pwrtoppl

New Pics for Halls of Relflection

2009-10-13T02:24:00.000-06:00

So, in this fight, you run from Arthas right? how bout some screenies on what it looks like?

Credit goes to MMO champs, for their hard work of pressing the printscrn key

My Current Works and Tier 10 bonuses

2009-10-13T01:32:00.001-06:00

As a vivd player to the World of Warcraft, I sometimes lose myself in the moment of Player versus Player, or even Raiding content (also occurs when the girlfriend also gets into her raiding moments) so i forget to post :)

For the most part, I have been dumping time into leveling my Priest, which is 77 as of tonight, and hopefully 80 by the weekend, I have some time, so I'm not in a rush, but I can't wait to get into a RMP team for arena (Rogue/Mage/Priest)
oh well, i have a couple for you tonight, including tier 10 bonuses:

Tier 10 Set Bonuses

Death Knight

* Item - Death Knight T10 Tank 2P Bonus - Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.
* Item - Death Knight T10 Tank 4P Bonus - When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 sec.
* Item - Death Knight T10 Melee 2P Bonus - Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike abilities deal 10% increased damage.
* Item - Death Knight T10 Melee 4P Bonus - Whenever all your runes are on cooldown, you gain 3% increased damage done with weapons, spells, and abilities for the next 15 sec.

Druid

* Item - Druid T10 Restoration 2P Bonus - The healing granted by your Wild Growth spell reduces 0% less over time.
* Item - Druid T10 Restoration 4P Bonus (Rejuvenation) - Each time your Rejuvenation spell heals a target, it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration.
* Item - Druid T10 Balance 2P Bonus - When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 10% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec.
* Item - Druid T10 Balance 4P Bonus - Reduces the cooldown on your Eclipse talent by 6000.
* Item - Druid T10 Feral 2P Bonus - Your Swipe (Bear) and Lacerate abilities deal 20% additional damage and the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy.
* Item - Druid T10 Feral 4P Bonus - Your Enrage ability no longer decreases your armor and instead decreases all damage taken by 12%, and the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike.

Hunter

* Item - Hunter T10 2P Bonus - Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for until cancelled.
* Item - Hunter T10 4P Bonus - Your Shot abilities deal 4% increased damage to targets afflicted with Viper Sting, Serpent Sting, or Wyvern Sting.

Mage

* Item - Mage T10 2P Bonus - Your Mirror Image ability also causes you to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.
* Item - Mage T10 4P Bonus - Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 3 sec when the effect of the talent is consumed.

Paladin

* Item - Paladin T10 Holy 2P Bonus - The cooldown on your Divine Favor talent is reduced by 60 sec.
* Item - Paladin T10 Holy 4P Bonus - Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.
* Item - Paladin T10 Protection 2P Bonus - Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.
* Item - Paladin T10 Protection 4P Bonus - When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 sec.
* Item - Paladin T10 Retribution 2P Bonus - Your Seals and Judgements deal 10% additional damage.
* Item - Paladin T10 Retribution 4P Bonus - Your melee attacks have a 4% chance to reset the cooldown on your Divine Storm ability.

Priest

* Item - Priest T10 Healer 2P Bonus - After your Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit talents expire on your target, they grant your target 10% increased healing received for 10 sec.
* Item - Priest T10 Healer 4P Bonus - Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells.
* Item - Priest T10 Shadow 2P Bonus - The critical strike chance of your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells is increased by 5%.
* Item - Priest T10 Shadow 4P Bonus - Reduces the channel duration and period of your Mind Flay spell by 51%.

Rogue

* Item - Rogue T10 2P Bonus - Gives your melee finishing moves a 13% chance to add 3 combo points to your target.
* Item - Rogue T10 4P Bonus - Your Tricks of the Trade ability now grants you 15 energy instead of costing energy.

Shaman

* Item - Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus - Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
* Item - Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus - Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
* Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus - Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
* Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus - The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
* Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus - When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
* Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Warlock

* Item - Warlock T10 2P Bonus - The critical strike chance of your Shadowbolt, Incinerate, and Corruption spells is increased by 5%.
* Item - Warlock T10 4P Bonus - Each time your Immolate and Unstable Affliction spells deal periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to gain 12% spell haste for 10 sec.

Warrior

* Item - Warrior T10 Protection 2P Bonus - Your Shield Slam and Shockwave abilities deal 20% increased damage.
* Item - Warrior T10 Protection 4P Bonus - Your Bloodrage ability no longer costs health to use, and now causes you to absorb damage equal to 20% of your maximum health. Lasts until cancelled.
* Item - Warrior T10 Melee 2P Bonus - When your Rend and Deep Wounds abilities deal damage you have a 2% chance to gain 20% attack power for until cancelled.
* Item - Warrior T10 Melee 4P Bonus - You have a 20% chance for your Blood Surge and Sudden Death talents to grant 2 charges of their effect instead of 1 and for the duration of the effect to be increased by 100%.

An old memory

2009-10-03T05:19:00.000-06:00

I found this on a forum in the archives...good classic WoW stuff

Halls of Relfection - Preview of 3.3.0 5 man

2009-10-03T01:32:00.000-06:00

Here's some info for Halls of Reflection, very cool stuff

enjoy!

Have a look at the map for Halls of Reflection.

Tunnel with two bosses, Marwyn and Falric, then a big room at the end with another boss. Arthas. But THEN leading out that room is a long section of map leading to nothing really. Some kind of ledge?

What if the Arthas fight IS a type of chase scene, and you fight Arthas along the map leading to the ledge where you are extracted out, because Arthas is too rough? 5-manners still get an Arthas battle, that will be epic in focus. But you don't kill Arthas, you fight to escape him.

Here's some more pics of HoR

And finally, here's some weapon pics, one of Shadowmourne, and the other of some shield

3.3.0 PTR Patchnotes

2009-10-02T03:57:00.001-06:00

Here's the PTR notes!
enjoy

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.3.0

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

General

* Icecrown Citadel
o The Forge of Souls, the first wing of the 5-player dungeon, is currently available for testing.
o Additional Icecrown Citadel dungeon and raid content will be made available in future test builds.
* Dazed: Creatures attacking a player from behind can no longer cause players level 1-5 to be dazed, and have a reduced chance to cause players level 6-10 to be dazed.
* Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Classes: General

* Default Equipment: Starting weapons are now more uniform. Rogues now start with a pair of daggers equipped. All other classes except shamans start with a 2-handed weapon equipped and the required skill already known. Shamans start with a 1-handed weapon and a shield, as they benefit more from the shield than they would from a 2-handed weapon.
* Glancing Blows: The mage, warlock, and priest classes no longer have an increased chance for their melee attacks to be glancing blows; and the damage penalty due to their glancing blows is the same as for other classes.
* Health and Mana Regeneration: These regeneration rates have been increased by up to 200% for low level characters. As a player's level increases, the regeneration rates gradually reduce, returning to normal rates at level 15.
* Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Races: General

* Racial Attribute Bonuses: These bonuses have been recalibrated to even out the amount of starting health on the various races. All races start with a standardized level of stamina, except for orcs, dwarves, and tauren who now start with 1 extra point of stamina. For each class, bonuses and penalties to all attributes have been adjusted so that each race has an equal attribute total.

Death Knights

* Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
* Talents
o Unholy
+ Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Druids

* Pets
o Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Hunters

* Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
* Talents
o Beast Mastery
+ Intimidation: If the hunter's pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet's next swing or attack.
* Pets
o Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Mages

* Talents
o Arcane
+ Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage's party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.
* Pets
o Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Priests

* Pet
o Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Rogues

* Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.
* Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.
* Vanish: For the first second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.

Shamans

* Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.
* Talents
o Elemental Combat
+ Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

Warlocks

* Pets
o Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
o Summon Imp: This ability is now available from the trainer for level 1 warlocks and no longer requires a quest to learn.

Warriors

* Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level 6.
* Talents
o Protection
+ Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.

User Interface

* Quest Tracking Feature
o This system is currently under development and is not fully functional.
* Looking For Group System
o This feature is undergoing several improvements and is not available for testing at this time.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Graphics

* A new feature has been added to the D3D graphics engine to improve texture management (particularly for Windows XP users). This is currently enabled by default on the public test realms. For more information please visit our Test Realm forum.

Professions

* Enchanting
o Black Magic: This enchantment now sometimes increases haste rating for the caster rather than inflicting the caster's target with a damage-over-time effect. It is also now triggered by landing any harmful spell rather than inflicting damage with a spell.

Items

* Glyphs
o Death Knights
+ Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.
o Shamans
+ Glyph of Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Glyph of Fire Nova. This glyph now reduces the cooldown of Fire Nova by 3 seconds.

Bug Fixes

* Druids
o Rejuvenation: Rank 15 of this spell was providing a 15-second duration. It has been correctly reduced to 12 seconds.
* Mages
o Flame Strike: Some ranks of this spell had an incorrect cast time of 3 seconds. All ranks now share a 2-second cast time.

Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen Halls

2009-10-01T00:31:00.001-06:00

I was killing time on some time and noticed this post by blue
enjoy
Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen Halls

»http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/3p3/icecrown.xml

Icecrown Citadel will feature a massive five-player dungeon sprawling across three wings of the citadel's foundation. While the Lich King's attention is focused on the Argent Crusade and the Knights of the Ebon Blade ripping through the front gates, players will be tested as they assist Jaina Proudmoore (Alliance) and Sylvanas Windrunner (Horde) in infiltrating the citadel through an alternate entrance.

An epic quest line will present adventurers with the task of weakening Icecrown Citadel's forces, requiring that players defeat the challenges in each dungeon wing before venturing into the next one. Normal and Heroic versions of the dungeon will be accessible to players, although each wing will be considered a separate instance; therefore, on Heroic difficulty, each wing will have its own separate lockout timer. All-new rewards -- including item level 219 (normal) and level 232 (Heroic) loot -- will be offered to those who destroy some of the Lich King's most formidable allies.

The Forge of Souls
Serving as the first wing in this expansive dungeon, the Forge of Souls will quickly put players to the test of carving through the Scourge stronghold into deeper, more treacherous locations. Jaina will command Alliance forces, and Sylvanas will direct Horde forces. The goal is to ruin the twisted engines known as soul grinders found in this portion of the citadel, and then players can advance -- that is, if the Horde and Alliance forces can overcome the foes who confront them.

Bosses
Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls (lol): An instrument of reckoning, Bronjahm watches over the engines in the Forge of Souls. He must be killed if the soul grinders are to be destroyed.

The Devourer of Souls: As the chief operator of the engines found in this wing, the Devourer stands guard over the souls stolen by the Lich King.

Pit of Saron
Accessible only to those who have laid waste to the Forge of Souls' unholy operations, the Pit of Saron will bring Horde and Alliance forces deeper into the Lich King's domain. Players who venture here will immediately be confronted by the lord of this lair, Scourgelord Tyrannus. But defeating him will not be as easy as it seems. Before they can present a threat to Tyrannus, the adventurers, instructed by their leaders, will need to free enslaved allies who have been trapped by the Scourge. Until that happens, Tyrannus will leave all adversaries to his minions, workers of the citadel's mines. Perhaps the challenges here will lend clues as to the whereabouts of the Lich King's private chambers outside of the Frozen Throne, deep within the Halls of Reflection.

Bosses
Forgemaster Garfrost: A master of Scourge weaponry, the forgemaster hauls stocks of saronite ore and other precious materials to the cold forges where the mechanisms of death are born. With a host of rime weapons and exotic alloys at his disposal, it could get cold in here.

Krick and Ick: Zombies serve as mindless muscle in the Pit of Saron's mines, stockpiling metals for Forgemaster Garfrost, and Krick -- a devious leper gnome -- supervises the operations from atop Ick, Krick's ghastly means of transportation.

Scourgelord Tyrannus: Tyrannus is a terrible force who will no doubt demonstrate his powers to those brave enough to enter the Pit of Saron. The scourgelord must die if players hope to make their way into the third and final wing of this dungeon.

Halls of Reflection
With Jaina and Sylvanas leading the way, adventurers who make it as far as these frigid halls will quickly recognize the weapon that lies ahead: Frostmourne, the corruptive, legendary device of the Lich King himself. The Lich King's private chambers are within reach, although they may be the death of anyone who ventures there.

Bosses
Falric and Marwyn: Captains for Arthas Menethil in life, Scourge commanders for the Lich King in death, Falric and Marwyn will be summoned to the Halls of Reflection for one purpose: destroying all intruders.

The Lich King: Sylvanas, thirsty for vengeance against the corrupted prince who sentenced her to an existence as an undead monstrosity, and Jaina, eager to find a flicker of Arthas's soul locked somewhere within the Lich King, have brought their hand-picked allies to this final confrontation. Arthas's true power may only now be discovered. Is there any hope in this mission, or does only death await?

I would be a terrible poster if I forgot the pics

There we go, I don't feel as bad now

Breakdown - 3.2.2

2009-09-29T03:53:00.001-06:00

3.2.2 Patchnotes in scope

Well, 3.2.2 is here, with some changes to the way things are looked at, a new instance to kill time in, some new PvP changes, and of course, class changes. This patch came out officially on September 22, 2009, so let's take a look at the changes, and see what it all means.

* The Brood Mother Returns

Can't say we didn't see another remake with Naxx being tossed back in the mix and all, good choice by blizzard in my part, with some new changes, so it isn't quite the old same stuff, but for kicks they remade the level 60 gear to be a remix of level 80 gear with some old style effects, including lifestealing for 100-180 on polearms, and +10 resist stats on gear. There is of course the bad remake, so it's now a 22 slotter, very nice, and a low low low chance for a 310% speed Brood of Onyxia (drake) to drop...very nice. It'll be a somewhat easy encounter, with just the straight boss encounter, like the old remake, but remade for some fun (something like VoA).

* Armor Penetration Rating: The amount of armor penetration gained per point of this rating has been reduced by 12%.

Not a total loss, but it'll mean people either need to add an extra gem to make up for the loss or just not worry about it as much, for rogues, and blood dks, ArP (armor penetration) is pretty big, so maybe it'll bring them a bit more in line with other specs on those classes

* Players level 11 and higher will always see a daily Battleground quest

Good change, since it used to be 50ish or higher. Nice to see them cater to people while they level, collecting honor and marks.

* [Frost Presence]: The damage reduction granted by this ability has been increased from 5% to 8%.

Blizzard has this policy, Nerf hard, Buff in increments. After taking away so much mitigation, Death Knights are finally getting some back, 3% is still 3% on paper.

o [Gnaw]: This death knight ghoul ability now has a 1-minute cooldown.

It was a great ability for PvP, putting it on a one minute cooldown does bring it in line with other stuns, though hunter pets have a 45 second cooldown on some of those abilities.

+ Heart Strike: Secondary targets of Heart Strike now take half as much damage.

A solid hit to the blood spec, as Heart Strike is the cookie cutter rune dump, it'll still be, but you can bet frost spec dual-wielding will see some numbers up against blood.

+ Vampiric Blood: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and duration reduced to 10 seconds.

Bringing it in line with the revamped unbreakable armor and Bone Shield, Blizzard spent so long making the three trees look and feel different, that now their finally putting solid caps on all abilties in all three trees, so they do not have random cooldowns.

+ Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and changed back to granting 25% additional armor while active instead of flat damage reduction based on armor. The amount of strength granted has been reduced to 10%.

A good change back to the start, and having it on a 1 minute cooldown with 20 second uptime means DKs will be using this 1/3 of the time, with the glyph of unbreakable armor still increasing the armor by +20%

+ Bone Shield: This ability now has 3 charges instead of 4. Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.

