Useful Information

Based on the new patch coming out, I sorted through and made somewhat of a priority list of things to work on now that we have access to the new content of the patch 2.4. Most of this I learned about in the druid forum summary post on the elitistjerks forums.

• Oh MY Squigglie symbolness!!! = The Idol of the Raven Goddess that previously gave +0.4% crit to everyone in the feral druid's party will NOW give +0.9% crit to the party! According to the calculations: "Assuming an average person in the party does 1500 DPS with a direct 1%crit->1% damage ration, it's a gain of ~6DPS per member, or 24 DPS + your own gain (more likely to be 4-5 or so)." **NOW**, AS OF 2.4, each party member gains ~13.5DPS per person for a total party DPS of 54 DPS + your own gain. This makes your presence twice as valuable in the group than previously with the Raven Goddess idol equiped. I'm going to request to be placed in the hunter party when I'm not tanking.
• Aquire this trinket upgrade: Tsunami Talisman = the upgraded version of Hourglass of the Unraveller. I still use this passive trinket for kitty form because I believe in removing clicking dependencies wherever it's more likely that the computer will be more efficient at thinking for me. I don't get those warm fuzzies from seeing huge numbers that some other players get, so popping damage trinkets isn't a warm fuzzy thing for me...
• Spend more time fishing for Figluster's Mudfish agility food and doing the daily fishing quest instead of farming Skettis for Warp Burgers.. I guess that just gets old after a while.
• Work on reputation with the new faction to be able to learn the new +Defence to chest enchant! *woot* so I can put it on the new t4 chest I got last night off of the rather even more nerfed Magtheridon that we botched up badly yet still downed with only 10 players left standing for most of the fight and me back up main tanking in my Hit gear. LOL. I hope to get one more piece of t6 in Sunwell so I can then swap out one of the 4 I have now to gain the 4 t6 set bonus AND the 2 t4 set bonus. This will be excellent energy and rage generation PLUS the 15 percent increase in damage all together!
• Run the new 5 man heroic until I get the new trinket: Commendation of Kael'thas. My two companion main tanks Teraxe and Bedwyr have already won this nice upgrade. I spent a lot of time pondering over how much of an upgrade it might be, and if it would be a problem by removing the human factor of being able to pop the trinket to initiate the extremely beneficial increase in dodge. I currently use the Moroe's Lucky Pocket Watch, plus the Badge of Tenacity combination, and when I am tanking Mother Shah'raz, I alternate them between the 2 minute cooldowns. So about every minute or so, I can dodge a little extra and give the healers a break for a few seconds. With the new trinket, I'll have about 700 more life as a buffer, plus the increase in life will cause the new trinket to activate when I still have less than 7500 hit points or so (my hit points while tanking Mother are currently about 21k fully buffed). The advantage of this trinket though, is that it can activate potentially every 31 seconds if I dip below the 35 percent life threshold. There will not be as many stressful moments when I see my life dip, and I still have over 45 seconds left on all of my trinkets because I used them both. Now I only have to watch one trinket, and maybe have my trigger finger ready on my feral combat potion+HS macro, and just admire the other trinket when it procs for me. I'll be swapping out some of my +defence gems for straight stamina to try to increase my hitpoints even more.
• Figure out what to do with all of the honor I now have from turning in my stacks of 100 PVP tokens my daughter has been accumulating from playing my character in battlegrounds. :D

And that's enough to fret my little furry bear head over for now... There is a LOT more content to explore than I had expected, and I'm excited. Unfortunately, I am not as much of a power gamer as some of my guild companions and I'll be taking my time to thoroughly explore it in my meager yet sufficient freetime.

New Content!!

