No Free Time Lately

Well I think I was actually kind of retarded to think I would get to play as much as I wanted to over Christmas break. Friday I was home with the baby who had an ear infection which means I didn’t get to do anything but hear her scream and cry. I didn’t get to play till that night and not for very long = nothing really accomplished. Saturday I was forced to go shopping by my girlfriend, along with millions of other people crammed into tiny ass stores in the mall. There was a point in Bath and Body works while standing in line this old lady who I have never met before thought it would be a good idea to tell me about all the lotions and candles she is getting and for which family members. She kept pulling lotions and sh*t out of her basket to see what I thought of the scents, it was a nightmare from which I couldn’t awake. I hate that place to begin with, I’m not a fan of all the crazy smells, I seriously thought of slamming my face against the wall till I went unconscious. Very little wow played on this day, just old people who look like the crypt keeper shoving scented oils in my face, that lady has no idea how close she was to getting choked out. Sunday morning I got to play a little bit but then it was off for a Christmas party. Which I did have fun at so I can’t complain about that, but no wow that night either. Monday I was finally able to relax and get some game time in. I did some 2v2 arena matches which bumped me up to 1560 from 1470, so that was a lot of fun. It’s been a while since I have consistently won in any arena matches. I also got a lot of battle grounds done, but sadly alliance in my battle group almost always lose every match. When horde win it’s a landslide, when alliance actually does win it always feels like we just barely squeaked a win in. I logged off for Christmas Eve with the family but I did log back on again when I went home. I did some more arena’s with my 3v3 team which went 5-5. After arena’s we went and raided Tauren Mill for the hell of it, it turned into a pretty good sized PvP war, some of the most fun I have had in a long time. Christmas I didn’t touch the computer and just hung out with the family.

I was able to pick up my chest piece for arena’s which is a huge upgrade to some blue lvl 70 Marshall gear I was wearing.

I think it was last Friday night we went into ZA and had the bear boss to 30% when the timer ran out, I think if we had a mage in the group the added dps plus a very stable cc could have made a huge difference. I don’t know which of the dps in the group I would like to replace with a mage though because everyone did a really good job. Hopefully on the next attempt we can beat the timer, thats a goal of mine. The guild hasn’t raided Gruul for like two weeks, hopefully we can get in there this week, but it’s looking kind of iffy with the holidays and every ones schedules are so sporadic. Sorry I haven’t kept up with the blog but like many other people I have been extremely busy around the holidays, I’m betting I don’t get another blog post up until next Wednesday. I know you all miss me, and I know you get lonely and depressed when you have nothing new to read from me. To help deal with these emotions just picture me in all my epic glory being your friend. Then I want you to realize you’re just dreaming and I’m way to cool to be your friend =).

Happy Holidays

*X files music plays* Last night on wow I told someone I was going to flatten their tires because they wanted to go to sleep instead of heal in my Kara group. This morning I woke up and I had a flat tire. Coincidence? Karma? I’m not sure, but I do know that my neighbor has a back tire up on a block because I had to steal his. Wonder what he did to deserve such an unlucky hit to his Karma. In my previous post on Monday I had mentioned that the Kara groups were reorganized to help some of the other struggling groups. My group was assigned on the forums and two of the people on the list couldn’t make the Kara runs so we subbed in two other guys (both new to my group), this put our group with five new people and five regulars. I am happy to say that my new group ran the instance fine. Everyone paid attention, learned the fights, was on time, and basically didn’t do anything stupid. We cleared through Prince but still have Netherspite and Nightbane up because it was getting late, hopefully we’ll find time to go back in there. Our run did take a little longer than normal but that’s totally understandable because we had to explain the fights to some people. To all the new guys that came, good job and thanks for coming. When these new Kara groups were reformed some of the regular Kara runners (Ones from my group, I’m not sure about other groups) were accidently left out of the re-order. This has lead to a lot of hurt feelings and people just being pissed off. When these people tried to get back into groups whether mine or other peoples supposedly they were just told to bad you’re out of the rotation. If this truly happened that’s a shame because they worked hard to help get the Kara groups successful in the first place. Now that my Kara group is pretty much done for the week I’m already getting whispers from new people and old people alike about who gets to go next week. I have no idea now, were the reorders supposed to be a permanent thing or were they to just expose people to the fights so they can learn and go do it in their own groups? There are a few posts on our forums about the re-order and pissed off people with no real answer as to what we are supposed to do. I’m pretty sure some of the officers read my blog so someone tell me what to do, and save me from having to hurt people’s feelings. I have mentioned that I used to be a GM before, this is one of the reasons I gave it up, dealing with pissed off people, telling people they are out of a group, and managing a ton of different personalities is not something I miss. I feel both sorry for the officers who I think are catching crap from people but they were trying to do a good thing by helping out the other groups and also the people who were left out for not having done anything wrong. My suggestion is to tell everyone F*ck Kara let’s do 25 man runs 4 nights a week and go to Kara in your free time. At some point if we really want to progress and become a raiding guild we have to do this right? I realize we have more people than the 25 who will get a spot, but if you are left out of the 25 man it’s probably a gear issue. If that’s the case then make a Kara group and go while the other guys are in the 25 man. If I’m one of the guys left out the 25 man raid what happens? I’ll go farm badges in Kara till a spot opens up in the raid. If a spot doesn’t ever open up for me in the raid for weeks on end what then? I’ll go kill one of the tanks in Real Life, bingo! spot available, couldn’t be more simple. With the new year coming up maybe it’s a good idea to make the transition? Or is that even the direction the guild would want to go? I hope it is, I don’t want to farm Kara forever, let’s really dig into some 25 man content and experience more of what WoW has to offer. Anyways this will probably be my last post till next Wednesday , I won’t have time with the holidays to write anything. Mostly all I do is threaten people with beatings anyways, which if Santa hears me I won’t get anything for Christmas and u know I’m a loot whore so it’s probably just better that I don’t post so close to the holidays. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

Santa's Epic Loot

Stupid new shield

We’ll after another Nightbane kill and no shield I decided I’m just going to buy the heroic badge shield and continue to wait for an upgrade to drop for me from Gruul or Nightbane. It’s not fair for me to horde my badges while using a crappy blue shield that can easily be replaced. I do hate everythign about this shield though, the fact i had to "buy" it with badges, the graphic is g@y, and its not as good as the shields i have been wanting. After purchasing the shield I have one blue item left to replace, which is my cape. One more Kara clear and I will have enough badges to upgrade that as well. Tonight I think we might be trying Mag again, which would be pretty fun so I hope we do. He drops the T4 chest piece but it’s not really a huge upgrade for me so I would roll on it, but not spend dkp points. He also has a nice polearm that I wouldn’t mind setting myself up with, but again not a huge upgrade so I wouldn’t spend dkp on it, just roll for it.