3 charges does hurt PvPers through intial burst, but the 1 minute cooldown from two minutes is a great change.

+ Dirge: This talent no longer grants additional runic power from using Obliterate.

Do not look for unholy DKs to keep using Obliterate in their rotation after this.

+ Moonkin Form: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%.

With the previous change to owlkin frenzy, this makes PvPing moonkins look a tad stronger.

+ Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.

Yes, this is a PvP booster, get it to proc, and instant cast even a healing touch. Not a bad upgrade at all.

+ Infected Wounds: The debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application.

Another PvP change, for the better, since a Warrior's hamstring is a single stack/full effect

+ The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.

Could see more of these guys raiding, look for BM hunters to have less uptime burst and more overall damage output.

* [Arcane Blast]: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.

Extra stack, less time, cheaper cost, a well rounded change.

+ Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it. This talent no longer has a chance to be triggered when spells miss.

* [Righteous Fury]: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.

Don't look for Paladins to miss much here. They won't be losing threat any time soon.

+ Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.

+ Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin's strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin's stamina.

A PvP hit for sure. It's common to see Prot specced Holy PvP geared Paladins in Arena and BGs, this cuts their Spellpower, so it's not a simple single Flash of Light cast to fully heal someone anymore.
+ Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

Crusader Strike just got a new friend, works with Exorcism too.

+ Twisted Faith now grants spell power equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of spirit, up from 2/4/6/8/10%.

Shadow Priests have spirit, now there's more reason to stack it, 20% is a strong number, meaning 1k spirit is 200 Spellpower, not a bad bump if I say so.

* [Fan of Knives]: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.

FoK will still be spammed in AoE fights, it just won't put rogues as number 1 for dps in the AoE department.

+ Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.

PvP hit to FoK and Rogues, won't affect PvE at all, but it does hurt Rogues in BGs.

* [Flame Shock]: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.

This will be in a rotation with an extra shock before it, 6 seconds is a perfect increase.

* [Lava Burst]: This ability no longer ever consumes a Flame Shock debuff off of the target.

All the more reason to use both Lava Burst and Flame Shock in the same rotation.

+ Critical Block: This talent now grants a 20/40/60% chance to block double the normal amount instead of 10/20/30%.

A nice buff for Warriors. Though they aren't the ones to stack block (Paladins are) the chance to block double is not a bad way to push Warriors to pick up a new shield or some extra block gear.

--
Overall, not a bad patch, I only touched on important things, and I decided not to go into bux fixes or professions changes, Classes were enough for me to hit on.
On that note...

-pwrtoppl

-out

Ready, Set, Raid - Raid Stacking

2009-09-29T02:00:00.000-06:00

Stacking up - making a full raid

Alright, so I decided to address this issue, because, people seem to have quarrels over trivial things like, which buff is superior to another buff of the same type from another class, and who is on refreshment duty. Couldn't say people are not entitled to their own opinion, but for the sake of the article, let's pretend that not everyone knows of every buff/debuff out there

What is this stack you speak of?

So, we all know, that in a 10/25 player raid, some classes give out party or raid wide buffs...some give +10% to attack power, some give melee or caster haste, and some increase spell damage on a target, with an occasional increase to critically striking the target. But what really makes a good raid stack? Pure melee with melee buffs? Or does a caster party sound more your style?

When raid stacking, the first thing to understand, is not bringing in too many of one class/buff. For example, bringing in four balance druids does give a 5% critical hit increase, and gift of the wild...but in the end, you only need one balance druid to get the same job done. Same goes for shamans providing Bloodlust. But on the other hand, having multiple of the same class gives out more buffs, like paladins, that can give blessing of might, an increase to attack power, and blessing of wisdom, an increased mana regeneration buff, and also give out blessing of kings, a +10% to all stats buff. All three at once, with no hassle. In fact, each of those three paladins could be a different spec, meaning in a raid you could have a protection paladin for tanking, a retribution paladin for dps, and a holy paladin for healing the tanks.

All in all, raid stacking is making sure your raid gets the most out of the classes played, making the raid easier and lets all the players bring something to the raid other then their classic role.

Different name - same effect

Sometimes it just happens that some buffs overwrite, or cancel out other buffs. A shamans mana spring totem can negate the blessing of wisdom from a paladin, while a warriors battle shout can overwrite a paladins blessing of might, and a death knights horn of winter can be overshadowed by a shamans totem of strength. There is almost no way around this, as some stacking of buffs would make the player able to be reliant on themselves and skill, and just buff every buff they can, in order to clear content.

Just because some overwrites others, doesn't mean that a warriors battle shout should always be used over a paladins blessing of might. What happens if the warrior dies? The paladin would be able to continue giving a raid buff, with a minimal dps loss and no buff loss. Sometimes having another class with a similar buff can prevent a dps, or mana return loss.

Buffing - Making good, better

Buffs a critcal to making a raid just that much better, from a fortitude buff, to a Paladin's Kings buff, everythiing improves with raid wide buffs, and it wouldn't be fair to name off raid wide buffs given out during a fight if I didn't name buffs given out before it all goes down. So, here are the buffs that can be given out to the raid.

There are thirty or so different categories into which buffs and debuffs fit. Here you will find a comprehensive list of the changes made broken down by category and which spells/talents are in that category.

Armor Debuff (Major): Acid Spit (exotic Hunter pet), Expose Armor, Sunder Armor
Armor Debuff (Minor): Faerie Fire, Sting (Hunter pet), Curse of Recklessness
Physical Vulnerability Debuff: Blood Frenzy
Melee Haste Buff: Improved Icy Talons, Windfury Totem
Melee Critical Strike Chance Buff: Leader of the Pack, Rampage
Attack Power Buff (Flat Add): Battle Shout, Blessing of Might
Attack Power Buff (Multiplier): Abomination's Might, Trueshot Aura, Unleashed Rage
Ranged Attack Power Buff: Hunter's Mark (only Hunters benefit, so no need to exclude against other class abilities)
Bleed Damage Increase Debuff: Mangle, Trauma
Spell Haste Buff: Wrath of Air Totem
Spell Critical Strike Chance Buff: Moonkin Aura, Elemental Oath
Spell Critical Strike Chance Debuff: Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill
Increased Spell Damage Taken Debuff: Ebon Plaguebringer, Earth and Moon, Curse of the Elements
Increased Spell Power Buff: Focus Magic, Improved Divine Spirit, Flametongue Totem, Totem of Wrath, Demonic Pact
Increased Spell Hit Chance Taken Debuff: Improved Faerie Fire, Misery
Percentage Haste Increase (All Types): Improved Moonkin Aura, Swift Retribution
Percentage Damage Increase: Ferocious Inspiration, Sanctified Retribution
Critical Strike Chance Taken Debuff (All types): Heart of the Crusader, Totem of Wrath
Melee Attack Speed Slow Debuff: Icy Touch, Infected Wounds, Judgements of the Just, Thunderclap
Melee Hit Chance Reduction Debuff: Insect Swarm, Scorpid Sting
Healing Debuff: Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Mortal Strike, Furious Attacks
Attack Power Debuff: Demoralizing Roar, Curse of Weakness, Demoralizing Shout
Stat Multiplier Buff: Blessing of Kings
Stat Add Buff: Mark of the Wild
Agility and Strength Buff: Strength of Earth Totem, Horn of Winter
Stamina Buff: Power Word: Fortitude
Health Buff: Commanding Shout, Blood Pact
Intellect Buff: Arcane Intellect, Fel Intelligence
Spirit Buff: Divine Spirit, Fel Intelligence
Damage Reduction Percentage Buff: Grace, Blessing of Sanctuary
Percentage Increase Healing Received Buff: Tree of Life, Improved Devotion Aura
Armor Increase Percentage Buff: Inspiration, Ancestral Healing
Cast Speed Slow: Curse of Tongues, Slow, Mind-numbing Poison.

In each category, you can only benefit from the most powerful spell granting that effect. For example, Fel Intelligence grants spirit and intellect, both weaker than Arcane Intellect and Divine Spirit. If a player has Fel Intelligence and receives a stronger Arcane Intellect buff, he will gain the intellect value from Arcane Intellect and the spirit value from Fel Intelligence.

In most cases, fully-talented players will have exactly equal power on the strength of these buffs and debuffs. Fel Intelligence is an example of where one ability is weaker than others. The buffs in the "Increased Spell Power Buff" category are also not all the same potency, as they scale and grow in radically different ways. In virtually every other case, however, the buffs are equal. This means, for example, that fully-talented Battle Shout and Blessing of Might now grant the exact same amount of attack power.

As for Mana Batteries, each time they trigger the mana regeneration effect, 10 people in their raid group will receive a buff which causes them to regenerate 0.25% of their maximum mana each second. This buff, Replenishment, will be given preferentially to raid members with the lowest mana, but will re-evaluate which raid members receive it each time it is fired. Replenishment is provided by Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters, and Retribution Paladins.

Finally, there is Heroism and Bloodlust to affect the entire raid. However, all affected raid members will be unable to cast or benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism for 10 minutes after the intial use (unless there is a wipe, in which case, it's a 5 minute cooldown on the cast itself).

Complete turnaround

When making a raid, composition is key, making sure you don't end up missing buffs while still filling 10/25 spots can be hard, but that's what part of raiding is about, making the raid work, fluently, and when that happens, going into progression content is that much easier. So remember, bring the player and the class, and you can reap the rewards when players get extra damage in, don't run out of mana, and live that much longer. With that...

-pwrtoppl

-out

another new pic

2009-09-23T06:05:00.000-06:00

another easy night, did this in about ten minutes, meant to do something with the outline on the leafs, but i did the trunk, so it worked well in my opinion

Onyxia's Lair Strat

2009-09-23T02:01:00.003-06:00

So, here's a strat from wowhead.com, on how to make this fight easy

Phase 1: The Old Stuff

Phase 1 is absolutely identical to the original fight. It lasts from 100% health to 65%, and consists of Onyxia utilizing basic dragon abilities - Flame Breath (heavy hit in frontal cone), Cleave (hitting up to 10 targets), Tail Sweep (with a large knockback), and Wing Buffet (frontal cone knockback). Basic skills will get you through this phase easily - tank Onyxia with your back towards a wall, to avoid knockback from Wing Buffet. DPS and Healers should be position at Onyxia's sides to avoid both Tail Sweep and the frontal baddies. The tank might need some heavy heals, as the spells hit rather hard, and some cannot be resisted/mitigated. Other than that, you should be fine here.

Phase 2: The New Stuff

This is probably the hardest part of the fight. There are two (categories of) things to watch out for - adds and Onyxia's new spells. Note to melee DPS - you can attack Onyxia even while she is airborne, as long as you stand underneath her.

There are two kinds of adds spawning during this phase - Onyxian Whelps and Onyxian Lair Guards. The whelps will spawn in packs of 40 (20 on each side ). The first pack will spawn seconds after Onyxia lifts off in the air, and a pack will hatch every ~90 seconds after that while in this phase. While it is good to have a tank on them, try to AoE them down as soon as possible, as you want to mitigate overall damage and keep your mobility - you'll need both. The Lair Guards are new NPCs added in the 3.2.2 version of Onyxia - they resemble the old Onyxian Warder, but are significantly more dangerous. The guards will spawn more frequently than the whelps (approximately every 30 seconds), and will spawn in pairs (possible a pair from each side?). They don't have too much health, but have really high melee damage output through abilities like Cleave, Fire Nova, Flame Lash (which reduces fire resistance), and Ignite Weapon (17.5k/25k extra fire damage to targets in melee range). It is good to have a tank on them, but it is better to kill them from afar. Keep your melee DPS away from them at all times.

The other thing to watch out for are Onyxia's spells. Her Fireballs are something you should just heal through - although it is advised that you spread out, as the missiles do damage in a 10 yards wide area. /range on DBM is your friend again. And, of course, there is the Deep Breath...

Deep Breath is now on 100% random cast intervals - which means that DBM, or BigWigs, or whatever boss mods addon you use won't be able to warn you in advance. You will however see a raid warning/emote "Onyxia takes a deep breath". As soon as you see that, you need to forget about anything else you are doing, locate Onyxia, figure out which way she is facing, and get behind her quickly. Deep Breath is very unforgiving.

Phase 3: No need to STOP DOTZ

Phase 3 starts when Onyxia's health reaches 40%. At this point she will land permanently and cast a raid-wide fear, accompanied by lava eruptions. Raid wide damage, with extras for the tank - nothing you haven't seen before. Unlike the original version of the fight, Onyxia will no longer wipe aggro between phases, which means that your tank from Phase 1 should be the first person she goes to in Phase 3.

Throughout this phase Onyxia will continue to use all of her abilities from phase 1 (Flame Breath, Cleave, Tail Sweep, Wing Buffet), alongside with Bellowing Roar (3-second fear) and Eruption (AoE during the fear). Whelps will continue to spawn as well, but they won't be nearly as many as in Phase 2, so a few of your ranged DPS should be able to handle them quickly.

Note: If a player gets close to the eggs, at any point of the fight, the nearest whelps will hatch.

Taunt works

3.2.2 patchnotes

2009-09-22T07:12:00.000-06:00

Here's some 3.2.2 enjoyment for you all to enjoy, I'll do a breakdown this week in addition to something productive

enjoy!

General

* The Brood Mother Returns
o After years of lurking in her lair battling the many brave adventurers who travelled from afar to challenge her, Onyxia returns to commemorate World of Warcraft's five-year anniversary.
+ Onyxia has been scaled to offer new challenges to level 80 players and is now available for testing in 10- and 25-player modes.
+ Adjustments have been made to the encounter to keep it fit for modern raiding, but the fundamental experience of fighting the Brood Mother will remain, as will the horror of the Deep Breaths!
+ Some classic items Onyxia offered level 60 players will have their stats adjusted appropriately for level 80 players.
+ [Brood of Onyxia], a very rare 310%-speed mount modeled after Onyxia herself will be available for the luckiest of challengers.
* Armor Penetration Rating: The amount of armor penetration gained per point of this rating has been reduced by 12%.

PvP Battlegrounds

* Players level 11 and higher will always see a daily Battleground quest, as the quest giver will only offer daily quests for a Battleground in which a player is eligible to participate according to level bracket (i.e. players levels 11-20 will always be offered a Warsong Gulch daily quest, while players levels 11-50 will be offered either an Arathi Basin or a Warsong Gulch daily quest, etc.).

Classes Death Knight

* [Frost Presence]: The damage reduction granted by this ability has been increased from 5% to 8%.
* Pets
o [Gnaw]: This death knight ghoul ability now has a 1-minute cooldown.
* Talents
o Blood
+ Heart Strike: Secondary targets of Heart Strike now take half as much damage.
+ Subversion: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Scourge Strike by 3/6/9%.
+ Vampiric Blood: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and duration reduced to 10 seconds.
o Frost
+ Threat of Thassarian now also causes Rune Strike to use both weapons when dual-wielding.
+ Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and changed back to granting 25% additional armor while active instead of flat damage reduction based on armor. The amount of strength granted has been reduced to 10%.
o Unholy
+ Bone Shield: This ability now has 3 charges instead of 4. Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
+ Dirge: This talent no longer grants additional runic power from using Obliterate.

Druid

* Talents
o Balance
+ Moonkin Form: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%.
+ Typhoon: The daze duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.
o Feral Combat
+ Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.
+ Infected Wounds: The debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application.

