Just ran this HEROIC with the guild. Yesterday I got enough upgrades from normal dungeons to qualify for Heroics ( iLvl 329 average). I barely squeaked by. I didn't consider myself at all ready to actually heal heroics. Today some guys from the guild asked if I'd heal a heroic for them. I told them that I just got to 329 and that I probably wasn't geared for it yet, but said I'd give it a shot anyway. We ended up in Halls of Origination, which I hadn't even run on normal yet!
It went very well. We one-shot all bosses. In fact our only wipe was 3 trash pulls into the instance. I lagged or had a brain fart and tried to keep a dying DPS up. The tank got an extra mob on him and started dropping fast. A dps and the tank dropped, while we had 2 mobs still up. We ping-ponged one of the mobs between DPS until it was dead ( it was pretty close already), then the mage polymorphed the other mob. We were then able to wait until the tank and 2 dps were able to run back in. Guess technically we didn't wipe, but other than that it was groovy.
Impressions
My first impressions of heroics? They're SOO much harder than Wrath heroics. To be honest Wrath heroics were hard at first, but these are at the level of Wrath raids. I truely felt like I was in a raid ( and not just cause it took 2+ hours to do the heroic). The trash pulls had to be CC'd, and I was on my toes the whole time.
Interrupts are crucial. In one of the fights (Temple Guardian Anhuur) its absolutely required that there be an interrupt capable DPS to do the fight well. We happed to get a compitent PUG DK with us. He did very well and stayed up on the platform on his own. He was even able to keep himself up with Death Strikes until the ground phase was done and I could sprint back to heal him up. To Riakk of Wyrmrest Accord, you were awesome. He did very well considering that was also his very first heroic.
A lot of fights required more twitch healing than I thought it would. A few times I absolutely had to use Flash of Light because anything other than a Holy Shock + 3HP Word of Glory wouldn't have been quick enough and hit for hard enough to make it.
Mana
Mana was a much bigger issue in Heroics than in Normals. With casting Judgement on every CD, and heavily favoring my mana-efficient spells, I was able to heal pretty well. I'd have around 30% of my mana left at the end of a fight. But if ever started to neglect casting Judgement my mana would plummet and I would be OOM very quickly.
Also, if I ever let the tank get too far down, it takes an extraordinary amount of mana to catch up. I had to do it a few times and it wasn't fun. Good choice in healing spells was important as well. Sometimes everyone is just taking so much damage that you NEED to use your AOE heals. Being a pally healer having AOE heals is new to me and as such under stress I go back to the furious whack-a-mole style healing that's ingrained in my muscle memory. In some situations this was simply not an option. Holy Radiance was very very useful. When everyone was getting low and I just absolutely needed to do a crazy amount of healing, there's nothing popping Guardian of Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, Holy Radiance, then a 3HP Light of Dawn towards a melee heavy group. The entire screen lights up with green number and the little green bars shoot up like jack's beanstalk. Its a sight to see. Of course you hope this is towards the end of the fight because its difficult to regen enough mana to be useful much longer.
All in all it was a good experience, and I gained some upgrades. There really is nothing than a trial by fire to hone your skills and see how you do. If Heroics are already so epic-ally raid like, how are the raids going to be?
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
[WoW IC] Lunitari out on her own
Lunitari, Apprentice Mage, - Sunstrider Isle
Taking a break today from working. Thats right, I'm working. I decided that I'm not going to let Nuii or Soli have all the fun. I'm gonna strike out on my own. Of course I haven't TOLD them this, but they're both away for work for at least a week so I can do what I want. I decided to start out slow, so I made my way back towards the Mage School, on Sunstrider Isle. This time I took the Windrunner service, got there in fraction of the time.
Currently I'm doing odd jobs, tending to whatever needs tending. The scourge are still everywhere so there's plenty to do. I've also done some training from Magi Sunstriker. My power has steadily improved, and yesterday I decided to focus on the Frost aspect of magecraft. The first spell I trained for was to summon my own Water Elemental. Unlike the Earth and Fire Elementals that Shaman's are able to conjure, mage summoned Water Elementals are allowed to stay on our plane for much longer. Whether this is an inherent ability of Water Elementals or because of the Mage summoning, I don't know.
Communicating with the Water Elemental seems almost harder than learning to summon. As far as I can tell, its the same Elemental every time. He ( or she? ) seems to be able to pick up strong emotions from me, but direct communication is more difficult. Mistress Garidel says that eventually I will be able to speak with the Elemental intuitively, but for now its mostly just him protecting me when I run into trouble.
Work is going pretty well. I've been helping out Starbreeze Village mostly. They're closer to the remaining scourge than other towns, so the fighting there is a bit more common. Its not terrible, there aren't overwhelming hordes of scourge set to pounce on the town. The local militia tends to keep the numbers low enough that travelers aren't in too much danger. Still, sometimes I have to go at it alone and I'm glad I have my elemental with me.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Malware and Blue Screens
Currently the den has felt more like a triage center for computer than a place of gaming and merriment. A few days ago my desktop gets some spyware on it. By "my desktop gets" I mean that I was browsing on the seedier side of the internet, where I knew I really shouldn't be going, and ended up clicking on a dialog box. I'm pretty sure I said "no" to whatever it was that popped up, but I don't think that mattered. "System Tools 2001" stealth-installed and then proceeded to "Scan" my computer. Eventually the system is unusable. I'm able to get it removed by booting into safe mode and installing malwarebytes.
Still, I wasn't completely satisfied that Squirrel( yes all computers in the house have a name, as they should). So I set to work backing up and reformatting the system, just to be sure. As the reinstall is progressing, I work on Fiance's computer. I decide that its defenses need some bolstering so I proceed to grab a "few" anti-spyware/malware/firewall programs. Get those installed, a few quick scans. I fire up WoW and merrily quest. Everything is fine for a few hours until I switch to my lowbie mage. I start to quest and BAM Blue Screen of Death. I find that odd, but I chalk it up to doing too many things at once ( I was still scanning as I was playing). I fire it up again and start to quest, 10 minutes later another blue screen. I disable the newly installed programs, but same result.
At this point Squirrel is back up and running, I copy over the WoW folder from the backup and try playing there. Almost instantly I get a blue-screen. Wow... that was bad. As I'm googling to find a way to remidy this, it blue-screens even while NOT in WoW.
I think I'm going to reformat Squirrel yet again, and this time not install anything but the bare essentials. I'm pretty sure its just software. If it was just one computer failing then I could see that it might possibly be hardware, but both at once?
Still, I wasn't completely satisfied that Squirrel( yes all computers in the house have a name, as they should). So I set to work backing up and reformatting the system, just to be sure. As the reinstall is progressing, I work on Fiance's computer. I decide that its defenses need some bolstering so I proceed to grab a "few" anti-spyware/malware/firewall programs. Get those installed, a few quick scans. I fire up WoW and merrily quest. Everything is fine for a few hours until I switch to my lowbie mage. I start to quest and BAM Blue Screen of Death. I find that odd, but I chalk it up to doing too many things at once ( I was still scanning as I was playing). I fire it up again and start to quest, 10 minutes later another blue screen. I disable the newly installed programs, but same result.
At this point Squirrel is back up and running, I copy over the WoW folder from the backup and try playing there. Almost instantly I get a blue-screen. Wow... that was bad. As I'm googling to find a way to remidy this, it blue-screens even while NOT in WoW.
I think I'm going to reformat Squirrel yet again, and this time not install anything but the bare essentials. I'm pretty sure its just software. If it was just one computer failing then I could see that it might possibly be hardware, but both at once?
[WoW IC] Hooff
Traveler's Journal, Illustious Grand Master Paladin, Hooff
Day 180
Well, I'm still here. I'm still me, I think. I've been in this land for 180 days now, and things have certainly been interesting. When Rhonin first approached me about this assignment, I didn't think it would turn out like this. The one constant has been that I don't know when or even if, I'll ever get to go home.
At least I'm not alone, theres about a dozen other warriors gathered here. Some I've worked with before, a fellow Paladin, Nib, a hunter named Kess and others. They also went through the "program" with Rhonin. There are also others from other lands. Many were able to keep their original forms, most from my homeland were not. I have taken the form of a Blood Elf. Valen help-me, I've had to become one of them. The fact that these Blood Elves aren't the ones that committed the atrocities against my people is of little comfort. They've committed atrocities against other peoples, just happens to not be mine.
Why I've come is still not clear to me. Rhonin mentioned that there is a coming evil, and that this land was in need of warriors. I naturally thought of the Lich King, infact we did aid in storming his Citadel. My batallion fought for and defended Valithria Dreamwalker. Our warriors were able to keep the Scourge at bay while the healers tended to the great dragon's wounds. Eventually the green dragon was well enough to move and was able to escape. We also faced the undead wyrm Sindragosa, but repeatedly she was able to repel our advances. There were heavy casualties but we were able to escape with our lives.
I heard days later, while recovering from my wounds that another Batallion was able to kill the Lich King, and the war was over. After such a long campaign ( both here and at home), it was almost bittersweet to not have had a direct hand in his downfall.
Since then the scourge has been steadily declining. Not all attacks have ceased but their forces are on the decline. It seems without their master, the scourge are content to hold onto whatever lands they've conquered. It will take years to reclaim what was lost, but it will get done.
I'm headed back "home". The warriors from home, as well as other distant lands have formed a guild of sorts. We are few, but it helps to keep ties to what you still have. We have a guild office in Orgrimmar. Apparently to be recognized by Thrall as a "sanctioned" guild, then you must have an office. It consists mostly of a table, a small chair, and a sign in the window that reads "Out". The only time the office is ever occupied is when we have a meeting, which is few and far between. Each of the members have their own residences in other horde controlled areas. I've taken to staying at an Inn in Silvermoon. While I have no love for Blood Elves and their precious city, they do have the most comfortable of beds.
Day 180
Well, I'm still here. I'm still me, I think. I've been in this land for 180 days now, and things have certainly been interesting. When Rhonin first approached me about this assignment, I didn't think it would turn out like this. The one constant has been that I don't know when or even if, I'll ever get to go home.
At least I'm not alone, theres about a dozen other warriors gathered here. Some I've worked with before, a fellow Paladin, Nib, a hunter named Kess and others. They also went through the "program" with Rhonin. There are also others from other lands. Many were able to keep their original forms, most from my homeland were not. I have taken the form of a Blood Elf. Valen help-me, I've had to become one of them. The fact that these Blood Elves aren't the ones that committed the atrocities against my people is of little comfort. They've committed atrocities against other peoples, just happens to not be mine.
Why I've come is still not clear to me. Rhonin mentioned that there is a coming evil, and that this land was in need of warriors. I naturally thought of the Lich King, infact we did aid in storming his Citadel. My batallion fought for and defended Valithria Dreamwalker. Our warriors were able to keep the Scourge at bay while the healers tended to the great dragon's wounds. Eventually the green dragon was well enough to move and was able to escape. We also faced the undead wyrm Sindragosa, but repeatedly she was able to repel our advances. There were heavy casualties but we were able to escape with our lives.
I heard days later, while recovering from my wounds that another Batallion was able to kill the Lich King, and the war was over. After such a long campaign ( both here and at home), it was almost bittersweet to not have had a direct hand in his downfall.
Since then the scourge has been steadily declining. Not all attacks have ceased but their forces are on the decline. It seems without their master, the scourge are content to hold onto whatever lands they've conquered. It will take years to reclaim what was lost, but it will get done.
I'm headed back "home". The warriors from home, as well as other distant lands have formed a guild of sorts. We are few, but it helps to keep ties to what you still have. We have a guild office in Orgrimmar. Apparently to be recognized by Thrall as a "sanctioned" guild, then you must have an office. It consists mostly of a table, a small chair, and a sign in the window that reads "Out". The only time the office is ever occupied is when we have a meeting, which is few and far between. Each of the members have their own residences in other horde controlled areas. I've taken to staying at an Inn in Silvermoon. While I have no love for Blood Elves and their precious city, they do have the most comfortable of beds.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
[WoW] Healing thoughts
Miss Medicina made a comment on her come-back post that got me thinking. Here's the original post She's Alive.
The comment was that she was having to re-adjust to healing again from the hiatus from WoW. Specifically she remarked that "I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean." I couldn't agree more. I've really started to notice this when I'm healing the new dungeons ( still on normal as I haven't reached 85 yet). The health pools are quite massive, even at pre-85. A guildie tank at 82 had 70k health, an 84 DK DPS had 85k+. With healthpools that massive, even our big heals won't make a dent if the target is <40% health.
I think this is one of the big causes of healers feeling very underpowered. Personally, when I heal the big green crits are nice, but they're not my main focus. My main focus is how much of that little green bar filled up after my heal. So even though we're healing for huge amounts, since the bars aren't refilling near as quickly as they used to, it FEELS like we're weak.
This also contributes to the feeling of OOM that many healers have complained about in the forums. What do you do when your last heal didn't bring the green bar up high enough? You cast it again and again until the bar is comfortably full.
Don't let it fall
The way I've handled this is actually opposite of what Blizzard was telling us we would be doing in Cataclysm. I'm topping off more than normal. More specifically, I'm using my smallest and/or most efficient heal, and topping everyone off as soon as I see that the heal won't just be 80% overheal. For pallies this is Holy Shock/Word of Glory on cooldown, or Holy Light if needed. In a perfect setup I would time the perfect heal, with the perfect cast time, to do as little overheal as possible. But since we're all still learning these fights I'm giving up some overhealing in order to keep the healthpools up in the 80-90% range.