If Mag doesn’t happen tonight then I think my group might try to run ZA. I’m really itching to beat the bear under the timer, and we still need to get an eagle kill. I would like to see my group start dedicating more time to ZA than we do in Kara, but I know a lot of people still want loot from Kara and who can argue with the free badges, but at some point ZA needs to be beaten. As far as Kara goes this week it looks like the guild has reorganized the groups because groups 3 and 4 have been struggling. I don’t mind subbing people in and out of different groups to help them learn the boss fights but from what I have heard some of the guys in those other groups cause a lot of wipes from either not paying attention or f*cking around. I’m down as the “Raid Leader” for the new group 3, if people start goofing off even after warnings then they get the /boot. It looks like I am lucky though, I didn’t get any of the guys who I have heard complaints about so my run should still go as smooth as normal and hopefully get a few guys some new gear. I picked up my gladiator legs after I got enough honor points this weekend. My pvp set still needs a ton of work but I am one step closer. On the arena home front, my 3v3 team (Oslo- hunter, Dirty- resto druid, and I -arms warrior) went 8-7. We gained 1 point after 15 games. Overall we’ve done 39 games and have a 1505 rating. That’s an average of about 1 point every 8 games. Let’s say the rating to hope for is 1850 which I think is the rating needed to buy season three weapons, at this pace we will only have to play another 2760 games =P. I am happy with my 3v3 right now though, we seem like were clicking better, so I’m just waiting for that point when we all “mesh” and we start doing really well. My 5v5 on the other hand got owned, we went 3-7. This week though it was more to just get people their weekly arena points. I’ll keep doing the 5v5 for practice but I think I’m going to hang my hopes of a high ranking arena team on my 3v3, I hope one day that pans out to a good score.

I missed my arena pvp chest by 65 points this week so I’ll have to wait an extra week to get that. I’m going to try to get my pvp bracers this week so I can at least put forth one new item to my pvp set since I can’t grab the chest piece. Here are the two items I picked up. I’m going to have the shield enchanted tonight before any raiding goes down.

PvP Tourney = Good times

“This weekend were having a sort of “guild pvp” event, I’m looking forward to it. Should be a lot of fun, monday ill probably post something about how everyone in my guild is a bunch of cheaters and hackers because i didnt win the tourney.” - Posted by me Friday, December 14, 2007 Turns out I was absolutely correct. I did horrible in the pvp tourney. Why so bad? The only answer is that in my guild I’m surrounded by cheaters and hackers. Couldn’t they just be better than me? Pfft, not possible. The only logical assumption is that somehow everyone in my guild found a way to hack the wow mainframe altering their characters stats allowing them to beat me. While I realize this would be a near impossible task for the common gamer, it was obviously carried out and successful to sedate their lust for glory and gold prizes....Okay, I will admit that there is a slight possibility that it’s because a lot of these guys are good and I still have a lot to learn when it comes to pvp as a warrior. I’m still leaning toward my theory of pro-hackers risking jail time over a 300 gold prize though. During the tourney me and dirty(resto druid) faced off vs a druid/rogue team. They beat us knocking us out of the race for 2v2 teams. What sucks for the druid/rogue team is that they are both in my Kara group. You bitches can kiss your loot goodbye for the next three weeks. “What’s that you say? Oh my goodness did I accidently give that loot you won to someone else? That’s a shame. My apologies” . The 2v2 tourney was won by an arms warrior and holy pally who defeated a team of two locks. During the 1v1 I did a little better but was beaten by Oslo a hunter who is also in my 3v3 arena team. It was actually a pretty good fight, if I had just gotten off that last execute it might have turned the fight in my favor. I guess the extra stamina buff you had from hacking into wow paid off, an anonymous letter has been sent to wow explaining what you did, grats on your jail time. The 1v1 was won by a demo lock vs a rogue but I don’t remember his spec. Locks are just badass, it was demonstrated yesterday over and over. The 3v3 consisted of Me, Dirty, and Nightwin (same rogue who beat us in the 2v2), we lost our first match, instantly putting us out of the 3v3 race. Not much I can say to this except, Dirty and Nightwin’s fault. The 3v3 was won by the same arms warrior and holy pally who won the 2v2, they had a rogue as their third. They beat a team of Druid, Druid, Frostmage for the win. Overall it was seriously a ton of fun and I hope we do it again sometime. Good job on organizing it all Oslo! Next time i'm going to get in some practice before hand.

You're A Vegetable - WTF DOES THAT MEAN

So im here at working listening to the radio.
Michael Jackson comes with the song "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".
Now I like some songs by Michael, but i dont know wtf some of the lyrics mean in this song. I'm tired and i guess crabby from my long night, crabby enough that these stupid ass lyrics are actually pissing me off.

I Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' I Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah) Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah) You're Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah) And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah) It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah) Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah) You're Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah) And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah) You're A Vegetable, You're A Vegetable Still They Hate You, You're A Vegetable You're Just A Buffet, You're A Vegetable They Eat Off Of You, You're A Vegetable

You're A Vegetable, You're A Vegetable
Still They Hate You, You're A Vegetable
You're Just A Buffet, You're A Vegetable
They Eat Off Of You, You're A Vegetable

WTF does the above mean. Him singing this in his high pitched voice just grated on me for some reason and irritated me enough to post about it.