Hunter

* Talents
o Beast Mastery
+ The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
+ Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.

Mage

* [Arcane Blast]: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.
* [Arcane Missiles]: Casting this spell while both Missile Barrage and Clearcasting are active will cause only Missile Barrage to be consumed.
* Talents
o Arcane
+ Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it. This talent no longer has a chance to be triggered when spells miss.
o Fire
+ Combustion: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of Fire spells by 50% while it is active. In addition, Living Bomb periodic ticks will no longer interact with the count or the charges on the talent.

Paladin

* [Righteous Fury]: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
* [Seal of Corruption] and [Seal of Vengeance]: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.
* Talents
o Protection
+ Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
+ Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
+ Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
+ Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin's strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin's stamina.
o Retribution
+ Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

Priest

* Talents
o Shadow
+ Improved Spirit Tap: Mind Flay periodic critical strikes now have a 50% chance to trigger this talent.
+ Twisted Faith now grants spell power equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of spirit, up from 2/4/6/8/10%.

Rogue

* [Envenom]'s scaling has been increased from 7% to 9% of attack power per combo point.
* [Fan of Knives]: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.
* Talents
o Assassination
+ Master Poisoner: No longer increases the Deadly Poison application rate following a successful Envenom and instead now provides a 33/66/100% chance of preventing Envenom from consuming Deadly Poison.
o Combat
+ Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.
o Subtlety
+ Honor Among Thieves: A 1-second cooldown is now enforced on how often a rogue can gain combo points from his party via this talent.

Shaman

* [Flame Shock]: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.
* [Lava Burst]: This ability no longer ever consumes a Flame Shock debuff off of the target.
* Talents
o Enhancement
+ Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock's melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).
o Elemental
+ Shamanism: Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.

Warrior

* Talents
o Arms
+ Sword Specialization: Now has a 2/4/6/8/10% chance to proc an extra attack, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Protection
+ Critical Block: This talent now grants a 20/40/60% chance to block double the normal amount instead of 10/20/30%.

Dungeons & Raids Shadowfang Keep

* Wailing Guardsman: Screams of the Past will no longer have multiple applications on a target. Recast time has been increased.

Ulduar

* Increased the cooldown on Immortal Guardians' Drain Life ability in the Yogg-Saron encounter.

Achievements

* The Achievement " Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare (25 player)" now requires 25 kills, down from 50.
* The Frostwolf Howler and Stormpike Battle Charger Achievements will now be awarded when a player learns the respective mount spells.

Professions

* The blacksmiths of Orgrimmar grew tired of running to the rear of the city to craft items and have installed a new anvil & forge at the General Store in the Valley of Strength.
* Engineering
o The [Mind Amplification Dish] no longer changes the appearance of your helmet.
* Inscription
o Added a recipe for Runescroll of Fortitude. This item grants a stamina buff equal to the highest rank of Power Word: Fortitude (untalented) to all players in the raid. Does not stack with other stamina scrolls and Power Word: Fortitude.
* Leatherworking
o Added a recipe for Drums of Forgotten Kings. These drums increase all stats by 8% for all players in a raid. Does not stack with Blessing of Kings.
o Added a recipe for Drums of the Wild. These drums grant a buff equal to the highest rank of Mark of the Wild (untalented) to all players in a raid. Does not stack with Mark of the Wild.

Items

* The Black Heart: This item's animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection.
* Death Knight Tier-9 Tanking 4-Piece Set Bonus: Now decreases the cooldown on Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor, and Bone Shield by 10 seconds instead of 20.
* Druid Tier-8 Healer 4-Piece Set Bonus: The amount of healing this set bonus grants on the initial cast of Rejuvenation has been reduced by 50%. In addition, this set bonus no longer has strange interactions with Harold's Rejuvenating Broach.
* Glyphs
o [Glyph of Bone Shield]: This glyph now grants 1 additional charge instead of 2.
o [Glyph of Flame Shock]: Redesigned. This glyph now makes [Flame Shock] periodic damage able to be critical strikes.
o [Glyph of Mind Flay]: This glyph no longer reduces the magnitude of the movement reduction on the [Mind Flay] victim.
o [Glyph of Scourge Strike]: Redesigned. This glyph now causes [Scourge Strike] to extend the duration of Frost Fever and Blood Plague by 3 seconds each time Scourge Strike is used on a target, up to a maximum of 9 seconds.
o [Glyph of Typhoon]: This glyph now increases the range on [Typhoon] by 10 yards in addition to its current effects.
o [Glyph of Unbreakable Armor]: Now increases the armor gained from [Unbreakable Armor] by 20%.
o [Glyph of Vampiric Blood]: The glyph now increases the duration of [Vampiric Blood] by 5 seconds instead of 10.
* [Libram of Obstruction]: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
* [Libram of the Sacred Shield]: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
* Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.
* [Totem of Quaking Earth]: Attack power value increased to 400.

User Interface

* Battleground Queuing
o Players may now only queue for no more than two Battlegrounds at a time.
o The dialog box for entering a Battleground match has been changed to reflect the following options: "Enter Battle," "Leave Queue," and "Minimize."
o The time a player has to enter a battle when selected has been reduced to 40 seconds when not already in a Battleground and 20 seconds when in a Battleground.
o Players already in a Battleground can now choose "Enter Battle" for a new Battleground under any circumstance (i.e. while dead, in combat, falling, etc.).
o A new Battleground will not launch until the maximum number of players on each side are in the queue (i.e. 40 players per side for Alterac Valley).
* The size of the Focus Frame can now be adjusted via the Interface Options menu.
* Mail System Auto-Complete Feature
o The inline auto-complete feature for the mail system has been added back into the game. The mail system will now have both the pre- and post-3.2.0 auto-complete features available.
o Added a label to notify players that the Tab key will allow players to navigate through the character names listed via the auto-complete feature.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Bug Fixes

* Death Knight
o Rune of Razorice: The frost vulnerability granted by this enchantment will now increase the damage done by Frost Fever as intended.
* Druid
o [Balance of Power]: Misleading tooltip reworded. The tooltip previously reported an incorrect value for the increased chance to hit with spells. The actual benefit of the talent is unchanged.
* Hunter
o [Master's Call]: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of [Infected Wounds], [Frostfire Bolt], and [Slow].
o Trap Mastery's (Survival) tooltip now states the correct amount of snakes summoned.
* Mage
o [Arcane Missiles]: Ranks 12 and 13 will now properly cause players to enter combat.
* Paladin
o [Hand of Freedom]: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of [Infected Wounds] and [Frostfire Bolt].
* Priest
o [Divine Aegis]: Ranks 1 and 2 now work with [Holy Nova].
o [Glyph of Power Word: Shield] now correctly uses the Priest's spell critical chance instead of the target's.
* Rogue
o [Vanish]: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Frostfire Bolt.
o Honor Among Thieves: This talent will now work properly again if two rogues with different ranks of the talent are in the same party.
* Shaman
o [Grounding Totem] will now properly protect against the [Death Grip] spell.
o [Lava Burst] can no longer deal critical damage to targets who are immune to critical strikes (due to, e.g. Roar of Sacrifice, Blessed Resilience).
o [Lightning Shield]: This spell will no longer set off some trinkets when it is cast.
o [Stoneclaw Totem]'s pulses will no longer break stealth on nearby hostile units.
o [Thunderstorm] and [Shamanistic Rage] can no longer be used while Frozen, Cycloned, Sapped, or Incapacitated.
* Warlock
o [Demonic Circle]: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of [Frostfire Bolt].
o [Fel Armor]: This spell was unable to set off trinkets and other effects. That has been corrected.
o When using [Shadowbolt] or [Incinerate] while having Backlash and Backdraft active, only Backlash will now be properly consumed.
* Coliseum Trinkets: Some spells that should have triggered these trinkets will now trigger them (such as [Holy Nova] and [Fel Armor]).
* Death Knight Tier-9 DPS 4-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for disease damage ticks to be critical strikes.
* Hunter Tier-9 2-Piece Set Bonus: Critical damage from Serpent Sting will now work properly with the [Mortal Shots] and [Expose Weakness] talents.
* [Lightweave Embroidery]: This tailoring item enhancement will no longer trigger from the periodic healing granted by the warlock spell [Fel Armor].
* Mote of Flame: Corrected a typo in the tooltip.
* Paladin Tier-9 DPS 2-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for Righteous Vengeance ticks to be critical strikes.
* Shard of Flame: Corrected a typo in the tooltip.
* [Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings]: Healing from [Prayer of Mending] now triggers the shield from this item. In addition, a bug was corrected which would cause the shield points to be overwritten rather than stack up as intended

WoW Hands Down

2009-09-22T00:10:00.000-06:00

An Inside Look At The Universe Of Warcraft

»http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25307

Thursday morning's GDC Austin keynote was met with a large crowd as Blizzard Entertainment's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce took the stage to offer a detailed look into the inner workings of the genre-dominating World of Warcraft.

Introduced by BioWare's Rich Vogel, the two men completed a three-part series run by GDCA on the inner workings of the gaming powerhouse.

Vogel introduced the two with word that they'd be focusing on the company's operations, and Brack began by separating the "universe" of World of Warcraft (its design, production, and implementation) from the in-game universe of barbarian shamanism and magical power. He admitted that the company tends to hold things fairly close to the vest, but today their intent was to share some of the 'behind the scenes' elements rarely considered by company outsiders.

World of Warcraft was launched on a foundation of 10 years of Warcraft RTS games. Brack noted the first appearance of the yellow exclamation point in the Warcraft III title, and the RPG-focused elements of the Orc Campaign in the Frozen Throne expansion.

The World of Warcraft team, which split from Warcraft III, was actually working on a squad-based RPG called Nomad prior to their shift in focus. The game featured haunting alien imagery, but it was something that they ultimately couldn't find a voice for. After months of pre-production struggle, they set aside Nomad and began work on WoW; "What would we do if we wanted to start a project today?" was the question they asked. The answer: an MMO.

Management, Programming, Art, and Production

Within the World of Warcraft team, there are some 30 department leads. There are three tiers of management, with France Pierce (Executive Producer) on top. Production Director Brack and Game Director Tom Chilton are below him, and below those two men are arrayed 8 lower-level managers. Brack notes that they try to structure the teams around the people, and not the other way around. They feel strongly that employee strengths should dictate organizational structure, and as a result all reporting structures within the company vary by team.

Each team on the game aims to be made up of 5-8 people. They break that regularly, Brack admits, but that is the goal. The programming department currently consists of 32 people, and envelopes systems, tools, gameplay, server technologies, and UI. Brack singled out the tools team as a critical component of this group. They make tools not only for the developers, but for customer service as well. Blizzard has an expectation of a long life for World of Warcraft, and so they see these tools as products to be fully-supported in-house. These tools go through their own proofing process, with certification dictated within the company. Their UI team is a cross-disciplinary team with artists, LUA programmers, and C++ developers all collaborating on the game's front end. In all, the programming team is responsible for some 5.5 million lines of code.

The art department is currently sitting at 51 people. Technical artists, character artists, environmental artists, dungeon artists, prop artists, animators, and concept artists are all lumped into this group. The prop team Brack calls out as a new group, a team dedicated entirely to creating wheels of cheese, torches, and other accoutrements to make a place within the game world feel 'alive'. Overall the art department is responsible for some 1.5 million assets.

Pearce moves on to the Production department, only 10 members strong. They're overseeing of all the other departments, and view themselves more as support than management per se. They aim for low ratio of employees to producers, to ensure that every Blizzard employee is getting somewhat individual attention. Creative teams to not report to producers, he pointed out. Team leads, instead, take up leadership roles within individual departments. The art lead, for example, still creates art. Creative employees report to the men and women that best understand their individual process. In turn, producers and leads collaborate to ensure that everyone understands their role. Leads are not forced into management/leadership roles they aren't comfortable with. Pearce notes the importance of what he called 'succession planning.' Producers help each team to understand who would be tapped in the future to take on a leadership role should the current lead step down, as well as plot out the future careers of individual employees. Overall production has managed 33,000 tasks in the last ten years.

Design, Cinematics, Sound, and Platform

The design department, some 37 members strong, came up next. Class designers, profession designers, itemization designers, level designers, event designers, encounter and lead designers are all grouped here. Brack points out the multi-disciplinary nature of the level creation team. They use WoWEdit to incorporate art assets and create the zones in the game. The events team is responsible for not only holidays like Hallow's End, but also static world components like the city of Dalaran and the new and popular Argent Tournament. Over the years, the team has created some 70,000 spells and some 40,000 NPCs.

The cinematics group was the next to be pointed out by Pearce. Machinima sequences, teasers, and the amazing pre-rendered cinemas that make Blizzard games kick off with a flash are all created in this group. As a talented group of artists, they also use this group to direct the creation of sword replicas, statues, and other physical objects. The group is 123 people strong, and Pearce notes that they could actually spend a whole talk just talking about how cinematics is organized.

The in-house sound department was next on the block for Brack. Handling sound effects, music, voice casting and recording are all partner projects with this team. The group's audio director is a talented composer, and has ended up composing a number of pieces for the game. There are over 27 hours of music in World of Warcraft currently, and Brack jokes that fully half of some patches for the game are audio files.

Platform services was the next group detailed, incorporating technologies for all of the games across the company, Macintosh development, QA, localization, and QA for in-house elements. There are some 245 people in this department, one of the largest in the company. Brack drilled down into the QA group, noting their sometimes inglorious role to test every patch and gold master. The size of their workload continually grows. World of Warcraft kicked off with some 2600 quests. They added 2700 quests in the Burning Crusade expansion and another 2350 quests in the Wrath of the Lich King drop. A total of 7650 quests in the game makes it very challenging to maintain and track all of the game's content. The QA group has tackled some 180,000 bugs since the game launched.

Localization, Technical Services, International Offices, and Online Services

Localization translates and culturalizes World of Warcraft into 10 different languages, and Pearce notes that there are actually more people playing WoW outside of the English language servers than inside. The capability to do all of this work in-house is incredibly important, and as a result they have no 'partial' localizations. It's not just translation and localization, they view a new language as an ongoing commitment to all the players on those servers. They actually have a dedicated producer working with this group to ensure that they have all the resources they need. Choosing to launch in a new language is a decision they don't make lightly, and Pearce points out that this group currently tracks 360,000 text strings and some 2 million words.

The technical services group is dedicated to getting every patch to the players. Patch 3.1 pushed some 4.7 petabytes of data to the players. Brack points out that they actually have to do some 10 patches for any given patch they do because of the numerous languages they support. QA has to test every patch they release, and there are actually 126 types of patches (streaming, universal, incremental) that all have to be updated and supported. A monumental task, Brack says.

The Blizzard Online Network services group is Pearce's next focus. A huge group, they have data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. He points out the picture of the GNOC in their slideshow, a data core that even has televisions tuned to the weather stations. They use those to ensure that conditions of the data center are up to their standards; with only a staff of 68 people they ensure connectivity across the globe for the numerous WoW servers.

International offices handle local market conditions, games that are released in other countries, and the occasional censorship issue prompted by a government. They also handle local marketing as well, ensuring it meets with regional sensibilities. There are hundreds of people in all these offices across the globe. Brack went on to talk about the customer support staff, a group with 2,056 game masters, 340 billing managers, and a host of other background staffers. These tireless staffers also work from locations around the world, ensuring that any local variations in culture (or the game) are respected.

