleeves the whole time, who would have thought right?

Anyway...Lets get down to business

WTFspaghetti style!

The Calm before the Storm
Things have been pretty quite around the world of warcraft. Patch 3.1 is coming out soon and alot of things are going to change.

Just to name a few of the changes that I am looking forward to...

All paladins will now have the spell Kings: Huge buff to all of us, 10% more on all stats is game changing. Also, in my situation at least, I have been missing the Kings buff on the majority of my 10 man raids.

Spirit would be made "a more useful and interesting stat for all Mages": Urm...well...not much information on this one. We know overall, spirit and mana regen are getting nerfed heavily. However, Blizzard is buffing Mage Armor, Pyromaniac, and Arcane Meditation in hopes to balance the Mage class out.

Should be interesting on how all thing pan out. Frost Mages are now going to be a full blown replenishment class and Blizzard is "working" to make the Ice Lance shatter combos useful in pve. Only time will tell if my frosty friends will be able to raid efficient again.

On a side note, go over and check out some of the Ulduar videos. They have a couple from a Mage's point of view...pretty neat.

Ground Mounts are now able to swim: Well in all honesty, its about time. Something to ponder about is this, why is Blizzard implementing this now?

Do you think that they are just getting around to it?
or
Do you think they are planning something that involves swimming mounts?

Maybe some sort of water instance or raid in the future? Who knows...but its fun to think about =P

New raid instance, Ulduar: It has begun, tier 8 is now available. It is the first step of Naxxramas turning into what Karazhan become, kinda sad but at the same time, needed.

It is time for people and guilds to separate and go their own ways. When 3.1 hits and the months following, the whole world of warcraft atmosphere is going to change dramatically.

What or where do you see your guild 2 months after the patch hits? Progressing through Ulduar or stuck farming Naxxramas/OS/Maylgos?

Whatever happens, whichever way the wind blows your guild, it is very important to remember that the main goal is FUN - not just progression.

The last thing that I am excited about in the new patch is of course Duel Specs: Currently, the one time cost is 1000g. Once you paid this you will be switch specs at any time as long as you are not in combat. All bars and gyphs will be saved and will show up once you switch over to that spec.

I know I am going to do it with my Shaman. My main spec will always be resto, but I have a pretty decent elemental set that I am going to try out. I mean, why not, its only gold.

Guildtalk

Naxxramas 10 man is now cleared in 1 day. We didn't even wipe until Saph and that was just one wipe before we downed him, pretty neat in my opinion.

I definitely feel what everyone was talking about when they said that Naxxramas is so easy. Once your raid understands the fights, the instance is pretty much just a big loot pinata. Maybe that is just the "elitist" in me, I am not sure. All I know is now that I have cleared 10 man Naxxramas twice, I feel like I was over-complicating things.

In regards to raids, it was my first time being in a leadership role. I am sure that played into the whole over-complicating things. It could of also been the last guild that I was in. I just never had alot of confidence in them for some reason. I am not sure why though, half of them were very confident and skilled.

It is just my luck that the half that was confident and skilled decided to join me and making my new guild.

One of the main things that makes a good raid leader is the ability to make the members of your raid better. Now, I am no way saying that I am a great raid leader, but I am going to say that I am trying to become a great one. What happen over the weekend told me that I was heading in the right direction in regards to that.

We have a hunter, which will be unnamed =P, that was with my old guild. The hunter was an older gamer and in my opinion was never really a great player. This hunter did make all the raids and did learn from her mistakes, even though her learning curve was greater then some of our other players. Nonetheless, the hunter was an asset in my opinion.

She joined up with our guild and from having some talks with her, her progress has flown through the roof. The hunter's dps is still rather low for her gear, but the dps has jumped easily by 600-800.

I couldn't be more happy and I am glad that I had something to do with this hunter's progression.

So that is my story on why, in the world of warcraft, I like being a raider leader.

O noes...

You hear that??

I think they are looking for me now....SOB!

/sigh, hopefully I will be able to write later this week, until next time, I'm WTFout!