It is Upon Us

Cata goes live in a few moments and everyone is ready to be a dick. Currently the Flight Trainer in SW is completely mobbed. MMO-Champion had the following advice: "Also, an useful reminder. Binding your "interact with target" key and using it after doing /target "NPC Name" is your only chance to quest." I didn't understand it at first. Now I do.

Decided to Tabard up to Northrend and hide. Figure should get a few dailies to turn in initially.

Blood DK Tanking

Every form of self-healing was nerfed in 4.0.3a. After some reading this largely due to PvP impacts at 85. In general, all healers took a hit. So naturally classes that had some form of self-healing became over-powered. This is Blizzard's response. It sure seems painful now but maybe it will work out in five levels. *sigh* I commented as such on this thread.

Found a decent thread on DK Tanking by someone who has been in the beta a while and even wrote a sim. More to do. But… there's always the Warrior or Paladin… :)

Out in It

Aenara decided to finish up Dinner Impossible. Needed Strand, Eye, and AV. Lost them all, of course, but it wasn't too bad. Was actually top damage in Strand, tied for second on kills. Sort of surprising yet maybe not. Moonkin are incredibly versatile and rather annoying to face.


Look at that. Horde had the rest of the damage. *sigh* Rated BGs are going to be wonderful. So tired of the slack-ass Alliance fools in our battlegroup. At least we still own Wintergrasp. *snicker*

Oh Come On

Got done with the Headless Horseman on all the toons when Aenara saw some spam in Trade Chat for Black Temple. They were on council so it would be getting the achievement done pretty quick. Trying to zone in kept erroring out with a message: “You have entered too many instances recently.” Searching the forums there was a blue post that stated: “Five instances per hour is the current limit. Please note that this is per account.” *sigh* I understand they want to limit instance farming but there's obviously a bug. I'd done HH easily six times in 30min so whatever. Maybe the LFG system gets around it but if Blizzard is going to deny access, the least they could do is provide a “XX more min until you can enter an instance” message.

Thankfully they wiped on their first attempt due to lack of healing. *snicker* Might be able to get in while they try to fine more.

Wha Happen?

More stealth nerfs inc!!*cowers in fear*

So Not Fair

Faerune got a second pair of The Horseman's Reins. *sigh* These things should really be Bind on Account.

Drop Rates or What

Trade Chat babble has mentioned that the drop rate on reins has increased. Naturally I took this with a grain of salt, yet Scheme's loot-filled pumpkin had The Horseman's Reins along with a Flimsy Male Undead Mask. Whoa! Would sure be nice to get the mount on one of the toons I'm doing Mountain o' Mounts on…

Patch Notes Official Bitching

Since the patch notes are now up on the Official Site I decided to do some bitching…

Flexible Raid Lock System
I love how they make this sound positive when it's fucking us. It should really read, "You need to choose 10man or 25man raiding. If you go with a pug and they melt after the first boss, you're fucked for the whole week. Time to find a guild, loser. Enjoy."

The Chill of the Throne effect has been removed.
In other words, if you can't get a Kingslayer title now, just fucking stop.

Ammo has been removed from the game.
More cries of anguish from the RP'ers.

Spells and abilities no longer have multiple ranks and now scale with character level.
Well about time. Why wasn't this done when Downranking was nerfed?

Resilience no longer reduces the chance a player will be critically hit by an opponent.
Wasn't mana-drain reduction also nerfed? I thought all resil did now was reduce player and player-pet caused damage.

Item Durability: cloth, leather, and mail now have as many points of durability as plate, making the repair cost on death much closer to equal for all classes.
Hahah! Now it's not just the plate tanks complaining.

Spell Alerts have been added to notify players when procs on select spells and abilities occur.
Blizz stealing more functionality from the AddOn community. Yay for built-in Power Auras!

New Raid frames are now available. They can also be used in place of the standard 5-player party interface via the User Interface options.
As Godly as Grid? Doubtful.

It's surprisingly short for a patch of this scope but then "Many class talents, spells, and abilities have been overhauled, added, or removed." does cover a lot of ground. Still can't believe Kings is going to overwrite my Mark now. Heh.

Extension Please!

Surprise of surprises, patching is extended again:



I wonder if we'll be able to raid at all tonight. Oh well. In the interim I've cleared out all my addons and the Saved Variable folder (after making back-ups, of course!) I re-downloaded those specifically flagged for 4.0 then will go back and try the ones I'd still like to use. So far I've got:

• Clique
• ShockAndAwe
• AtlasLoot
• Omen
• Pawn
• IceHUB
• Recount
• Quartz

Guess I should go look at the new WrathCalcs spreadsheet.

LFG Tool Success!