Pearce then focused on the Online Services team, a group that includes the important gaming service Battle.net. Pearce gave a quick overview of the many new features coming to the service such as Battle.net-wide friends, integrated billing, and a number of other new features. Online Services specifically handle login technologies and billing elements for World of Warcraft. There are now 12,000,000 Battle.net accounts, and they look forward to the eventual seamless integration of that community and the WoW community.

Web, Community, PR, et al

The Web team was Brack's next group to discuss, a team responsible for managing a host of websites, online stores, the WoW Armory, and promotional materials. The mobile technologies team at Blizzard is grouped under this umbrella as well, and Brack calls out the mobile armory and the mobile authenticator as products they've previously released. They currently manage some 900,000 web files.

The corporate applications team is the company's internal tools team for activities "around" the game. They work to do fraud prevention, maintain bug tracking, keep a look out for upcoming trojans and spyware, maintain the internal wiki, and are responsible for the WoW team's internal data mining. This is the group that ensures the designers know exactly what is popular and what isn't in the game. Pearce jokes that the achievements system has been especially popular with WoW players and to date the players have unlocked some 4,449,680,399 rewards.

The PR and community teams were Brack's next focus, the groups responsible for public interaction. The PR team has helped to ensure some 10,000 articles have been written about World of Warcraft, while the community team acts as a liason between the players and the team itself. The 66 members of the community team ensures that civility is maintained on the game forums, and produce the always popular "blue posts".

The eSports group is responsible for all of the Tournament-related activities. Their budget includes prize money, travel arrangement money, and venue arrangements, and they ensure that professional gamers are tied directly into the WoW/Blizzard organization. To date they've hosted almost 1640 events. The events team proper is responsible for organizing BlizzCon, getting employees to events like AGDC, and coordinating with other consumer conferences. Brack notes the new addition of streaming viewers via DirecTV this year, and the explosive acts of Jay Mohr and Ozzie Osborn. With streaming viewers, BlizzCon had 100,000 participants this year.

Marketing, the next group on the docket, handles box creation, web campaigns, TV commercials, partner promotions (such as WoW-themed Mountain Dew), and in-game promotions like refer-a-friend or the scroll of resurrection. They're obviously very successful, as their commercials have seen over 10,000,000 views since Blizzard's television advertising campaign began. Licensing, a related group within the company, handles novel publishing, comics, strategy guides, the upcoming WoW magazine, apparel, plushies, action figures, games, and endless other tie-ins. Their role is to pair the right products with the right brand, and to date they've helped to release 400 products with Blizzard properties.

The creative development team is the hub for the company's history. They have two full-time lore historians, keepers of blizzard's past. They are the liaisons with the novelists, work to create shared art resources, act as an archive for every piece of art that's been created for Blizzard Entertainment, and currently maintain 100,000 art assets. Pearce takes a moment to note that the World of Warcraft team also has the capability to tap into the resources of other development groups within the company. He singles out the StarCraft 2 team as helpful for getting the original game out the door. Strike teams from these other groups are also helpful in evaluating World of Warcraft content without the connection that the team members already have, impartial observers for new content.

Brack notes that WoW also taps all of the other 'background' departments in the company. Finance, Human Resources, Facilities groups, the legal team, and of course the IT team all support the massive undertaking that is World of Warcraft.

Making the World Work

As an organization, World of Warcraft utilizes 20,000 computer systems, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and more than 4600 people. "Operating an online game is about more than just game development." Pearce hopes that the importance of these non-development groups is obvious, especially given the explosive growth of the company over the last five years. "World of Warcraft has completely changed the organization", and it wouldn't have been possible without the departments that they'd singled out.

new pic - eye for an eye

2009-09-18T06:36:00.000-06:00

Again, a whole ten minutes

I like the shading I did, I was aiming for something animeish, but a phone really doesnt do well zoomed out on a 3" screen...still, not too shabby on the shading imo

quick drawing up, and a funny wow pic

2009-09-17T05:16:00.000-06:00

when we were messing around in ulduar last night, we had a priest die one some trash...needless to say, seeing the undying die, gave me a laugh

i got bored before writing the article on tanking, so i doodled this...dont know why the hell i used the darkening tool like i did, but it looked cool on my phone

enjoy

RolePlay - Tanking the tanks

2009-09-17T02:41:00.000-06:00

Being the Wall

Tanks are at first thought, a wall that stops a boss or encounter from crashing into the raid and killing everyone. A second thought, pretty much proves that, a tank has the sacred duty of being the only line of defense to the raid. But unlike a normal concrete wall, the tank can move, become more resilient, or even interrupt a boss, plus, they can die. First off, this isn't an article on healing, that'll be for another day, this is more about the tank.

Tanks do not have it easy. Anyone thinks they can play a tank, but there is a fine line between being a good tank, and a terrible tank. Although it can be taught, tanking is really a first-hand experience. Any good tank can give advice, but without practical application, and learning individual play styles, tanking can seem daunting.

Where do tanks come from?

Traditionally tanks are a select few classes spec'ing (with talent points) into their protection trees to gain extra survivability talents that will allow them to live longer in boss encounters. Protection Warriors, Protection Paladins, Frost Death Knights, Feral Druids, can all be tanks. To note, Death Knights can use almost any talent tree to pick up survivability talents, but Frost or Blood seem the most traditional as Unholy has become more the PvP talent tree, and Blood has lost some mitigation and stamina bonuses over time since their release.

Tanks, usually aim for gear with "Defense" stats posted on it. "Defense" increases some natural avoidance abilities (more on those in a minute) as well as decreases the chance for the tank to be critically hit. By reaching an amount of 540 at level 80, tanks become "uncrittable" meaning bosses and mobs can no longer deal extra amounts of damage to them. Feral Druids are the exception, as they can spec into a talent that makes them uncrittable for 3 talent points. Generally Defense gear should go to tanks if seen as an upgrade, because, having a better geared tank means that wall between the boss and raid becomes that much harder to knock down.

Pure Avoidance - the legit way to not get hit

Avoidance is when a tank dodges, or parrys an attack from a boss, and in return takes no damage. It's percent based, meaning there is a percent chance the tank gets hit, as well as a chance the tank does not get hit. Avoidance is a loved thing. It means less mana consumed from a healer, and the fight can proceed with damage and mana saved. Sometimes, that breather can allow healers to catch up on the tanks life bar and even top him off, making sure the tank is fit for the next major attack from a boss. Pure Avoidance is dodge, and parry. Both work about the same, but come from different stats. Dodge, comes on gear usually with defense, but also comes from Agility, while Parry, comes on gear usually coupled with defense, and also comes from strength as well. Those two stats help a tank survive even the most deadly of bosses, just by dodging or parrying their melee attacks. Pure Avoidance is something aimed for by any tanking class, except for Feral Druids who cannot acquire parry stats.

Blocking...a damage mitigation story

Block is another stat given to most tanking classes (Druids do not get block, but instead Savage Defense, where when the Druid critically strikes they get a buff that reduces the next hit taken by 25% of their attack power). Death Knights do not get Block, but can also spec to take less damage by entering their frost presence for straight damage mitigation. Block, in a nutshell, is when the tank uses a shield and when successful, mitigates some damage from the boss attacks. Warriors and Paladins get block from their shields used, and as the stat posted on their shield, when they do block an attack, damage mitigation occurs for the amount listed. However, block also falls under a percent chance, making it a percent to happen or not happen. Paladins and Warriors alike can spend additional talent points to increase block chance, and Paladins can use an ability coupled with some talent points to increase their block chance by large numbers (60%). Block, can be acquired from gear like parry and dodge, and is often stated with them. The shield block amount is how much damage is absorbed when the block occurs.

Health Pools - How much can i take?

Health, is important to any player, it means how much you can absorb without biting the dust, or dying in quintessential terms. Health for a tank is more important, as they are taking a majority of the damage done by the boss (some rare cases, but I am not going to indulge upon them at this time). Having a large health pool, means you can take bigger hits, or even multiple hits in a row before death occurs. Some bosses do abilities a tank just can't dodge, so that's where their health pool comes into play. Or say they don't get a dodge or parry off, again, to the health pool the damage goes. HP comes from stamina, which is overabundant on tank gear, coupled with dodge, block, and parry (not all gear contains all bonuses, it's a mix and match game). Tanks with higher end gear will 99% of the time have higher health pools then tanks just starting to tank. Health is the end all stat for a tank, either they take the hit and live, or take it and die, having a higher number is always a good thing, but it doesn't mean giving up pure avoidance for it all the time either.

A Balancing Act - To be hit or not to be hit

So, you have some gem slots (for gems that can provide additional bonuses for your stats) open do you? Sometimes, too much of one thing means losing out on another...meaning you could have a hugh pure avoidance, but lack in health, and when that pure avoidance doesn't stop two attacks in a row (remember it's percent based) you could be in trouble. But the same could be said about health, gemming, enchanting, and aiming for high stam gear could be bad if the boss hits you multiple times in a row and your healers call out that they are running low on mana (always a bad thing). The best thing, is to find your middle road, and roll with it (somewhere between 50% or higher avoidance can be good as long as you have a good amount of health to back it up [try not to count block as pure avoidance since it doesn't negate a hit, and isn't always up to block to begin with]). It might be hard to start with, but when you get multiple pieces of gear for the same slot, you can judge which helps more (just make sure to stay around the minimum required 540 defense number).

Aggro - Making threats and keeping them

Tanks are walls because they can take hits, and dodge them sometimes...but they can also be the stopper between a boss and the rest of the raid because they can force themselves inbetween so. Threat, occurs when a tank uses abilities that cause threat, and does more threat then the other raiders. Every player produces threat (unless otherwise noted on abilities). Whether healing or dpsing or tanking, everyone produces threat, some more then others. A Paladins Sacred Shield doesn't produce as much immediate threat as a Priests Power Word: Shield. A tanks abilities, usually produce a large amount of threat per second, or tps, that, as long as they remain on top, keeps the boss focused on them. When dps starts doing more tps then the tank, then the boss moves to that dpser and kills them, number one on the aggro chart means the first (and sometimes only) target the boss focuses on. Aggro, threat, is the same in terms, threat is produced off of abilities, and aggro is the result. So tanks, keep up their respective threat making rotations and keep aggro focused on them.

Situational Modifiers - Run away little girl

It's no small feat for a tank, they have to make some choices while tanking, more personal choice then anything, but none-the-less, a choice. If a boss has a cast bar on an ability, tanks can choose, one of three things, try to move out of the way, eat it, or interrupt it. These choices aren't available all the time, or even at the same time. Sometimes a boss might cast an aoe that can't be interrupted, be can be moved out of the way from, or just taken as damage. Of course, there are times when damage can't be avoided, or interrupted, but has to be taken. And then there's the only option to interrupt it where moving or eating it cannot be options. But tanks must do the research of every boss encounter and learn what options are open to them. By knowing the fights before hand, a tank can respond accordingly to every ability, and prevent less damage, overall.

And...?

What's above in the post, is a general overview of what tanks must look at before each raid, during, and afterwards. It's alot more work when people actually stop to think about it. When it unfolds during a fight though, it seems like a blur, and in minutes, everything is over, and either the raid lived or didn't. For the record, I respect tanks, they have to worry about stats and put them into practice on every encounter, pulling out all the stops.

If you want to be a tank, I highly recommend tankspot.com to get in depth videos of all encounters and explanations for them. elitistjerks.com also has some great spec/rotation/gear recommendations updated with the latest theorycrafting.

-whew, enough to type for now

-pwrtoppl is out

New Pic up

2009-09-16T05:25:00.000-06:00

I got bored last night and finished this up...coulda been a bit darker overall, but oh well

next will be a swamp...maybe ill tint it for flavor

remember, its from my phone, with a tiny 3" screen, try not to judge too hard

Fresh out of the Box - Going from 0 to hero

2009-09-15T23:45:00.000-06:00

Instant Mix, add water and stir

It doesn't hurt to be known on your realm...unless it's through a negative incident, but even then, so few people care, and others might give you crap, but oh well, all is fair in love and war. Being known on the realm gives you several advantages, including other guilds knowing about you and your accomplishments, other people knowing of your feats, and some sort internal power motor that makes you become even more attuned to the world of enjoyment and contentment.

But, to get to be "that" guy, who people love/fear/hate, you first gotta get there. And that road could be a harsh one indeed. The top arena teams from the last major tournament didn't exactly play dumb all the way to the top; instead, they worked their asses off and for good reason: recognition. They want to be known, to have one's name in a conversation isn't always a bad thing.

So, let's say your new to the game of World of Warcraft, and have heard rumors of former players who seem to drift into the following years without actually making an appearance. You want to be like them, or at least as popular, because, fame means an ego feed, and that makes most everything better in life. Having that instant gratification knowing that people know of you in this large world, is always a plus.

The Statement

So here's how to do it: work at it. Yeah, pretty dumb right? Just focus, determination, and some work can make someone known, but let's make this even more of a statement. Toss in some research, do some known events, like raiding with the top end guild on your server, or blast through an arena rank with someone, but make sure you don't lose the focus. By setting goals too, you can make sure to meet them, and increase a rating by a certain date every week, or by trying a new heroic achievement, getting a server first along the way. But maybe your not up to that point...let's backtrack just a bit.

The Starting Line

First off, say you get a new 80, or just decide it's time to claim your stake in the world, wow or not, you need to know what you're getting into.

Research - Look into what you're getting into, and what others have done to get to their current rank. Make sure to note what they did right and wrong. Look for something maybe you could improve upon, saying you know what you're looking into
Goal setting - Start with simple goals, run some semi-current content to make sure you got a good grasp on what your aiming for, and when you get a solid idea of how your performing, you can set realistic goals.
Making the Goal - Most of the time, people don't follow through with their idea, so make sure you setup reminders and have others to back you...best part of setting a goal in wow? Others are aiming for it too, common group goals, are nothing to be ashamed of, aiming to clear current content on heroic, means working with 9 - 24 other people anyways, so take advantage of it, work with them and reach those goals.
Improving - A guide, is just that, a guide. No reason why anyone has to follow it to the "T." If your for any reason see a way to improve upon something, try it out, if it works, then you've just improved upon a guide/method and made it your own...if it doesn't work, oh well, try something else; at least you learned what doesn't work.
Competition - One of the best motivators to reach a goal is some competition. Being in the top guild means you're constantly working your butt off to remain the best, and striving to put more distance between your guild and some other person's guild. For arena, it's pure ranking. Doing better is just more rewarding, and staying on top, should not hold you back from letting others know that you're on top (chances are, they'll say something out of jealously).

Checking Back

Make sure to keep up with your goals after you reach the top, or whatever you're aiming for. make new goals, and shoot to do those, or aim for something challenging that hasn't been done before. Make yourself even more well known. Why not? Part of being the best is making sure people know of you, and they will, some people will start their own goals and research and find your name as top .

Ending up

I didn't write this as a fact sheet, it still falls under a generic guide to getting "X" goal. But I thought it might be something worth writing about, since it could be called WoW related. Wasn't really aiming to make people feel inspiried as much as informed. There are a thousand more detailed guides out there, but this isn't a bad way to get started.

-on that note

-pwrtoppl

-out

Ready, Set, Raid - You are the WheelMan

2009-09-14T23:45:00.000-06:00

Knowing Your Place, Raiding 201

So you've lived through a few ulduar and ToC encounters? Have gotten some loot have you now? But people still comment on you in general for not being a hardcore raider, being in a non-raiding guild, or a burnt out raider? Let's make sure your a raid ready, by starting with what your role is in a raid (not healer. dps. tank terms).

