Random Thoughts, and The New Arcane Shatter

So, it was a busy weekend. My wife was throwing a birthday party for her niece, and we had family in town as early as Thursday night. I had Friday off, as a result of holiday work schedules, and was expecting to get bogged down entertaining, but bless my wife’s heart, she arranged it so I had most of Friday to myself.

So, been fighting off the last dregs of a cold, and ended up waking at about 6:30 Friday morning, and after getting a pot of coffee going, jumped on WoW, and resumed my grind to finish off Hyjal, and then was off to Deepholm, where I eventually found myself in the good graces of the mother of the hottest babe ever to hit Wow. I think it says a lot for my determination, charm, suaveness, and the lack of sweating petty details by the WoW design team, that Therazane conveniently ignored the fact that Layjos has killed her lovely daughter at least twice. Oh, wait, that was when he was Lajos. Of course! It was the name change! Doh!!!

On a serious note, I repeat again, Blizzard does it right! I’ve taken a break from leveling alts now that Layjos is on the scene, but what I’ve seen of the revamping of the Old World quests has been very pleasing. The quest-lines make sense, they move along, with very few of the “kill endlessly until you get X number of items” type of quests. Even those tend to be fairly quick. The copious side quests don’t detract from the momentum of the main questline, and some of the questlines are downright entertaining. The John J. Keeshan lines in Redridge and Burning Steppes inspired me to grab First Blood for my son Nick to see, and he has declared it his current favorite movie.

When I finally decided to scratch the mage itch, and move Lajos/Layjos, I breezed through Hyjal, and Deepholm, with no real feeling of “grind”. About the only time I did a conscious “grind” was when I saw my experience bar close to the next level. I always make it a habit, if possible, to grind out those last few points on mobs, so the quest turn-ins launch me well into the next level. So, having gotten the Coming Down the Mountain and Deep into Deepholm achievements, I returned to Vash’jir to pick up there. Unfortunately, I’m not getting the big quest experience points, since I’m a bit above level, but the quests are still entertaining. Yesterday, after family left, I jumped back on, and decided to see how I fared in the battlegrounds.

Oh, incidentally, I gave Fire a try during all that. Not bad. The ability to cast Scorch while moving is interesting. Unfortunately, leveling the way I am, I haven’t been able to muster enough crit rating to really make it effective. I’ve been gradually replacing my Wrath epics, but even with abilities, I wasn’t finding Hot Streak proccing enough for my comfort in PvP, so I decided to return to Arcane.

Overall, battlegrounds went well. I killed more than I died, and even with very little resilience on my gear, didn’t find myself getting killed to fast when I got focused. I identified a few areas I need to macro, and shift my keybinds, but all in all, it went quite well. I didn’t dominate, but I didn’t suck, either. When I had a group that worked as a team, things went well. When I had a group that thought Eye of The Storm is all about capturing the flag, things didn’t go well.  One Warsong went really well, with me leading in HKs, and in the top four in killing blows. We had a good team, and I spent my time picking engaged targets, and hitting them with Arcane Blast, and destroying their health bar, while staying out of close up mismatches. Looking back at it today, that was probably my best battleground, and it highlights what I need to do – get myself in a good position, avoid short range mass crowds of melee, and focus on staying alive. In later battlegrounds, I forgot those principles, and while I didn’t do terribly, I was letting myself get focused, and not escaping effectively enough. It’s something I noted before. I tend to go for the goals, and dive into things, counting on my teammates to be there to back me. When they are, I rock. When they aren’t, I die. It all goes by fast, but I can clearly remember several fights yesterday where I had a healer backing me, or a couple melee-types keeping me from getting smothered. I felt comfortable, in control, and Horde were dying. I can also remember several times that I rushed in too fast, and then, when I went to escape, was still trying to do damage, instead of getting away, and I invariably died.

Arcane has some great control and escape features. Insta-Invis, PoM + Polymorph, and a 3 second speed burst after blinking. I used all of them Sunday, but not as effectively as I should have. Using PoM effectively is going to be a key skill in this spec. The two biggest uses are going to be Insta-Sheep, and Insta-Nuke. In the past, playing the old Arcane Shatter spec, I used Frostfire Bolt as my Insta-Nuke, since it was buffed by the Frost tree, and had the benefit of slowing the target down. Now, with Nether Vortex, Arcane Blast slows the target, and applies the buff, so it’s going to become my nuke of choice, with Presence of Mind making it instant when I need it. More on that later.

