The Orcs Are Coming!

The brilliance of the WoW Insider column All The World's A Stage continues this week with the second installment of the history of the races and practical advice on how to roleplay that race. Once again, I'm one of those who smiles at roleplayers when I come across them in the same way that we smile at the very elderly or the very sick... but I love the WoW lore. (Ok, dirty secret... I'd probably have a blast roleplaying... I would just never admit it or do it 24/7 like I do simply playing my toon! Shhhh!)

In any case, this week features an article describing (briefly) the history of the Orc race and how one of their kind would be feeling, going through, etc, throughout the history of Azeroth and Draenor as we know it of late.

"If you've seen Lord of the Rings, or read any other fantasy story in which orcs are portrayed, you probably think orcs are hideous humanoid monsters charging mindlessly forward to slaughter helpless innocents. Azerothian orcs are significantly different, however, with a shamanistic culture that prides honor above all other virtues."

Warlocks spreadin' their seed...

Hot, ain't it?

Seven warlocks in a Mount Hyjal raid proved to be hilariously entertaining, as waves of mobs dropped faster than I've ever seen it happen. With each warlock doing just under 4 million damage, that was quite a lot of pew pew power that we had going.

One point of contention, though, centers around seven warlocks but usually only 2 of them worrying about the need for curses.

It should go without saying that not a single one of the warlocks, no matter the quality of their gear (or lack thereof) can go full out dps without pulling aggro. So we're stuck. We're stuck sitting there doing nothing for a good 10-15 seconds from the start of the wave. The class lead I've noticed always puts a CoE on the various mobs until enough threat has been built that we can start seeding. I've picked up on that and taken care of a CoW, less melee power on these mobs definitely can't hurt the tanks as they hold on to them... less damage, less strain on the healers, less strain on the dps as they get more heals... everybody wins. But then when a curse of tongues has to be thrown in, it's once again myself or the class lead running up to do it.

What exactly are the other 5 warlocks doing in that time? Dancing in the back? Looking for epic drops beneath the trees?

Roleplaying a Human

I'm not big into roleplaying... heck, if you want to do it, great, enjoy, but it's not really for me. I do, however, love to read about the histories of the races and the various characters. All The World's A Stage latest installment concerns some much needed basic Human lore for WoW players.

"If your human character is now over 30 years old, he or she may have witnessed all these events as a child or young adult, and may carry an abiding fear of and hatred for the orcs who very nearly destroyed humanity."

Find the full article here.

Hope is Restored!

I had a lovely chat with one of the GMs during my ZA run. In fact, at some point I had to ask the raid to wait 5-10 minutes as the GM was requiring some specific information from me... thankfully they all knew my situation and had no qualms about taking a break at that moment. I wasn't so cruel that I took the break during the timed run, but only afterwards.

All the items I mentioned in an email to the GM were later restored. Here is a quick summary of the essentials:

[3] Void Crystal
[67] Badge of Justice
[22] Large Prismatic Shard
[5] Primal Nether
[20]x2 Large Brilliant Shard
[11] Primal Fire
[20]x3 Eternium Ore
[20] Primal Earth
[5] Fel Lotus
[20]x4 Adamantite Ore
_________________
[20]x5 Purple Lotus
[20]x10 Dream Dust
[20]x8 Illusion Dust
[20]x2 Greather Nether Essence
[20]x2 Greater Eternal Essence


You know what that means? I'm RICH again! YESSSSS!

Take that, hacker!

Ahem!

Still no upgrades, lost the offhand from Rage and yet another Nethervoid Cloak drop... but! This is by far my highest dps output ever without boss-damage-modifiers. Lookie the gorgeous 1444!

Death VS End-Game

So Katipunan's US raid team is working out nicely so far. For once I've joined a guild on the upswing of things instead of in its swan song. They have awesome tanks and great healers, and oddly their dps is what is restricting them from going further. I have no doubt that any of the main tanks I've seen (Paladins/Warriors with 17.5k unbuffed, Druids with 14.5k out of bear form) can pretty much tank any end-game boss. But the dps needs work.

