EVE Online's Development Approach

So I was reading an interesting article about how EVE Online plans out some of their development.  Basically in summary: CCP (The company who created EVE Online) allowed the playerbase to select 9 players to represent them to the development team.  These 9 players came up with their top 10 issues they think should be resolved and give them to the dev's, who estimate how long each task will take.  Given those estimates the group of 9 will prioritize them and send them back, and the dev's then get to work.

I'm about to begin working for a company that's main focus is projects.  This process therefore seems extremely logical and familiar.  When I look at how WoW does their suggestions (forums for the most part I believe?) and then how EVE does theirs.  It almost seems like CCP is treating these 9 people (who are actual players) as CUSTOMERS. 

Yea, pretty shocking.  I know.  But these 9 people get status reports from the devs and then in turn give those to the playerbase.

Because these 9 people are 'elected' by the players it would seem very democratic and representative...right?  I am curious if that is actually the case, or if it is similar to our political system in the USA.  And while technically any of the players could get elected.  In reality you need to be a part of a major in game corporation to be considered.  I wonder if there's an electoral college in game too?

If WoW moved to something like this, do you think the elections would be truly anyone could win?  Or would people just vote in the biggest names? A member of Ensidia? Ming?  Would that even be that bad of an idea?

What Keeps You Coming Back?

Recently Real Life has been really getting in the way of my WoW time.  I play soccer Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday, with Softball Tuesday Thursday, and then some volleyball thrown in Friday.  With all of this I find it hard to find the time to play anymore.  However, when I think about it, I've more or less always played a lot of sports after work, but I still found time to play WoW or other games.  My fiance also moved in with me this last week.  As the relationship is no longer a distance one I also spend a lot more time with her (obviously).  All of these things come together and seem to keep me from playing WoW, but I do not seem to disappointed with it.  The only drive I have to play is my goal of getting 1800 in the arena to buy a weapon.  While this seems like a fairly easy goal to a lot of people I have found it extremely difficult.  This season alone I've had 3 different 2's partners on 3 different teams.  All 3 of those teams seem to sit around 1700 before either Lock A deactivates his account, Lock B doesn't have the time to play said Lock along with his priest in HC Raids, 5's, 3's, 2's as well as I believe his druid in some arenas as well.  The good news about all of that though is that it means I'm back to my old 2's partner.......

RAITHEN!!!

  Yea, in case you were curious, that's what he does to people.

However, he also has some drains on his time.  Meaning my free time does not = his free time.

PvP is trying to bring me back, but not doing a good job.  With Cataclysm around the corner (hopefully).  What keeps you playing until then?  What keeps you excited?

Fail PuG

I'm sure everyone has seen these posts all over blogs and forums.  People complaining about the (not as new anymore) LFG system and the people it causes them to get stuck with.  I was healing on my druid when the system came out, and I really didn't have many problems with people.  Some DPS might suck, or Tank may not be able to hold aggro.  But honestly, I knew more or less what I was doing and I had the gear to back it up (read, completely overgeared for heroic content).  If a DPS did pull aggro, chances were good they had decent enough skill to kite for a second and I could NSHT/Swiftmend/Nourish them and keep them up.  Either way, I never really saw what all the fuss was about.  Now I'm leveling a warlock, she's 72, and I've been running instances.  Now I realize the DPS complaints about 20 - 30 minute queues.  Still not too terrible as I just queue and continue doing quests.

Last night I had a stellar experience with my run through Azjol' Nerub or however it's spelled.  Our first tank (before we even got into the instance) declined group invite, 2nd tank went offline before we even pulled.  3rd tank is a DK that seems to have an idea of what to do, so I'm excited.  He pulls first mobs in the Gatekeepers rooms and dies at the end of the pull. "Wtf healer, heal".  Priest apologizes and we move on.  The priest didn't survive a different pull later on.  Tank asks me to put a SS back on the priest, so I let them know it's cooling.  Tank immediately  asks again, and so does the healer this time.  So I let them know it's actually still cooling like it was 5 seconds ago.  I'm beginning to get slightly irritated by this time, but we move on.  Tank boy asks for levitate and takes off, dropping down the hole towards the final boss and continues running right to the last adds and pulls them.  I'm right there with him and looking around at the complete LACK of anyone else in our group.  Healer is still back up top drinking water as he had to res some people.  DK dies "Wtf Healer, Heal"

I politely explain why pulling when he doesn't have a healer is a bad idea.  He then whispers me and asks if he can have a soulshard.
1) wtf are you going to do with a soulshard?
2) they're soulbound

I just don't understand where these people come from.

TWOTHREEFOURFIVE

So there are some pretty stupid nick names for different arena makeups but the comp I've been recently playing really takes the cake. It is really shocking that someone called Warrior / Ele Shaman / Frost Mage / Disc Priest / Holy Paladin 2345 and it stuck. It isn't catchy and its not amusing. But apparently it did stick and even spawned 2 copycat naming conventions 2346 and 2347. Apparently 5 = frost mage, 6 = warlock, and 7 = hunter. Anyway I've been playing that comp recently and doing alright, esepcially considering I had never played my paladin in 5s before. My gear was pretty gross, with only 2 pieces of relentless and 3 furious - and almost no wrathful off pieces. My GS was 5100 compared to the rest of my teams > 5800 so they were definitely carrying me a bit. Of all the people on the team I have one of the least difficult jobs as I mainly spam flash of light with the occasional holy light bomb or cooldown to save someone. That being said my priest is extremely aggressive both on mana burns and offensive pressure so the better I stay on top of healing the more it allows him to control the mana pace of the match.

