World of Warcraft VII: Thread VI Was Merely a Setback! [Archive]

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mangosta71

2010-01-15, 10:54 AM

Last one hit 50, so...

Anyhoo, guess what my random dungeon was last night! The pally tank and the DK left immediately when they saw it was Oculus, leaving me, a boomkin, and a resto shaman. We got bored after a few minutes of waiting around for another tank and just started going, with me roguetanking. We cleared the pathway, killed the first boss, and had knocked out one of the islands of constructs before the group finally refilled. I think we could have finished the place with just the 3 of us. And at the end of the run, the boomkin got a blue drake in his bag. All I got was a sapphire and a pair of badges. :smallsigh:

Bouregard

2010-01-15, 11:06 AM

Since they add bonus badges+gems I really like to run Occulus. Never understood why people don't like it. But I rarely run heroics with randoms...
Yes it's slightly more difficult. But it wouldn't hurt if people start thinking in this game. I remember a HoR H run last week. Me (Warrior, Tank) 2 retripaladins and a healpriest + a rogue. Noone with a gearscore under 4700. The retripaladin and the priest imedietly left the group saying too hard.

Let me think about this a moment. 2 Retris= 4 perma CC'ed mobs + a priestshackle. What is exactly hard there?

People sadly don't like to think in heroics. Friend of mine got kicked as a tank for a heroic. His 29k Hp unbuffed wheren't apparently enough. Violet Hold...

Archaicwonder

2010-01-15, 12:13 PM

The thread is Dead. Long Live the Thread.

mangosta71

2010-01-15, 12:15 PM

Meh. The tank I had in that OK group had less than 1k more than me. As long as he's def-capped and competent, hp isn't that big an issue in heroics.

Zherog

2010-01-15, 12:39 PM

Odd night for me on heroics last night.

First one up was HoR. As soon as we entered, the tank said he knew his skill wasn't good enough for the instance and bailed. The healer went with him, without ever saying why. I actually appreciated the tank's honesty. We hung for a few minutes, and a new tank and healer popped up. The tank declares, "We'll fight to the north where Arthas appears." Questions about why not to fight in the alcoves are ignored.

Fight starts, and the tank fails to pick up aggro. It's the first time I've ever seen a pally tank fail to pick up aggro. I die, the healer almost dies. The group beats the first wave and healer rezzes me. Things go well enough -- because our healer kicks ass. The tank continues to struggle picking up aggro. I honestly don't recall ever seeing his Consecrate spell go off.

The first boss comes along, and another DPS dies -- because the tank fails to pick up. We then proceed to 4-man the boss. And then the 6th wave hits... and (tell me if you've heard this before) the tank fails to pick up aggro and the healer and I both die horrible painful deaths. And that's where the group fell apart.

Second instance was UP. That goes well enough.

Third instance was OK. It's rough, but we get through it. Part of the problem here was that I hit a lag spike for some reason -- my latency was above 300 the entire run. No idea why. After that, I called it a night.

*

Question for the masses:

Is it generally worthwhile for me to convert my frost badges to the various other styles so I can continue to upgrade equipment? To finish buying the best possible badge-only equipment, I need a total of 40 valor and 100 triumph. (boots and two trinkets)

TheEmerged

2010-01-15, 12:59 PM

My main, frost mage (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&cn=Shaynta&gn=The+Order+of+Cerberus)

My primary alt, druid (currently spending most of his time as resto). (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&cn=Laram)

I love the new feature to actually view your character's appearance in the armory.

tyckspoon

2010-01-15, 01:03 PM

Is it generally worthwhile for me to convert my frost badges to the various other styles so I can continue to upgrade equipment? To finish buying the best possible badge-only equipment, I need a total of 40 valor and 100 triumph. (boots and two trinkets)

No. Either save your frosts for Frost-level gear or trade them in for Primordial Saronites, sell those on the AH/trade channel, and use the gold to buy the Ulduar/Trial crafted items.

Zen Monkey

2010-01-15, 01:07 PM

What is the defense cap? How high can it get for a tank before it stops being effective?

Zherog

2010-01-15, 01:29 PM

No. Either save your frosts for Frost-level gear or trade them in for Primordial Saronites, sell those on the AH/trade channel, and use the gold to buy the Ulduar/Trial crafted items.

Do I need to be in a raid group in order to get in to the Frost quartermaster? I assume so, but figure I'd check...

Kish

2010-01-15, 01:31 PM

What is the defense cap? How high can it get for a tank before it stops being effective?
Critical Hit immunity for a level 80 player against a raid boss occurs at 540 Defense and requires a defense skill of 140 (689+ def rating) from gear to achieve. This is commonly, and somewhat incorrectly, termed the "defense cap." However, as past that point each point of defense still increases your chance of blocking, your chance of dodging, your chance of parrying, and your chance of being missed, the answer* to your second question is that it remains one of the best tanking stats long past the "cap."

*Not an exact answer, because I don't know the precise number at which diminishing returns make defense rating no longer a useful stat, but it's so high that very few tanks ever need to think about it.

Manicotti

2010-01-15, 01:33 PM

Do I need to be in a raid group in order to get in to the Frost quartermaster? I assume so, but figure I'd check...

There's a Frost Quartermaster in Dalaran, you shouldn't need to go to ICC just to get stuff. The Ashen Verdict, on the other hand, probably requires you to have a raid group to get in.

And the defense "cap" (the point at which you can no longer be crit) is 540 defense. You will, of course, still get benefits to your other defensive abilities with further defense.

Guancyto

2010-01-15, 01:33 PM

Frost quartermaster is with the rest of them.

You can also talk to your tier vendor (remember them, back in the days of t7 and t8?) to check out how many you need for tier 10 gear.

The gear you get from frosties (capes, trinkets, tier10) is nine different kinds of awesome. Save your frost emblems.

tyckspoon

2010-01-15, 01:34 PM

What is the defense cap? How high can it get for a tank before it stops being effective?

Really short answer: there isn't one. Extra Defense rating always improves your survivability.

Longer and more accurate: There is a 'soft' cap at 535 and 540 Defense; those are the marks where you are uncrittable by level 82 (5-man Heroic bosses) and level 83 (Raid bosses) respectively. Beyond that, Defense still provides increased dodge, parry, and block chances. However, the diminishing returns on these values creates a point where it is worth more to go with something that has uncapped value instead- Stamina and DPS stats also improve your effectiveness as a tank. If you want to know the exact values for your current situation, get a good tanking points-equivalency addon (there's probably a tank module for Rawr that will do the job) and let it tell you how you're looking. If you just want a an easy answer, it is..

Short answer 2: Get crit-capped and stop worrying about it. Stack Stamina and, if you find yourself having trouble holding threat, hit/expertise/your DPS stat. Improved Defense rating will come as your gear level rises.

Zherog

2010-01-15, 01:36 PM

Frost quartermaster is with the rest of them.

You can also talk to your tier vendor (remember them, back in the days of t7 and t8?) to check out how many you need for tier 10 gear.

Um... no, I don't remember them. While I've been playing since Vanilla, this is the first time I've made any effort at gearing and (maybe) seeing end-game content.

As for the question... I actually realized the answer right after I asked it. Doh!

Guancyto

2010-01-15, 01:39 PM

Zherog

2010-01-15, 01:53 PM

Oh! Well then. Most people don't remember them because they don't buy tier 7 and 8 armor any more, and the tier 9 vendor is elsewhere. :smalltongue:

Your main is a rogue, right? You'll want the leather armor shop in Dalaran for tier gear.

Also, Herkuml War Token (trinket, 60 frost emblems) is best in slot, and the bonus you get for having two pieces of tier 10 gear equipped is really nice if you use Tricks of the Trade a lot.

Yes, rogue. And thanks. I was looking at two trinkets that required 50 triumph badges each. But I'll look up this one instead. I do use Tricks a lot -- whenever it's off cooldown, as a matter of fact. :)

TheEmerged

2010-01-15, 02:06 PM

What is the defense cap? How high can it get for a tank before it stops being effective?

Okay, before we go any further -- it's a SOFT cap not a hard cap. There is a point at which you become uncritable, and points in defense passed that point aren't as desirable.

At 80, for most classes, it's 540 (http://www.wowwiki.com/Defense) for raiding.

Coming back to edit more before it gets ninja'd.

EDIT: Too slow, thanks TyckSpoon :smallbiggrin: I'd just like to add that Feral Druids have a talent that essentially makes them uncritable.

Karoht

2010-01-15, 03:51 PM

Full set of Tier 10 is (60 x2) + (90 x3) = 390

When only 4 bosses of ICC were available, at 2 badges per boss, this mean that if you did 10 and 25 ICC, the most badges you could get per week were:
14 (heroics) + 5 (weekly raid) + 8 (4 bosses ICC 10) + 8 (4 bosses ICC 25)

Meaning that with the initial lockout on the second wing, the most frost badges anyone could have got were 35 x 4 = 140. At most someone out there has 2 pieces of T10 (Gloves and Shoulders)

Now there are 7 bosses available in ICC, so thats:
14 + 5 + 14 (7 bosses ICC 10) + 14 (7 bosses ICC 25)
Meaning that between the old lockout and the new one, the most badges anyone will acquire will be 47 x 4 = 188.
For a total to date of 328.

This means that until the next wing opens, the most anyone could possibly get would be 4/5 pieces of T10.

On that note, I'm quite happy that all you need to upgrade to T10.25 or T10.5, all you need is the trophy. Unlike T9.25 where you had to acquire a new load of badges AND the trophy, or save up the badges and then wait for the trophy. To me, this is the most intuitive gear progression they've done yet.

However, any thoughts on the Frost badge cloak? Worth the 50 badges? I've already got my idol, I'm saving up for the cloak next or one of the trinkets.
Karoht <----Resto Druid

Karoht

2010-01-15, 03:56 PM

First one up was HoR. As soon as we entered, the tank said he knew his skill wasn't good enough for the instance and bailed. The healer went with him, without ever saying why. I actually appreciated the tank's honesty. We hung for a few minutes, and a new tank and healer popped up. The tank declares, "We'll fight to the north where Arthas appears." Questions about why not to fight in the alcoves are ignored.

Whoops, didn't notice this part of your post.

Yeah, I've found a few tanks who prefer it that way. As a healer I've found it to be a preferable way to do it.
Another method I've seen, and it went really smoothy, was to go stand where the mobs are all ghosty like all around the place, and just move to them when they become active. It's more reactionary, you need a really good tank, and a hunter misdirecting or a rogue doing tricks + fan really helps. It's a much easier method for warriors, because all they have to do is shockwave to pick up the mobs, with their taunt for the stragglers. Again though, need a VERY good tank for this, not just one that is rediculously geared.

Athaniar

2010-01-15, 04:35 PM

I love my (heavy RP) guild. We just raided Orgrimmar (alongside several other guilds) in order to (RP) free a guild member from orcish captivity. It was awesome.

GolemsVoice

2010-01-15, 04:41 PM

There was only ONE time I left a random group, as I'm generally quite masochistic. When my group failed to kill Slaadran (or whatever the snake boss in Gun'drak is called), I didn't bother to go any further.

AgentPaper

2010-01-15, 04:41 PM

I love my (heavy RP) guild. We just raided Orgrimmar (alongside several other guilds) in order to (RP) free a guild member from orcish captivity. It was awesome.

That kind of stuff actually happens? What server is this on? Perhaps we'll have to switch the weekly GitP wow-meetup to that one instead. :smalltongue:

The Linker

2010-01-15, 05:38 PM

Here be the incomplete list of GitP WoW characters, organized by US and EU, then alphabetically.

How to get in:
Simply give (via post or PM) your name and your realm, and I can find the rest. Of course, it'll go faster if you give your level, race, class, and an armory link. :smallbiggrin: Spec is optional -- you're free to give it, but if you don't think it's important or you're experimenting, that's fine too.

If you see the level listed here is way behind your current level, or your spec's been changes, post or PM me to update it! You could also alert me when, say, you've deleted your character, race changed it, name changed it, server transferred it...

The Challenge -- or, how to make Linker leap off cliffs for your amusement.
I'm a perfectionist. Every mistake you find in this here list will net you a Point. This could be something like a bad link, but a missing capital letter, improper spacing, inconsistencies, anything is worth a Point. The more notoriously anal you are, the more points you get. The person who gets the most points gets to make the next one if they're so damn good at it to ask me to make an alt on their server to be their slave for an hour. And I will yell insulting things at nearby high-levels at your urging. :smallamused:

Alternatively, suggestions to help improve the list (whether in clarity or any other way) that I accept also nets points. But that's not as fun.

Points

Ishikar: |
Aidan305: |

Previous Winners

AgentPaper: Friday, January 15, 2010 (7 points)

BooNL: Saturday, April 17, 2010 (2 points)

World of Warcraft in the Playground -- Version 1.9.1

US and Oceanic Servers

Antonidas

Alliance

Shyftir: Martellei (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Antonidas&cn=Martellei), 80 Human Protection/Retribution Paladin

Shyftir: Telamari (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Antonidas&cn=Telamari), 80 Draenei Enhancement/Restoration Shaman

Shyftir: Deathbank (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Antonidas&cn=Deathbank), 63 Dwarf Death Knight

Shyftir: Kotter (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Antonidas&cn=Kotter), 15 Gnome Rogue

Horde

Shyftir: Vecna (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Antonidas&cn=Vecna), 22 Undead Priest

Archimonde

Alliance

tyckspoon: Dougalmcstew (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Archimonde&n=Dougalmcstew), 80 Dwarf Paladin

Area 52

Horde

Mattarias, King.: Mattarias (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Area+52&n=Mattarias), 80 Blood Elf Mage

Mattarias, King.: Reios (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Area+52&n=Reios), 73 Blood Elf Paladin

Argent Dawn

Alliance

Geesi: Chutzpah (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Chutzpah), 60 Gnome Death Knight

Geesi: Tatorn (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Tatorn), 41 Human Warlock

Horde

Omnik: Keirgan (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Keirgan), 60 Tauren Unholy Death Knight

Zeb The Troll: Zebmage (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Zebmage), 65 Blood Elf Mage

Alarra: Astorya (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Astorya), 65 Blood Elf Priest

Balnazzar

Horde

Shishnarfne: Shishnarfne (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Balnazzar&cn=Shishnarfne), 80 Troll Mage

Shishnarfne: Mitya (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Balnazzar&cn=Mitya), 80 Tauren Protection/Arms Warrior

Shishnarfne: Alexeichik (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Balnazzar&cn=Alexeichik), 18 Orc Restoration Shaman

Shishnarfne: Fyodorovich (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Balnazzar&cn=Fyodorovich), 16 Undead Rogue

Shishnarfne: Agrafena (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Balnazzar&cn=Agrafena), 15 Blood Elf Warlock

Black Dragonflight

Alliance

Shishnarfne: Javert (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Black+Dragonflight&cn=Javert), 30 Dwarf Hunter

Bleeding Hollow

Alliance

Ishikar: Kylecia (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bleeding+Hollow&cn=Kylecia), 80 Human Mage

Ishikar: Ishikar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bleeding+Hollow&cn=Ishikar), 80 Night Elf Warrior

Bronzebeard

Alliance

Omnik: Aristote (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&cn=Aristote), 80 Night Elf Combat Rogue

Omnik: Durkheim (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&cn=Durkheim), 80 Draenei Enhancement Shaman

Horde

Anatharon: Zulmaran (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&n=Zulmaran), 80 Troll Beast Mastery Hunter

Anatharon: Rekiraak (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&n=Rekiraak), 64 Orc Frost Death Knight

Anatharon: Zarikash (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&n=Zarikash), 36 Blood Elf Combat Rogue

Anatharon: Kelaos (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&n=Kelaos), 16 Blood Elf Demonology Warlock

Anatharon: Lorthiras (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&cn=Lorthiras), 15 Blood Elf Warlock

Anatharon: Sathias (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&n=Sathias), 14 Blood Elf Discipline Priest

Caelestrasz (Oceanic)

Horde

Wandiya: Wandiya (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Caelestrasz&cn=Wandiya) 80 Troll Hunter

Wandiya: Myrayeda (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Caelestrasz&cn=Myrayeda) 80 Blood Elf Protection Paladin

Cenarion Circle

Alliance

The Linker: Linkera (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Linkera), 65 Draenei Holy Priest

Bandil: Bandil (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&cn=Bandil), 80 Night Elf Death Knight

Horde

AgentPaper: Lithdrail (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Lithdrail), 36 Blood Elf Hunter

AgentPaper: Queldanem (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Queldanem), 20 Blood Elf Paladin

Darkspear

Alliance

Archangel Yuki: Necrodermis (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Darkspear&n=Necrodermis), 80 Night Elf Rogue

Dark Iron

Alliance

Rowsen: Gadoken (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dark+Iron&n=Gadoken), 80 Human Destruction/Demonology Warlock

Rowsen: Harcienias (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dark+Iron&cn=Harcienias) 44 Draenei Retribution/Holy Paladin

Destromath

Alliance

ReluctantReaper: Hiandran (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Destromath&n=Hiandran), 80 Draenei Paladin

Dragonblight

Horde

The Linker: Trium (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dragonblight&n=Trium), 19 Tauren Hunter

Duskwood

Alliance

drakeblood4: Bannen (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Duskwood&n=Bannen), 79 Human Warlock

Executus

Alliance

Anatharon: Muran (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Executus&n=Muran), 20 Dwarf Protection Paladin

Farstriders

Alliance

Cryssandra: Cryssandra (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Farstriders&cn=Cryssandra), 73 Human Paladin

Frostmourne (Oceanic)

Horde

The Linker: Durgregin (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmourne&n=Durgregin), 33 Tauren Shaman

Leon: Skyndi (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmourne&cn=Skyndi&gn=Beltin+John), 80 Troll Shaman.

Garona

Alliance

Omnik: Spinoza (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garona&cn=Spinoza), 23 Gnome Affliction Warlock

Horde

Omnik: Aschenn (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garona&cn=Aschenn), 48 Blood Elf Retribution Paladin

Garrosh

Alliance

Prophanti: Bryngar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garrosh&n=Bryngar), 64 Dwarf Hunter

Horde

Prophanti: Kemall (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garrosh&n=Kemall), 80 Tauren Warrior

Galakrond

Alliance

Manicotti: Manicotti (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Galakrond&n=Manicotti), 80 Human Rogue

Jubei'Thos (Oceanic)

Alliance

Hailphage: Irongouger (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Jubei%27Thos&n=Irongouger), 22 Dwarf Hunter

Khadgar

Geesi: Cathari (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&cn=Cathari), 80 Blood Elf Paladin

Geesi: Nathema (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&cn=Nathema), 80 Undead Death Knight

Geesi: Kuifie (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&cn=Kuifie), 80 Blood Elf Rogue

Geesi: Sharellz (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&cn=Sharellz), 80 Blood Elf Priest

Geesi: Juce (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&cn=Juce), 80 Tauren Shaman

Geesi: Nektarr (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&cn=Nektarr), 70 Orc Hunter

Kilrogg

Alliance

Zherog: Caigin (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kilrogg&n=Caigin), 70 Dwarf Hunter

Zherog: Uvora (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kilrogg&n=Uvora), 22 Draenei Shadow Priest

Kirin Tor

Alliance

Alex Star: Rhysode (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&n=Rhysode), 80 Human Protection Paladin

Horde

ShaneLeahy: Grami (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&cn=Grami&gn=Worlds+End+Regulars), 80 Orc Combat Rogue

ShaneLeahy: Ruairi (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&cn=Ruairi), 80 Blood Elf Protection Paladin

ShaneLeahy: Motgut (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&cn=Motgut), 80 Undead Discipline/Holy Priest

ShaneLeahy: Grishi (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&cn=Grishi), 80 Troll Beast Mastery Hunter

ShaneLeahy: Thrazgash (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&cn=Thrazgash), 80 Orc Blood Death Knight

ShaneLeahy: Alberta (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kirin+Tor&cn=Alberta), 71 Tauren Arms Warrior

Llane

Alliance

The Linker: Daidistelf (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Daidistelf), 80 Night Elf Kitty Druid

The Linker: Daidisto (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Daidisto), 70 Human Rogue

The Linker: Daidist (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Daidist), 61 Dwarf Hunter

Horde

The Linker: Basilis (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Basilis), 80 Tauren Hunter

The Linker: Daenerian (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Daenerian), 61 Blood Elf Rogue

The Linker: Tranoria (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Tranoria), 31 Blood Elf Demonology Warlock

The Linker: Shmash (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Llane&n=Shmash), 14 Orc Arms Warrior

Maelstrom

Horde

darkblust: Sardor (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Maelstrom&n=Sardor), 21 Troll Mage

darkblust: Bulle (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Maelstrom&n=Bulle), 11 Tauren Warrior

Magtheridon

Horde

AgentPaper: Gurukai (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Gurukai), 80 Orc Shaman

AgentPaper: Keule (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Keule), 80 Troll Protection Warrior

AgentPaper: Guruchill (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Guruchill), 62 Tauren Death Knight

AgentPaper: Firehoof (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Firehoof), 43 Tauren Druid

AgentPaper: Gurumal (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Gurumal), 34 Orc Warlock

AgentPaper: Guruken (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Guruken), 11 Undead Rogue

AgentPaper: Drools (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Drools), 10 Undead Mage

Malfurion

Alliance

The_Glyphstone: Fantastkfred (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Malfurion&n=Fantastkfred), 80 Draenei Restoration Shaman

The_Glyphstone: Fredthedread (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Malfurion&n=Fredthedread), 77 Human Paladin

The_Glyphstone: Fredinand (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Malfurion&n=Fredinand), 71 Human Warlock

The_Glyphstone: Furballfred (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Malfurion&n=Furballfred), 66 Night Elf Druid

