*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.

Poked in the Eye

Last night we formed up our 25 man raid and headed toward the eye with the plan to take on Void Reaver. After fighting a war with horde for a while we managed to get everyone to the zone and into the instance. This was the first time in the Eye for all but two of the raid members. As we wiped on our first pull of mobs I have to admit I had my doubts we would even be able to progress down the hall, let alone to Void Reaver. The next pull went better, and then the next was better after that, until finally we seemed to be making some headway. I later was pleasantly surprised how quick everyone learned to deal with the trash pulls, next time I don’t think we’ll have to worry about constant explanations which took more time in the raid than the actual mob killing. We cleared trash for about 2 hours before we got to Void Reaver. We did get one epic drop from the trash which went to a resto druid, Grats to Dirty! On the way to Void Reaver we passed the Phoenix boss but did not attempt him, apparently he is really hard and we’re not ready for that so he was bypassed. I will note though that I think he has a kick ass graphic and I am looking forward to attempts on him because I bet he does some bad ass looking spells. Besides being a loot whore I’m also a graphics hoe, I always judge a book by its cover when it comes to bosses. I guess I’m shallow when it comes to WOW =P.	Epic Trash Mob Drop Phoenix Boss
After all the trash killing we finally arrived at Optimus Prime, in my head I kept connecting the Void Reaver to Optimus Prime, even though they have very little similarities. Apparently I have seen that movie one too many times. Hopefully later in the dungeon I’ll find a mob which resembles that hot chick who is also in the movie wearing the short skirt and cut off shirt. Anyways we never did get to kill Optimus but we did get to put in 3 attempts on him. We only got him down to about 78%, which was kind of a bummer, I was hoping we would do better than that. We kept losing too many people to the arcane balls, I don’t know if people didn’t understand or weren’t paying attention but I think that’s what killed the attempts. I was one of the off tanks on him so my job was only to fight for aggro and tank void reaver when it came to my turn, i think i did alright and didnt mess anything up. Overall In my opinion we did better on trash than I thought we would, but not as well as I had hoped on the boss. I think next time we’ll move through the trash much faster and get in more attempts at the boss.
During the raid the Guild Master was talking about a new kind of loot system she is wanting to implement, I didn’t get to hear all of the explanation but it was already making me leery. It was explained as “Like DKP but NOT”. I don’t know what this means but I’m really hoping that it keeps a fair level for everyone. Someone was arguing in chat why not just use a standard DKP system, even though I don’t know what the exact plans the GM has for a new system, I also want to argue with what’s wrong with a normal DKP system? Honorshammer usually posts the raid-stats on the guild site the day after a raid so ill be examining how I did tanking compared to other the tanks sometime next week. I am thinking though it will be harder to compare because as an OT on Void Reaver my job is to just fight for agro, so I was using rage on shield slam and devastate and not really shield block. Therefore when I was hit I was probably being hit for harder than I should have been. I’ll let you know next week on that. Overall I had a ton of fun last night, new instances new strategies it was a shit ton of fun. Thanks Raist for organizing the run good job man!

Random Spewings

Here are some random mumblings.

Last night our 5v5 team got together last minute and we got our 10 games in. Again we had a different class make-up than the previous 2 weeks so it took us several games to get into a rhythm (no one ever wants to do skirmish warm-ups), but by that time we were already down to 0-4. We finished the week at 4-6 with a 1446 rating; at first I wasn’t sure if we were going to win any. On the games we did “click” we beat 2 very well geared teams getting 18-19 points for each of those wins, so that was exciting. I am about 100 points away from my season 2 helm, but I’m going to just sit on my points until season 3 comes out. Another thought I’m having is I would love to set aside 1 day strictly for 5v5 practice. I don’t even care if we run the rating into the dirt, it will be reset to 1500 when season 3 gets here (In 1-2 weeks). Hopefully after a bunch of practice we can do better in season 3 than we are doing now. I know we are limited by our gear, but we are better than what our ranking is. I’m of the mindset a little practice can make a big difference. If we practice and still don’t do well, I will take all the blame. I am cursed with this sexy ass which is obviously distracting my friends and hindering their pvp.