This keeps me used to seeing smaller changes in the healthpool, and reduces the frantic heal spam when someone's health is in the 30% range. Once I get into heroics I'm sure I'll have to alter my strategy a bit, but for now this seems to work well. This is especially useful in pugs where, to be honest, I don't trust the DPS or even the tank to blow defensive cooldowns when they're in trouble. I'll be more adventurous in a guild run, but any group from the DF means I'm on my guard.
Mana regen
Since the server transfer, I haven't had a chance to go back to my old server and try healing on my shaman, so I can really only comment on Paladin, and to a lesser extent, lowbie Priest healing. But Blizzard seems to have built an offensive mechanic to allow healers to regen some mana. Priests have their Smite + Archangel combo, but I have yet to see real gains from it. My priest is stuck at around level 50, so I can't comment on how well this regen works.
For Paladins, being a hybrid class, there seems to be some intended, and possibly unintended synergy between our offensive abilities and mana regen/conservation.
1. Judgements: Judging restores 15% of base mana. Thats a lot considering the cooldown and cost of our judgement spell. Not only are we doing a small bit of damage to the boss, refreshing our Haste buff, but we're also getting mana back. At 83, with a mix of t10 and cata quest blues/greens I'm getting back about 6% of my mana per judgement.
2. Divine Plea: Our old mana regen. Blizzard nerfed it like crazy, but it does still give back some mana. Watch out for the healing debuff though. I usually cast it more in the beginning of the fight, when damage hasn't ramped up yet. Also useful for trash pulls, instead of drinking.
3. Crusader Strike: Yes, it requires being in melee range, something no other healer would dare. But we're paladins, wearing plate, with more defensive cooldowns than some tanks ( sorry warriors ). CS won't actually return you mana, but it will gurantee a holy power charge. If you can position yourself in a semi-safe area where you can melee on a mob ( I personally go behind a caster mob, or slightly back of the melee hitting the boss), you can CS on cooldown significantly increasing the rate at which you can Word of Glory or Light of Dawn. Even a single CS gives you a free heal.
Also, this works well with Holy Radiance. Most pally healers would probably use Holy Radiance by sitting next to the casters. They can cast holy radiance to heal the casters, and use Light of Dawn to AOE the melee. I turned this backwards. I sit next to the melee, and Light of Dawn the casters. Since the casters tend to like to spread out, this fits with the cone targeting of Light of Dawn.
Obviously this won't work for every boss, and in some bosses it would be bad news. For these normal dungeons its working well, as long as the boss doesn't have a stomp or anything. I'll keep you guys posted if and when this thing backfires on me.
Happy Healing.
The comment was that she was having to re-adjust to healing again from the hiatus from WoW. Specifically she remarked that "I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean." I couldn't agree more. I've really started to notice this when I'm healing the new dungeons ( still on normal as I haven't reached 85 yet). The health pools are quite massive, even at pre-85. A guildie tank at 82 had 70k health, an 84 DK DPS had 85k+. With healthpools that massive, even our big heals won't make a dent if the target is <40% health.
I think this is one of the big causes of healers feeling very underpowered. Personally, when I heal the big green crits are nice, but they're not my main focus. My main focus is how much of that little green bar filled up after my heal. So even though we're healing for huge amounts, since the bars aren't refilling near as quickly as they used to, it FEELS like we're weak.
This also contributes to the feeling of OOM that many healers have complained about in the forums. What do you do when your last heal didn't bring the green bar up high enough? You cast it again and again until the bar is comfortably full.
Don't let it fall
The way I've handled this is actually opposite of what Blizzard was telling us we would be doing in Cataclysm. I'm topping off more than normal. More specifically, I'm using my smallest and/or most efficient heal, and topping everyone off as soon as I see that the heal won't just be 80% overheal. For pallies this is Holy Shock/Word of Glory on cooldown, or Holy Light if needed. In a perfect setup I would time the perfect heal, with the perfect cast time, to do as little overheal as possible. But since we're all still learning these fights I'm giving up some overhealing in order to keep the healthpools up in the 80-90% range.
This keeps me used to seeing smaller changes in the healthpool, and reduces the frantic heal spam when someone's health is in the 30% range. Once I get into heroics I'm sure I'll have to alter my strategy a bit, but for now this seems to work well. This is especially useful in pugs where, to be honest, I don't trust the DPS or even the tank to blow defensive cooldowns when they're in trouble. I'll be more adventurous in a guild run, but any group from the DF means I'm on my guard.
Mana regen
Since the server transfer, I haven't had a chance to go back to my old server and try healing on my shaman, so I can really only comment on Paladin, and to a lesser extent, lowbie Priest healing. But Blizzard seems to have built an offensive mechanic to allow healers to regen some mana. Priests have their Smite + Archangel combo, but I have yet to see real gains from it. My priest is stuck at around level 50, so I can't comment on how well this regen works.
For Paladins, being a hybrid class, there seems to be some intended, and possibly unintended synergy between our offensive abilities and mana regen/conservation.
1. Judgements: Judging restores 15% of base mana. Thats a lot considering the cooldown and cost of our judgement spell. Not only are we doing a small bit of damage to the boss, refreshing our Haste buff, but we're also getting mana back. At 83, with a mix of t10 and cata quest blues/greens I'm getting back about 6% of my mana per judgement.
2. Divine Plea: Our old mana regen. Blizzard nerfed it like crazy, but it does still give back some mana. Watch out for the healing debuff though. I usually cast it more in the beginning of the fight, when damage hasn't ramped up yet. Also useful for trash pulls, instead of drinking.
3. Crusader Strike: Yes, it requires being in melee range, something no other healer would dare. But we're paladins, wearing plate, with more defensive cooldowns than some tanks ( sorry warriors ). CS won't actually return you mana, but it will gurantee a holy power charge. If you can position yourself in a semi-safe area where you can melee on a mob ( I personally go behind a caster mob, or slightly back of the melee hitting the boss), you can CS on cooldown significantly increasing the rate at which you can Word of Glory or Light of Dawn. Even a single CS gives you a free heal.
Also, this works well with Holy Radiance. Most pally healers would probably use Holy Radiance by sitting next to the casters. They can cast holy radiance to heal the casters, and use Light of Dawn to AOE the melee. I turned this backwards. I sit next to the melee, and Light of Dawn the casters. Since the casters tend to like to spread out, this fits with the cone targeting of Light of Dawn.
Obviously this won't work for every boss, and in some bosses it would be bad news. For these normal dungeons its working well, as long as the boss doesn't have a stomp or anything. I'll keep you guys posted if and when this thing backfires on me.
Happy Healing.
Monday, December 13, 2010
[WoW] Dungeon Finder "First Impressions" or How to fix "meet the requirements for this dungeon" error.
The past few days I've been receiving that error whenever I've tried to queue up on the Dungeon Finder. I finally figured out that though I HAD discovered Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns, I still needed to discover The Stonecore before DF would let me queue. Yesterday I discovered it, and got brave. I queued up as DPS or Healer.
About 10 minutes later the DF pops and I'm notified that I will be a healer for an "Already in progress" dungeon. To me this was a bad start, as there are quite a few disadvantages to being matched into a dungeon thats already started.
1. Less loot, since they're already killed mobs and bosses then there's less chance for loot you.
2. Ditto as #1 for XP. Less mobs killed, less xp.
3. There's a good chance that the reason they need to REPLACE a healer is because the previous healer got fed up with their shinaniggans.
This was the experience I had in this dungeon. It had almost EVERY stereotype DF fail-group personality. The gogogog rogue, the hunter that "accidentally" pulls more mobs, and the tank that loved BIG pulls. Here's how it went down.
I zone in to the dungeon and switch specs/gear. As I'm switching I call out in chat that I've never done this dungeon, so someone may have to explain if there's something complicated I need to worry about. The tank chimes in that its his first time also. This seems like a plus to me, inexperienced tank means he might be more cautios. Rogue immediatly pipes in and says "gogogo" (-100 for him). I guess the tank pulls, and they fight a pack of mobs. I say I "guess" because I'm still at the front of the instance running towards them, while they're somewhere in the middle. They last a little while, tank dies, then the rogue, then the pally. Hunter feign's death.
Tank asks in chat "heals?".
I reply "Still in the front of the instance, I just zoned in".
Tank replies, "Then why did someone say gogogo?"
Surprisingly the rogue speaks up and apologizes ( +1 for him ), then asks if he can be rezzed ( -1 for him ). I rez him and the tank, and we buff up and eat/drink.
The rogue then says "gogogo" again.
I reply "Jeez, chill", since one of the DPS is still running back, as her body was too close to the mobs for a safe rez.
We were making decent progress, so I decide to stick with it. In the room before Ozruk, where there are 4-5 groups of mobs pretty closely packed. The tank decides that he'll tank one group of mobs where they were, but not before waiting until a patrol comes by so that he can get them both. That was annoying but nothing I couldn't handle. This is when the hunter decides to tab-target once too much and pulls ANOTHER group. Unfortunately they're ranged so the tank can't just taunt. I end up having to run over to the mobs, stun them, and then line of sight them over the tank, and hope that the tank notices and hits a thunderclap. At some point in the fight another group is pulled. I'm healing like mad, bubbling the DPS, throwing out Light of Dawn on CD. Eventually we live, but not before I was completely OOM. The DPS are cheering, and I just put one phrase in the chat.
"Smaller pulls please."
We did down the rest of the bosses, so I can't really consider the group a fail-group, it certainly wasn't relaxing. I did the same dungeon again, but this time with the guild and it was much smoother. The tank did die once, because I got line-of-sighted in the Ozruk fight with the falling rocks. Other than that smooth sailing.
The guild then 4-manned Blackrock Caverns. I think we've 4-manned every dungeon available to us so far ( except The Vortex Pinnacle, we've never been in there). The dungeons are certainly doable, and having one less DPS just makes the fights last a bit longer.
Keep in mind this is all on Normal difficulty as we level up. I'm sure it'll be much different once we hit Heroics.
About 10 minutes later the DF pops and I'm notified that I will be a healer for an "Already in progress" dungeon. To me this was a bad start, as there are quite a few disadvantages to being matched into a dungeon thats already started.
1. Less loot, since they're already killed mobs and bosses then there's less chance for loot you.
2. Ditto as #1 for XP. Less mobs killed, less xp.
3. There's a good chance that the reason they need to REPLACE a healer is because the previous healer got fed up with their shinaniggans.
This was the experience I had in this dungeon. It had almost EVERY stereotype DF fail-group personality. The gogogog rogue, the hunter that "accidentally" pulls more mobs, and the tank that loved BIG pulls. Here's how it went down.
I zone in to the dungeon and switch specs/gear. As I'm switching I call out in chat that I've never done this dungeon, so someone may have to explain if there's something complicated I need to worry about. The tank chimes in that its his first time also. This seems like a plus to me, inexperienced tank means he might be more cautios. Rogue immediatly pipes in and says "gogogo" (-100 for him). I guess the tank pulls, and they fight a pack of mobs. I say I "guess" because I'm still at the front of the instance running towards them, while they're somewhere in the middle. They last a little while, tank dies, then the rogue, then the pally. Hunter feign's death.
Tank asks in chat "heals?".
I reply "Still in the front of the instance, I just zoned in".
Tank replies, "Then why did someone say gogogo?"
Surprisingly the rogue speaks up and apologizes ( +1 for him ), then asks if he can be rezzed ( -1 for him ). I rez him and the tank, and we buff up and eat/drink.
The rogue then says "gogogo" again.
I reply "Jeez, chill", since one of the DPS is still running back, as her body was too close to the mobs for a safe rez.
We were making decent progress, so I decide to stick with it. In the room before Ozruk, where there are 4-5 groups of mobs pretty closely packed. The tank decides that he'll tank one group of mobs where they were, but not before waiting until a patrol comes by so that he can get them both. That was annoying but nothing I couldn't handle. This is when the hunter decides to tab-target once too much and pulls ANOTHER group. Unfortunately they're ranged so the tank can't just taunt. I end up having to run over to the mobs, stun them, and then line of sight them over the tank, and hope that the tank notices and hits a thunderclap. At some point in the fight another group is pulled. I'm healing like mad, bubbling the DPS, throwing out Light of Dawn on CD. Eventually we live, but not before I was completely OOM. The DPS are cheering, and I just put one phrase in the chat.
"Smaller pulls please."
We did down the rest of the bosses, so I can't really consider the group a fail-group, it certainly wasn't relaxing. I did the same dungeon again, but this time with the guild and it was much smoother. The tank did die once, because I got line-of-sighted in the Ozruk fight with the falling rocks. Other than that smooth sailing.
The guild then 4-manned Blackrock Caverns. I think we've 4-manned every dungeon available to us so far ( except The Vortex Pinnacle, we've never been in there). The dungeons are certainly doable, and having one less DPS just makes the fights last a bit longer.
Keep in mind this is all on Normal difficulty as we level up. I'm sure it'll be much different once we hit Heroics.
Friday, December 10, 2010
[WoW] Ganking in Vashj'ir
Last night was my first real experience with Ganking/Griefing. I was trying to do the quests inside Nespirah, the ones that involve you going to his "brain" chamber. 3-4 Alliance toons decided that it'd be a hoot to sit there and gank any horde trying to talk to the quest giver. 3 Alliance toons is enough to cause even a decent PVPer some issues, especially when one is a healer.
I had to wait until there was a sufficient amount of hordies being killed that we could run in together and kill the gankers. This didn't take long at all, but as soon as we did that, grabbed our quests, everyone dispursed. 10 minutes later, when I'm trying to turn in said quests, the gankers were back. This got annoying quickly, since we had to go back to that NPC multiple times. Eventually 1-2 people stayed at the NPC in order to keep the ganking down. Funny enough, the horde "keeping the peace" let Alliance members get the quests as well. They only attacked when attacked.
That really shattered my long and totally illogical image of the horde as the "Mean" faction.