Moon Guard

Alliance

Shishnarfne: Gruschenka (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Moon+Guard&cn=Gruschenka), 80 Gnome Death Knight

Shishnarfne: Alyoshenka (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Moon+Guard&cn=Alyoshenka), 80 Human Priest

Shishnarfne: Lizaveta (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Moon+Guard&cn=Lizaveta), 29 Draenei Shaman

Shishnarfne: Rakitka (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Moon+Guard&cn=Rakitka), 18 Night Elf Druid

Ner'zhul

Horde

Forderz: Forderz (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ner%27zhul&n=Forderz), 80 Tauren Druid

Norgannon

Alliance

darkblust: Falnar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Norgannon&n=Falnar), 30 Dwarf Hunter

darkblust: Millee (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Norgannon&n=Millee), 25 Human Paladin

Quel'Dorei

MandibleBones: Rosewoodren (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Quel%27dorei&cn=Rosewoodren), 80 Tauren Enhancement Shaman

Ravenholdt

Horde

The Linker: Tyrothos (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ravenholdt&n=Tyrothos), 72 Blood Elf Frost Mage

Rexxar

Horde

Celesyne: Mercykiller (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Mercykiller), 80 Undead Shadow Priest

Celesyne: Aianna (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Aianna), 80 Undead Arcane Mage

Celesyne: Celesyne (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Celesyne), 80 Blood Elf Frost Death Knight

Celesyne: Alianna (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Aliannia), 80 Blood Elf Protection/Retribution Paladin

Celesyne: Faele (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Faele), 80 Blood Elf Survival Hunter

Celesyne: Assault (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Assault), 73 Orc Arms/Protection Warrior

Celesyne: Miserie (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Miserie), 71 Undead Subtlety Rogue

Celesyne: Dekrath (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Dekrath), 63 Undead Affliction Warlock

Celesyne: Uzielic (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Uzielic), 63 Tauren Enhancement/Restoration Shaman

Celesyne: Dopple (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&cn=Dopple), 14 Tauren Banker

Scarlet Crusade

Horde

Kish: Trian (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Scarlet+Crusade&n=Trian), 80 Blood Elf Paladin

Sen'jin

Alliance

expirement10K14: Afrid (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&n=Afrid), 80 Human Warlock

Horde

expirement10K14: Githdar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&n=Githdar), 80 Blood Elf Death Knight

expirement10K14: Githdor (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&n=Githdor), 51 Blood Elf Paladin

Silver Hand

Alliance

AgentPaper: Ishwar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&n=Ishwar), 80 Human Death Knight

AgentPaper: Barccik (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&n=Barccik), 55 Dwarf Paladin

TheEmerged: Shaynta (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&cn=Shaynta&gn=The+Order+of+Cerberus), 80 Human Frost Mage

TheEmerged: Laram (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&cn=Laram&gn=Aggressive+%C3%9Fy+Nature), 80 Night Elf Restoration Druid

Silvermoon

Horde

tyckspoon: Rafflaram (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silvermoon&n=Rafflaram), 80 Undead Priest

Stormrage

Horde

Yana: Roymustangsa (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormrage&cn=Roymustangsa), 80 Troll Rogue

Terenas

Alliance

Steelblood: Mcvargas (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Terenas&cn=Mcvargas), 80 Human Paladin

Thaurissan (Oceanic)

Alliance

Hailphage: Grailraven (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thaurissan&n=Grailraven), 48 Draenei Paladin

Horde

Hailphage: Citrixica (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thaurissan&n=Citrixica), 80 Blood Elf Hunter

Hailphage: Krushnkill (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thaurissan&n=Krushnkill) 80 Orc Warrior

Hailphage: Hailphage (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thaurissan&n=Hailphage) 74 Blood Elf Death Knight

Hailphage: Yetamar (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thaurissan&n=Yetamar) 61 Tauren Druid

Tichondrius

Alliance

AgentPaper: Sabette (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Sabette), 10 Human Priest

Trollbane

Alliance

darkblust: Syleann (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Trollbane&n=Syleann), 66 Night Elf Balance Druid

darkblust: Athrogaite (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Trollbane&cn=Athrogaite), 30 Dwarf Fury Warrior

Vek'nilash

Horde

Zherog: Mazumoka (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&cn=Mazumoka), 80 Orc Rogue

Zherog: Randagny (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&cn=Randagny), 80 Undead Fire Mage

Zherog: Berinick (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&cn=Berinick) 80 Undead Warlock

Zherog: Mithip (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&cn=Mithip), 70 Taruen Warrior

Zherog: Valysth (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&cn=Valysth), 46 Blood Elf Paladin

Zherog: Mokog (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&cn=Mokog), 37 Tauren Druid

Whisperwind

Alliance

mangosta71: Ivellios (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Whisperwind&n=Ivellios), 80 Night Elf Rogue

mangosta71: Nalia (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Whisperwind&n=Nalia), 80 Human Paladin

mangosta71: Paedric (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Whisperwind&n=Paedric), 80 Human Warlock

Ysera

Alliance

Tyndmyr: Tyndmyr (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ysera&cn=Tyndmyr), 42 Gnome Fire Mage

EU Servers

Darkmoon Faire

Horde

Castaras: Castaras (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Darkmoon+Faire&n=Castaras), 23 Blood Elf Holy Paladin

Castaras: Càssandra (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Darkmoon+Faire&n=C%C3%A0ssandra), 58 Blood Elf Blood Death Knight

Der Rat Von Dalaran

Alliance

GolemsVoice: Mannwin (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Der+Rat+von+Dalaran&cn=Mannwin&gn=Smaragdwache), 80 Human Discipline/Holy Priest

Earthen Ring

Alliance

Castaras: Kaelde (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Earthen+Ring&n=Kaelde), 58 Draenei Blood Death Knight

Ghostlands

Alliance

Castaras: Castaras (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ghostlands&n=Castaras), 65 Human Blood/Unholy Death Knight

Castaras: Aslandle (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ghostlands&n=Aslandle), 56 Draenei Protection Paladin

Castaras: Kaelde (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ghostlands&n=Kaelde), 15 Draenei Restoration Shaman

Castaras: Ethrelda (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ghostlands&n=Ethrelda), 13 Dwarf Hunter

Ravenholdt

Alliance

BooNL: Jorun (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ravenholdt&n=Jorun), 36 Night Elf Restoration Druid

Scarshield Legion

Alliance

Gauntlet: Isvan (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Scarshield+Legion&cn=Isvan), 80 Draenei Shadow Priest

Horde

Aidan305: Skorfen (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Scarshield+Legion&cn=Skorfen), 80 Tauren Shaman

Steamwheedle Cartel

Alliance

Even Human: Alhatazza (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&n=Alhatazza), 80 Draenei Protection Paladin

Even Human: Ysdwriel (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&cn=Ysdwriel), 32 Night Elf Feral Druid

Horde

Malek: Canavan (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&cn=Canavan), 67 Undead Destruction Warlock

The Sha'tar

Alliance

Lord Xavius: Athaniar (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Sha%27tar&n=Athaniar), 41 Dwarven Hunter

Lord Xavius: Cynewalden (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Sha%27tar&n=Cynewalden), 31 Human Warlock

Lord Xavius: Buri (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Sha%27tar&n=Buri), 30 Dwarven Priest

WoWitP Composition Analysis

There are 151 characters in this list.

68 are Alliance.

83 are Horde.

65 are level 80.

11 are between the levels of 71 and 79.

19 are between the levels of 61 and 70.

8 are between the levels of 51 and 60.

8 are between the levels of 41 and 50.

8 are between the levels of 31 and 40.

13 are between the levels of 21 and 30.

19 are between the levels of 10 and 20.

16 are Death Knights.

11 are Druids.

17 are Hunters.

11 are Mages.

26 are Paladins.

14 are Priests.

15 are Rogues.

13 are Shaman.

16 are Warlocks.

11 are Warriors.

And 1 is a lowly Banker.

24 are Humans.

12 are Dwarves.

12 are Night Elves.

5 are Gnomes.

14 are Draenei.

11 are Orcs.

14 are Undead.

18 are Tauren.

10 are Trolls.

31 are Blood Elves.

90 have the standard of one gathering profession and one production profession.

21 have two gathering professions.

31 have two production professions. Usually Tailoring and Enchanting.

4 have no professions. Two of them are Death Knights.

2 have one profession for some reason.

39 are herbalists.

52 are miners.

42 are skinners.

15 are alchemists.

19 are blacksmiths.

28 are enchanters.

12 are engineers.

13 are jewelcrafters.

19 are leatherworkers.

14 are scribes.

32 are tailors.

Archangel Yuki

2010-01-15, 05:56 PM

Yes, rogue. And thanks. I was looking at two trinkets that required 50 triumph badges each. But I'll look up this one instead. I do use Tricks a lot -- whenever it's off cooldown, as a matter of fact. :)

Sweet, another rogue. What spec are you currently running? (This is assuming your raiding, of course.)

I just switched to a 51/18/2 spec and was wondering what your spec was and how well you do in endgame? I've always been good at raiding, but I am applying for a high end raiding guild.

Castaras

2010-01-15, 06:04 PM

That kind of stuff actually happens? What server is this on? Perhaps we'll have to switch the weekly GitP wow-meetup to that one instead. :smalltongue:

There's a weekly gitp wow-meetup?

GolemsVoice

2010-01-15, 06:06 PM

Warcraft in the Playground -- Version 1.3

Now, I don't know if you're THIS tidy, but shouldn't it be WORLD OF Warcraft itp? Since the Warcraft thread's over there. Points over yonder.

The Linker

2010-01-15, 06:18 PM

Now, I don't know if you're THIS tidy, but shouldn't it be WORLD OF Warcraft itp? Since the Warcraft thread's over there. Points over yonder.

This is true. I always wondered about that, but strangely never thought about how WoWitP was just as good an acronym as WitP. Fixed!

Also, I figure the end of a thread is pretty much as good a time as any to end the Challenge for that period (and in the future, it'll tentatively end every 25 pages) so I declare that AgentPaper, should he so chooses, gets an in-game slave for an hour. Besides, it's quickly become apparent no one's going to surpass seven points any time soon. :smalltongue:

*looks at list*

*wonders about cross-faction slaving on Cenarion Circle*

GolemsVoice

2010-01-15, 06:22 PM

This is true. I always wondered about that, but strangely never thought about how WoWitP was just as good an acronym as WitP. Fixed!

If this counts as a point, you have forgotten to add mine. Another mistake! A-ha! Feeling tired, old man?

AgentPaper

2010-01-15, 06:36 PM

This is true. I always wondered about that, but strangely never thought about how WoWitP was just as good an acronym as WitP. Fixed!

Also, I figure the end of a thread is pretty much as good a time as any to end the Challenge for that period (and in the future, it'll tentatively end every 25 pages) so I declare that AgentPaper, should he so chooses, gets an in-game slave for an hour. Besides, it's quickly become apparent no one's going to surpass seven points any time soon. :smalltongue:

*looks at list*

*wonders about cross-faction slaving on Cenarion Circle*

Aww, I thought I had 7 hours from 7 points. :smalltongue:

Also, Linker's list and the announcement of the new Weekly Meetup should probably be in the first post. For those who missed it, we're staging our first meetup tomorrow, Saturday, at 2:00PM, horde-side on the Cenarion Circle. I'll make sure to update you if anything changes. Also, if you want, send me a PM telling me you want to be added to the list of people planning to come, and I'll send out a reminder every week the day before the meetup, as well as any changes to the time/day/server/planned events.

For this week, it depends on how many people we get, but we might try and do a raid on hogger. Other than that, I don't really know what we'll do in these meetups, so if anyone has any ideas that'd be great. In a perfect world, we'd have our own server or something, and be able to have planned sessions, with RPing and the like, kinda like DnD in WoW. If anyone knows how we might set something like that up, that'd be awesome, otherwise we'll probably end up just messing around and raiding various named mobs and leveling up.

The Linker

2010-01-15, 07:06 PM

WoWitp Major Content Patch 1.4
Friday, January 15, 2010

Additions

--Added Previous Winners section below the Points section, detailing those who have been diligent in pointing out his many mistakes or offering helpful suggestions.
--Supplements to the WoWitP list have been individually spoilered, labeled, and slightly modified.
--New way to get points: Decent suggestions to improve the list in any way.

Changes

--Title has been changed from Warcraft in the Playground (WitP) to World of Warcraft in the Playground (WoWitP) to differentiate from those playing Ye Olden Warcrafte the Thirde in Yonder Grounde of Playe
--Modified TheEmerged's character 'Shaynta''s description.
Spec (Frost) has been added.
--Modified TheEmerged's character 'Laram''s description.
Spec (Restoration) has been added.
--Modified The Linker's character 'Trium''s description.

Level increased from 13 to 18.

Points

--As the end of a thread has arrived, points have been reset, declaring AgentPaper the winner for that session.
--Gave GolemsVoice one point for the title change idea.
--Gave GolemsVoice one point for not getting his first point fast enough.
--Deducted one point from GolemsVoice for calling me an old man.

I, like TheEmerged, also like the new character viewer in the Armory. I might just take a trip down the list checking out everyone's character. :smallbiggrin:

Philistine

2010-01-15, 07:17 PM

I'd just like to add that Feral Druids have a talent that essentially makes them uncritable.

Well, yes... but then, Feral Druids are the only tanks who wear leather, and the only leather-wearers who tank; gear homogenization thus dictates that they aren't going to see much in the way of tank stats on their gear. In order to be viable tanks at all, they require another way to make up the difference. Thus the talent.

All of which I'm sure you know - but as I'm sure you also know, there are people in this world who will seize on any pretext, no matter how feeble, to QQ about how IMBA the game is. :smallamused:

The Linker

2010-01-15, 07:31 PM

Another reason I can't wait for Cataclysm. No more Defense stats on gear, period, and all tanks get an Uncrittable talent. :smallbiggrin:

Kish

2010-01-15, 08:21 PM

Another reason I can't wait for Cataclysm. No more Defense stats on gear, period, and all tanks get an Uncrittable talent. :smallbiggrin:
That better not mean all tanks are suddenly like those just-enough-defense-to-be-uncrittable-and-no-more monstrosities I so loathed as a healer. Newsflash (for them, not anyone here): I am not impressed by 40,000 health if you bleed a river when you get a paper cut.

sihnfahl

2010-01-15, 09:57 PM

That better not mean all tanks are suddenly like those just-enough-defense-to-be-uncrittable-and-no-more
Essentially. It'll mean that anyone who isn't specced that way won't be a tank. (It probably also means the end of 'alternative' tanks...)

They'll have different gearsets, of course, for avoidance and mitigation, as opposed to DPS, so you'll still be able to say 'oh, no, THEY'RE not tanking...'

Zherog

2010-01-15, 10:11 PM

AgentPaper

2010-01-15, 10:37 PM

Okay, so for the meetup tomorrow, here's the full details:

2:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time, Cenarion Circle, Horde side, get in contact with Soovan. (me) Any race/class combo is fine, as long as it's horde. We'll meet up at Orgrimmar, just outside the main gate. Try to get to level 5-6 before heading there, doing so shouldn't take more than an hour, tops. Basically whatever level you get to once you're done with the very first zone is good. From there, we'll do...something. :smalltongue:

Anyways, here's a guide on how to get to Orgrimmar from the various racial starting locations:

Orcs and Trolls: Just follow the road north until you hit Orgrimmar, you can't miss it. :smallwink:
Tauren: Follow the road north to Thunder Bluff, then take the zeppelin to Orgrimmar. The zeppelin is on the west side of Spirit Rise, which is the north-western plateau.
Undead: Take the road east to Brill, and then a bit further to the south-east until you see two towers, right outside of Undercity. Climb up the eastern one and take the zeppelin to Orgrimmar.
Blood Elves: Head into Silvermoon City, all the way back into the Sunfury Spire. In the back of that building, behind all the royal-looking elves, is a portal to the Undercity. Take that, then head north out of the Undercity, and to the first big tower you see, and catch the zeppelin to Orgrimmar.

If anyone has some ideas for what varying amounts of level 5-6 characters could try to take down, feel free to share. At the moment, I'm thinking something like trying to wrest back control of Northwatch Hold, or fighting against some of the various groups of Quillboar, or just hunting down some of the big game in southern barrens. :smalltongue:

expirement10K14

2010-01-15, 11:03 PM

While I won't be able to participate in said event: Horde raid on hogger. Most of the challenge is getting there :smallbiggrin:

Manicotti

2010-01-15, 11:25 PM

I don't raid, although I'd like to. I have no luck at all in finding feasible groups. But for the record, I'm assassin specced.

FWIW, my gf and I transferred to Dragonmaw a few days ago, and have had amazing luck finding capable and available raid groups on both sides. If you can gear yourself to ~T9 levels by Triumph/Frost badges alone, that could get you in the door to quite a few, I would think (especially with the curiously good market for melee DPS these days).

Updates here: I'm having a devil of a time actually catching up with the guy who can create the Footsies of Encroaching Bad Feelings (http://thottbot.com/i49895), which are, according to all known theorycraft, best in slot for rogues and especially Mutilate rogues (and are technically second-best to a pair of boots from Heroic ICC25, which is so rare and difficult to come across that it may as well not exist for the majority of us, myself included). I have the mats and have gone effectively bankrupt, so I fill in the time I'm not reading Dune with doing dailies with the lady. I think I just broke 100g 10 minutes ago.

I'm 6 badges away from replacing the Mirror of Truth with Herkuml's, so I'm looking forward to that like no one can believe. We also found a couple of casual and very competent raid guilds almost immediately on transferring, so I'm looking forward to getting my first Saurfang10 kill on Monday (we got to 15% before a freak accident - i suspect a bug). After that, it's running VoA on every lockout and starting over to collect some T10. Once I get another job IRL, I intend to swap to Horde because...well, Orc dances are awesome.

The Linker

2010-01-16, 02:15 AM

AgentPaper

2010-01-16, 02:24 AM

Wresting BACK control of Northwatch Hold? When did you have it? :smalltongue:

I actually start work at 3:00 PST tomorrow, but it really wouldn't be worth it for me to go level up a brand new character and get him all the way there, and then leave in so short a time...

...Buuuuuut if you see a strange level 65 Dranei show up with the name of 'Linkera', don't be surprised.

The barrens are part of the orc's Ancestral Lands(tm), so obviously we must have owned it at some point before the humans took it. Just like how we're clearing out those damn dirty pigs (quillboars) from the land is obviously rightfully ours because we said so. :smalltongue:

The Linker

2010-01-16, 02:30 AM

Well, OK, they could make claim on the land, I guess. But it's not like they built it. :smalltongue:

Ahhh, but the Quillboar hypocrisy is always good for a chuckle.

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-16, 03:38 AM

Well, yes... but then, Feral Druids are the only tanks who wear leather, and the only leather-wearers who tank; gear homogenization thus dictates that they aren't going to see much in the way of tank stats on their gear. In order to be viable tanks at all, they require another way to make up the difference. Thus the talent.

All of which I'm sure you know - but as I'm sure you also know, there are people in this world who will seize on any pretext, no matter how feeble, to QQ about how IMBA the game is. :smallamused:

Rogue tanking works fine outside of SWP, and the last wing of ICC. :smalltongue:

mangosta71

2010-01-16, 03:53 AM

Sweet, another rogue. What spec are you currently running? (This is assuming your raiding, of course.)

I just switched to a 51/18/2 spec and was wondering what your spec was and how well you do in endgame? I've always been good at raiding, but I am applying for a high end raiding guild.

I run a 51/18/2 assassin spec. Even since the "nerf" I smoke everyone else on the dps meters. My server got Sarth for our weekly raid quest, and in a group stacked for casters I was on top by about 1500 dps.

Can't wait for AT&T to move into the neighborhood. I have to react faster to the various bad **** that happens constantly than everyone else because it's usually already been a second or so before my client tells me it happened - my lousy ISP oversold, so if I'm under 500 latency during a raid I consider myself fortunate. But I have still never failed to get my ooze to the OT on Rotface.

Zherog

2010-01-16, 11:47 AM

FWIW, my gf and I transferred to Dragonmaw a few days ago, and have had amazing luck finding capable and available raid groups on both sides. If you can gear yourself to ~T9 levels by Triumph/Frost badges alone, that could get you in the door to quite a few, I would think (especially with the curiously good market for melee DPS these days).

I'm in 4/5 T9 pieces, and most of my other stuff is item level 213 or better (only boots and trinkets aren't, and I'll be getting new boots after a couple randoms tonight).

So here's a question. I continue to have absolutely no luck finding a raid group of any sort. So, how do you go about finding one? The few times I see anybody looking for DPS, they either require vent or want a 4000+ gear level or 4000+ DPS or some other ridiculous requirement.

Manicotti

2010-01-16, 01:24 PM

I'm in 4/5 T9 pieces, and most of my other stuff is item level 213 or better (only boots and trinkets aren't, and I'll be getting new boots after a couple randoms tonight).

So here's a question. I continue to have absolutely no luck finding a raid group of any sort. So, how do you go about finding one? The few times I see anybody looking for DPS, they either require vent or want a 4000+ gear level or 4000+ DPS or some other ridiculous requirement.

I never really had much of a problem getting into a raid group or guild on my home server, but I think I was just lucky. Keep your eyes peeled on trade chat and try to run groups with folks on your server for basically anything - getting a reputation as a competent DPS is a plus. Also, the last time i server-hopped, we did a lot of searching for guilds that had slots for DPS, and applied to a few before getting the OK to go to the one that accepted us. So if you have the funds for a transfer, and no particular attachment to your current server, I'd suggest that.

Also, lead your own pugs. I do that pretty regularly for things like VoA and OS, and if you're good at building them (and have a couple of friends with you), you can usually get a couple people thanking you for the run and voicing interest for future raids. Half my friends list at one point was just returning Puggers who know that I'm a reliable source of successful raids outside their guild schedules.