Speaking of the next patch I am really looking forward to a lot of the new content, besides season 3 arena gear there is the new 10 man instance. Which is awesome, I’m pretty burnt out on Kara and would love to see some new boss encounters. Also when doing these 10 mans the bosses will now drop badges (excellent idea blizzard), so my previous post about a massive heroic run badge grind maybe not needed now in such an extreme.

I did a few heroic runs this weekend of slave pens and steam vaults, those went over pretty well and I added 9 badges to my inventory. Is it just me or does Slave Pens and Steam vaults seem to be on an equal level of difficulty? In fact I don’t know the answer to this question, are all heroics supposed to be the same level of difficulty since they are all “heroic”? They all give the same badges of honor, it would make sense they are all on the same tier of difficulty. I realize on non-heroic runs slave pens is obviously way easier than steam vaults, but I don’t think that a heroic slave pens should be easier than a heroic steam vault run.

Anyways I feel like I’m just passing time now till the new patch comes then I’m hoping I can get in a solid team to really start cracking away at the new 10 man dungeon, which I realize is going to be extremely tuff, but I’m excited none the less.

Dragging Ass Today

Last night around 10:30 server time we formed up to run the last half of our Kara run. I have been staying up really late all week raiding/grinding so after last night’s run I am completely dragging ass today. The run itself was great, we one shotted shade, Illhoof, chess (of course), and Prince. I picked up a better pair of tanking boots off chess, which I like better than my boots of elusion. Our hunter made out like a bandit last night getting his t4 gloves, t4 helm, a nice belt, and maybe even a dps cloak if I can remember correctly. It was around 1:00 in the morning my time when we decided to try to kill Nightbane, 5- 6 people had never attempted him before so I had figured we wouldn’t kill him. We gave him 3 attempts and on the last one he was down to 25%, which I thought was really impressive being the first time for so many. We all plan on going back after him this weekend and getting our kill on him and Netherspite. I didn’t get to bed till around 2:30 am and had to wake up for work at 5:30, so I’m feeling completely trashed and don’t feel like writing anymore. I will update you on how plan “Manly” went (see previous post). My hot neighbor wasn’t home, therefore I had to switch to a secondary sexual target…her poodle. After that magical moment was done plan “Manly” can be called a complete success. I’m just joking, sorry if I grossed you out, of course I would never let a dog prepare dessert for me, I’m not some sick freak, jeez.