1 +24 does = 25

Chances are, you aren't the raid leader, and for good reason, raid leaders usually are (or should be) the people who carry the most stress, having to pay close attention to attendance, activity, loot, complaints from people, others attacking random people for low dps or bad healing strats, or people who just aren't cutting the current content's requirements; but you are just one among the many. People tend to use the "group concept" until they learn of the "I'm great" concept and forget that they once started out as a new player to the game, and so, as it goes, they think they are above everyone else, which is usually false (there are some amazing players out there and they know that they are). Don't be like those people, you help contribute to the raid, 10 or 25 respectfully, and by knowing your part, you provide less strain on the raid leader. But you cannot forget, by filling some vacant spot, could mean your just as replaceable as the guy you filled in for, so let's go over some things that will make you stand out.

Standing out (in a good way)

First off, in order to be someone to come back week after week, you need to have a couple things in mind as you raid:

Raid Awareness - Simply put, know whats going on around you, while helping others out
BYOB - Raid leaders like people who bring their own chow and flasks to a raid, being prepared is ALWAYS a good thing (several hours worth for the long runs)
Mindful of /raid chat - Watch what others say, and respond respectfully; most of the time, people will say random things, or spam, or argue amongst themselves, try not to be one of those people.
Advice given at the RIGHT time - Sometimes, people need to be told what they are saying or doing is wrong, by pointing it out in a non-threatening manner could show people what you know without offending other people.
Ventrilo's Lure - Avoid saying random things in Vent, unless it's an idea to correct an issue. Never speak during a boss encounter or an explanation of one, wait until after, unless it is during the boss encounter and something happens to you where you need to call it out. And never NEVER call out if your dps and you die (bad way to get people to not like you)
Designated Speaker - The raid leader usually has someone call out when something happens to players in vent during a boss fight so vent doesn't become cluttered with people's reverb and announcements of personal happenings.
Ready Checking - People love to ready check, make sure you don't AFK during a raid and miss the check, you might go on the uninvite list after that run.
Meter Maids - Don't be one, carry your own meter, but do not post it, the point of raiding with 24 others is to reach a common goal, posting how well you do looks bad, many raid leaders use their own and will look anyways.

It's not all the examples, but pretty close. Make sure you are respectful of others, be a happy raider, and keep discussion during boss fights to a nil. Raiding is one of those things, that requires focus and 24 other people to be aware of you and the encounter as a whole.

Being the Go-To Guy

Maybe you think it's time to contribute in some major way, but let's make sure your right for the job:

Reading up - Know the fights, and know the damage/debuffs given out during the encounter, and by lending advice to the raid about what you view on the situation can get you major points from the raid leader/guild leader. Not recommended for every fight, but sometimes lending a thought or two on stressful fights by offering a new tactic can make the world of difference.
Being there - Raid time, non-raid time, either way, be there for others, by helping out, and just being around online people will notice your not some silent scrub getting a free ride, show your worth by just being there.
Don't get cocky - Being in the upper ranked raiding guilds doesn't mean you should go sporting your guild name to everyone else. Chances are, people won't care, or will attack you for your foolishness, instead, work on being #1, and then keep cool about it, anyone who does care about ranking will know your guild is #1 and that knowledge that they know, alone should be worth the effort.
Fill-in, Step-out - Raid too full? Offer to step out for a night, maybe your just a dps that could be replaced with a tank or healer, in which case just offering could lend you some great points, because raid/guild leaders respect people who aren't greedy and there to take up space...but wait, is the raid missing some healer/dps/tank? Having a spare geared toon and offering can mean you really are a go-to guy, a hero of terms...just try not to relish in it.

Be cool about where you are in the guild, offer up, and one day you might make it to the top...or at least a guarenteed spot to raid every night your guild goes in.

well, just thought I would give out a thought or two what even I can't do well, maybe I'll start reading my own posts.

-pwrtoppl

-is out

Two new pics

2009-09-11T05:15:00.000-06:00

Two more to glance at

I know, I like to doodle on my phone, but what the hell, it's fun. Here are two new ones to look at (Ironman one I had for a bit, but the plains looking one i finished this morning)

Some Photos

2009-09-11T02:36:00.000-06:00

A couple photos

In my time away from my blog, I did get a new phone a month ago, a HTC diamond (http://www.htc.com/www/product/touchdiamond/overview.html) and so far it's rocked

In my flashing and unlocking, I did get a painter program, for my touchscreen, and here's some random photos I've done with my free time, hope you all like it!

For this one, I saw a sunset with a single cloud surrounded by darkness...

not a bad one if I say so myself.

Here I was watching a documentary on Eclipses, so, this is what came to mind.

First one made actually, went for a rose for my girlfriend, was just working on getting colors and smudges down, so, not a terrible result

- I have a couple more I'll upload in a couple days, gotta finish one and upload another

enjoy

What type of Raider are you?

2009-09-11T02:02:00.000-06:00

Something to Mull over

I updated an old thread some time ago on DSL reports, thought I would copy my work over to my blog:

enjoy!

=============================================================

You raid with these people. You work with these people. These people are closer than your family. You should worry.

The GM - He’s sacrificed his health, friends, and probably a couple of jobs to drag you through new content. When the guild isn’t performing, these decisions are in question. Prone to shooting sprees, forum flame wars, and the rapid advancement/gearing of whatever toon the guild “needs”. If you can keep your mouth shut, he’ll go emo and quit before you get gkicked. Still, you do like the guy. Or did. Before he went crazy. See drunks, below.

The GM (second type) – It’s his guild, his rules, and he has a final say so. He might have a second in command, kind of a fall back, but otherwise, he either is a straight out honest person who will let you know when you do bad (and not nicely) or he will get someone else to do it. Has an Elitist attitude.

The Co-GM – Maybe not as hardcore as the GM, but in a pinch, he makes a good raider. Listens to opinions, but gives little feedback. He does make some major decisions, and always tries to do it on the behalf of the GM. Look for this guy to give you feedback when others aren’t. Overall nice guy (unless the GM is nice, then this guy is an asshole.)

The GM's Significant Other - Okay, so he was going to have to quit but he tricked his SO into playing. She loves it. She's terrible. You'll effectively 24 man every boss. Count on 4 constructs in the raid, every attempt. She plays a Belf. Oh yeah, and she’s the one really in control over guild decisions.

The Raid Leader - When you stand in the flames, he dies a little bit inside. Look for this guy to do the Guild Leader’s dirty work. He WILL call you out in the raid by name and let you know your about to be replaced. After all, it’s his job to make sure raids happen successfully.

The Heir Apparent - When the GM goes psycho, ninjas the bank, and gdisbands, you’re the guy the guild is gonna look to fix the mess. You see it coming. You can't decide if ritual suicide or being the new GM would be more painful.

The Positive Officer - “That was great. Just great. You know, only 5% of guilds have even made it to Agalon, and getting him down to 67% on the second attempt is hawt.” He will blow more smoke up your ass then any other person on the planet, but sometimes, that’s just the trick. See Stoner, Below.

The Negative Officer - “Jesus Christ why are there corpses under all these goddamn volcanoes? It’s Jaraxxas for %@*@s’s sake. GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN FLAME!” This guy, makes it a point to let people know when a fuckup occurs and the more often it occurs, the louder and nastier he gets. See Drunks, below.

The Healing Officer - Has this job because, as the newest officer who plays a healer, he’s stuck with it. When a tank dies, he takes the blame for not helping out the healers enough, but that doesn’t mean he won’t get on your case. Has a separate channel for healers, likes to assign them, even if there is only one tank

The Hunter Class Lead - Will tell you that it does actually require skill and preparation to play a hunter well in the end game. Lies frequently.

Metermaid - He's got meters running. Always. Asks for meter postage whenever he's in the top 5, which is rare, as his focus on the meters is preventing him from seeing the volcano he's pathing towards. Pulls aggro. Has yet to realize that 0 health returns 0 dps. If he's healing, you might as well just put him on raid, he's gonna heal them anyway. Will personally whisper you meters when you’re below him. Usually an idiot or an asshat.

Stratman - Has read every strategy on the entire internet for every boss. Unable to think critically. Knows where his talk key is. Hated by the officers. Likely to play a hunter or mage. Also does out of his way to point out people not following the strat, but usually only to officers.

The Gay Guy - Affects the gay accent for effect. Upgrade decisions tend to involve lengthy discussions about gear appearance. Learned to use the dressing room function before the ‘v’key. Links gear and tells people to shift-click it.

The Stay At Home Mom - She’s around children all day and craves adult conversation. Babbles incessantly in vent, forgetting that adult conversation doesn’t usually begin with, “So I was talking to (insert name of four-year-old child) and he says…” Well liked, but frequently muted. Also has an issue with end game raiding, will show up, but won’t be the most promising dps.

Mr. Mikeless - Has a microphone. Hears the conversation and directions. Once wiped the raid because he started talking and most folks alt-tabbed to see who the hell was speaking. May be your best player. Very quiet.

The Kid - So, you messed up on this guy’s interview and nobody noticed that he was 12. But, he can play. And if he gets a little bit excited when boobies are getting talked about? Hey, he’s young. Has some skill when pointed in the right direction.

The Backbone - Plays a tank. Doesn't have much to say. Made an error once in Naxx, or so you heard. Will disconnect when Anub'arak is at 30% and keep aggro while offline for the rest of the fight. Has never said anything negative to the healers. Ever. GL with your progression without one of these. Hates the prima donnas.

The Other Kid - Remember that accountant you interviewed for the fury warrior position? And how you wondered how he’d make time to raid during tax season? He couldn’t. His eleven year old daughter took over about that time. She’s been raiding since. Mages, that’s an eleven year-old girl owning you night after night.

The Hunter Who Doesn't Do His Homework - Always good for insightful commentary and clever observation just after a wipe. "Holy Crap Man! I was just standing and shooting and this damn VOLCANO popped on me! When did they put in those volcanoes?"

The Prophet - Keeps insisting that you are going to need a melee group for ToGC. Badgered the management until they broke. Plays a rogue. Shreds. Loved by the Most Devout.

The Most Devout - This is the guy who gets to play an off-spec in a big-boy raid. He's the fury warrior or the enhance shammy. He cannot believe that some fate is letting him have this much fun that he's afraid it will all come crashing down. Prays devoutly to his favorite deity that the guild won't collapse because he'll never have THIS much fun again. Ever.

The Drunks - The special section of your guild. As raid progresses, their voices in vent are getting just ever so slightly slurred. You don’t notice because you’re trying to sound sober yourself. DPS output seems to scale positively with blood alcohol level.

The Stoners - Quietly wiping raids since the beta. They really, really, really hate having to move out of the fire. Two of them are dead under the volcanoes. They live in fear of the negative officer. They have their own channel. Try /join (insertguildname)stoners. You’ll see who’s in there. It’ll explain a lot. Still, if these guys don't show, bosses don't seem to actually die. They’re also having more fun that everyone else combined.

The Prima Donna - Requires special attention from management. Constantly whining. Plays some vital role. Might be a main tank, off tank, or healer. The officers really hate this guy and as soon as they can find another tank with 50,000 buffed HP, he’s out. Not a stoner.

The Chick with the Accent - Is the accent fake? Nobody knows or cares. Future visits to Australia/Britian/New Zealand/Alabama are now planned by all single raid members. Sometimes can be combines with Vent Prostitute, See Below.

The Healing Pally - Hates healing and had to go holy to see endgame. If you raid with a boomkin, a feral druid, a fury warrior, or any non-resto shaman, you are not getting a 10 minute blessing. Forget it. He hates you. God help you if he has a raid-viable alt in one of those classes; you're not even getting heals. Also, see Prima Donna.

The Departed Legend - You joined after he left. You suspect that he could not actually solo Yogg Saron. But you're not totally sure.

The Disgruntled Raider - Took an unannounced, extended vacation and now has to share his raid spot with the other 11 extra dps. Very angry about this situation. Doesn't realize that ##@#*ing is making things worse. Officers pray for a gquit. Often carries outdated gear he refuses to update.

The Warlock Whisperer - Directionally challenged. Despite having run Ulduar 1.26 million times, will require a summon to General Vezax’s room from the entrance. Has a "summon pls" macro. Strangely, is good at moving away from Void Zones. See (you guessed it) Stoners.

The New Guy - Begins most sentences with, "That's not how we did it in my old guild on Korgath." Likely to remain guilded for approximately one week. You wonder if he'll be telling his next guild, "In my old guild, we ran TOWARDS the volcanoes.”

The Backup - He's the guy waiting in the wings for the raid slot. Totally dependable and plays about 200% better than the guy for whom he's filling in. He's got half the gear and puts out 20% more dps. Totally cool, amazingly competent. You love it when the main can't be there. Could be a secret backbone.

The Buff-less Wonder - Plays a class with group buffs, but "forgets" to bring the necessary reagents. Highly skilled at turning a deaf ear and blind eye to buff assignments. If reminded, will proceed to slowly buff people one by one until someone else is overwhelmed by frustration and does it for them. Has a tendency to overwrite others buffs when choosing incorrectly.

Mr. Pick Me! Pick Me! - This guy is online and ready to raid. Always. Need a prot warrior? He's got one. A holy pally? Check. Problem is, he's really bad. Like bad bad. You keep him in the guild because he's... well, he's always been in the guild. So when your main tank, back up tank, and back up back up tank have vanished Mr. Pick is ready to rock, much to everyone else's horror.

Tootsie - Has a female toon. Claims to be female. Receives many of the benefits that the other females do, people are nice to her; she gets suspiciously good loot. Problem is, she's never posted a picture of herself, and she never talks on Vent. Could she really be a girl? Sure. But who's to know?

The Dumbest Person On The Planet - No one's quite sure exactly what's wrong with this guy, perhaps human evolution really has come to a standstill. Will be the cause of 60% of your wipes until he gets a /gkick. Tell him to spread out and he'll glue himself to a squishy healer. Tell him to avoid something and he'll stand in it till dead, then complain that he didn't get any heals. Ask him to CC the yellow star and he'll pick the orange circle then claim bleeding wounds debuff on his target.

The Obvious Explainer- This guy has read Wowwiki and probably written some of it. He will stop the raid for 15 minutes before each fight to explain to all the new people (of which there are none) that this guy might produce ground fire once in a while or that the hunter adds might shoot arrows. He'll warn that the boss can hit hard, tell everyone to avoid damage, and remind the healers that they need to keep the tanks alive.

Hair Trigger - He means well. Really, he does. Most of the time, he's likable, knows how to play his class, shows up on time, well prepared, and ready to work hard. He knows the strats, knows his role, and 75% of the time is a pleasure to have in the raid. Unfortunately, he's also got a very short fuse, and if something goes wrong or somebody screws up, he'll set off with enough RAGE to keep your Warriors happy for a week. "How the hell could you screw that up?" "Don't you know what the hell you're doing?" "Jesus Christ, could you please NOT suck next time? Can we get somebody goddamn competent in here, dammit?" Causes a good share of drama, frequently butts heads with the officers (especially the Negative Officer), and prone to /gquitting in a fit of anger before simmering down and humbly requesting a re-invite.

The Undergeared Slacker - This is the player who, for whatever reason, will only put out 33% of the DPS or healing of any other player with the same role. While not being AFK. This player is also likely to roll or spend DKP on the worst possible items for his/her class or role. You would love to drop him from the raid, but you don't have enough bodies to do so.