I ended up getting about a third of a level in the battlegrounds (gotta love that!) and made level 84 shortly after logging on this morning.  I’m going to finish up Vash’jir, then head out to Uldum. I’m guessing level 85 by no later than Wednesday.

And I’ll be respeccing this evening as well. I’ve already foregone Arcane Tactics, since I don’t plan to be doing much raiding early on. I’m going to drop Focus Magic, and putting that point in Shatter. My level 85 point will go in Shatter as well. “Lol-wut?!?” you say.

Arcane Tactics is a 3% damage buff on the raid. In a raid, over the course of a boss encounter, 3% is significant. In PvP, particularly when you’re not packing a buttload of spellpower, it’s not crucial. Likewise, with Focus Magic, a once-in-awhile 3% crit buff is significant, on a raid where you can make sure it stays on your partner. In PvP, it’s nice, but again, not particularly crucial.

However, being able to selectively apply a triple-damage crit in PvP is very significant, and very useful, especially when that allows you to tie it in with Arcane Potency and Arcane Power. PoM triggers the former, and Arcane Power just adds more goodness. If they’ve been pounding on my Mana Shield or Mage Ward, so much the better, as Incantor’s Absorption is  going to be buffing my damage. Get an interrupt on a caster? Woo-hoo, he’s silenced for 4 seconds, AND Invocation kicks in. Quick freeze, AP, POM, and nuke well.

Then of course, there’s Frost Ring, which has a significant range, which opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, especially when you note that all the arcane tree goodies are worded “all damage”, “your damage”, “spell damage”, etc. Are Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt going to hit as hard as Arcane Blast? Of course not. But  they’re not going to start the mana ramp-up either, and against a frozen target, Frostbolt is going to get a 20% buff in addition to all the other spell buffs Arcane gets, including the mastery buffs. Not to mention, it has a shorter cast time, and also very importantly, if I get interrupted, I’ve only got Frost spells locked out, and I have most of my main guns still available.

Is it gonna pwn like the old Arcane Shatter spec? Probably not, and I suspect it will play significantly different, but we shall see.

The Joys of Killing Paladins

So, we moved Nick’s DK over yesterday. By the time I got home from work, he’d already headed out to Hyjal, and was over it because of the constant ganking. So we tried the Vash’jir heroes call, which started okay, but then was cut short because the first quest refused to complete for Nick. (He found out this morning how to fix it, yay!). We went back out to Hyjal, started questing, and immediately, a level 85 Horde pally named Arvalon, or something like that, started displaying his douche-bag-ness. We’re in the middle of a bunch of mobs, and he jumps in. With a level difference of 5, Nick couldn’t even hit him, and frankly, Nick’s a PvE tank, not an arena player. I fared a bit better, and I can testify that Improved Blink is the shiznit in PvP, but I also haven’t mage PvPed in about 5 or 6 months. We hurt him, and finally got him to drop an AoE, and got some guards on him. We died about 5 times to his 1, but I still count it a minor victory. He camped the questgiver, and laughed at me. I laughed right back at him, and even gave him a mock-salute. I find it amusing that someone can misses the stupidity of making fun of someone they’ve killed who can’t really even hit them back, and let’s face it, that sort of person gets their nut on thinking they’ve pissed someone else off. No worries, it’s a big world, I can go elsewhere to level, and yeah, fucker, what goes around comes around, and the day will come when I’m what comes around.  My son hasn’t really had that sink in yet, I’m hoping he can be taught.

Caraway and I were talking at work, and he was marveling at the survivability of paladin’s in general, particularly prot. I was regaling him with tales of Hartbane‘s battle-healer spec in the good ol’ days, and as I told him, you don’t so much kill paladin’s so much as you dismantle them. Sort of like peeling an onion, and far more painful and full of tears. But hey, a Blood Elf pally died last night, so at least one new angel has a set of wings, and the day was a success.