Gruul --> Mag --> Kara = Another late night.

Yesterday I got home from work to test out my new ISP. It worked, I was on WoW and Vent at the same time, latency was around 250-350, that’s good enough for me to be happy. I gave my new router a little loving last night to let her know how much I appreciate her, she told me I’m the best she ever had. Hopefully this leads to a long lasting relationship of happiness for both parties. My quest now is to get a new computer, but that won’t happen for a few months with the holidays here and my money going out the window for gifts to family and friends. Last night the plan was to Kill Gruul, Kill Mag, form up a group and go finish up Kara. About 50% of these plans were executed successfully. Gruul died in one shot, he dropped the token for my pants. I bid 5dkp on them but didn’t win them since someone decided to go negative, since I just got the pants of curator I wasn’t going to try to match that. This was the same druid that beat me on a roll for the t4 glove token the first time they dropped, this is the same druid that beat me on a roll for the t4 helm the first time it dropped, this is the same druid that is going to have four flat tires this weekend. Actually I don’t know how old this guy is, if he isn’t old enough to drive then…this is the same druid who will have 2 flat bicycle tires. Maybe he doenst have a bicycle? I'll rip the soles off his shoes, thats right i thought of everything. After killing Gruul we headed over to Mag, we couldn’t quite get the right makeup that people were saying we needed but we went ahead anyways. Which is totally cool with me, I’d rather wipe on a boss and begin the learning process than disappoint people and decide to not attempt him. I used to be a guild leader/raid organizer and keeping people motivated and happy about progression isn’t an easy thing. If you don’t raid you upset the people who want to progress, if you go in with the wrong make up and wipe you hear BS from people about how we shouldn’t have even tried and then it’s harder to motivate those people to go next time. Raistilan a mage in our guild is shouldering the raid progression, just wanted to give a quick shout to him about what a good job he is doing. I don’t envy you, it’s a pain in the ass with little reward. Thanks for organizing it all. As far as the Mag fight goes my job is pretty simple. I run in and tank the 3’d warlock, as each warlock dies the others get stronger. It’s a dps race to kill the warlocks, so when the fight starts the guy on the first warlock has the hardest time controlling agro because everyone is balls out dps go go go. With me being 3’d I have plenty of time to get agro and even with warlock 1 and 2 dead the mob really still isn’t even hitting hard. I just have to interrupt his death coils and mending spells, last night I think I most likely did have the easiest job. When my mob died I ran around taunting infernals off healers until Mag was released and honors starts MT him (Honors our pally tank was chosen to MT him last night. He now has a Sh*t ton of hp, grats man and gj!). One of the classes we were short on last night was locks so there wasn’t enough fears/banishes to go around so that’s why I picked up the infernals, better smacking on me than a tree. When Mag pops it was my job to toss up a thunderclap, demo shout, and hit honors with a commanding shout. That was also easy, I think the hardest part of my “Mag fight” experience is to watch the “cube” I am assigned to. This part is where Mag starts casting this fire spell and the five cubes around him have to be simultaneously clicked, also not that hard and I got my “clicks” off just fine. Except the time I was dead, that made it a little bit difficult but I had said I was dead in vent and someone covered me. We didn’t get Mag down but at least we learned something. On our final attempt i was the last guy standing, just for fun i grabbed mag and tanked him against the wall to see what it was like. Suprisingly i actually lived a long ass time with no heals, long enough for people on vent to ask how i was still alive. I should have popped shield wall to see just how long i could last. After getting a taste of tanking Mag i hope one day i get a shot to MT him. After switching some of my gems around i noticed in my kara raid i have 17k hp, i wish i would have paid attention during the 25 man raid. The guild has decided to concentrate on Mag until he is dead then we move off to SSC, good call in my opinion. After Mag my Kara group formed up and we headed in. It was already late so the whole time I was hoping it would get called so I could go to bed. Like I said in a previous post, I can’t say no to a raid so I stuck around. We killed Illhoof, shade and the chess event and that’s when people decided it was late and we should call it. I think tonight we’ll probably go in and finish the rest of Kara off. I have decided that if Nightbane doesn’t drop my shield I’m going to use my badges and buy the heroic one for now. It’s not that great of an upgrade but I can’t keep putting it off hoping for a free drop. Yes I realize that as soon as I buy it a shield will drop off Gruul or Nightbane. This weekend were having a sort of “guild pvp” event, I’m looking forward to it. Should be a lot of fun, monday ill probably post something about how everyone in my guild is a bunch of cheaters and hackers because i didnt win the tourney.

I am sick

Wow the plate legs off Curator weren’t just a myth. They ended up dropping last night and being the only plate tank I picked them up. I also bought a new pair of bracers with my heroic badges last night, which I needed since Attumen refuses to drop his. I like the heroic bracers better anyways so f*ck you attumen i dont want your sh*t drops anyways. This leaves me with about 40’ish badges and I’ll probably pick up either the cape or shield next depending on what Nightbane and Gruul offer up. What sucks about the legs I got last night is that I’m not sure how much $$ to put into them because most likely in a few weeks I’ll have the t4 ones from Gruul. I’ll probably be a cheap ass and put the +9 stam gems in them and maybe not even attach the +30 stam leg armor for right now.

The last few days my ISP has really sucked hard core because we had a little bit of an ice storm which froze all the lines around my house. If you will remember from previous posts if I have any type of “wet” weather my connection goes to hell real fast instantly driving me crazy. I don’t know why it’s like that it just is, no matter how much I yell and scream at the phone company. We’ll now my ISP is totally down while we have this icy weather so I decided I’m going to drive up to Dirty’s house and use his ISP for Gruul last night. He is a RL friend and doesnt mind me bumming off his connection but also lives 30 mins away. Yes, you are correct, I am sick, i care about raiding that much. I packed up my computer, drove 30 minutes, raided till 1:30 am, packed up and then drove 30 mins home. I feel like I laid down in bed, and instantly the alarm went off for me to go to work. As always I’m writing this post while only being half awake, like I said…I have a sickness. My original plan was to just go bum his ISP for an hour to do Gruuls then pack up go home and get a good night sleep. We’ll my regular Kara group formed up after Gruuls and when it comes to going on a raid I can’t say no. When I got home a little after 2am my girl friend was NOT a happy camper, I wish she would be a little more appreciative that I stayed up all night to fight the forces of evil so that our child can grow up in a future not over run by the forces of undead. She didn’t see it that way though, apparently I’m just a dumbass. That’s fine if she is gonna be all mean to me, I’ll just have to cut her off from the old love muscle. Wonder how she is gonna like those apples.