The Douche - He knows his class, knows the game, and always shows up to raids, but generally unpleasant and often rubs his guildmates the wrong way. If you ask him to do something he doesn't want to do (heal as a priest/drood/shammy/pally instead of DPS, tank as a warrior instead of DPS, kite as a hunter instead of... DPS) he'll do it, but he'll complain endlessly the entire time and opt out the first chance he gets. He'll bid on minor upgrades even when someone else could use it more, but hey, he's got the DKP, and the raid doesn't want to lose him because he's a good player. Every guild has one, you know who it is--if you don't, you may BE one. Often from New York, New Jersey, or Quebec.

My Glass Is Half Full - He's a decent player, but above all else he brings to the raid endless optimism. "Don't worry guys, good job, we learned a lot!" "We'll get him next time, we're doing better and better!" "We're definitely going to down this guy tonight." If there's any conflict or argument, he'll try and step in with a quick "Let's not argue, guys! Stay focused and we can do this!" He's a nice guy and means well, but the officers keep him muted on Vent half the time just because his encouragement gets in the way of strategy.

Pointdexter - He has the game down to a science. He may be a 40-year-old accountant with the free time of a 15-year-old student, or a 15-year-old student with the focus of a 40-year-old accountant. Drools over spreadsheets, calculates the group's overall DPS and efficiency and how it can be improved down to the smallest stat bonus. Spends his days on WorldofRaids and the Elitist Jerks forums looking at all the numbercrunching and posts everything on your own guild forums. Certainly an asset to the raid, but damn he needs a hobby.

The Terminal Virgin - Excessively vulgar, passive/aggressive. Has a slang term for the female genitalia for every letter of the alphabet, but has never actually seen one.

The Avatar - He's been in your guild since before you can remember and you've seen him raid maybe twice, but for some reason, this guy outgears the rest of your guildies by a tier. If you're in Udluar, he's wearing gear from ToC. If you're in ToC, he's got gear from ToGC. If you're attempting ToGC there are no more upgrades for him in the game. He'll hit 15% of your total raid dps in a 25 man instance, or heal your main tank without dropping below 70% mana. And he'll let you know how bored he is the entire time.

The Baggage - He's not bad per se, but he isn't good. The only reason he's still getting raid invites is because some vital raid member refuses to raid without him. Maybe he's family, maybe he's just a friend, but it's not his leet dps that you drag him along for. Usually knows he has a guaranteed slot because of his connections, and feels free to use that at every opportunity.

The Kid With ADHD - Night elf hunter or undead rogue. This kid is spastic, while the raid is drinking, he's jumping around like a moron, running in circles, and setting off fireworks. If that wasn't bad enough, he's on vent complaining that the raid isn't moving fast enough, even though he's not prepared for the next pull either. All of that might be tolerable if his constant antics didn't also involve falling into the lava and aggroing every mob in a 100 yard range.

Vent Prostitute - This is the girl that wants the raid to know she has boobs, a nice butt and loves sex. She will shamelessly tell you how anything demure turns her on, and will occasionally moan in vent. Don't be fooled ... she knows what kind of power this gets her; after all she needs to level the playing field when Girl with the accent is online. She often will find online boyfriends to be a time killing fling.

Mr. Mumbles - Loves to talk on vent, but is constantly asked what he just said. This can be caused by several reasons - broken mic, bad accent, or just mumbly. Almost always has something important to say - too bad you'll never hear it.

The Jackass Entertainer - Mouthy comments and random song follow this raider around. Usually contains his bullcrap to the space between wipes, but has upon occasion caused a hiccup in the progression due to a poorly timed joke nearly wiping the raid. Talks during boss encounters while dpsing.

Mr(s). Worthless - The one or two people you have to take sometimes because you're short on people. They are as geared and talent-specced like others in the raid, yet their numbers don't come close to others. Most of these are hunters or rogues, although that shadow priest or warlock fits that bill. They leave you scratching your heads on how the **** their numbers are so bad, vowing not to take them again until they improve...until next week you need them again.

Mr. 4Chan/Ytmnd/WoW.com Forums - Thinks every internet fad they've ever seen or heard about is the most hilarious thing in the universe, and has to share it with the raid. He has a massive amount of internet knowledge, has millions of pictures, and can bring up any oft-repeated phrase for hours at a time for no reason. Going from ' no wai ' to ' naga stole my [arcanite reaper] ' to ' [perdition's blade] GOES HERE D: ' golemagg doesn't change facial expressions!, ' he's sometimes funny, but the humor wears thin the 90th time you've said a raid command in /rs and he's /yell'd back, ' O RLY? '

Mr. STFU - This is the guy who believes he is funny but simply isn't. Even his voice is annoying, like nails on a chalkboard. Or he is the one with the most God-awful laugh you've ever heard who is always laughing. The problem is some of these people can't be muted because most of the time they actually contribute viable information. These are the people you whisper to other people in the raid, "He sounds like a baying donkey who's been kicked in the nads" or "Oh for the love of Christ shut him up".

The Over-Analyzer - Even if this person does top damage and dps in the raid, he is convinced he can do better or that the guild could do better. He is nearly impossible to make happy, and frequently is self-absorbed about himself in general. He is generally a really good player, but he is convinced that no matter what, anything could be better then whatever he just did/the raid just did.

The Perv - Takes anything and everything said and twists it into an innuendo, some more subtle than others. His mind resides firmly in the gutter and what few minds weren't there before he spoke create an almost audible splash when they hit it and hit it hard. Source of much entertainment, especially late at night or when drunk, as long as he doesn't carry things too far. Keep away from the Kid and the Other Kid or you may lose them to parental aggro.

Junkie- The one who perpetually raids while under the influence of half a bottle or more of Nyquil or some equally intoxicating cough syrup/pill. ALWAYS slacks on trash, all the while laughing to themselves for no reason with eyes half open. Always #1-2 on dps on bosses, but bottom 15 on trash dps. A fucked up flipper baby of The Stoners and The Drunks. Also, much like The Stoners, always has WAY more fun than other people in the raid even though they have no idea what's going on.

The Armor Thief - This person is in agreement with the officers that some pieces are better for his "spec" than pieces from his actual armor type. It's a shame he didn't talk to anyone who actually played the class, or he might actually not be pissing them off AND might actually not be at the bottom of the charts. Frequently a Druid, Paladin, or Warrior.

The Other Armor Thief - This person is not in agreement with anyone that he will take anything designed for his armor type, even if someone else sees it as an upgrade. Simply put, if he doesn't have it, and it's his armor type, he wants it, even if it's not an upgrade or intended for a different spec.

The Casual – Not a really well geared player…not the best spec either, but is always on, and though he doesn’t care if he makes it into the raid or not, he won’t get upset by it. Likes to run old content, believes that he could get better, just doesn’t want to work at it. Also has a habit of not rolling on any gear until it is about to be destroyed, then will take it because everyone else passed.

The Passive – Will listen to anyone’s thoughts, but have nothing to say for or against it. Not the person to ask for ideas, and when it comes time to raid, stays quiet, does his job, and calls it a night. Never seen upset…or happy for that matter.

The Opinionator - Makes it a point to voice his thoughts in response to anything anyone else says, or thinks. If the raid leader is trying to make a point about a wipe, the opinionator is backing him up 100% with the words, “yes” and “correct.” Likes to follow up with, “Here is what I’m thinking,” and “I think it would be best if we…” Also likes to talk about who should really get the gear despite dkp bids. Whispers people if no one is responding in /g chat or vent about his thoughts and their responses. Follows the annoying.

The Dedicated - Has two of every class at 80, horde and alliance. Has a bankroll (gold) that rivals most millionaires. Might be second best in every slot, but knows how to play every class really well, and usually isn't proven wrong unless he does it to himself, but never admits he's at fault. Also on 24/7 unless he finds a job...not likely.

Captain Lags-a-lot - The boss mgiht have died 60 seconds ago, but not for this guy, he's still deep into rotation and thinks the win is close. Great guy, 2k latency though. And usually can't change the situation unless he turns off his p2p client...which even then, doesn't help. Look for this guy to die in fires, not by choice, but only because he won't see it until it's too late.

The Experimentor - Thinks he is on to something about his class. As a holy pally, he might be aiming for haste over crit, or as a dps, leather over plate. He could be right, or completely wrong, but still, it's fun to see the whole process. Could be a secret Prodigy.

The Unreliable Raider - Outgears and out-dps's 90% of your regulars, knows all the fights (despite lacking all the achievements), and makes every boss seem 50% easier because he is kiting/dpsing the adds without being told, giving the tank helpful tips, or just rocking the meters. Passes on most loot as what he has is better. Unfortunately, he comes up with obviously fake excuses for bugging out early, or not showing up at all. Whether it's his RL schedule or he'd rather grind rep in the Outlands instead of raiding ToGC, he's never consistent. You'd love to remove him from the roster completely, but the times he actually shows up and stays, he's golden.

So...I forgot

2009-09-11T01:55:00.000-06:00

Been a while

So, I forgot I had a blog...forgive me, something about raiding and time away

Made me get old, so here's my return to a new youthful poster

---

In my epic time away, I joined the second best guild on my server, Checkmate, and so far, it's been awesome. I've also spent time with my girlfriend, worked my ass off at work (kind of) and seen a dozen movies.

Since, I owe it to everyone, here's a cool post I have come across:

From official WoW forums fyi...

=========================================

"Lord Arthas," Kel'thuzad shrilled on his way to the peak of the Frozen Throne. "Naxxramas has fallen! So, too, the bowels of Ulduar!"

The Lich King's mind stirred, but his body did not. He was situated on a slab of ice, clutched tightly by a series of jagged, icy spikes. "Bowels?" asked the Lich King, whose booming telepathic voice could only be heard by his servants.

Kel'thuzad stopped and floated in front of the Lich King. "There must have been thousands of them--" Kel'thuzad's chilly wheeze, visible in these temperatures, got swept away by the Frozen Throne's furious winds. "Alliance and Horde alike--all of them, working together!"

A vile mist of frost emerged from the holes in the Lich King's helmet.

The chains holding Kel'thuzad's robes together rattled nervously. "They stormed in without warning, My Lord--"

The Lich King rose. Pillars of ice shattered around him in his wake.

Kel'thuzad cowered and shielded his head with his skeletal hands. "An army of gryphons, bats, and drakes the color of blood!!"

"ALEXSTRASZA?!" the Lich King roared. The Frozen Throne shuddered.

"There is no question, My Lord! She aided them in conquering Malygos, and defeating Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum! --Even the God of Death, Yogg-Saron, was vanquished by their efforts!"

The Lich King raised his hand in anger at Kel'thuzad. "Kel'thuzad, you allow but insects to invade your necropolis? To befriend the Aspects, to conquer my Lieuten--" The Lich King blinked, suddenly grabbed his own chin, and looked down. "Wait, did you say 'God of Death'"?

Kel'thuzad peeked through his finger bones. "Yes, My Lord. Yogg-Saron, the God of Death."

"..."

"My Lord?"

"How, exactly, do you go about killing a God of Death?" the Lich King asked. He turned around, looked up at the blizzard in the sky, and wondered.

".. well, uh, I assume you.. kill it, My Lord. With fire. Or a large sword."

"--And, on that note, how exactly are you still alive, Kel'thuzad?" The Lich King looked over his dented, frostbitten spaulders at Kel'thuzad.

"Well, I'm not, My Lord. I'm dead. I'm a lich."

"Then how is Naxxramas fallen? Why didn't you fight the Alliance and Horde?"

"I did. They killed me."

The Lich King glared at Kel'thuzad.

"I mean, I try to defend the necropolis every week, but they just keep coming back," Kel'thuzad defended.

"So let me get this straight." The Lich King brushed a human tooth off of his ice slab. "You, who are dead, are killed every week."

"By the undead," Kel'thuzad injected.

"What?"

"Well, you see, they have Death Knights now. --And sometimes a few Forsaken show up."

"So the undead kill you every week, who is dead, so that you die, and then you.. come back to life every week so that they--"

"I come back to death every week."

"Right. You come back to death every week so that the undead can kill you again. And then they go ahead and--why not?--kill the God of Death."

"That's about the gist of it, My Lord."

"Kel," the Lich King said in a softer voice. He appeared to be admiring a snowflake that had gotten impaled on a nearby ice spike.

Kel'thuzad looked left, and then he looked right. He cleared his throat, but his lich voice remained as raspy as ever. "Yes, My Lord?"

"Do you ever wonder if we're actually just data in a computer? --Hell, we could all be characters in someone's MMORPG!"

"You mean like The Matrix, My Lord?"

"I guess."

"I highly doubt we're characters in an MMORPG, My Lord."

The Lich King dragged his gloved fingers across the side of his helmet. "I mean--sometimes it just feels like I'm ineffective, you know? I set up a necropolis in the sky. Suddenly everyone has a flying mount. I show up in that super hard quest in Borean Tundra--you know, the one with--"

"Yeah, I know the one," Kel'thuzad replied with a quick nod. "The one where the damage gets reflected back at you. Very original."

"Epic, too. Did you hear my voice acting?"

"Completely on par."

"Yeah." The Lich King touched the snowflake with his fingertip. The snowflake shivered and fell apart. "Yogg-Saron and I--we set up that fool-proof hole in Ulduar. How were we supposed to know that Kologarn is the only enemy in the game that doesn't despawn?!"

Kel'thuzad stiffened.

"And I was talking to Anub'arak the other day. He had this great idea; we could kill those pesky mages that are holding up Dalaran. Can you imagine? During peak times?!" The Lich King cackled and turned around. His grin was hardly visible beneath his helmet. "The whole place would come crashing down! Do you have any idea how much DEATH and DESTRU--"

Game.

Kologarn is the only enemy

enemy in the game

game that doesn't

doesn't

The Lich King gasped.

game

Kel'thuzad strafed to the side.

game

"You--" The Lich King lost his breath. The water in his eyes caused the ice on his eyelashes to sizzle.

That's a terrible idea, Lich King. It would never work.

Crash Dalaran? What good would that do? Let's terrorize the Argent Tournament instead!

Hey, Lich King! Let's go gargoyle tipping! Hahaha!

The Lich King's voice deteriorated into a whisper. He stared at Kel'thuzad. "You knew. All along, you--"

"You were never supposed to know, Arthas," Kel'thuzad said. "But it's too late now." Kel'thuzad, who had been staring off into the distance, finally made eye contact with the Lich King. "You dug too deep." Kel'thuzad ripped the miter off of his head.

The Lich King's heart--which had suddenly returned--skipped a beat.

Kel'thuzad tossed his staff aside. It broke in two when it collided with the icy floor, and the gigantic jewel at its end shattered into a thousand brilliant pieces. Kel'thuzad peeled his mustache off, and then he peeled his body off, revealing--

The Lich King's eyes widened. "Z--!!"

Zarhym. Zarhym stood before the Lich King, in all of his floating skull glory. --And Zarhym cackled. He cackled long, and he cackled hard. The insane laughter literally tore the Lich King's helmet apart. Arthas, free from the helmet's grip, fell to the floor and screamed.

Kalgan emerged from the haze of ice behind Arthas. His eyes were dark, but his smirk was darker. "You did your best, Zarhym--" He looked over at Zarhym. "--but, as usual, your best wasn't good enough. Please return to your necropolis and try to actually accomplish something for once."

"Yes, My Lord!" Zarhym hissed. "My apologies, My Lord! I will inform the playerbase that we currently have a Paid Class Change feature in the works at once!" Zarhym floated away hastily.