My first experiments with Arcane PvP were interesting, though. I complete forgot to use things like Arcane Power (need to get that macro-ed in, dammit), but that really wasn’t a factor. As I said, Improved Blink rocks. I haven’t had time to evaluate the Glyph of Arcane Power (I’ve heard some discussion on how it’s supposed to work, but doesn’t). The biggest thing that jumped out at me was the lack of a really spam-able Arcane spell. Arcane Blast just isn’t suitable for quick use in combat. My initial cast with haste adjustmetns, is still like 1.9 seconds. In a battleground, with distractions, that’s probably doable, however, 1 on 1, or in Arena, that’s an eternity. Of course, there’s always Scorch or Ice Lance, but those really aren’t optimal for Arcane.  I sort of have visions of running along a freeway, throwing pebbles at trucks. Then again, Shatter is available on the first tier of Frost, for double/triple crit chance… and Arcane Blast has a 40 yard range, AND slows the target with Nether Vortex.

I’m having this vision of stacking AB a couple times at long range, then jumping in with a Frost Nova, and cutting loose with a PoM + AB that crits for what Christian Belt describes as “ also doing damage to his posterity down through seven generations, causing his children’s children’s great-great-grandchildren to speak in hushed tones about the time many generations past when a mage blew up his forefather”. Granted, Layjos is only level 80, and doesn’t have that kind of spellpower yet, but the principle is there, and yeah, I find it exciting. More research required.

All that said, I’m going to experiment with Fire and Frost as well, I think.

 

 

Moving On

So, yeah, much as I hated bailing on Crits, I had too much time and effort invested in Lajos to let him sit, and the reality was, I’d never play him. So, last night, I popped on Winterhoof, sent the heirloom items from my other toons to Lajos, and a few other key items. The old guild bank had been ransacked by the last member of the old group, who had stayed with the guild. That surprised me, though on reflection, it shouldn’t have, since I haven’t really been on in about 3 months. It would have been nice to have my share of the titansteel we’d been pooling for choppers, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. For all I know, Booters sent it to me, and it timed out and returned.

So, now I have to learn how to play a mage all over again. Whee, good times. Actually, I think it’s going to be pretty interesting, since there isn’t a whole lot out there for Arcane Mage PvP in Cataclysm. Yup, you read that right. Arcane.

Sure, I know, Frost is a no brainer for PvP. So, I’m guessing that there are going to be a LOT of Frost mages in the battlegrounds. Fire has been improved, and likewise, I expect to see a lot of Fire mages there as well. So, since I’m having to relearn anyway, I figured I’d stick with what’s realtively familiar. Everything I’m reading seems to indicate that Arcane rules when it comes to burst damage, and PvP is very much oriented around burst damage. We shall see. Should be exciting.

Oh, and incidentally, I had to rename him, so now he’s named Layjos. Meh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ebb and Flo

So, yesterday, sitting at work, I was going through some old WoWInsider articles, and came across one from last June, an Art of Warcraft column talking about dealing with PUG battlegrounds. Most of it dealt with how to enjoy the experience, and not rage at it, and overall, was some really good advice. Most of it was redundant for me, things I’d sort of subconsciously realized and adapted to during the time where I was building my first PvP set, as it was the only way I could get any higher level gear, and that meant PUGS. It’s different in a battleground tho’, as there isn’t the rigid “this is how you handle this boss” attitude, and things are happening so fast, weaknesses of players (i.e., my own suck-age) are a lot less glaring, and so less likely to be commented on.

Looking back to then, I realized I’m in sort of the same situation. Back then, I was guild leader of a very small, tight guild, and raiding, even heroics, were beyond us. We were very PUG shy, when it came to instances, and my only real alternative was to do BGs, to get any sort of decent gear. Eventually, I ran into Repgrind, and found a high comfort level, and started getting into some higher level content. Eventually, my own guild fell apart, and I went to Crits, but left vs. right coast scheduling proved to make it extremely difficult to progress with them. Not long after, I decided to just take a break.