True Story.
I had to wait until there was a sufficient amount of hordies being killed that we could run in together and kill the gankers. This didn't take long at all, but as soon as we did that, grabbed our quests, everyone dispursed. 10 minutes later, when I'm trying to turn in said quests, the gankers were back. This got annoying quickly, since we had to go back to that NPC multiple times. Eventually 1-2 people stayed at the NPC in order to keep the ganking down. Funny enough, the horde "keeping the peace" let Alliance members get the quests as well. They only attacked when attacked.
That really shattered my long and totally illogical image of the horde as the "Mean" faction.
True Story.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
[WoW] Cataclysm Dungeons - First run
Last night, a few of the guildies wanted to try our hand at running these mythical, CC-requiring, dungeons of Cataclysm. Going into the dungeons, to be honest we were a bit nervous, after hearing how hard Cataclysm dungeons were. TLDR version, dungeons are awesome, but completely doable if you have a group that can work together.
I'm not going to go into detail about which bosses do what, because there are already guides that do a much better job of it. I will give you my impressions though.
We went into the dungeon with the following compilation: Prot Pally, Frost Death Knight, Shadow Priest, Ret Pally(me) and Resto Shaman healing. This wasn't planned or anything, it just happened to be the mains of the people that were willing and inclined to run the dungeon. Also, the prot pally and frost DK are main spec tanks, and the other three of us are main spec healers. My personal DPS was complete and utter shiet. I don't know if there' something fundamentally wrong with ret dps, or if the problem was the chump at the keyboard, but I was pulling low 4k DPS. This is in full vendor T10, some Naxx25 pieces, and a few Cataclysm quest greens. The Shadow priest was similarly geared, and pulling about the same DPS. The Death Knight was putting out 8K DPS. We were all about level 81 or so ( though a lot of us had forgotten to train up our 81 abilities ).
We went into the dungeons NOT having read up on strategy or anything. The most preperation we had was the tank watching a video from the beta, once, a month ago. We went in with the purpose of just seeing the dungeon, trying it out, and seeing how far we get.
Trash pulls did not require us to do any CC. That being said some did require an interrupt. DBM gives you the big INTERRUPT NOW alerts, so it wasn't terribly difficult to get it done. Even when we did fail to interrupt, the damage done wasn't horrible and our healer handled it fine.
Lady Naz'jar
Right off the bat, this fight requires quite a bit more coordination than most Wrath bosses. When Lady Naz'jar casts the shield on herself, adds spawn. The adds don't hit particularly hard, but they should probably be tanked. Since we had 3 plate wearers in the group, we ended up just each tanking and DPS down our own adds. It was a bit chaotic, but everyone just kind of handled it. We one shot her, and got an upgrade for our healer.
Commander Ulthok
This boss wasn't too difficult. His big mechanic is that he pulls one of the party, holds them up in the air ( but the member can still cast) then slams them into the ground for a bunch of damage. We got through that by popping any kind of damage preventing cooldown ( mine was bubble ) before being slammed. The Slam hits hard but its not 1-shotting. We downed this boss in 1 shot as well.
Erunak Stonespeaker & Mindbender Ghur'sha
Erunak has probably the most interesting, and in my opinion is the most challenging boss in the instance. Its mostly tank and spank until Ghur'sha, which is an Aliens-style facehugger thing, lets Erunak go and finds a new host. That new host is one of the party members. When one of the members is mind controlled, they are CC'able. We took a hybrid stun, kill them, strategy. To be honest we just started killing anything we could before we figured out that we were actually killing a teammate.
Our healer actually OOM'd on this fight, will all the crazy damage, and the length of time we were fighting. Eventually she called for someone else to spot heal, and I started throwing out heals to help her catch up. We lost 2 members but we were able to down the boss. Very fun.
Ozumat
This is actually a multi-phase fight. The first phase you are defending Neptulon a'la the dragon fight in ICC. Tank and DPS took care of the adds that try to start attacking Neptulon. Our tank picked up the bigger guys while DPS usually just took care of the small adds, then helped finish off the bigger ones. This sounds very organized but really it was just a chaotic melee of death dealing. At some point Neptulon casts a spell that makes everyone HUGE. You then fight Ozumat, which is an octopus thats sticking to the side of the room, from the outside. Pretty crazy. At this point it was basically tank and spank, don't stand in fire idea. We downed him pretty quickly too.
Thoroughly enjoyed this dungeon, look forward to running it again.
We actually ended up 4-manning this dungeon. Our healer had to leave so I switched to healing. We really just wanted to discover the dungeon so that we could queue for it in the dungeon finder. Once we were there we said why not and 4-manned it. We actually downed the 3rd boss with just 4 people, where we called it for the night. That being said, we died ALOT in this dungeon, mainly because we were trying things out and in general gooffing off quite a bit more.
Rom'ogg Bonecrusher
Pretty easy fight, though we did wipe 3 times. Its tank and spank until he brings everyone in and casts Chains of Woe. At that point EVERYONE has to target the inner ring ( it'll be right next to you) that links the rings together and DPS them down. Because we were 4-manning it and were already low on DPS, this was trickier than it should have bene. Also after killing the chains, everyone needs to RUN OUT of where the chains are, before he casts The Skullcrusher, which insta-wipes the party.
Corla, Heral of Twillight
The interesting mechanic of this fight is a simplified version of Netherspite from Karazhan. She spawns with 2 adds, there are beams of light going to those adds. The beams stack a buff on the adds that goes up to 100. Once it reaches 100, they turn into Evolved Dragon things and go around hitting everyone. The point of it is that party members have to take turns breaking the beams and keeping the adds from reaching 100 stacks. The members also have to worry about making sure they let the stacks fall off when they're not in the beams or else they will turn into dragon things and be mind controlled. The dragon things can still be CC'd.
We first tried splitting the tank and melee dps taking turns interrupting one beam, while the healer and the range DPS take turns interrupting the other beam. It worked ok, but we couldn't find the right balance of being in the beam, and being out of the beam to let the stacks fall off. On our last try, the ranged add turned into a dragon thing and the tank just picked it up. The four of us then focused on making sure the other add didn't get a 100 stacks. I think this strategy might be the best for PUGs, as its less complicated, with more margin for error. In heroic I'm not sure it'll be an option because I'm sure the adds will hit much harder.
Karsh Steelbender
This fight is actually pretty easy if done SLOWLY, and extremely difficult if done too quickly. The big mechanic is that the tank has to put the boss inside this lava flow, in order to make it damage-able. But while its in the lava, everyone takes alot of damage every second. The trick is to put the boss in the laval for 3-4 seconds and then pull him out and let the healer catch up on healing. It makes the fight slower, but infinitely easier than just leaving it in and healing/dpsing through it.
At this point we called it a night.
Impressions
The dungeons were awesome. The bosses are much more involved, and generally take much more coordination to down. I can see almost any of these bosses be group killers in a completely random PUG. Specially in PUGs that are used to the AOEfest of Wrath. We did pretty well considering we didn't prepare for the fights. But also, we were on Ventrillo, which helped with calling out things in an emergency. Also this particular group has played together in varying degrees since 2007, so they're pretty used to each other. All in all I can't wait to run more of these, and see how the raids are.
I'm not going to go into detail about which bosses do what, because there are already guides that do a much better job of it. I will give you my impressions though.
We went into the dungeon with the following compilation: Prot Pally, Frost Death Knight, Shadow Priest, Ret Pally(me) and Resto Shaman healing. This wasn't planned or anything, it just happened to be the mains of the people that were willing and inclined to run the dungeon. Also, the prot pally and frost DK are main spec tanks, and the other three of us are main spec healers. My personal DPS was complete and utter shiet. I don't know if there' something fundamentally wrong with ret dps, or if the problem was the chump at the keyboard, but I was pulling low 4k DPS. This is in full vendor T10, some Naxx25 pieces, and a few Cataclysm quest greens. The Shadow priest was similarly geared, and pulling about the same DPS. The Death Knight was putting out 8K DPS. We were all about level 81 or so ( though a lot of us had forgotten to train up our 81 abilities ).
We went into the dungeons NOT having read up on strategy or anything. The most preperation we had was the tank watching a video from the beta, once, a month ago. We went in with the purpose of just seeing the dungeon, trying it out, and seeing how far we get.
Throne of the Tides
Trash pulls did not require us to do any CC. That being said some did require an interrupt. DBM gives you the big INTERRUPT NOW alerts, so it wasn't terribly difficult to get it done. Even when we did fail to interrupt, the damage done wasn't horrible and our healer handled it fine.
Lady Naz'jar
Right off the bat, this fight requires quite a bit more coordination than most Wrath bosses. When Lady Naz'jar casts the shield on herself, adds spawn. The adds don't hit particularly hard, but they should probably be tanked. Since we had 3 plate wearers in the group, we ended up just each tanking and DPS down our own adds. It was a bit chaotic, but everyone just kind of handled it. We one shot her, and got an upgrade for our healer.
Commander Ulthok
This boss wasn't too difficult. His big mechanic is that he pulls one of the party, holds them up in the air ( but the member can still cast) then slams them into the ground for a bunch of damage. We got through that by popping any kind of damage preventing cooldown ( mine was bubble ) before being slammed. The Slam hits hard but its not 1-shotting. We downed this boss in 1 shot as well.
Erunak Stonespeaker & Mindbender Ghur'sha
Erunak has probably the most interesting, and in my opinion is the most challenging boss in the instance. Its mostly tank and spank until Ghur'sha, which is an Aliens-style facehugger thing, lets Erunak go and finds a new host. That new host is one of the party members. When one of the members is mind controlled, they are CC'able. We took a hybrid stun, kill them, strategy. To be honest we just started killing anything we could before we figured out that we were actually killing a teammate.
Our healer actually OOM'd on this fight, will all the crazy damage, and the length of time we were fighting. Eventually she called for someone else to spot heal, and I started throwing out heals to help her catch up. We lost 2 members but we were able to down the boss. Very fun.
Ozumat
This is actually a multi-phase fight. The first phase you are defending Neptulon a'la the dragon fight in ICC. Tank and DPS took care of the adds that try to start attacking Neptulon. Our tank picked up the bigger guys while DPS usually just took care of the small adds, then helped finish off the bigger ones. This sounds very organized but really it was just a chaotic melee of death dealing. At some point Neptulon casts a spell that makes everyone HUGE. You then fight Ozumat, which is an octopus thats sticking to the side of the room, from the outside. Pretty crazy. At this point it was basically tank and spank, don't stand in fire idea. We downed him pretty quickly too.
Thoroughly enjoyed this dungeon, look forward to running it again.
Blackrock Cavern
We actually ended up 4-manning this dungeon. Our healer had to leave so I switched to healing. We really just wanted to discover the dungeon so that we could queue for it in the dungeon finder. Once we were there we said why not and 4-manned it. We actually downed the 3rd boss with just 4 people, where we called it for the night. That being said, we died ALOT in this dungeon, mainly because we were trying things out and in general gooffing off quite a bit more.
Rom'ogg Bonecrusher
Pretty easy fight, though we did wipe 3 times. Its tank and spank until he brings everyone in and casts Chains of Woe. At that point EVERYONE has to target the inner ring ( it'll be right next to you) that links the rings together and DPS them down. Because we were 4-manning it and were already low on DPS, this was trickier than it should have bene. Also after killing the chains, everyone needs to RUN OUT of where the chains are, before he casts The Skullcrusher, which insta-wipes the party.
Corla, Heral of Twillight
The interesting mechanic of this fight is a simplified version of Netherspite from Karazhan. She spawns with 2 adds, there are beams of light going to those adds. The beams stack a buff on the adds that goes up to 100. Once it reaches 100, they turn into Evolved Dragon things and go around hitting everyone. The point of it is that party members have to take turns breaking the beams and keeping the adds from reaching 100 stacks. The members also have to worry about making sure they let the stacks fall off when they're not in the beams or else they will turn into dragon things and be mind controlled. The dragon things can still be CC'd.
We first tried splitting the tank and melee dps taking turns interrupting one beam, while the healer and the range DPS take turns interrupting the other beam. It worked ok, but we couldn't find the right balance of being in the beam, and being out of the beam to let the stacks fall off. On our last try, the ranged add turned into a dragon thing and the tank just picked it up. The four of us then focused on making sure the other add didn't get a 100 stacks. I think this strategy might be the best for PUGs, as its less complicated, with more margin for error. In heroic I'm not sure it'll be an option because I'm sure the adds will hit much harder.
Karsh Steelbender
This fight is actually pretty easy if done SLOWLY, and extremely difficult if done too quickly. The big mechanic is that the tank has to put the boss inside this lava flow, in order to make it damage-able. But while its in the lava, everyone takes alot of damage every second. The trick is to put the boss in the laval for 3-4 seconds and then pull him out and let the healer catch up on healing. It makes the fight slower, but infinitely easier than just leaving it in and healing/dpsing through it.
At this point we called it a night.
Impressions
The dungeons were awesome. The bosses are much more involved, and generally take much more coordination to down. I can see almost any of these bosses be group killers in a completely random PUG. Specially in PUGs that are used to the AOEfest of Wrath. We did pretty well considering we didn't prepare for the fights. But also, we were on Ventrillo, which helped with calling out things in an emergency. Also this particular group has played together in varying degrees since 2007, so they're pretty used to each other. All in all I can't wait to run more of these, and see how the raids are.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
[WoW] Cataclysm First Thoughts
WoW. Vashji'r is pretty amazing. The zones are very vibrant, and the story is pretty compelling so far. I haven't actually read quest text since the release of Wrath ( and even then after Grizzly Hill I stopped reading). This is the frst major high level questing I've done Horde side, and it certainly has a different tone than I remember from questing Alliance. I don't know if thats more because of the expansion or something inherent in the way Horde quests are. I guess I'll find out when I take one of my alliacen toons through Vashji'r also.
