Thursday, 24 September 2009

rambling business (unedited)

I just got paid. I went to see District 9, we had sushi for lunch, I bought not one but two new drills, and the latest Clutch album. Not a bad days work! This evening, whilst waiting for the show to finish, I've been reading Zardoz' WOW datamining blog, which has all sorts of interesting statistics culled from the WoW armoury, including which professions Blood Elves find most popular, and exactly which hunter pets are the most popular. I've learned that at patch 3.1, death knights were the most popular character, followed by paladins, while warlocks were least popular, followed by rogues. this is a bit mental really, and I'm sure that this balance changes all the time, and is probably changing as we speak. I guess I find it mental because when I first rolled pala, there wasn't that many of us around, and it seemd like everyone was a rogue. I gather that when WoW first came out, everyone rolled hunters, because they were prevalent in the advertising, and warriors, because, hell, warriors kick ass in every other game.
On Nordrassil, it seems like there is plenty of everything. If someone had asked me to hazard a guess at the least popular class, I would have said Warlock, but mostly because I think they are a bit of a pain to level, and its rare that a good one will show up in an alliance BG. A few Horde ones show up, but It feels like they're in a minority, and their channeling spells are very annoying, but not all that common a killing blow for me.
This week, I am starting to level the Hunter in some earnest, and enjoying it enormously. mid twenties and going strong, but you can get to the mid 20s blindfold these days. I hope to invest some time in running AB at the 29 bracket, it will be a good exercise in panic and CC rotations, and be something of a break from the fedexing around azeroth that I am currently doing. I have a wolf and a crab in the stable, and both are ace. I am trying to complete ach's as I go, fishing, cooking, exploring and pvp, so that I don't have to wander about when he is an 80 to get a respectable ach total. It is also adding another dimension to experience gain, and I hope to establish a kind of ach level for myself every few xp levels. For example, if you can have 200 points at 18-20, is it reasonable to double that by 30? (probably doable in exploration alone) or treble it? if you then treble it, then does that expansion curve continue? as more battlegrounds open up to you, more prof and dungeon ach's appear too.
Further questions arise from this thought process. Does keeping up with these give you an efficient framework for levelling too? by having to explore an area as soon as you are feasibly able too, do you find all the quests more efficiently, or are you likely to cover the ground more needlessly than just going about your business? If you're rolling BGs throughout the levelling process, does rolling enough of them to gain the easy ach's mean you have rolled enough to get the useful honor gear too? maybe. I suspect my answer to the last question is going to be keep the honor for 50 to 59 bracket, which is probably going to be the most boring, and I may have to get stuck into AV at 56,57 in order to avoid a lot of eastern plaguelands chaos. I spent far too much time there on Noah, and i just don't like it now, unless there's a scourge invasion going on:-)
In other news, we went into Trial of the Crusader the other day and after abandoning heroic mode, we did alright. It felt like my damage output sucked, being inconsistent beyond belief. (I still don't subscribe to recount, as I don't think I need any more excuses for changing my setups every few days) for the first fifteen minutes of attempts I was just trying to get back into PVE rotations, and trying to get my omen off my bars ( I recently moved all my bars up into centre of the screen, and kind of forgot about Omen in the BG focussed rejig). I can churn out damage alright, and my CDs were going well, but my positioning was shit, and therefore when i was connecting I was stealing threat or on the front of the boss, and when I wasn't connecting, I was of no real use. It panned out a bit after a short while, but then we were more or less done, as its such a short instance. I did really enjoy dpsing in an instance, and would kill to do more of it, particularly with friends, but I should spend a bit of time at the dummy getting my twitches in order, and not automatically flicking to anti cc spells, pointlessly self healing, or watching my buddies for shields and cleanses:-)

Saturday, 19 September 2009

On Spec

I will not mention fishing or levelling a warrior for no purpose in this post. I seem to mention it in all of them:-) I will mention Achievements, but then I like using them as yardsticks, in moderation.
Its time for my fortnightly experiment with talent specs. This weeks challenge, to get some burst going on with a survival based Protection spec in the BGs (for the express purpose of disarming bombs and gate fighting in IOC) and to build an arena, general purpose pvp spec for Lohengrin. Now I've got the Deadly Shoulders for it, its time to get some CC going on, some ghoul Stun maybe, and some general survival in the mix.