Now, I’m just a guild member, of a very casual guild, Moonlight Requiem, headed by one of the guys I work with. The guild is really just getting off the ground, but Caraway, the GM, is very good at getting people in. Most of the people I’ve met through the guild seem pretty cool, but I’m still finding myself soloing a lot. A big factor in that is the holidays. People have a lot of time off to play, and they’ve leveled at an insane rate. On the flipside, a lot of my play time has been sporadic, due to family aggro. It will be interesting to see now how it levels off, and what happens.

Doing a bit of introspection, I’m realizing that if I want company, I need to be more outgoing. LOL… not really my forte’, but hey, I’ll work on it. Looking at the big picture, Caraway has assembled what seem to be a really cool bunch of people, so in essence I have a “pre-screened” group.

Anyway, to get back to where I was originally going, I was musing on how far I’ve come. I started, unintentionally, on a PvP server, and used to gnash my teeth at the ganking. I moved to a PvE server, and once there, grew to really like PvP. Now I’m back on a PvP server, and while I still despise the random griefing, it’s more of a roll my eyes thing now, rather than real rage. And, full-circle, I’m back to taking refuge in the battlegrounds, this time for leveling as well as gear.

Originally, I’d planned on leaving Lajos over on Winterhoof, in Crits, but I’m starting to rethink that. I’ve got a perfectly good level 80 mage, well geared, sitting, doing nothing, and realistically, I’m not going to be spending much time over there. If I do, it’s not like I’m going to be in a position to run content. Basically, I’m just “keeping a presence”, and I’m debating whether it’s worth it. If I do a character move, I can bring money, heirloom items, etc. over that will make life a lot more productive on my current server, including leveling our guild.

And of course, I’ve got a guild bank over on Winterhoof, full of stuff that would be really useful. My DK sits as guildmaster, and the stuff languishes in an upper tab. Those people who stuck with the guild after the melt-down have given up and bailed, and I can’t say as I blame them. I just really lost my enthusiasm for WoW after the events of last summer. Now that I’ve rediscovered some of that enthusiasm, it’d be nice to profit from some of my labor.

Azeroth’s Axis Just Tilted a Tiny Bit

Last night, the unthinkable happened… an event that will have wide-ranging repercussions that will and resound through the very fabric of Azeroth, with echos in far off Outland. Compared to this, Cataclysm will be but a faint whisper of an aftershock. Dragon’s stopped in their tracks, and raised their heads, testing the swirls and eddies of magic that permeate the fabric of Azeroth. Garrosh Hellscream woke in a cold sweat, the vestiges of an un-recallable nightmare fading into the gloom. The Lich King in the middle of his speech to Svala Sorrowgrave, suddenly began sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk. Hogger suddenly went “Hrrrmmmmuh?” and fell dead after being hit with a staff by a level 6 mage.

Okay, it’s wasn’t that big a deal. But it was something that I really did not expect to happen. Nick and I joined Crits and Giggles.

As the post activity on my blog shows, I’ve been busy. Softball season ties up my Saturdays, but when all-stars rolled around, and my daughter made it, that went from “Saturdays” to “weekends”. I’ve bemoaned at length the normal challenges our guild faced, having such a small core membership, and apparently, the inevitable finally caught up with us. I wish everyone the best, have fun. That’s what it’s all about.

Meh, high-road be damned. It’s my blog, and as best I could tell, none of my ex-guildies ever read it anyway. I’m feeling something that’s a cross between hurt, bitterness, and just  plain sadness. Nick and I have could have been in Crits or Apathy months ago, and been raiding our little hearts out, but we stuck with our friends. I’ve sat around Dalaran for hours, turning down raid invites, because I wanted to stay freed up in case my guildies showed up and we could put together a heroic. I cheered my ass off when our group cleared their first heroic. While my guildies were working the auction house, and buying gear because they were too shy to run heroics, I was spending my money on guild tabs, a tundra-mammoth so I could run lowbies to flight points, repair bots, etcetera.

And then I stopped being on every night of the week, and my weekends were taken up by my daughter’s tournaments, and I logged on to find our core group gone, without a word. When I asked, I was told “they had no one to play with”. Ah well. I hope you find people to play with, and I hope they can keep you amused. I do wish you the best.