Before Kara last night we formed up and went in to Gruuls layer. We had A LOT of new people so the run wasn’t as smooth as normal, but we also didn’t have all the regulars on so trying to teach new people a dungeon is better than not going in my opinion. My normal mob to tank on HKM is Olm the Summoner. He is my new nightmare since the last patch change making fear no longer an agro wipe. Before the patch he would be tanked to the left and against the wall of the main entry hall, he would fear you and then switch targets to either his enslaved fell hound or to the other tank. He never moved really from this spot, and was about as simple as it could be. Now with the non-wiping agro he follows the tank around that he feared, and is just a huge pain in the ass needing to be chased after and taunted back to his starting position. Last night two times in a row I got Olm into position and then was feared directly into the mage mobs aoe. I died leaving Olm in a bad spot and with only 1 other tank on him. We had to reset HKM about 3 times before we actually killed him. We attempted Gruul 2-3 times getting him down to 11% but then on our last wipe we got respawns so it was called. I’m not sure when we are going back in to kill him but I hope I’m on for it, I really would like the t4 legs and the shield he drops. I know Honors and Lan both have their eyes on the shield along with me so the plan is to hack the database storing DKP so that it looks like I’m the only one with enough to bid on the shield. Obviously im joking, of course I wouldn’t ever do anything like that……

Tonight I don’t think Gruul is on the schedule so it will probably just be a run to finish up Kara, I hope it goes smooth so I can get to bed at a decent hour.

w00t!

Going to type up a normal blog but i thought this was funny so i'll link it / copy it here.
Read about it on yahoo here

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007
Thousands of you took part in the search for Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007, and the vast majority of you chose a small word that packs a pretty big punch. The word you've selected hasn't found its way into a regular Merriam-Webster dictionary yet—but its inclusion in our online Open Dictionary, along with the top honors it's now been awarded—might just improve its chances. This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ("leet," or "elite") speak—an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "we owned the other team"—again stemming from the gaming community.
Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2007 based on votes from visitors to our Web site:
1. w00t (interjection) expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay" w00t! I won the contest! Submitted by: Kat from Massachusetts on Nov. 30, 2005 23:18

L2Math!

The statement that plate tanking pieces drop off of Curator, Attumen, or a shield from Nightbane is a cruel lie. Tuesday the Kara group I am in did a clear from Attumen through Prince. We left Nightbane, Illhoof, and Netherspite for Wednesday, which we went back and did. So a full Kara clear and no loot but a dps ring for me, which I only took because no one else wanted it. I’m sitting at 60 badges right now, I am capable of going and buying a shield but what I really want to use my badges for is the tanking legs then a cape.

Normally in previous posts I would go on a rant and say mean and hurtful things which were probably unfair to these bosses and possibly hurt their feelings because they didn’t drop my loot. I’m going to rise above that this week, stay calm, stay optimistic that next week they will drop my loot, and not say anything harsh about my good friends Attumen ,Curator , and Nightbane…..but…F$*k you creators of AtlasLoot, leading me onto to believe that these drops have a 15% drop rate let alone even exist. I think one of you bastards forgot a period somewhere and it’s supposed to be .15%. The calculations on that mod can kiss my beanbag, there is no way they are correct. If the guy who wrote Atlasloots is reading this, drop me a line, I’ll find you a math tutor. You all should be Tbagged for all eternity for the frustration you have caused millions of wow players with your blatently false calculations. Enjoy Hell F*$kers.
*Yes I realize these drops all do really exists and yes I’m sure the drop rate is spot on I’m just venting and being an ass, Atlasloots is a kickass mod that I wouldn’t ever get rid of and i really appreciate the work those guys did to provide a free mod like that.*

Tonight we plan to raid on Mag which will be really fun and I’m looking forward to it. If we happen to down him then awesome, if not I want to see him just for the experience to say I have been there. At some point though I hope we pick a boss and focus on him till he is dead, much the same thing we did with Gruul. I don’t even care which boss the guild picks, just to have another boss kill notch in my belt would be great.

We had two of our highest dps’ers in the guild leave the other day because we didn’t raid enough, the mage who left I was sad to see go because he really kicked a lot of ass and was an all around nice guy. With them leaving it got me thinking of my thoughts on if we raid enough. Right now we do 1 night of Gruul and then 1 night of progression raiding whether it be Lurker, Void Reaver, or now Mag. That’s only 2 nights a week of 25 man raiding. Although I have to factor in 2 nights for Kara badge farming (it’s certainly not loot farming these days /grumble), and then 2 nights for ZA. 6 days a week of raiding is more than enough for me, it actually leaves me with not enough free time as it is. So Id rather not see us picking up another raid night, I’m happy right where we are. Maybe if we learn the Mag fight fairly easy we could wrap him up with HKM and Gruul in one night as other raiding guilds have done, since they are both pretty short instances. Leaving us still with 1 night for a 25 man progression night. So anyways while I hate to see these guys go I hope we don’t pick up more nights of 25 man raiding, at least not until ZA has been cleared.

Loot Train pushes onward

The loot train chugged onwards this week which made me pitch a happy tent. For starters I grabbed my season 3 helm. I needed a new pvp helm badly, since the helm I was using before was some blue POS with no resilience. Illhoof dropped a nice mace that I will use as an offhand when grinding, and the ZA bear boss dropped some new tanking boots which were a really nice upgrade with loads more stamina. Here are all three items.