One thing I am noticing I need to work on a lot more is my positioning. I have played 2k+ in all brackets on my priest as disc before and its amazing the difference in where I need to be as a paladin vs my priest. Priests have a good number of mobile heals and their positioning forces the enemy to react with the threat of mana burns. The difference on the paladin is I am way more effective of a healer when I don't have to move and get to pump out heals. In order to do this I need to almost predict where the fight is going to be so I can be where the action is going to be as well as where it is now. With 2 defensive dispels I don't need to worry too much about polymorphs but I could still improve a lot about deciding when I hide from cc and when I stay in and heal.

The other thing that I have been working on is using my hammer at good times. 2345 has a lot of offensive pressure, which acts like CC in a way by forcing people to line our frost / elemental turrets. Besides that all we really have is polymorph on demand so we really have to use our hex / fear / hammer wisely. I'm still learning but I've had some big stuns that have scored us kills when we didn't have a polymorph or counterspell available to use against one of their healers. My general strategy there is to inch closer to their paladin or druid. If I run up to their paladin early I can usually lure his hammer when it really isn't effective. My team is pretty verbal on swaps so I know when it's time to help out. Most of the time their healer can trinket it right away but that brief interrupt is enough time for our burst to drop someone very low and even if we don't score a kill they are burning cooldowns, mana, and iniative.

The new random BG system is simply amazing compared to the old suffer through isle of conquest strand of the ancients to complete the set. I am at full wrathful off pieces on my rogue and only need to upgrade furious ring to wrathful ring on my paladin after 2 hard weekends of farming. I wish alliance stood a chance in WG on my server, but in the last week we won a total of 3 times. The silver lining is with 9 tenacity I'm going 30-1 soloing on my rogue taking on 3 people at once and winning with under 20% health. I know its not skill but it is fun to break face sometime. We'll see how much the upgrades matter on my paladin tonight, we're hoping to break 2000 team rating this week. We started the team from 0 (ugh) and have kept a ~65% win ratio. Our initial 1800 MMR quickly rose once we started beating a few 2200-2300 teams but we're hanging steady now at about 2200 MMR because we keep running into a really good Euro Comp (Lock/Mage/Rogue/Resto Druid/Disc Priest). That comp was invented in S3 to beat 2345, and while we haven't given up, they have both the comp advantage and 5 really solid players.

I'll try and fraps some matches tonight and see if it is even worth watching from the paladin's perpsective :)

I'm back!

Yeah its been a while, so fucking sue me. I've been busy with... yeah I got nothing I get distracted easily. Anyway Season 8 has been interesting so far playing a new fun comp with Karial and Ernnie and trying to ride the druid/lock synergy train towards goodness. It would be better if I was a warrior (obviously) but here are some key tips I discovered our first week of playing.

1. Queue with energy - you got to be pumped to get into that fight. Positivity is at least as good as plate with several defensive cooldowns, incredible damage, and a fuck you move where only death can stop you (I wrote this before you could disarm it - ty Blizzard).

2. Go over strategies with your team mates while you buff. Our warlock shared this brilliance with us in a recent match
Ernnie: you guys should stealth
Rogue + Druid in Unison: WE ARE FUCKING TRYING TO
Blizzard: hahhaha we outsourced our servers to Antartica to save on heating costs. This allows us to enjoy this



3. Once the match starts don't be afraid to adapt. In our 10th and final game last week none of us spawned before the gates opened, and since I was already being judged by the holy paladin, I quickly adapted by vanishing. My druid then spawned in the middle of the warrior and dk. He popped barkskin like a champion. I knew he was gonna get squashed so I cheapshotted the warrior. The warrior was having none of that and instantly trinketed and span in a circle like a ceiling fan made of knives. This game is like rock paper scissors, only in this case spinning hatchet of death, tree, and helpless dude who can't save his druid. Our warlock managed to spawn with 10 seconds remaining until we needed to leave the arena (which no matter how hard we clicked did not work).

4. Momentum is everything
Match #9 from the same week we spawned before the gates opened (hooray) but then froze in place. When our lag ceased the gates were open and the druid dk and hunter had flares death and decay cleverly awaiting us directly under the pipe, which then proceeded to vomit us out onto their waiting grasp. We used this momentum, and their massive incompetence to get a restealth off and open hard on the hunter. Riding the momentum train we were clevelry winning until the lag hit again leaving our druid unable to cast, and poor Ernnie got death gripped into his early grave.

Ok all joking aside our resto druid lock rogue comp has been very fun to play. When we are doing things right we have a lot of CC. Our general strategy is, I stunlock whatever melee will prevent Ernnie from dotting everyone up. When I finish the stunlock, Karial will rotate his cyclones on while I switch to our main target. With Ernnie/Karial rotating cyclones and fears and me swapping quickly to play a mix of offense and defense we can put out some serious pressure. We can then blind a healer or if the healer is exposed from trying to keep up, hard swap to him. It takes a lot of coordination but we are loving it so far. The biggest problem is finding time to play (those ICC bosses aren't going to kill themselves) and a certain someone keeps leaving on weekends to do real life stuff... what a loser.