Castaras

2010-01-16, 02:00 PM

2:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time, Cenarion Circle, Horde side, get in contact with Soovan. (me) Any race/class combo is fine, as long as it's horde. We'll meet up at Orgrimmar, just outside the main gate. Try to get to level 5-6 before heading there, doing so shouldn't take more than an hour, tops. Basically whatever level you get to once you're done with the very first zone is good. From there, we'll do...something. :smalltongue:

European or American Cenarion Circle?

AgentPaper

2010-01-16, 02:21 PM

European or American Cenarion Circle?

American. Didn't even know there was a European server called that. :smalltongue:

I'll be getting on Soovan in about half an hour, in case anyone shows up early. If you haven't made your character yet, this is a good time, so you can get to level 5-6 before we start.

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-16, 02:52 PM

American. Didn't even know there was a European server called that. :smalltongue:

I'll be getting on Soovan in about half an hour, in case anyone shows up early. If you haven't made your character yet, this is a good time, so you can get to level 5-6 before we start.

Done. Orc warrior called "Kazdar".

darkblust

2010-01-16, 03:07 PM

I made a rogue troll named "Se",but i dont know if i'll be able to get on at the right time.

Kaiser Omnik

2010-01-16, 03:08 PM

Hi! I don't post here often, but I thought I would add my own characters to the list:

Argent Dawn US
*Horde*
Keirgan (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Keirgan), level 60 Unholy Death Knight (don't play him much)

Bronzebeard US
*Alliance*
Aristote (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&cn=Aristote), level 80 Combat Rogue
Durkheim (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&cn=Durkheim), level 80 Draenei Enhancement Shaman

Garona US
*Alliance*
Spinoza (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garona&cn=Spinoza), leve 23 Gnome Affliction Warlock (don't pay him much)

*Horde*
Aschenn (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Garona&cn=Aschenn), level 48 Blood Elf Retribution Paladin

EDIT: I may be able to come to the meetup (since everyone seems to be invited) with a troll shaman named...Omnik. Beside my guildmates on Bronzebeard I don't know many people on WoW, so it should be interesting.

TheEmerged

2010-01-16, 08:32 PM

Well, yes... but then, Feral Druids are the only tanks who wear leather, and the only leather-wearers who tank; gear homogenization thus dictates that they aren't going to see much in the way of tank stats on their gear. In order to be viable tanks at all, they require another way to make up the difference. Thus the talent.

All of which I'm sure you know - but as I'm sure you also know, there are people in this world who will seize on any pretext, no matter how feeble, to QQ about how IMBA the game is. :smallamused:

Thing is, my druid has been kicked from groups for not having the magic number before :smalleek: He mostly heals these days.

tyckspoon

2010-01-16, 11:49 PM

Thing is, my druid has been kicked from groups for not having the magic number before :smalleek: He mostly heals these days.

Honestly? If they ask, just tell them "yeah, I've got 540 Defense. What, you don't see it on my gear? Of course not, Druids get a talent that converts Armor to Defense." If they decide to go check on *that* hopefully they'll find the actual relevant talent and stop being stupid. (LOL stupid WoW players not being stupid. Eternal optimist I am.)

The Linker

2010-01-17, 03:17 AM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.4.1
Saturday, January 16, 2009

Additions

--Added five characters from Omnik.

Changes

--Modified The Linker's character 'Trium''s description.
Level increased from 18 to 19.

*abuses powers of level updating*

It's fun seeing this list come together. More and more realms are being covered by GitPers! :smallbiggrin:

Hailphage

2010-01-17, 03:53 AM

Wandiya

2010-01-17, 06:21 AM

Caelestrasz(Oceanic)
Wandiya (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Caelestrasz&cn=Wandiya) 80 Hunter

Myrayeda (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Caelestrasz&cn=Myrayeda) 80 tank Paladin

And an asortment of alts from levels 1-20
I don't play as much as I used to.

The Linker

2010-01-17, 06:34 AM

Done and done.

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.4.2
Saturday, January 16, 2009

Additions

--Added two characters from Wandiya.

Technically, it's no longer January 16, but I generally feel that where dates are concerned... well, I wouldn't look back and say "I did that on a Sunday!" I'd say it was Saturday night. :smallamused:

Sort of a freaky coincidence, though. I saw your post in the Steam Thread minutes ago, and I thought "Hey, I think I remember entering that guy in the WoWitP list." Seconds later, I came here and found out I was wrong, and you've never approached the WoWitP list, except you just did a minute after I thought to myself with absolutely no precedent that you already had.

I'm scared.

Celesyne

2010-01-17, 07:21 AM

Oh lordy lord... let's see"

Realm: Rexxar US

Characters: only Horde

Mercykiller 80 Undead Shadow Priest

Aianna 80 Undead Arcane Mage

Celesyne 80 Blood Elf Frost-DPS DK

Aliannia 80 Blood Elf Protection/Retribution Paladin

Faele 80 Blood Elf Survival Hunter

Assault 73 Orc Arms/Prot Warrior

Miserie 72 Undead Subtelty Rogue

Dekrath 63 Undead Affliction Warlock

Uzielic 32 Tauren Enhancement Shaman

Dopple 13 Tauren Gbank-Spec Druid

Philistine

2010-01-17, 09:06 AM

Thing is, my druid has been kicked from groups for not having the magic number before :smalleek: He mostly heals these days.

:smalleek:

:smallconfused:

:smalleek:

Sometimes the only thing to do is laugh, and update your Ignore list.

GolemsVoice

2010-01-17, 09:55 AM

Funny. I've NEVER heard of anyone being kicked out of a random group for not having the right gearscore. In raid groups I've heard of it, but only for VERY badly equipped characters. Strange.

Shishnarfne

2010-01-17, 11:58 AM

I'm not on here much, but I'll list my characters. Some levels approximate.

Balnazzar (Horde):

Shishnarfne, troll mage, 80

Mitya, tauren prot warrior, 58

Alexeichik, orc resto shaman, 18

Fyodorovich, undead rogue, 17

Agrafena, blood elf warlock, 15

Black Dragonflight:

Javert, dwarf hunter, 30 (pretty much unplayed and unloved)

Moon Guard:

Gruschenka, gnome death knight, 80

Alyoshenka, human priest, 80

Lizaveta, draenei prot paladin, 29

Rakitka, night elf feral druid, 18

My 80's get the most attention, of course, so if you have a character on the server, feel free to drop me a line (just check to make sure I'm not obviously in an instance or raid first... else I'll be a while before I get back to you).

The Glyphstone

2010-01-17, 11:59 AM

Then again, I've never seen anyone that I can ever remember roll Need on a Frozen Orb in a PuG, even before the cross-server LFG. Maybe I just play with nice people.

Zherog

2010-01-17, 12:49 PM

Then again, I've never seen anyone that I can ever remember roll Need on a Frozen Orb in a PuG, even before the cross-server LFG. Maybe I just play with nice people.

Just about everybody I've pugged with rolls need on frozen orbs, which forces me to roll need if I want a chance at them.

And a douche in one of my groups last night rolled Need on everything from the final boss, waiting until everybody else had selected before doing so.

AgentPaper

2010-01-17, 04:16 PM

There's really no reason not to roll need on a frozen orb. And you only have yourself to blame if you roll greed and don't get it. I don't know why anyone has been rolling greed in the first place. It's like refusing to lock your door, and then getting mad at the person who comes and steals your stuff. Sure, they're a **** for doing it, but you're the one who let him do it.

My server, at least, has always rolled need on orbs, and I always roll need on orbs in cross-server groups no matter if everyone else chose greed or not. And you know what? Now everyone rolls need, and the issue can't even come up in the first place, and so there's no drama. Of course, the fact that frozen orbs sell for so little now also helps, but my point stands.

Bouregard

2010-01-17, 04:41 PM

I have like 22 frozen orbs in my inventory (I did't sell/use them for some time) And never roled Need.... So it's aparently not standart.

The Linker

2010-01-17, 05:53 PM

No, it's not standard, but I think it will be eventually. It's either people start rolling need, or the people who DO roll need win out every time. Sort of like how passing on BoP items died out because, hey, we have five minutes to decide now, roll Need if you need it. If you pass, you're most likely not going to even have a chance at it. :smalltongue:

WoWitP Major Content Patch 1.5
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Additions

--Added 10 characters from Celesyne
--Added 10 characters from Shishnarfne
--'Banker' is now an applicable replacement for the class of a character, if that is said character's role.

@V: You can't get points off things I specifically justified! Lies! :smalltongue:

Also, the Problem's 'lag' aura lowers your initiative roll by 25, don'tchaknow.

AgentPaper

2010-01-17, 06:19 PM

WoWitP Major Content Patch 1.5

Patching, please wait...

A problem has been encountered. Roll for initiative.

Celerity. Timestop. Cloudkill. Forcecage. Sip martini.

Edit: Also, how many points do I get for pointing out that patch 1.4.2 was labeled as updated on Saturday, when it was actually updated on Sunday? :smallamused::smalltongue:

expirement10K14

2010-01-17, 09:56 PM

Rolled a Druid, and love it.

Githcow, level 27 Tauren Druid. Sen'jin. Heals in training.

Anyone else hate gnomeragon (butchered that)?

tyckspoon

2010-01-17, 10:07 PM

Anyone else hate gnomeragon (butchered that)?

Yup. And Maraudon, Blackfathom Deeps, Maraudon, Blackrock, bloody freaking Maraudon.. at any given time at least half the Old World instances you can access are obnoxious. The only reason I don't have the highest level ones listed here (Stratholm, Scholomance, Dire Maul, etc) are because when I'm in that level range I quest through them and pretty much never set foot in there. They're probably just as annoying.

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-17, 10:23 PM

Woo, ding'd 80 with my Hunter today. :smallsmile:

Wandiya

2010-01-17, 11:24 PM

*Snip*

Sort of a freaky coincidence, though. I saw your post in the Steam Thread minutes ago, and I thought "Hey, I think I remember entering that guy in the WoWitP list." Seconds later, I came here and found out I was wrong, and you've never approached the WoWitP list, except you just did a minute after I thought to myself with absolutely no precedent that you already had.

I'm scared.

Thats probably because I posted in the old thread two times.:smalltongue:
You're scared:smalltongue:

Edit: Congratz Anatharon

The Linker

2010-01-18, 02:54 AM

You can't just let me revel in my naive belief in my own psychic abilities? Maaaaan.

Hmm, can't find any Githcows on the armory. Hopefully I'll remember to try looking again tomorrow.

Regardless:

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.1
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Changes

--Modified Anatharon's character 'Zulmaran''s description.
Level increased from 76 to 80.

Points

--Gave AgentPaper one point for pointing out the seven-days-off date contained in the 1.5.1 patch notes.

Cheers! :smallbiggrin:

Also, AgentPaper, you could have gotten a point by pointing out I forgot the date for 1.5 completely. :smalltongue:

AgentPaper

2010-01-18, 02:56 AM

Hmm, can't find any Githcows on the armory. Hopefully I'll remember to try looking again tomorrow.

Regardless:

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.1
Sunday, January 10, 2010

Changes

--Modified Anatharon's character 'Zulmaran''s description.
Level increased from 76 to 80.

Cheers! :smallbiggrin:

Also, AgentPaper, you could have gotten a point by pointing out I forgot the date for 1.5 completely. :smalltongue:

I think you mean Sunday, January 17, 2010. :smallwink:

The Linker

2010-01-18, 03:00 AM

Aaaah, points'd. :smallbiggrin:

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.2
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Points

--Gave AgentPaper one point for pointing out the seven-days-off date contained in the 1.5.1 patch notes.

Man, I was off a week for a while. I even had you listed as a Previous Winner on the eighth instead of the fifteenth. :smalleek:

AgentPaper

2010-01-18, 03:11 AM

Hailphage

2010-01-18, 05:32 AM

So ....... how did the GitP meetup go on Cenarion Circle? :smallsmile:

Hopefully I'll make the next one, which leads me to my next question - what race/class did everyone roll? Figure it might be an idea to find out what everyone else is using so I don't go rolling, say, a troll rogue when we've already got 10 troll rogues or something. :smalltongue:
Sorry for quoting myself here :smallredface:, but I'm really looking forward to an answer - did the meetup go well? Did plenty of people turn up :smallcool:, or was it a no-show event? :smalleek:

Rowsen

2010-01-18, 06:14 AM

If anyone is ever on Dark Iron Alliance side and want's to say hello, I'm there on these characters:

Gadoken (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dark+Iron&n=Gadoken) - Level 80 Destruction/Demonology Warlock

Harcienias (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dark+Iron&cn=Harcienias) - Level 44 Retribution/Holy Paladin

I love the dungeon finder. Finally, leveling through dungeons is viable! :smallbiggrin:

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-18, 08:44 AM

Sorry for quoting myself here :smallredface:, but I'm really looking forward to an answer - did the meetup go well? Did plenty of people turn up :smallcool:, or was it a no-show event? :smalleek:

Myself, Agentpaper, and someone who I cannot recall the name of were there.

We got to level 7, but sorta broke up as Paper left, and the third person had to go for awhile, and then I had to leave.

Castaras

2010-01-18, 10:44 AM

Yup. And Maraudon, Blackfathom Deeps, Maraudon, Blackrock, bloody freaking Maraudon.. at any given time at least half the Old World instances you can access are obnoxious. The only reason I don't have the highest level ones listed here (Stratholm, Scholomance, Dire Maul, etc) are because when I'm in that level range I quest through them and pretty much never set foot in there. They're probably just as annoying.

Maraudon: Pristine Waters is good. It's the other Marudons that are crap.

And Blackrock takes a freaking AGE... :smallsigh: Why couldn't they split it up into smaller instances? Every team I got to go there would either fall apart at the start or fall apart halfway through (slight lie. I did have one team go from start to finish completely. We didn't even get a reward for finishing the dungeon still though. :smallsigh: 4 freaking hours of one dungeon...)

BooNL

2010-01-18, 10:48 AM

I'd love to join a meet-up one day but my time is pretty limited usually. I generally play about an hour a day, if I play. Doesn't help that I'm on CET time either.

The new LFG system has been a blessing for me. I'm able to level with relative ease and it's perfect if you have limited time (no time wasted travelling).
That said, there are an immense amount of mute, ninja-looting idiots though... It's a bit better at my current level (28), but at the early level I had paladins need on blue cloth because "it was rare". Or a hunter who needed on a blue shield because "he wanted to sell it on AH", note the item in question was BoP...
It's also too easy to be a bastard these days. People pulling a crap load of mobs, training them to the rest of the party and then quitting just "for the lulz".
I must admit I've quit a couple of instances myself (as a healer), but that's mainly because the tank was either a complete nutjob or because I was *very* annoyed with the group.

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-18, 11:45 AM

TheEmerged

2010-01-18, 12:55 PM

RE: Problems in PuGs. I've not tried the "someone rolled Need for the Orb when everyone else rolled Greed" flavor yet (knocks on wood). Of course, I too have the stack of Frozen Orbs & not much to do with them symptom. They need to make them currency for something (like, say, EoFrost :smallbiggrin: ) I'm probably going to end up burning through them on my Jewelcrafter.

I've had the "Gearscore Jerk" effect on my druid about 3 times now. The last one I molified with a simple explanation. "Wow, you're so right! I guess I need to run heroics for gear... oh wait...". Since then, I took Karoht's backhanded advice and essentially given up tanking with him. He's healing almost exclusively now; once I finish his current emblem priorities (EoF = the resto relic, EoT = buying a BoA legacy item to clean out his older emblems, as part of Operation DiesHorribly) I'm going to be dedicating his EoF's to his healing set and EoT's to his tanking set.

Saturday night, I actually had the opposite -- let's call them the Gearscore Angels. He signed into LFG and almost immediately got into... Halls of Reflection. I promptly advised the group, and it turns out the tank has a resto druid as his main. "Let's try this, the rest of us are pretty geared," he offered. I ended up finishing (although it's clear I need more stamina on the resto gear), with the group's assesment at the end that I'd done well for my gear.

Being on an RP server, I've also run into the RPhobes a couple of times (players that don't respect players from RP servers). Both happened shortly after the LFG tool went live, I suspect now that people are seeing we actually know what we're doing it's been less of an issue.

I have had one case of fighting over resources (ore, skinning, etc)... which is actually below average for before cross-server LFG :smallredface: I've also seen a new variation on this, a player that asked the rest of the group not to select "Disenchant" in case something needed to be traded. Nobody took him up on it, though.

The new problem is one we've had on this board a few times -- people who are shocked... SHOCKED!... to discover that not everyone does things the same way on other servers. Had a tank die Saturday because he charged off on his own to skip a few mobs at the beginning and didn't understand why we hadn't done the same. Friday my main ran into some people that were not aware of the "runthrough" method of doing UP's guantlet. And don't get me started on the guy that quit the group because we were using crowd control one time...

RE: Old Dungeons. The following is my opinion, based on my experience, and is colored by the time that I did these dungeons. It will also only cover dungeons I ran while level appropriate.

1> Deadmines. One of my favorite dungeons. It has a couple of flaws (it's too linear and therefore can take too long, there's a couple of points where wonky pathing can cause weird problems) but had interesting story and a fair number of quests/drops making it worth it.

2> Stockades. Wasted potential. There's more quests here than most people realize... because at least half of them have prerequisites (one of which used to be a group quest) or are located far away from the dungeon. It can actually be run quickly, but half the time I ran it in actual level-appropriate groups people ran into problems because they didn't understand how fear powers work and/or didn't want to be bothered with clearly thoroughly.

3> Gnomeregan. Hate hate hate hate... didn't do it level-appropriate on my main, but have done so on a couple of alts. Those 'occassional' pathing issues from Deadmines happen around every corner here.

4> Scarlet Monastery. The main problem here on my main was that its distance for the Alliance meant you could almost never find groups for it. I did manage a couple when she was slightly over-leveled for it and enjoyed it, but most of my alts have been run through it.

5> Uldamen. Oh, how I hate you. There's a reason NOT ONE of my alts has gone through here. Yes, many of the reasons I hated it are no longer true (the level range has been tightened, enchanters are no longer required to come here, the quests outside the entrance are no longer group quests, mobs that are completely magic immune or even reflect). That doesn't make me hate it any less, or make it any liklier I'll take an alt there of my own free will.

6> Zul'Farrek. Now this, on the other hand, I like. Fair number of quests, a couple of fun experiences (The Stairs is something every WoW player should experience at least once in a level-appropriate group), and loot that's worth pursuing. Also, much better than a couple of other locations (Uldamen, I'm picking on you again) it actually felt like someplace people were living. I make a point of either trying to get a group for this or being run through it on all my alts.

7> Maraudon. A fun one... when you could actually do it. An early experiment in winging a dungeon, they didn't quite get it right. I spent many a weekend trying to finish up a few quests there even after it was no longer level appropriate. But because it was so far away, back when it was level appropriate it was all but impossible to get anyone to do it -- and when you did, they almost always wanted a different wing.

8> Sunken Temple. Was fun the first three or four times I ran it, but because I was constantly re-running it for an enchant pattern I ran it more than was healthy (and while I saw the pattern drop several times, I never won the roll for it). Most of my alts have been run through it.

9> Black Rock Depths. Could REEEEEALLY benefit from becoming winged. Had the same problem Uldamen had with having too large of a level range (since corrected), coupled with the same problem as Maraudon where if you could find people to run it they were always on different quests... and one of the longest marathon sessions I've ever had MMOG was a group that essentially ran the entire...freaking...zone... including the Jailbreak quest. Including the parts that involved leaving the dungeon. It also had the problem of being somewhat required for enchanters (one of the better enchanting items back then was a trinket that could only be made at the bottom of the zone). On the other hand (like ZF) it felt like someplace the monsters actually lived, had worthwhile loot, some fun quests (and some really painful ones too).

10> Dire Maul. Fun potential, problems in execution. It also had the same problem with being so remote it was almost impossible to get groups for when I was running it. The Tribute Run here is another one of those things I think every WoW player should do at least once while level appropriate.

11> Scholomance. Loved it. The only flaw with this zone are the completely-magic-immune mobs and that boss in the basement that was a pain to get people to even agree to try.

12> Strath. Loved it. I've run it more than healthy (like Sunken Temple) but have never gotten bored with it. I solo it from time to time even at 80, thank you.

darkblust

2010-01-18, 02:53 PM

The third person was me.

Karoht

2010-01-18, 03:21 PM

I'm in 4/5 T9 pieces, and most of my other stuff is item level 213 or better (only boots and trinkets aren't, and I'll be getting new boots after a couple randoms tonight).

So here's a question. I continue to have absolutely no luck finding a raid group of any sort. So, how do you go about finding one? The few times I see anybody looking for DPS, they either require vent or want a 4000+ gear level or 4000+ DPS or some other ridiculous requirement.

Wait wait wait, whoa, whoa. Okay, hang on.
In all the times you have mentioned that you can't find a raid group, you never once mentioned that you don't have/don't use vent.
Um, you don't need a microphone for vent. You just need it on, because it is way easier to explain things or call out changes than it is to type them out.
If you had said 3 months ago that you don't have vent, that would have mostly solved the puzzle of why you can't find raids. Lots of raid groups won't take people who don't have vent.
Can I ask why you don't have vent? Again, even if all you do is listen, that is enough. Nine times out of ten I don't talk in vent, there's no need because the leader is calling things out, and Healbot does most of the coordination work I need with other healers.

Next you'll be telling me that you don't have Deadly Boss Mods installed either.

Then again, you are also in a guild with only 8 actual people, which means you are not in a raid capable guild. I've said before that if you find another guild (and have everyone from your guild transfer over) you'll be in raids much faster.