And a friend of twenty-five years who never mentioned a word of any problems in the guild to me, who in fact had been telling me over the past few months how well I handled the role of “cat herder”, lectured me on my lack of leaderships skills and “selfishness” - when she could finally be bothered to even return an email. Yah, sweety, I hear ya. Thanks for “smoothing things over” with everyone, while keeping me in the dark. Hope you enjoy those glacial bags that I bought for you because you were bitching at me about people filling up the guild tab that you paid for.

::Deep Breath:: Ok, got that off my chest. Cathartic. And yes, I know that all that is MY perception, and they may see things entirely differently. It’s over, it’s done, move on.

And to return to our regularly schedule programming, move on we did. I managed to get the guild bank someone straightened out, and promoted Zachiel, my utility toon to GM, and then told RG she could pull the trigger. And it was done. And it was good.

After a chorus of welcomes from the Crits crowd, and getting Nick in, we did a random, then went for Magister’s Terrace, first normal, then normal again, because Sol and Nick didn’t realize they needed to complete the quest to get into the heroic, and then heroic. It was a learning experience. For example, I learned that despite the tank running around and chain-aggroing everything in site, there was in fact method to the madness, and that did not in fact mean that I should start long-range pulling mobs standing off to the side. Go figure. My bad.

And as RG mentioned in her post today, the Phoenix Hatchling dropped twice in a row, and she didn’t get it. Nick and I will have to start scheduling play-dates for our new pets.

After that, RG was off to help Hartbane, and I responded to a call from a guildie in WG, only to undergo multiple ass-handings. I see I’m going to have to rebuild my PvP set, and get back in the swing of things. That, and get my ‘lock leveled. I still enjoy the mage, but there’s no doubt who my eventual main will be.

Holy shit. It just hit me. I have a guild full of people. Lots and lots of people. There’s bound to be some toons around my lock’s level to play with. Don’t get me wrong. One thing I could always count on from my ex-guildies was help, if they were on. (Despite my self-indulgent rant above, don’t think for a moment that these are “bad people”. It was just a bad situation that was poorly handled all around. ) But I don’t always WANT to have an 80 running me through instances or quests. I *like* challenge, and learning to play my toon. Simple math says I’m going to see more of that.

Most cliche’s have at least some truth behind them, and my own life experience has taught me that when something happens that seems earth-shaking, and terrible, it’s likely just The Power’s That Be forcing you into the change that you already knew, in the back of your mind, that you needed to make. One door closes, another opens.

To all my new guildies… it’s good to be home!

Son of Manic Monday

So, I’ve been seriously delinquent in posting the last couple weeks. Manic Monday has mutated to “Manic Days Ending in Y”. And truth be told, there hasn’t been a lot going on in my WoW world that I consider that noteworthy.

Noblegarden came. Last year, I was like “Meh… eggs? Are they deviled? Can I throw them at a boss for a stun? No? Blah.” and moved on. I was leveling. This year, tho’, I’ve got “the Pilgrim” and “the Elder” knocked out, so “the Noble” was just another one to check off the list. So, climbing out of bed, jumping on WoW, with a quick glance at WoW.com’s Noblegarden writeups, I got on it. Found a hotspot for eggs, and commenced to scarfing down chocolate. When the dust cleared, I hadn’t purchased a single item, except the Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit. Everything else dropped, along with a metric buttload of chocolate eggs.

My momentum was too much, as it turned out, because I missed the fact that the rabbit disguise inflicted by the Blossoming Branch allows one to lay the eggs that you need for the Hard Boiled achievement. When I hear the word “Achievement”, I assume that it’s going to involve some time and effort, so I didn’t bother to dig deeper. End result was me and Edelestar waiting to be polymorphed by opening eggs, then hopping out to Un ‘Goro to lay our eggs. We hearthed, to take the Cavern’s of Time portal in Dalaran… except my hearth is set to Wyrmrest. (Reason being is, I can normally teleport to Dalaran, and the Wyrmrest drakes are an express flight, centrally located. Method, madness, all that stuff.)