Back to Arenas

The Bits and I finally found time to 2v2 again this last weekend.  Ahh how I miss it.  We were doin pretty good! Like 6-1 and we're fighting a prot pally and warr.  I'm doing my best to control the warrior, roots to cyclone and back to roots and whatnot.  Their pally is dotted and at like 50% health, but I am DYING!  I try and run behind some boxes to hide and heal, but mr pally finds me...He's laying into me, and I'm actually a little worried I may die.  All of the sudden he just DROPS...wtf happened?  That little nub cleansed a UA off himself while DPSing me......


......
.....
BAHAHAHAHAHA.  I don't think we stopped laughing for a solid 5 minutes.  It also probably contributed to our 0-3 run we went on following that.  Oh well, worth it in my opinion.

Too Busy Taunting

So this is a tribute to Jong about his Least Favorite PvP Spell.  The Bits, Raithen, and I were doing some arena's last night in Ring of Trials.  I'm running away from this DK who's trying to eat my lunch.  I'm about to run behind one of the pillars meanwhile I am laughing over my shoulder at the DK who is Nature's Grasped to the ground as I cheetah away...YOINK! I'm in squishy form next to the pissed off DK.  I went splat.  Raithen and Bits continue on their merry way.  Raithen tries to run behind a pillar to re-stealth.  YOINK! Raithen goes down in a blaze of glory.

Yea, Death Grip sucks.

Arena Match & My Char's Facebook Status

Last night the Bits, Raithen, and I decided to do some 3v3.  Just a little feral/holy-pal/afflock.  We're not pushing for gladiator (yet) as Bits' lock just dinged 80 not too long ago, and frankly, I suck at the feral ness.  But we were playing and having a fairly good time, winning as many as we lost.  So our last match we're fighting, frost mage, hunter, holy pal.  The exact kill order eludes, but I'm pretty sure their mage went down first, followed swiftly by the Bits.  Raithen is able to rez the Bits, who dies almost immediatley again, meanwhile having our pali dumping mana into him.  Now their pally is rezzes the mage (That's my bad, I tried to get to him in time, but failed.)  So I kill him again after stopping his evocate.  Well we play around with the hunter and I attacking each other, neither of us really doing much damage.  Both our pally's are gaining mana without having to drink.  I'm hopping around in bear form as we try and distract them for the rez again.  But they're sticking to Raithen like flies on....well, you know.  I'm trying to peel them and then realize, wait.  I have a rez too amiright?!  So I run away, hide behind a pillar and REZ MY FALLEN COMRADE!!  Hunter realizes what is going on just a smidge too late for him.  Bits comes up, stays alive, we finish off hunter and then pally, ya ya ya! USA! USA!

We decided that was a good one to stop on.

I armoried myself cause I was bored this morning and oh wow they updated the armory!  There's Karial staring at me in 3 EFFING D.  Not only that but I can put him in different poses??  and HOLYCOWWTFOMG he's got "recent activity"  Pretty soon I'll have to update his status and let it tweet out to the world.

"Karial would rather be in an arena right now"

Yeesh, we're getting closer to a live feed where people can watch my char's every move.  A lot of people are going to wonder why I spend so much time naked with Bits and Raithen in the Howling Fjord.

Karial: "Ok, you jump in the icy water first"
Bits: "NO! You won't do it, YOU go first."
Raithen: "Fine, fine, fine.  We'll all go on 3."

How do you learn to arena?

Obviously the answer is to play arena matches right? Well not really I've actually found this to be one of the worst ways to introduce an arena virgin into the wonderful (and fucking painful) world of arenas.

Stream of Consciousness

So after the long Holiday season, lots of traveling, and not a lot of WoW. I'm BACK!

So the Bits has a warlock now that he's gearing up, which means lots of heroic runs. Problem 1: He is the tank for our groups of insta-queue. Which means we needed to find another one. Raithen's response about asking if his Pally would/could tank. "Umm, I threw away/vendored all my tanking gear" Alright then, I've got a feral spec. Maybe not (even close to) the greatest, but could be fun.

In hindsight I'm dumb

I've played WoW since about a month after it came out. I've played a lot of RPGs in my time and am decently experienced with the genre. Occasionally I make the mistake of thinking I am actually pretty decent at the game, and then I immediately get murdered by someone better (or someone smart enough to play a class that can stomp on my face). Once I get to the state of thinking I'm halfway decent I begin to want to play with others that are also pretty good. This is true both for the world of arenacraft as well as killing large dragons.

My Thoughts on LFG System

So I've been reading a lot of blogs about the new LFG System. To me it seems as if people are having just as many mixed responses about it as ANY change implemented in this game. Some people have had terrible people in greens/blues/epics doing sub 1k DPS others have had 0 problems. I fall into the latter category. I've played through and had a pretty good time on every instance I've played in. Honestly I don't even think I've checked anyone's gear to see if it was good bad or in between. I've looked at my tanks health to see how much he has and I will base my "Time in Tree Form" accordingly. I still have yet to find the my low barrier to how much health means I shouldn't be hopping (necessary) about in caster form AMG MOONFIRE!!!, so I guess I've had good groups?

Sometimes I feel like Ron Popeil Yelling "Set it and forget it!" after giving the tank rejuv and regrowth. If it got dicey I had tranquility, and a battle rez.