"Yes, Arthas, you were a great villain," Kalgan continued as he stared down at the poor soul. "Perhaps too great. You--" Kalgan glared down at something that was sneaking around in the broken pieces of the Lich King's helmet. Was that-- Was that a crab?! "GHOSTCRAWLER?!"

"Err--" Ghostcrawler hesitated. He skittered around, grabbed a chunk of Lich King helmet, and put it over his crab head like a hat. Because it was a hat, technically. I mean, moments ago, it had been a helmet. But just imagine a crab wearing the entire Lich King helmet. I mean, come on. That would be ridiculous.

"Were you hiding in that Lich King helmet, Ghostcrawler?!" Kalgan asked--loudly.

"No, Sir! I was.. working on those Elemental Shaman changes, Sir! You know the ones!!"

Kalgan put his hands on his hips and tapped his foot.

"Yes, Sir! Applying those changes right now, Sir!" Ghostcrawler skittered away.

"Now, where was I?" Kalgan looked around, settled his eyes back on Arthas, and cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. --You were able to realize the truth, weren't you?! That you are nothing more than a character in a video game. What a pity." Kalgan walked around Arthas and chuckled.

"You--" Arthas tried to speak between his own retching and hacking. Black sludge--the will of the Lich King--was pouring out of his mouth. "You won't get away with this!! There's no way-- I'm Arthas Menethil! I am the Lich King! What will the fans say?! You can't replace me! I'm better than Sephiroth, for god's sakes!!"

"Oh, can't we now?" a familiar voice called out from beyond the haze.

A chill ran down Arthas' spine.

Chris Metzen stopped beside Kalgan.

"NO!" Arthas cried.

"One little retcon is all it would take," Chris said with a smile. "In fact, we've got one lined up already..."

Chris and Kalgan turned around to face something. Arthas struggled to roll himself onto his back, so that he could see what they were looking at. His blackened, frozen lips trembled. A shadow--a silhouette; a flare. Something with spikes. Something growing. Tears, hotter than Hell, finally gushed out of Arthas' eyes.

The silhouette flipped its hair.

"Magister's Terrace was merely a setback!"

Enter the Blog Master's Dungeon - A little break

2009-07-28T03:55:00.000-06:00

mind as well advise to myself

Whew...all this blogging, is fun, but I don't think for a minute I've talked about myself at all, but then again, what's the real purpose of a blog if I hold out blogging on whatever comes to mind...oh wait...wiki beats me to it:

-Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries.-

Well now...mind as well hit the personal side for a couple minutes, since my brain wants to write some more about World of Warcraft...which can be a very time consuming game, AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS!

So, about me (guess I'll fill out that -about me- section in my dashboard), I am 23...with a killer appetite for gaming and my girlfriend, which seem to be the most two important aspects of life anyway, I love to play RPGs, along with MMOs (actually just WoW for me thanks) and like to spend time harassing my girlfriend for many things (some naughty) including getting her to stop playing WoW long enough to see me do a dance when I win new gear (though she might get jealous since we share tier -- me<-holy pally, her<-disc priest).

I like to party too, like go to parties, drink booze and BS with everyone there. Every week me and some guys gather for some Dungeons and Dragons or Shadowrun depending on the weeks (alternate between em). I actually got my girlfriend to GM DnD, which she has twice before, to my dismay of losing a swordmage the second time around. Shadowrun is run by a guy named Juels, nice guy too. I used to run a Legend of Five Rings campaign, but decided to take a break recently, as a player one-shotted my campaign villain at rank 1...woot.

I do work (shocking as it may be) for the government, answering calls on a third shift where people often call, forgetting their password for applications or losing the slip of paper everything was written down on (yes these people protect us). I love my job, a little boring, but hell, what doesn't get boring after a couple years? It's stable, and for this economy, I will stick to my guns and ride it out.

...I could say I like music, but going to concerts and having two Ipods (a 8gb touch and 80g gen[whatever's the most recent]) and usually stream music 24/7...but that might be an understatement...

No, I can't draw, even if it was to save my life, but if it comes to a conversation about debate, I can chime in with usually something relevant to the situation (most of the time, it's about the subject and how porn might fit in) but who cares right? Some dude who's randomly blogging on the Internet posts what he is thinking about, can't say people avoid it though, seems to be the hot thing to do these days.

I have a myspace that's outdated, a facebook which I logged into once, and a Twitter, cause it's not blocked at work (woot, thank you websense). I went to school for networking and programming, but never got a degree because I'm lazy and like to kill time doing nothing important, instead of attempting to better myself (other then I stopped drinking soda, maybe lose a couple pounds)

I like my life as it is, for some reason, contentment hit my with a wooden bat that makes me okay with how everything is, though some of it I might not agree with, I can't change human actions other then my own, and hope maybe other people catch on.

No, I do not have a religion, though I was talking with a friend at work about the whole thing, and we came to the conclusion that you don't need to have a religion to believe in something or have faith in another, which is fine by me.

I have gaming consoles, but usually avoid them, as I can't download the games I want, so my brother plays more then me (and he is only partial toward the gaming world). That doesn't mean I'm not a gamer, I am by all means, and play ever new PC game i can get my hands on, which ends in disappointment more often then not (though some recent ones are pretty fun with wicked graphics). I like tabletop games, have dabbled in MTG over the years, going to States twice (but usually only play a few tournies a year).

I am a Scifi guy, who likes watching the Scifi channel (or SyFy or whatever its called) and likes competing shows like Hell's Kitchen and Chopped...I like cooking and watching cooking shows (though it might interrupt my raid a bit, as i tend to AFK more then others, but make up for it with mad skillz), and naturally I like anime, and manga, though my girlfriend seems to like it more then me (I'm glad too, means I'm not the dork of the relationship...oh yeah, she plays WoW more then me, but only because I work more then her).

Anything else? Yeah, nothing I can't write about later...maybe I'll do a column of this once per week, just to help out a bit, so I can learn a little about myself too

-pwrtoppl <---- me :)

out

Fresh out of the Box - Gearing at 80

2009-07-28T02:44:00.000-06:00

We all had to level to 80 at some point, and though it might have been easy, or hard (depending on characters leveled, time spent learning the game), when someone hits 80, they have to gear up their character, based on how far someone plans to go in endgame content, or what their mainly interested in (PvP or PvE). But, the course remains the same, gearing up from a fresh 80, to a competent raider, pvp'er, or even the casual who likes heroics and just killing time in game.

With that nice sweet into, let's jump in!

Hitting 80

Long after you've pushed through 80 levels of content, gotten that final leveling achievement, and looked back at your current equipped gear, the time now has come to make a critical choice:

-To be a PvP'er, or Raider? Or both?

When you usually choose a path, it makes the difference of where you'll spend most of your time while your 80. Going the route of the PvP'er means you'll be shooting for Resilience and high stamina gear, while going the route of a Raider, means you'll go for class specific gear, with no Resilience but better overall rounded stats made to endure the PvE aspect of the game.

Raiding means...

Time spent in Heroics are the fastest way to go to get gear to see higher endgame content. Heroics will start most players off in the right direction of what type of gear to look for that is best for their class. While this might not be the chosen route for players with multiple 80's and have the BOE's (bind on equip gear) ready, Heroics can open the doors into instances available for raiding. Naxxramas, Vault of Archavon, Eye of Eternity, and Obsidian Sanctum all couple perfectly with gear levels around and slightly better then Heroic gear. All offer some gear for most other classes and can aid in quickly gearing someone for higher endgame content. By running these raids on the 10 man versions, you can quickly learn some great raid awareness skills and walk out with multiple pieces of decent raiding gear. 25 man versions of the above listed raids have bosses with more health and damage output, have better reward gear, and require...yes you guessed it, 25 people (give or take a few). By running the 25 mans versions, you can get some better gear, and learn about working with 24 other people besides yourself. The real goal of gearing up is to unlock current contents such as Ulduar and Trails of the Crusader, which both offer massive gear upgrades and can allow you to be ready for any new content that comes out afterward. Raiders going this path have a long way to start out, but can quickly become an effective raid member. And do not forget to spend badges collected from running PvE content, you can trade them in for gear upgrades that fit most classes pretty well.

PvP, the other white meat...

PvP is a different set of endgame content rewarding a different set of gear. Instead of spending time in Heroics, you go to battlegrounds, where you compete alongside and against other players to the death over different objectives (depending on the battleground) for honor. Honor, is a currency used to trade in for gear that gives good resilience, stamina, and can be coupled together with other PvP gear for bonuses. By running weekly Wintergrasp, and doing Daily battleground quests, in addition to participating in battleground weekends (weekends that change every week that reward more honor in the selected battleground) you can gain a large amount of honor in a short time, giving you good battleground gear. But what about weapons? Or even better armor, like that of raiding gear equivalent, but only for PvP gear? Fear not PvP'er, Arenas help out here. Arenas a smaller battlegrounds with one purpose, killing the other team in a selected match up by current arena ranking that rises and falls by victories and loses. Arenas come in 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5, where each one hands out Arena points per week depending on the number of wins. These points, along with Honor, can reward top end PvP gear, including weapons, made just for Player versus Player combat.

Ending on a good note

Doing one or the other does not mean you can't mix it up and do both though, it just means you might have your dual talent specs setup so one you can raid with and one you can PvP with, and there is nothing wrong with that. Also, it couldn't hurt to carry two different sets of gear for when you go back and forth, so you don't use a bad stat such as Resilience in a raid, people often look down on you for that. In conclusion, pick what you want to go for, and give it a try, worst case, you can do the other and come back to your main pick when you think you are ready for it.

-pwrtoppl

-out

Player vs. Player - Battlegrounds - How not to be a nub

2009-07-21T01:14:00.000-06:00

Who doesn't dread entering a battleground (aka BG) and being called a nub (newbie, n00b...take your poison). Nothing beats the fresh scent of scattered player corpses littered on the battlefield with spells crackling off in the distance and 20-80 players running around like their head was removed with a meat cleaver. But going in blind into a BG can be daunting, unless you are ready (or have been there before). So, let me open up on some BG tactic know-hows, what to dress in, and what to bring to the party.

First off, #1 most important factor, is your survivability...can you take a player, or two, or three all chopping as you attempt to defend yourself? If not, consider a stat on your defense tab on your character sheet titled resilence. It shows the chance removed that you have to be critically hit by another player, and how much damage less you take from damage and critical hits. This is important, because in a game where damage trumps defense, having even a little means you can go all out without worry about your current health status (unless your a healer, then run to a DPSer). By stacking resilence, you take less damage overall, and have a chance less to be crit (which is more damage done to your head by a single hit). Healers need this stat stacked a bit more, only because people like to target healers and go after them first (most of the time). Your Resilence can be stacked from gear you get by trading in honor or marks from certain battlegrounds.

Secondly...watch your surroundings (yes, it isn't just a raid thing) because there are people who come at you from behind or stealth to you. By keeping an eye on the rogue stealthing 80 yards out, you can bet chances are, he's headed to you with intentions to stab you until you die. By watching that rogue stealth, you can drop some aoe (area of effect) effect that will break his stealth, ruining his opening attacks and leveling the field (at that point, go all out). By knowing that a group of players is forming off in the distance to take over your spot (either because you are guarding a flag or holding a base), you can call out for inc (incoming) to your spot, and though you might not live, you will have helped out your BG by preventing a base from being taken over without anyone knowing (other then the warning on the screen when it is too late). Sometimes hiding nearby before the other faction shows up and by attacking when more players come to assist you can mean the difference between a failed defense or successful pushback.

Third, communication. /bg is the best way to let people know where you are headed, where is under attack, or what the plan is for the next strike at a flag or base. Being quiet in BG chat does not mean people can focus, not unlike raids at all, but can instead let others know the situation of areas they currently are not around. Let people know what's going on, and the scrub title...will disappear.

Fourth, Grouping is key here. Don't go Clint Eastwood on people and run into a group of enemies, guns blazing...it does not work that way. Instead, go with two or more people so your survival efforts aren't lost on a 1 v 10 scene where your guns don't fire because your stunlocked from multiple people. When you get 1200 resilence, and have a top end PvP (player versus player) weapon...then you can attempt the Clint Eastwood scene, but chances are, you'll still get rolled, it'll just take them longer to kill you. Group, and you and your fellow BGers will live long happy 60 second lives.

Fifth, though important, is speccing (using those talents for purpose). PvP specs look much much different then raiding specs, and have increased player survivability and talents that reduce time spent snared, stunned, feared, and so forth. Speccing your classes pvp specs don't take long and pay off in the end.

And Sixth (only because it seems relavent to end with), learn to play your class against other players. Knowing which buttons and cooldown's to pop when will keep you alive and help out the friendly nations when the guns go blazing...learn to play before you go in, and people won't tell you that in the BG (which will come out in a much more angered tone).

So, Resilence, Watching your back, Communicating, Grouping, Speccing, and Learning to play will keep your new shiney PvP toon alive long enough to get smeared against the other pros without them letting you know how new you really are to the whole thing. I'm not saying you can be a master overnight, there will be many a death before you get the swing of things, but I thought giving some basics wouldn't hurt anyone.

And for the second time tonight

-pwrtoppl

-out

Ready, Set, Raid - Limiting Factor, Playing Favorties

2009-07-18T01:32:00.000-06:00

New content is just around the corner, and most of the time, it means guilds that raid have one of two options, gear up the masses or play favorites, both have their ups and downs. For starters, gearing up the masses means going in on 10/25 man groups and rotate new people in every week to see the fights, get some gear, and overall enjoy the new experience. Playing a set group on the other hand, means leaving out a majority of a guild so a select few can progress content as quickly as possible without losing time to teaching others the fight, or gearing them for the newer content.

When you take a guild of a couple hundred members, and decide to rotate them into the new content, you give everyone the chance to learn new fights, win new gear, and overall work as a guild to progress into new content. Some people may come around for a second or third trip, or just make a regular appearence (such as tanks and healers or really solid DPSers), but that core plus new people means more people are working together and even those who would be left out in the cold get a chance to try the newer content.

The downside to running more people, or rotating people for newer ones (or returning) is you face a difficult sense of unity between current raiders as fewer will know their set roles (MT, OT, MT healer, Raid healer etc). That issue can mean people will have a harder time worker together or play favorities by bringing back people they feel comfortable with raiding. While it can be a plus to gear up multiple people, the times that they aren't raiding means that their new gear, and increased stats won't contribute to progressing the raid any further then they had already cleared the time before.

If you decide to take the smaller path, with less memebers but a set group, you can clear content faster as you won't have to teach new people the fights or attempt to gear as many people. Those select few will learn the fights in less time, because the fewer explanations per attempt will lead to that group worrying less about who plays what role that night, which leads into that group gearing those players quicker, and in return, hoping to clear the content. By those few working together and getting to know one another's tactics, your group can move more fluidly through different areas.

The downside to choosing a select few and keeping them in the same group every week is, it becomes clear favorities are picked because of their ability to work together, raid awareness level, current gear, attitude of raiding, or some other factor that makes them worthwhile to be in the group. This means many other guild members must sit out week after week until the content is cleared and becomes open to group swapping, where they can switch one or two people per week so they can finally get gear/see fights.