So, after hopping my way up from Wyrmrest to the portal up to Dalaran, I hopped to the CoT portal, then made my way across the desert to Un ‘Goro, down the hill, and through the ravasaurs, to get to the hotsprings, and hear someone asking if someone could use a branch on them.  Good thing I was a pink bunny, or the embarrassed blush would have shown. Meh, I meant to do it. Anyone can ride out to Un ‘Goro. My 45 warlock did it. Takes a real stud, secure in his masculinity, to hop out there as a pink bunny! The rest of the Noble title was a piece of cake. Perseverance, patience, all that stuff. Only the Main Four online, so when Innarra came on, we grabbed her to tank, and we ran a random. /sigh. Pinnacle again. Innarra was gulping, but I followed my usual script, and assured her that once you had the encounter down, it was a piece of cake. Same formula…  give the tank time to grab aggro, keep the adds in hand, and get plenty of harpoons, then warn everyone Skadi is coming down in one pass. Slam dunk.

The following evening, Crits’ Classic Raid was AQ-40. Got Ron and Joyce in on it this time, then they had to pack for a spring trip, so we continued the Noblegarden merriment with lowbies. Ran a few Outland heroics. From Tuesday on, it was pretty much Sue and I holding down the fort. Lots of lowby action going on.

This weekend, I was just hanging out, chatting with Innarra, and it occurred to me that I need more pets. Hmmm…. I’ve got a few Sanguine Hibiscus in my bank. I hear Sporeggar is nice this time of year. Gee… can I solo Underbog? Quick step back here. When the last patch came out, I took my off-spec to Frost. Tried it out in AQ-40, and Black Temple the week before, receiving a scathing “Traitor!” from RG. Such an arcane snob. I’ve pretty much decided that it’s going to take some work before I’m ready to try it in a heroic or a raid. With my group, we need me at max DPS, and if I’m invited to a raid, I’m typically with mages geared a bit heavier than I am, so I need to stretch. But for soloing an instance, it looked to be advantageous.

Worked like a champ. After one run, I ripped out the Frostbolt and perma-squirtle glyphs tho’. I miss having the Frost control. In fact, I forgot how much I missed it. Yesterday, I went out to Tanaris to farm mageweave, and it was like a second childhood.

Speaking of mageweave, that leads me to my little gnomie-girl warlock. You can see on the banner the results of a hiccup in my Dimensional Ripper: Area 52. I fell in love. I was seriously considering doing a race/gender change with Lajos, but it just didn’t feel right. After a couple weeks debate, it dawned on me that what I loved best about that particular toon-model was the slight hint of a frown on an otherwise adorable face… the hint of evil… the suggestion of “Don’t #!@$ with me!” In other words… a warlock.

As the Fates would have it, I already had a gnome warlock, Leareth. It was Destiny! Last weekend, Leareth became Liris. Wheee!!!!

This weekend was dead. Did OS3D with Apathy, fun as always, but other than that… just me, chatting with Innarra… finally lo and behold, after a week absence, on  Booters appeared, and we scrambled to get her the bunny pet before the event ended. In doing so, I found another use for the wonderful Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth: sitting on eggs. It wasn’t 20 minutes, and Booter’s had her eggs and her pet, at which point, late nights caught up with me, as well as the imprints of keyboard keys on my forehead from face planting, and I called it a night.

Sunday, after a quick trip to the grocery store, it was more of the same… lots of dead time. Nick came on, and announced he had the urge to try a mage again. We talked about the pros and cons between human and gnome, and he finally decided on a gnome. I finally I decided to get back to work on Liris’ professions, namely tailoring and enchanting. Hmmm… got tons of runecloth, but she’s still on mageweave. Hence, Lajos’ trip out to Tanaris to farm mageweave.

About 4 stacks into that, Edelestar logged in. Shortly thereafter, Booters came on, as did Nickolas, and with only four of us, and it being a rather late start, we decided to just lowby it. Hmm…. my warlock is a gnome. Sue’s mage, Mydge, is a gnome. Nick’s mage, Goodo (to low for Armory) is a gnome. That left only one choice, so after porting my warlock to Dalaran to set my hearth, Nana logged off on Booters, and created a gnome rogue, and it was a gnome party. We helped her cruise through starting area, then headed to Northshire Abby to get some Stormwind rep. Nick has been playing Godfather II his console, and donned a full tux, complete with battered jungle hat, and proclaimed himself Don Goodo, (complete with Brando voice).