My Tank Points

With this blog post I’m going to analyze my “tank points” and what I can do to make them better. Honors pointed me at this mod and I have found it to be extremely helpful, thanks for the tip. What will also be kinda cool is in a few months I can hopefully look back at this post and see how much my character has improved. A few minutes ago I got done going over my screen shots and getting my thoughts in order to write this post when the thought occurred to me that I’m turning into a big Fu*#ing nerd. When I’m done with my nerd post I’m going to have to go home and do my girlfriend while watching a porn then demand she cook me some dinner while I go beat up the neighbor so I can get some manliness back into my life. No wait change of plans, I just realized my neighbor is actually a chick……. and not to bad looking, instead of a fight ill just do her as well and tell her to cook me a dessert. Okay with these manly plans firmly in place I feel like I can now start analyzing my tanking numbers and let my nerd flag fly. First off there are 2 stats I don’t really understand so if anyone reading this can lend a hand I would appreciate it. I don’t understand what miss% is, is that the chance a mob will miss me or how much I am going to miss a mob? There is also hit %, I don’t understand the mechanics behind this number, so an explanation on that would be really helpful as well. What I will look at is my total reduction, my dodge, my parry, my block, crit % against me, and crushing % against me. What sucks is I don’t have screen shots of other tanks “tank points” so I don’t know what I NEED to have to be a strong tank in Gruuls or later dungeons, I can only guess.
Here is a screen shot of me just standing still not doing anything but looking sexy. My total reduction is 80.74%, compared to other tanks in my guild is this good? Of the main tanks in the guild (the guys I compared against in my previous gruul post) I would guess I probably have the lowest total reduction because my gear is not as good on several key pieces. I only compare myself against the tanks in my guild for the following reasons; We are all doing the same raid encounters therefore get exposed to the same mobs, so the only differences between us is similar gear, talents, and play style. I can’t compare myself against guys in SSC+ because they have the opportunity to get amazing gear that I can’t right now so I would just look like a schmuck and not be able to do anything about it. I also can’t compare myself against some tank who hasn’t done heroics or Kara yet because his gear wouldn’t hold up to mine so I would look amazing and could think I have nothing to improve on.
As you can see in the previous picture I have a 15% chance to get crushed, this is why you have to constantly spam shield block as a warrior. With shield block up my 15% chance to get crushed goes to 0% , my chance to block is upped to 47.71%, and my reduction goes up 1.7%. If you’re a warrior and not using shield block constantly for these advantages, not to mention it almost always enables revenge, then you’re a turd. This is why I put talent points down to get improved shield block because it adds the ability to block 1 extra attack and increases the duration by 1 second. These numbers tell me it was well worth it. *side note the hit% went down from 8.4% to 0%, I guess that’s good?*
Now this screen shot shows the advantages of using my pocket watch. My reduction jumps up from 80.74%(that’s me just standing there) to 87.54%(6.8% difference), that’s sweet in itself but what’s really tight is that my dodge skyrockets from 24.41% to 40.26%. I’ll be holding onto this trinket for a long time I think. Now keep in mind my shield block isn’t up for this screen shot so I am still able to get crushed. I cannot only use my pocket watch and think I will be in a good position to survive, always always always keep shield block up. *side note the hit % is back to 0 again*
This screen shot opened my eyes to what a crappy waste of a trinket Adamantite figurine is. It does give me 32 defense which is nice, but I have enough defense to go around. So what bonus does its “use” give me? All that it does is raise my total reduction by .95%, and that’s only for 20 seconds. I need to fill this trinket slow with something much better, most likely the shield block trinket received by turning in heroic rewards. For right now I could replace this trinket with a pile of dog sh*t and wouldn’t really notice the difference. *side note, the hit% was not affected and remains at 8.4%*
This screen shot is what I look like if I use my shield wall and last stand macro. I use this macro basically to save me when tanking a boss and I get low health. That’s actually what my macro is called “save me” which is what it normally does. Also in this macro I burn my two trinkets as well (*The trinkets were not burned in this screen shot, only SW and LS*). I have made it a point now that to use the trinkets as often as I can, not just when I’m in trouble so the trinkets are usually on cool down and not available in the macro. Shield wall when used reduces the damage by melee attacks by 75%, as you can see it works, my total damage reduction is boosted to 97.97%.
Now if I were to use my “save me” macro and my trinkets were available to be used , here is the screen shot for that. My total reduction is 98.93%, and dodge is at 40.26. In reality though this isn’t all I would be at because I forgot to add in shield block for this screen shot, which I WOULD have up. If I was in trouble and used my “save me” macro and used my shield block my numbers should look something like this. Total Reduction – 100% Dodge – 40.26% Parry-16.16% Block-47.71% Crit-0% Crushing-0% Hit-0% Now this doesn’t mean I’m invincible, if I was up against Gruul he is still going to ground and pound me because of his level vs me BUT to me it is still some impressive numbers.
The most important thing I walk away with in this review is that I need to replace that trinket BAD. My total reduction can also be raised with new pants, chest, and shield, all of which need to be replaced if I ever plan to be a stable MT on Gruul or later raids. Now that this is done I’m going to go wash the nerd off me and execute plan “manly”.