Well I have not yet discovered all of the new content, but as of this new patch, there are a lot of very refreshing changes! First of all, everyone now has access to the Hyjal and Black Temple instances that previously were basically off limits unless your guild was filled with extremely serious raiders who were relentless about getting down Vashj and Kael... Those two epic battles were large obstacles for most guilds and almost impossible for the casual laid back raiding guilds. Unfortunately, my "brilliant idea" in the following post is now simply an "obsolete idea" unless a high end guild simply charges people gold to take them through the attunement steps to gain the "Hand of Ad'al" title, but what an expensive title that would be? But the good news is.. Guilds that were beyond the attunement hump and were into the farming stages of Black Temple are now able to find new recruits. Blizzard has brought the players together... the over powered high end players and the ambitious yet stuck players can now get together and progress side by side again.. There are new challenges to face that are not restricted to only half of the lucky population of the server, but all may set foot into them and get their butts handed to them just as efficiently as anyone else.. And much handing of hindquarters occured on Tuesday night when raiding guilds peaked their eager head around the corners of the new 25-man instance Sunwell. Our guild had a night of exploring and experimenting with the efficiency of blasting scouts before they awaken the huge electified green robots that shoot chain lightening through the raid like current through a copper wire... New content luckily has a fresh and exciting feel to it... allowing you to tolerate all of the silliness wipes to a certain degree. But then you expect to see progression, and we did get in multiple decent learning attempts on the first boss after dragging torturously through the finicky trash mobs. Overall I think Sunwell will be a lot of fun. The loot is new and exciting, and getting heroic badges from Hyjal and BT as well as the ability to bring all of the alts through them is a huge bonus since the new patch.

Brilliant Idea?

Okay this may be perceived as ludicrous to some, but....
In almost every guild, there comes a time where the regular raiders will start to have real life interference that takes them away from their raiding posts, or the player will simply drift into other things besides raiding... This will leave a void and can sometimes be compensated for by other guild members, but the more people who drift away, the more it can cripple a guild's raiding ability. At this point in time, the guild leaders will begin to consider recruiting replacements to fill those voids. Often they would like to get specific classes and will seek out replacements who are qualified for the position. Currently my guild is actively seeking to fill the position of a resto shaman and a shadow priest, as well as other general healing classes. As a response, the current guild members have searched through their friend lists and other resources finding a few players that are accepted.. but after those resources have been exhausted, the guild members must then look for new players that may not be well known entities.. HAT guild has the upper hand in recruiting because we currently have done a complete clear of Black Temple, and have Mount Hyjal on farm. Now.. here is where my idea comes in... Our little obstacle in recruiting is the fact that the majority of available players are not yet Black Temple attuned. The individuals who /are/ attuned are most likely content with their guild and would be very hard to recruit. The only ones who would be recruitable are more likely to be guild hoppers, or may end up being a bit sketchy with raid attendance. So, my idea includes a possible two week long process that would involve attuning some new characters. First of all, we would include several key alts that our current reliable players have for example: Jingle has a priest alt who was often at many of the pre-Black Temple raids and has decent gear. Several other players have well geared druid alts, or paladin alts as well. This would give the guild more flexibility for fights such as Gurtogg Bloodboil where a mage would not be nearly as useful as a priest would, and other fights where a melee or range DPS could be swapped out for an ALT healer or hybrid. Also, the player will be able to get excited about picking up gear that might otherwise be disenchanted because most of our main raiders are fairly well geared at this point. So, our attunement group would include about 4-5 Alts, but we still need more actual dedicated players to fill up the occasional extra spot in our 25 man raids. This is where the brilliance comes in. ..... Because we have basically run out of players whom people could *without a doubt* be vouched for, it would be a risk to _first_ invite a new recruit and _then_ attune them.. What if they don't show up to the raids? What if their performance isn't up to standards and brings the quality of our raids down? Then we would have to consider confronting them about their performance, replacing them, or even removing them from the guild.. Therefore.... I suggest that HAT advertise Black Temple Attunenments! There is a price of course. Probably set at somewhere between 500 to 1000 gold each. (According to other members of the Gorfiend server, attunment is already set at about 1000 gold). For our runs, we could charge: 300-600 for the Eye including Kael, and 200-400 hundred gold for SSC including Vashj. This would allow the dedicated players who are still loyal to their own guilds to become Black Temple attuned and possibly break away from their well loved guild that might not be progressing into the end game instances that they might wish to see, or stay with them and help them progress from the experience they gained from raiding with HAT. This would also allow some players in some guilds to manage to get their second vial and maybe also progress into end game. The price would compensate the high geared players who will be taking these folks through the instances. So for example, if the raid consists of 5 alt players, and 6 possible recruit tag-alongs. That would leave about 14-15 main players to be partially compensated for their efforts. Of course it would also be FUN for most serious raiders.. They raid because they enjoy it! So if SSC takes two days, with 6 recruits paying 200-400 gold each, that would be 1200-2400 gold to compensate the other members who are not alts. Each geared member would get about 80-160 gold to do this run for the alts and the possible recruits. Hopefully no one's repair bill will be over 40 gold each day, so it would be well worth the main raiders to first of all, get guild alts attuned, and secondly, evaluate some new players and possible recruits. In the end, even if this does not produce new members for the guild, the alts will be attuned, and the raiders will have had some fun at little to no cost to their personal gold funds. Some of the profits could also be given to the alts who are getting attuned in response to guild need anyways. (If the alts are included in the compensation equation, the guild members still will be compensated with 60-120 gold each for the SSC run, and 90-180 gold for The Eye run). As a result of including non guild members... these individuals can be seen as possible recruits. The possible recruits will get a chance in return to see how our guild runs, and evaluate whether or not they would fit in and enjoy raiding with us. It will be beneficial for all individuals involved in the long run. If all goes well, HAT will become even better known, and attain the reputation of containing players willing to help others. There are some risks though. A possible recruit could in fact attempt to ninja the instance when the scheduled rais is not running it. This would set our guild back a week with our attempts to attune people. If this does actually happen, our guild would simply delay the efforts and get back to our guild only Hijal farming runs and Black Temple runs. Therefore the possible recruits would need to be screened well as being well known non-malicious people. What are the chances that this will work? Well it will come down to the actual raid make up. If the 3 main tanks are top geared, and there are at least 3 top geared healers, and 4 top geared DPS, they should be able to pull the weight of the alts who should already be known to have excellent player skills and able to maximize their alt's efficiency. Hopefully the recruits will also be serious players that can be vouched for as reliable players and good people, so that the raid should still work out. It's so crazy it just might work...
Okay, so this isn't a NEW idea, but it is simply illustrated here in detail to point out how it might be beneficial to execute such a plan of action to help gather like minded people together who enjoy raiding...

