
Friday, October 26, 2007
Kara Cooler

Thursday, October 25, 2007
Raiding Limbo
Last night I started out the night with a Steam Vaults run, I have been sitting at honored with 500 rep to go to revered for months now. Steam Vaults went smoothly and now I’m revered, which is good because I think my plan is to start stock piling badges over the next few weeks. I used to not really care about badges because for a long while my guild was on a strong Kara streak and had regular attempts at Gruul, so I figured I would get the nicer gear before I would earn the badges anyways and for Kara and Gruul my gear is acceptable. At the moment though our guild feels like it has hit this weird phase that I can’t really describe except by saying mass recruiting but for no purpose. On our website it says recruitment is closed but almost every day people of all classes will post an application and get into the guild or get invited without even posting an app, for instance in the case of my class we have at least 7 active warriors right now and just invited another into the guild a few days ago.
This was posted in our guild forums the other day (many more have entered the guild btw since this post)
18 Hunters
16 Druids
13 Warriors
13 Paladins
11 Mages
10 Priests
10 Rogues
10 Warlocks
1 Shaman
What the hell are we going to do with 13(14 now) warriors? I’m sure now you are thinking the only reason I care about more warriors in the guild is because I don’t want to have to share all the loot.
To that I would be honest and say that’s about 40% true, if every warrior took turns rotating through Kara or Gruul’s how long would it take for everyone to really get geared up. We also don’t have a DKP system so the possibility of one of our older established tanks losing his tier 4 shoulders or pants to a brand new guy is a very frustrating possibility. I’d have to shoot myself if I was a hunter in the guild. The other 60% of why this bothers me is by flooding the guild with lots of new people you are diluting your core group and slowing the possibilities for progression, taking longer on runs because the boss fights will have to be explained every time, and allowing for a lot more wipes due to new people learning the encounter. Now if there was a problem with attendance keeping us from going to raids I would be all for going out and recruiting new people, how else would we get to see 25 man content? I’d like to point out that I have talked with many of the new people in the guild and so far everyone seems really nice I’m just confused as to what were gonna do with all these people? It hasn’t been attendance keeping us from raiding, it seems like we normally had 30+ 70’s on, so what the hell is going on? I have no idea, I don’t know if it’s that the people who normally arrange the raids are burnt out with their mains, are tired of wiping on Gruul, or if behind the scenes they are asking people to go to Gruul’s but no one wants to? It also doesn’t even deal solely with the 25 man content, it also applies to Kara. My original group I used to run with stopping going for a few weeks, then started again but only went like one night a week and didn’t really go past curator. I have started running with group 2 and I enjoy raiding with those guys but they are a late night crowd and I don’t know if I can keep staying up that late. This is why I think I’m going to put some effort to mass badge collecting, which I admit I should have been doing all along anyways but got a little lazy. I really like the people in my guild and enjoy how we all rip on each other (which I’v been taking the brunt of the jokes from everyone lately, I get so sick of people lashing out at me because I’m so sexy.) and have a lot of laughs together, and that’s the only reason I have stayed. Pre-BC when I was more “hard core” for raiding I probably would have bailed a while ago since it feels like we have “lost our way” when it comes to raiding. I know a lot of people are angry because the guild totally skipped its last scheduled Gruul attempt. If we end up skipping again on Friday (Our next scheduled attempt) I would guess that we’ll lose some people over it. Now, with my luck Gruul will be all set up and ready to roll and my internet will make me look like a tool, in which case someone working at my ISP is going to walk out to their car and find I have smeared dog crap all over their door handles. As I re-read this post I guess it was maybe half a rant and half confusion because a lot of us in the guild don’t know what’s going on. What’s up with recruiting people when we have the #’s to raid already? What’s up with not raiding on scheduled days? What’s up with this weird burning sensation I have when I pee?
Also last night in Kara some of us were discussing what the symbol on my shield means. Today at work I have spent a lot of time researching ancient languages and hieroglyphics and found the answer. It means Fu*# you.
This was posted in our guild forums the other day (many more have entered the guild btw since this post)
18 Hunters
16 Druids
13 Warriors
13 Paladins
11 Mages
10 Priests
10 Rogues
10 Warlocks
1 Shaman
What the hell are we going to do with 13(14 now) warriors? I’m sure now you are thinking the only reason I care about more warriors in the guild is because I don’t want to have to share all the loot.
