Random Musings

None of these rise to the level of needing a separate post, so here they are.

• I've discovered the Joy of Kiting. Paladins aren't really made for kiting, since you preferably want a ranged attack that you can slow your opponent with. My current spell list for a Shadow Priest isn't the greatest for kiting either, since the spells that I've got with a speed reduction (Mind Flay) end once the spell ends. A mage -more specifically a frost mage- is much better suited for this fun little pasttime with Blink, Frostbolt, Ice Nova, Ice Barrier, and Frostbite to play with. I spent a half an hour yesterday kiting bears and whatnot into the range of the Tarren Mill Deathguards while I was in between coats of paint, and although I don't have it quite down yet, it's rather fun watching the Deathguards hack the spiders to bits. (Yes, I was doing this instead of watching paint dry on the front door.) I've read stories about groups kiting bosses all the way to major cities, and I can definitely see the appeal.
• Shadow Priests are more mana efficient than Fire and Frost Mages. I expected a Shadow Priest to be more mana efficient than a Fire Mage, but the Frost Mage surprised me. That Spirit Tap comes in handy more than I care to admit. I haven't tinkered with an Arcane Mage, but I suspect that at this level (low 20's) it doesn't really matter.
• A Mage -particularly one with Ice Barrier active- handles damage better than a Priest. Yes, I know that Priests have the healing spells, but in a PvE questing environment that Ice Barrier spell keeps a Mage's cloth armor (or a sissy robe, as Tamarind on Righteous Orbs puts it) nice and clean.
• Running a Paladin is easier than either a Priest or a Mage. A Paladin -particularly a Ret Spec or a low level Holy Spec version- is a "run up and hit something" type. There's not a lot of variety to the Pally's attacks in the 20's. A Shadow Priest or a Mage, however, has a wider arsenal to work with. Keeping track of those extra spells can be quite a challenge if you're not ready.
• That little Emerald Boar trinket comes in awfully handy soloing 5 man elites in Outland. It's rather nice getting a virtual tank for 30 seconds, allowing Quint a short breather from the steady flow of damage. Too bad the sucker isn't an epic level trinket.

Apparently, I'm Taken

Well, that was a brief bachelorhood.

I am no longer wild and free to chase the winds as I wish, reveling in the solitude among the masses. Quint is now a guilded Blood Elf. Again.

Okay, things aren't going to change too much, because I doubt there'd be any more guildies than me on at 5 AM, but you never know.

The Early Bird Gets the PuG

Most of the time when I play WoW is early in the morning. Sure, I've got the once weekly time set aside to hang with Souldat and his wife, but I've settled into a routine where I play before I have to get the kids up for school. Since I'm up really early to go work out, I slip in some WoW time between 5-7 AM.

When I was on Stormscale (Pacific Time Zone server), that early time was great for dailies. You could get some dailies done, and then the server time would hit the 3 AM reset (6 AM my time in EST) and you could do the dailies again. It was also ideal for exploring; the likelihood of running into a pack of 80's while checking out Elwynn Forest was remote, particularly during midweek.

Ironically enough, I found the same competition for mining resources during those wee hours as I did at other times. Three of us (two Horde, one Alliance) would be duking it out for the same titanium ore in Icecrown, and you got used to being jumped just when you thought the coast was clear.

If there was one drawback to the early morning solo time, it's that the players for random heroic 5-man runs were few and far between. It wasn't an issue when I was handling the regular solo quest work, but now that I'm soloing the instances in Outland and the 5-man quests in Icecrown, I need to work on my gear. That means badges and instance runs.

Switching to an Eastern Time Zone server has it's drawbacks for some solo work -such as the dailies- but it's been easier to use the LFG tool to pull in a few runs. The last time I tried the LFG tool on Stormscale at that time, after about 45 minutes I gave up. When I tried using it for the first time that early on Area 52 --I chose an Azjol-Nerub run rather than purely random for the speed factor (10-15 minutes if you do it quickly)-- I only waited about 12 minutes before I got in and was on my way.

Not bad.

The irony of getting some 5-man runs in this early in the morning is that the pure randomness of the tool is defeated by the lack of players. For example, today's first run (the Oculus) had not only the same two guys from the Exodar server I saw yesterday (including one well run Druid tank), but another repeat player from a separate server. After a relatively painless run through the Oculus which included the occasional joke about needing coffee, we stayed together for a second run, this time through Utgarde Keep.