I have Aenara running around doing dailies when I get a whisper from someone named Rhialla asking if I wanted to do the Weekly. Took me completely by surprise because I'd queue'd up in the Raid Finder over two hours earlier. *snicker* Sadly I forgot to mark the Healer checkbox so I suppose I was lucky to get an invite at all. Was a bit rough as I out-geared the tank, Svennorsky, by a great deal and started pulling aggro around 80%.

It really isn't worth sitting in a city and enduring trade chat to find a raid yet I'm glad we got Anub'Rekhan Must Die! done. Aenara had 434 Frost Emblems and 188 Triumph Emblems so she doesn't really need any, but she only had 2304 emblems towards 2500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems. Sadly, when the quest was turned in, it didn't increment the count. Turns out rewards don't count as it's not looted. *sigh* Not sure I'll get that achievement since emblems will be going away next patch.

Hope Blooms

Maybe servers are slowing coming up. Sure hadn't seen this screen in a while!


Alleria isn't where I wanted to be but whatever.

It Patches Well

The application of the latest content patch" has not gone well at all. They initially estimated completion at the regular 2pm EST but everything is still offline. It's twenty minutes after when they said they'd provide another status but no word. Naturally the forums are on fire. I posted a quick "I think Ahune is fighting back. Or maybe it's one of the Ruby Sanctum guardians." on page 47 of a General Forums whiner post moments before it got locked. Checking the forum now gives a huge Battle.Net error screen:


Hehe. Awesome customer service response… too much flaming and no more forums at all!

Flame On!

The Midsummer Fire Festival started up today. Hate how these stupid events suck up my time; Blizzard really know how to keep me reeled in. Thankfully Martini, Aenara, and Sloosh already have it done. Dragging Decimate along as Favor does the Honor/Extinguish the flames things in the old world for the Mage ports. Followed the comments in Flame Warden of Kalimdor, getting them all done including Stealing Thunder Bluff's Flame. Going to save Stealing Orgrimmar's Flame for later when it's less popular and less active.

Only had one PvP encounter when Decimate and Favor got separated. Favor didn't have the flight path so she had to hoof it from the Exodar. Crossing the bridge to Bloodmyst Isle, some stupid cow warrior, Kuitrurah, charged my Pally in full tanking gear! Killing this pathetic Arms Warrior was easy. A Shadow Priest, Fynnlee, happened upon us as I dealt the killing blow. She did manage to get me to half health, but I ended up out running her with Pally speed.

The Lord Ahune encounter is the same once started. With the cross-realm LFG tool it was pretty easy to run on all my 80s except for tanking with Faerune. All of the adds are immune to Frost which is conveniently a Death Knight's primary form of threat. The cloak drops are mostly useless but it's any easy two Frost Emblems. The only character to get the updated Frostscythe of Lord Ahune was the Warrior. Of course.

More Heroic 10'ing

Martini had a fairly good night in Heroic ICC10. Got through the lower citadel without much trouble. We decided to head over to The Plagueworks where both Festergut and Rotface went down on our first attempts. The Malleable Goo on Fester was only an annoyance with proper positioning and raid awareness. The Vile Gas addition to Rotface was dealt with relatively easy. At least it seemed since I wasn't healing. *snicker*

Spent over an hour on Blood Prince Council to no avail. Took a while to get fucking Kinetic Bombs under control then we still had positioning problems. There's more to do this week for sure.

Picked up a few things this run: Shawl of Nerubian Silk, Abracadaver, and Taldron's Short-Sighted Helm. The cloak and the helm are offspec "in-case" side grades, but it appears I'll actually be using the Heroic Abracadaver. The fucking Spirit on Frozen Bonespike itemizes poorly enough for me to not use it with Bulwark of Smouldering Steel—for now. Shaman using a staff—horrible. Really ready for a Royal Scepter of Terenas II or a Tel'thas, Dagger of the Blood King. *sigh*

Back Into the Thick of It

So Martini's GM informed me last night that he needs me back in Enhancement since our regular Death Knight population has dwindled to zero. It always annoys me how he prioritizes melee DPS over the casters. Currently we don't have a Demonology Warlock for Demonic Pact, yet he hasn't asked our sole regular Lock to change from Destruction.

At the moment I can't make a compelling argument to retain my favored spec since another Elemental Shaman joined. He appears to know what he's doing plus attends regularly. Though I am doing more DPS, it's only a gear thing. Plus my Enhancement offset is nearly as good as my Elemental. So it looks like I'll be at Rogue and DK elbows again with Spirit Wolves howling.

It's been months since I've dusted off the melee gear or even thought about the Enhancement rotation… errr, priority system. Figured I needed to visit Elitist Jerks for some review. I'd noticed an Enhancement Shaman in the Druid's guild, Jinnä, do some impressive DPS that involved a lot more Fire Nova than I remembered mine ever showing.

