Randon Dungeons

So, I like this patch, it makes me smile.  They put in new fancy things that amuse me, for now.  My favorite is the random dungeon.  I can now do a heroic when I feel like it and don't have to ask around.  The frost emblems you get are nice as well. 

I have done five or so of these and have noticed some trends.  First if you are a hybrid and not a failure (only can dps) queue up as a tank or healer unless you want to wait 10 to 15 minutes. Also tanks tend to out dps the dps, most of the dpsers are failures in gear or skill.  Healing heroics is really easy, I spend a good amount of time dpsing in them as a healer.  Also people don't like Oculus, why I don't know.

I have really enjoyed these, as an antipugger I approve of them. As healer I get a queue in less than two minutes.  Even if the dpsers are failures we still don't wipe.  Tast run I did was Nexus, we had a hunter who was in aspect of the viper the entire time.  He also kept attacking a boss when he was immune instead the adds to break his immunity (as did the warlock) and never moved to get rid of the debuff off the last boss.  I did more damage than he did in the instance.  These things are so easy it doesn't matter.  Assuming you don't get the new heroics, I'm bailing if I see one of those.

So props to Blizzard for this, now to get them to not have it cost eight trillion frost emblems for the gear I need.  That's all.

My Moonkin Future

Well after reading what GC has had to say this week about balance druids I don't see staying balance for Cataclysm.  Here are the links to the threads.

• Is Moonkin pvp feedback still appreciated?
• Rogues get a buff. Moonkins get a nerf?

He has done what a feel is a good job of laying out the vision of pve balance and acknowledging the problems in pvp.  He also acknowledged the complaints with balance pve (eclipse), but made sure to say they like it, it isn't going anywhere and also gave zero vision for balance pvp.  I understand why, they don't have one.

When I started playing this game I picked a druid, figuring to a be a power spell caster, not an overweight punching bag.  Balance is a fringe spec that doesn't get the time that others do, and will remain fringe because it isn't that fun to play.  Eclipse the perfect example, they tried it, everyone hated it, but they put too much time into it to come up with something different, so an entire expansion of this crap.  There is only so much time the developers have to work the game and playing one of the specs at the bottom of the priority list isn't fun.  If they don't get it right the first time then wait for another expansion, no thanks.

I know that just sounds like QQ, but it's just common sense.  The devs are good at what they do, but they only have so much time to balance this game with it's thirty specs among all the other things they do.  They only have so much time to dedicate to balance druid pve and if the dps itself is passable they are going to let it be.  When it comes to balancing pvp it's a quality of life issue for everyone when buffing.  Part of the reason season 5 sucked was because of out of control overpowered classes.  Classes/specs being underpowered really only effects those class/specs.  Right now balance is bad that only effects balance druids and there aren't that many.  If I were them buffing balance would be at the bottom of my priority list too.

Anyway I could go resto, but I really enjoy caster dps.  I'm thinking of leveling a mage, I'm not basing anything on current performance, I'm basing it on the developers philosophy and track record.  Pure classes will always do more dps, and if mages aren't at or near the top they will be buffed.  Hybrids dps gets buffed to make sure they will still take you.  It might suck, but as long as it doesn't suck so bad that raids stop taking you, you are fine.  I'm not real interested in that.

They may "get it right" this time, make eclipse fun and interesting (opposite of current) and they may give balance the tools to be a viable casters dps in arenas.  I could see balance being reworked to be fun in pve, I doubt it, but it's possible.  I have no reason to believe that balance will ever be viable in pvp, prot specs became viable before balance, what else says screw you more than making tanking specs viable for pvp dps before a dps spec, pretty much nothing.

So, I'll be working on leveling a mage.  I have complained about moonkins and wondered what it would be like to play a pure caster, time to find out. That's all.

WTB a 1600 rating

We've hit a wall in 2's, one made of rogues mostly.  Blue and I have been stuck between 1500 and 1550 for about a month.  We have been losing to some comps that I can't figure out.  Maybe these are just hard counters and we have to hope to avoid them.  I'm not gonna list weird comps like double frost mage or something stupid like that.  Anyway here is my list of evil in rank evilness.

Group 1, Could beat us in season 4 gear

Mage Rogue.  It seems like we mostly play this comp in the Ring of Fail Valor where my los leaves while I get blowed up.  They generally sheep Blue and skill me down with counterspell and 45 stuns.  I get off maybe 3 gcds before I die here.  Our only success comes when Blue is able to get off bladestorm before they poly him and they are so badly geared they die in it.