In order to offset these drawbacks for both groups, is to run, multiple 10 man groups, and a 25 man group, so alot of people can see the content/get geared etc. By having multiple 10 man groups, people can still play favorites with the raiders they choose to work with, but can also gear up many more people in the guild, which can also account toward 25 mans, where multiple people from both groups can still have the chance to raid together without swapping out members. But say there are still people waiting for those 10 man groups, either because they cannot consistanly raid or just don't seem to work well with others, the best way to go is, gather them in a group, and let them have at the content. Just make sure they understand, no matter who raids in what groups, that some favortisim might be applied as the "group 1" might be clearing futher then others in the content in question.

Other then that, make it'll always be hard to make sure everyone is happy, so just shoot for gold and work with anyone who understands the bonuses and consequences of both sides.

With that note

-pwrtoppl is out

Ready, Set, Raid - Weeding out the meek from the meat

2009-07-15T03:28:00.000-06:00

So what happens when you take a group of individuals into a raid, and one really stands out, but not in a good way, a very negative way? Do you confront said person or assume they know what they did or are doing is wrong? How do you calm 23 other people besides yourself and the offender?

Sometimes it happens just by mistake, force of habit, or it is influenced, but sometimes it's just fate. Someone will mess up the raid. Pulls that could cause wipes, being afk (away from keyboard) for an extended period of time, interrupting communication from tanks and healers during a boss encounter, and some other annoying or unforgivable acts (insults included). How do you deal with these situations? Let's break them down to understand two types of these offenses.

First off, does the offender do it on accident? Standing in front of a tank aggro'ing a group of mobs, or DPSing the wrong group of mobs by accident. These can be corrected, by letting the person know what their doing wrong, you can prevent repeating mistakes...but hey, we are all human, repeats are bound to happen, so forgive and forget a new raiders mistakes, they are there to raid and learn, so teach them.

Second though, what if the offender does it on purpose? Pulling a group of mobs to stress the tanks or healers is more then enough to talk to after the first time. Going invisible to run by a boss to show off that you can "push" a pull to it's edge, where your spell seperates the raid from a boss pull and possible wipe is unacceptable in raiding terms, and if it's a repeat process, the member should no longer be raiding or be removed from the guild. But let's back it up a bit more with possible considerations.

So someone goes afk to run to the bathroom, a minute or two, here or there, can be excluded, because who doesn't answer nature's call? understandable...unless it's an afk that takes five minutes, everytime, multiple times per raid, then it can become a problem, because they are holding up 24 other people who want to finish the run and go to sleep/work/etc. Telling people to be ready to raid with set intervals can decrease downtime to a minimum if you have a set time everyone can use the bathroom between bosses.

Some people like to DPS a mob when the tank pulls...and for the most part, its okay if the tank has decent threat...unless it's the wrong group of mobs. Sometimes, players use a wrong attack on the wrong target, and that can cause issues if two groups of mobs hit the tank for more damage the healers can heal through. Usually having the DPS target the tank's target is the best way to fix this issue.

SOMETIMES, and it does happen, players don't learn from their mistakes or choose to keep repeating them...if you've spoken with them about their issue, and they knowingly continue, it's time to remove them from the raiding group or kick them altogether. Remember, though they are just another player, and it is a game, when someone is ruining the fun for 24 others, it's time to step in and fix it so those people won't all have to suffer through one man's poor actions.

As my previous post put oh so well,

-pwrtoppl

-out

Ready, Set, Raid - Raid Awareness 101

2009-07-14T05:21:00.000-06:00

Knowing how to play your class is important. Knowing how to gear and enchant also makes a difference. Knowing rotations and stacking for raids, also is important. But KNOWING what goes on around you, can make the difference between life and death...and for a raid, that could mean a wipe or not.

Example incoming >>>>

You are a really well geared resto druid. You have top end raiding gear, and are considered *THE* resto druid of the guild. You're the go-to guy for druid healing, and better yet, your peers want you to heal in Ulduar, awareness city.

It's not your first time in there, you have spent countless hours spilling gold, guts and glory into watching bosses fall to their death, so being in here is another trip to kill some badies.

You get to a boss that requires alot of movement...like old mimrom and buff up for the big fight. You know this fight. Been there, done that kind of deal right? So it starts up...Phase 2 comes along after a smooth Phase 1, and out comes the anti-personnal cannon. You think: laser barrage, random laser attacks, heat wave aoe, and a rocket or two...easy right? Why not, you've seen all his attacks, and know the damage from them playing a healer. You break into Raid healer mode and drop your heals where you see fit, catch an unavoidable heat wave, and drop some additional heals...incoming rocket right where you are, you get ready to move, and blamo! 1 cool million damage later, you die a fiery death in an early battle.

>>>>

What went wrong? you had heals going, you even had a near full bar of mana...but how did you falter on the rocket? Lag? maybe, or it could have been your skill in Raid Awareness.

Raid Awareness isn't a tab you can lookup, or grind to a high skill...it's something you learn about the hard way.

Jumping out of a void zone from an Obsidian Sanctum drake, to switching polarities on Thaddius, to moving out of Iron Councils Rune of Death...all require an innate skill called Raid Awareness.

How does one obtain such a skill? Here's the breakdown for you raider-wannabes:

Know your surroundings - seems simple enough, but sometimes standing in the lava just won't extend someone's patience for you.
Move when you need to - If its a Polarity Switch, then move IF your debuff changes from one charge to the other, but don't get twitchy and jump the gun. Sometimes not moving is your best bet. Remember your working with others, so, either lead by example or follow and learn, cause what you don't know, someone else will.
Maximizing DPS does not mean you live the longest - sometimes boss fights require you to stop DPSing and move, stay still, turn away from the boss, or run on top of a snow pile, and although you might lose some DPS, you'll get to do use that shiney new Rune Edge much much longer.
Keep your eyes on the fight - yes, they do wonder, either on-screen or elsewhere, you might glance at a healing or DPS chart, look at the TV, tab to change songs on a mediaplayer, talk to someone...the list goes on. Those momentary flicks of your eyes could mean you die from fire on Razorscale, or have Kologram's eyes hit you over and over until you die. Keeping alert and focused can make the difference between life and death.
Healz...plz? - You can't expect to get a heal right away or all the time if the healers are healing 10/25 people while everyone is taking aoe damage, from something like, Kologram's Obilivion, and during that time, if you pull and add from his dead arm, chances are you might die. Hey it happens...but try to do it in style. Drink a potion, pop a Fel Healthstone, turn on a defense button...do what you need to in order to stay alive long enough for that refreshing heal to keep fighting on, relying on yourself as well as the raid pays off.
Opening Rotation = aggro - I've seen Shamans rip aggro from a tank with multiple critical strikes in a row on an opening fight with a boss. They rush in, do a few major swings and suddenly they die...but it's not just shamans, alot of classes can pull threat if they get a strong opening rotation, so wait a few seconds for the tanks to really establish threat before going all in.
Know your range - be wary of the range of mobs, let the tanks lead in raids, after all, that's why they are there. But also keep an eye out for wondering mobs attacking healers and caster in the back, and by chance you do catch a mob wondering, tell a tank, it can save someones life, or even the raids.
Watch for the aggro wipes - some bosses wipe threat tables every special occasion, and during those times, chill the DPS on ice for a few seconds and wait for the tank to get a good amount of threat, otherwise, you'll count toward the corpses on the floor of others who didn't wait...

I COULD go through every boss fight since WOTLK's launch, but that would take too much space and just repeat what you could find on YOUTUBE, GOOGLE, and TANKSPOT.COM and for some reason, I think they go into fights more then I would.

So with your new profound knowledge, go forth and live in a raid, kill a couple of bosses, and overall, enjoy staying alive.

-pwrtoppl

-out (just in time for sleep)

Ready, Set, Raid - Raid Recovery - where it went wrong

2009-07-09T23:44:00.000-06:00

Well, nothing goes as planned...and the few things that do, can not go without a complication afterwards or two. But for raiding in world of warcraft, there are so many factors that could lead to a bad raid player-wise:

Undergeared players - those who can't survive the current content because their equipped gear does not give the survivability to withstand harder encounters.
New raiders - they might know how to raid, but their new to your guild and they don't know your style of doing a boss fight or something different they might do, but you don't.
AFKers - ones who say, "BRB" in raid chat and actually go AFK (away from keyboard) and are semi-important (healer or tank important...dps can be brought back later or replaced)
Ramblers - ones who won't keep quiet and clog vent (online voice system for gaming) with their mindless chatter, ruining prospective communication between the raid
Low-ballers - these guys don't think anyone can do better then them, and the rest of the raid should listen to their words of wisdom, because they might not be the raid leader, but they sure know the most.
Offline Gamblers - never online for boss fights...or disconnects at a critical point...not because they want to, but because their internet is unstable and causing the raid to wait for their return or push on without them.
Emos - can't win gear, can't get credit for kills, can't top charts, can't make raids in time (except for a short few), feel left out in conversations...and doesn't want to do anything to change their Emo status.
Shifters - they cause wipes...doing something they shouldn't...and to learn from their mistake...isn't possible because it's never their fault (if they fall against kologram's body to their death, it's the game's fault, not theirs), these people, shift the blame to make themselves seem more knowledge about blizzard coding, or just more overall amazing.

I could go on with several more, but the point is seen, put in one of each of the listed types and suddenly your 25 man raid feels more like a 15 man raid, with a handful tagging along for the ride. But, it's not like the raid cannot push on without these folks, no, they have that option and can still do pretty well.

So here's the shakedown...Raid wiping is talking about what went wrong while rebuffing and getting ready for the next attempt. Talking about an issue between people usually means people can understand the issue and attempt to resolve it. The same applies to Raids and wipes. When healers aren't doing their job, it's up to them and the tanks to figure out how not to repeat that mistake. Or when DPSers keep dying in the blue flame on Razorscale...with some simple words, and open ears, people can learn from these mistakes and work to aviod repeating the past.

The most useful tool to finding out how people die is the simple, yet elegant combat log. It's there to show what you take damage from, what happens to others, and when someone dies, it lists not only the damage and overkill amount, but the type and the name of the ability AND who did it (mob or boss).

-So, quick overview beforce I lose my main point (think it's already happened), talking about what happens in a raid wipe helps everyone learn from their mistakes and can make a raid, and guild, both more efficient and help future raiding smooth out.

-pwrtoppl
-out

Recount - Adding flavor, me vs you

2009-07-09T04:20:00.000-06:00

Meter maids...they happen. They are the jelly of the pbj sandwhich...they are the sweet stuff that brings together the tanks (bread) and healers (peanut butter). DPS in world of warcraft is what kills a boss, and, with a good amount of DPS, you can clear an instance within a feasible amount of time...because, without it, bosses hit enrage timers, and things just take much much longer.
With DPS comes the competition though. Ever see UFC? Where two guys go at it for fame, glory and blood? Sure, to the victor go the spoils. DPS is a competitive thing, not only because it seperates those who know their class from those who REALLY know their class, but it shows who is really doing what. And what a better way to track that then an addon just for situations like that?

Recount is an addon that can track a multitude of things, from the number of interrupts performed in an encounter, to healing done overall, to even the damage taken per person (tanks usually get the top here). But the sweet stuff, the most viewed and talked about option in Recount...is the DPS.

Recount records DPS in several useful ways. First off, it records who is performing what attacks, combinations, number of times an ability is used in a fight, and several other interesting features including how often an ability crits. The Second part, and sometimes the most annoying, but also useful, is the damage per second (or damage overall depending on the category) raiting. So, if person X is doing really good damage to a boss, he might indeed be at the top of the charts. Below him, will be person Y, A, and B will be at the bottom.

Here's the usefulness of DPS (or overall damage done) part of Recount:

shows whos undergeared by stating low damage done per attack
shows whos missing attacks in a rotation (might lead to the person needing to learn how to play their class)
it shows (per person under their abilties) crits and hits per number of attacks per boss, including misses, glances (partial damage), dodges, blocks, and parries

Overall...its a useful thing. Recount can track everyone in the raid with a 1% difference per meter from person to person (some might show a tiny bit more then someone else's meter)

Here's where the usefulness drops off --- spamming the meter in raid chat everytime someone does top 3 or so on a boss. The worst part, is sometimes, people don't see that person do their usual post if their not in the top...almost as if they feel shamed for not contributing to the raid. But that's the thing, they are helping, and even though they might not take the top, they still killed the boss, moving the raid along. And people have forgotten those roots.

In terms, it is indeed a damage race to kill a boss before he enrages, gaining something like a 500% bonus to damage and 150% bonus to attack speed. But people now take it too far, and race against themselves, to the point where they might fight over who plays what role during some boss encounters, where not everyone can just stand in place and DPS a boss to death. And it's during those times that posting a raid meter doesn't show who is helping the raid overall but dpsing a contruct during Ignis, or who is interrupting the bosses during Iron Council. Overall though, it can be fun to post when people get to stand and DPS a boss like Patchwerk, where only the healers and tanks dont participate on the DPS meters.

Recount also doesn't show DPS loss when a player is temporary unavailable to DPS the boss, though his DoTs, or Damage over Time effects still tick, thus reducing his overall damage. This is shown on some fights like Ignis, inside the slag pot, or even Kologram, where he grabs random people, leaving DoTs to tick with no other damage being applied.

Overall though, Recount is an exceptional addon that can show so much that isn't seen, but can also become annoying when used improperly. It can be both a helpful addon that can be used to reviews players in fights, or a spam method to show who "dedicates" themselves to the boss. So for all the DPS out there, no one really cares about your overall DPS, or how much you do, the boss still dies, and we all move on together, if you must post the meter, whisper it to someone else, don't bother the rest of the raid with your great lifetime accomplishment.

-pwrtoppl

-out

connected - wired into the matrix

2009-07-09T03:00:00.000-06:00

It's officially no longer the Internet.

We left the station of the Internet some time ago. What once was a start where communications could be sent in a secure fashion from one base to another within the government has developed to scrambling to play with the latest trend while browsing a library of outdated, connected, contacted information...though not a bad evolution, it has it's moments.

I can't say we didn't see it coming though...and without actually feeling it, we can never understand what it is, but alas we are here, with a nagging feeling like we need more.

This Internet could never be enough, for data searches or blogs about feelings, to posting what someone is currently doing to the very second no matter the location...the title of the Internet is long gone.

Matrix...has taken it's place. And no, not like the movie, where AIs fight against humans for the very control of their mind (though, the possibility is still present). The Matrix from wiki states:

matrix (plural: matrices) is the material between animal or plant cells, the material (or tissue) in which more specialized structures are embedded.

Seems only logical that the Internet could be established as such right?
Is the Matrix we deal with every day of our lives embedded as such? The answer is more clear then one could think.

Take a person's normal daily routine where they work at an office, and live in a circular pattern as they continue their life. They wake up, probably check their phone (connected to a network, able to access other forms of communication [ex: internet]) go to work, check work emails (another internal connection), check personal emails (saying they are permitted to), go about their day, communicating with others either via voice, or words typed (including blogs, emails, forums). Then they might proceed home, do as they normally do to live their life, including watch TV, check more email, touch up on an mmo or visit with other people in the life (neighbors, friends, social locations that also count for myspace, twitter, facebook, or even a bar, club etc.). And then proceed to rinse and repeat.

The point? It can no longer be just an internet, someone must see that it has grown past it's old title, and now must adopt something that we've embedded in our everyday lives (ie: Matrix).

I could go on, and fight with any thought and self indulged crazy ideas, but, I don't think a million worded blog will change many peoples lives...maybe (could be crazy enough to work)

-pwrtoppl
-out