3.3??

I was sitting here tonight doing some deep thinking and working up one of those deep posts that I do maybe once every year, but then I decided I was way over my quota for the year so I thought I would simply ask, what is it in the new patch that you love/hate and why?

(Seeings as I am at work and everything will be old and used by the time I get home and eventually log on.)

Update

Hey all! Do not worry, I have not forgotten that I have a blog where useful information and rants can be placed. I have just been pretty busy both in real life and in the game itself and unfortunately that has not allowed me to spend as much time on the blogs as I would like. So expect some more periods of time where there is nothing, but do not worry I am alive and kicking!

Raid NIght! (What's Up With That!?)

So I mentioned this briefly in my update post, but I wanted to take a little more time to bring something to the community's attention. I am sure it is nothing new and we have all experienced it, but I still feel compelled to point this out. In this past Friday's raid on Ulduar, we had the majority of our usual group but had to PuG one member. I went and started looking at the list of folks who were sitting in LFG and I see this Mage. Now he was absolutely perfect. I looked him up and he was arcane spec. I checked him out on Pugchecker.com and he had been in Ulduar before. I looked over his gear and he was well geared. He was sporting some nice items from both Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader (25). Just looking at his gear, he should of been punching out 3500 DPS blindfolded and if he has any clue about playing his class should of been hitting between 4000 - 5000 DPS. This was a no brainer. I whispered the guy and asked him if he wanted to join us and he immediately said yes.

So we summon him and in we head. I really did not pay much attention to him during Flame Leviathon as I was too busy trying to do my job and gun things down from my siege engine. We hit Razorscale and I noticed the guy is only putting out around 2300 DPS. I figure that it was no big deal. It takes some time to get use to running in a PuG and maybe he just did not want to look too good. We downed Razor and moved on to the creepy robot. We wanted to kill the heart and then him and felt that we had all the right tools. We failed. I looked over DPS and once again this guy was only putting out around 2400 DPS. Sure it was an improvement and if this was back when Ulduar first launched that would of been alright for a ten man run, but this guy was sporting item level 245 gear and talked like he knew what was going on. I pay it no attention and figure let's go down Ignis and move on. We go in and proceed to wipe on Ignis. I was pretty pissed off at the wipe to be honest, but did not yell at anyone just took note of who had gotten hit by flamejet and who had low DPS. Sure enough, our Mage was hit by flamejet a whopping six times and he was sporting a cool 2000 DPS. Now when we do Ignis, we have one tank take the adds and the other holds him facing the water and we proceed to rock his world. We have always done this with little trouble. So we roll back in there and proceed to roll Ignis with minimal effort. I am going to be honest, at this point I was aggrevated and only healed the Mage because it would have been a reall ass move not to.

Having knocked out Ignis, I went in officer chat and debated what to do. It was clear our PuG Mage was unable to get over 2400 DPS and that he was probably carried by friends within his own guild (which we all know I dispise). We decided to down Kolgram and then call it. We had been moving slower overall and felt that it was because we were out of rythm, aka the Mage sucked. So we went and cleared the trash to Kolgram and proceeded to down him. Oh and a big surprise here, the Mage stood in the eye beam! Yeah, this guy was not impressive and definitely made a poor representation for his guild. After we downed Kolgram we looted and I announced it was getting late for me and that I would need to be leaving. My wife stated she would be leaving with me and losing two of your healers is rough. Now, we did leave. I was hungry and so I wanted to get a bite to eat before all the food places closed for the night. We did decide to extend the raid since no one really needs anything off the first few bosses at this point.

So here is my issue, you are getting players who are looking like they are geared out their ass, yet they are unable to produce what their gear is indicating they should. I think ToC 5, ToC H 5, ToCr 10, and ToCr 25 are really at fault here; well, more accurately, Blizzard is at fault. I understand that they wanted to make gear accessible so that everyone could try the new instances and ICC when they drop, but they have really destabalized the whole raiding game. PuGs have always had bad reputations, but at this point and time I would rather not raid than take a PuG who I do not know. This is not the first time this has been encountered. When I go into the LFG channel looking for something specific and get whispers from people asking what I need, I always look up these folks to see if they can fill a roll and perhaps we can bring someone's alt in to do a different job. What I find is that people do not understand their classes and have specs that boggle the mind, or they are a healer with +hit gear, or they have all the gear and when you bring them in they have no clue what is going on. Now I do not consider myself a hardcore raider at all. I have one raid group I run with on one night a week. We value our time and want to clear content as much as possible. I will run with the guild on other nights if something is posted for us as well.