Lock Rogue.  With this comp they generally blow Blue up while I get seduced, feared and blinded.  Blue is stunned in place while the lock free casts on him, then we lose.

Elemental Shaman Rogue.  Same as Lock Rogue except anything I cast gets interupted or in the case of cyclone grounded.

Group 2, we can win if we are significantly better than them.

Disc Priest Rogue (notice a theme yet).  Mana burn and the rogue's control are our main problems here.  The rogue always sits on Blue keeping him away from the preist so he can mana burn me.  Most of our wins here come if they aren't well geared and Blue blows up the priest in the first 15 seconds or the rogue doesn't do enough damage to Blue to pressure me into exposing myself to mana burn.

Resto Druid Rogue.  A lot of control here, if they do it right we almost always lose.  Luckily this doesn't seem to a comp we run into a lot.  When rogues have like twenty class/spec combos that are viable in 2's some comps don't get as much play.

Ret Pally Rogue.  The reason I list this lower is a few these teams aren't smart enough to cc me and blow up Blue.  Some try to kill me, we win those most of the time.  If they do this right, even if they have to run to blind me, they win.

Resto Druid DK (not a rogue).  If the DK wants to he can the druid can keep Blue cced the entire match.  Luckily no one would ever die so they don't try that.  If the resto druid is smart he chases me so the dk can peel for him and spread his diseases (the Dk's not the druids).  If we keep them separated Blue generally kills the druid before the dk ooms me (which he usually needs to do to kill me).

We tend struggle mage + anything as well.  They are just too good against warriors with no dispel.  We don't see many mages outside mage rogue.  Could it be that other healers can dispel?  Anyway, I'm not real good at figuring this stuff out.  If any of you have any ideas you'd better feel free to comment.

While I'm posting I must share the highlight of my weekend.  Running warrior/druid/disc, we beat two different beast cleave (enhance shaman/beast hunter/holy pally) teams.  Both teams were able to kill our priest in the first thirty to forty-five seconds of the fight, then the hunter fails to kill me while Blue kills the shaman with the pally trying to heal.  He then kills the hunter, then the pally.  Thank you for never turning on the warrior for me and making 2v3 easy.  I guess that's why they have 1200 ratings.  Like ours are much better.  That's all.

Reading Through the Lines

Well, looks like I'm batting .000 for raiding this week.  I won't be raiding on Tuesday either, what can you do?  Though I most likely will be able to do heroic 10 man toc on Monday, if we have enough people.  So what to do, blog of course.

You may be wondering if there is a point to this, maybe there is.  Alright, there is.  I just figured out something sweet for blogging.  I now know how to put a line through words on here.  You see all the "pro" bloggers do this, I'm joining the bandwagon now.

With this line thing I can say whatever I want, put a line through it and it doesn't count.  Doesn't count?  You might not think that makes any sense, but it does.  It makes perfect sense if you aren't an idiot, which you are.  The possibilities are endless

Picture it, we are working on a new boss in Ice Crown and some noob is screwing it up.  I'll use Blue as an example, because he is a big boy and won't get his feelings hurt.  Before I would be real vague or not bring it up at all.  I don't mean like a year ago, I mean since I stopped being a jerk (on this blog).

Tonight we struggled with "Some ugly undead guy".  We didn't struggle Bluenoob did.  He we couldn't avoid fire and was were too low on dps.  He we also had trouble not pulling aggro from the tanks.  Blue some of us also spent the night in the wrong vent channel and he we had many bathroom breaks do to his our weak bladder.

As you can see if you are not stupid this is probably the greatest thing ever.  So get ready for words with lines through them.  They are coming not really and you are going to love it.  That's all.

The Auction house

Is it me or has it become really popular to post about how to make money on the auction house? If you are looking for that look elsewhere, I've got nothing for you. Well, one thing, I'll get to that later.

When I switched from Alliance to Horde I lost my alts, not having cash to bring them along. So I needed an alt and alts cost gold if you are going to have them flying anywhere. So decided to end my 3 year break from the ah.

Back when Altar of Storms was new I set my self up to make a ton of gold on the ah. Long before Goblins or MMO champion was telling everyone how to use cheap mats to craft greens to de and sell the mats, I was on it. When I hit level 60 I had 1000 gold, my epic mount, two pieces of tier one and a couple of other expensive pieces of gear. I also ran with Staff of Jordan from level 35 to 60. That may not sound like much now, but then it was a fortune, or it least it was to me. Once I hit 60 I was burned out on it.