To that I would be honest and say that’s about 40% true, if every warrior took turns rotating through Kara or Gruul’s how long would it take for everyone to really get geared up. We also don’t have a DKP system so the possibility of one of our older established tanks losing his tier 4 shoulders or pants to a brand new guy is a very frustrating possibility. I’d have to shoot myself if I was a hunter in the guild. The other 60% of why this bothers me is by flooding the guild with lots of new people you are diluting your core group and slowing the possibilities for progression, taking longer on runs because the boss fights will have to be explained every time, and allowing for a lot more wipes due to new people learning the encounter. Now if there was a problem with attendance keeping us from going to raids I would be all for going out and recruiting new people, how else would we get to see 25 man content? I’d like to point out that I have talked with many of the new people in the guild and so far everyone seems really nice I’m just confused as to what were gonna do with all these people? It hasn’t been attendance keeping us from raiding, it seems like we normally had 30+ 70’s on, so what the hell is going on? I have no idea, I don’t know if it’s that the people who normally arrange the raids are burnt out with their mains, are tired of wiping on Gruul, or if behind the scenes they are asking people to go to Gruul’s but no one wants to? It also doesn’t even deal solely with the 25 man content, it also applies to Kara. My original group I used to run with stopping going for a few weeks, then started again but only went like one night a week and didn’t really go past curator. I have started running with group 2 and I enjoy raiding with those guys but they are a late night crowd and I don’t know if I can keep staying up that late. This is why I think I’m going to put some effort to mass badge collecting, which I admit I should have been doing all along anyways but got a little lazy. I really like the people in my guild and enjoy how we all rip on each other (which I’v been taking the brunt of the jokes from everyone lately, I get so sick of people lashing out at me because I’m so sexy.) and have a lot of laughs together, and that’s the only reason I have stayed. Pre-BC when I was more “hard core” for raiding I probably would have bailed a while ago since it feels like we have “lost our way” when it comes to raiding. I know a lot of people are angry because the guild totally skipped its last scheduled Gruul attempt. If we end up skipping again on Friday (Our next scheduled attempt) I would guess that we’ll lose some people over it. Now, with my luck Gruul will be all set up and ready to roll and my internet will make me look like a tool, in which case someone working at my ISP is going to walk out to their car and find I have smeared dog crap all over their door handles. As I re-read this post I guess it was maybe half a rant and half confusion because a lot of us in the guild don’t know what’s going on. What’s up with recruiting people when we have the #’s to raid already? What’s up with not raiding on scheduled days? What’s up with this weird burning sensation I have when I pee?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Arena Kill Order
Here’s the deal, I have been getting pretty bored at work lately because I am in between projects. I have been toying with the idea of adding onto a mod I currently use, Arena Live Frames (ALF). I’m writing this post almost to help me get my thoughts in order on what it would take to do this. Using ALF = upon mouse over of an enemy this add-on builds a box on your screen that shows the classes, hp% of the opposing team, and which target each of your team members are clicked on. When the arena starts our chats begin as we try to decide a kill order, and being new together it seems like we don’t decide fast enough leaving the enemy to get the first hit. I’m sitting here thinking now, how great would it be that besides the classes/hp of the enemy team it also shows a kill order? Picture you’re against a team of Hunter, Mage, Priest, Warrior, Shaman, when you’re ALF loads up your kill order is already there for you, no discussion needed.
Hunter – 100% - 4
Mage– 100% - 2
Priest– 100% - 1
Warrior– 100% - 5
Shaman – 100% - 3
I just looked over the code for ALF and it doesn’t seem like adding an extra box with a kill order in it to the graphical interface would be hard. The hard part is figuring out the kill order, not only do I have to take into account classes but also the specs. To take every possible combination for a 5v5 arena team there are 59,049 possibilities and that’s only dealing with the classes! Yes I know that doesn’t seem possible but it is (9 different classes and five different team slots = 9x9x9x9x9). Now take that number and add on two (I used two because some classes found in arena’s are specced one of two ways, holy priest or shadow priest, fire mage or frost mage, etc) different possibilities for specs for each class. That 59049 number blows up again to 1,889,568(9 classes, 2 specs each, five team slots). Now what if you have two of the same class same spec on the team, which do you kill first? I guess you would try to kill down the guy with lowest hit points, so that’s more code that would have to be written. Wow, I’ve pretty much talked myself out of this already.