I would complain about having to run with under geared people...but that would be hypocritical. I leveled to 80 when AV was ez-mode from 71 on. That's right I'm one of the proud leeches who took my afk marks and xp all the way. I did not do a SINGLE non-heroic 5 man in WotLK. I still don't think I have. Needless to say, I may not have been in full greens, but the blues (and greens for that matter) that I was wearing were from Outlands. MAYBE Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra.

I wish I could find the post in the wow forums I read about PuG's. Basically said that PuGs will find any and every way to test you, as DPS, Healer, or Tank. They will come up with the stupidest stuff to do. So think of it as a challenge. If you're only able to complete a heroic with a tank with 50k life and a healer with 3k spellpower...who's carrying whom?

I got carried, I still get carried. If someone wants to freeload off me, I'd feel flattered. It hasn't been a problem for me yet. If it becomes one? Well I'll cross that bridge when I find it.

Happy Holidays

Rogue Origins

I dedicate this post to Tooth. If there was ever someone that motivated me to hate horde it was that motherfucker. He was one of those motivated (defined in this particular instance as someone who did nothing besides play wow) individuals who hit 60 before I even bought the game. This was back in the day when leveling was significantly harder than it is now. Getting to 60 was further hindered by the fact that you would get unmercilessly griefed by horde whenever you tried to quest. This dude was a 60 troll rogue back when I didn't understand what aggro was and was trying to use fade to run closer to mobs so they wouldn't attack me and I could sneak by. He had some stupid dagger that at that time was probably the best non epic in the game (keep in mind epics at this time were rare in the way lottery winners are rare, I mean you've heard of people winning but never seen it happen). So there I am happily flying on the flightpath to Southshore in my horrible holy / shadow build. At this point I was used to Diablo 2 talents which give you new powerful spells that rock face, where as talents in WoW at this point vaguely enhance your existing abilities. I land and before the zone even fully loads I'm dead on the ground due to something called Ambush. This guy was nothing if not efficient he didn't even bother moving after he killed me he just restealthed and sat there waiting for his next victim. I ran back to get my body thinking I will run to the guards they will protect me! I rez and start hopping away, and suddenly get brutally ambushed again. This time he didn't crit and I lived long enough cast a shield, which his backstab immediately destroyed along with my remaining life. Then I got my first chance to see what emotes are. He spat on my body (so sorry being level 32 offended you) and then I got to see another first - the troll dance. Of all the dances in WoW the troll dance is obviously the "coolest" if you can consider anything in WoW hip. At this particular moment I was not quite in the mood to appreciate it. Where are the guards why aren't they killing him! My third rez I discovered if you are noob enough to die quickly in sucession you have to wait to rez. This time I ran into the town hall where the number of guards was overwhelming. They will protect me I told myself. They have shiny armor and swords and there are a lot of them! In the town hall I found another victim huddling praying for safety. He managed to squeak out "lookout there is a rogue ganking!" right before said rogue floored him right in front of me. My natural fear was tempered as the guards immediately responded and lept upon him with the full fury of Stormwind. The full fury of stormwind however was no match for this wily individual. He popped sprint (although at this point my only thought was FUCK HE'S MOVING FASTER WHY CAN HE DO THAT) and hopped over and finished me off. He then disappeared (little did I know this was the 1 time in WoW that vanish would actually work). Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Murder me three fucking times in a row I do the only thing possible. I immediately logged out, contemplated throwing my keyboard - resisted, and created a rogue.

My priest sat badly neglected, indeed I don't think I logged on him again until long after my 60 gnome rogue was completed. I was not alone in my frustrations as 3 other friends created rogues at the same time as me. Our little gonmes names were creatively Bippity, Boppity, and Bu (Boo was taken, and no for the thousandth time I don't watch DBZ stop whispering me about how awesome it is). My friends had not been systematically destroyed by Tooth so their dedication ran out at about level 14 (which is too bad because we would have been a hilarious ganking team) but I didn't pause. I got to 60 and on the way I murdered everyone I was remotely capable of killing. If you were horde and you helped me with an escort quest I would reward you at the end by ruthlessly slaying you and camping you for an hour. If you were higher level than me I would call in reinforcments. There was nothing fair about my hatred, it was all consuming and if it took 5 level 45s to drag a 60 down, so be it. If the fight went against me I used 1 of the hundred tricks rogues have to get away and then I plotted and schemed until you showed weakness.

My favorite zone to this day has to be the western plaguelands. This was with out a doubt the best place to world pvp as newly minted level 60s would head out to Stratholme as that was THE instance to be in to get gear. To do this horde needed to ride from safety in Tirisfal Glades out through the bulwark. The bulwark was a gate with a road leading through it. This road had hills and trees to the side of it and was in short the perfect place to launch an ambush. Me and a few rogue buddies would chill to the side of the road with a hunter shadowmelded as well. We would then have our paladin friend sit tauntingly in the middle of the road. Our grasp of slowing mechanisms and cc that could dismount enemies was vague at best so we relied partially on the horde stopping to engage this lonely paladin. The moment we saw enemies vent would rise to a fever pitch desperately calling out classes and levels of the enemies riding through the gap. Cheap shots ambushes aimed shots hammers of justice all used with desperate abandon. We didn't have any of that girly resilience and healing was for people who weren't smart enough to roll dps classes. Zerg or be zerged. The fury of battle without skill (god we were awful). The thrill of victory was usually ours, and then we would fight a running guerilla engagement because horde were very well organized on Burning Legion and poking one disturbed the bee hive. We ride into the hills trying to circle around and pick of our pursuers one by one, but inevitably this led to a huge pitched battle that only occasionally went our way. Now outnumbered, we struggled to get off rezes and remount and regroup. Honestly in all my WoW time nothing was more fun. Eventually we met more people and added to our guild. My brother played horde on the same server and he told us our guild was hated (not feared horde are too comptent for that) but at least hated. Our incursions into horde territory began. The zepplin tower was our new home. We would strike at people getting on or off the Undercity zepplin and eventually the Undercity itself would stir. Waves of horde would come out to engage us, with a key advantage. Their graveyard was WAY closer than ours.