With Lohengrin, He's a blood presence kind of guy. It's like you're always judging Light in Blood presence, with regular green numbers appearing alongside the purple ones, and for me, this is working well in the tank setting. Heal per second for free, alongside the Damage per second is equalling useful threat per second. However, For PVP we need Damage over time, and a slack handful of suppression skills. I need to slow you down and keep constant damage going, not just hit you hard enough every ten seconds to keep your attention, I need to stop you, kill you, silence your mate, kill your other mate and distract his mate with my pet. Then do it again with very litle downtime, preferably stoping only to /flex.
In my blood spec, which is tank orientated, but will suffice for PVE damage output, I can hit you hard once or twice quite quick, stop you only once and If I'm lucky, get a disease up on you before I am silenced or stunned with semi-permanence. As a Death Knight with very few debuff removal tools, I am not going to win the melee game that a Paladin or a warrior might win (the first with the array of shield utility and proper self-healing, the second with berserker stance and multiple stuns and interrupts) so I need to slow you down and only come in to hit you with the situation in my favour; you moving slower, preferably with a pet on you, and my diseases, not only applied by means other than direct strike, but hitting harder for each tick (everyone's ressed up to the eyeballs these days aren't they?)
This all sounds good, and without going into individual talents, it seems Unholy is going to strengthen my pets and diseases quite a bit, and frost is going to make everyone move a lot slower for me.
I am not overly fond of having a ghoul to worry about (or at least I wasn't when levelling), but this is where I hope to make some use of macros in order to get the slime ball doing his work more efficiently. Having ghoul Leap and stun macro-ed together has got to be good for a laugh at the very least, “You, yes you over there! Stop casting and have some Leftoversgobbler for your trouble!”
We will see how this all works out. I like to mix things up a bit to see what we learn, and having never spent any time specced Unholy, it will at least be interesting to be move and cast quicker.

For Noah’s protection spec, it gets back to the idea of the PVP tank. There is a mistaken hope that survivability will actually triumph over all, partly based on how well Druids keep themselves up (and shamans too in my own travels). I believe this is mistaken because while its all very well to keep yourself up, while you're doing so, you're not keeping as many of your buddies up, and you're not really putting out a lot of damage. the odd Wrath in between heals is not much of a contribution in BGs, and half the time you may have been more useful chucking out damage and walking back from the graveyard same as the rest of us. Now, I appreciate having an opponent you just can't kill is a frustrating and demoralising experience, and being that tree or undead priest is a fun way to spend your afternoon, but unless you're a very good player, who can mix it up a bit and move very well, it feels very limited. The first mistake or series of spell misses you make, you're dead.
So, I am not going to be tank shaped for a theoretical survivability against players. I am mostly going to be tank for the very frequent Hammer of Justice stun, the ranged punch of Avengers Frisbee (or whatever it’s called) and to soak up the AOE vehicle damage floating around. The noisy cleave is going to be fairly useful too, and the overall "effective health" is going to of be benefit where there are healers for the inevitable end sequence castle defence. I will still have Hand of Freedom, and pursuit of Justice, but the downside of this spec will be losing Ret's Repentance, which is truly excellent when you can get it off where they actually aren't expecting it, but then this is a spec with a purpose, and I could always go back to the Hybrid BG spec for regular fun and games. On the whole, I don't really ever do exactly the same thing in any Battleground twice in a row. Depending on raid composition, Its nice to be able to heal when there's lots of melee on side, and melee when there are healers. On days where I'm spectacularly ham-fisted, it's nice to sit in a turret gun and lead Tauren:)
Having dual specs is excellent, as I was changing specs every few days before. To be able to experiment with different stuff in PVP, but still have a go-to Spec for Ret, should someone need me to, is ace. I have a very respectable Ret set in both raid stuff and horde beating stuff, and I spend enough time in a Divine Storm for things to be straightforward to switch to.

As I'm an achievements fan, I may also use having a tank spec for going back and completing a few BC dungeons. I haven't really had time enough spare for this type of thing recently, and completism isn't something I worry about, but I do feel that having come so far on Noah, and being quite a high achiever as it is, with all the profs, cooking and event ach's, maybe he should complete explorer and the old dungeonmasters and push for 4k. I'm in the top 10 of Lord's acheivers, why not consolidate that? Without any serious dungeon ach's under my belt, that’s not bad. My current favourite achievement? Isle of Conquest All Star. Far easier than any of the other "All Stars" but hell, it counts, and I got it in the BG I set out to get it in. For The Alliance!