So, I decided to endure the pain of leveling enchanting on my death knight. It sucked, but I paid for my epic flyer and now have a near max level enchanter. I hate finding someone to do an enchant for me and finding someone to de greens for me. Problem solved. Now I don't need to keep selling anymore. I paid for what I needed to and I have 7000 gold with nothing to spend it on. I can't stay away though, I should, stupid people have joined in the fun and have crashed the market.

Anyway, the one tip I will give for the ah is this, patience. Selling things for less than the mats cost to make them or just selling things for less than people will pay is fail. This isn't a message to Ofn, he has made way more gold than I have and doesn't need my advice. There are names I see selling and I know to not put my stuff up. I have seen people sell items for cheap then once they are gone I put up mine and sell them for double. You can tell these people don't know what the stuff is worth, I really should have bought the stuff myself and resold, but I prefer not to get into that.

The new folks selling remind me of BC raiding, when you needed twenty five to move past Karazhan.  So you'd recruit noobs who did 300 dps and didn't pay attention to what was going on.  Well, I guess we could have learned to stop recruiting those people a little quicker.  Bad news on the ah, the noobs can't be gkicked, you're stuck with them until they decide to go.  I'm still making gold, not as quickly as I'd like, but I'm in no hurry.  Look at that, I finally made a post about the auction house and did it without freaking out.  Miracles do happen, that's all.

Heroic TOC 10 and my dps

Well, I have found some moonkin blogs from people who know math or know people who know math. I had only done minimal research this expansion up until this point, enough of that. From what I have read, the theory I have been going with is correct. I did find some guides on how to dps the fights in TOC which was helpful.

I put my a link to the wowmeter for the raids I go on. My dps on the beasts was almost identical on the fights I have saved. The problems I run into are on the worms with whole disappearing thing, and Icehowl's charge and stun. I lose a significant amount of eclipse time and my dps tanks. I don't think I have cracked 4k on the guys which is bad. Tonight I can remember at least four different times I lost most of or all of an eclipse because of these mechanics.

Jaraxxus has given me issues as well, not tonight, at least on our kill. Tonight I broke 5k on him, by far my best effort. The difference between that and 3700 dps fight I hvae recorded is cast 16 more starfires. Rng worked fairly well for me and movement was pretty minimal for me. Hopefully, tonight wasn't a fluke and I can improve on that.

We finally downed the faction champs on heroic, Honors will have an in depth story on that. It was pretty hairy until we downed all but that last two. I tried rotate cyclones on the targets we weren't dpsing as we got to the last three.

I got one attempt at dps on the Twins before I switched to healing. This is the one fight I do well on and I was over 7k when we wiped. The raid damage is pretty high, high enough that each healer including me was doing 5.5 hps. That was a lot of rejuvs and single lifeblooms. We are extending the raid id so next week we'll have this down and start working on Anub. That will suck.

Quickly I have been resisting posting on my adventures at the AH because I'm trying to be nicer. As long I'm going with If I can't say anything nice I don't anything at all, you can expect to never hear anything about it. Rest assured my head is ready to explode. That's all

Some Rules

I haven't decided on a new name, I'm sure you can handle the wait. Anyway, I have been hesitant to start this up again, I don't really like what it had become, a place where I complain mostly. The following are posts that aren't allowed.

First, no Blizzard sucks at pvp balance posts. I might as well post, I live in a desert, it is hot in summer, nerf the sun. No point, it will always be hot here and pvp will never be balanced.

Second, why won't this thing drop QQ posts. Everyone has something that they wish would drop (probably). Pointing out how something hasn't dropped 10 times doesn't make it appear (though whining on vent seems to work).

Third no posts that attempt to cause trouble. I only posted those to get the drama over with. I prefer if people are so unhappy in a guild that and won't stop crying they just save everyone the trouble and leave right away, not two months later. If some argument is brewing, do it now not in two weeks. That being said, no drama here.

I'm sure most of you are trying to figure out what I have left to talk about. Mostly whatever is going on with me and the thoughts I'm thinking that you should know about, unless they have something to do the list up there. I'm not saying I'll never mention pvp balance or fail loot but that will never subject of the post.

Anyway those are the rules if this returns the QQ blog it was before, I'm done.