*10 minute break passes at this point while I was writing this *
I just spoke with Krawl (I work with him in RL at a software development company) and I was going about figuring out my kill order totally wrong. This could be done much easier by giving each class/spec a set number amount. For example, let’s say no matter what combination of classes I am against if there is a priest and he isn’t shadow I want to always kill him first. So we assign the priest the number 1. If we detect that he is shadow spec (he runs out in shadow form) we assign him a number 5. Why 5? Because in between a holy priest and a shadow priest you might want to give a resto shaman the number 2, a resto druid the number 3, and a paladin the number 4. Now building our kill order map( ill call it KOM) it looks like this so far. Priest (Any Priest not in shadow form) – 1
Resto Shaman (Resto because he cast earth shield on someone) – 2
Paladin (Hard to tell his spec and also do we care?) – 3
Druid (I don’t think we can tell if he is resto or not?) – 4
Shadow Priest (in shadow form) – 5
Mage (If he is not frost) – 6
Warlock (do we care about his spec?)– 7
Frost Mage (we could tell from his frost shield) – 8
Rogue (Does his spec matter?) – 9
Shaman (Any spec not resto) - 10
Hunter (Does his spec matter?) - 11
Warrior (Does his spec matter?) - 12
(There is a lot of reworking that had to be done on this, this is just used for my example). So what if you go against a team that is rogue, paladin, druid, hunter, and warrior. You would have
Rogue – 9
Druid – 4
Paladin – 3
Hunter – 12
Warrior – 13
Reordering this list by lowest number first the kill order would be.
Paladin – 1
Druid – 2
Rogue – 3
Hunter – 4
Warrior – 5
As I said the KOM needs a lot of work and the mod would have to watch for who is healing, because what if the druid is resto and the pally is only DPS? We’d have to switch the kill order by healing done? Would you want to switch the kill order after the fight has even started? I don’t know I’m not a big arena buff yet and don’t know all the secrets.
I think I’ll start picking apart the mod the next few days and see if the work needed to do this would be worth it. Even trying to think about it with the KOM approach the amount of work here seems daunting, so my first thoughts on this are; My current rating doesn’t seem so bad =P, but it would be a very handly tool to have. *edit 10/24/07 15 mins after post --- would i even need to show the kill order, maybe just put a big arrow pointing to the guy who should be killed first, then an arrow on the next guy after the first one is dead? All the KOM math would still have to happen but a pointing arrow seems cleaner*
Hunter – 100% - 4
Mage– 100% - 2
Priest– 100% - 1
Warrior– 100% - 5
Shaman – 100% - 3
I just looked over the code for ALF and it doesn’t seem like adding an extra box with a kill order in it to the graphical interface would be hard. The hard part is figuring out the kill order, not only do I have to take into account classes but also the specs. To take every possible combination for a 5v5 arena team there are 59,049 possibilities and that’s only dealing with the classes! Yes I know that doesn’t seem possible but it is (9 different classes and five different team slots = 9x9x9x9x9). Now take that number and add on two (I used two because some classes found in arena’s are specced one of two ways, holy priest or shadow priest, fire mage or frost mage, etc) different possibilities for specs for each class. That 59049 number blows up again to 1,889,568(9 classes, 2 specs each, five team slots). Now what if you have two of the same class same spec on the team, which do you kill first? I guess you would try to kill down the guy with lowest hit points, so that’s more code that would have to be written. Wow, I’ve pretty much talked myself out of this already.