Mobs:
The mobs are much heartier than Wrath mobs, by a lot. They hit harder and have much more HP. Take this example, while doing daillies in Icecrown for the Argent Tournament, Hooff had to kill those Twillight Disciples ( or equivalent). Hooff almost always two shot, and at times one-shot those mobs. In Vashji'r Hooff will get through the rotation at least twice before the mob goes down. get 3-4 of the mobs together and I actually have to pay attention and heal myself. A few times I've had to bubble to keep from dying. To be honest, I'm liking it. It really makes you feel like you're going somewhere savage, seeing the change in the mobs.
Professions:
I actually missed out on quite a few skillups because I mistakenly went to Vashji'r BEFORE training up my professions to Illustrious. After hearthing back to Orgrimmar to train my professions I've been keeping an eye out for herbs, as well as skinning anything I can. An unfortunate change is that turning scraps of savage leather into a whole piece of leather now requires a leatherworking ( as opposed to wrath where scraps of borean leather could be combined by anyone).
I'm also selling anything and everything from Vashji'r I can. Learning from my mistakes in Wrath, I'm not stockpiling anything. The thing that seems to sell the best so far is the Embersilk ( Cata equivalent of Frostweave ) cloth. Any and all cloth I put on the AH is snapped up within 5 minutes. The herbs I've gathered are also fetching a pretty penny, though much slower. In Wrath I hoarded everything, so that I would have something to use later. This time I'm going to simply sell everything while the prices are high. Then in a week or two I'll get what I need off the AH for much less, to level whatever professions I want to level.
Gear:
Estimates from WoWInsider said that epic (ilvl 254 ish ) gear should last you well into level 82-83. Either my gear was substandard ( Hooff is in full T10 for Ret, and T9 for Holy ), or their estimates were way off. I've already replaced 3-4 pieces of gear from green quest rewards. It hurts a little to replace a hard one epic with a quest green, but the sheer crazyness of the stats softens the blow a bit.
Ganking:
Since transferring to a PVP server, I've wondered when I would encounter this mythical ganking everyone has been talking about. Up to now I hadn't really been affected by it. Once or twice I would get killed randomly by a passing Alliance on one of my baby triplet casters, but they were few and far between.
With the proximity Alliance and Horde toons were questing in Vashji'r, I was expecting quite a bit more ganking. I think it was the scenery, and the immersiveness of the quests but the factions tended to leave each other alone. At least in the beginning. In the first quest hub the only world PVP that happened was when one toon would use an AOE that would hit a nearby member of the opposing faction. The injured enemy would retaliate and one of them would die. They would rez and be on their merry way. This happened to me once or twice, sometimes it was my fault, sometimes not.
By the second or third quest hub, the PVP picked up a bit. There were actually one or two people working together to kill members of the opposing faction. Still, these didn't last long and people weren't inconvenienced in any major way.
I did find that I am truely horrible as PVP DPS. Part of this was because I tried to Bubble + Lay on Hands, which I found later is no longer possible. Lay on Hands causes, and checks for Forberance.
Other toons:
I did briefly log into my Alliance toons on my old server. I got each of the high level toons Azeroth flying ( 250g, a bargain). I spent a few minutes flying around Stormwind. Its amazing how expansive Stormwind really is. You can't really get a scope of it until you're flying over it. Overall it looks amazing.
I'm not sure when or if I'll ever really level my alliance toons. I'm sure I will eventually, but no idea about a time frame. As for if I'll transfer another character, I'm not sure on that either. I guess it'll depend on how well the guild holds up to raiding. I don't want to transfer a toon and have the guild dry up.
Conclusion
So far I'm really enjoying the story, and taking it slower than I did in Wrath. Hooff is a quarter of a bubble away from level 81, but I was too tired last night "power through it".
Friday, December 03, 2010
[WoW] How To: Cross the Greate Divide
Crossing the Great Divide
If anyone is still wondering how to cross the Great Divide between Northern and Southern Barrens, this is how I did it (assumming you can't fly accross because you have no FPs down there). As Horde, I rode down from Durotar to Ratchet. In Ratchet, I went southwest, around the coast. You'll have to got through some Alliance controlled encapments, but they're pretty easy if your level 30+. If you're less than 30 then its probably not a good idea to be heading down to Southern Barrens as a Horde. I followed this route until I crossed the divide and then high tailed it to the nearest Horde FP, so as to never have to do it again.
[WoW IC] Nuiitari Origin
Adventurer's Log, Journeyman Warlock, Nuiitari
Day 37
Well I arrived in Silvermoon yesterday. Luni came to meet me at the gates. Its a good thing I dismissed Jhuutom before I was in sight of the gate. He was not happy about that, but he's bound to my will, whether he likes it or not. Of course that doesn't prevent him from fighting it. I'm still getting used to asserting my dominion over this new demon, I only first summoned him a week ago. In fact I'm still getting used to controlling all the demons. The Imp is the most annoying, I think he's incapable of shutting up. The voidwalker has been the most... subdued. He's quiet and does as he's told, though I still have to be on my guard, lest I become the minion. The Felguard, Jhuutom or Jhu for short is my newest demon. The Warlock that trained me in summoning him mentioned that its only recently that they've found a way to enable Journeymen Warlocks to summon demon as powerful as a Felguard. Previously you had to be at least an Artisan Warlock to be able to summon such a demon. As the price paid for summoning a felguard at this level, the demon itself is weakend quite a bit. But I was assured that as my power grew, so would all my demons.
It seems strange to write those words now. Just hardly two months ago I was studying to be a Blood Mage back in Sunstrider Isle. That all changed when in a fit of rage, I unconciously summoned . That was startiling to say the least, for the both of us. It was a good thing we were in a semi-deserted courtyard, or else there would have been quite a bit of damage. Magus Sunstriker sheeped the Imp, then blinked away. She blink back again a few seconds later, with Summoner Teli'Larien in tow. Magus Sunstriker removed the sheep spell and Summoner Teli'Larien cast some sort of control spell on the demon, and banished it. Teli'Larien looked at me for a second, nodded to Sunstriker and walked towards her office. Magus Sunstriker motioned for me to follow them, quickly.
The Magus and the Summoner then explained to me that I had a natural connection to the twisting nether. Having an untrained magic-user summon a demon fully, is very rare. Thats when they asked me if I would consider becoming a Warlock. I'd never considered being a Warlock. In idle conversation, Warlocks were regarded as Magi who couldn't resist the temptation of the arcane, and delved too deeply in the darker arts of shadow.
Summoner Teli'Larien said that while Warlocks are more plentiful now than in days past, there are still far fewer Warlocks than Magi. Warlocks are no longer merely fallen Magi, there are students who choose to train to become a Warlock from the start. She did caution me that the way of the Warlock is both thankless, and not for the weak willed. The only thing keeping your dominion over the demons is your force of will. Not only do you have to keep dominion over a demon at all times, you have to keep dominion over 5, at the same time.
The one question I asked her was, is a Warlock inherently more powerful than a Mage. Summoner Teli'Larien cracked a crooked smile and simply replied "No, we're just meaner".
[WoW IC] Nuiitari is here?
Adventurer's Log, Apprentice Blood Mage, Lunitari
Day 36
Nuiitari finally made it to Silvermoon. She wasn't like I was expecting. She wasn't wearing the Apprentice robs that I was given when leaving mage school. In fact she was wearing armor that was worn, as if it had been in battle recently. I didn't mention this too her because she seemed exhausted. So exhausted in fact that she fell asleep shortly after we had dinner. Her sleep didn't seem very restful, she tossed and turned, mumbling softly.
When she was dep in sleep, I sneaked over and "accidentally" knocked one of her bags over. Being the ever caring sister that I am, I gathered her belongings to put back in the bag. Her spellbook was a strange color. It wasn't the deep red, with blue trim that mine is ( again given by the magii at the school). It was a dark violet almost black, with gold trim. I've never seen a spellbook this color before. I didn't dare open it, the spellbook of a magic-user is very personal, and is rarely shared. The more powerful magii were said to cast protection spells around their books. At best they would befuddle a curious on-looker, at worse it could seriously injure or kill a thief. While I don't believe either Nui or I ( or even Soli for that matter ) are powerful enough for something like that, its better to respect this tradition. The only other time I've ever handled a spellbook that wasn't mine was when Soli asked me to hand her her's. That was a pale yellow, with white trim.
Speaking of Soli, she left late yesterday. She mentioned that she might be gone for an extended period this time. She said she's heading to Orgimmar again, by way of Undercity for the Zepplin. She asked if I'd heard from Nui, which at the time I hadn't. I was a bit surprised she asked about Nui. Soli and Nui have never really been close, at best I would consider their relationship, cold. Its not that they ever openly argue about matter ( not since we were small children anyway). When one of them used to give an opinion, it almost seemed like the other simply stopped listening. Ohh well, they're family, and sometimes thats just how family is.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
[WoW IC] Shadow
Log of Expert level Priest, Solinari
Day 34
It took me a few days, but I recovered from my little ordeal in Tarren Mill. Rather than shatter my will, I think it has steeled it. I've redoubled my efforts into becoming more powerful. One day I hope to meet that Death Knight again, I won't be as lenient as that Blood Knight.
To that end, I've decided that I need to embrace both aspects of what it means to be a Priest. All my life I had dedicated to healing, and the ways of the Light. Even when protecting myself, I used the blinding aura of Light to intimidate, and when necessary, punish those who would do me harm. With what happened to me at Tarren Mill, I've discovered that while power from the Light is potent for healing, they are simply not meant to hurt. To truely be effective at slaying the evils in Azeroth, I would need to turn to more dark arts.
I made my way to Lady Balestra in Silvermoon, to inquire for training in the ways of Shadow. She didn't seem surprised at my inquiry, I guess in these dark times more followers of the light are looking at effective ways to fight back. She mentioned that there is a way to follow two avenues of the light at the same time, but it takes special training. It also doesn't mean that I will be equally powerful in both aspects, the training would simply allow me to switch which aspects becomes more powerful, after some meditation.
Lady Balestra directed me to Master Aldrae, possibly the most powerful Priest trainer in Silvermoon. He started my training to allow me to switch aspects. The training itself wasn't terribly difficult, though Master Aldrae seemed surprised that I was able to get through it so quickly. We were finished within a few days. Master Aldrae then directed me to Orgrimmar, to study under a Dark Cleric Cecille. He said she would be able to teach me all about being a Shadow Priest.
Shadow Training
Going to see Dark Cleric Cecille was a mixed blessing. I was glad that she was located in Orgrimmar, and not in the Undercity. I was relieved to know that I wouldn't have to spend any more time in Undercity than absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, getting to Orgrimmar involves going through Undercity, plus the Dark Cleric is a Forsaken ( figures ), so it would still be a constant reminder (plus the smell).
Tomorrow I set off for Orgrimmar to start the training. The trip should be quicker because of the extra training I've received in riding. Strut ( my hawkstrider ) received some new armor as well, so he's in fine form.
I've decided NOT to tell Luni about my decision and training. She thinks I'm just going back to adventuring, like before. She's already worried about Nuitarri. Her worry has kept her pre-occupied so I haven't had to lie per-se, but I don't like keeping secrets from her. She doesn't like anything to do with the Arcane, let alone Shadow teachings. I guess she can't help it. I've heard its drilled from the very first day of magecraft to be wary of the Arcane arts, since they so often lead to Shadow magic. Shadow magic being so addictive, many a magii have fallen under its spell never to be the same again. Luni still hasn't told me exactly what happened to Nuitarri, and why she isn't here yet. Maybe on my way to Orgrimmar I'll inquire with a Magii to see if I can find anything.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
[WoW] 4.0.3a The Shattering thoughts
I would love to say that the most memorable part of my first night playing after the shattering was the new vistas, or the new classes, or even seeing Deathwing ( which I haven't yet ).
But no, the most memorable part was feeling like a noob.
The biggest contributing factor to this was that I could not figure out how to get anywhere. I was logged into my Solinari, and trying to make my way down to Duskwallow March , on orders from Warchief GARROSH *grumble grumble*. I made my way ( on the regular, non-epic ground mount), through Durotar and over to Northern Barrens. Passed through Crossroads and ended up at the "Great Divide". I followed the divide looking for a way to cross. Asking in chat yielded the usual "Lol jump" answers. Wowhead for once was no help. Someone suggested I fly over, which would be fine if I had any flight paths down there. I made my way over to Ratchet and decided to fly to Thunderbluff and run east to the barrens from there.
After arriving in Thunderbluff, I rode out to Mulgore. Unfortunately the entrance to the barrens from Mulgore now has a huge gate, aptly named "The Great Gate". I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to get through it. Frustrated I flew back to Ratchet. I then made my way across the coast and finally made it down past the divide and into Duskwallow Marsh. By then I was too tired to quest, so decided to just level my cooking on my alliance toons.
Sweet potato portion of the cooking, I could not figure out where the Pilgrim's Bounty setup was in darnassus. I thought that since every other city had it outside the city walls, then it should be in Rutheran Village. It was not, someone on Trade said it was at the Exodar. I flew over there, but it wasn't. I could not figure out how to fly back, simply because the flight point had been moved. The hyppogriphs were in the same place, but the flight master was gone. After 15 minutes, someone told me it was INSIDE the exodar now. Of course I should have remembered, since I FLEW INTO Exodar. By this point I was annoyed and just logged off.
Granted quite a few of these were my fault, but it reminds you how annoying getting around was before the Shattrah/Dalaran portals. For high level toons, its not as big of an annoyance, mainly because they already have most of the flight paths. But for people re-running alts, its a major headache. Not that I'm suggesting its a bad move, just something we have to get used to.