I am just afraid that at the rate this is going, ICC is going to be a laughing joke. Sure, there will definitely be the guilds that clear it. I am intending for MAS to clear it. However, there are a lot of people who have the impression that because they have all epics that this makes them perfectly geared. I hate to break it to you all (if you are reading this), but it does not make you perfectly geared. It just shows that you love you some Trial of the Champion/Crusader. I am sorry, I do not want to step on anyone's toes, but from now on, if the only gear you have is from ToC/ToCr, then there is no chance in hell I am picking you up. It just has gotten to the point where I feel the same about this as I do about most Death Knights (and I know there are a few good ones out there). People need to understand that a blue item may be bette for you than a purple item. For instance, on my lock I currently am rocking something like five blue pieces of gear, yet I can put out numbers comparable to those with much higher gear score. Why is this? Because I understand itemization and that you need to be able to hit the baddie before you even think about anything else. (That is just an example, I do not consider myself a great player on my Lock.) However, I suppose I should jump into the new age of raiding and throw on all my ToC/ToCr gear that has no hit rating, but will give me a hell of a gear score. I will definitely get picked up by PuGs who will be in awe of my purple haze, but once the shit hits the fan they will realize I am litterally just shit.

So in closing first let me apologize, I try to keep the blog "G" rated, but people are starting to really piss me off with their stupidity. Secondly, if the only gear you have is from running ToC/ToCr, then please start running some Naxxramas, Ulduar, Obsydian, Vault, and any other raid where you will first learn what raiding is about and then secondly gather some other gear which may be itimized a little different. Thank you and have a good day!

Weekly Update: November 16 - 22 (2009)

This has been a pretty active week for me really and I look forward to jumping in and talking a little bit about everything that has been going on!

• Ulduar - As a guild we have been pretty focused on raiding as of late and have managed to acquire a few achievements this week that I am proud of. In Ulduar we decided to activate the hard mode for Flame Leviathon and we managed to get Orbital Bombardment on the second attempt. Now we were a few short of our regular members, but we also went after Heartbreaker with no success. We did however have the solid numbers from our core group. Had we not taken a Mage who had the right gear and numbers but no clue how to actually play, we probably would have achieved this as well.
• Onyxia - It is weird but we have never done this raid as a guild. So, Nymeros (one of our raid coordinators) decided we should go for it. We gathered together and had six guild members online. We ended up picking up some great folks to help us and we went in there and in true MAS style wiped the first attempt, but owned her on the second attempt. We also managed to acquire She Deep Breaths More. I have no clue how we went from total chaos to accomplishing that, but hey we did it and kudos to everyone for working together to down her.
• Whoopy - Yes, my Rogue gets his own spot here as I have been working hard on developing him. I believe I said this before, but I had enough of the Combat build I was using and switched backed to Subtlety. I have spent countless amounts of gold changing my spec and adjusting my rotation to where Whoopy puts out solid numbers in PVE with this spec. I will probably go a little more into detail on Friday about him and what the build will ultimately look like. The main drive behind leveling him is that he is my jewelcrafter and I am tired of buying cuts or waiting for a guild member to log online. The thing I discovered that I did not know was that you could work on the jewelcrafting dailies as early as level 71 (probably sooner). The nice thing here is that every daily can be completed in the Howling Fjord or the Borean Tundra. On top of doing the daily, I can now make myself the Delicate Dragon's Eye cut (which Whoopy has all three in use) and I get 20,000+ experience at my current level of 73. On top of working on leveling his jewelcrafting, I am working on leveling his mining (which is much lower and a much bigger pain to level). I finally caught up his lockpicking skill, so now I just need to lockpick some big viking wanna-bes and we are golden. Seven more levels till I can see if this will all come together for him.
• Blogging - Yeah, I had slacked off some and I apologize for that. I feel like I am back on track and I actually love spending time sharing my thoughts on certain aspects of the game. I also miss it when I am unable to actually blog. So hopefully, with the broader topics and more flexibility on my part, I will be able to give you a little more of my time.
• PuGs - Man they have been getting more stupid every day. I actually have taken a break from running Emprius and Lrem through stuff simply to avoid the PuGs. I have played with every level of stupidity known to WoW. I have had several runs where I could have punched a baby. Thank God, my kid is in a different room usually. If it stays like this, I will be spending most of my time leveling through questing, which I simply despise.
• Auction House - Oh yeah, the cow is back into dominating the auction house. I had laid off of listing for quite some time simply because I had acquired enough funds for what I wanted. However, two brand new 80s later and the desire to acquire a few other things and get duel spec on six of my alts, I now feel the urge to list. That and I find it quite enjoyable. I am actually working on writing up a series for Holeycow on auction house tips for a new player. It will not be anything insightful, but it will cover what I used to get started and it has proven to work on servers even with next to no population (Alliance Cho'gall). So hopefully I will have some time to get all my thoughts in order and get an outline up and running on that.