Time went by and people started raiding dungeons more and my rogue was sadly not needed. The guild master and a few other were rogues and there were a lot of them on the server. We needed healers and tanks, there was none of this dual spec opportunities. So our pvp group shifted focus and began raiding. I picked my priest back up and quickly finished him off becoming the healer officer. We entered the leviathan now known as molten bore and had our triumphs and disasters. This was fun, this gave us epics, but it wasn't quite the same as the old world pvp. I got my first piece of prophecy - indeed the first epic our guild got were the bindings of prophecy. More time went by and occasionally we'd go back to the bulwark but it was never the same. PvP was now dominated by the guilds that were tearing through Molten Core and was centered in Blackrock Mountain. My rogue was now outgeared and outclassed as horde shamans and warriors with shiny epic weapons could kneel on my face. My priest was well geared and could heal my friends but keeping someone alive while they put a sword through a horde skull just isn't the same as personally getting the blood on your hands.

So when I kill you even though you are 20 levels lower than me. When I camp you for an hour and then slaughter your main that comes to teach me a lesson. When I attack you to 5% health and let the mob you were attacking kill you so you take durability - don't blame me. Blame Tooth. I certainly do, although now I'm glad he did it because it made me start a rogue and it made me love the fierce joy of killing people who can't defend themselves. Yes I arena and battleground and do all those things blizzard wants me to do to get gear. I even raid on my rogue to gain a slight advantage, but its the moments where I kill ten noobs and then pick off their mains one by one that I live for. These moments keep me playing WoW, and I treasure them.

I Think I Started Raiding Again...

Our guild (like many others I am sure) has had problems keeping members, especially during the pre-patch lull everyone was experiencing. With this we've had players come and go in every which way. Some people went to different guilds, some quit the game, some did both, some just stopped raiding, or any other number of things. I quit playing before WotLK came out and probably started again about 6 months or so ago, but did not get back into raiding as I don't usually enjoy using the limited evening time I have at home in one instance regardless of what it is. As Raithen or Naughty will let you know, I ADD out quickly. For the past month or so I've come to a few raids the guild did if they were short a healer. For the most part healing in full PvP gear, I wasn't great at it, I won't lie. But they weren't expecting too much from me and were great about offering tips/suggestions as opposed to telling me I suck and that my furious gear has resil gems in it instead of SP. So that was enjoyable.

So Naughty got promoted to officer the other day and IMed me yesterday asking if I would raid that night. Well he'll be raiding all night, as would Raithen, so I figured I might as well go with them as they're two of the main reasons I play this game. I went, messed up on first boss (stood in the fire...awkward.) As someone pointed out, there's been fire you shouldn't stand in since vanilla. Touche sir, but this fire was MOVING! And it blends in the with the floor and stuff. Anyways, Mr Marrow goes all bone tornado and I swear decides he will follow me forever. So I finally juke him and am dutifully about to nourish someone who I had cleverly pre-hotted...Why am I standing next to a bear? Wait...that means.. Naughty informs me about this time on vent that where I am currently is not the place he'd prefer me to be. "Yessir, just let me finish casti..." *Dead*

Oh you meant right meow.

After a wipe or two we had a nice little bit of drama/emorage from some people and an ensuing gquit. We refilled the raid (we had more than 25 people willing to raid!?!!?) I think we called in some favors, not sure. On at least one attempt we had some chain battle rezzes going on. (I think at one point we had..7? druids in the raid) *shrug* was fun. Anyways, we killed that guy, got some neat loots and went on our way. As we made some attempts on Miss Deathwhisper people were getting antsy I believe.

Which brings me to a problem we began to experience which as I read through others blogs I notice a LOT of people posting about.

Advice.

There's a time and a place for advice/ideas. New content is cool, and usually challenging, and unfamiliar. This means there is probably more than one way to do something. With 25 people in a raid you've got a lot of different personality's/experiences. Some people had tried these fights on the PTR, some had tried it since it had gone live on different toons. Some have absolutely no idea what's going on, but will still give you their opinion. I'm guilty of some of this as well. I make jokes in vent during fights, I have given my opinions on things to try. After reading a lot of these posts I found myself last night saying less in vent, and giving my opinions/thoughts to an officer and letting them decide if they want to voice that to the rest of the raid or not. I think a problem a lot of people run into is the too many chiefs not enough indians issue. Maybe you think you know better than the raid leader what's going on. Maybe you DO know what's going on better than the raid leader. Either way, as Ky said in his post, unless you're the raid leader it's not your job to decide the strategy. Make suggestions sure, but maybe in a tell, or only when asked for your opinion.