Zherog

2010-01-18, 03:27 PM

Wait wait wait, whoa, whoa. Okay, hang on.
In all the times you have mentioned that you can't find a raid group, you never once mentioned that you don't have/don't use vent.
Um, you don't need a microphone for vent. You just need it on, because it is way easier to explain things or call out changes than it is to type them out.
If you had said 3 months ago that you don't have vent, that would have mostly solved the puzzle of why you can't find raids. Lots of raid groups won't take people who don't have vent.

Alright, I'll clarify I guess. When I say "I don't have vent" what I mean is that I don't, at the moment, have a working microphone and so see no reason to ever say I have it installed on my PC.

When somebody says, "Must have vent" I assume they want me to be able to talk. I can't.

Next you'll be telling me that you don't have Deadly Boss Mods installed either.

No, I have DBM. :)

Then again, you are also in a guild with only 8 actual people, which means you are not in a raid capable guild. I've said before that if you find another guild (and have everyone from your guild transfer over) you'll be in raids much faster.

The guild has more than 8, it just never seems to ever have more than 8 people with level 80 characters logged on at one time.

Karoht

2010-01-18, 03:30 PM

AgentPaper

2010-01-18, 04:22 PM

Alright, I'll clarify I guess. When I say "I don't have vent" what I mean is that I don't, at the moment, have a working microphone and so see no reason to ever say I have it installed on my PC.

When somebody says, "Must have vent" I assume they want me to be able to talk. I can't.

Like said above, you only need to listen. Having a mic is absolutely not needed. The only people who even should be talking are the raid leader(s) and maybe the tanks. I've done countless raids, and been in a dedicated raiding guild doing Naxx and Ulduar when they were still the top-end content, and I never once had a working mic. Nobody ever even noticed, and if I told them, they didn't care. Anything I needed to say, I could type. And this was as both a DPS and as a healer. Even when playing as my tank in PuRs, I didn't have my mic and it didn't matter, though admittedly I was only really doing low-tier raids.

Hailphage

2010-01-18, 05:00 PM

Myself, Agentpaper, and someone who I cannot recall the name of were there.

We got to level 7, but sorta broke up as Paper left, and the third person had to go for awhile, and then I had to leave.
Hmmm, that's unfortunate. Are we going to try and have another crack at a meetup? I'm keen to come but again shiftwork can get in the road a bit. :smallsigh:

expirement10K14

2010-01-18, 09:28 PM

Apparently the armory thinks my Druid is level 6. In reAlity he is 28.

Also, my server is full of tanks so good that ony spins in a circle during flame breath.

SolkaTruesilver

2010-01-19, 12:09 AM

So.. have you seen the announcement for the new expansion, Cataclysm?

They totally ripped the event and its name from Dragonlance!

GolemsVoice

2010-01-19, 01:59 AM

Have not read that. Don't really care.

Innis Cabal

2010-01-19, 02:00 AM

So.. have you seen the announcement for the new expansion, Cataclysm?

Nope. They've not been talking about it at all, or even promoting it. In fact, this is the first time I've heard of it. Whats it about?

AgentPaper

2010-01-19, 02:01 AM

So.. have you seen the announcement for the new expansion, Cataclysm?

They totally ripped the event and its name from Dragonlance!

And they both ripped off Webster! Those bastards! :smallfurious:

GolemsVoice

2010-01-19, 02:10 AM

Nope. They've not been talking about it at all, or even promoting it. In fact, this is the first time I've heard of it. Whats it about?

I've heard it's about the Goblins going mad and threatening to destroy all Azeroth. The black Dragonflight, remembering their early job as earthwardens, send their mad boss into the Nether and join the Alliance, where they serve as shape-shifting allies. The Horde, on the other hand, gets an entire race of Wrynn-clones that were secretly being made while he was fighting in the Arena. And now you know.

The Linker

2010-01-19, 03:27 AM

I am a speechless Vent-user as well. No one really cares if you talk or not, honestly. At least not when you're just casually Naxx-ing it up or something.

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.3
Monday, January 18, 2010

Additions

--Added two characters from Rowsen.

Fixes

--Changed one instance of 'Dranei' to 'Draenei'.Yeah, I did it again.

Innis Cabal

2010-01-19, 03:34 AM

I've heard it's about the Goblins going mad and threatening to destroy all Azeroth. The black Dragonflight, remembering their early job as earthwardens, send their mad boss into the Nether and join the Alliance, where they serve as shape-shifting allies. The Horde, on the other hand, gets an entire race of Wrynn-clones that were secretly being made while he was fighting in the Arena. And now you know.

Really? Wow, well what about Thrall, all I've heard in game is that he's going to join the Alliance and lead a holy war on the now Troll lead Horde. Is that true?

The Linker

2010-01-19, 03:38 AM

I'm pretty sure the entire Alliance gets turned into Werewolves. That should be fun.

On a not-at-all-more-serious note, I hope Blizzard names at least one of the Worgen Waldo.

:smallamused:

GolemsVoice

2010-01-19, 03:40 AM

They would, but players in the Beta complained they never found him.

The Linker

2010-01-19, 03:49 AM

"Dude, dude, you gotta see this. They put this awesome easter egg in. I know you're gonna laugh when you see it."

"Alright, where?"

"He's right next to that house over there."

"What? What house? There's like fifty houses."

"It's the one with the weather vane on it. And there's a tree next to him, too."

"This really isn't helping. Where the hell is he?"

"Uhhh... ok, look at the moon, and then trace your sight directly down the screen. You should see him."

"...This is just frustrating. I've looked everywhere."

"Ok, look for the crowd of people around him yelling about how clever they are for getting the reference."

"Oh, that guy. Heh. Yeah, that's kinda funny."

BooNL

2010-01-19, 04:51 AM

TheEmerged: I agree with most of what you said. This is how I've experienced it so far:

Ragefire Chasm: Meh, not much to talk about. Before the Dungeon Finder people would do this only once for the quests, if they even did this at all. Though it's nice and short and the mobs are spaced pretty decently. Bit silly that the Dungeon Finder considers RFC complete after the first boss, makes motivating players to take out the second harder.

Deadmines: Love it. This instance has so much style and atmosphere. I think this is one of the instances people still played for kicks under the old system. I agree with TheEmerged on it being a bit linear though.

Wailing Caverns: There were only three classes willing to do this instance before: druids, hunters and rogues. I must say I love the atmosphere of the dungeon, but it is looooooooooooong. They could have easily cut out half of the trash mobs. Also, that Tauren guy is a slowpoke.

Shadowfang Keep: Love it, good pacing and a nice change of scenery from regular dungeons. The instance is pretty fast, but action filled.

The Stockades: Hate it, absolutely hate it. I'm usually the healer and this dungeon is a healer's worst nightmare. Line of Sight is terrible in this instance and I've had the unfortunate pleasure of having PuGs where people don't watch where they're going. Also, respawning mobs=bad.

Blackfathom Deeps: Like WC, this dungeon is way too long for too little gain. The bosses are interesting though and the atmosphere of the dungeon is pretty cool. The area with the hydromancers near the end is almost a guaranteed suicide for PuGs.

Razorfen Kraul: I like this dungeon, it has character. Though they could well have done without the silly bat zone. Silly bats...

Gnomeregan: I used to be a hordie, so I never had the pleasure of doing Gnomeregan. I had always wanted to do it, as gnomes are still one of my favourite races. When I finally got the chance last week, I was thoroughly disappointed...
While they tried hard to create the right atmosphere, I felt nothing while running the instance. It really fails to capture any kind of wonder. Couple that with a dungeon that's badly mapped, and unspectacular mobs you have one failed dungeon.

Scarlet Monestary Graveyard: I have run SM to death on my previous character, absolutely love the instance. I don't think I've ever done the Graveyard though. I recall people saying it wasn't very spectacular. Ran it for the first time yesterday. Those people were right... 2 bosses and a bunch of non-elite trashmobs doesn't make a dungeon. Still, pretty fast instance, which is nice for the Dungeon Finder.

Those are the instances I've done with my druid so far. It's fun reliving all these dungeons and seeing that old content again.

Innis Cabal

2010-01-19, 04:56 AM

They would, but players in the Beta complained they never found him.

Really? He's in Stormwind. He took over didn't you know? They even changed his class to Paladin.

expirement10K14

2010-01-19, 06:36 AM

Leon

2010-01-19, 08:36 AM

Gnomeregan: I used to be a hordie, so I never had the pleasure of doing Gnomeregan. I had always wanted to do it, as gnomes are still one of my favourite races. When I finally got the chance last week, I was thoroughly disappointed...

I predominantly play Horde and i have done Gommer on them much more than any of my Alliance toons.
Its not a brilliant place but the rewards from Rig Wars made it worth it

GolemsVoice

2010-01-19, 09:21 AM

Note here that it will be out in BLIZZARD November, which is anything from November to a date in two or three decades. :smallbiggrin:

TheEmerged

2010-01-19, 09:32 AM

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/

Earliest date in there puts the anouncement around August.

The basic idea is that Deathwing has broken away from Deepholme, tearing Azeroth apart in the process. All of vanilla wow, and possibly northrend, will be changed. Barrens split in two, stormwind gone etc. And a specific faction of the goblins, who have crash landed on an island and are attacked by alliance scouts or some nonsense, join the horde. The worgen, who have existed since vanilla but, by Lore, are hidden away behind some huge wall, have exited their sheltered home and have joined the alliance. No new classes, but new race/class combos and level cap moved to 85. EB games claims the release date is in November, but as the alpha was released last week it seems it will come a few months after the last wing of ICC (or at least the beta will).

You might have missed some sarcasm tags :smallcool: Oh wait, I'm the only person here that actually uses them :smallredface:

As always, keep in mind that EB Games and everyone else are just making up dates. They can't legally take preorders without a date, so they make one up. Always remember -- if it didn't come from Blizzard itself, don't believe it. If it came from Blizzard, expect it to change at least once (insert "Blizzard Being Blizzard" joke here).

Having said that, November looks like an *awfully* good guess to me. I was originally thinking July or August, but they're stretching out the ICC raid more than I expected.

Karoht

2010-01-19, 02:24 PM

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/

Earliest date in there puts the anouncement around August.

The basic idea is that Deathwing has broken away from Deepholme, tearing Azeroth apart in the process. All of vanilla wow, and possibly northrend, will be changed. Barrens split in two, stormwind gone etc. And a specific faction of the goblins, who have crash landed on an island and are attacked by alliance scouts or some nonsense, join the horde. The worgen, who have existed since vanilla but, by Lore, are hidden away behind some huge wall, have exited their sheltered home and have joined the alliance. No new classes, but new race/class combos and level cap moved to 85. EB games claims the release date is in November, but as the alpha was released last week it seems it will come a few months after the last wing of ICC (or at least the beta will).

My contact at Blizzard insists that this will probably be the shortest Alpha and Beta for WoW, because of the upcoming Beta for Starcraft II and subsequent launch of SCII in May/June.

However, it will also be the biggest Beta in that they are planning on having more players allowed in the Beta than the Wrath or BC betas. They are expecting something like 1/4 of the current population to be listed for the Beta. Big reason for allowing more people in the Beta than previous...

...wait for it...

...they are trying to test server load and need to test quite a few computers for the upcoming graphical changes and reshading and such.

Glad I'm doing a severe overhaul on my PC's in March.

mangosta71

2010-01-19, 02:44 PM

Interesting. The way they seem to have picked people for the BC and WotLK betas was giving keys to everyone that had cleared the last instances of vanilla and BC. So they expect a quarter of the people playing now to kill Arthas? Perhaps I'm being overly cynical.

So, more intensive, bandwidth-eating graphics. Joy. Because half the guild's computers aren't already overloaded playing above minimal settings. And nobody has a spotty connection at all.

On a more positive note, I finally finished Ulduar 10 on my main. Yeah, the toon that's cleared ToGC10, ICC25 up to and ICC10 through Putricide, and beaten Algalon didn't have a Yogg10 kill logged. I got 7 achievements with that kill - One, Two, and Three Lights, Decent into Madness, clearing Ulduar 10, Drive Me Crazy, and Glory of the Ulduar Raider. As a melee dps, I also got the achievement for seeing all three brain room events in the process of killing him, and the one for blowing a kiss to Sara. The important thing to me is the mount, though. Sure, the violet drake is just as fast, but I prefer mounts that mean something. And the rusted drake is prettier. Still not as pretty as the 25 man one, but frankly I doubt that's ever gonna happen.

Karoht

2010-01-19, 03:16 PM

Interesting. The way they seem to have picked people for the BC and WotLK betas was giving keys to everyone that had cleared the last instances of vanilla and BC. So they expect a quarter of the people playing now to kill Arthas? Perhaps I'm being overly cynical.You are, because this isn't even remotely true. Clear majority of players who were in the Wrath beta hadn't even visited sunwell isle to do the dailies, much less actually set foot in or cleared the instance. I know because a friend of mine who was in the beta complained about this constantly, and it was not an isolated complaint.

So, more intensive, bandwidth-eating graphics. Joy. Because half the guild's computers aren't already overloaded playing above minimal settings. And nobody has a spotty connection at all.The game is 5 years old. What do you expect? Everyone and their dog complains about the graphics.

Karoht

2010-01-19, 03:24 PM

On a more positive note, last night I was in the best PuG raid EVAR!

ICC, in there to kill Marrowgar for the weekly raid quest. Went all the way to the gunship, no wipe. Would have kept going but our two tanks ran out of time, and it was kind of late.

The best pug ever before this was back in Karazhan. Me and my fiance joined a pug because the guild just wasn't doing anything for a while there. We said we were just going to stay for the first two bosses and then go, as we were both tired. 2 hours later we're walking out of the instance, having full cleared, we both turned to look at each other (IRL) and she said 'what the hell just happened?' I look on her screen, she's holding the axe known as Gorehowl (Grom Hellscreams axe, which should have been a legendary but oh well). And we had a pile of invites to go again next lockout with those people. Good times.

GolemsVoice

2010-01-19, 04:15 PM

The game is 5 years old. What do you expect? Everyone and their dog complains about the graphics.

The problem here is that WoW is played across maybe the broadest range of computers possible, from the PC that is barely able to handle the login screen to the latest machine with all the toys. Those on the low end will complain about the graphics being too much, while those on the upper end will complain about ugly graphics. Can't please everyone all the time, can you?

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-19, 05:13 PM

Nope. They've not been talking about it at all, or even promoting it. In fact, this is the first time I've heard of it. Whats it about?

Really? O.O

They DID have a big thing about it at Blizzcon, at least.

Some stuff that isn't in the previous link can be found here (http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Cataclysm).

You might have missed some sarcasm tags :smallcool: Oh wait, I'm the only person here that actually uses them :smallredface:

Y'know, every time someone makes a "I used sarcasm on teh int0rwebs :smallcool:" remark, I want to reach through my monitor and throttle them. :smallannoyed:

Zherog

2010-01-19, 05:23 PM

Wait -- are you being sarcastic?

AgentPaper

2010-01-19, 05:24 PM

Wait -- are you being sarcastic?

Obviously NOT!

God.

:smallbiggrin:

The Linker

2010-01-19, 05:50 PM

Innis Cabal fools all, it seems. :smalltongue:

Karoht

2010-01-19, 06:41 PM

The problem here is that WoW is played across maybe the broadest range of computers possible, from the PC that is barely able to handle the login screen to the latest machine with all the toys. Those on the low end will complain about the graphics being too much, while those on the upper end will complain about ugly graphics. Can't please everyone all the time, can you?

So Blizzard is supposed to do what City of Heroes did? Ignore the issue, actually making their graphics engine harder to work with? Updating it will make their lives easier, which to me says more and better content. And shiny graphics.

As for those with terribad computers, best buy had some pretty decent systems for around 400 bucks. Spend 1000 and you get pretty close to top of the line nowadays, if you know where to shop. Referbished models are dirt cheap and easy to come by. And a newer graphics card is typically only a 100 dollar upgrade, half that or less if you find one in the bargain bin. Right now a 256 MB graphics card will run WoW pretty well. 512 MB cards are becoming plentiful and cheap, and 1GB cards are starting to come down very quickly. This is the only major upgrade that is needed for most systems to run WoW, though some extra ram ($100 bucks will go very far with ram if you shop around) doesn't hurt either.

Aion requirements are much more steep, and they are only getting steeper with their upgrade to the Cry2 engine in March this year, and the Cry3 engine in 2012. And, more functions are done on the client side than the server side, WoW is very much the opposite. Would you prefer Blizzard took the same path?

expirement10K14

2010-01-19, 08:36 PM

So Blizzard is supposed to do what City of Heroes did? Ignore the issue, actually making their graphics engine harder to work with? Updating it will make their lives easier, which to me says more and better content. And shiny graphics.

As for those with terribad computers, best buy had some pretty decent systems for around 400 bucks. Spend 1000 and you get pretty close to top of the line nowadays, if you know where to shop. Referbished models are dirt cheap and easy to come by. And a newer graphics card is typically only a 100 dollar upgrade, half that or less if you find one in the bargain bin. Right now a 256 MB graphics card will run WoW pretty well. 512 MB cards are becoming plentiful and cheap, and 1GB cards are starting to come down very quickly. This is the only major upgrade that is needed for most systems to run WoW, though some extra ram ($100 bucks will go very far with ram if you shop around) doesn't hurt either.

Aion requirements are much more steep, and they are only getting steeper with their upgrade to the Cry2 engine in March this year, and the Cry3 engine in 2012. And, more functions are done on the client side than the server side, WoW is very much the opposite. Would you prefer Blizzard took the same path?

Like to note- My computer bought this past year from Best Buy for about $500 runs the game fine at low settings, and it is running an integrated GPU and 1 gig of ram. Also, the new processor my friend is buying is more than my entire computer (then new I7s if anyone likes shiny things).

I am leading my first raid on friday- Nax 10 then Maly, and possibly OS if we have time. My guild leader wants to try and get some of the lower 80s leveled, as well as work our way through each raid to get used to working together. It just so happens he also wanted to try other people leading, as he has no mic for vent instructions, and I volunteered. I think with most of use pulling upwards of 4k dps we should be able to easily gear up the newer players.

And to all DKs- Go unholy. Best decision I ever made (dps jumped up 500 in heroics, about 700 raid buffed).

Leon

2010-01-20, 12:44 AM

And to all DKs- Go unholy. Best decision I ever made (dps jumped up 500 in heroics, about 700 raid buffed).

Really wow, for you that may be good but others may not like it as much.
I tried Unholy and didn't really find much i liked in it (the permanent Ghoul is nice but not a must have)
Ive tinkered with Blood a bit and like some of the mid range things but Ultimately Frost is where it is for me for both Tanking and soloing

Innis Cabal

2010-01-20, 12:57 AM

Innis Cabal fools all, it seems. :smalltongue:

Yes, I was being sarcastic. Anyone who plays WoW, knows about WoW or somehow sees WoW passing a window to work knows about Cat. Not to mention it was announced here in the previous WoW thread. Its plastered on the website. Plastered on the game launch. Heck, ingame events are even starting for it, namingly in Earthquakes. So...I think its pretty certain we've heard just a tad about it.

AgentPaper

2010-01-20, 01:18 AM

And to all DKs- Go unholy. Best decision I ever made (dps jumped up 500 in heroics, about 700 raid buffed).

That would be because you're doing AoE DPS. All the specs do roughly the same amount of DPS, even frost.

The Linker

2010-01-20, 02:07 AM

Heck, ingame events are even starting for it, namingly in Earthquakes.

Wait wait wait. Earthquakes?

This I have not heard of.

Edit: Just did some Googling. That is actually really cool.

Cataclysm is going to be so freaking awesome. :smalleek:

GolemsVoice

2010-01-20, 06:47 AM

So Blizzard is supposed to do what City of Heroes did? Ignore the issue, actually making their graphics engine harder to work with? Updating it will make their lives easier, which to me says more and better content. And shiny graphics.

I didn't really want to say anything for or against ths issue. I like the way they are going now, steadily updating their graphics and subtly chaning things instead of doing a major overhaul of everything. Of course, newer content will have better graphics, and I would require that, and so the Expansion will, just like the last two, bring better graphics. And as they will be replacing the old world, this will also mean that the uglier vanilla graphics will disappear.
Add in a few new minor models in patches (like the new totem models which look really cool) and I'm good.

mangosta71

2010-01-20, 12:51 PM

I'm finding that I prefer blood for soloing, especially for taking on elites. I'm running around taking revenge on all the mobs that roflstomped me when I was playing frost, without having leveled or upgraded gear. I did swap out weapons, since I spent the time and money to make both the Lionheart Executioner and a pair of Blazefuries. I gotta say, the LE proc coupled with Fallen Crusader is a beautiful thing.

As far as the graphics upgrades, sure, a $400 rig from Best Buy will run WoW. At the lowest settings. As in, you can be on the ground below Dalaran and not be able to see the city when you look up low. I highly doubt that such a system will run Cataclysm. How many WoW players are the type that play a lot of WoW and practically nothing else, so they have those bottom-of-the-line systems? They already pay $15 a month, and (assuming they've been playing since it came out or shortly after) $50 for the original game, plus $40 for each expansion. Now they have to shell out another $1000 just to be able to continue playing, still at the lowest settings so they don't even see all the new pretties.

I'll say right now that my system is capable of running it pretty much maxxed out (I remember the awe the first time I turned it on, and actually saw Dal before I flew into it), and likely will continue to run with high settings in Cataclysm. I'm trying to look at things from the point of view of those who are in the "upgrade your entire computer or quit WoW" camp.

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-20, 01:07 PM

Wait wait wait. Earthquakes?

This I have not heard of.

Edit: Just did some Googling. That is actually really cool.