Last night's run through SSC (Lurker / Leo / FLK) went really smoothly through Lurker. Not a single death through trash + boss downing. Then a couple silly wipes (tank runs into a group of mobs while we're taking a 5 min break... then someone runs too close to the group of mobs to rezz the last person on recovery... then a wipe on Leo at 10% as a lot of people were doing it for first time and didn't understand how to do it. But that was pretty much it. So pretty smooth. I wasn't on CoE and got about 1250 dps. I'm not sure how, as I've never really had it that high on a consistent level without a bunch of aoe groups. I'm not complaining, and neither is the guild! I ended up 2nd on the overall damage meters as we did FLK while I was passing out and I would constantly lose conciousness for 15-20 seconds before snapping back to and shadow bolting the totems or the bosses some more. Ended up with 900 dps on the last boss and a hunter who decided to go nuts passed me on total charts. But I'm awesome, I decided.

Now, is it worth passing out at my desk to see end game content before Wrath? So far, yes. I might find a way to make this easier on myself, but yeah, a few weeks of it won't kill me.

How Not To Recruit

(warning: long post, not for the weak and feeble!)

We often have posts on blogs explaining how to apply to guilds. Rarely do we have one giving advice to guilds on how to recruit. I suppose that's because deep down, we're all loot whores and will accept entry into any guild we can... BUT, sometimes it just doesn't work. Let me recap a fun scenario from yesterday.

I am currently guildless. I haven't found a suitable guild since my return to Coilfang. I pug quite often with our various raiding guilds and have been used as a filler since I'm guildless and agree not to make a fuss about loot. In the end, I'm using it as exposure more than anything.

With my current gear, I top out around 1150 dps if I'm firing at all cylinders and there are no damage modifiers nor any damage mitigation on a boss. I have 20% spell crit, and depending on my gear I have 136 to 191 spell hit. I've found that for some reason, I only get about 2.8% of my shadow bolts resisted against bosses, even though the numbers point towards 6%. For that reason, I've stayed at 136 hit but maxxed out my shadow damage at 1206 self buffed.

I'd say it's a good tradeoff. To attain 191 spell hit (the most I can do right now), I would need to sacrifice roughly 110 spell damage and 2% crit. I'm no theorycrafter, but I've found through trial and error that equipping the gear I have now gives me more dps, and that maxxing out my spell hit actually diminishes my final damage output. Why? Ignoring the precise numbers, it's like this: having 2.8% resisted out of 100% of my dps is better than having 0% resisted out of 90% of my dps. Follow the logic? Right, I do too. And I understand the need to cap spell hit as a warlock asap, but again, I think my logic is pretty good and I back it up with personal experimentation on raid bosses.

Anyhow, on to the main event!

Saturday, I joined a TK run with one of the server's more progressed guilds, and through trash + VR I ended up 2nd in damage. Around 1200 dps. Not excellent, but good. Main thing is: I never died. Others with better dps died, a lot. They got hit by orbs, they let orbs hit others as they ran for their lives.


Sunday, I joined the same guild for an SSC run. Through trash + Lurker, I ended up 6th in total damage. Let me explain this one, though. There was a group where 3 better geared warlocks were put in. They had a shaman and a boomkin in that group. That's a totem to increase their spell damage by 101 and an aura to increase their crits by 5%. On top of that, they tell me "Hey Latus, put up CoE". Ok. The main warlock, t6, topped the raid with 1550 dps. The t5-t6 warlock was a close second with around 1520. The third warlock, the class lead in the guild, had 1240 dps. I had 900.



