Wednesday, October 28, 2009

WoW: Recent Happenings

Occasionally I'm struck with an urge to chronicle the goings-on of a certain aspect of my time/space/etc. Today I had the urge to write about how my WoW (World of Warcraft) characters are doing. Since I've never done this before, it might be a good idea to mention all the characters, at least for this first time.

Quackingbob( 80 Human Warlock Destruction )

Bob was gearing up steadily. He got the Tier 8 chest piece, which really helped his DPS. He can get about 3k+ on heroic target dummies. Since Hallow's End started up he's been shelved a bit. He was able to Trick-or-Treat his way to getting the cloth helm but thats about all. He needs to run a bunch of Heroics for more Emblems of Conquest. Next up in line is the T8 head piece, some decent bracers and probably the spellslinger slippers.

On the AH side Bob's been buying cheap greens to DE and sell the mats on the AH. The money has been steady, so that's nice. The bag market is virtually dead, with netherweave cloth costing 104%+ PCT, its hard to get enough cloth to make bags in any substantial quantity. I try to do the Ebon/Spellweave and Mooncloth transmutes on every cooldown. They are also currently stocked up in the guild bank.

New development, took Bob back into Heroic: Trial of the Champion. The group was pretty good, Reminome the Gnome Mage ( who's DPS is about the same level as me in this dungeon), a blue-geared Pally tank and a decent druid healer and dps warrior. We had an early wipe, which was partly my fault for pulling aggro. We were able to finish the dungeon and I got my Boots of the Crackling Flame. Remi released right before the headless horseman went down and couldn't roll on the boots.

Hooff ( 80 Draenai Paladin Holy/Retribution )

After some random luck with the Hallow's End event, Hooff was able to get the two hardest parts of the achievement pretty easily. He got the Hallowed Helm and Sinister Squashling. Yesterday I finished the achievement up and now Hooff is known as Hooff the Hallowed. Fitting for a Paladin I think.

As for Hooff's gear, his DPS set is still much better than his healing. I want to get him the new t8 helm, but his current helm Spiked Titansteel Helm has so much hit that it would be hard to recoup that lost hit through gems. Maybe I'll wait until I can get both the t8 helm and chest, to make the re-gemming expense worth it.

His healing set still requires some work. He needs some new bracers, he's currently wearing some leather piece from Heroic Culling of Stratholme, and some a new ring ( current one is also from HCoS). Its much easier for me to chain heroics with Hooff as healing, since healers are much more in demand.

Waash ( 75 Night Elf Druid Bear/Cat )

Wash is 75, and has the Hallowed title. Him and Zoee were basically at the same point but Casey hasn't played in a while. In a single run he was able to get both the Hallowed Helm and Sinister Squashling.

I recently respec'd his Cat DPS tree to something more raid worthy. Some theorycrafting and EJ research got me a decent rotation. Its pretty complicated and takes some getting used to. I think its almost as complicated as the 3.0 Affliction Warlock "rotation" back when Affliction was the go-to raiding spec. At my best Waash can put out about 900 DPS on the Heroic target dummy. At 75 that's not terrible.

Waash's tanking spec and gear is mostly the same. A bit of EJ research shows that I should probably be using Maul more, which will be a pain. I'll probably have to respec his tanking tree again when we reach 80, whenever that is.

Waash has been steadily transmuting epic gems, I've got a proc here and there. I haven't been selling the gems lately. I'm trying to stock up so that I can get them cut and used for when my toons get some really good gear. His Alchemy is completely Maxed out while is Inscription is at 446/450. At this point the Major Inscription research is green and skill-ups are few and far between. I'm starting to try to get into the glyph business. Yesterday I spent about 400g on herbs, milled them for inks and made every glyph I could that required Ink of the Sea. I'll see how lucrative the glyph market really is for me. Looking at the prices they're anywhere from 30g to 4g a glyph. The epic Off-hands seem to sell pretty well, so I should be able to keep making those.

Hotplate ( 71 Human Death Knight Blood DPS )

Hotplate got some leveling time recently, and made it up to 71, almost 72. She's currently questing in Dragonblight, near Winterguarde Keep. I was able to get her Tidebreaker Trident from the Winterfin Murlocs, this replaced the venerable Axe of Frozen Death the Trident has slightly better stats and was super easy to acquire that it seemed worth it. Plus the animation speed of the Trident seems faster than the Axe so it gives her a more finessed effect.

Hotplate's mining is coming along nicely, she has a nice stockpile of Cobalt Ore. Her Jewelcrafting on the other hand has stagnated at 225. JC is just so expensive to level that I'm not sure its worth continuing. It would be nice to cut my own gems and have some Dragon's Tears for Hotplate but we'll see. Either way she has a nice stockpile of ore that can be prospected. Having the Tome of Cold Weather Flying has really helped to speed up leveling. I'm cutting my travel time by at least half in comparison to Waash. It also helps with being able to collect mining nodes as I go along.

I'm debating whether to get Hotplate dual-spec. If I bought dual-spec for her, her other spec would probably be tank. I'm not sure I like Death Knight tanking, of course I've never done death knight tanking either. One issue would be that Waash is supposed to be my tanking toon. But with the speed by which he's leveling I doubt he'd be 80 by the time the next expansion comes out. Also Waash has the advantage that he doesn't need to hit the defense cap. He's already un-crittable from his talents. Still, it would be a fun sight to see little Hotplate tanking a 10 foot monster.

Huntry ( 21 Draenei Hunter Beast Master )

Huntry has been converted into a glyph merchant lately. I use her to post my glyphs and run to/from the Ironforge bank. The main reason I haven't been leveling her is time, as in I don't have any. With two toons so close to 80, and two that are gearing up, I just don't have time to really level yet another toon. Though with Casey creating her Pally ( Zoeepal ), if she can get that to 21/22 then I might quest with her.

I did level Huntry to 21 so that she can get her mount, it makes it easier to get from the bank to the AH. Though with Aspect of the Cheetah, thats just fast enough for me not to bother with mounting up.

Lowbies/Assorted:
Quackbank ( 4 Human Rogue )

My banking alt, she's been with me from the very beginning. Nothing new with her, still at level 4 or 5. I did get her a spiffy Noble's Monocle and a Simple Dress. This fits in with the story that she's "retired" from her Rogue ways to live the simpler life of Banker/Merchant. That, plus I had an extra one lying around when I was leveling Bob's tailoring.

I did move her from her cozy home in Stormwind to the more exotic Ironforge, mainly because the AH and bank are a straight shot from each other.

Tempered ( 17 Orc Warrior )

Nothing new to report here, I've trick-or-treated on him once or twice, but nothing else.

Classy ( 17 Blood Elf Rogue )

Same here, nothing really to report. I do notice that people /flirt with this character way more than any other toon ( even the girls ).

Monday, October 05, 2009

CentOS and RHEL

This might be plainly obvious to some people but if you need a package for CentOS, if you can't find a specific CentOS package ( which you probably won't). Grab the corresponding RHEL package. For example if you need subversion 1.5.5 for CentOS 5.3, grab an rpm for RHEL 5.3.

Good thing about RHEL packages, the dependencies are usually in the same folder.

For example, I needed svn 1.5.5 for CentOS 5.3

Grabbed the subversion 1.5.5 package from:

http://the.earth.li/pub/subversion/summersoft.fay.ar.us/pub/subversion/latest/1.5.5/rhel5/i386/

Get the RHEL 5.3 package. Subversion also needs an updated neon package, which is nicely included in the link.

rpm -Uvh the neon package then the subversion package.

-U means upgrade.