Well, that is all that my mind can think of right now. As always, thanks for reading and catch everyone later!

Red Sunday: PVP and My Lack of It!

So, I typically dedicate my Sunday blogs to PVP, but I have one problem! I have not been involved with much PVP at all lately. There are a couple reasons for this actually.

1. Alts - I have been spending so much time focused on my alts lately that I just have not had a desire to spend a lot of time running them through battlegrounds and arena.
2. Professions - It is freaking annoying how much time I have spent leveling up enchanting, jewelcrafting, leatherworking, and inscription. Do not even get me started on the gathering ones or the secondaries.
3. Raiding - While I use to not spend much time raiding, now days I typically raid two to three days a week and then on the nights I am working I typically spend time working on my alts or professions (see above).

However, do not take this pause as a change of heart. Nothing makes me feel warm and fuzzy like the screaming sounds of a dieing Night Elf. I plan to get some time back into at least arena. I am currently wanting to work in some time to be able to run on all three of my arena teams. My main focus is on getting Ruhtra's 2v2 team back on track. I also am very focused on getting Emprius' 2v2 team solidified. My partner with Ruhtra has a druid and we have been running some arena with a Destro Lock/Resto Druid team. We have seen some good signs, but neither of us have had the time to really dive in and see what we can do. Then there is Lrem who is on a 3v3 and 5v5 team. Quite honestly, I just want to run some 2v2 with him while I get use to PVP with a BM Hunter.

Aside from the three level 80 characters, I am also leveling my Rogue Whoopy. Now with Lrem and Emprius I spent a lot of time leveling in the battlegrounds. That was a great way to level and I really nailed down a good system that mixed questing, instances, and battlegrounds to provide decent gear for them. However, trying to play a Rogue in a battelground where your enemy NPCs can spot you a mile away and kill you in three shots takes much more patience than I usually have. Ofcourse it is not nearly as annoying as being told you are playing completely wrong because you do not haul your little level 70 Rogue ass up to the enemy's base bunkers. I mean to hell with the fact that you cannot litterally sneak there and sure your whole DPS ability is dependant on being able to sneak behind someone, but that is for me to work out because some PuG battleground Priest obviously knows better. Yes, I had one really loud mouth Priest who thought he knew everything about every class and just made me so mad I wanted to punch babies the last time I was in there. So, I have decided to give the battlegrounds a break and do some other constructive things.

On the battleground subject, there is a couple things that I wish Blizzard would do with AV. One of the biggest is bring down the level of the marksman/bowman that guard the towers. This is not for the sake that I cannot sneak anywhere, but for the sake that they left the NPCs the same level as when we shared battlegrounds with level 80s. It simply does not work out that well, but I doubt there will be any change on this front. Blizzard has their hands full with a lot of other things that are much more important (at least we hope they feel ICC is much more important). The other thing I wish they would do is find a way to balance the teams a little more. There is nothing more frustrating than going into a battleground and having everyone on the team being level 70 - 71. Then you find out that your opposing team is level 78 - 79. Yes, I have seen this happen both favorably and unfavorably. I really do not think there is much that can be done about this, but it would be nice for them to set a certain percentage of slots for certain levels. This could provide some form of balance overall, but would require a lot of resources I am sure to develop a system for this. The final thing I wish that Blizzard would consider doing is rebalancing the battlegroups. It takes forever to get into a battleground now days, even at level 80. I do not know of any way for them to overcome this other than enlarging the battlegroups. It would also give them a prime time to move some of the servers to different battlegroups where there me be a higher representation of one faction verses another.

Well, that is really all that I have for today. What about you? Do you like PVP? If so what do you think they could to improve certain facets of the game? We are talking minor, not complete overhauls. I do not think some of the suggestions for AV are large. The battlegroup realignment is large but definitely needed though. What about those who do not like PVP, what could Blizzard do to make it more appealing to you?