As an aside, this seems to be destiny. Nana has always had a soft spot for Gnomeregan, and with the Reclaiming of Gnomeregan coming up in Cataclysm, what more appropriate way to do it than with a squad of gnomes?

My Butt Is Numb

Ah, Sunday night. Relaxing at the computer, winding down before falling into bed to get some shuteye before the workweek starts… well, at least, I’m at the computer. In this case, I’m trying to wind down, take the edge off, and let the remnants of repeated adrenalin rushes fade out. It were A Good Day.

Start at the beginning… with Saturday. I got to sleep in. For me, that means getting up after 7AM. After 30-odd years of getting up between 3:30 and 6:30 AM, it’s rare that I get past 6:30. Got up, logged on – and got hit with a splitting allergy headache. Screw earthquakes and falling into the ocean… this weekend, the SoCal winds decided to try and blow things into the ocean. Better yet, my daughter’s softball team had a doubleheader. Oh, joy of joys. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching her play. But…. it’s Rec ball. That means cliques, stacked teams, a season that starts in February with maybe three practices as a team,  and players that don’t want to be there but are because Mom and Dad think that they should be.  Or what’s worse, Mom and Dad  decide that soccer, homework, and who knows what else aren’t enough to keep their child occupied. At least one girl plays two other sports. She’s a good little player, but she gets beat up playing soccer, beat up playing softball, and then beats herself up when she doesn’t make the play. Sad, sad.

Screenshot Grabbag

Not too much new and exciting, and I’ve been remiss on the screenshots lately, so I figured I’d go through and recap.

Last night, from Crits Classic Raid Night, the League perched atop Nefarian’s throne in Blackwing Lair, with Louweaze from Crit’s nestled in there amongst us.

Of special note, look what’s strapped across Nick’s back:

That’s Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood, sword of Anduin Lothar. Kudo’s to Hartbane, who suggested that it be rolled on, so whoever got it could have the fun of running around Ironforge with it. Nick won it with a roll of 100, then promptly stripped down to nothing but the sword, and ran around IF.  Nick is a huge lore buff, and he was tickled beyond end.

Here’s the final from the Naxx run the other day:

And ToC25 from last week:

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to screenshots from other peoples computers. I need to set my guildies up with an achievement screenshot addon, and get them added to my Dropbox so they can upload them easily.

After BWL last night, Edelestar, Tiamarie, Lightblazer, Bootters and myself queued up for a random heroic, and got Gundrak. Of the group, only Ed and I had been through on Heroic, so it was new territory. We were still feeling a bit giddy after BWL, so we didn’t exactly go in serious and at the top of our game. Our wipes were pretty much “doh!”s (like yours truly grabbing aggro), but other than that, we went through pretty easy. All in all, a good night.

Monday, Monday

Ok, so yeah, it’s another Monday, we’re a guy short, we’ve got fifteen in the call queue, and I’m still fixing customer problems from last week. See, my job started as simple “Product Support Specialist”, but it sort of evolved. Anyone who has worked for a software developer will tell you that there’s usually something of a disconnect between front line tech and developer. Developers just never seem to quite feel the same urgency the people who are dealing with the customer have.  In our case, it’s not the norm… our devs are extremely responsive. I’ve escalated a customer issue to the devs, and had them spend several hours jumping through hoops to get the issue resolved. That’s NOT the norm in the software business. As far as that goes, I can’t speak highly enough about our developers.

Where the disconnect comes, in our case, is when we find a problem that’s machine specific. The dev, on his machine, can’t reproduce the problem. And in the dev mindset, that means that the problem is on the customer machine, and therefore, not his problem. That, of course, ignores the fact that, bottom line, things aren’t working correctly. It’s one thing if I can point to a specific problem on the customer machine, and say “you need to have this fixed”. But if the cause is unknown, as far as the customer is concerned, we’re just trying to weasel out of fixing the problem, and furthermore, they are broke. “Can’t reproduce”, in this case, is of absolutely no use to me.