All in all a fairly fun night of raiding. We ran some heroics afterwards that were pretty funny. I enjoy heroics with a group I know well because we don't usually take it seriously. Any instance I'm playing where I feel my innervate is best used on the pally tank is usually pretty enjoyable. I think these groups teach me to be bad. All 5 of us are hunkered down in the soup and just healing/dpsing through it.

Icecapades with Rollerblades

The title should say it all; anytime I play arenas it is an absolute cluster fuck and It's not that I'm inexperienced in queueing to say the least. Let me first explain a little bit about my background with WoW. I started playing in Vanilla as a Night Elf Rogue, after some friends convinced me I needed this game in my life. I left a party where alcoholic beverages were being served (I was hosting said Kegger in my own rental home) to go to Ghetto-Mart and purchase this encrypted software which equates to having no life. I eventually leveled the Rogue to 60 just in-time to miss out on all the fun raids where you actually earned your purples. None of this Archavon bullshit when WotLK came out. Anyway, I digress. I raided all through BC, arenaed in all 4 seasons on said Rogue, leveled to 80 in WotLK raided Naxxlawlmas, got purples and liquidated my holdings in Blizzard Assets to some nerd in a Coffee Shop for $800. At the time I probably had the best geared Rogue on the server for peeveepenis.

Life went on, I got a girlfriend, got my grades up, and then Karial started playing again, FML. I immediately reactivated a RAF account we used to wtfpwn some Alts to 60 with and eventually led to the creation of Naughtybits The Argent Champion, Savior of the Alliance. Really, I'm a badass. After leveling that stupid Paladin to 80, I needed a Rogue cause well, I like ganking people and then hiding like a little bitch. This brings us to the present time where I have an Paladin who gets suckered into raids to tank (I don't mind it, however I'm not there for your benefit) and a Rogue who doesn't have the best gear, but I can outplay the pants off of most anybody.

This particular story takes place last night on December 6th where I was doing our weekly 2s in the 1500 MMR bracket (tough amirite?) with a friend named Begus who we met through a mutual frat friend named kermit ze frog. Begus is a destro warlock who recently discovered he should use a Succubus for CC and that Demonology has talent points to reduce that CC to almost instant. Needless to say once he made this realization our rating went from 1k and falling to 1400 and rising. Another downfall with Begus is that he still lives at home and attempts to disguise his WoW endeavors by not talking on vent, even though he is creepily listening. It makes it very frustrating when I yell in vent to Kill the fucking rogue and he responds by typing DURING THE MATCH I was CCing the paladin (just an example, nothing like this has ever happened).

In our 10 games last night we went 5-5 prior to my emorage/logoff/qguit/uninstall/hammersmash harddrive actions I took. how i gquit after I logged off I will never know. In the first match we played a mage/rogue. In this bracket I can usually destroy a rogue before he even knows what hit him, So i ask Begus to start dueling the mage 1v1 and I will wait for the rogue, Then we can hard switch. I feel confident that he understands, which I guess is my own fault. I'm mashing my Sap macro as my little gnome feet are doing whimiscle circles around the arena floor (figured I should make some reference to the title) when BAM i get icelanced outta stealth... How the fuuuuuuuuck did that happen, whatever I Vanish and due to said vanish i see the Rogue before he sees me and SAP woohoo we're getting the opener. As I sap Begus get's Poly'd and my Mod starts squaking that he used his trinket. I don't understand, but whatever, he gets poly'd immediately (this is one smart mage) So i resap the rogue, hoping somewhere in here we actually get the opener. I say fuck it, cheap the rogue, rupture, mutilate blah blah blah, essentially the rogue is almost dead before the mage even has time to Poly me, I cloak it cause im pro, and finish the rogue. The mage just won't stand for this, turns and cockslaps begus in the face with that stupid Ice tomb spell and I'm now short one arena partner in the time it takes for me to reset. I really hoped he would've teleported Line of sight (like we discussed) or possibly Saved his trinket for when it was useful, not when there was no pressure. After each match we discuss what went wrong, usually im telling him what he did wrong regardless of my own faults. I asked why he trinketed said Poly, "Well they were about to open on you and I didn't want you to die." was the stellar response I got, I simply cried a little on the inside and informed him I can't get opened on when im sapping the rogue since I'm stealthed. Oh i lost that match too since Frost Mages are fucking invincible when I have 0 cooldowns. I bet if I had a Preparation for my Preparation He'd still wreck my fucking face.

The second match in question was against double stealth. In the early seconds of the match I could see how this could be construed as a frost mage/rogue after 30 seconds however, clearly it is not. This team gave my Begus Buddy ample time to set up his Teleport and wtfescape should anything ridiculous happen, perhaps a stun/pounce/bleed/rupture/combo that eats anything. You know, the druid/rogue opener. Well we faced a druid rogue and he was able to get away since I sapped the rogue cause he was looking for me without a sap macro, Tab Mash just doesn't work folks. Anyway the druid opens on him, his teleport is not set up LoS from the druid, since he's really good at geometry and the druid Kitty Jumps and i think an auto attack killed my little buddy. The rogue is just about dead till i get instant cycloned (cool idea blizzard) the druid heals him to full and I quickly leave arena to avoid the embarassment. I ask Begus after the match why he it was called when he wasn't alive and he said sorry, he didn't know the cats could jump out of stealth. I let that one go, it is an honest mistake, I think.