Cataclysm is going to be so freaking awesome. :smalleek:

Elaborate please? :smallsmile:

The Linker

2010-01-20, 03:51 PM

http://www.wow.com/2009/12/30/blizzards-comments-on-the-in-game-earthquakes/

I gleaned everything from that article (and this one (http://www.wow.com/2009/12/28/are-invisible-mobs-ushering-in-the-cataclysm-world-event/) discusses the technical aspects). Random earthquakes are shaking players' screens Azeroth. To use a cliched-by-this-point phrase, Deathwing... is stirring. :smalleek:

Karoht

2010-01-20, 04:53 PM

I didn't really want to say anything for or against ths issue. I like the way they are going now, steadily updating their graphics and subtly chaning things instead of doing a major overhaul of everything. Of course, newer content will have better graphics, and I would require that, and so the Expansion will, just like the last two, bring better graphics. And as they will be replacing the old world, this will also mean that the uglier vanilla graphics will disappear.
Add in a few new minor models in patches (like the new totem models which look really cool) and I'm good.

Yeah, thats my thing. I like the old graphics, and as cartoony as everyone claims it to be, sometimes you look at something like a Tauren or a Troll or a Human and you see past the cartoony to the serious, and things are still very cool.
New totems is awesome, indeed.

On the note of UBER graphics (not the way the game is going), this is something I just posted over in the Aion thread. For those who don't know, I've been playing Aion for around a month.

Yeah, with all the pretty graphics, Aion is really flat to me. Then again, I will reserve final judgement for when I hit max level, which I have vowed to do before I quit the game. Who knows, maybe by 50 it will grab me.
Start of the thread is here.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127687

I really don't think shiney graphics is that big a deal for wow. But in the case of City of Heroes, because they never upgraded the engine in any meaningful way, it actually limited their capabilities. When vehicles showed up in Wrath, I pointed that out to some City players I know. They said that the reason that vehicles would never be in CoX, stated by the devs of CoX, was that it was simply beyond what the engine was designed to do, or capable of doing. And before people start saying that things like vehicles are governed by nothing but source code, recall that things like the vehicle model itself and it's animations, it's abilities, how it interacts with the rest of the game world, are all related to and largely governed by the graphics engine.

I do however thing that a graphical update, because of all the implications it brings along with, is a big thing for WoW. But like all things related to Cataclysm, this is a major upheaval for the entire World of Warcraft, and everything in it.

Karoht

2010-01-20, 05:28 PM

As far as the graphics upgrades, sure, a $400 rig from Best Buy will run WoW. At the lowest settings. As in, you can be on the ground below Dalaran and not be able to see the city when you look up low. I highly doubt that such a system will run Cataclysm. How many WoW players are the type that play a lot of WoW and practically nothing else, so they have those bottom-of-the-line systems? They already pay $15 a month, and (assuming they've been playing since it came out or shortly after) $50 for the original game, plus $40 for each expansion. Now they have to shell out another $1000 just to be able to continue playing, still at the lowest settings so they don't even see all the new pretties.

I'll say right now that my system is capable of running it pretty much maxxed out (I remember the awe the first time I turned it on, and actually saw Dal before I flew into it), and likely will continue to run with high settings in Cataclysm. I'm trying to look at things from the point of view of those who are in the "upgrade your entire computer or quit WoW" camp.

Without knowing what the new specs are (though we are being reassured that you won't have to go out and buy a whole new computer to play WoW), this statement really assumes quite a bit. It assumes that the graphics will perhaps be on par with something as graphic intensive as Aion, and assumes that all the WoW players in the world are poor ass peons. I'm not sure if I should be insulted or not. I am however, insulted that you would imply that anyone in the Upgrade or Quit camp would not even look into solutions (IE-actually looking at the specs once released and price out some upgrades or a new system) and would instead simply QQ about it.

Without getting too technical on the matter, as I mentioned before, you can pick up a new or "as good as new and likely to be better than your current" graphics card for 100 bucks or less. 200 if you want something less than fancy. 400 would buy you a practically top of the line nVidia card.
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX25495(ME).aspx --- This card is 60 Canadian. If it can't run new WoW, then I'll be damned impressed.
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX25797(ME).aspx ---This card is 180 Canadian. It will probably last you another 2-4 years of PC gaming. Good chance it will run new WoW at max settings (possibly even Aion at max settings) quite well.
Pair either of these with about a 100 dollars on a ram upgrade, and you should run smooth as silk. You mention the price point of 400 dollars. You could get the ram AND the more expensive graphics card right now. All for under 300 dollars. And by the time Cataclysm comes out, there is likely to be a drop in those prices as well.

As for rigs from Best Buy...
Well, anyone who knows computers will tell you that parts are 9 times out of 10 cheaper than boxed rigs. Go to places like Laptop Depot and Racks and get a referb. Costco typically has fire sales on their boxed rigs about once every 5-6 months as they rotate out stock. I bought a pair of excellent systems for me and the fiance, and not more than a month later, that same system was on for half price at Costco. And they have really good warrenty and return policy, arguably better than the big electronics stores.

And bear in mind, a computer upgrade is not the same as paying for a specific exclusive peripheral to play a game. Anyone upgrading their computer would still reap the benefits of said upgrade, WoW notwithstanding. To claim that the money spent is just to play WoW is not accurate in the least. If anything, Blizzard is doing something very dangerous here by encouraging upgrades. People who would never play the competator MMO's like Aion due to their poor systems, might now reconsider them once they upgrade. Then again, any requirement to upgrade can and will be considered an afront to anyone who has played since vanilla on a piece of crap.

For anyone shopping for computer parts (IE-Graphics card and Ram upgrade, the only two you will likely need), I recommend march or april. nVidia has new product rolling out around then, so stores will be trying to offload older stock. There will be plenty of 512 MB and 1GB graphics cards hitting the bargain bins. And most of those stores are smart, they try to upsell ram and new power supplies to anyone upgrading at those times, and typically install/service plans as well. $400 bucks or less will go surprisingly far at that time, trust me.

Innis Cabal

2010-01-20, 06:03 PM

Wait wait wait. Earthquakes?

This I have not heard of.

Edit: Just did some Googling. That is actually really cool.

Cataclysm is going to be so freaking awesome. :smalleek:

It is. I actually started following the expansion -before- I started playing the game. Its one of the reasons I joined. That and a very very very very persistant friend.

I'm on the Sha'Tar btw, Horde Side. Have an 80 Lock, 65 DK, 52 Priest and 40 Mage at the moment. Trying to get that mage higher as Lock DPS sucks at the moment.

tyckspoon

2010-01-20, 06:03 PM

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-20, 06:52 PM

As for rigs from Best Buy...
Well, anyone who knows computers will tell you that parts are 9 times out of 10 cheaper than boxed rigs.

Emphasis mine.

Karoht

2010-01-20, 07:22 PM

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10135613&catid=
here's a referbished unit from futureshop. 350 bucks canadian. And I'm confident it will run maxed out WoW settings right now. With little love a year or two down the road like a better vid card, she'd see you all the way through the next WoW xpac.

Yana

2010-01-21, 09:40 AM

It's been awhile since I've posted here, but I just wanted to make sure that my character was added to the list. Roymustangsa, Troll rogue, Stormrage US.... Horde.

On another note, is anyone else currently working on the Blood Prince Council on 25 man?

Kish

2010-01-21, 09:46 AM

Blood Prince Council. *shakes head* Blizzard's really not abashed about recycling boss concepts.

GolemsVoice

2010-01-21, 10:01 AM

Well, there's only so many concepts you can have for killing somebody dead. Most other bosses in ICC are innovative and challenging, though. Allthough I must admit that I have not yet face the Blood Council, so I can't comment on them.

Zen Monkey

2010-01-21, 10:02 AM

Needing a change from my 80 tank/healer, I just dusted off my shadow priest that hasn't been played in a couple of years, so I'm re-learning. Any tips or secrets to play/build/gear a shadow priest effectively? I'm at lvl 59 and using Outland to remember how to play a cloth dps-er.

thank you

mangosta71

2010-01-21, 10:03 AM

Without knowing what the new specs are (though we are being reassured that you won't have to go out and buy a whole new computer to play WoW), this statement really assumes quite a bit. It assumes that the graphics will perhaps be on par with something as graphic intensive as Aion, and assumes that all the WoW players in the world are poor ass peons. I'm not sure if I should be insulted or not.

Well, it seems that the people I play with usually are poor ass peons. Most of the people in my guild are college kids, so they don't have a reliable source of income, and thus can't guarantee that they can afford even $50 to upgrade their systems.

I am however, insulted that you would imply that anyone in the Upgrade or Quit camp would not even look into solutions (IE-actually looking at the specs once released and price out some upgrades or a new system) and would instead simply QQ about it.

People tend to take the easy way out. QQing is easier than doing research and, if necessary, upgrading. If we go to the official WoW forums, we'll find hundreds, if not thousands, of people QQing about this very thing. At least 90% won't have even looked into pricing upgrades.

You have demonstrated on several occasions that you are more sensible than the masses. I appreciate that, and certainly did not intend offense.

Then again, any requirement to upgrade can and will be considered an afront to anyone who has played since vanilla on a piece of crap.

This basically sums up my entire point. People are going to QQ because that's human nature. Some will even ragequit. I find such complaining silly and at minimum premature (if not completely unreasonable) but, as I mentioned, I'm playing devil's advocate.

Mang, you generally seem to know what you're talking about, but I have to ask.. have you shopped for a computer lately? You can get a $400 pre-built that will meet Wrath's recommended system values.

I seem to recall my system at the time of WotLK's release meeting its recommended system values, and still having to crank everything down if I wanted to raid. Also, Wrath's recommended values are based on an XP rig - 7 and Vista are more resource intensive to begin with. But to directly answer your question, no, I haven't seriously looked into pricing upgrades or replacements for my comp recently.

On another note, is anyone else currently working on the Blood Prince Council on 25 man?

My guild found it far easier to have a bear instead of a warlock tank Keleseth. We only got one pull after we changed our setup, but we got them down to 20%, whereas our best attempt with a warlock tanking him was ~70%.

Needing a change from my 80 tank/healer, I just dusted off my shadow priest that hasn't been played in a couple of years, so I'm re-learning. Any tips or secrets to play/build/gear a shadow priest effectively? I'm at lvl 59 and using Outland to remember how to play a cloth dps-er.

1) Heirloom gear. I was struggling with my spriest until I got shoulders, robe, staff, and trinket.

2) The rotation I usually use for soloing: shield, vampiric touch, pain, mind blast, mind flay. Most equivalent level mobs are dead by that point, or close enough that a couple swats with your wand will put them down. You should always have fort, spirit, inner fire, and vampiric embrace up.

3) My priest is 70 now. I think I ended up with 60 points in shadow. Dispersion is a lovely thing - you can even cast it without dismounting. I like to use it as a second wind on elites, but the cooldown is short enough that you can use it to keep your mana pretty close to topped off, too.

tyckspoon

2010-01-21, 10:34 AM

People tend to take the easy way out. QQing is easier than doing research and, if necessary, upgrading. If we go to the official WoW forums, we'll find hundreds, if not thousands, of people QQing about this very thing. At least 90% won't have even looked into pricing upgrades.

Well, yes, but that's the official WoW forums. The only things worth paying attention to in there are blue posts. QQ postings are not reality (in particular, anybody saying something along the lines of "I already spent $X00 buying a graphics card to play WoW!!! Cata will make me spend $X00 moaahhh!!!!!"...almost certainly has a good enough system already.) Some of them may quit if Cata requires them to change anything. Some will pull their heads out, realize they can get away with a 50-70 dollar upgrade, and do that. Most will tweak their settings down some as needed and carry on. It's not worth Blizzard's time to worry about, not when they'll be dealing with actually launching Cata and reabsorbing all the "I'll come back and play some more when the expansion launches" people.

I seem to recall my system at the time of WotLK's release meeting its recommended system values, and still having to crank everything down if I wanted to raid. Also, Wrath's recommended values are based on an XP rig - 7 and Vista are more resource intensive to begin with. But to directly answer your question, no, I haven't seriously looked into pricing upgrades or replacements for my comp recently

Raiding is admittedly a much more power-intensive situation than the general game, and it would be nice if Blizzard listed their recommendations for people who wanted to do raid content as well. But if that was what they based all of their suggestions on they'd be wildly overshooting the mark for the remaining 80% of the game which is perfectly playable with much weaker systems or higher graphical settings and probably scaring off more customers than they could ever hope to lose by updating the graphics. (And the recommendations are updated for 7/Vista- the biggest difference is that it requests 2 gig RAM instead of 1.)

Blayze

2010-01-21, 10:34 AM

Blood Prince Council. *shakes head* Blizzard's really not abashed about recycling boss concepts.

Hah. Let's recap, shall we?

Archavon? Tank swap.
Razuvious? Tank swap.
Gothik? Tank swap.
Four Horsemen (Tank swap).
Gluth? Tank swap.
Razorscale? Tank swap.
Thorim? Tank swap.
Deathwhisper? Tank swap.
Babyfang? Tank swap.
Festergut? Tank swap.

Besides, the Council/Twins encounters are the PuG-Wipers for a reason -- but that reason is usually "Muppets letting the bosses get close to each other" for their AoE-denying healing/buffing.

tyckspoon

2010-01-21, 10:47 AM

2) The rotation I usually use for soloing: shield, vampiric touch, pain, mind blast, mind flay. Most equivalent level mobs are dead by that point, or close enough that a couple swats with your wand will put them down. You should always have fort, spirit, inner fire, and vampiric embrace up.

Vampiric Touch, Mind Blast to set off Replenishment, Devouring Plague for more up-front damage.. at this point, most normal mobs are close enough to death that you can finish them with a Mind Flay or just let the ticks from Touch and Plague finish them while you set up on the next target. I usually find that it's not worth the extra cooldown to throw Pain in there when it's only going to tick once before the target falls over. If you're dealing with elites or significantly over-level mobs, then get Pain in there for the benefits it gives to everything else, or just use it anyway so you don't train yourself out of using it when you're in an instance/raid situation and need to use it to put out correct DPS.. but for the latter half of leveling and doing world dailies and quests at 80, it's mostly not needed.

mangosta71

2010-01-21, 12:04 PM

Raiding is admittedly a much more power-intensive situation than the general game, and it would be nice if Blizzard listed their recommendations for people who wanted to do raid content as well. But if that was what they based all of their suggestions on they'd be wildly overshooting the mark for the remaining 80% of the game which is perfectly playable with much weaker systems or higher graphical settings and probably scaring off more customers than they could ever hope to lose by updating the graphics. (And the recommendations are updated for 7/Vista- the biggest difference is that it requests 2 gig RAM instead of 1.)

I wouldn't try playing WoW on a Vista rig with anything under 4. But yeah, raiding is more intensive, but Blizz has been focusing on making raids more accessible to the player base and encouraging the players to at least attempt some of the easy-to-reach/kill bosses. Wow's focus has always been the endgame, because that's what really sets it apart from other MMOs (not to say that other MMOs have no endgame). Their recommended settings should take high-level raiding into account, because that's what they're pushing us to do.

Vampiric Touch, Mind Blast to set off Replenishment, Devouring Plague for more up-front damage.. at this point, most normal mobs are close enough to death that you can finish them with a Mind Flay or just let the ticks from Touch and Plague finish them while you set up on the next target. I usually find that it's not worth the extra cooldown to throw Pain in there when it's only going to tick once before the target falls over. If you're dealing with elites or significantly over-level mobs, then get Pain in there for the benefits it gives to everything else, or just use it anyway so you don't train yourself out of using it when you're in an instance/raid situation and need to use it to put out correct DPS.. but for the latter half of leveling and doing world dailies and quests at 80, it's mostly not needed.

I throw pain because I have the glyph that increases mind blast and flay damage when it's up. Even though plague is right next to the rest of my buttons, I tend to forget that I have it.

Yana

2010-01-21, 01:15 PM

tyckspoon

2010-01-21, 01:47 PM

I throw pain because I have the glyph that increases mind blast and flay damage when it's up. Even though plague is right next to the rest of my buttons, I tend to forget that I have it.

Yeah, every Shadow Priest has that glyph+talents. It's just not worth it in a short fight, which should be.. everything except instance mobs for a good DPSer. Consider- Pain (highest rank) hits for 1380 total over time, and having it up adds an extra 10% to your Mind Flay from the glyph. Mind Flay is 588 base, so that's worth about 59 more damage per cast of Mind Flay. Devouring Plague, with the appropriate talent, deals its normal DoT plus 30% of that total instantly, which makes 1582 DoT and 475 instant. You'd have to cast Mind Flay around 8 times with the Pain bonus to make up the lead you get from doing instant damage with Plague- it's only worth the cooldown to cast Pain if you're in a fight that will run long enough for you to actually have to cycle through your rotation. If your target dies within the period of a single Vampiric Touch, and most things do, cast Plague and profit.

Edit: Twisted Faith effect + Glyph gives Mind Flay +20% that Devouring Plague isn't getting, so the bonus is actually about 123. Still takes 4 Mind Flays to make up the damage lost by not using Devouring Plague.

The Linker

2010-01-21, 06:17 PM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.4
Thursday, January 21, 2010

Additions

-Added one character from Yana.

Done and done.

Karoht

2010-01-21, 06:18 PM

Hrm, have a druid tank Keleseth? That'd be most interesting to find out. Considering our warlock seems to be having health issues once Keleseth is empowered, that is actually a very good idea. Thanks :)
Most warlocks tend to forget that they have that lovely shadow absorbing ability. They also still tend to tap for mana, and then wait for a healer rather than draining. Your warlock tank NEEDS to carefully time the taps (or just wait until the rest of the raid is dealing with Keleseth), or they'll just die.

As for a bear tanking instead of the Warlock, also consider that attacking Keleseth at the beginning is not actually contributing to raid DPS. So a warlock focused on a target they can actually do something with makes much more sense. Though personally, I would check out the tankspot video on youtube.

TheEmerged

2010-01-22, 09:47 AM

Good News: thanks to a vacation day, good timing on the weekly raid quest, and my guild, I finally avenged Keristraza by killing Malygos.

Bad News: I now see why that is an unpopular raid. I do okay in phase 1, but in phase 2 I'm doing something that's causing all those mages on the disks to coordinate on me. I'm in the bubble(s), and all the sudden 2-3 of those bolts hit me at once and I'm dead. I think I could handle phase 3 if I could survive to it (I'm generally pretty good with the vehicle fights, and I've done that Coldara daily often enough to know how that vehicle works).

Good News: my druid bought the BoA dagger for my rogue (and eventually, DiesHorribly the goblin hunter), cleaning out his 'leftover' badges. He's two random dailies from getting his EoFrost resto relic.

mangosta71

2010-01-22, 10:42 AM

Last night, with a bear tanking Keleseth, we oneshot the Council. Quick, clean kill. So in all, we attempted it 4-5 times with a warlock tanking, and the second time we tried it with the bear we downed them. Even got the achievement (but then, you get that pretty much by doing the fight the way it's intended to be done). Granted, the first couple attempts with the lock tank we were all seeing the fight and figuring out exactly what we all needed to do - videos can only tell you so much, after all. I had a slight moment of awesome - a nucleus was on the fire tank (pretty much as far as it's possible to be from where we needed it), I popped sprint and leapt from the top of the stairs, getting just enough height and distance to swat it as I passed, and took it over to the druid.

We then put in a few attempts on Blood Queen, but decided to get some experience on her in the 10 man version over the weekend and hit her again on Monday.

Karoht

2010-01-22, 05:39 PM

Good News: my druid bought the BoA dagger for my rogue (and eventually, DiesHorribly the goblin hunter), cleaning out his 'leftover' badges. He's two random dailies from getting his EoFrost resto relic.The Frost relic kicks some severe ass. It's like an extra 300 spell power. And it has a constant uptime, if you know anything about healing as a druid. The trinket is awesome as well, worth all 60 of those badges, and the cloak is only 2 steps shy of best in slot.

I'm 110 frost badges away from 2 piece T10 bonus.

Karoht

2010-01-22, 06:33 PM

Lightning Quick Resto Druid Healing Guide

1:Gear-Resto Druids need SP, Spirit, Int, and Haste. Crit raiting is nice, additional MP5 is nice. Gem for SP, Spirit, Int, and Haste. There is an orange pattern that has SP and Haste on it, and a Green Pattern with Spirit and Int. For your Meta Gem, Ember Skyflare. Gives you 25 SP and 2% Int. Very worth it.

2:Glyphs-Swiftmend so you don't lose your HoT when you Swiftmend, Rapid Rejuvination (haste now shortens the time between Rejuv ticks), and anything after that is just dandy. I take Nourish, just so I have a more uber Nourish.