Its true though, it does make the world feel bigger, just because you have to run through more of it.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
[C++]
Learned something new today.
If you get the "jump to case label" error in g++. This is caused when you don't have brackets in a switch-case but are trying to instantiate variables within the case statement.
If you get the "jump to case label" error in g++. This is caused when you don't have brackets in a switch-case but are trying to instantiate variables within the case statement.
switch( num )
{
case 1:
int a;
...
break;
....
Bad.
switch (num)
{
case 1:
{
int a;
....
}
Good.
[WoW] Title to Level
In the stories I try to write, there's really no concept of "level". I can't say in character that I've leveled up or reached a new level. Usually you just say less/more powerful. So I think I've come up with a simple way to express the levels, in a way that people can relate to. I've made a mapping between the profession levels and class levels.
In Wrath, the highest profession skill you can attain is 450. When you start a proffession, you begin at level 1. There are currently 6 proffession levels you train for as you progress: Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Artisan, Master and Grand Master ( Cataclysm is introducing Illustrious Grand Master). I've broken up the 80 levels, into these "titles".
Apprentice 1 - 14
Journeyman 15 - 29
Expert 30 - 44
Artisan 45 - 60
Master 61 - 70
Grand Master 71 - 80
Illustrious 81 - 85
Master, Grand Master and Illustrious corresponds to the levels added when that skill as activated. The other 4 levels were divided between the 60 levels in Vanilla. This will mean I'll have to retcon some of my old stories, since Lunitari and Nuitari are still considered Apprentice Magic Users, and Solinari is now an Expert Priest. I'll have to find a way to explain an "Expert" Priest, but that should be fun.
In Wrath, the highest profession skill you can attain is 450. When you start a proffession, you begin at level 1. There are currently 6 proffession levels you train for as you progress: Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Artisan, Master and Grand Master ( Cataclysm is introducing Illustrious Grand Master). I've broken up the 80 levels, into these "titles".
Apprentice 1 - 14
Journeyman 15 - 29
Expert 30 - 44
Artisan 45 - 60
Master 61 - 70
Grand Master 71 - 80
Illustrious 81 - 85
Master, Grand Master and Illustrious corresponds to the levels added when that skill as activated. The other 4 levels were divided between the 60 levels in Vanilla. This will mean I'll have to retcon some of my old stories, since Lunitari and Nuitari are still considered Apprentice Magic Users, and Solinari is now an Expert Priest. I'll have to find a way to explain an "Expert" Priest, but that should be fun.
Friday, November 19, 2010
[WoW IC] Unexpected help
Adventurer Log, Solinari, Priest.
Day 15
Spent some time in the Undercity today. Wow, that place was a bit terrifying. There were body parts everywhere, not to mention falling off some of the inhabitants. I think the worst part was the smell, I'm still trying to get it out of my robes. I stayed in Undercity only as long as absolutely needed before venturing to Tarren Mill.
At Tarren Mill I had my first taste of Alliance "hospitality". I was hired by the inn keeper at Tarren Mill to gather some herbs and hunt for some meat. Not the most prestigious instructions, but coin is coin. I was just returning with the meat and herbs when I heard a commotion outside the inn. Outside was an Alliance death knight! The death knight was not in a particularly good mood, judging from the way he was coming after the Forsaken, he seemed rather grumpy. I guess he hasn't quite figured out the difference between Scourge and Forsaken. Strange for a Death Knight to not know the difference, but maybe he just didn't care?
Before today, I'd never actually SEEN a Death Knight before, only descriptions and accounts from survivors of the fall of Silvermoon. They're quite a bit more intimidating in person. In fact they're very intimidating when they're barreling at you on a deathcharger while the guards are 2 strides behind him and losing ground. For a second I considered getting onto my hawkstrider and making a run for it, but from the pace his deathcharger was going, I wouldn't have gotten far.
By instinct alone I cast my go-to protective spell, "Shield" on myself. I knew that the shield would protect me as well as some dried leaves but it was purely instinct at this point. The shield materialized, which looked about as imposing as the dried leaves I mentioned before. At this point I steeled my nerves and willed myself not to look away. If I'm going to die, I'm gonna die facing my opponnent, not cowering away. Before my eyes could shut out the actual blow, I did notice that my shield became much more opaque. For a split second I stood there, waiting for the flash of pain and darkness, but none came. Instead a dull POP was all I heard. Opening my eyes, I saw the death knight's rune blade arching once again for my head. The blade simply deflected as if it had hit pure stone. The death knight himself had a confused look on his face, probably the mirror of my own confusion. The death knight's head shifted ever so slightly over my right shoulder and he took a reactive step backwards.
I turned my head to see what could possibly enlisit such a reaction from a death knight. Behind me was, a Blood Knight. This was no journeyman blood knight, judging by the armor he was wearing, and the way he stood, this was a grizzled veteran. His left hand was extended after having cast a Blessing of Protection ( thus saving me ). In his other hand was the hilt of a huge black battle axe. The axe itself glowed, and seemed to actually BLEED. With the cowel of his helm over his face, he looked like the epitome of a golden warrior out for blood.
This image was not lost on the death knight as he took another step backwards. By then the forsaken guards had closed in and were preparing to deliver their own attack on the death knight. With surprising speed the deathknight leaped to get back on his deathcharger and rode away from the forssaken guards. With the speed of the mount he was able to start putting distance between himself and the forsaken, but not before a few arrows could ding his armor.
When I tured back to thank my savior, he was gone. I caught a brief glimpse of him as he rode off on his own red and gold charger, going the opposite direction. After that turned in my herbs and meat, took the next bat back to Undercity, then headed back to Silvermoon. Usually I would have stayed in Tarren Mill to save on the fare, but all I wanted to be was back in the semi-familiar surroundings of Silvermoon.
Luni met me at the door to our little apartment in Silvermoon. We had dinner, and I told her about the experience. She seemed more frightened than I was. I tend to forget that Luni hasn't been outside the Silvermoon walls yet, so in many ways she's more sheltered than I. I think I'm going to stay in Silvermoon a few days, let me get myself back together.
Day 15
Spent some time in the Undercity today. Wow, that place was a bit terrifying. There were body parts everywhere, not to mention falling off some of the inhabitants. I think the worst part was the smell, I'm still trying to get it out of my robes. I stayed in Undercity only as long as absolutely needed before venturing to Tarren Mill.
At Tarren Mill I had my first taste of Alliance "hospitality". I was hired by the inn keeper at Tarren Mill to gather some herbs and hunt for some meat. Not the most prestigious instructions, but coin is coin. I was just returning with the meat and herbs when I heard a commotion outside the inn. Outside was an Alliance death knight! The death knight was not in a particularly good mood, judging from the way he was coming after the Forsaken, he seemed rather grumpy. I guess he hasn't quite figured out the difference between Scourge and Forsaken. Strange for a Death Knight to not know the difference, but maybe he just didn't care?
Before today, I'd never actually SEEN a Death Knight before, only descriptions and accounts from survivors of the fall of Silvermoon. They're quite a bit more intimidating in person. In fact they're very intimidating when they're barreling at you on a deathcharger while the guards are 2 strides behind him and losing ground. For a second I considered getting onto my hawkstrider and making a run for it, but from the pace his deathcharger was going, I wouldn't have gotten far.
By instinct alone I cast my go-to protective spell, "Shield" on myself. I knew that the shield would protect me as well as some dried leaves but it was purely instinct at this point. The shield materialized, which looked about as imposing as the dried leaves I mentioned before. At this point I steeled my nerves and willed myself not to look away. If I'm going to die, I'm gonna die facing my opponnent, not cowering away. Before my eyes could shut out the actual blow, I did notice that my shield became much more opaque. For a split second I stood there, waiting for the flash of pain and darkness, but none came. Instead a dull POP was all I heard. Opening my eyes, I saw the death knight's rune blade arching once again for my head. The blade simply deflected as if it had hit pure stone. The death knight himself had a confused look on his face, probably the mirror of my own confusion. The death knight's head shifted ever so slightly over my right shoulder and he took a reactive step backwards.
I turned my head to see what could possibly enlisit such a reaction from a death knight. Behind me was, a Blood Knight. This was no journeyman blood knight, judging by the armor he was wearing, and the way he stood, this was a grizzled veteran. His left hand was extended after having cast a Blessing of Protection ( thus saving me ). In his other hand was the hilt of a huge black battle axe. The axe itself glowed, and seemed to actually BLEED. With the cowel of his helm over his face, he looked like the epitome of a golden warrior out for blood.
This image was not lost on the death knight as he took another step backwards. By then the forsaken guards had closed in and were preparing to deliver their own attack on the death knight. With surprising speed the deathknight leaped to get back on his deathcharger and rode away from the forssaken guards. With the speed of the mount he was able to start putting distance between himself and the forsaken, but not before a few arrows could ding his armor.
When I tured back to thank my savior, he was gone. I caught a brief glimpse of him as he rode off on his own red and gold charger, going the opposite direction. After that turned in my herbs and meat, took the next bat back to Undercity, then headed back to Silvermoon. Usually I would have stayed in Tarren Mill to save on the fare, but all I wanted to be was back in the semi-familiar surroundings of Silvermoon.
Luni met me at the door to our little apartment in Silvermoon. We had dinner, and I told her about the experience. She seemed more frightened than I was. I tend to forget that Luni hasn't been outside the Silvermoon walls yet, so in many ways she's more sheltered than I. I think I'm going to stay in Silvermoon a few days, let me get myself back together.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
[WoW IC] Lunitari
Excerpt from the log of Lunitari, Apprentice Blood Mage...
Day 2, Apprentice Mage Log
I left Sunstrider Isle mid-morning yesterday. Currently staying in an inn on the west side of the Ruins of Silvermoon. They've blocked off the East side of the city, no access from this side to the next. Some of the guards mentioned that in order to gain access to the city, adventurers have to cross the dead scar farther down south. They are able to provide protection up to the dead scar, and from the dead scar into Silvermoon proper, but not inside the dead scar.
It took me longer to get here than it should because I stopped to help a few folks out on the road. With the state of the land and everything, we need to really stick together. Also, they were paying some good coin, and my purse is very light. I've saved about 10 silver up to this point. Not a lot, but certainly more than I've ever had at one time. There was no real need for coin at the Mage school, most of our needs were provided for by the school.
Spellcasting has gotten easier with time, I think I'm getting more and more used to the arcane energies. Casting a fireball has become almost second nature now, though i'm embarrased to admit that I occasionally still singe my robes in the attempt. Magister Erona mentioned that as my proficiency with spells increases, I will need to train with more experienced Blood Mages.
I'm told that in the near future I'll have to pick a school of magic to specialization into. I heard about this specialization in mage school as well, but I haven't decided which specializatoin to pick.
From my understanding Fire is the most popular, because of the sheer power of the spells. Unfortunately I've also heard its the most taxing, exacting a heavy toll on the bodies and minds of its practitioners. But for those interested in sheer destructive power, its an attractive school.
Frost is another popular spec, almost being the polar opposite of the Fire specialization. This seems a more controlled specialization, using elemental ice. One of the Magisters at the school gave a demonstration where they could incase both their enemy and themselves in solid blocks of ice!
There's also the third specialization, Arcane. This is a dangerous specialization, especially for Blood Mages. With the Sunwell restored its less of an issue, but you still have to be careful. Delving too much into the Arcane puts us dangerously close to letting the addiction take control. Personally I've never considered this specialization, but I know some who have. Including some that have taken an almost too keen interest in it.
Day 2, Apprentice Mage Log
I left Sunstrider Isle mid-morning yesterday. Currently staying in an inn on the west side of the Ruins of Silvermoon. They've blocked off the East side of the city, no access from this side to the next. Some of the guards mentioned that in order to gain access to the city, adventurers have to cross the dead scar farther down south. They are able to provide protection up to the dead scar, and from the dead scar into Silvermoon proper, but not inside the dead scar.
It took me longer to get here than it should because I stopped to help a few folks out on the road. With the state of the land and everything, we need to really stick together. Also, they were paying some good coin, and my purse is very light. I've saved about 10 silver up to this point. Not a lot, but certainly more than I've ever had at one time. There was no real need for coin at the Mage school, most of our needs were provided for by the school.
Spellcasting has gotten easier with time, I think I'm getting more and more used to the arcane energies. Casting a fireball has become almost second nature now, though i'm embarrased to admit that I occasionally still singe my robes in the attempt. Magister Erona mentioned that as my proficiency with spells increases, I will need to train with more experienced Blood Mages.
I'm told that in the near future I'll have to pick a school of magic to specialization into. I heard about this specialization in mage school as well, but I haven't decided which specializatoin to pick.
From my understanding Fire is the most popular, because of the sheer power of the spells. Unfortunately I've also heard its the most taxing, exacting a heavy toll on the bodies and minds of its practitioners. But for those interested in sheer destructive power, its an attractive school.
Frost is another popular spec, almost being the polar opposite of the Fire specialization. This seems a more controlled specialization, using elemental ice. One of the Magisters at the school gave a demonstration where they could incase both their enemy and themselves in solid blocks of ice!
There's also the third specialization, Arcane. This is a dangerous specialization, especially for Blood Mages. With the Sunwell restored its less of an issue, but you still have to be careful. Delving too much into the Arcane puts us dangerously close to letting the addiction take control. Personally I've never considered this specialization, but I know some who have. Including some that have taken an almost too keen interest in it.
[WoW IC] Back to the bottom.
Correspondence between Solinari, blood elf priesttess and her sister Lunitari, blood mage. Read from the top down.