We got so lucky and played the previous team again, We had a MUCH better opening since I sapped the Druid this time as the rogue jumped Begus. I stunlocked the Rogue and I'm screaming that he needs to be on the Rogue. As i watch immolate break my 10 second sap and this Cat come flying through the air to eat begus yet again a couple of thoughts come to mind. The Cat continues to lose health at an equal rate of the rogue, which is silly cause warlocks don't have chain lightening. I get insta cycloned again and before My happy little ass can trinket vanish cheapshot the rogue, Begus gets liiiiiiiiiit the fuxx up and we lose 15 more points to this cocksuckers. After that Match I'm a little irritated and ask Begus

Me: "Why weren't you on the Rogue?"
Begus "I was on the Rogue but that fucking druid kept chasing after me"
Me: "well that makes since because he can't do damage unless he's in melee range, However, why was the druid losing health?"
Stellar 2's partner: "I wasn't on the fucking druid, I was on the fucking rogue, He had a yellow energy bar, I know what the fuck a rogue is."
Me: "Rogues can't be Cats, queue up"

Other matches go really well following these awful moments and people start joining vent for this terribad Ulduar 10 Hard modes I'm convinced to tank in a few minutes. However our final match is against a Priest/Surv Hunter and I call out the Hunter as the target, I get into position, Sap the priest, and open on the hunter. Why the fuck does the priest have immolate on him and fear in my unit frames? I'm not too sure but I think Gladius is bugging out, there is no possible way my partner can be DPSing the priest. After some quick thinking and fast button mashing the hunter is almost dead, i've blown most of my cooldowns and I see this human warlock HOP OFF THE SIDE OF BLADES EDGE ARENA IN PURSUIT OF THE PRIEST. Dubbya Tee Eff in the words of Karial. I'm screaming in vent, people are laughing at me, infact 4-5 people due to the raiders joining up. I'm not a screamer, normally I play wow for the enjoyment and relaxing factors (where the fuck are those again?) I get fucking frozen with no cooldowns, no trinket, and this cocksucker of a hunter has 214 hp / 25k or something. Needless to say, One immolate at any point in time would've killed this asshole, I'm screaming to kill the fucking hunter kill the fucking hunter. This priest is running all the way around the map, the hunter turns and disengages away from me and flies towards his priest for some awesome penance, I watch the chaos bolt fly through the air at the fucking hunter as he makes his 'flying camel donut drop illusion spin' (real ice skating trick, look it up) when BAM the hunter dies in midair and we can 2v1 the priest. While this makes me really happy on the inside, My throat hurts from screaming, we should've beat them in less than half that time, and My partner is sitting there talking about how awesome that was, 'we' really fucked them up, damn that was awesome blah blah blah.

My screaming scared people out of vent (minus our guildleader Seth who just enjoys the emorage of Arenas) and when I change channels for this Ulduar to get away from Begus I hear Raithen telling the story for all to enjoy, painful.

I absolutely hate World of Arenas.

An Evening of PuGs

I began playing wow in the days of BWL and started with a few friends. This was particularly effective as one friend would tank, one heal, i'd dps, and then the other 2 DPS were a dime a dozen. When I started healing as a priest/druid I didn't like to PuG groups as they were usually fail and it's just frustrating.

So anyways, healing on my druid for heroics/raids has been pretty cake (especially heroics) my gear isn't terrible, the tank's and dps' gear is pretty good. So while they kill things I can work on, and perfect, my hopping skills,dps, and blending in with the shrubbery around me, while in tree form. Sure they yell at me occasionally, but I always respond with "It's ok, I have Wild Growth". (note to self, WG doesn't actually heal for as much as I thought it did...oops)

Yesterday I decided to log on and see what said friends were up to. Ulduar hard-modes or some other such nonsense. I mean honestly, how am I supposed to PvP/VoA10 without you guys!? I once read a post (sorry can't find it anymore) about PuG's being the ultimate test of skill. I can see it. I think it would be difficult if I had to focus on healing a party instead of trying to /cower in funny locations. So bring on the tests!! I'm a tree, I can heal anything, I don't need them. Alrighty, let's start wintergrasp. AMG Alliance DEFENDED!?!? This is a sign from above, VoA10 go go activate. After an uncomfortably long time trying to get 10 people who feel like killing the same thing together, complete with our Black Temple geared rogue with 1 MainHand Warglaive and bear tank with green staff, we began our campaign. Koralon activate. Things are going good, There's a priest (raid leader) who's healing with me. We're bumping along, hmm. I'm out of mana. INNERVATE!!!! heal heal heal, I'm out of mana again!? Dubya. Tee. Eff. Ok, well maybe we're close to killing this guy? Oh...60% you say? Well that's awkward. Oh, another fun fact. I'm doing 55% of the healing, mr priest is doing like 25 or 30...The paladin tank in greens and blues is doing almost as much with his seal of I heal myself as much as bad priests. Now we come to a fork in the road, there are several possible reasons why we're in this position.

1) I worthlessly pissed my mana away nourishing everything in sight regardless of HoTs on the target.
2) I wasted/efficiently used my mana spamming HoT's and nourishes on undergeared tanks and raid, including a tranquility.
3) I'm in feral gear.