The caveat? I was 6th in damage, with the class lead having done less than 50% of my damage. Again, let's keep in mind, they've got a bonus +101 spell damage and +5% spell crit, on top of having better gear. Two of them died on Lurker on the first or second spout, BOTH times we wiped. We got him on the 3rd attempt. The top Warlock was a beast, he was insane, doing 750k damage on the boss each attempt. I did about half of what he did, but on top of being assigned to CoE, no buff group and worst gear, I was also the one fearing nagas while they all dps'ed (assuming they survived that long!). I'm not saying I should have stood toe to toe with the t5-t6 warlocks, but I definitely eclipsed the moron that called himself the class lead.
At some point, the split second Lurker resurfaced, the class lead screamed out on vent : "WHY IS THERE NO COE ON HIM!" I figured it was obvious that it was because the curse is removed during the submerge phase, and as I was furiously casting shadow bolts to finish off the naga dude that had started molesting the healers, it would take perhaps 5 seconds before Lurker would get his CoE again upon reappearing. In fact, I wonder why he even had Lurker targetted instead of focusing on getting rid of the adds along with the rest of the dps. The adds, he would have noticed, wiped as on the first attempt at 1%. Oh wait, he wouldn't have noticed, he had died on the first spout! Nonetheless, I eloquently responded on raid channel with "?" and just went about my business, CoE'ing, then bolting.

Raid ends, we all go home, I'm happy overall with my performance based on what I described above. Suddenly, the top dps of the raid, a hunter named Fatimah, whispers me "Hey are you looking to join a guild". I'm not particularly impressed with the efficiency of the raids I've seen this weekend (3 hours to down one boss is unacceptable, and 20 minutes to recover from a wipe is obscene), but what the hell, let's see exactly how it would work out. I ask when they raid, what times... they're a weekend raiding guild. Sure, I can join and see if I stay home in the coming weekends... if so, why not? I respond finally that yeah, I'm interested, send me an invite. Fatimah: "hang on speak to Razielz hes class lead". Ok, sure, they like to have class leads inguild, why not.

Razielz: "Hey what's your gear like?" I find this question odd, he was just in a raid with me, why is he asking me again? I know exactly what everyone's gear was like in my raid, based on their performance and based just on me inspecting them as we wait around. I answer what it's like, the sp.dmg, crit and hit. "Cap for warlocks is 202". He's referring to the spell hit cap. Yes, I know, I respond. "Can u get it to 202". I'm beginning to see how this is going to go, but I play along for now. "No", I say, "Not without at least 1 drop most likely in TK". "Are u scryer" "No, I'm Aldor." "ouch" "Listen, I looked into it, and the dps I get despite getting resisted 2-3% of the time is better than if I elevated my spell hit to the max and sacrificed a lot of spell damage." I added, "Like in the entire SSC run, I got resisted 2.9% of the time, which really isn't the end of the world." And then silence. I realize he logged off. Amused, I respond to Fatimah, who also isn't there anymore. A few minutes later, Fatimah comes on and whispers me "Warlock class lead said no and he decides on new warlocks" "Oh? How come?" "He says ur not geared enough and not willing to listen to a much better geared and more experienced player". Wow, ok... that's a lot of psychoanalysis from Raziels based on an exchange of 5 whispers before he qq'd without saying a word.

I respond, "How so? I was 2nd in overall damage in Saturday's raid and 6th today." "He said you're not geared enough sorry don't take it personally". Intrigued, and realizing this is like trolling the wow forums, I pressed on. "But that makes no sense. Only 4 members of your guild were ahead of me on the damage charts in 2 raids combined, and I never died on trash nor on bosses save for full wipe." "He also said your spell hit is not high enough" I explained to him what I explained to myself and to you all earlier in this post. "Go on any warlock forums they say you have to have 202 spell hit" "Ok, so you didn't understand a thing I just said, did you. All right, so anything else you want to add here?" "Yeah he said you also have a attitude problem and you dont want to take advice from someone who knows much much more than you" Wow. "For someone who knows so much about the game, Razielz spent a lot of time dead on every pull, fell in the water, and just didn't dps." "You dont know anything hes an amazing player i've seen him pull 1500 dps on Hyjal bosses" "Yes... that's because there's AoE attacks for about 16 minutes prior to the boss, every warlock should be way up there on the dps charts."