3:The Rules (AKA-How to Heal really well and not run OOM)
Rule 1-Never ever clip your Rejuvination HoT. If you do, you can possibly create as large as a 5-6 second window where your target is not receiving heal from Rejuvination, and this wastes mana as well.
Rule 2-Never cast Regrowth just to apply the HoT. It wastes half the heal, wasting mana.
Rule 3-Never roll 3 stacks of Lifebloom more than 3 times. This wastes SERIOUS amounts of mana. I personally let LB 'bloom' at 2 stacks most of the time, sometimes 3. Rarely do I roll 3 stacks.
Rule 4-Whenever you get Clearcasting to proc from Omen of Clarity, always cast Lifebloom on someone. This nets you back 400 mana and still gets a heal on someone.
Rule 5-Whenever you are about to cast Nourish, consider Regrowth. Cheaper in some respects, and applies the HoT. Nourish is only truly mana efficient if you have 1 HoT on the target already.
Rule 6-Do not cast Wild Growth every cooldown. This is sloppy and wasteful. Also, do not cast Wild Growth before a large AoE goes off. Cast it afterwards. Otherwise, you waste the biggest parts of the heal, which is in the first 2-3 seconds. And remember, Wild Growth doesn't heal all that much, and it's a smart heal with a short range. There are instances where you will cast Wild Growth on a target, and get no one else but that target with it. If everyone in range of the target is already topped off, Wild Growth may not apply to them, due to the smart heal. Sometimes you fight the smart heal AI, some times it does your bidding, but it's finnicky.
Rule 7-If you are healing a tank, you want minimum 2 HoTs at all times (more obviously better) and you want to use Nourish as your spam. If you only had to pick 2 HoTs to have on a tank, my choices are instantly Rejuvination as #1 (because of how much it heals, it's effects with haste, Swiftmend), and Lifebloom #2. Lifebloom because you can quickly increase the stacks as needed, and if you have to stop healing the tank for whatever there reason (and your very good with your timing), you have the bloom effect to fall back on. If you are tank healing, you definately want to get LB up to 2 stacks and let it bloom. You will need the mana back, and it is a good safety feature for if you need to break away from healing the tank for a moment. Just throw the 3rd stack on, and go do something else. If you need more time, refresh that 3rd stack.
Rule 8-Innervate at 14000-12000 mana, dependant on your total mana pool. And then every time it is off cooldown after that, unless you are above 75%.
Rule 9-Take Healing Touch off your bar. You'll never use it again. It's a mana hog, it's slow, and getting the talents and glyph to make it not suck will wreck any resto build.
Rule 10-Final rule, hardest one to follow. HoT people pre-emptively. Roll Rejuvination on the tanks at all times, and try to have it on at least 2-4 other targets as well. It is hard to know which targets to pick, I stick with melee DPS or anyone still within melee range of the boss/mobs. Casting Wild Growth on the main tank will tell you who is within 15 yards of the tank (most of the time), and I usually HoT those targets whenever possible.

Follow these rules, you should still have mana at the end of every fight, and should be competative on the healing meters, regardless of your gear. I learned to heal in the BC days, and I was always taught to be a stingy bastard with my mana. I also subscribe to the rule (true for almost any caster) only use as much mana as you need to.

4:Flask-Frost Wyrm all the way. You want your HoTs to be as strong as possible. Only do the MP5 pots if you are having serious MP5 issues.

If you want to break the healing meter over your knee (some raid leaders look at total healing which counts heals landed + overheal as separate) roll Rejuv and 1 LB stack on 2-4 people (very easy to maintain) and spam nourish. You'll be up to 4 million total heal by the end of a normal 5 man dungeon, or one raid boss fight.
And remember, on Valithria the Dreamwalker, there is no such thing as overheal, so spam away. Your HoTs alone should land you (assuming a gear score of 2600 or better on Wow-heroes.com) in the 3K-4K healing per second territory, before you factor in bloom effects, the straight heal from Regrowth and Nourishes, or any crits or crit ticks of Rejuvination if you have 4 pc T9 still by that fight.

AgentPaper

2010-01-22, 08:56 PM

well, you want healing touch on your bar, though only to instant-cast it to save a tank or some such.

Archangel Yuki

2010-01-23, 02:37 AM

Manicotti

2010-01-23, 06:07 AM

I started a Dk tonight and grinded out about half way through 61. He plays a surprisingly large amount like my rogue. I go bored at 60 and ended up tanking a couple of dungeons and I am pretty set that I will have him be a tank once I hit 80. besides my rogue, I have never leveled another character ever... this should be interesting.

I know exactly what you mean. The DK rotation sets up diseases as the equivalent of combo points, and then finishes with Death/Frost/Scourge Strike, ad infinitum. Although I hated leveling my DK, even when I facerolled everything as Blood. It just seemed boring.

AgentPaper

2010-01-23, 06:21 AM

I know exactly what you mean. The DK rotation sets up diseases as the equivalent of combo points, and then finishes with Death/Frost/Scourge Strike, ad infinitum. Although I hated leveling my DK, even when I facerolled everything as Blood. It just seemed boring.

Which is why you go and fight mobs 3-4 levels higher than you, like I do with all of my characters. Which probably is the main reason I was having so much trouble with my warrior. Also fighting 2-3 people at once on a regular basis. :smalltongue:

Malek

2010-01-23, 08:00 AM

Well The Linker, you can add one playground-lurker to your list:

Canavan (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&cn=Canavan) - level 58 (the armory lies at the moment, probably because I've just got this level) Destruction Undead Warlock, on his way to escape Old Azeroth.

Speaking of Warlocks, I could use a hint - is Improved Life Tap talent worth having for me? At first I thought it is, but now I'm not sure if these 4 points spent getting it wouldn't be better off on other talents.

AgentPaper

2010-01-23, 08:02 AM

Well The Linker, you can add one playground-lurker to your list:

Canavan (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&cn=Canavan) - level 58 Destruction Undead Warlock, on his way to escape Old Azeroth.

Speaking of Warlocks, I could use a hint - is Improved Life Tap talent worth having for me? At first I thought it is, but now I'm not sure if these 4 points spent getting it wouldn't be better off on other talents.

It's worth not having to increase the cost of changing your talents even further. :smallwink:

darkblust

2010-01-23, 10:41 AM

So,are we having the gitp wow meetup thingy still?

Cryssandra

2010-01-23, 04:22 PM

Did I hear what I think I heard?
A GitP WoW meetup?

Anyway, I should have mentioned...

Cryssandra, level 73 Human Paladin at your service.

Rowsen

2010-01-23, 08:35 PM

Speaking of Warlocks, I could use a hint - is Improved Life Tap talent worth having for me? At first I thought it is, but now I'm not sure if these 4 points spent getting it wouldn't be better off on other talents.
No, but pick up the Life Tap glyph. The buff is pretty awesome if you've got some spirit on your gear.

The Linker

2010-01-24, 01:16 AM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.5
Saturday, January 23, 2010

Additions

--Added one character from Malek
--Added one character from Cryssandra

A second yet unrelated person on Steamwheedle Cartel! They're on different factions, but still. :smalltongue:

expirement10K14

2010-01-24, 09:50 PM

I think a jump from the 30s to 51 on my paladin is significant enough to note.

Also- Why won't anyone in randoms do the extra bosses in sunken temple. It makes my cry that after six runs I still have 3 or 4 unfinished quests.

The Linker

2010-01-25, 02:15 AM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.6
Sunday, January 24, 2010

Changes

Modified expirement10K14's character 'Githdor''s description.
Level increased from 35 to 51
Done and done. :smallcool:

mangosta71

2010-01-25, 10:06 AM

On warlocks, it depends on your leveling spec. Imp LT is probably a lower priority when it becomes available, but eventually becomes better than anything else you haven't taken. I don't know if you're big enough to have haunt yet, but between it and siphon life you'll just about never have to drain life again, and Imp LT will keep your mana topped off too.

Karoht

2010-01-25, 04:21 PM

well, you want healing touch on your bar, though only to instant-cast it to save a tank or some such.
I don't bother with nature's swiftness actually. By the time I've hit Natures Swiftness and Healing Touch, I could just as soon hit Swiftmend. Or cast a nourish (my nourish casts are 1.09 seconds), and the healing from HT is hardly competative to that of Swiftmend anymore.

However, I recognize your point, and seeing as my guide was aimed for starting healers, not ones in full 232 or better gear, perhaps some might see the benefit. Although back when we raided Naxx (and I was in blues) there was no situation that came up where an instant HT would have saved anyone. Once again though, just my experience. I suppose I should have thrown on the caveat 'milage may vary' as it were.

Karoht

2010-01-25, 04:25 PM

On that note, does anyone know a good generic tanking guide? I have a friend who thinks he's a tank, and my best attempts to explain tanking to him seem to not be working. He's a Deathknight if it matters, I keep trying to tell him to just go DPS until he's got a better handle on things. But I might try to actually tank an instance or two with my tank (Prot Warrior) with him alongside (tanking as well) and see how things go.

Thoughts?

AgentPaper

2010-01-25, 06:43 PM

This (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tank_%28game_term%29) guide seems to be fairly good just for the basics, while this (http://www.wowwiki.com/Death_knights_as_tanks) one is more focused on DKs. Here (http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?59900-Comprehensive-Guide-to-Death-Knight-Tanking) is a more in-depth guide from tankspot for Death Knights.

BooNL

2010-01-26, 09:22 AM

Awesome druid healing guide.

Thanks for the guide Karoht! That was pretty awesome.

While I'm only 36 atm, I can relate to a lot of stuff in this guide. I don't generally bother with Healing Touch, as Rejuv + Regrowth is usually more than enough in a dungeon.
I do like Nature's Swiftness though, but that's mostly because of impatient tanks who think it's smart to start pulling mobs before I'm done running around the corner... I have used to in a long fight only once, but dozens of times as an opener...

My current glyphs are Rejuv (double heals if the target is under 50% health, very nice!) and Regrowth (+20% healed if Regrowth was still active on the target). I'm not too fond of the Regrowth glyph as I don't have it active all the time.

Zen Monkey

2010-01-26, 09:36 AM

BooNL

2010-01-26, 09:42 AM

All I can say is find out of there's a strong twink community within your battlegroup. I've heard plenty of stories of players spending hundreds of gold equipping their twink only to find out they cannot find any battles after locking their XP.

Karoht

2010-01-26, 03:02 PM

While the answer may vary by personal experience, I'm still curious, what's the most powerful race/class combination for a 19th level battleground twink? Some of my guild want to try it and I didn't know what to tell them (for either Alliance or Horde). Can anyone speak from experience?

Deathknight. Okay, kidding.

Paladin, hands down. At 19, bubble is amazingly effective, and you have a 3 second ranged stun that never misses at that level. Judgements are quick, ranged, instant damage. They have quick heals at that level too. And they get a high damage proc from one of their seals (which now hits 3 people and turns all of their holy damage to hit 3 people instead of 1). And don't forget the auras. Do they have hand of... (the one that removes snares?) at 19?

Rogues are heavily twinked at 19, damage output I don't know much about.
Hunters is the same story. Ranged stuff, traps, pet
Mage similar to hunter. Ranged damage, snares, AoE, some proc stuns.

Shaman at 19 does some pretty awesome damage with Windfury procs, but it's a proc so it isn't all that reliable. Shocks are high damage at 19. Chain Lightning is awesome as well, totems are useful enough, one of their fire totems does an AoE stun. Earthbind totem slows people down, great for defending any objectives or retreating.

Back before everyone got mounts at 30 and 40, druids were rocking the 29 and 39 bracket with travel form, particularly in Warsong Gulch as flag runners. Druids don't see much twinkage at 19 anymore, or even higher brackets.

Warlocs aren't really twinked much per se. But they bring a lot to the table at 19. Pet, fear, dots, high damage, other effects from specific pets and curses.

Warrior at 19 gets pretty darn shafted all things considered. Nothing at 19 that they bring really compairs. Priests are walking free honor, unless they are healing someone more important.

Karoht

2010-01-26, 03:08 PM

I was listening to the Jonathan Coultan song 'code monkey' this morning. Now I want to write a song.

It's called Gamer Girl.
Same music as code monkey.
'Gamer girl get up, drink red bull, Gamer girl go log on.'

The song will detail her lament as she is constantly forced to heal for her guild, when she really is actually secretely very good at DPS and PVP. The song ends with her ending up in an all girl guild where she can do what she's good at.

Gonna do a machinima for it, and send it to Jonathan Coultan. I'll post it on youtube when I have permission from him to do so.

Shyftir

2010-01-26, 05:01 PM

I suppose I should go ahead and add my name to the WoWitp list.

My toons: (worth noting)

Server: Antonidas

Alliance:
Martellei 80 Paladin, tank/dps

Telemari 43 Shaman dps

Kotter 15 Rogue dps

Horde:
Vecna 21 Priest dps/healer

The Linker

2010-01-26, 05:23 PM

tyckspoon

2010-01-26, 05:38 PM

Shaman at 19 does some pretty awesome damage with Windfury procs, but it's a proc so it isn't all that reliable. Shocks are high damage at 19. Chain Lightning is awesome as well, totems are useful enough, one of their fire totems does an AoE stun. Earthbind totem slows people down, great for defending any objectives or retreating.

..uh.. Windfury is trainable at 30. Frostbrand is 20. At 19, your options are Flametongue and Rockbiter. Chain Lightning doesn't show up until 32. You do have a fire totem, but it doesn't stun. And you don't have the Call spells yet, so you have to burn cooldowns dropping individual totems..

At 19, a Shaman is probably most useful as a flag-runner. As soon as you get into open space drop Earthbind, instant Ghost Wolf, and away; Ghost Wolf makes you faster than anybody at this level (Druids don't get Cat Form until 20) and provides snare resistance. You should have an uncatchable lead by the time any chasers get free of the Earthbind snare. If you want to do damage with the class in that bracket, I would do it caster style; stack spellpower, pick a target, and Lightning Bolt its brains out. You could also use Wind Shear to function as a caster spoiler- find a healer and interrupt at least half his spells.

mangosta71

2010-01-26, 07:55 PM

Paladin, hands down. At 19, bubble is amazingly effective, and you have a 3 second ranged stun that never misses at that level. Judgements are quick, ranged, instant damage. They have quick heals at that level too. And they get a high damage proc from one of their seals (which now hits 3 people and turns all of their holy damage to hit 3 people instead of 1). And don't forget the auras. Do they have hand of... (the one that removes snares?) at 19?

Seal of Command requires 10 points in ret to unlock, so isn't available until level 20 at the earliest. They do get Hand of Freedom at level 18, though.

Shyftir

2010-01-27, 12:42 AM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 5.7
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Additions

--Added three characters from Shyftir.

I couldn't find Telemari. I couldn't find anyone with that name on any server, actually. :smallconfused:

Hmm... its probably telamari, with an A and I just suck at typing..

BTW, just where is this list anyway?

The Linker

2010-01-27, 01:43 AM

Post #23 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7699918&postcount=23) of this thread. :smallsmile: Yeah, I was a little late.

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.5.8
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Additions

--Added one character from Shyftir.

The Linker

2010-01-27, 03:06 AM

Sorry for the double post, but I'm just not done yet. :smalltongue:

WoWitP Major Content Patch 1.6
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Additions

--Added a detailed analysis of the composition of the WoWitPers. This list is contained in a separate spoiler box located below the list.

Changes

--Moved the points tally, along with the list of previous winners. They are now inside the spoiler box describing the contest itself.

Fixes:

--Changed 'Pally' to 'Paladin' in the description of Alex Star's character 'Rhysode' on Kirin Tor.
--Changed 'Resto' to 'Restoration' in the description of BooNL's character 'Jorun' on EU-Ravenholdt.
--Added the 'Alliance' tag above GolemsVoice's character 'Kaelde' on Der Rat Von Dalaran.
--Added the 'Horde' tag above Wandiya's characters on Caelestrasz.

Where I prove I really do have too much time on my hands. Recorded here for convenience:

WoWitP Composition AnalysisThere are 122 characters in this list.

57 are Alliance.

65 are Horde.

44 are level 80.

10 are between the levels of 71 and 79.

13 are between the levels of 61 and 70.

10 are between the levels of 51 and 60.

7 are between the levels of 41 and 50.

8 are between the levels of 31 and 40.

12 are between the levels of 21 and 30.

18 are between the levels of 10 and 20.

11 are Death Knights.

10 are Druids.

15 are Hunters.

8 are Mages.

23 are Paladins.

10 are Priests.

13 are Rogues.

9 are Shaman.

14 are Warlocks.

8 are Warriors.

And 1 is a lowly Banker.

21 are Humans.

10 are Dwarves.

9 are Night Elves.

3 are Gnomes.

13 are Draenei.

8 are Orcs.

12 are Undead.

14 are Tauren.

8 are Trolls.

24 are Blood Elves.

67 have the standard of one gathering profession and one production.

18 have two gathering professions.

16 have two production professions. Usually Tailoring and Enchanting.

3 have no professions. Two of them are Death Knights.

1 has one profession for some reason.

31 are herbalists.

38 are miners.

35 are skinners.

10 are alchemists.

14 are blacksmiths.

15 are enchanters.

8 are engineers.

7 are jewelcrafters.

15 are leatherworkers.

10 are scribes.

19 are tailors.

BooNL

2010-01-27, 03:37 AM

ShaneLeahy

2010-01-27, 03:38 AM

Long time lurker of this thread, figured why not add my toons to the list just in case someone is on my server and needs something.

Server: Kirin Tor
Horde

Guild: Worlds End Regulars (as mentioned on Guildwatch (http://www.wow.com/2009/09/23/guildwatch-beware-of-tourists/), sorry proud of what my guild did)

Grami - Orc Rogue 80 - Combat Hack n' Slash - Grand Poobah (Guildmaster rank)
Ruairi - Blood Elf Paladin 80 - Protection
Motgut - Undead Priest 80 - Disc/Holy
Grishi - Troll Hunter 80 - Beast Master
Thrazgrash - Orc Death Knight 80 - Blood DPS
Alberta - Tauren Warrior 71 - Arms

various others that don't really count yet.

The Linker

2010-01-27, 03:44 AM

Linker, two notes:

Jorun's level should be 36 by now, I think that's a significant enough change.
Second, in your update you should probably mention my character is on the EU-Ravenholdt server, in case anyone gets confused :smallwink:.

Which should earn me a point to boot!

Ah! You are right, sir. I meant to, but forgot. Point for you!

Points and changes and additions will have to be completed tomorrow because the internet here shuts off in a few seconds and oh god I'm almost out of

Blayze

2010-01-27, 09:10 AM

Hello, Hyjal. Thanks for resetting today. It's Blayze again, ready to grind the last 130 mobs needed for Exalted. On my own.

I love being a tank.

Guancyto

2010-01-27, 01:32 PM

Oh right, characters.

Server: Khadgar
Faction: Horde

Cathari - level 80 Paladin (main)
Nathema - level 80 Death Knight
Kuifie - level 80 Rogue
Sharellz - level 80 Priest
Juce - level 80 Shaman
Nektarr - level 70 Hunter

And then some others that don't matter.

Also Server: Argent Dawn
Faction: Alliance

Tatorn - level 42 Warlock (main)
Chutzpah - level 60 Death Knight

The Linker

2010-01-27, 02:58 PM

Apparently waiting a day to make the composition analysis wouldn't have hurt. :smalltongue:

WoWitP Major Content Patch 1.7
Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Additions

--Added six characters from ShaneLeahy
--Added eight characters from Geesi
--Added profession data to the Composition Analysis from all EU characters.

Changes

--Modified BooNL's character 'Jorun''s description.
Increased level from 23 to 36

Fixes

--Modified the 1.6 patch notes to clarify that the server BooNL's character 'Jorun' is stationed on is EU-Ravenholdt, rather than US-Ravenholdt.
--Added a comma after the link to Hailphage's character, Irongouger.

Points

--Gave BooNL one point.

I forgot to mention that a few characters' professions data have not been added to the composition, due to an inability to access their armory profile. These are Queldanem (Agentpaper's character on Cenarion Circle) and Manicotti (uh, Manicotti's character. On Galakrond). This is just an FYI, nothing more -- I'm not gonna boot you off the list if it doesn't work, or anything like that. :smalltongue:

Technically, I haven't actually added the profession data for any EU characters, either. That's only becuase eu.wowarmory.com was down for maintenance yesterday when I was assembling the thing. I'll fix that a bit a later today. Edit: Done! Man, a LOT of you have Enchanting and Tailoring.

Edit: Just picked up the Armory app for the iPod Touch. Man, that's cool.

expirement10K14

2010-01-27, 04:36 PM

Got my outland dungeonmaster (easily solo with a DK at 80), so Im now going to attempt soloing AQ20, followed by a 2 man ZG. Praying for a mount.

Edit: I wonder how hard AQ 40 trash is... I want that red insect thing.

Edit2: AQ40 trash is hard. Really hard. 5 elites all aggro at once on the second pull.

The Glyphstone

2010-01-27, 05:04 PM

Yeah. AQ40 trash is still tough. I 2-manned it no problem on my healing shaman with a bear druid friend (up to the boss at least, who promptly MCroflstomped us), but it took us a while.

expirement10K14

2010-01-27, 05:05 PM

Main problem is the golem things. I got them on my second try, but its close. Picked up a yellow mount as well.

Edit: that boss is easy. Till he splits in 3 and kills me in a few seconds.

Zherog

2010-01-27, 05:57 PM

How do you solo a raid? Or, I guess the question actually is: how do you make it so you're in a raid group when you're alone?

Innis Cabal

2010-01-27, 05:58 PM

How do you solo a raid? Or, I guess the question actually is: how do you make it so you're in a raid group when you're alone?

Getting a ton of people togather, having them all log off when you go into the instance?

Kish

2010-01-27, 06:05 PM

expirement10K14

2010-01-27, 06:24 PM

Just need one other person, as long as s/he's not going to be doing anything you can't do in a raid group with the character you group with. Your boyfriend or girlfriend. Your other account. The guildmate who planned to play a different character, and so logs off that character right after you go inside the raid instance.

Kish got it. Guildie logged off for me. Got as far as the first boss of aq 20 before I had to leave (groan). Did try zul'gurub, though we couldnt two man hakkar because when we were mind controlled we would kill the other quite quickly (both are dk dps). THink we might need to wear some tanking gear to be able to absorb each others hits and survive long enough to heal with deathstrike. I did go through AQ 40 trash a few times and got all the mounts but red in about thirty minutes.

The Linker

2010-01-27, 07:04 PM

I tried soloing Onyxia40 on my Hunter. I could get to Phase 2, but then of course she starts fireballing ME, and I can't do squat about that.

Still, I'd like to try soloing AQ20 and ZG on my Druid sometime. Shouldn't be too hard, right? :D

Karoht

2010-01-27, 08:22 PM

expirement10K14

2010-01-27, 09:05 PM

My fiance and I go into ZG every lockout, hoping for the Raptor or Tiger mount to drop. We've attemped it at least 40 times in the last few months. No luck so far.