Hoooray! Illidan is dead!

Okay okay, I guess all of these posts about winning and stuff were initiated due to the fact that my guild HAT finally took Illidan down on Monday March 10th. (Um yeah, 2 days ago). I didn't have time to post anything until today. I have a few afterthoughts about our epic experience that I would like to record right here for my buddies to ponder over.. ... First of all, it took us several weeks to work up to the point of even getting to Illidan. Once we were able to get to him on a weekly basis, the actual fight itself required many hours of practice ---> particularly with kiting of the Flames of Azzinoth. Two tanks get to do this fun job that has been called "The hardest tanking job in the game" by some. I was one of them. I was decked out in full fire resist gear which included: The full set of heroic badge gear (chest, gloves, leggings, and boots), I still had my Lava belt that my friend Whitefire made for me from the days of Molten Core, I also had my Onyxia neck piece, and the Blood of onyxia trinket. I had a few slots left to work with to get in as much armor, dodge, defense and burst damage as I could get to help with survivability and holding agro. I selected my T6 helm, plus the T6 Shoulders for the 2 piece bonus, and I have my new Pillar staff from Mount Hyjal for the most damage I can do. This set of gear seems to work out okay except it is still very fragile regarding Agro, and our DPSers had to be very careful about watching their own threat. I learned how to do the kiting from the very helpful informational YouTube video that you can find links to from Bosskillers or other WOW resource sites. Um yeah I guess this blah blah isn't really important unless you too are a feral druid who is either about to tank Illidan in fire resist gear, or has been kiting him and likes to compare methods with other people... But.. I just wanted to note something about the kiting pattern around the concentric circles on the ground that the raid is standing within. There are lines that basically mark the range limit for each elemental, but they are not exact. The exact markings are the small double lines that are at regular intervals on the inner ring. The north west line that marks my north limit is just outside of the limit range for my Elemental, and whenever I stretch this limit, the other elemental will immediately charge me just before or during the time that I turn it around, and it is flaming at me.
....so there I was... just an innocent little bear... (with sharp 4 inch claws and razor sharp teeth, and a vicious bite to go with it).... Minding my own business.. just toying with the cute fuzzy little flaming elemental (who was flaming me for ticks of 3-4k fire damage of which I could resist 2.5k or so each).... Just pawing at it playfully.. luring it in my direction.. playing with it like a cat toys with it's prey before it pounces and breaks the poor mousie's neck.... and suddenly a giant blue laser beam ray shoots down from the sky where Illidan is ominously hovering over us... It sears the ground behind me in a path heading straight toward the innocent little bear... so I dodge outward.. jumping gleefully into the safe zone... and ( *ZAP* -19000 ).. my poor innocent bear tail gets seared right off.... I LIVE.. ..but my little toy elemental gazes at me with it's evil eye that says "I don't think so" .. and .. I .. die...
I am proud to report though.. that of the seven attempts that it took for us to take down Illidan that night, only on that attempt and one other attempt where I discovered the north line border, did we not make it through the Flame of Azzinoth kiting phase. So 5 out of 7 near perfect kiting phases courtesy of myself and our other brave and valiant fire-resist tank: Morphinicus. Not too shabby.. eh? So after a few tries to get through the final phase of the fight.. one of which the parasites went out of control at the last 3 percent left of Illidan's waning life bar.. on our seventh try for the night we finally saw him drop.... and then there was rejoicing.... So.. now what? I guess we do it all over again! But next time.. even better! (like I said in a previous post.. there is no end of the game truely)... It's all about taking on a challenge and through excellent teamwork and execution of a carefully devised plan... achieving our goals.