"No he had 1500 dps on boss only" "That's impossible with his gear, I'm sorry." "Omg i saw it ok" "Look, I'm not here to argue with you that you don't know anything about the warlock class, I'm only saying that his gear allows for 1150ish dps tops." There was silence, I did not want to let go of making him feel silly yet, so I persisted: "By the way, perhaps you don't realize, but I was the only warlock in that group that did not have a boomkin and a shaman in my group to help my damage and dps." "Your not hit capped thats all it is you need to learn your class" "Ok, so would you be more impressed if I was spell hit capped but had done half the damage I did? Because that's exactly what your warlock class lead did and ended up in the bottom 3 on the damage meters. Is that the kind of player you're looking for?" "He is much better than you" "I'm sure he is, but he did less than half my damage, and he died a lot like a noob does." "It's not all about the damage charts!" "I know, absolutely! So why is the spell hit such a problem then if its not about the damage charts?" "Its a problem because you got resisted 5 times on Lurker that's 15k damage... 15k is a lot when we wipe with boss at 1%" "Yeah, you're right... so tell me, how much damage did the other two warlocks do that attempt? I see a combined output of 24000 damage, they seem to have died on the first spout. Think that helped us down him or was it just my 5 resisted bolts?" "If you didn't get resisted he probably wouldve died." "Probably not, since those 5 resists were spread out over 3 attempts, btw, but again, you think your dying guild members helped the raid?"

At this point he actually started insulting me, to which I responded, "Don't take it personally, it's just a game." He blew up at me. After a while of me not responding, I caved in to my dark side and tried a diplomatic approach to mock him, "Look, sorry if we got out of hand here, you're a great raider, so is Razielz I'm sure, and you guys have a good steady guild. I wish you all luck, and I'm available to help you out when need be. But one more thing, what was wrong with my attitude?" And the moron took the bait. Like a big fat oaf he took it. "Its just that you have to remember when your trying to get into a guild that you're the one who wants to get in and you want to make a good impression, not the other way around." "HMM!" I said..HMM! "You're the one who approached me about joining your guild. I never asked to join you guys, and your class lead started things off with me by qq'ing on me without giving me any answers, then you took over and implied I'm an idiot who knows nothing. And you tell me I'm the one with the wrong attitude?"

I never heard back from him. :(

Ironically, the next day I got invited to the currently top progressed guild to join their core raiding squad since they lost one of their dps to a server transfer, and one of the established members remembered running a few heroics with guildless me. Downed VR, Solarian and was top 3 in damage and pumped out 1250 dps, second only to one of their warlocks' 1450. Hmm, inadequate indeed!

Any tool can write about things he knows!

The real difficulty is in writing about things you don't know much about! In the world of PVP, I firmly believe that taking a break even for a week dulls your skills. That's what I did after my pvp intensive last weekend, I did a total of 1 battleground since then and 0 arena matches. That doesn't bode well for actually writing about how I pvp or how anyone should do it. I'll probably get back into it and finally write my useless tips and tricks!

At this point, I'm realizing that new bloggers will find it tough heading into the last months before WotLK.

No, this isn't a qq post because I'm unhappy with anything here or anything of the sort. If I qq, I do it with a much bigger ooooompfffff! This is more about the reality of establishing a proper blog filled with useful information that hasn't yet been established or that people still care about.

Anywhere between 2 and 4 months to go before Wrath. Do people really still care, en masse, about how to gear their characters for the best T4-level raids? Or how to get the most pewpew without being a hardcore raider? How to waste hour upon hour of their playing time to get a tailoring set, a blacksmithing set, a leatherworking set? While there are of course exceptions, and people naturally aim high when they play, for the vast majority of players, the answer is "no, they don't care about it all that much."

They will focus more on battlegrounds, arenas and farm-status raids than on progression. New characters will gear up through arenas unless they get into a Karazhan run, if they're lucky a Gruul's run. Sure, friends of end-game raiders will occasionally get carried through higher content and gear up that way, but overall, the drive to get 375 tailoring to get a shadoweave set is probably no longer as prevalent as it used to be because hey, why bother so hard when it'll all be replaced within 5 levels. (Yeah yeah, won't be the same as with the BC gear replacement, but let's be realistic, by level 75 you should be sporting new gear no matter how well off you were at 70!)