Greetings Solinari,
As we agreed I will be staying with you in Silvermoon once I complete preliminary training. My instruction will end in 3 days, so I am planning on starting off on the journey within a week, I just need to gather some supplies and tie up some loose ends here. Nuitari will not be joining me, as she has run into ... complications ... with her training. Its a shame, I would have welcomed the company on the trek from Sunstrider Isle to Silvermoon. I've heard from travelers that the route has become especially treacherous in recent months. You would think there would be less scourge in the dead scar, because of the fighting in Northrend, but I guess they have plenty.
As you said, I'm not bringing too much on the trip, basically what I can carry in my backpack. I've brought enough provisions for the trip, plus a little extra in case its needed. When I graduated, one of the magi gave me a small quarter-staff, its my first weapon. I really hope I don't have to use it.
Well that should be it, see you in a week or two!
Sincerly,
- Lunitari
-----
Hi Lunitari,
Its a shame Nuitari isn't going to be joining you. I know you guys were planning on making the journey together for a while. Maybe its a blessing in disguise, the accomidations I've been able to get are... humble. Lodgings are expensive here in Silvermoon. Its not very crowded ( there's not really much of us left ), but everything is still expensive. I think its a throwback from when the city was bustling from before. Some of the innkeepers can't seem to let go.
Speaking of the innkeeper, once you arrive in the city head for the ____ inn, its near the bazaar area. Ask any of the guards, they'll help you. They're mean at first, but a little flirting softens their demeanor quickly. When you get to the inn, we're upstairs and to the left, room 65.
Yours,
- Solinari
-----
Hello Solinari,
Wow I wasn't expecting a letter so quickly. I guess these new mailboxes are pretty quick with the deliveries. I'm guessing someone from the Kirin Tor had something to do with that.
Well anyway, by the time you read this I should be on my way.
Sincerly,
- Luni
Greetings Solinari,
As we agreed I will be staying with you in Silvermoon once I complete preliminary training. My instruction will end in 3 days, so I am planning on starting off on the journey within a week, I just need to gather some supplies and tie up some loose ends here. Nuitari will not be joining me, as she has run into ... complications ... with her training. Its a shame, I would have welcomed the company on the trek from Sunstrider Isle to Silvermoon. I've heard from travelers that the route has become especially treacherous in recent months. You would think there would be less scourge in the dead scar, because of the fighting in Northrend, but I guess they have plenty.
As you said, I'm not bringing too much on the trip, basically what I can carry in my backpack. I've brought enough provisions for the trip, plus a little extra in case its needed. When I graduated, one of the magi gave me a small quarter-staff, its my first weapon. I really hope I don't have to use it.
Well that should be it, see you in a week or two!
Sincerly,
- Lunitari
-----
Hi Lunitari,
Its a shame Nuitari isn't going to be joining you. I know you guys were planning on making the journey together for a while. Maybe its a blessing in disguise, the accomidations I've been able to get are... humble. Lodgings are expensive here in Silvermoon. Its not very crowded ( there's not really much of us left ), but everything is still expensive. I think its a throwback from when the city was bustling from before. Some of the innkeepers can't seem to let go.
Speaking of the innkeeper, once you arrive in the city head for the ____ inn, its near the bazaar area. Ask any of the guards, they'll help you. They're mean at first, but a little flirting softens their demeanor quickly. When you get to the inn, we're upstairs and to the left, room 65.
Yours,
- Solinari
-----
Hello Solinari,
Wow I wasn't expecting a letter so quickly. I guess these new mailboxes are pretty quick with the deliveries. I'm guessing someone from the Kirin Tor had something to do with that.
Well anyway, by the time you read this I should be on my way.
Sincerly,
- Luni
Monday, November 15, 2010
WoW Update
Heroic burnout is upon me. I've run so many heroics the past week that I literally cannot stand to be in heroics again for a while. This has lead me to trying to level my Priest ( lv 31 ) and my new baby lock ( lvl 10 ) so that I have something new to do.
Hooff - Retribution
The reason for all this heroic running was to get better gear for Hooff. Hooff now has 4pcT10 for his Retribution set. Unfortunately even with 4pcT10, Hit and Exp capped, he's still only pulling 5k DPS max on the target dummy. That hurts considering that Bob can pull almost 5k DPS in 4pcT9. Both Melee DPS and more specifically Retribution DPS has been crap lately.
I've started to get pretty comfortable with the new Ret rotation. Its more complicated than the previous priority system, but its not super complex. I do still sometimes TV at 2 instead of 3 stacks, or do CS when I have a full 3 stacks of holy power, but its not as common as it used to be.
Looking at Hooff's DPS gear, there are a few things I really need to work on. The non-tier gear is pretty low level, most are from Naxx or OS. This is of course because that was when Hooff was hardcore raiding. A big contributor to the low DPS is probably my weapon. As with most melee classes, the weapon makes a huge difference in DPS, mostly because a lot of the abilities are based on weapon damage. Some classes, such as kitties are based on AP, which weapons seem to have a lot of also. Currently Hooff has the Tyrannical Beheader from Pit of Saron, Scourgelord Tyrannus. Its a good weapon as weapons go, certainly better than any other 2-hander from 5-mans. I'm hoping that maybe there's a PVP option I can grab to raise my DPS.
Pre 4.0.1, ret solo DPS wasn't too great, but it was usually helped with having DS in our rotation. With DS, we had a built in AOE that helped with trash mobs and such. I know DPS on trash doesn't really count for anything, but its still nice to have something to help.
Hooff - Holy
So far I've decided NOT to upgrade Hooff's 4pcT9 set with the t10. I didn't put too much thought into this, it was more of a helper reason for upgrading the Retribution set first. The T10 bonuses are pretty lack luster, especially the 4pc bonus. Because of the way the names of spells have been mixed up, the t9 2pc bonus is actually pretty good. The 4pc T9 bonus is +10% more healing with Flash of Light. Pre-4.0.1 this was to help make flash of light not so weak. Because of the 4.0.1 changes, this effectively boosts our Big+Fast+Expensive heal even higher. With the almost infinite mana pre-cataclysim I use this spell more than almost any other ( Holy Shock + Word of Glory being the other two).
I'm sure that the stats differences between 4pc T9 and 4pc T10 more than make up for this +10% healing but I haven't done that math yet.
Solinari
Solinari just got Shadowform. That plus devouring plague has really stepped up the DPS. I'm able to kill mobs quite a bit faster. Unfortunately I also go OOM much much quicker now as well. This is especially true in dungeons. After a few pulls I'm completely tapped. Also, since a lot of Shadow priest damage is DOTs based, I do very crappy damage on recount. Overall, DPS on this priest has been lackluster. I'm hoping it picks up soon.
Healing on the other hand is pretty fun. There's elements of mitigation ( Power Word:Shield), HOTs ( Renew ) and direct healing ( Flash Heal). Even when I'm almost completely OOM, I can still keep the tank up, because of the synergy between PW:S and Renew. PW:S is really nice, especially when someone's health is dropping like a rock.
Nuiitari
I tried leveling another baby lock. I guess I just can't get away from having a Warlock. It was my first toon, and I just love having one. It took some getting used to having a "guardian" instead of a "minion". For the first few levels your demons are guardians, meaning you don't give them commands. They just attack anything that you attack, or attacks you. It was disconcerting, I kept thinking it was some addons that were malfunctioning.
Over all its harder than I thought to relevel another toon. There's none of the wonder of a new toon, just reminders of how you did this already but are doing it again. I'm planning to level demonology, just so its something different ( leveled Affliction then Destrution previous).
Lunitari
My mage is still the banking alt. I want to level her but the thought of going through the belf starting area AGAIN makes me want to shoot myself. I figure she can wait until after 4.0.3a, so that it'll be new quests and such.
Hooff - Retribution
The reason for all this heroic running was to get better gear for Hooff. Hooff now has 4pcT10 for his Retribution set. Unfortunately even with 4pcT10, Hit and Exp capped, he's still only pulling 5k DPS max on the target dummy. That hurts considering that Bob can pull almost 5k DPS in 4pcT9. Both Melee DPS and more specifically Retribution DPS has been crap lately.
I've started to get pretty comfortable with the new Ret rotation. Its more complicated than the previous priority system, but its not super complex. I do still sometimes TV at 2 instead of 3 stacks, or do CS when I have a full 3 stacks of holy power, but its not as common as it used to be.
Looking at Hooff's DPS gear, there are a few things I really need to work on. The non-tier gear is pretty low level, most are from Naxx or OS. This is of course because that was when Hooff was hardcore raiding. A big contributor to the low DPS is probably my weapon. As with most melee classes, the weapon makes a huge difference in DPS, mostly because a lot of the abilities are based on weapon damage. Some classes, such as kitties are based on AP, which weapons seem to have a lot of also. Currently Hooff has the Tyrannical Beheader from Pit of Saron, Scourgelord Tyrannus. Its a good weapon as weapons go, certainly better than any other 2-hander from 5-mans. I'm hoping that maybe there's a PVP option I can grab to raise my DPS.
Pre 4.0.1, ret solo DPS wasn't too great, but it was usually helped with having DS in our rotation. With DS, we had a built in AOE that helped with trash mobs and such. I know DPS on trash doesn't really count for anything, but its still nice to have something to help.
Hooff - Holy
So far I've decided NOT to upgrade Hooff's 4pcT9 set with the t10. I didn't put too much thought into this, it was more of a helper reason for upgrading the Retribution set first. The T10 bonuses are pretty lack luster, especially the 4pc bonus. Because of the way the names of spells have been mixed up, the t9 2pc bonus is actually pretty good. The 4pc T9 bonus is +10% more healing with Flash of Light. Pre-4.0.1 this was to help make flash of light not so weak. Because of the 4.0.1 changes, this effectively boosts our Big+Fast+Expensive heal even higher. With the almost infinite mana pre-cataclysim I use this spell more than almost any other ( Holy Shock + Word of Glory being the other two).
I'm sure that the stats differences between 4pc T9 and 4pc T10 more than make up for this +10% healing but I haven't done that math yet.
Solinari
Solinari just got Shadowform. That plus devouring plague has really stepped up the DPS. I'm able to kill mobs quite a bit faster. Unfortunately I also go OOM much much quicker now as well. This is especially true in dungeons. After a few pulls I'm completely tapped. Also, since a lot of Shadow priest damage is DOTs based, I do very crappy damage on recount. Overall, DPS on this priest has been lackluster. I'm hoping it picks up soon.
Healing on the other hand is pretty fun. There's elements of mitigation ( Power Word:Shield), HOTs ( Renew ) and direct healing ( Flash Heal). Even when I'm almost completely OOM, I can still keep the tank up, because of the synergy between PW:S and Renew. PW:S is really nice, especially when someone's health is dropping like a rock.
Nuiitari
I tried leveling another baby lock. I guess I just can't get away from having a Warlock. It was my first toon, and I just love having one. It took some getting used to having a "guardian" instead of a "minion". For the first few levels your demons are guardians, meaning you don't give them commands. They just attack anything that you attack, or attacks you. It was disconcerting, I kept thinking it was some addons that were malfunctioning.
Over all its harder than I thought to relevel another toon. There's none of the wonder of a new toon, just reminders of how you did this already but are doing it again. I'm planning to level demonology, just so its something different ( leveled Affliction then Destrution previous).
Lunitari
My mage is still the banking alt. I want to level her but the thought of going through the belf starting area AGAIN makes me want to shoot myself. I figure she can wait until after 4.0.3a, so that it'll be new quests and such.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Transmission
Fiance's 2002 Dodge Neon can no longer go in reverse. I'm afraid that it might be the transmission needing to be replaced. If so that'll be quite an expense. Fiance and I talked about just getting a new car.
Pros:
1. New Car
2. We've been needing a truck/SUV, it'd be nice to be able to actually haul stuff.
3. Putting money towards a new car, instead of putting it towards keeping an old one running.
Cons:
1. Way more expensive
2. Payments again, which would mean we'd be paying 2 car payments and a new mortgage. Not fun.
3. She loves her neon.
Eventually we decided that having 2 car payments and a mortgage would be all kinds of stupid so we're going to be getting Neon repaired. Some of our friends have had transmissions replaced before and there are cheap ways of getting it done. I'm just hoping its not terribly expensive.
Pros:
1. New Car
2. We've been needing a truck/SUV, it'd be nice to be able to actually haul stuff.
3. Putting money towards a new car, instead of putting it towards keeping an old one running.
Cons:
1. Way more expensive
2. Payments again, which would mean we'd be paying 2 car payments and a new mortgage. Not fun.
3. She loves her neon.
Eventually we decided that having 2 car payments and a mortgage would be all kinds of stupid so we're going to be getting Neon repaired. Some of our friends have had transmissions replaced before and there are cheap ways of getting it done. I'm just hoping its not terribly expensive.
[WoW] Update
I'm still working on an in character introduction of what happened to Hooff, and whats going on, but thats taking a while. For once I have a lot of ideas and am having trouble getting from ideas -> story. Usually I have no ideas... and thats what makes me have trouble writing a story.
Here is the down and dirty update.
I've gone Horde.
My old Sinister Blades gang reformed on another server and went Horde. Unlike the other times they've tried to form, we seem to have reached critical mass, and fusion has started. I made a priest alt on the server to see how things were and found that I really missed being in a tight-knit guild. So I bit the sword and server transfered, and faction changed Hooff. Hooff is now a Blood Elf Paladin. Its weird seeing everything from the other side.
I've had to try to work Hooff's server transfer into the story. I think it'll work well, though I don't know if I'll have enough material to keep both the Alliance-side and Horde-side stories going.