*10 minute break passes at this point while I was writing this *
I just spoke with Krawl (I work with him in RL at a software development company) and I was going about figuring out my kill order totally wrong. This could be done much easier by giving each class/spec a set number amount. For example, let’s say no matter what combination of classes I am against if there is a priest and he isn’t shadow I want to always kill him first. So we assign the priest the number 1. If we detect that he is shadow spec (he runs out in shadow form) we assign him a number 5. Why 5? Because in between a holy priest and a shadow priest you might want to give a resto shaman the number 2, a resto druid the number 3, and a paladin the number 4. Now building our kill order map( ill call it KOM) it looks like this so far. Priest (Any Priest not in shadow form) – 1
Resto Shaman (Resto because he cast earth shield on someone) – 2
Paladin (Hard to tell his spec and also do we care?) – 3
Druid (I don’t think we can tell if he is resto or not?) – 4
Shadow Priest (in shadow form) – 5
Mage (If he is not frost) – 6
Warlock (do we care about his spec?)– 7
Frost Mage (we could tell from his frost shield) – 8
Rogue (Does his spec matter?) – 9
Shaman (Any spec not resto) - 10
Hunter (Does his spec matter?) - 11
Warrior (Does his spec matter?) - 12
(There is a lot of reworking that had to be done on this, this is just used for my example). So what if you go against a team that is rogue, paladin, druid, hunter, and warrior. You would have
Rogue – 9
Druid – 4
Paladin – 3
Hunter – 12
Warrior – 13
Reordering this list by lowest number first the kill order would be.
Paladin – 1
Druid – 2
Rogue – 3
Hunter – 4
Warrior – 5
As I said the KOM needs a lot of work and the mod would have to watch for who is healing, because what if the druid is resto and the pally is only DPS? We’d have to switch the kill order by healing done? Would you want to switch the kill order after the fight has even started? I don’t know I’m not a big arena buff yet and don’t know all the secrets.
I think I’ll start picking apart the mod the next few days and see if the work needed to do this would be worth it. Even trying to think about it with the KOM approach the amount of work here seems daunting, so my first thoughts on this are; My current rating doesn’t seem so bad =P, but it would be a very handly tool to have. *edit 10/24/07 15 mins after post --- would i even need to show the kill order, maybe just put a big arrow pointing to the guy who should be killed first, then an arrow on the next guy after the first one is dead? All the KOM math would still have to happen but a pointing arrow seems cleaner*
Monday, October 22, 2007
I kinda like Smelly Hookers
Friday, October 19, 2007
Scary Night (Halloween boss and My repair bill)
Last night the plan was to go into Kara knock down Shade, Chess, Prince and then maybe Illhoof. We weren’t clicking that great and wiped a few times on Shade. I was a total douche on one attempt. I ran out of the arcane blast just fine, was standing against the wall, then hit my intercept macro thinking the arcane blast had gone off. Well it hadn’t so I charged back in and promptly died, laying on the ground like a schmuck that whole attempt. I caught shit for that all night. *Sarcasm* I never knew we had so many comedians in the guild, everyone was just so hilarious. After Shade died we cleared smoothly through chess and got to Prince. That’s when the repair bill skyrocketed. It just seems like no matter what we did or tried the infernals wouldn’t cooperate. Our dps also seemed to be lacking even when the infernals left us alone for short periods of time. Prince's health just wasn’t dropping down fast enough. *Edit - I had the line "Prince just wasn’t going down fast enough" but was informed that sounded very gay* It didn’t help that it was either me trying to dps(as a prot warrior) when Honor’s was tanking, or Honor’s(prot pally) was dps/healing when I was tanking. On the flip side of that though, on every prince fight I have been on the rest of the group pulled the weight for that guy so he had the chance at loot just like everyone else and it really was never a problem before. I’m going to attribute the wipes to everyone being so tired since we got such a late start and the horrible infernal luck. We’ll go in and get him tonight and hopefully down Nightbane and Illhoof as well.
After the Kara raid was called it was around 1:30 am – 2:00 am server time and I knew I should go to bed but I wanted to see that new Halloween boss. He is a new 5 man boss found in SM who drops random epics. The drops really are not that great(besides the warrior dps helm which is pretty nice) but the boss is extremely easy , and can be summoned by each person 1x a day (there were 5 people in my party so we summoned him 5 times). I picked up a dps ring which is just “alright”, the plate helm also dropped but I passed on it for Devona (another warrior in the group). I’d like to have the helm since I’m still using a crappy blue one for arena’s and could use the added dps until I get my Merc Gladiator helm. I’ll go back and kill him another 5 times today and tomorrow, I’m sure on one of those kills I’ll get the helm. That helm btw has a sweet graphic on it. I also won the epic riding broom and the epic flying broom, I didn’t use them though so I have no screen shots for those. Explanations for the boss fight can be found on several other blogs/sites so I’m not going to go into it. Needless to say, it’s a simple encounter and should be done just for the fun of it if not the random epics. Also there was rampant arguing on our general chat about the new loot and if it dissapears or not. Some were saying his loot will only last 14 days, others said the brooms only last 14 days but the loot remains, and then others said nothign dissapears. I don’t know whats up with the loot but I’ll try to look into it later and edit an answer into this post. I’ll also try to look into the brooms saying “One time use” apparently this isn’t true and you can use them multiple times. Some screen shots are included below. I’m sorry if the blog is a little dry today, I crawled my ass into bed around 3am and had to wake up for work around 6am.