As far as the techs here go, I have it better than most, because I speak Developer, and I’ve done enough development, I know how to look for things that most of the other techs don’t. Further, over the first few months I was here, through a series of coincidences, I got dragged into the area of custom reporting and exporting. When the Prez/CEO found out I had installed Microsof’ts free Express version of Visual Studio on my workstation, he very sternly told me to remove it – and replace it with the Pro version that our company developers use. Little did I know that Tony is one of those guys who believes in matching talent with task, and before I knew it, I was being through custom exporter projects, and then custom reports. Over time, things have further evolved so that most database corruption issues come to me before being escalated to the devs.  One of the things that I wistfully hope to get accomplished Some Day is to do some utility programs for the other guys to run to help in diagnosing database issues.

This weekend went well. Friday, I decided that if I’m going to direct raids with my guild, I need to learn all the jobs, so I started working my DK up as a tank. Did a quest in Hellfire to get a trinket, at RG‘s suggestion, then tanked Sethekk Halls for her priest, and Elgar’s pally. It seem to go well. No one died. lol. I’ve got a long way to go, tho’. I have a bad habit in melee of right clicking my mouse for auto-attack, and of course, that makes me jump targets.

Saturday, we got the gang together, and ran H-HoL, taking down Loken after one wipe. More progress. Sunday, Edelestar, and myself got with Innarra, who has done some questing with some of us, and she graciously agreed to tank a random heroic. We got AN, and had little problem until the final boss, where we wiped. She’s never tanked it on heroic, and one of the DPSers started quizzing her about whether she was capped. She’d had some gear upgrades, and no, she hadn’t gotten her enchants on, so no, she wasn’t. He came off with a “no wonder”. Edelestar and I promptly invited him to tank if he’d like, and he said “if he had a toon that could, he would”. He then made some remarks about leaving if we wanted him to, and we corrected him on that: We didn’t ask him to leave, but if he was going to play “whine about the tank” games, we’d happily wave goodbye. He remarked about “how do you expect her to hold aggro?” and I very pointedly said “by the DPS watching their own aggro, and throttling as necessary.” Let me point out, she hadn’t lost aggro to me, and I’m constantly struggling with threat management, so she couldn’t be doing too bad.

I finished up by observing that DPS are a dime a dozen, at which point, he shut up, and I pointed out to Innarra that the trick was to get the Anub turned around, so he couldn’t pound us, and then when he submerged, run for the gate to pick up the adds. She’d missed that the first time, having issues with her camera, but second time around, she snagged them flawlessly, and we had no real problem downing Anub.

After that, we grabbed Booters, and Mysticdemon, and ran a normal, getting Old Kingdoms. It went well. A few deaths here and there, but we made it through fairly easily. After that, we decided to take them down to Upper Blackrock Spire and get the Jenkins title for those who didn’t have it. That turned into a clear of UBRS, and LBRS. Then we took a break, hoping to get on later and do something, but it was not to be… real life finally caught up. Still, it was a good day, and I’m looking forward to getting more of the guildies into the fun.

Blase’-ness is Relative

So, with schedules in disarray, and the sanity meter at work pegged well into “Complete And Utterly Crazed”, I’ve been making a point to try and get my random heroics out of the way before I go to work in the morning. Started my day yesterday with a little nibble of Pit of Saron, and today with a bit of Drak’ Theron Keep.

Ok, put the phraseology in that last sentence down to “writing style”. Now stop, back up, and pull it out of that category, and look at it. Blase’. That’s how I feel about heroics, at least up to Pit of Saron.  Drak is strictly farm, although the bear tank this morning made it interesting by sprinting through the entire instance. The time was when I would have been frantically grabbing mana on the run, and trying to keep up, to make sure my DPS was up to snuff. This morning? Meh. I was toasting bagles, smearing them with peanut butter and apple butter, and munching away, while dropping flame strikes on the mobs, via mouseclicks, not keybinds. DPS? Meh. They want DPS, slow down and let me actually get in on the fight. I was banging Skada on the boss fights, so no worries, and my gear score is such that if someone calls me out, I don’t feel I have to defend anything.