So what do I blog about? Simple, the same I've always done on other forums and message boards: everything. That doesn't translate into a journal of any kind, but it does involve things I personally experience or hear others experience because, well, what the heck would I write about otherwise!

And if through my ramblings some people can get any kind of advice, so be it!

Also, I figure this might as well be a joint effort, so I'll open it up to all the people who migrated to WoW from the previous game we played, Achaea, which, to warn you... is a text roleplaying game. If they feel like posting anything at any point, expect to read their ramblings too!

Boo-ya-ka!

On My Command, Unleash... what the hell?

Let me preface the following pieces by saying I'm an experienced pvp'er, in terms of my character's life. I've been involved in it since I started playing and love every moment of it. I didn't get into arenas, however, until late season 3 other than maybe 40 games much earlier that allowed me to get my s2 caster dagger (which I don't use anymore).

I've joined 2v2 and 3v3 teams with friends. Rogue/Warlock for the 2s, Warrior/Warlock/Priest for the 3s. The 2v2 team is experienced in arenas now, the 3v3 is not, only me.

I promise I usually won't write whole entries about some experience of mine or other, but in this case, I think they will illustrate what a lot of people go through or what a lot of people should go through in their arenas to eventually excel.

This should have been written Monday and Sunday, but thanks to El Hackero (bastard), I'm only getting to it now. Brief introduction complete, let's get ready to pvp-write!

Nuclear Winter

I'm recovering from the hacker. I don't like the hacker. If I met him, I'd buy him a beer (or most likely a pizza and pop, since I doubt he's 21) and pat him on the back for a job well done... just to make him feel like crap at seeing how some of us can be the bigger men in these situations. I won't comment too much on the hacking other than be perplexed at how it was done, since I don't remember installing any new programs or clicking any new sites in the last week... I'll assume the keylogger was imbedded in one of the addons I got long ago, and the hacker just took his time cashing in so as to deflect attention away from which addon could have caused it. In any case, I caught him part way through the act and he was an amateur, not having changed the password as a first step. I salvaged some of my items, reported a ticket and am in the process of having my stuff restored. I formatted my hard drive, changed the security on my wireless, had my password reset for my WoW account and for good measure changed my passwords in my email and other programs/websites I might have used in the last few weeks. I'm also much selective about which addons I am using this time around. Xperl, Omen, Recount, TrinketMenu, DBM, Proximo 2.2, SpellAlerter. This is as barebones as I've ever gone, but hey...

As I wait for full account gloriousness again, I've gotten a bit more involved with my new guild's summertime woes: lots of raw, undergeared recruits with less and less experienced geared veterans. The guild leadership is fairly raw, being in command for the first time, and they're losing their cool at the situation. In fact, for the first time they have realized that there should be requirements to raiders. No more +900 healing Holy Priests in Mount Hyjal, no more mage dps decked out in quest-reward greens and blues being told to tank in Gruul's.

The official decree passed down to the guild plebs is thus:

"If you show up to my raid with green gear, or gear not enchanted, or without proper potions, or unrepaired, you're being removed from the raid. If it happens twice, you're being removed from the guild.

Ridiculous, if you ask me. First of all, there are times when greens are the last remaining piece on someone's gear. My own Holy Priest, for instance, is pushing 1800 healing with a green wand, just because that is the best healing wand available until later 25 man raids. I've seen plenty of fully epic Priests with only 1500-1600 +healing. Who will you take? The "purple" priest or the one who has studied the gear and realizes the best possible game he can bring to the raid involves that green piece? What about dps trinkets? A lot of people will have level 70 quest rewards because they make most sense. An affliction warlock using a green trinket that gives him +26 spell damage is much better off than an affliction warlock using a reputation reward blue trinket which only gives him some +crit on equip, like Xiri's Gift. Sure, it's a blue trinket, and shares the same cooldown... and even has the same 1m30s cooldown... AND the cooldown buff is much better than the green trinket's buff. But it provides spell crit, useless for an affliction warlock, whereas the green provides spell damage, much more useful. A constant +26 spell damage is much more beneficial in the long run. If I know an affliction warlock is debating between the two, I'll suggest the green. Green is UGLY and HURTS THE EYES... but it's not always worst when you consider what you have available to you.