I had to beg off after Utgarde, but the quality of the PuGs in the 5 AM slot had me impressed. Compared to the lunchtime fare, the early morning runs are more about getting in, getting it done, and getting out. (Yeah, I know, insert tasteless jokes here.) I had yesterday's Azjol-Nerub run take twice as long as usual because the three guildies in the group had decided to go for the Hadronox Denied achievement without telling the other two of us, and that fight included both the healer and one DPS dying and running back to get into the fight.

If I had to choose between the two, I'd go for the early morning runs. They feel less like kids on lunch break at college and more like parents squeezing in WoW time before getting ready for work. I can get 2 to 3 runs in fairly quickly, get some questing done in Outland, and then I'm ready to start the day.

(It's still amazing that Dalaran is never empty, even at 5 AM. Org is dead then, but Dal? No way. I wonder whether Blizzard is planning on trying to spread the Dalaran concentration out a bit in Cataclysm, but I have no idea how they'd do it.)

Hellscream's warsong

So you may have had a surprise when you zoned in to Icecrown Citadel this week. Everyone has a awfuly nice buff applied to them. What does this buff do?

The current (and we'll get this in a bit) is this:
Hellscream's Warsong
The warsong of Hellscream fills you with strength, increasing total health, healing done and damage dealt by 5%.

Now you can look at this two ways.

1. zomg, they nerfed icc? casuals are ruining teh gaem!
2. A buff to actually help us down that bastard of a boss (I'm looking at you, Saurfang) we're stuck on ? SWEET!

If you can't tell, I'm more of the mind set of the second option.

The nice thing about about this change, however, is that Blizzard gave you the option of declining the buff if you so choose. You can go on about your business as the hardcore raider and do things the hard way.

Where as currently with the group of wonderful people I raid with, we are more casual. We tend to bring alts or offspec people along to make due with what we've got. And it works for us. Gear for your offspec is obviously not going to be as good as your main spec, but you don't need 5 tanks for a ten man. So this buff will help us out and help progress us through the content.

Do I feel cheap for using the buff? No. I'm glad that Blizzard is giving everyone the opportunity to eventually see the content. I was one of the lucky ones in vanilla to see every raid but one. I was not one of the lucky ones to see all of the raids in BC. But I'm doing my best to make sure I see every raid in Wrath.

And to get back to a mention I made earlier in this post, the buff will eventually change to a 30% increase over time. What does that mean?

1. Guilds that may be struggling will be able to progress pretty easily.
2. PUG groups will have an easier time bringing under geared members.
3. I'm going to have a shit ton of HP! Almost FIFTY NINE THOUSAND hit points. Muahahaha

Um... Oookay....

I don't pretend to have done a boatload of heroics*, but today's quick and simple farming run through Azjol-Nerub had to be one of the stranger ones I've been in.

We had:

• Three players whose entire conversations consisted of "?". Not once, not twice, but at least 20 times. I mean, I can understand if you're puzzled about one thing, but when you're doing "?" the entire run, I have to wonder what's going on. While we were getting our buffs ready, one of the guys said "Pit of Saron?" No, dude, the sign said "Azjol-Nerub".
• The healer died early in the first trash before the first boss, and the tank kept pressing on anyway. I was the only other party member with rez capability, and the tank engaged the trash mob before I could start my rezzing. The healer runs back, and what does he do? Runs right in front of the next trash mob before he's not even back to 100%. ::sigh::
• The tank had some major difficulty holding threat. At one point I looked at the damage meter and found to my surprise I was on top (Paladins + Glyph of Sense Undead + Scourge = extra damage), but I knew I wasn't pulling the threat. I suspect the Hunter with his pet, but I've no proof.
• The tank died on some trash right before Anub'arak, and we're all standing around, puzzled. "Where did he go?" I asked. He was right behind me when we were swimming to shore, and the next thing I knew he was lying dead on the shore next to me.
• The healer was running around not healing anything for a while in the Anub'arak fight, so I had to heal myself and the tank for a minute or so.

I've seen my share of strange group behavior, but this bunch put the fun in dysfunctional.

*Considering what I've bought with badges and had left over, I had to have had at least 120 badges when that "100 Badge" achivement popped up. I wonder if the count got messed up during the transfer between realms.

Oh Brother

Can't a guy create a bank alt without any of the following happening?