*Edit added - From my post the previous day: I added the +2% threat to my gloves and found it to be worth it, incase anyone was wondering*
Repair Bill: 37g =/




After the Kara raid was called it was around 1:30 am – 2:00 am server time and I knew I should go to bed but I wanted to see that new Halloween boss. He is a new 5 man boss found in SM who drops random epics. The drops really are not that great(besides the warrior dps helm which is pretty nice) but the boss is extremely easy , and can be summoned by each person 1x a day (there were 5 people in my party so we summoned him 5 times). I picked up a dps ring which is just “alright”, the plate helm also dropped but I passed on it for Devona (another warrior in the group). I’d like to have the helm since I’m still using a crappy blue one for arena’s and could use the added dps until I get my Merc Gladiator helm. I’ll go back and kill him another 5 times today and tomorrow, I’m sure on one of those kills I’ll get the helm. That helm btw has a sweet graphic on it. I also won the epic riding broom and the epic flying broom, I didn’t use them though so I have no screen shots for those. Explanations for the boss fight can be found on several other blogs/sites so I’m not going to go into it. Needless to say, it’s a simple encounter and should be done just for the fun of it if not the random epics. Also there was rampant arguing on our general chat about the new loot and if it dissapears or not. Some were saying his loot will only last 14 days, others said the brooms only last 14 days but the loot remains, and then others said nothign dissapears. I don’t know whats up with the loot but I’ll try to look into it later and edit an answer into this post. I’ll also try to look into the brooms saying “One time use” apparently this isn’t true and you can use them multiple times. Some screen shots are included below. I’m sorry if the blog is a little dry today, I crawled my ass into bed around 3am and had to wake up for work around 6am.
*Edit added - From my post the previous day: I added the +2% threat to my gloves and found it to be worth it, incase anyone was wondering*
Repair Bill: 37g =/







Tanking Kara: Shade of Aran
Last night I was talking to a warrior on my server who said he reads my blog. He had stated that his guild is getting ready to start running Kara and he would find it beneficial if I would blog about what it takes to tank certain boss fights. I’m guessing he is looking for information like knowing to disarm Attumen, where to stand/stance dance on the Nightbane fight, or any other immunities/special abilities that boss’s have which make tanking difficult. So I suppose I’ll give it a try.
Shade of Aran:
He has no agro table and randomly selects his targets, therefore he cannot be tanked.
-The end
Your welcome =)
*In all serious though I think maybe next week I’ll write something up about how to tank the first 1 or 2 bosses in Kara and if i have anything interesting to say i might keep it up.* *edit 10/23/07* --> Looks like im off the hook as i found a warrior blog that does this very thing and is well written. http://thepositivewarrior.blogspot.com/
Shade of Aran:
He has no agro table and randomly selects his targets, therefore he cannot be tanked.
-The end
Your welcome =)
*In all serious though I think maybe next week I’ll write something up about how to tank the first 1 or 2 bosses in Kara and if i have anything interesting to say i might keep it up.* *edit 10/23/07* --> Looks like im off the hook as i found a warrior blog that does this very thing and is well written. http://thepositivewarrior.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Maiden Love
*Edit - I just went back and re-read what i wrote and realized i rambled alot. Im to tired to fix it though, hopefully it makes sense.*
Last night I got home, played with my kid for a little while till she fell asleep, and then watched one of the worst movie ever created. I wanted to rent transformers but it was all checked out so looked at the new releases and picked up Bug. I thought I had remembered seeing the previews of this as some type of bug swarm attacking people horror movie, so I rented it (I’m one of those guys who watches the SCI-FI channel movies even though 90% of them suck and I had thought “bug” was right up that alley). Instead it was about crazy people who scratch holes in their skin, have sex, and then die…that’s about it. It was extremely painful to sit through, seriously it was that bad. That’s 102 minutes of my life and 1 dollar rental fee I pissed away. I should have just taped the money to my sack and lit it on fire,it would have given me the same experience AND saved myself some time.