Friday evening Oslo (beast hunter), Dirty (resto druid), and I (arms warrior at the time) decided to try our luck in 3v3 arena. Our luck was not good. We went 3-7 for the night, getting owned pretty hardcore in several matches. What sucks about week 1 of a new season is that everyone is set back to a 1500 rating, 80% of the teams we faced totally out geared us. I was on the verge of getting pissed off but my other 2 team mates kept reminding me that it’s a gear issue and we really shouldn’t even be playing teams like this yet. I wasn’t getting mad at my teammates; I was just getting mad at losing. I hate to lose. I held my frustration in check, took the lumps, and we’ll get about 300 arena points for this week’s games. *Off wow topic for a second* Speaking about how much I hate to lose, yesterday (Sunday) I had some family/ friends out. They brought with them Mario Olympics, a newish game for the Wii system. I have a Wii but I really never play it, I just bought one because everyone else wanted one. My little cousins are between 7-12 years old, and wanted to play me. I’m 27 and grown up enough to realize that even if I could beat them in a game I should let them win and laugh and have a good time with it…..pffft F$*k that, I beat their asses and it was amazing fun. Who can beat me playing the crocodile character (who isn’t even that fast ill point out) in track and field? No one is the answer. I didn’t only kick ass on the little kids, I had friends my age over that I smoked also. I didn’t take the gold medal in every single event but the ones I took silver in were the gay events (such as the trampoline or dream racing) that I didn’t want to win anyways (That’s not true, obviously I wanted to win every one this is just my way of dealing with it)… Anyways back to wow. I can’t express how happy I am at the latest changes to devastate. As a prot warrior I can effectively grind for money now. I can even grind better as prot than I can when I’m spec’d for arms pvp. This works out nicely since I’m prot 5-6 days per week. The new offhanded weapon helps with my grinding, that’s the reason I rolled for it (I was the only one who wanted it anyways). Toss on dps gear, duel wield, spam devastate and execute, then move onto the next mob. It doesn’t work as well as a beast master hunter but it gets the job done much better. Last night we killed Gruul again, I had to deal with some lag issues which always sucks my balls but HKM and Gruul went down on one shot each again. It’s amazing that such a short time ago we were wiping endlessly, now the guild makes it look like cake. I’d hate to think that everyone is so focused on not screwing up and killing Gruul because I won’t be their friend any more but that’s probably the case. To lose a friend like me would be devastating, I am an amazing person..… Of course I’m being sarcastic I’m way better than an “amazing person” I’m like “Super Amazing to infinity + 1”, and even if someone did mess up id never hold it against them, my lag makes me goof up all the time.. … I’m just rambling now and not sure if I even know what the hell I’m talking about or being funny which is my intent so I’m going to just put this; Gruul and HKM down again on 1 shot, everyone rocks, and now I’m going to leave work I’m F*$king tired.

Lame ass drops

Ugh, week after week I kill the curator and he never drops the plate pants, same thing with Attumen and the bracers. I’m almost willing to bet I will have earned enough badges to just buy both tanking pieces before I ever see them drop. I had to take out my loot whore aggression somehow last night so when the group zoned out of Kara I snuck back up to curator, opened his metal helmed visor, and pissed in it. It was kind of funny, there were sparks flying everywhere. I still didn’t feel satisfied with that though so I went back downstairs and had an unholy union with Attumen’s dead horse while his undead eyes watched me. I felt better after that, but I did wish I had brought a towel, plate socks are not very good for cleaning up with. Anyways…(i kind of grossed myself out there actually)...I guess buying those 2 tanking pieces with badges isn’t that horrible of an idea since they are better anyways, minus the fact the leg graphic looks like sh#t.

Last night we stopped after curator and tonight I’m assuming we will finish the last half. At least that’s what I’m hoping, I really want to be done with Kara for the week and start focusing on some 25 man runs or at least killing Bear and Eagle in ZA. Group 1 has downed Eagle boss in ZA so now Group 2 has to catch them =).

Nothing else really to post about, I’m going to link up my pictures from SSC the other night because I forgot to bring them in. I think that place is really tight graphic wise, much cooler looking than the eye.

Hope "most" of you had a good holiday

Wow I hadn’t realized it’s been a week since my last post. I was off work a lot around the holiday so that’s why it’s been so long in between posts, speaking of that I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. No wait...I take that back, everyone except the 5v5 teams we played on Sunday, I hope your turkey was rancid and gave you massive bouts of diarrhea. Then I hope you realized you were out of toilet paper and had to drag your ass across the carpet like a dog with worms to get clean. Sunday our 5v5 got together and got our faces stomped, we went 3-7. I think our team was a little to “squishy”. It was me (Arms for arena), Aztk (Holy Pally), Luminati (Holy Priest), Faeye (Shadow Priest), and Dirty (Feral druid). It seems like every team we would play we were facing extremely well geared guys, most of the time we lost we were only losing 9-12 points. The 5v5 team still has not been able to get a solid group going yet, I don’t think we have played 2 weeks in a row where it was the same 5 guys. I don’t think were ever gonna “click” if we’re always finding someone new to take a spot. Hopefully that changes soon, especially since the new season starts today.

On the PVE home front I was able to get my breast plate from Nightbane! After killing him 100 times he finally dropped something for me, now I just need his shield. Since everything resets today it’s probably going to be a Kara badge night, unless a 25 man run is tossed together. As far as 25 man raids go over the weekend we Killed High King Mulgar and Gruul, both were one shotted but neither dropped anything I could use. Even though i receieved no loot it was still fun just going in there and killing them so easily when at first it seemed like Gruul was an impossible boss because we wiped over and over and over. Last night our guild gave Lurker a shot. The trash in SSC seemed to be much easier than the trash in TK, so that was a nice surprise. We were never able to kill lurker, I think people were getting hit on the spout and we also had trouble on the adds. Our last attempt was our best though, we got through the spouts okay and eventually killed the adds but didn’t have enough people left alive to kill lurker. We were in there with only 5 healers, I hear that you are supposed to have 7-8 maybe that would have made the difference?