And as for killing Hakkar, you're both Deathknights. CC and kite the other person. You have a great CC ability. It's instant cast and ranged for crying out loud. They aren't immune to CC just because they're mind controlled.

Feral Druids can solo just about anything old world. Just time your stun/shift/heal/shift/asswhuppin right.

I'd like to be nice but, he is a moron. He doesn't understand interrupts or CC, and when trying to do the fight where the three rez each other made me want to tear my hair out. He gets really angry when I explain fights saying we can just smack them to death. I really need to find someone else to help.

AQ20 has been going well, but ossiron is going to take some patience to get down. I need to find those crystals much faster than I am. The two other bosses were simple- the first just needs to be kited and he goes down fast without dealing any damage at all. They drop a decent amount of cash, and the scarabs (got 5 coffers= 50 scarabs) sell around 20-30g each on my server. I think I found a new hobby.

BooNL

2010-01-28, 03:35 AM

The Linker

2010-01-28, 03:45 AM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.7.1
Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Points

--Gave BooNL one point.

Served

--The Linker just was.

Gauntlet

2010-01-28, 04:53 AM

*waves* Isvan, Draenei Priest (Scarshield Legion-EU) dropping in here. Incidentally, don't talk to me about soloing. At level 80, anything above Stratholme is a serious problem for me :smallwink:

GolemsVoice

2010-01-28, 07:12 AM

We did a 10 man AQ40 run last week. Those were fun times, and I managed to get all but the red mounts, as well as half the rep needed for Neutral. I will definitively do it again if I get the group together, and maybe BWL, so that I can get the Achievement. That would be the last for Classic Raider.

BooNL

2010-01-28, 01:02 PM

I have hit a small snag...

I'll be staying at my girlfriends for at least a couple of weeks (see how we enjoy living together!), which is great and all. Except for the fact that she has a terrible internet connection.

When I say she, I actually mean her neighbours who I steal it from. I just tried doing a dungeon, but it's impossible. It takes 6-7 seconds before I see my toon cast an instant cast spell and I managed to wipe the group on the first pull.

So, knowing I cannot improve the internet connection in any way, and buying our own connection being out of the question too (we'll be moving in a couple of months), do you guys know of any ways to tweak my game/computer to run with as little latency as possible?

Right now, I'm playing near max graphics and running a couple of interface mods. Removing those should improve the lag at least a bit, but I'm looking for more advice.

GolemsVoice

2010-01-28, 01:08 PM

There are also a few game features that can be disabled that reduce lag, I think.

mangosta71

2010-01-28, 01:50 PM

You'd have to boost the speed of the connection to make a noticeable difference. I feel your pain - I was in that situation for a while during the BC era. Being benched for 6 months sucks.

tyckspoon

2010-01-28, 02:04 PM

If your framerates are good and your problem really is connection latency.. there's not a lot you can do. You'd have to convince the neighbors to pay for a higher-grade service package and/or stop using the connection as much/assign your WoW process a higher priority on the router.

You can try disabling mods, but I don't think it will help; most interface changes are purely local and have no major performance effects (exceptions: ones that prettify elements like the minimap, which can harm your FPS a little. Your frames should be at least 30-60 reliably for smooth gameplay; if they're not, then you need to slide the graphics down.) Informative mods like DPS and threat meters can cause some extra lag because they have to make extra contacts with the server/other players in order to gather information.

But mostly, without controlling the connection yourself you'll probably just have to deal with it. Learn to play the auction house or go fishing or spam Trade with your profession services or something.

Karoht

2010-01-28, 02:06 PM

Go down to the local net cafe and play there. It's going to be easier than relying on stable bandwidth (from your stolen connection) that night. Besides, what would happen if your neighbors got wise and protected their network?

The Linker

2010-01-28, 04:33 PM

Crankin' out the patches, yo.

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.7.2
Thursday, January 28, 2010

Additions

--Added one character from Gauntlet.

BooNL

2010-01-29, 07:09 AM

That's the problem indeed. My FPS are pretty good, running at a stable 40-50 at all times.

However, the latency is killing me. If there is truly nothing I can do from this end, I guess I'll have to plan my game nights back at my own place :smallmad:.

I've been mooching off my gf's neighbour for as long as I've known her, and he's never found out. However, simply walking up to him and asking him to pay for better cable... probably not gonna happen :smallbiggrin:.

Too bad, I was really getting back into this game, now I'll be forced to let it rest for a while...

Malek

2010-01-29, 02:19 PM

Muahahahaha... Dreadsteed of Xoroth (both the mount AND feat of strength) is mine :smallbiggrin: Also: level 67 now :P

The Linker

2010-01-29, 03:39 PM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.7.3
Friday, January 29, 2010

Changes

--Modified the description of Malek's character 'Canavan'.

Level increased from 60 to 67.

Bam!

Karoht

2010-01-29, 04:10 PM

Is anyone noticing a sudden influx of retarded on their servers?

Let me explain.
In the past week, I've run into more fresh 80's than I care to ever again. And they call think they can raidlead. So they make raids, and to the best of my knowledge, they seem competent. They're gearchecking and asking for people with the achievement, though I can't verify if they are actually doing so.

So, it comes time for the first boss, and the raid leader has said, in 3 different pugs now, "Okay someone explain this fight" and upon verification, the Raidlead has abosolutely no idea how the boss fight works.

If you don't know Patchwerk, Flame Leviathan, or Northrend Beasts by now, you have no business leading a raid. Lets just say that now.

Top it off, LFG has paired me with fresh 80 tanks for heroics, who don't even have defense rating on their gear, but have selected 'tank' for some reason. Most aren't even spec'd as tanks. I had to go through 3 tanks this morning before I got one that could do the daily random heroic.

Seriously, when did tanks become the new (class)tards?

Guancyto

2010-01-29, 05:00 PM

Since the DPS started figuring out that tanks got instant queues, and also that the completely idiotic time limit on vote kicks means that the group has to put up with their shenanigans instead of being able to boot them immediately.

Apparently it's better to fail your way through an instance for an hour than to wait 15 minutes to rock through it in another 15. Who knew?

I don't mind fresh tanks. Even the ones in heirloom gear. I do mind the people who (based on their DPS gear) could have a perfectly viable tank set, don't seem to have bothered and queue as tanks anyway.

Shishnarfne

2010-01-30, 01:21 AM

Hehe, had one of those undergeared tanks earlier tonight on my priest: DK tank who showed up with 500 defense rating and nine minutes of rez sickness. We decided waiting out his rez sickness (after a couple pulls) was faster than waiting for the vote kick timer. It was really fun keeping the group up for the two pulls where he tried to tank with the rez sickness.

He wound up pulling a group (later) that the rest of us had bypassed and we couldn't get back to him in time.

Ah, well, H UK isn't that hard, and I actually had to work while healing instead of Prayer of Mending+Renew and falling asleep at my keyboard.

On a better note, my mage dps'd H Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron with a recently 80 tank who was quite skilled. I was somewhat surprised that he was able to replace a pre-heroic blade with the tanking sword off of Tyrannus. I'll take skilled with minimal gear over geared and clueless pretty much any day (mostly because the skilled people manage to avoid getting in over their heads gearwise, too).

Anyone not willing to gear and spec for a tank who wants a tank queue should find a friend/guildie who is a tank, rather than try to fake it. But I'll be honest: my mage has 10 minute+ queue times; my priest 1-2 minute queues; but if I have to wait 15 seconds for a queue on my DK as a tank, that's a long time. The appeal for getting a "tank-length" queue is obvious.

Innis Cabal

2010-01-30, 03:59 AM

Here's a crazy question. Who actually RP's on the RP servers? I myself do, but it dosn't seem to be something thats brought up here alot.

GolemsVoice

2010-01-30, 04:20 AM

I try to whenever I actually find a partner for it, and have written several in-character things on the message board of my guild.

The Linker

2010-01-30, 04:22 AM

I don't like any sort of deep RP, but lighthearted banter -- maybe with a little fourth-wall-breaking thrown in -- is definitely my kind of thing. Just don't expect me to go to a memorial service for your brother, the half-elf-half-orc who was clubbed to death due to intolerance (by, in a totally original twist so it's not like all those OTHER stories, trolls for some reason) and give a heartfelt speech and spam the /mourn and /cry emotes all night. :smalltongue:

That said, I don't participate in it as much as I'd like to. My whole experience can pretty much be summed up as playing off other people who engage me. :smallconfused:

Kish

2010-01-30, 06:14 AM

Here's a crazy question. Who actually RP's on the RP servers? I myself do, but it dosn't seem to be something thats brought up here alot.
I realized, after being accused of not roleplaying because I didn't want to stop helping the people of Sporeggar to attend a string wedding (a wedding for pieces of string...yes, reallly...) that my concept of roleplaying is quite different from most people's on RP servers. I roleplay a great deal--if by that you mean "act like I actually am my character, rather than talking about 'toons' and 'mobs.'" I played for the game's story, though, not the stories all the amateur thespians around me come up with.

Inhuman Bot

2010-01-30, 01:05 PM

Whew.

Finally got Rivendare's Deathcharger.

Also, I generally don't like to que for an RDH if I don't have a tank and healer from my guild, or at least FL.

Adumbration

2010-01-30, 01:21 PM

Finally got my WoW account to work, but being a new computer, my old addons are gone, and frankly, I can't remember their names.

I know. I can find hundreds of addons on the internet with google. This is the problem. Which of them are good? Where is it safe to download?

So I come here to seek your help. I'm primarily looking for a quest helper for Scourge side, but I'm taking suggestions for other addons. Thank you beforehand!

tyckspoon

2010-01-30, 02:03 PM

Well.. what do you do? What roles do you normally play in what classes? There's a lot of specific stuff that is useful for some stuff and not others..

but, general use stuff that I'm currently running:
Auctioneer- a huuge auction addon, can do.. almost anything auction-house related you might want. Probably more powerful than it needs to be for what I do.

IceHUD: versatile UI addition that places information where most of your focus is- that is, near your toon on-screen. Easily configurable to show things like target-of-target cast bars where you need to see them and as large as you need to see them so you notice them (if you're wondering why you might want that.. you're not a healer.)

QuestHelper: It's.. a quest helper. Tracks your progress, keeps records of where quest items drop, zones where quest mobs can be found, that sort of fing. Usually accurate, although some things are weird (if you have to buy something to finish a quest, for example, instead of saying "buy this from the AH" it will just keep directing you to the nearest mailbox because that's the location where you actually pick up the item.)

Dominoes: This or another action-bar management addon is critical, IMO. I ran without one for a few months and couldn't imagine doing it now; you can rearrange, resize, and reposition any bars you want.

Grid: Or other unit-frame addons. Mostly important if you raid; these will take the default UI frames (those sections representing your other party/raid members) and make them present actual useful information.

Adumbration

2010-01-30, 03:14 PM

Just downloaded QuestHelper to start with, but I seem to recall that on my previous computer it also helped find the level-appropriate quests, as well as help finish them. This version just helps you finish them.

I'm leveling a low level troll hunter, so it doesn't matter much yet, but particularly at higher levels that function would be very useful. Does it exist anymore/where can I get it?

Looking at more addons now.

The Linker

2010-01-30, 04:38 PM

QuestHelper: It's.. a quest helper. Tracks your progress, keeps records of where quest items drop, zones where quest mobs can be found, that sort of fing. Usually accurate, although some things are weird (if you have to buy something to finish a quest, for example, instead of saying "buy this from the AH" it will just keep directing you to the nearest mailbox because that's the location where you actually pick up the item.)

Or, in the case of one Alliance quest in Borean Tundra, directs you to the Storm Peaks where the Engineering item you need HAPPENS to drop off some high level mob. Had some 70 Rogue wandering around asking for help in an area seven levels above him. Stay smart, people. :smalltongue:

Malek

2010-01-30, 05:00 PM

Ahh, addons... Well a good place to search for them is Curse (http://www.curse.com).

As for addons themseves:

-Auctioneer, Atlas and Omen would probably be the "base" package, stuff that I can see being useful for anyone.

-QuestHelper gets a lot of good reputation, but can't comment personally as I use Carbonite which includes it's own quest module.

-ArkInventory would be something I might advise personally - it requires a bit of setup, but it *greatly* improves your ability to manage inventory if you do take the time.

-Quartz is my casting bar addon of choice (it combines nice look with showing the lag), not sure if hunters need that much.

I have much more installed (I'm a addon junkie :P) but nothing of that seems "vital" so I'll pass commenting.

AgentPaper

2010-01-30, 10:56 PM

Quest Helper is obsolete. By default, you're now shown exactly where you need to go for your quests on the map, so the only thing it does is give you a logical order to do them in to get it all done the fastest, which can be nice but generally isn't worth the huge addon.

However, what you might want is something like Jame's Horde Leveling Guide in addon form (http://www.wow-pro.com/leveling_guides/james_horde_leveling_guide_addon). Just pick a spot in the guide around your level, and it'll tell you exactly where to go, what quests to get, and how to complete them, and in what order to level up very efficiently and with much less hassle than if you wandered around on your own looking for quests. It'll even help you out by telling you to get items for a later quest on the auction house, so you can turn them in right when you get them, instead of having to trudge back to Orgrimmar.

Anyways, other addons:

Auctioneer is of course great. Makes selling all those various white and green items you get much easier and often much more profitable. Just scan, then throw whatever you have on the auction house for whatever it tells you it's worth. And if you keep it moderately up to date, it's also very nice for telling whether that stack of magenta primal refined essence of raw chimpanzee is worth holding on to or whether you should drop it to pick up that doily of +17 stamina, agility and spirit.

Dominoes is also very nice to mod the action bars to place them where you want them. It also makes it easy to assign hotkeys. Personally, I use: 1-6, alt 1-6, and alt RTY-FGH-CVB, for a total of 18 buttons. For some classes that need even more buttons, like my DK and druid, I also use shift to add 12 more buttons. And, though I haven't needed it yet, I could also use shift-alt together to add another 12. You could also use ctrl in the same way, but I generally find it hard to press along with the keys compared to alt and shift. I also don't go beyond 6 on the number line for the same reason.

If you ever end up raiding, or even doing 5-mans, Deadly Boss Mods is almost essential. It tells you when to interrupt, when to kill adds, and when to run away like a little girl. Another near-necessity is Vent, so you can listen to the raid leader when he tells everyone what to do and explains the fight. Remember that you don't need to have a mic even, unless you plan to lead raids, you just need to be able to listen.

Atlas Loot is another nice addon if you're doing dungeons, specifically for seeing what the various bosses can drop, so you can know which dungeons you're interested in running and when you've gotten everything you want from that annoying boss.

Grid or similar is also very useful when healing, to make it easier to tell who needs your heals, who's out of range, and who has that curse of raid wiping that you need to cleanse.

Some type of damage meter can also be very useful, especially if you're DPS. I use Recount, but others work just fine as well. Basically it lets you know how much damage you and other people in your group have been doing, both overall and per second, so you can know how well you stack up and whether your new experimental rotation helped or not.

A threat meter, such as Omen, can also be useful if you're tanking, though it's becoming less of a necessity since tanks generally produce enough threat that you don't have to worry about pulling aggro from them, though it can still be good to know. If you're tanking, it's more useful, at the very least so you can see how much threat you're putting out, and whether you're barely scraping by and need to gem for more STR, or whether you're miles ahead of even the top DPS and can switch to armor with more mitigation stats. And, of course, there's still a few bosses you really need to know where you're threat is at accurately, such as Patchwerk, to make sure you stay above the DPS but below the main tank.

I, personally, also like to use an addon call DrDamage, which puts a little number on your abilities on the action bar telling you how much damage they actually do on average, including stats from gear, talents, current buffs, and the enemy's level and defenses and such. And if you hold your mouse over the button, it'll give you a lot more detailed info, like chance to hit, chance to crit, average normal, crit, and overall damage for DoTs, how much damage/mana, damage/second, and for stuff that does some damage up front and some over time, it'll give you a comparison between spamming it constantly and letting it go through it's duration, both in mana consumption and DPS. This is especially helpful while leveling, since often you'll have multiple abilities that do similar things, and often one will be just plain better than the other.

Other than that, there's a whole lot of stuff specific to each class, for example if you're a shaman, you can get stuff to help manage your totems, weapon buffs, and shields, as well as things like maelstrom procs if you're an enhancement shammy. (watching the buff is a pain in the ass, especially when there's about three dozen buffs up there constantly moving around)

As for where to get all these addons, Curse.com is probably the best place. I personally have their little client, which makes it much easier to keep track of which addons I have and which ones are out of date, and to update them when that happens.

Edit: In addition to addons, you might want to look over macros, which can be equally useful. For example, on my shaman, I have macros set to, when I cast Wind Shear or Purge, stop casting, target my focus, cast, and then re-target whoever I had targeted. That way, I can set the boss to be my focus, and then when I see him start casting or DBM tells me something needs to be purged, I can just hit the button and then go back to healing or DPSing my other target, without having to worry about frantically clicking the boss, move or jump to stop casting my heal, cast, and then frantically re-target the tank I just stopped healing.

Of course, it's not easy to know what macros you'll want, and not everyone knows how to make macros, so if you want help, here (http://www.wowwiki.com/Useful_macros) is a nice list of macros. (especially look under Useful Macros by Class, on the right) And of course you can always ask here, and I or someone else can help you out.

Zherog

2010-01-31, 12:24 AM

I told a friend I'd help him do some research to improve his mage. Folks here have pointed me to some great resources for rogues, so I'm gonna start here. Anybody have good reference sites for mages looking to improve? Good talent specs, gear lists (something like Shadowpanther), rotation descriptions, etc would be a great start.

The Glyphstone

2010-01-31, 12:47 AM

There's always Elitist Jerks, naturally - knowing the absolute best is still helpful even if you're not intending to have the best as your baseline.

WoW.com has a pretty nice Mage column, Arcane Brilliance.

tyckspoon

2010-01-31, 01:09 AM

Mage 'rotation': Cast your primary nuke. Cast it again. Keep casting it until it procs a talent. Cast your instant Pyroblast/free Fireball/free Arcane Missiles/Shatter-boosted Frost Bolt + Deep Freeze. Return to start. It's rather difficult to really screw up Mage DPS in that respect (Fire Mages have it a little tougher, since they also have to pay attention to keeping the Scorch debuff up and getting as close to 100% Living Bomb uptime as they can.. but it still pretty much comes down to "Cast Fireball. Cast Fireball. Cast Fireball. !Hot Streak! Cast Pyroblast! Cast Fireball...)

Gauntlet

2010-01-31, 07:03 AM

As far as Addons go, I find Bartender to be pretty essential as well, just becaus eI don't actually have enough buttons to hold everything on the default Blizzard UI.
As far as watching for buffs goes, I fine PowerAuras to be a good choice there- you can configure it to show an effect round your character whenever you have or haven't got any buff (or a number of stacks of a buff). I use it to tell me when my Inner Fire is failling off, when Vampiric Embrace is gone and when I'm on 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving. It should also work for stuff like Maelstrom Weapon, Lightning Shield and so on. I use it on my mage alt to show up when Missile Barrage procs (to make my rotation easier :smallwink:).

Other useful but not exactly essential addons I use (I'm an addon junkie):
SexyMap: makes you minimap moveable, and look pretty.
ItemRack: Similar to the blizz equipment manager, but lets you set it to do things like change helm and cloak display, equip an item set upon mounting/changing stance and so on.
Shadowed Unit Frames: simple but still good looking unit frames, and they dont' eat as much of your connection as X-Perl.
Skada Damage Meter: Like Recount, only more streamlined (slightly less graph analysis, but it still works).
ForteXorcist: It's a dot/cooldown/hot/buff timer. It was originally a warlock addon, but it tracks just about everything, including trinkets, rune cooldowns, temporary buffs, permanent bufs...
There's a load more I have, but they've either been mentioned here (Grid, Omen, DBM, Auctioneer) or they are unlikely to be useful to you (EventHorizon, FMR, Gladius).

>.>
yes, I use two dot timers at once. *cough*

AgentPaper

2010-01-31, 08:19 AM

It's always wierd to, after playing an enhancement shaman, see what stats other classes want. It's always some absurdly simple priority list, like hit cap then stat1, stat2, stat3, stat4, in that order. Whereas for enhancement shamans, you want either attack power, hit rating, crit, agility, haste, expertise, or int, and the only way to tell which one is the best for you with your current gear is to have a simulator tell you. And even that's just a best guess. And then of course you have to decide whether you want fast weapons, slow weapons, one of each, and which weapon buffs you want on which weapons, and, and, and...*head asplode*

I think the main reason people tend to count enhancement shamans as "low" DPS is that nobody really knows how they hell they're supposed to be geared. I managed to pull some pretty slick (as in normally top) DPS with my pre-made shammy after doing some heavy simming and theorycrafting, though, so I know it's possible at least.

Innis Cabal

2010-01-31, 08:22 AM

For you RPer's out there, FlagRP is probably your best bet for discriptions, gaining last names and things of that nature. Griffon Heart Items is also rather neat and handy for those of you who like to make items for Guild quests.

Kish

2010-01-31, 09:04 AM

And then of course you have to decide whether you want fast weapons, slow weapons, one of each, and which weapon buffs you want on which weapons, and, and, and...*head asplode*
Since when is that ambiguous? Slow weapons all the way (you're not a rogue), Windfury/Flametongue.

AgentPaper

2010-01-31, 09:45 AM

Since when is that ambiguous? Slow weapons all the way (you're not a rogue), Windfury/Flametongue.