If you've read Raithen's post below this, you might be inclined to guess #3. Oh ye of little faith! Not only was I actually in Resto gear and Resto Spec, but my PvE gear and spec no less! I prefer to think the problem was our dps, or lack there of. Why do I think this you might ask? Because Koralon ENRAGES!?! wtf...this guy has an enrage timer? The answer is yes, he does, and after doing VoA10/25 each week for the past like 6 months I'd never seen that happen before. Anyways, we regrouped, booted some people (we kept the warglaive rogue...as he was our #2 highest dps...) and killed him, almost as slowly, but he didn't enrage, so that's neat. Hunter/lock loot, neither of which is in our group, ok....neat. On to Emalon, long story short, no dps switched, we got blowed up hardcore, i chose life instead of VoA of Doom. Alrighty, let's PvP. A few 5 cap losses of Daily AB later, friends are done with ulduar!! Come play with meeee. We form up, holy moses we're 5 cap winning an AB!!! And then I did what every AB newb has done. While defending LM I almost kill this shaman, amg amg, must kill him!! He's got like 20% health!! Chase chase chase "Horde has assaulted the Blacksmith"


Fuck. That was just the beginning, with like 40 resources left to go Horde 5 nodes us ftw...Achievements and all. They beat us so quickly my timing mod hadn't even had a chance to catch up yet, it still had Alliance winning in the next 5 seconds...What a tease. At least then we realized it was an org group. I wish I could have at least been in their vent afterward to hear the cheering/name calling/taunting

Another stellar match

So there we were, in a freshly formed 3v3 team ready for some epic battles. The gates open and our holy paladin (Naughtybits) goes oh shit I'm in my prot spec. This would matter less if our feral druid (Karial) had any gear at all and didn't die like a girl when anyone even looks at him. So we start the match with me advising Naughty to just use that silence hammer after our opening stunlock wears off and we would try and zerg down the healer and make it a short match. About halfway through my kidney shot on the priest, Karial starts complaining in vent why the fuck can't I kitty leap. No there was not a bug in the game, no he was not out of range, and finally he was indeed in line of the priest to leap. What could possibly be preventing this ability you ask Well after the priest died anyway (he must have been wearing greens) from just my mutilate spam he finally figured it out. He had remembered to switch to his feral gear but unfortunately not specs. You would be surprised how little damage you do in resto spec. Oh the joys of playing on a team that has had its MMR tanked into the 1200 bracket. It also helped that the team we played was 820 MMR. I honestly don't think I could lose that much and not delete the game from my computer.

After switching the correct specs for the next match we were able to bring our MMR out of the gutter and up to 1500 in just a few quick matches (yes I know that isn't hard but you should check out some of our gear). We won't be pushing Glad this season obviously but I could see us moving up into the upper 1800s as our paladin and feral druid learn what they are doing. It would probably also be beneficial if I wore resilience instead of massing armor pen but where is the fun in that!

So you've probably figured out at this point that I play a rogue, but in addition to this I arena as a holy paladin (roll face on flash of light) ret paladin (roll face on 4 damage abilities) and a priest which I've played S1-S5 and then retired due to being slighty bored with it. I currently play 2 rogues (one is a friend in the guilds who doesn't pvp much) to maximize the amount of friends and comps I can play which brings me to my point. You can play 2200+ and push for Gladiator and you can play 1200 and push for 1300 and have the same amount of fun as long as you're playing with other people you enjoy playing with. Winning is important and that's the good thing about Blizzard's MMR system it lets you play people near the level of skill your team has. Basically this allows the casuals to arena and the hardcore but what you don't see mentioned as much is the hardcore can enjoy playing with a casual or someone who just rolled a character because you get to meet somewhere in the middle. This lets one player enhance the team enough to win matches the other wouldn't have normally been capable of. Playing people that are better than you, but not ludicrously so helps you learn much more quickly. This also lets you play crazy comps for fun without worrying that losing the next match will prevent you from getting that coveted 2200 weapon or title.

Well Hello There

I've read a decent amount of WoW blogs recently and have thoroughly enjoyed that time. I find that the next step should probably be to create my own. So here we are. As you can probably guess I play a resto druid and just recently picked up feral off-spec. I played a rogue/holy paladin/shadow priest through TBC. Raided a decent amount, but never very "Hard-Core". PvP has always been my friends and my cup o tea. I'm not talking about 1v1 dueling, 2v2 arenaing or anything "balanced" like that. I'm talking about me and a friend hiding in stealth while our priest looks around innocently and squishily. We were WotLKing people in 1 GCD back in the lvl 60 days. Why fight fair if you don't have to? If it looked even close to fair you better believe we ran away. Pick off the weak ones when they get distracted with pretty flowers and shiny rocks. Ahhh those were the days of world of roguecraft...

Anyways. Now I'm a druid and trying to keep people alive instead of murderlize them. (yea...right. That's why I was specced into Insect Swarm) So my ret pally friend and I go off to 2v2. He'd probably give you a better play-by-play of how that went, but here's a summary:

I pounce from stealth, immediately tree form and begin to run away. Mr Ret is beating away on one of them. OH NO! They're attacking ME!? Muaha this is why i rolled a druid, check out my ability to escape and run away! Oh more chains of ice? I can break that quicker than your runes can cool! Yea you thought you were gonna catch me sucka! Now I'm healed to full and you're nowhere near me....

...

Where's Mr Ret? Why's he lying on the ground? *poke* *poke*


Shit.

It's not my fault Mr Ret decided against running after me...is it?