• Getting wolf whistled
• Having a female character say "you're so sexy!"
• Getting an escort from another female character who makes a point of of emoting "XXX checks you out"

Just what is it about rogues, anyway?

PVE vs. PVP (Or How I Spent My Lunchtime)

The past couple of lunch breaks I've been able go online and take care of some stuff I've been working on, like soloing Sethekk Halls and finishing up the Terror of Terokkar achievement. It's been a bad week at work, so the opportunity to go thwack something has its advantages. Today, while taking a run through Drak'Tharon to finish up the Guru of Drakuru achievement, I had some spare time* to think about the differences between PVE and PVP servers.

When you are out and about questing on a PVP server, the first thing you notice is that the monsters aren't what you need to fear the most, it's the opposing faction. Nothing quite strikes terror into your heart like when you're minding your own business, killing a few bears, and you turn to see the sight of a ?? Level player closing in on your poor 20th Level character. You learn very quickly to keep one eye over your shoulder no matter where or when you are; even when you're an 80 zipping through Thousand Needles you can still get jumped. (Stupid Gnome hunters.)

Such caution serves you well when you reach Outland and Northrend with the inclusion of flying mounts; all you have to do is spend an evening farming ore or herbs and you'll understand what I mean. In Icecrown, the game encourages you to seek and destroy the opposing faction with the inclusion of a Daily for killing a certain number of the enemy. Never mind that the Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade are pulling their hair out over this ("Hello! We're supposed to be fighting Arthas, not helping him!"), you get to go gank some people because the game said so!

Now, take that hard earned wisdom, and turn it on it's head. That's what it's like switching to a PVE server.

When my Mage first ventured into Hillsbrad Foothills as a young lass of 20 (yeah, I live dangerously given the number of monsters aggroing on me) I was shocked -shocked!- to see Alliance players passing me on the road and actually waving from time to time. The last time I saw an Alliance player wave at me was because they were trying to play nice and didn't want me to gank them, as I had the drop on the guy at the time. Once Quint arrived in town, I then discovered that this overall lack of fear toward the opposing faction wasn't limited to the Classic areas. Imagine my surprise at seeing a Draeneii Paladin go running right by me while I'm soloing one of those tunnel worm elites outside of Auchindoun. I know I had to be an ?? Level player to him as he was 65th Level, but there was absolutely no fear of the opposing faction in this guy**.

What do I think of this? Well....

For the quester, this is a godsend. You can go about your business without worrying whether just over the ridge is a Hunter ready to zap you from distance. For the casual player, it's a boon as they can work on those seasonal achievements in relative peace --until you venture into a capital city, that is. If you want to PVP, nobody is stopping you from flipping that switch on your character, but you don't have to join in if you don't want to.

The flip side is that you develop some very bad habits. There's a reason why there are opposing factions, and you don't have quite the same dislike for the other team without the occasional ganking. When Quintalan made 80, I fulfilled my vow to park him on a ridge overlooking Tarren Mill, waiting for the gankers to show. None did on those nights, but when a 77 Level Priest decided to pick on Grom'gol Outpost in Stranglethorn, I gave him a good old fashioned spanking. If the worst an Alliance character can to do you is say "neener-neener" after he got that titanium ore first, well, you don't have quite that same healthy disrespect for him.

Am I going back to a PVP server or flipping that switch to play PVP? For the mage, definitely not; I'm still learning the ropes there, and I know that her progression up to about 40-50 will be a slow road without all the PVP ganking going on. For Quint, I might flip that switch, if for nothing else to remind myself to stop getting into bad habits.

There's a war to be won, after all.

(Edit: Changed the first sentence in the last paragraph to avoid confusion.)


* Our DK tank dumped us after we wiped right before Trollgore, so we were stuck waiting for about 10-15 minutes until we got a new tank. Ah, the joys of a lunchtime run. I'm still not certain what happened there, but when I'm doing the highest DPS of the group, you know we've got a low DPS group. The new tank laughed when she saw our output. "That's all your DPS?" she asked. However, after that initial wipe we didn't have any issues throughout the rest of the run.

Oh, and Drakuru? You suck, man. I'd already kicked your sorry behind in Zul'Drak, but it needed to be said.


** He also had no fear of that elite monster, either, which proved to be fatal as when it tunneled to a short distance to spit at me, it aggroed on him instead. Sorry, dude.