new experiences and pointless Loquacity

Bang! Back to tanking with a vengeance last night. A slightly mental run round Utgarde Pinnacle on heroic, with about 8 wipes in total, and a half an hour exploration of the Eagle's Eye harpoon fight. I say run, it took 2 and a half hours. I am determined to press on with Death Knight tanking, as the numbers make sense more than paladin tanking for me, but I am not getting my rotation right consistently yet, and Death and Decay is the most annoying spell to cast, ever (the last thing I want to do whilst doing everything else is have to mouse click on the ground).
There are some glimmers of light here, as when it comes off, its fine, and single target stuff is easy enough. I think of single target threat maintenance as Tanking 101, and I'm about ready to qualify there. I also have made some headway with macros for the first time, and I kind of understand how all the spells work together, which I still scratch my head a little over with Pala tanking. Getting gear without doing Pugs has been fine (although I don’t excuse this antisocial behaviour), and I enjoy running around doing dailies with Loh, looking at quests with fresh eyes, and not feeling the "Paladin envy" I do with Noah. Practise will definitely make perfect here, and I hope to be able to tank more often as my reactions improve. onwards and upwards.
Inevitably, I am starting to build a PVP set with Loh, and have the start of the Gladiator gear. I got quite gripped with the notion of being "Lohengrin of the alliance" before the Cataclysm Expanson comes out, but this seems a bit far fetched really and I won't be pursuing it. I am absurdly pleased with 10K honor kills on the paladin, and doing that whole thing another 9 times, even with it getting easier through repetition, feels like a marathon that isn't worth running for its own sake. I will press for further PVP achievements, as nothing feels quite as good as getting those ones, but I will not be grinding HKs purely for the sake of it. I got “Capture the Flag” on my mage 2 days ago, and I did a victory lap of the flat it was such an unlikely thing to happen.
I leave that to guys like Xfolif. Nordrassil has its celebrity idiots, as well as its heroes, particularly where PVP is concerned. This guy is a paladin, playing mostly in protection spec, who has the "of the Alliance" title. He also has the worst case of verbal diarrhoea I have ever seen. It seemed particularly bad when Isle of Conquest was in its Honeymoon fortnight, with this guy giving it large in nearly every fight, at all times of day, on why the Alliance were so bad, why no one would ever do well, and why they should be listening to him. Now, I don’t really mind the Armchair generals, and guys who get frustrated because they think someone ought to be giving orders, and Hey, it might as well be them don’t strictly bother me. But Xfo would give it large on a premade, and always from the comfort of a stage left turret gun. He had a favourite armchair, even for his avatar. I have been in all the Battlegrounds with this guy now, and it always seems the same. Now, he must have worked a bit to get the 100,000 Kills, and had his fair share of BG blues, listening to others moaning on, but enough is enough really. I would quite like to interview him outside a BG setting, to see if I can get any sense out of the guy, to explain his contradictory motivations. He obviously wants to do well in BGs, but he undermines the slender starting confidence of every side he is ever in. Maybe I’ll try to talk to him.
I had another good example of pointless loquacity last night. Its about 1am server time, and I went into WSG on my 19 hunter, mostly for a bit of variety (we’re in hunter levelling central presently, with Heirloom shoulders full of win). Now, as traditional in the small hours, 19 bracket WSG is going on for lots of people, but not here, alliance side in the Raserai/Frenzy Battlegroup. There’s 4 of us versus 10 of them. Ah well, jump in, get some kills, run about for less than 10 minutes while they pull flags, no one’s really hurt, and the experience is still worthwhile. Unfortunately, this isn’t good enough for Hellscream warrior of the month, who bemoans that we are all rubbish, we aren’t working together, and because he hasn’t played his twink in 6 months he cannot singlehandedly win this. This guy is probably under the age of 15, but it still seems excessive, particularly as his last comment is along the lines of “your silence tells all” as no one else has bothered to respond to his meaningless diatribe. Honestly mate, move on, if you don’t wish to take your 15 minutes down time, then don’t type, just Kill. Experiment, go play hide and seek, try and play healer with bandages, anything. But please stop typing.
I am venting spleen myself now, but I would rather it was here where no one really minds (sat at work with nothing to do), than in orange or beige chat. On the flipside of doing a lot of BGs, you do get to meet some real heroes, and witness a few really great players in action. Topping the Nordrassil Arena rankings last season were guys from Gauntlet and NVM CLEAVE, and dudes like Bodymaster are really good to watch in Wintergrasp, if you can keep up next to them for a bit before you get drilled by people looking for an easier target! Early this week, we won a Wintergrasp in the afternoon in fairly organised style (northwest corner with tanks from west works every damn time, if you ask me) and one of the cleave teams who got Frost Wyrms for their efforts were sitting them on the steps of the fort, whilst the VOA Yukon goldrush was going on. “Respect to you!” As big hearted Caribbean sauce entrepreneur Levi Roots might say, were he in the position to comment on Warcraft arena ability, and particularly if he understood the paucity of talent apparently available on Nordrassil. That last sentiment is unfortunately backed up by the stats. Nord’s Arena rankings at the end of the last season showed only 3 or four alliance teams in every bracket. I take heart however, that those teams are in the top 10 of the rankings. Hope and high fives all round.
I seem a bit preoccupied with numbers today. Ninety percent of the time, I just really enjoy the scenery, and revel in each new bit of gear, and punch the air with every killing blow (particularly, if your Blood Elf, or a warlock, or any fight where it’s completely one on one!) I have the 1000 fish caught Ach on three characters (one of whom, my warrior has reached the late forties, but won’t ever get serious playtime now – “with all these melee dps you are truly spoiling us, ambassador”), but, having given this charming sub game time-filler a bit a bit of a break, have enjoyed fishing pools with my hunter this week (still hoping they make Scavenger a title…).
To close this post, I would like to give a few shout outs (in the style of Suggs looky likey hard man Tim Westwood, perhaps) to the Nordrassil guys who got the Celestial Defender “Realm first” this week. I really like the realmwide announcement when these things happen; the best one of which was first to 80 in that mental week after Wrath came out. Here’s to more of these before Cataclysm, and obviously when that gets here. My other shout out is to any guild mates who have to put up with me being a learner tank, or the “you are currently in spectator mode” paladin in any group setting. Many thanks, with love from the bottom of my pond.