Speaking of Horde side, downed all the way to Sindragosa 10-man normal on their first night of raiding. I wasn't able to join them but I was able to join then for night #2. We spent the whole night wiping on Sindy. We got her down to 20-12%, a few times down to 9%. The night of wiping was fun. Its been a long time since I've had to watch my mana, make sure my positioning is good, heck its been a while since I've had to learn strategy. I'm sure we'll be able to get Sindragosa down eventually, just need more practice and maybe tune up our strategy a little. It seems like the tank dies whenever I'm not spamming heals. During phase 3 I have to duck behind an Ice Block or else I will die from Buffet Magic stacks, this is usually when the main tank dies.
Here is the down and dirty update.
I've gone Horde.
My old Sinister Blades gang reformed on another server and went Horde. Unlike the other times they've tried to form, we seem to have reached critical mass, and fusion has started. I made a priest alt on the server to see how things were and found that I really missed being in a tight-knit guild. So I bit the sword and server transfered, and faction changed Hooff. Hooff is now a Blood Elf Paladin. Its weird seeing everything from the other side.
I've had to try to work Hooff's server transfer into the story. I think it'll work well, though I don't know if I'll have enough material to keep both the Alliance-side and Horde-side stories going.
Speaking of Horde side,
Monday, October 25, 2010
Hooff
Onaara,
I have some sad news for you. Elder Hooff had a terrible accident. A few days ago Rhonin ( of the Kirin Tor I'm told ), requested a meeting with Hooff. A new gnomish device was invented, one that could transport beings through time. Traveling through time is not unheard of ( the Bronze Dragonflight do it all the time), but to have a device that enables mortals to travel through time is amazing. While clearly it was dangerous, the worst anyone was expecting was that the old dranei would fall out of the sky somewhere ( which to paladin is trivial).
Something went horribly wrong. As Hotplate put it, this is what happened: Rhonin, Hotplate, Waash, even QB, a representative from the Horde as well as the Alliance, along with the Gnome Toshley ( from Toshley Station ) were there to supervise. The first test was simple, send Hooff 5 minutes into the past, in the other side of Dalaran. After the device was activated instead of disappearing ( and later reappearing ), Hooff started to phase in and out. A blood curdling screen rang out, and then a flash of blue then red appeared and Hooff was gone. Toshley contacted the receiving team, but Hooff wasn't there. They then tried to figure out where he was. Rhonin called for mages to scrye, try to locate where Hooff ended up. After the mages reported that his presence was felt nowhere on Azeroth the search was widened to Outland. Finally when all else seemed to fail, the Bronze Dragonflight was involved, to try to locate where in time Hooff may have possibly ended up. Chromie reported that it was very unlikely that Hooff was lost in time as there was no disruption in the flow of time. Even the infinite dragon flight could not mask a disruption.
Rhonin declared that Hooff was simply lost, a victim of technology ahead of its time.
I'm sorry to have had to break the news to you.
- Huntry
-------
Hot,
Heard from Huntry today, she's taking the news of Hooff's passing as well as can be expected. He was like a father to those twins. I expect to hear from Onaara soon as well, she may even come home for a while. Zoee and I have restocked the manor, in case people show up.
I corroborated the story you told them. I hate keeping secrets from them but I guess its for the best. They can't do anything to help anyway, they might as well get some closure from it.
- Waash
-------------
Bob,
I told the young ones the story you told me to. Waash corroborated the story and it seems like everyone is satisfied with the explanation. Care to explain what I really saw in Dalaran?
- Hot
I have some sad news for you. Elder Hooff had a terrible accident. A few days ago Rhonin ( of the Kirin Tor I'm told ), requested a meeting with Hooff. A new gnomish device was invented, one that could transport beings through time. Traveling through time is not unheard of ( the Bronze Dragonflight do it all the time), but to have a device that enables mortals to travel through time is amazing. While clearly it was dangerous, the worst anyone was expecting was that the old dranei would fall out of the sky somewhere ( which to paladin is trivial).
Something went horribly wrong. As Hotplate put it, this is what happened: Rhonin, Hotplate, Waash, even QB, a representative from the Horde as well as the Alliance, along with the Gnome Toshley ( from Toshley Station ) were there to supervise. The first test was simple, send Hooff 5 minutes into the past, in the other side of Dalaran. After the device was activated instead of disappearing ( and later reappearing ), Hooff started to phase in and out. A blood curdling screen rang out, and then a flash of blue then red appeared and Hooff was gone. Toshley contacted the receiving team, but Hooff wasn't there. They then tried to figure out where he was. Rhonin called for mages to scrye, try to locate where Hooff ended up. After the mages reported that his presence was felt nowhere on Azeroth the search was widened to Outland. Finally when all else seemed to fail, the Bronze Dragonflight was involved, to try to locate where in time Hooff may have possibly ended up. Chromie reported that it was very unlikely that Hooff was lost in time as there was no disruption in the flow of time. Even the infinite dragon flight could not mask a disruption.
Rhonin declared that Hooff was simply lost, a victim of technology ahead of its time.
I'm sorry to have had to break the news to you.
- Huntry
-------
Hot,
Heard from Huntry today, she's taking the news of Hooff's passing as well as can be expected. He was like a father to those twins. I expect to hear from Onaara soon as well, she may even come home for a while. Zoee and I have restocked the manor, in case people show up.
I corroborated the story you told them. I hate keeping secrets from them but I guess its for the best. They can't do anything to help anyway, they might as well get some closure from it.
- Waash
-------------
Bob,
I told the young ones the story you told me to. Waash corroborated the story and it seems like everyone is satisfied with the explanation. Care to explain what I really saw in Dalaran?
- Hot
Friday, October 22, 2010
Housing Update
Fiance and I have been in the house for about 2 weeks now. We've settled in pretty well. The unpacking has slowed down to a crawl. I think this is because we've unpacked enough to live day-to-day. Its amazing how little of the stuff we brought we actually use every day. There's some stuff that would make things more convenient ( doors on the bathrooms, clothes in dressers instead of a pile on the couch, Fiance's shoes, etc), but we're making do. I think tonight will be more of a hardcore unpacking night. We may possibly have people staying over at the end of the month and I don't know if they'll appreciate our certain level of unpackedness(that a word?).
We seems to have reached a compromise in the battle of the server closet. Some background, one of the bedrooms was converted into a den by the previous owners. The closet doors were removed, so there is a space there. Fiance wants to put a cabinet for "office supplies" while I want to put the servers, and server related equipment there. We found a nice modular cabinet/dresser system at Ikea. Our basic idea is to have a tall cabinet in that space for all the assorted equipent (except the servers). The servers themselves will be on top of a smaller, matching dresser thing, out and to the right of the opening. Haven't worked out the measurements but it should work out.
We also got an idea for the dining room. There's a big empty wall that used to contain a large bookcase ( by the previous owners). We don't have THAT many books, so we thought some more modular would be good. We're thinking basically stacking 3 of those modular cabinets on that wall, in different configurations. Then maybe a painting on top.
We seems to have reached a compromise in the battle of the server closet. Some background, one of the bedrooms was converted into a den by the previous owners. The closet doors were removed, so there is a space there. Fiance wants to put a cabinet for "office supplies" while I want to put the servers, and server related equipment there. We found a nice modular cabinet/dresser system at Ikea. Our basic idea is to have a tall cabinet in that space for all the assorted equipent (except the servers). The servers themselves will be on top of a smaller, matching dresser thing, out and to the right of the opening. Haven't worked out the measurements but it should work out.
We also got an idea for the dining room. There's a big empty wall that used to contain a large bookcase ( by the previous owners). We don't have THAT many books, so we thought some more modular would be good. We're thinking basically stacking 3 of those modular cabinets on that wall, in different configurations. Then maybe a painting on top.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
4.0.1 the Money Maker and Class Breaker ( kinda )
4.0.1 Hit last week and there has been blog after blog written about it. Many much better written than this one. With that in mind, here's how 4.0.1 affected moi.
Fiance and I moved the Monday before patch day. This means that we didn't have internet again until Wednesday night. Because of this I completely missed out on 24-hours of post-patch mayhem. This was both good and bad, good in that we were able to get enough stuff unpacked to be able to live BEFORE I totally got sucked into WoW. Bad because I missed out on a huge amount of glyph business.
In short, almost all my toons, especially the 80s, underwent huge changes. As of yesterday some still don't even have their specs rebuilt. This is mostly my fault, I've spent far more time making glyphs than actually rebuilding the toons.
Destruction
The destruction rotation is very complicated. Much more complicated that the previous rotation. The old rotation went something like this:
Opener: Life Tap, CoE, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt and Conflag on cooldown, refresh Immolate as needed, lifetap every 30-40sec to keep the buff up and get mana.
Now:
Opener: Bane of Doom, CoE, Soul Fire, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Shadow Flame, Corruption, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt, Conflag, and Shadow Flame on cooldown, refresh Bane of Doom, Immolate, and Corruption as needed. If Empowered Imp procs then cast Soul Fire. On top of all that use Soul Burn->Soul Fire three times somewhere in the fight. Spam Incinerate otherwise.
The opener has 9 spells, you're keeping 3 on cooldown, refreshing 3 dots, watching for a proc and weaving in 3 big cooldowns. I'm slowly developing the feel of it on a target dummy. Its complicated, and I find myself watching the dot timers and my action bars. On a target dummy the rotation is involved, in a real raid where you have to move around, it would be very difficult, at least at first.
The good part about all this, is the DPS. I'm pulling in 6K when I do the rotation well. Thats pretty crazy considering I was only getting 3-4k pre-patch.
Demonology
With dual-spec being lowered to 100g, I went ahead and got bob a second spec. I've always wanted to try Demonology, its the most utility oriented class, plus who doesn't want to turn into a big purple demon?
The rotation is much easier, but the DPS I was getting was only around 3.5k. Its entirely possible that my gear isn't suited for this spec or that I just don't know the "proper" rotation. Either way, I'll have to work on it and see how things progress.
Paladins ( and Hunters ) have had the biggest change in terms of class mechanics of the patch. Pallies now have "Holy Power" think mini rogue combo points. For Retribution, the rotation isn't that much more complicated, but it changes the tempo of the class quite a bit.
Rotation: Crusader Strike(CS), Filler, CS, Filler, CS, Templar's Verdict. Filler being Exorcism when Art of War procs, judgements, holy wrath ( which now affects all enemies but stuns undead/demons). Its made the class feel slower, more rigid. Whereas before it was priority and you hit whatever was off cooldown, now you have to wait and try to build up holy points (with crusader strike) as fast as possible to hit with a heavy TV. I have to keep myself from trying to hit the abilities as they come off CD.
Unfortunately melee DPS seems to be down accross the board. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, but that was the scuttlebut on wowinsider and mmochampion.
Holy
I haven't got the courage up to try healing on Hooff yet. The heals have been shifted around and new ones added. Flash of Light is now a big, fast, expensive heal. Holy Light is the slower, small heal. Divine Light is the big, slow nuke heal. Except for the names changing, its not a huge change. Then there's the Holy Power mechanic. Holy Shock is still instant, with a CD, and it heals for a decent amount. It also produces 1 holy power. Word of Glory is instant, has no mana cost, but consumes all your Holy Power. The more holy power the more it heals. So this leads to the scenario where you want to use Holy Shock all the time to build up HP to get mana-free healing using WoG. There's also Light of Dawn, which is a Cone type AOE heal.
I haven't actually tried healing with this new toolbox so I don't know how anything feels. My old playstyle heavily favored Holy Shock + Flash of Light combos so that should be easy enough to convert to Holy Shock + Holy Light. Remembering to use WoG will come with time. From what I've heard, the mana pools are so large ( from the SP->Int conversion) that using Flash of Light won't drain your mana much at all.
Blood Tanking
I haven't even respec'd her yet. I forsee that it shouldn't be a huge change for me, since I was already blood tanking pre-patch. There might be new abilities, or name changes but it should be ok. With that said, I haven't built up the bravery or inclination to try tanking with her yet.
Frost Dual-Weild DPS
I just spec'd her into dual wield DPS yesterday. To be honest I really just like seeing a character go to town on a monster with two weapons. With 2pcT9 dps with a bunch of tanking gear, plus a tanking 1hander, I was pulling 2.5k DPS on a target dummy. Pretty low, but to be expected considering my gear and inexperience with the spec.
To be perfectly honest Waash has spent the majority of the time creating Glyphs. Though I did get around to specing him back into tanking. I even tried tanking a few heroics. The biggest change? Swipe now has a 6sec CD. Thats an eternity for an ability that used to be spam'd with no cooldown. It makes getting AOE threat much much more involved. Now I still use swipe on every cooldown, but I have to be smarter when I use it. For example, during a pull I have to make sure that first swipe gets EVERY mob, so that I can get some initial threat. After that I'll throw a mangle on the first target, then tab-target a lacerate on each mob until swipe is back off CD. Eventually either every mob will have the complete set of debuffs or they'll be dead.
I'll mix in Maul if I'm falling behind in threat and/or I have plenty of rage.
Probably the least affected toon. DPS is exactly the same as before. Healing did take some getting used to, but mostly the same spells, just different named. No more Lesser Healing Wave. Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave (new) have the same cast time, but different heal and mana costs. With the SP->Int conversion I have a huge mana pool now. I rarely have to drink, and even spamming chain heal barely dents the mana bar. This will probably change at 85, but at 73 its awesome.
Even with the 24-hour late start, glyphs have been selling. I had about a guild tab full of icethorn going into the patch. This was by chance from when I used to do glyphs before my last hiatus. Those herbs came in handy. Once I got my auction addon working ( ZeroAuctions instead of QuickAuctions), I looked around. Most glyphs were going for 100+ some weren't even on the AH. I set my fallback to 200G ( just in case ) and made all the expensive glyphs I could. I chewed through those herbs in a few hours. Everything was selling. I made 8k that first night, which was nothing compared to the 20-30k other people were making that prepared.