The same applies to all classes. There are times when you just get unbelievably unlucky with drops to replace that very good green. What guilds, like mine, should be doing is not limiting access to raids based on the color of gear but on the quality. While someone with all greens will not cut it, no matter how much time they spent picking that gear out, someone with an assortment of various quality pieces of gear will more often than not be more than suited.

The actual stats on your gear, and your total stats, reflect whether you're suited to a raid or not, not the color you are sporting. Warriors, do you have 490+ defense? Yes, great, as long as your healers are competent, you should be able to tank Karazhan. Do you have green boots of the Champion, and a green belt of the Champion? Great, those are truly amazing tanking pieces most of the time with huge stamina boosts and even bigger defense boosts, almost unnaturally high ones for green gear (**links coming soon**). Warlocks, can you showcase more than 750-800 shadow damage? You can dps Karazhan. Stats, not gear quality. Granted, the better quality gear, the better stats, but not always. That is something raid and guild leaders need to be aware of.

haxxored :(

Logged in today to find my stuff gone from all my chars, including most of the enchanting mats I've been writing about. In the process of having my account restored. Yay :(

I shouldn't guesstimate

It appears I was horribly wrong in the previous entry. 2000 gold total would be a great price to pay. I've bought most of the mats to get to 300 enchanting, and I find myself down about 1000g. I still need to spend near 500 for the illusion and dream dusts. I suppose my only comfort is that for the past year I have been sending all my greens to the same disenchanter who should probably have such a large stock of lvl 60-70 mats that I won't need to spend a dime on them.

Of course, it'll turn out that enchanter probably sold them already and I'm screwed!

Anyhow, I'm now farming Stratholme to make back some pretty pennies and to get the remainder of what I need. You know what I've discovered? Destro locks need about 2 minutes between pulls in their. I need my voidwalker to be able to aoe taunt so I can SoC the skellies up and blast the group to hell. That's a 2 minute cooldown. DO NOT LIKE.

Instead, I'm trying out this guy's suggestion found in this post. He advises the best warlock farming technique is insta-cast dots and siphon life coupled with sac'ing my voidwalker for even more health regeneration. Ok, sounds good in theory. And my 14k self buffed health in pvp gear probably won't hurt either. If not, I can always switch to the shadoweave set I have to allow for an extra health regen of 2% of all damage dealt. I'm pretty sure the pvp set will be better.

/2 wtb 1 spell damage, pst.

What is the price that casters will pay for a single point of spell damage? Apparently, I value it around 85 gold. That's since I'm assuming getting from 1 to 375 enchanting will cost me roughly 2000g. All that just to get this gem of an enchant, Spell Power. Yes, 2000 gold for a total of +24 spell damage.

So worth it.

And ok, fine, I'm estimating based on nothing but a wild guess! But it'll be around there, 85g and a lot of work farming other mats that I didn't buy. Coilfang is ridiculously overpriced for enchanting mats.

Now, while I generally agree with people who don't want to hear too much about WotLK, I believe we can't be caught completely unprepared. I had mining up until now, but when I saw that enchanters would be getting the ability to make epic wands with spell crit and spell power, I was bought over and dumped that mining. I need to be 375 enchanting by the time WotLK hits, or I'll never be bothered to farm the mats and level it instead of focusing on the 70-80 grind. And not only the wands, you have the ring enchants doubling in value, to a whopping +24 spell power EACH. +48 spell power free for me, that nobody but other enchanters can get. CRAAAAZY!

So currently I sit at 155 enchanting and am stocking up on mats for the push to 225, when I'll buy the mats 'till 270 and then farm up a storm in Stratholme.

And why does Wowhead not have links to those enchants yet!