Instead of heading directly to the Think Tank summary I started in the Class Mechanics forum where I found an interesting thread, [Enhancement] BiS gear and set-up discussion (3.3 and onward). The first thing that startled me was seeing this ability priority order:

1. Maelstrom Weapon x 5 stacks - Lightning Bolt
2. Flame Shock
3. Stormstrike if debuff not active
4. Lightning Shield if not active
5. Fire Elemental
6. Magma Totem if not active
7. Spirit Wolves
8. Shamanistic Rage
9. Earthshock
10. Stormstrike
11. Lava Lash
12. Fire Nova
13. Magma Totem
14. Lightning Shield

Good God. I have to state for the record that this kind of shit is what makes me hate Enhancement. Look at all of these fucking abilities to monitor—busy, busy, busy! Further, they have to be kept readily accessible on your bars since you have to maximize your GCD use. And naturally all this has to be done while maintaining raid awareness so you are not dying from standing in the proverbial fire. *sigh*

Whining aside, I was very surprised to see Flame Shock at the number two spot. Then I noticed that the gear list included the "caster" trinket (Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice). I'd heard of this relic being used by healers but for some reason it surprised me to see it on melee. Haste seems to be the sweet stat on all upper-geared classes regardless of role or talent specialization anymore. While I really like have my attack power break 11k with Totem of the Avalanche, I suppose I could give this a shot.

The talent build on this thread was also a little disconcerting. Glyph of Feral Spirit and Glyph of Stormstrike were familiar. I'd laughed the Glyph of Flame Shock out of Elemental use many patches ago so seeing it here made me laugh out loud. Jinnä is using Glyph of Fire Nova so I'm going to have to keep an eye on this choice. I may try to sneak in Glyph of Lava Lash or Glyph of Windfury Weapon for old time's sake.

As for the actual talents, I see extreme pains were taken at avoiding any mana conservation. Namely Elemental Focus, Shamanistic Focus, and Improved Stormstrike were not chosen. This is where I see reality clashing with theory. While Shamanistic Rage makes filling up a mana bar trivial at my gear level, it does still require something to smack for seven to ten seconds. Boss encounters don't always allow that. Yet the above priority list will be making damn sure I'm using my mana.

So while I agree with all three points in Improved Shields, I don't feel that a human dealing with latency can really make use of one point in Reverberation. Where to put this stray point? Elemental Focus and Shamanistic Focus are too specific. I considered Ancestral Knowledge for extra mana, Elemental Warding for slight damage reduction, or Totemic Focus since I'm always dropping totems. But Initially I'm going with Improved Stormstrike because it will have the most consistent use and provides the most generalized return.

I would like to peruse the standard summary in the Think Tank, but I'm currently getting a "502 Bad Gateway" error trying to access it. That's fine. It's going to take me an hour just to respec and figure out my bag space. Carrying around three entire sets of gear is difficult for a pack-rat like me. *snicker* Probably going to have to re-gem everything once I get Rawr to review things. *sigh*

Boring Borean

Conta is really into his new Death Knight, Saidar. While I really enjoyed playing my Tauren I did make an Alliance on the second account. The Dranei free heal sounded really appealing, yet I figured I would mostly PvP so I went with a Night Elf. Faerune was still sitting half-way through the intro quests so I got them all finished up and parked her in Honor Hold. She’s half Unholy and half Blood for now. Getting back to Sloosh… who was still 71 (77151/1555700).

Sent the bank alt to the IF AH and the cheapest Overcharged Capacitor I could find was 79g. Instead of my usual crying, pissing, and moaning I just bought it and moved on. Don’t have an engineer high enough to make one nor is Favor able to go out and mine the Cobalt. Sloosh was parked at the Air Strip so I wanted to log in, complete Just a Few More Things..., then move on. When the priest is leveled I’m definitely going to have Favor gather tons of ore to sell; vengeance via profit.

While I did complete The Cell, I decided to let Keristrasza rest comfortably within the Augmented Arcane Prison in my bags for a while. There were so many people around Coldarra it seemed wiser to wrap up the other Borean areas. Actually got the Nothing Boring About Borean achievement done around 7pm. Finished up by playing with the Murlocs. The Oh Noes, the Tadpoles! took forever with all the competition but it was fun to have the army of baby Murlocs following me around.

The whole DEHTA quest line was pretty amusing. The gnomes at the Air Strip made me kill mammoths for a robot; never did try to approach the druids with the “Animal Blood All Over You” debuff. As I was turning one of the quests in, a gnome rogue walked up bloody and was dead in like two hits. Gnome deaths always make me laugh yet this one was doubly amusing. The final quest to kill Harold Lane I finished up with Daryius (who I did the first failed UK run with) and his friend Midgetcaster. We were doing fine yet I wanted to use the horn anyway. The mammoth stampede was even more hilarious than the pelts that Harold was throwing at us. That line actually got Sloosh Exalted with Cenarion Expedition since she started it at 19k in Revered.

Off to Dragonblight.