Winning the Game

Well, winning the game is truely a relative term, but if you /could/ win it, I guess most people would say it would involve killing the final boss in the game. Other people might consider it as gearing up with the top gear in every slot AND killing the final boss.. Yet other people might consider it achieving top PVP status or being ranked number one as a guild. Truely the "winning the game" idea is just a goal that you set for yourself. What do you do once you reach that goal? Well... you make another one and work toward that one! So in reality.. we never can really "Win The World of Warcraft" like we can win other games... Now as far as LOSING the game.. I don't think there is any way of actually LOSING, but if you /could/ lose, my son managed to do it. He had made a character (a Night Elf Druid actually) and was leveling him up, but whenever he died, he would use the spirit ressurection. After a while, he had completely run out of all forms of currency.. perhaps had only a few coppers to his name, and every single piece of gear he owned was at Zero durability... Not only that, but he had not been on the server long enough to make any friends, and I had no characters on the server to pass him any gold either. ... So this rendered him completely useless trying to fist fight spiders or bats. He couldn't even kill anything in order to regain his gold.. so all of those 4 hours was wasted and he had to start over.. LOL.. I believe Blizzard has created this game to make it so that there is no way of losing.. if you lose you might stop playing, and if you stop playing, you won't want to pay the monthly fee, and if you don't do that, then they won't make money off of you.. so we /certainly/ can't have that!

Over all.. I believe when you mosey off to bed and ponder over the events of the evening after playing online with your friends... you get a sense of accomplishment if you had a good team, and together you achieved some goal.. It is the feeling of teamwork, and comraderie at its peak. You have a sense of being needed and appreciated. Of course one should seek this type of usefulness and accomplishment in all aspects of their lives as well. When you go to work and work as a team to get the daily tasks done, it should also be followed by a "Good day's work done" feeling. When you do a favor for someone, you also have the satisfaction of having done something good, something right, something useful and your self value will increase in your own eyes and in the eyes of others as well. So why do we play this game? What is the meaning of life? Why does my daughter make such a mess in the kitchen when she is baking cookies?? Well we may never know, but perhaps they are all tied together.. Wow is another way for humans to interact.. and perhaps some of you hermits thought you didn't need human interaction, but in fact, we do.. Isolation is not truely a desireable thing.. Seeing yourself reflected off of others by hearing a simple "thank you" for helping others.. is a desirable thing for most humans... So don't forget to appreciate your friends... so they can wake up the next day ready to be even more "cool" and look forward to teaming up yet again.. And.. well.. Make that 15 dollars a month worth every cent... Blizzard will thank you later .. won't they?

Another Late Night

All this long raiding has gotten a little bear all tuckered out...
It has rendered me nearly speachless.... so my solution to this is...
How about I just post several interesting eventful screenshots?

When the phases of the moon and the earth's relative location along it's circumfrencial path aligns itself in a more verbally proliferative inducing manner, I will commit to writing long drawn out paragraphs about useful, or perhaps not so useful information for all computer addicts who might just avert their eyes in this general direction simply to absorb my extremely long run on sentences....

Coming to an insane Tally blog near you... Soon!