Well, yes, between two weapons of similar DPS and stats, you want two slow weapons. However, if you can get a moderate upgrade with a fast weapon in your off-hand, it might be worth using over a slow weaker weapon, since flametounge scales better with faster weapons. So yeah, that's not really a big issue most of the time. As for WF/FT, that seems to be the accepted standard, but I'm not so sure at the moment. I've tried using WF on both, and against a dummy it gives me better DPS than WF/FT does, but then that's just a dummy, so I don't know if it's 100% accurate, and surely they'd have found out that twin WF was better over at EJ if it was that easy...but then again, the damage meter doesn't lie. Or did it? I'll have to do some more testing with this wen I start playing my shaman again some more.

Right now I'm focusing more on my Warrior, though, who is thankfully much easier to figure out the stats for. Def cap, then stam, and then dodge/defense rating/parry/strength.

On the topic of tanks, I think I heard someone complaining about tanks that stack Stamina to all hell and ignore mitigation beyond defense cap, for the most part? Well, as a healer and a tank, I've got to say, I'd much rather have someone that can take 2-4 hits from the boss, than one who can only take 1-2, but dodges 20-30% more. Sure, the second one is going to be taking less damage overall, and thus less healing is required, but really that isn't worth much. At best, it makes it so the healer runs out of mana slower, which doesn't really happen very often anymore, and if it does, it's 100% of the time because of heavy raid damage, not tank damage. And that extra bit of HP padding is really essential.

Sure, in a pure tank 'n spank, being able to survive a few more hits isn't very useful, since the healers will keep you up regardless. But there's really no such thing as a tank 'n spank anymore, and there's always something that might cause a spike of damage on the tank that the healers can't anticipate, or the healers might have to move around to avoid various hazards and such, or heck, the player might just sneeze, and the tank has to be able to live through that 2-3 hits between heals.

Karoht

2010-02-01, 02:49 PM

I've tried using WF on both, and against a dummy it gives me better DPS than WF/FT does, but then that's just a dummy, so I don't know if it's 100% accurate, and surely they'd have found out that twin WF was better over at EJ if it was that easy...but then again, the damage meter doesn't lie. Or did it?
Twin Windfury no longer works. They took that out ages ago. You should still be proccing the extra attack at the same percentage with twin WF than with 1 WF and 1 FT.

On the topic of tanks, I think I heard someone complaining about tanks that stack Stamina to all hell and ignore mitigation beyond defense cap, for the most part?Oooh, this is a neat topic.

Alright, more mit or more HP? Well, this is where I look at trinkets like the brewmaiden trinkets and laugh. Really, 270 stamina beats having a proc or on use ability? This I find odd. Tanking is about managing cooldowns and farming threat, especially Warriors and Deathknights. Giving up a slot that could provide you with another 'oh snap' button, much less two, seems counter intuitive. Especially with Bear tanks and Pally tanks which don't get many 'oh snap' buttons. Paladins have THE best button in the game, shield. Comparitively, bear tanks get Barkskin which doesn't do a whole heck of a lot, but at least it is on a short cooldown. Also with bear tanks having less defensive mechanics (no parry, no block, just dodge and defence) you would think that getting an extra cooldown/proc type ability or two would be crucial.

From a healing standpoint:
Whoever takes less damage overall, is the better tank. That really sums it up I'm afraid. Sure, the one with only 35K HP instead of 50K means that I might have to throw more pre-emptive heals (hots, shields, earth shield, prayer of mending). The lesser HP'd tank's healthbar will spike more sharply by comparison, so I'll have to be on my game. But the 50K tank who is taking constant damage and needs constant babysiting (and who in your example has less mitigating stats) means that if the raid is suffering, I might not be able to save them for fear that the tank may die. Less raid members means less DPS and heals, meaning the fight gets harder. Fights are DPS races, and healing marathons, as much as they are a test of the tank. The more attention I have to pay on the tank, the less attention I can pay on the rest, which jepardizes two parts of what is supposed to be a 3 part equasion.

If fights were just tank and spank (lets use Patchwerk as a good example), and raid damage was minimal to zero, then yes, the mitigation VS stamina arguement is less relevant, as it will all be on the healer/s, who should all be focused on that tank and no one else really. However, in many of the blue posts for Ulduar and ToC, Blizzard devs have said constantly that fights such as Patchwerk (AKA-Target Dummy Loot Fights) are going to be few and far between, especially as time goes on.

Kish

2010-02-01, 03:05 PM

On the topic of tanks, I think I heard someone complaining about tanks that stack Stamina to all hell and ignore mitigation beyond defense cap, for the most part?

Me, yes.

I see a lot of tanks with insane health numbers who bleed an ocean as soon as they get a papercut. The first time or two, I was surprised. Now I know, before I even look them up, what I'm going to see: As close to 540 defense rating above 540 as they could get, stacked Stamina above everything else. You're more than welcome to heal my share of those monstrosities, if you think that gear plan is viable; I shall not begrudge you a single one of them.

AgentPaper

2010-02-01, 04:05 PM

Twin Windfury no longer works. They took that out ages ago. You should still be proccing the extra attack at the same percentage with twin WF than with 1 WF and 1 FT.

Interesting if true. As I've said, my DPS meter said otherwise, but then again I haven't tested extensively.

Alright, more mit or more HP? Well, this is where I look at trinkets like the brewmaiden trinkets and laugh. Really, 270 stamina beats having a proc or on use ability? This I find odd. Tanking is about managing cooldowns and farming threat, especially Warriors and Deathknights. Giving up a slot that could provide you with another 'oh snap' button, much less two, seems counter intuitive. Especially with Bear tanks and Pally tanks which don't get many 'oh snap' buttons. Paladins have THE best button in the game, shield. Comparitively, bear tanks get Barkskin which doesn't do a whole heck of a lot, but at least it is on a short cooldown. Also with bear tanks having less defensive mechanics (no parry, no block, just dodge and defence) you would think that getting an extra cooldown/proc type ability or two would be crucial.

The idea is that, with that much more health, you won't get into those "oh crap!" situations in the first place. Of course, that's definitely a decision, and being able to use cooldowns for specific phases or when things get rough can be more useful than having more HP when you might not need it. The cooldowns might be overall more useful, but stuff like the brewfest stuff has it's place, and I could see myself using them.

From a healing standpoint:
Whoever takes less damage overall, is the better tank. That really sums it up I'm afraid. Sure, the one with only 35K HP instead of 50K means that I might have to throw more pre-emptive heals (hots, shields, earth shield, prayer of mending). The lesser HP'd tank's healthbar will spike more sharply by comparison, so I'll have to be on my game. But the 50K tank who is taking constant damage and needs constant babysiting (and who in your example has less mitigating stats) means that if the raid is suffering, I might not be able to save them for fear that the tank may die. Less raid members means less DPS and heals, meaning the fight gets harder. Fights are DPS races, and healing marathons, as much as they are a test of the tank. The more attention I have to pay on the tank, the less attention I can pay on the rest, which jepardizes two parts of what is supposed to be a 3 part equasion.

From a healing standpoint, whoever takes less damage overall means nothing whatsoever. Healers can out-heal the boss' damage 100% of the time. At worst, you'll have to gem a bit more Mp5 or use mana-recovery abilities more often. Running out of mana used to be a major threat in by-gone eras of raiding, but has been phased out almost completely.

The real threat to tanks is spike damage, taking too much damage in too short a time that the healers can't keep them up during that time. Both mitigation and effective health can help with this, and indeed mitigation can also be more efficient at it, but it's also very much unreliable. Being able to dodge half the attacks doesn't help you one whit when the boss lands a string of 5 lucky hits on you. Sure, you can reduce the chance of that happening, but it'll never go away. Even if it's just a 1% chance of it happening, that's far too much for something that will wipe the raid when it happens.

With more effective health, however, you can survive those 5 hits, so while they will happen more often, it doesn't matter, because you'll be alive and well at the end of it.

I also find it amusing that you say how the lesser HP'ed tank will jump around in HP more often, meaning you'll have to pay closer attention to him, and then use this as a reason that the higher HP tank needs MORE babysitting. Might want to get your story straight, there. :smallwink:

I, for one, very much like not having to babysit my tank, which is why I like high HP tanks. They're taking more damage, yes, but it is also very consistent, and less prone to falling suddenly and demanding immediate attention. I might have to heal more damage, but I'll probably be casting less heals overall, since I can actually wait until he's taken damage before healing, instead of needing to constantly be healing just in case he needs it, since with a spiky tank, it's entirely possible that he will just flat-out die, even from full health, before I can finish casting my heal.

If fights were just tank and spank (lets use Patchwerk as a good example), and raid damage was minimal to zero, then yes, the mitigation VS stamina arguement is less relevant, as it will all be on the healer/s, who should all be focused on that tank and no one else really. However, in many of the blue posts for Ulduar and ToC, Blizzard devs have said constantly that fights such as Patchwerk (AKA-Target Dummy Loot Fights) are going to be few and far between, especially as time goes on.

Are you saying that there isn't a designated tank healer outside of fights like Patchwerk? In my experience, healers are always divided into "tank heals" and "raid heals", often with tank heals being sub-divided between tanks, in multi-tank fights. Never should you be in a situation where you be switching between healing the tank and healing the raid.

Edit: I should try and be clear here, I'm talking about effective health versus mitigation, effective health being how much raw damage you can take, given your damage reduction from armor and such and your total amount of HP, and mitigation being your chance to evade damage altogether, mostly be dodging/parrying/being missed.

tyckspoon

2010-02-01, 05:14 PM

Well, yes, between two weapons of similar DPS and stats, you want two slow weapons. However, if you can get a moderate upgrade with a fast weapon in your off-hand, it might be worth using over a slow weaker weapon, since flametounge scales better with faster weapons. So yeah, that's not really a big issue most of the time. As for WF/FT, that seems to be the accepted standard, but I'm not so sure at the moment. I've tried using WF on both, and against a dummy it gives me better DPS than WF/FT does, but then that's just a dummy, so I don't know if it's 100% accurate, and surely they'd have found out that twin WF was better over at EJ if it was that easy...but then again, the damage meter doesn't lie. Or did it? I'll have to do some more testing with this wen I start playing my shaman again some more.

Auto-attacking only, or doing your full array of special attacks? I can see tighter timings on Windfury procs giving you a DPS bump on auto-attacks, but remember that running Flametongue on the off-hand increases the damage on Lava Lash and provides extra Spellpower for your Shock and Maelstrom casts; it will take a very impressive off-hand weapon for off-hand Windfury hits to make up for the loss of those benefits (plus, Flametongue adds a flat damage bonus to the off-hand which is the same value regardless of positioning, while Windfurys from the off-hand are only hitting at half value because they're the off-hand.)

GolemsVoice

2010-02-01, 06:10 PM

I, for one, very much like not having to babysit my tank, which is why I like high HP tanks. They're taking more damage, yes, but it is also very consistent, and less prone to falling suddenly and demanding immediate attention. I might have to heal more damage, but I'll probably be casting less heals overall, since I can actually wait until he's taken damage before healing, instead of needing to constantly be healing just in case he needs it, since with a spiky tank, it's entirely possible that he will just flat-out die, even from full health, before I can finish casting my heal.

As a dedicated healer, I'm with you on this one. Many fights require either the healer or the tank, or both, to move to avoid death, and knowing that you can take an eye of the tank to make sure you arrive safely means very much. Because the more you know a tank can take, even if bad situations should come, the more you can focus on other things that need your attention, like the group, or the environment.

Karoht

2010-02-02, 03:19 PM

I've got a lvl 12 shaman who I haven't touched in ages. I'm going to level him in Cataclysm, so I can see all the nifty new areas and the like with a character who is actually appropriate level to experience it.

Speaking of which, the end of Wrath of the Lich King draws near. Today, the final wing of ICC is available, and the cinematic which plays upon the Lich King's death has been datamined and spammed across the internet as far as the eye can see.

First, I am going to request that no one spoil it. Yeah, we all know whats going to happen, but we don't know what's going to happen. So quick reminder, spoiler tags, and let us know what you are covering, because I have a habit of opening such tags if they are unmarked.

Second, a question. Are you going to view it on the internet, or are you going to wait until you kill Arthas to view the cinematic?

Waiting...

Zherog

2010-02-02, 03:25 PM

I'll view it on the intertubes.

The Linker

2010-02-02, 03:35 PM

Second, a question. Are you going to view it on the internet, or are you going to wait until you kill Arthas to view the cinematic?

Waiting...

I would try* to wait, if I thought I had any hope of killing him in the conceivable future. I just have no time to set aside for raids more often than not. D:

*Read: I'd probably watch it later today after going crazy rather than watch it right now like I'm about to. :smallamused:

mangosta71

2010-02-02, 03:39 PM

I'll see it when I kill Arthas, which has a good chance of happening this weekend in the 10 man version.

Our 25 man group finally got Putricide last night, but we haven't put much work into Blood Queen yet. The mechanic of limiting the number of attempts you get on bosses is kind of irritating to me, especially when the limit is so low and my guild has a history of having bad things happen unexpectedly to key members. As an example, we would have downed Putricide a lot earlier except, when the boss was at about 10% our MT, who never has connection issues, got DCed. The other two tanks made a valiant attempt but they had too many stacks of the debuff, and we lost one at .3%. 100k hp. Less than 1 second away, the kill was snatched out of our hands.

Looking forward to the new boss in VoA. Really want my t10 pants, and would prefer to not have to spend a whole bunch of badges for them, especially as I just spent a bunch to get saronites for a pair of boots (read, no longer have enough badges to buy them). The gloves are ok too, but I've really been hurting for expertise.

Karoht

2010-02-02, 03:58 PM

Oh yeah, the new VoA boss. Easy T10 for all. Woot.

Yeah, I'm still on the steady climb for T10 shoulders and gloves. Got a ways to go yet. Not looking forward to the 190 to get the next two pieces, so if I can get a piece out of VoA, heck, I'll be in there every week.

PS-I have heard that the new VoA boss isn't super difficult. Clear out VoA on 10 and 25 every week, and you'll get Frost and Triumph Badges much quicker, and likely get T9 or T8 if you have neither.

As for the cinematic, I'm waiting for the kill. I want to be surprised.
*Plays the song from All Dogs Go to Heaven entitled "Let me be surprised"*

So far though, I would call ICC hard the way Naxx was hard if you were in nothing but blues from heroics and quests. Part of me is really jazzed for hard modes. Anything to keep me from having nothing to do in WoW, therefore being forced by my friends to go play Aion.

Good news everyone...
ICC has quite a few pugs clearing out the first wing. Most of the pugs aren't even gear checking, from my experience. In fact, last night I was in ICC25 with a group that was severely undergeared. But I estimate 20/25 were extremely skilled, the other 5 were better geared but still passable or better in skill level.

darkblust

2010-02-02, 05:05 PM

So,at what level should i go to Northrend?

My druid,syleann,has gotten to level 66,and i now have a level 30 fury warrior dwarf named Athrogaite,on trollbane.

AgentPaper

2010-02-02, 05:11 PM

So,at what level should i go to Northrend?

68. There's really no reason to wait any longer than that.

As for the datamined cinema on the intrawebs, well, I've already watched it, so I guess that answers your question. I won't post any spoilers here, even in tags, but I gotta say, it was pretty bitchin, and not who I expected at all.

Who I expected: (in spoilers just in case someone else suspected the same person)
All Hail Lich Queen Sylvannas! I mean, really, who would be better? She's proven her ability to break free from the scourge mind control, and to help others, so it's completely feasible that she would be able to free a lot of the various heroes that have been turned into scourge.

The Linker

2010-02-02, 05:28 PM

The whole thing is very human-centric. A human kills the human Lich King, wants to take on the burden for himself, but instead gives it to another human. Now the Lich King line has been Orc-Human-Human. There are other races, you guys! :smalltongue:

Still, I thought Terenas, the benevolent king, might have done a good job. Ner'Zhul did it without a corporeal form, Terenas might be able to inhabit the armor.

TheEmerged

2010-02-02, 06:05 PM

RE: RP on RP Servers. Well, I play on an RP server myself. I've been able to join in on more than a few events now that my playtime is closer to primetime. Generally, in an instance, people just run the instance. The one time I was able to go against Malygos, a few of us made a point about how we were avenging Keristraza, and that's about it.

RE: Shaman. I recently finished leveling my Alliance Cliche (draenei shaman/jewelcrafter) from 60 to 80. Now what I'm about to say could change based on spec (mine was enhancement), could change at end-game levels, and all the usual disclaimers. But I was definitely killing mobs faster with slow/wind on main and fast/flame on off-hand.

RE: The Arthas Video. My chance of actually seeing this in-game are somewhere between a rat's chance at a cat show and an ice-cube's chance in the desert. My policy however is that I won't go looking for it until I've had a 'reasonable' chance at it, so I won't be seeing it before it's live on the servers at least.

So,at what level should i go to Northrend?

My druid,syleann,has gotten to level 66,and i now have a level 30 fury warrior dwarf named Athrogaite,on trollbane.

I delayed on my other alts, so as an experiment I took my shadow priest to Northrend at 68. It's *definitely* workable, and probably what I'll do with my remaining alts when/if they get that far along.

Archangel Yuki

2010-02-03, 01:33 AM

So i went through about 38 games tonight with my Disc priest buddy, who is extremely well geared, and myself, as a mut rogue, alright gear (1k and 730 resil respectivle). We went 11-1 the first few matches, but then ended up hitting a wall with some Warrior Paladin teams.

If the paladin was holy, we always lost. Now, Warrior/any other combonation we facerolled rather easy, and holy paladin/anything else we rolled the same.

Put the 2 together and they seem to eat us alive for some reason :smallannoyed:
well, up to 950 rating in one night. Not too bad.

The Linker

2010-02-03, 01:46 AM

WoWitP Minor Content Patch 1.7.4
Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Additions

--Added one character from MandibleBones.
--Added one character from darkblust.

Changes

--Modified the description of darkblust's character Syleann.
Level increased from 60 to 66.

First character added to the list via PM! :smallbiggrin:

GolemsVoice

2010-02-03, 01:56 AM

I'm having to keep myself so hard from seeing the Arthas video. My raid has cleared all raid instances so far (10 man version), even if it was hard. So I'm hoping we WILL face Arthas sometime in the future. At the moment, we're trying Putricide, but our damage is just too low to get him down without exceptional luck. But we had him at 30%, and have reasonably mastered the goo challenges. I hope that when more people get better equipment, all things will work out.

Tell me, though, is the video as epic and breathtaking as I hope it is?

expirement10K14

2010-02-03, 06:36 AM

As someone with little interest in lore, the video was pretty awesome. I saw toravon 25 yesterday, and saw how bad the dps is on our server. Really, if you get kings, sanctuary, mark of the wild and a feast, you should be pulling more than 3k dps in a 25man. We got him down to 20% twice, then a bit lower a few times and the LOWEST dps (just over 2k average through all the runs) started complaining about how the heals were bad. Rage quits by the heals followed shortly after.

Yana

2010-02-03, 09:45 AM

Manicotti

2010-02-03, 10:00 AM

I think Toravon is a little broken now currently. Either my eyes were decieving me, or his adds had the same amount of health on 25 man as they did in 10 man. Oh, and Cloak of Shadows removes his "Whiteout" debuff in case you were wondering :P

You may actually not be seeing things; I recall Emalon's adds also had a similar issue in the first couple days of his release. They're still being tuned.

My own updates: So, three weeks behind the rest of the world, I finally saw Festergut and Rotface in a pug with another guild. They're fun and reasonably competent, and we had a couple strong attempts at Rotface before we had to call it due to school and such this morning. We're going at it again on Sunday, so hopefully my connection will have shaped up by then.

I also finally got to see Saurfang *die,* giving me the achievement for having done so and therefore raising my raid credentials slightly higher on a new server. (Protip: Mark of the Fallen Champion damage counts as an AoE for some reason, so in case you didn't vanish it to keep it from being applied in the first place, keep Feinting to make things easier on the healers)

I got the 1.4 dagger from ToC25, finally replacing the damn GSS I'd been carrying around from Uld25. I'm stoked and can't wait to test my DPS with such an upgrade. Also got the pants off of NRB25 the previous lockout, finally replacing my disgraceful T8.10 pants.

And yes, the video of Arthas' death is amazing. I didn't feel bad about seeing it, since I both knew that it would be happening and that my odds of getting into a dedicated raid guild capable of downing him are reasonably slim to nonexistent.

mangosta71

2010-02-03, 10:16 AM

The Glyphstone

2010-02-03, 10:29 AM

The thing with ignoring shields is confirmed as a bug then? That'll be good to know, my group went to fight him last night (normally a oneshot) and got curbstomped, only bringing him down to 15% before the 7+ marks started exploding. We run 2 Disc priests and sometimes a Holy who goes Disc to make DBS easy, and they were freaking out huge.

mangosta71

2010-02-03, 10:52 AM

Yeah, it's a bug. Until they fix it, you just have to not put up any shields at all. From my perspective, the fight was the same. I presume it's different for the healers though.

Tyndmyr

2010-02-03, 01:04 PM

Got sucked back in this about a week ago...brand new account and everything.

Main: Tyndmyr, gnomish fire mage on Ysera. Level 42 currently, but frankly, I'll cap out in a coupla weeks.

only one of the eight alts have cleared 30 yet, I'll add then when they get respectable levels.

Karoht

2010-02-03, 02:26 PM

Yes, feint works on Mark, but my guild just lets the first person to get it in 25 (assuming we haven't botched the blood beasts, and there's no shield bug that quadruples his BP generation like there was last night, this happens about the time we get him to 50%) die. The point of that person dying is to cut his BP generation so he doesn't do it again so quickly, so prolonging your death is frowned upon. In our 10 mans, he's so close to dead by the time he casts it that healing is no problem.

One attempt on 10 man, we got him down to 15% before the first mark went out. Person flung herself off the ship (something we found out later we should not do), and I don't know what happened next, but by the time he was at 5 percent there were 3 marks. Still got him, just barely as we had to fight the heals.