This Thursday we have a Mag attempt planned. Hopefully I get a spot in the raid and get to check him out, I’m be pretty excited to see him for the first time. I’m totally down for checking out all the bosses and stuff but I hope eventually we go back to focusing on just 1 boss at a time. We had VoidReaver down to 48%, if I had to pick the next raid id say we go give him some more shots since it seems like we were finally learning him. It doesn’t matter who we kill next I love learning new boss fights, I just like to see someone get rewarded at the end of the kill. Preferably “Someone” meaning me. To get that first kill though I think we just need to stick to our guns and keep wiping on one boss over and over until everyone finally gets the hang of it. At least that’s my experience from learning the bosses in BWL,AQ40, and even from recent raids,look at how many times we wiped on Gruul. Wipe + wipe + wipe + sleep + wipe + wipe + wipe = boss kill.

Zombie

Ugh, I am starting to turn into quite the zombie. Last two weeks I have been staying up way to late, last night was no different. Started out the night with a great Gruuls run, full clear with a one shot on each boss. That was the first one night Gruul clear we have had as a guild, it was awesome and now that we have set that bar we can hopefully always clear it that quickly. In my previous post I had stated how much I need new pants, I’m still using blue Felsteel leggings and those have gotta go. Gruul ended up dropping double t4 warrior, druid, priest tokens so I was pumped. I’m not sure if our MKP has been implemented yet or not but both tokens went straight to rolls. I’m not sure which F*$ker at Blizzard didn’t get the memo but I am supposed to win every roll ALWAYS. Both tokens went to druids so Grats to those guys. I hope they realize though that since you took my lootz I’m going to do your sisters in front of a camera and post it all over the internet as payback. Actually that’s a little harsh, Gruul also dropped some dps plate gloves which no one wanted so I picked them up, since I didn’t walk away empty handed I’ll just do your sisters but leave it off the internet. Our Gruul’s run was the tits and I’m really happy I didn’t miss it, can’t wait to go again.

After the Gruuls run was finished I had to make sure I got in my arena games for the week. Me, Slymongoose, and Honorshammer/Dirty(taking turns) went 6-4 last night in our 3v3’s. I got to try out my new axe and I was pleasantly surprised. It hits like a truck on clothies. After our 3v3’s were over I got whispers from my 5v5 team asking if we could get together and get those games in as well. I was happy to do them , I’m an arena junkie any chance for arenas and I’m all over it. Our setup was Arms Warrior(me), Honorshammer(prot pally), Faeye(Shadow Priest), Aztk(Holy Pally), and Slymongoose(marks hunter). We went 7-3 last night which I thought was really good as we didn’t do any skirmish matches and really have not ever played together as a 5v5 before. I should be carrying about 2700 arena points over into season three next week, depending on how much gear has rating requirements I might be sporting the season three arnea helm. I talked to Dirty this morning and told him he missed the 5v5’s because he went to bed early. Dirty was one of the druids who won the t4 pants over me earlier in the night, it’s a shame he missed out on his 5v5 arena points……

I had every intention of going to bed after our 5v5 games because it was already late and I was so tired I couldn’t hardly keep my eyes open. That’s when Luminati asked me if I wanted to go for another shot at Nightbane. Nightbane has two pieces of gear that I really need so how could I pass up on that? Who needs sleep anyways, I can nap at work. I have been running Kara with group 2 lately and we have been tearing every boss up except for Nightbane, he has been a thorn in our side for a long time. Last night Kara was all clear except for him so we formed a group and gave him a shot. There was only one priest in the group last night so even though he kept his fear ward up on me when he could I still had to stance dance a lot. I hate to stance dance it is such a pain in my ass. I already have to make sure I have max threat, keep shield block up constantly, burn my trinkets on cool down, consume healthstones-pots-last stand-shield wall when needed, but to add on the fact of stance dancing is a pain. Anyways I got through my job and the dps/ healers rocked the house last night giving group 2 their first kill. Still no luck on my shield or chest piece, Nightbane is a stingy As$hole. We run Kara again tonight so I’m hoping I can get one of my much needed pieces this week.

Skill > Gear --- I dunno about that

I often hear people say Skill > Gear. I’m starting to think that’s a situational statement, during a normal boss fight you can have a great (play skill) mage in greens VS an average mage in all epics and it’s my belief that the average player would throw out more dps. I feel like Skill > Gear comes into play more in PVP than PVE. True there are some PVE fights where you have a lot of running around/placement, class specific actions, etc but in most cases I think most boss fights come down to a tank/spank strategy with namely one or two special things you have to watch out for which an average player can handle. The reason I’m even posting about gear is my damage taken compared to Lanorah and Honors on our Void Reaver attempt the other night. I was working on a post comparing the stats but Honors beat me to it, it’s a good post found here. Basically what it says though is that I took 7% more damage than honors and 9% more than Lanorah over all the boss fights. In this post I’m just going to comment on the last boss fight because that’s where I think I “tried the hardest”. Right from the beginning of that fight I ran out and had initial agro (more from my hunters misdirect than anything I did I think). Since I was up first and it was also our last attempt of the night I did everything I could possibly do to mitigate as much damage as possible while keeping up my threat. I guess what I’m pointing out here is that even though I tried my hardest, when I was hit I took more damage than honors and even though I popped my trinkets the second they were up I didn’t dodge as much as Lanorah. I’m pretty sure there was no different spell rotation or other player action I could have done to make a noticeable difference. That leaves me with nothing to fall back on except it’s the gear. I am now the least geared tank of the three of us, and it’s starting to show with me taking 9% more damage than our main MT. I have really stepped up my effort to improve my gear so hopefully I can get in on another hot streak in my next couple of runs. Also the badges have been raining down on me so as soon as I have 40 I’ll be buying the shield block trinket, then after that a shield, chest piece, or leg piece depending on what is needed the most. If I haven’t gotten lucky with drops then after I replace my trinket my shield is my main sore spot. I have tried every run a hundred times to get a better one, I just have no luck with a new shield. I should have just worked on my rep or badges and gotten an epic one a long time ago. Right now my shield works about as good as a stack of porn magazines strapped to my arm. Blizzard should change the graphic so people don’t get confused thinking it’s a real shield.