After giving my dogs a new dvd chew toy I logged onto wow. I wasn’t looking to really do anything last night except maybe grind a few primals and then go to bed. Sunday and Monday were both late wow nights for me and at some point I need to grab a good nights sleep. When I logged on the guild had downed High King Mulgar and was working on Gruul(Grats on your Tier 4 honors, not sure who else got loot but grats to you guys as well). They didn’t down Gruul but they had again came close(10% I think). After their Gruul run some of the group decided to run Kara, and I took the invite against the seductive callings of my warm bed. It was already late so we decided to do Moroes, Maiden, Opera then call it a night. This put us in a nice place to finish up the rest of the bosses on Friday night. I made a promise to maiden id give her some sweet lovin if she gave up her tanking gloves. Besides being a tank im a gigalo on the side incase you didnt know. Did you seriously think it was luck that got me loots every week? Since she is 25 foot tall I’m guessing that it’s gonna be like throwing a hotdog down a hallway, but a promise is a promise.
I’m thinking about adding the threat enchant to the gloves, but it’s kind of expensive so I can’t decide if I should just hold off for my tier 4 gloves. I might buy it just because im really interested in seeing how well the enchant works, 2% added threat every hit could make a huge difference. *I took the picture before i added the gems, but i did socket it before going to bed*
Tonight after giving Maiden the best 3 minutes of her life I will maybe do some arena’s, or possibly run a nice easy dungeon for some rep, or just go to bed and get a good night of sleep.
Repair Bill: No clue i was to tired to repair and just logged. I only died 1x though.
Last night I got home, played with my kid for a little while till she fell asleep, and then watched one of the worst movie ever created. I wanted to rent transformers but it was all checked out so looked at the new releases and picked up Bug. I thought I had remembered seeing the previews of this as some type of bug swarm attacking people horror movie, so I rented it (I’m one of those guys who watches the SCI-FI channel movies even though 90% of them suck and I had thought “bug” was right up that alley). Instead it was about crazy people who scratch holes in their skin, have sex, and then die…that’s about it. It was extremely painful to sit through, seriously it was that bad. That’s 102 minutes of my life and 1 dollar rental fee I pissed away. I should have just taped the money to my sack and lit it on fire,it would have given me the same experience AND saved myself some time.
After giving my dogs a new dvd chew toy I logged onto wow. I wasn’t looking to really do anything last night except maybe grind a few primals and then go to bed. Sunday and Monday were both late wow nights for me and at some point I need to grab a good nights sleep. When I logged on the guild had downed High King Mulgar and was working on Gruul(Grats on your Tier 4 honors, not sure who else got loot but grats to you guys as well). They didn’t down Gruul but they had again came close(10% I think). After their Gruul run some of the group decided to run Kara, and I took the invite against the seductive callings of my warm bed. It was already late so we decided to do Moroes, Maiden, Opera then call it a night. This put us in a nice place to finish up the rest of the bosses on Friday night. I made a promise to maiden id give her some sweet lovin if she gave up her tanking gloves. Besides being a tank im a gigalo on the side incase you didnt know. Did you seriously think it was luck that got me loots every week? Since she is 25 foot tall I’m guessing that it’s gonna be like throwing a hotdog down a hallway, but a promise is a promise.
I’m thinking about adding the threat enchant to the gloves, but it’s kind of expensive so I can’t decide if I should just hold off for my tier 4 gloves. I might buy it just because im really interested in seeing how well the enchant works, 2% added threat every hit could make a huge difference. *I took the picture before i added the gems, but i did socket it before going to bed*
Tonight after giving Maiden the best 3 minutes of her life I will maybe do some arena’s, or possibly run a nice easy dungeon for some rep, or just go to bed and get a good night of sleep.
Repair Bill: No clue i was to tired to repair and just logged. I only died 1x though.
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