Here is the stats from our last attempt where I lived the longest(I didnt live as long as honors or lanorah or take as many hits so keep that in mind), I think I made a respectable showing of myself but still I didn’t do as well as my fellow warrior Lanorah.

Name Avg Hit Avg Crushing Parry % Dodge % Total boss missed % Dmg Mitigated Raydz: 3660 2% 5208 22% 22% 58.7% 6.1% Lanorah: 3667 2% 5903 24% 22% 62.3% 9.8% Honors: 3612 5% 5722 12% 18% 45.39% 5.9%

Raydz: Lanorah: Honors: Keep in mind though that this is just the last boss fight, overall I didn’t do as well as either tanks. Realistically I’m probably missing some key bit of information and I didn’t do as well as honors either on the last attempt. I’m really hoping once I get the new gear these numbers improve elevating me to thier mitigation levels, because if they don’t that means it’s some action im inadvertantly doing. I don’t want to face the reality of being a shitty tank because then I’ll have to get all depressed, move into my parent’s basement, masturbate to my porn shield while bawling like a baby, and no one wants that. Another observation concerning gear is that in our ZA group last night we kept fumbling with the bear boss. I feel like I can say the problems we had last night came 100% from the gear some guys were using. Even though these guys played their ass off their gear was less than what the instance needed and it showed, so now when I hear Skill > Gear, I don’t know if I always agree with that. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to invite someone to ZA because of their gear, who am I to tell someone no, but it does mean that the rest of the group might have someone else’s short comings to pick up and i dont know if it's fair to them either.

Group 2 Bear Boss Down

Last night I started forming up group 2 for ZA, I wanted that damn bear boss dead so bad I think I was giving myself a complex. First and foremost I want to say thank you to Celoria for helping group 2 out with all the potions! I think I said thank you 10x in game but you really unloaded a lot to help the group, so I thought you deserved another big THANK YOU! I was able to stock up our healers and casters with mana pots, health pots for tanks, and feed everyone helpful foodstuffs. It made a huge difference last night, if you ever need anything from me please just ask!
That being said, after grouping up we zone in and start killing trash up to Bear boss. I forgot to time our trash killing, I won’t forget next time because I want to get an idea of how we are going to do on the “timed” run. We killed the bear on the second attempt. He went down extremely smooth and easy, when I think back to yesterday it’s like… “what the hell was our problem?”. He dropped some lame ass claw that no one really needed which was kind of a bummer, but at least we get to say 1 boss down!
After killing the bear boss we cleared to the eagle boss. The trash on the way to eagle couldn’t be any easier, so that was a pleasant surprise. The bear rider trash on the first boss makes the eagle’s trash mobs look like a joke. The eagle himself on the other hand…his storm is a pain in the ass, and so are his damn bird spawns. We attempted him 4x before the group decided they wanted to jump into Kara for some badges. Our best attempt we got him to 48% I think. Every attempt though we improved significantly and the next time we go in there he will probably die. There is a lot of fun to learning a boss fight where there really is no help from strategies guides or from people who have been there before, makes the boss kill more rewarding in my opinion. ZA so far Bear boss dead – Eagle 50%
So now It’s time to point out what a ninja I am…again…. Two weeks ago in Kara the raid leader forgot to put it on ML on Moroes. Two loot windows pop up on my screen, I click greed on both of them. I just don’t pay attention to that shit, I never look to see what it is, I never need any of that stuff so I just greed, it’s almost like a habit now. I hear a lot of groans on vent and I realize what I did. Everyone else had passed on the loot and I greeded so therefore I got them. I felt like an ass that entire run and apologized over and over, honestly that stuff bugs me when I f*&k up someone else’s loot. Low and behold I inadvertently do it again last night. The raid leader forgot to ML on Attumen, two purples flash up on my screen but this time everyone is yelling in vent for me to pass. Ever since I did that in Kara two weeks ago it’s been forged into a joke about me being stealing every ones epics, so through all the joking everyone actually knew to yell at me to pass. Even if they hadn’t of yelled I learned my lesson and would have passed anyways, which I did. So everyone passes and people start clicking on the boss to get their badge, I did as well. What I didn’t realize is that I had the “loot all items” clicked on in my interface, so when I click on the boss it asks “would you like to bind this item to you” of course I would it’s my badge,I clicked yes. Well it gave me some bracers that were supposed to go to a paladin. I was so angry at myself I was cussing up a storm in vent, I hope I didn’t upset anyone’s delicate ears. So there I was again apologizing to someone because I stole their loot. Ugh ugh ugh, I feel so bad when I do something stupid like that. Basically I guess this whole last section is just a long apology to the paladin I stole the loot from =/ I think tonight were hitting up the eye again for another shot at void reaver, im looking forward to it...as long as its on Master Loot.

*circus music playing*

Real quick post about what I think about this ZA plate armor set graphic.
I think they did an excellent job designing a plate mail clown suit. Hopefully in later patches they will implement some honking rubber horns that you can equip as an off hand weapon or a flower that squirts water as a necklace. I can almost bet they got the artistic inspiration from that movie “Killer Clowns From Outer Space”. Maybe if I can collect this whole set ill rename my character to John Wayne Gacy and be “Pogo the killer clown” (John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer who had a part time job as pogo the clown for those of you who don’t know). Or maybe there is the possibility me and my fellow warrior guildies could all wear this and pile up on one horse like it was a little clown car? This set looks like hunk of walking SH&T. Maybe with the next instance release we'll get lucky and the plate armor will resemble Care Bears. Have i ever mentioned i fu#$ing hate clowns?	=
GOOD PLATE EXAMPLE. BAD PLATE EXAMPLE GOOD PLATE EXAMPLE. BAD PLATE EXAMPLE
This set is the one of the gayest things I have ever seen, I’ll wear it for the item stats but hate the way my character looks. /rant over

At least the trash was easy

Last night I logged onto WoW and saw that group 1 had headed into ZA, I was worried for a while that I had missed my ZA chance but a few hours later a second group formed up which I got to MT. Me and Dirty run ahead to the ghostlands and try to start summoning people. I say try because horde were camping the stone making life hell for a lot of people. I think blizzard tried to prevent stone camping because they put guards all around the flight path and summoning stone, but some horde guys found a few safe areas to ranged attack without having the guards pull. After pissing us off enough by cancelling our summon portals, we finally killed enough horde that in between their rezzes we were able to get the group summoned. After you zone into ZA you talk to a npc, Harrison Jones (Harrison Ford & Indiana Jones Mixed, I love the names Blizz uses). He is an archeologist who has found a way into ZA and needs help opening the doors. The doors open and immediately the group is swarmed with 2 big elite trolls which require one tank each and dozen slaves which are aoe’d down. First trap mobs go down nice an easy, it was the same for most of the other trash as well. In fact from zoning in to the first boss we never wiped, I was really happy about that (While clearing trash ZA group 1 announced they had killed the bear boss, Grats to you guys!). I will admit though that a lot of the trash are kind of a pain in the ass. There is a shaman “Witch Doctor” who will toss down totems making all the mobs invincible, so that totem has to be burned down every time it’s up. There is also bear riders that pull in packs of 2 that separate from their mounts which are kind of a pain as well. It was nothing we couldn’t handle though and before we knew it we were setting up for the bear boss pull.

The bear boss is an endurance tank and spank fight. I am sad to say we didn’t get to kill him last night, we did manage to get him to 24% though. I was tanking his humanoid form and we had a feral druid tanking his bear form. The rotation went well, he really doesn’t hit as hard as I thought he would, some of our healers just seemed to run out of mana a little bit too early. When I say he doesn’t hit that hard I mean his normal melee attacks, but he does cast bleed effects on the tanks which seemed to be our downfall. The healers would burn all their mana healing the tanks through the bleed effects. We had 3 pally healers but I think having a resto druid with leet HOTS might have made the difference. I was with a good group of guys last night so even though it ment more wiping none of the healers were asked to leave so someone else could come in. After the first three wipes on the boss he reset so all the trash needed to be killed again. I was impressed that we cleared from the front to the boss again in 16 minutes, and during that time we had people outside repairing. After another couple of wipes on the boss some people had to go to bed so it was called. I was really hoping for a boss kill last night, but were planning on going in again tonight so hopefully we get a down a boss, or even 2.

Here are a few screen shots I grabbed at ZA but I forgot to get a good picture of the boss while fighting him =/ .

Bastard Horde =P

Boss taunting us.

Last Pull before boss.

Gruul T-bag

Last night we formed up our 25 man raid to go take down Gruul. Theoretically one day we’ll be doing HKM and Gruul in one night but as of now we still have a few wipes on him so it ends up being dragged into a 2 night event. We did however kill him last night, this being my first time on a Gruul kill, second time for Mal Katai. It was really awesome to see him die after having wiped on that boss so many times. Two hunters won the legging tokens, I think we DE’d some shaman boots since we had no shaman in the raid, but I managed to walk away with a nice two handed axe. I slapped a savagery enchant on it and now it will be my new arena weapon. It’s a nice upgrade from the despair sword I was using. The graphic on it is a little goofy though.
This week our guild is switching over to a “dkp” type of raiding format, which I think is the fairest way to run raids so I’m 50% excited to see these changes come into effect. The other 50% that’s not excited is because lately I’m on fire with my loots, anything that drops that I want I always win the roll, so now I have to put aside my loot whoreish ways and get in line with dkp. This type of system does need to be in place though, my luck will not hold out forever and the people who just have horrible luck but raid all the time need to get their dues. DKP systems are what I am used to from pre-BC raiding, they help keep a solid loot distribution structure and honestly they push people to stay on a little later and not skip scheduled nights if they can help it. I do have a little trepidation at some of the “changes” our guild made from a normal DKP system, but I’m hoping they all turn out to be good idea’s and I’m just biased because I have never done it this way before. The biggest change that worries me is that lets say I have 5 dkp and so does another tank and we both want the same item. We both say we want the item, so it goes to rolls. Makes sense, the winner of the roll gets the item and it cost him his 5dkp, that’s the way dkp has always worked and is solid. We’ll now one of the “changes” implemented is that not only does the winner lose his 5dkp, but the other guy rolling against him loses 2 dkp. It’s kind of like being “Charged” for your roll. I see this causing problems in two different ways, the first is that people are allowed to “buy” dkp by donating mats to the guild bank (The fact you can buy dkp I’m not sure how I feel about that yet, but I do see where people who constantly donate potions to the guild should be rewarded for that). Roughly 200 gold in donated mats will buy you 1 dkp. If you want an item and lose, you just spent 400g in hard earned mats and time on a crappy roll with nothing to show for it. The idea of a dkp system is to reward people with loot and in most cases take away the chance for it to go to “rolls”. The second problem is our dkp cap is very low so I’m foreseeing most loot going to rolls. With people going to rolls I feel like we’re diluting the true value of a dkp system. All the people who have crappy rolls will be losing dkp all the time, and with a low dkp cap they will never make significant dkp gains to keep them from always competing with rolls on loot. It’s almost like we don’t need a dkp system if we’re going to do it this way because all it’s doing is going back to rolls anyways. I’m not sure if I explained my concerns well enough to make sense but by now you’re bored to tears so ill just say this; I’m really happy were going to a dkp type of system, a little worried the “changes” made to dkp will imbalance it. This morning before work I downloaded the last bit of the patch which goes live today, I also stopped in front of the mirror and was shocked by how sexy I am. I’m really excited about being so sexy and also all the new boss encounters and possible loot that will be released today, I have been looking forward to this for a long time. It’s easier to progress 10 people through an instance than it is 25 so I see ZA being farmed before the EYE or SSC, or maybe I’m just on crack and ZA is gonna beat my ass 4 nights a week without ever seeing a boss kill. I think tonight I’ll be going into ZA so tomorrow ill post some screen shots if I’m lucky enough to go.