I'm still creating glyphs, I predict that it'll still be easy profitable for another few days. Once most of the glyphs drop below the threshold I'll have to make a decision on whether I want to continue or just get out and enjoy my profits.
Fiance and I moved the Monday before patch day. This means that we didn't have internet again until Wednesday night. Because of this I completely missed out on 24-hours of post-patch mayhem. This was both good and bad, good in that we were able to get enough stuff unpacked to be able to live BEFORE I totally got sucked into WoW. Bad because I missed out on a huge amount of glyph business.
Class Changes
In short, almost all my toons, especially the 80s, underwent huge changes. As of yesterday some still don't even have their specs rebuilt. This is mostly my fault, I've spent far more time making glyphs than actually rebuilding the toons.
Bob, Warlock
Destruction
The destruction rotation is very complicated. Much more complicated that the previous rotation. The old rotation went something like this:
Opener: Life Tap, CoE, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt and Conflag on cooldown, refresh Immolate as needed, lifetap every 30-40sec to keep the buff up and get mana.
Now:
Opener: Bane of Doom, CoE, Soul Fire, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Shadow Flame, Corruption, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt, Conflag, and Shadow Flame on cooldown, refresh Bane of Doom, Immolate, and Corruption as needed. If Empowered Imp procs then cast Soul Fire. On top of all that use Soul Burn->Soul Fire three times somewhere in the fight. Spam Incinerate otherwise.
The opener has 9 spells, you're keeping 3 on cooldown, refreshing 3 dots, watching for a proc and weaving in 3 big cooldowns. I'm slowly developing the feel of it on a target dummy. Its complicated, and I find myself watching the dot timers and my action bars. On a target dummy the rotation is involved, in a real raid where you have to move around, it would be very difficult, at least at first.
The good part about all this, is the DPS. I'm pulling in 6K when I do the rotation well. Thats pretty crazy considering I was only getting 3-4k pre-patch.
Demonology
With dual-spec being lowered to 100g, I went ahead and got bob a second spec. I've always wanted to try Demonology, its the most utility oriented class, plus who doesn't want to turn into a big purple demon?
The rotation is much easier, but the DPS I was getting was only around 3.5k. Its entirely possible that my gear isn't suited for this spec or that I just don't know the "proper" rotation. Either way, I'll have to work on it and see how things progress.
Hooff, Paladin
Paladins ( and Hunters ) have had the biggest change in terms of class mechanics of the patch. Pallies now have "Holy Power" think mini rogue combo points. For Retribution, the rotation isn't that much more complicated, but it changes the tempo of the class quite a bit.
Rotation: Crusader Strike(CS), Filler, CS, Filler, CS, Templar's Verdict. Filler being Exorcism when Art of War procs, judgements, holy wrath ( which now affects all enemies but stuns undead/demons). Its made the class feel slower, more rigid. Whereas before it was priority and you hit whatever was off cooldown, now you have to wait and try to build up holy points (with crusader strike) as fast as possible to hit with a heavy TV. I have to keep myself from trying to hit the abilities as they come off CD.
Unfortunately melee DPS seems to be down accross the board. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, but that was the scuttlebut on wowinsider and mmochampion.
Holy
I haven't got the courage up to try healing on Hooff yet. The heals have been shifted around and new ones added. Flash of Light is now a big, fast, expensive heal. Holy Light is the slower, small heal. Divine Light is the big, slow nuke heal. Except for the names changing, its not a huge change. Then there's the Holy Power mechanic. Holy Shock is still instant, with a CD, and it heals for a decent amount. It also produces 1 holy power. Word of Glory is instant, has no mana cost, but consumes all your Holy Power. The more holy power the more it heals. So this leads to the scenario where you want to use Holy Shock all the time to build up HP to get mana-free healing using WoG. There's also Light of Dawn, which is a Cone type AOE heal.
I haven't actually tried healing with this new toolbox so I don't know how anything feels. My old playstyle heavily favored Holy Shock + Flash of Light combos so that should be easy enough to convert to Holy Shock + Holy Light. Remembering to use WoG will come with time. From what I've heard, the mana pools are so large ( from the SP->Int conversion) that using Flash of Light won't drain your mana much at all.
Hotplate, Death Knight
Blood Tanking
I haven't even respec'd her yet. I forsee that it shouldn't be a huge change for me, since I was already blood tanking pre-patch. There might be new abilities, or name changes but it should be ok. With that said, I haven't built up the bravery or inclination to try tanking with her yet.
Frost Dual-Weild DPS
I just spec'd her into dual wield DPS yesterday. To be honest I really just like seeing a character go to town on a monster with two weapons. With 2pcT9 dps with a bunch of tanking gear, plus a tanking 1hander, I was pulling 2.5k DPS on a target dummy. Pretty low, but to be expected considering my gear and inexperience with the spec.
Waash Druid
To be perfectly honest Waash has spent the majority of the time creating Glyphs. Though I did get around to specing him back into tanking. I even tried tanking a few heroics. The biggest change? Swipe now has a 6sec CD. Thats an eternity for an ability that used to be spam'd with no cooldown. It makes getting AOE threat much much more involved. Now I still use swipe on every cooldown, but I have to be smarter when I use it. For example, during a pull I have to make sure that first swipe gets EVERY mob, so that I can get some initial threat. After that I'll throw a mangle on the first target, then tab-target a lacerate on each mob until swipe is back off CD. Eventually either every mob will have the complete set of debuffs or they'll be dead.
I'll mix in Maul if I'm falling behind in threat and/or I have plenty of rage.
Onaara Shaman
Probably the least affected toon. DPS is exactly the same as before. Healing did take some getting used to, but mostly the same spells, just different named. No more Lesser Healing Wave. Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave (new) have the same cast time, but different heal and mana costs. With the SP->Int conversion I have a huge mana pool now. I rarely have to drink, and even spamming chain heal barely dents the mana bar. This will probably change at 85, but at 73 its awesome.
Glyphs-mas
Even with the 24-hour late start, glyphs have been selling. I had about a guild tab full of icethorn going into the patch. This was by chance from when I used to do glyphs before my last hiatus. Those herbs came in handy. Once I got my auction addon working ( ZeroAuctions instead of QuickAuctions), I looked around. Most glyphs were going for 100+ some weren't even on the AH. I set my fallback to 200G ( just in case ) and made all the expensive glyphs I could. I chewed through those herbs in a few hours. Everything was selling. I made 8k that first night, which was nothing compared to the 20-30k other people were making that prepared.
I'm still creating glyphs, I predict that it'll still be easy profitable for another few days. Once most of the glyphs drop below the threshold I'll have to make a decision on whether I want to continue or just get out and enjoy my profits.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Paddling News
Winter Off-season has hit for paddling. It's hit pretty hard. Because of the weather, its hard to get out on the water more than once a week, sometimes none at all. There were some highlights though.
PIFA 2010
PIFA was a big success. It was my first time going. I stayed for all of the first day ( Saturday). The usual suspects were there, Fiance, Uncle, Auntie, Victor, Mica, Princess, etc. One of the Keiki's put on the gourd helmets, which helped to attract attention. MN was leading the charge getting everyone signed up for the intro paddle the following weekend. All in all we got about 6 pages of emails/info for people interested in trying it out that day. If we even get a percentage of that to show up at the intro-paddle its going to be huge. I heard that over the 2 days we got over 13 pages worth of emails.
Intro Paddle 10/02/2010
The most intro paddlers I've seen at one place ever. By last count there were 50 people there. Because of time constraints we didn't do a double-hull, just had all 4 going out constantly. There was rarely a time where a canoe was sitting on the beach. Fiance, and all the other steersmen were very busy that day. Uncle did his introduction speech and paddling basics. It was longer than normal, probably cause there were so many people that he put in quite a bit of culture into the course. There wasn't near enough Wa'a to take everyone out at once so people had to take turns. IKOCC provided seats 1 and 6, the rest were intro people.
True to Uncle's word, we were having a nice luau when a Regatta breaks out. Some of the intro paddlers, a group of 6 to be exact, wanted to go out again, this time racing. This started it off, soon every canoe was lining up and putting on a small sprint race. When I saw the 5 guys going out again, I grabbed Rog and Fiance and got a crew together to race against them. Needless to say we killed them, but the intro people in our canoe loved it.
I think we've stumbled into something to get people even more interested in joining the club, and racing in general. These little mock sprints are short enough ( and exciting enough) to get people going. But they're also short enough that they don't feel discouraged when they're being left behind. Something like deanza to the bowling pin and back would be wayyy too long and take too much time.
PIFA 2010
PIFA was a big success. It was my first time going. I stayed for all of the first day ( Saturday). The usual suspects were there, Fiance, Uncle, Auntie, Victor, Mica, Princess, etc. One of the Keiki's put on the gourd helmets, which helped to attract attention. MN was leading the charge getting everyone signed up for the intro paddle the following weekend. All in all we got about 6 pages of emails/info for people interested in trying it out that day. If we even get a percentage of that to show up at the intro-paddle its going to be huge. I heard that over the 2 days we got over 13 pages worth of emails.
Intro Paddle 10/02/2010
The most intro paddlers I've seen at one place ever. By last count there were 50 people there. Because of time constraints we didn't do a double-hull, just had all 4 going out constantly. There was rarely a time where a canoe was sitting on the beach. Fiance, and all the other steersmen were very busy that day. Uncle did his introduction speech and paddling basics. It was longer than normal, probably cause there were so many people that he put in quite a bit of culture into the course. There wasn't near enough Wa'a to take everyone out at once so people had to take turns. IKOCC provided seats 1 and 6, the rest were intro people.
True to Uncle's word, we were having a nice luau when a Regatta breaks out. Some of the intro paddlers, a group of 6 to be exact, wanted to go out again, this time racing. This started it off, soon every canoe was lining up and putting on a small sprint race. When I saw the 5 guys going out again, I grabbed Rog and Fiance and got a crew together to race against them. Needless to say we killed them, but the intro people in our canoe loved it.
I think we've stumbled into something to get people even more interested in joining the club, and racing in general. These little mock sprints are short enough ( and exciting enough) to get people going. But they're also short enough that they don't feel discouraged when they're being left behind. Something like deanza to the bowling pin and back would be wayyy too long and take too much time.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
[WoW IC] Back into it.
Dearest Sister,
Greetings! Its been a while since I've had a chance to write. This was
partially because the past few months I haven't had anything to write
about. I've been pretty quiet the past 4-5 months. Stayed at an inn
and just tried to live the normal life. Even got as far as putting my
armor into a crate, because I thought I "wouldnt' be using it any time
soon". Well that changed quickly.
A few weeks ago the little termors and rumblings I've been noticing
have gotten worse. I don't know if you notice these quakes in
Ironforge, ( it being deep in into a mountain maybe that makes them
MORE noticeable? ) but you must have heard the talk. There's talk that
the end of the world is near. That a huge shakeup is due and that some
sort of Cataclysm is about to happen. No one seems to know when, but
they all know its coming "Soon". I didn't pay it much mind, even the
quakes I eventually got used to.
Unforunately, as is usually the case, I started getting cabin
fever. I've never been able to stay in one place too long. Since we
were children, neither of us have really spent more than a year living
somewhere. The lure of fortune and adventure was just too much, and so
about 2 weeks ago I bid farewell to the innkeeper and set off yet
again.
I've learned a lot in the past 2 weeks. The shaman master in stormwind
has taught me quite a bit, both in the art of healing and melee
combat. I've needed every ounce of knowledge. I've been traveling to
quite a few new places. I've spent the majority of my time at this
huge mountain. It was the kingdom of the Dark Iron Dwarves ( cousins
of the dwarves from Ironforge). Unfortunately they're not very
friendly, but there is an elemental infestation. I've joined up with
other adventurers to help keep back the evil living there. I've gone
in many times, usually with random people, usually with mixed
success. Being able to effectively heal has made me more valuable to
the war effort. Seems quite a few people know how to hurt, but not to
heal.
One of the commanders mentioned that I might be powerful enough to be
of some use in Outland. I remember Elder Hooff talking about it a few
months back. I'm excited to go, from what we've been told the fight is
going well there, but slowly. Wish you were here.
I'll write again as soon as I'm able.
- Onaara
Greetings! Its been a while since I've had a chance to write. This was
partially because the past few months I haven't had anything to write
about. I've been pretty quiet the past 4-5 months. Stayed at an inn
and just tried to live the normal life. Even got as far as putting my
armor into a crate, because I thought I "wouldnt' be using it any time
soon". Well that changed quickly.
A few weeks ago the little termors and rumblings I've been noticing
have gotten worse. I don't know if you notice these quakes in
Ironforge, ( it being deep in into a mountain maybe that makes them
MORE noticeable? ) but you must have heard the talk. There's talk that
the end of the world is near. That a huge shakeup is due and that some
sort of Cataclysm is about to happen. No one seems to know when, but
they all know its coming "Soon". I didn't pay it much mind, even the
quakes I eventually got used to.
Unforunately, as is usually the case, I started getting cabin
fever. I've never been able to stay in one place too long. Since we
were children, neither of us have really spent more than a year living
somewhere. The lure of fortune and adventure was just too much, and so
about 2 weeks ago I bid farewell to the innkeeper and set off yet
again.
I've learned a lot in the past 2 weeks. The shaman master in stormwind
has taught me quite a bit, both in the art of healing and melee
combat. I've needed every ounce of knowledge. I've been traveling to
quite a few new places. I've spent the majority of my time at this
huge mountain. It was the kingdom of the Dark Iron Dwarves ( cousins
of the dwarves from Ironforge). Unfortunately they're not very
friendly, but there is an elemental infestation. I've joined up with
other adventurers to help keep back the evil living there. I've gone
in many times, usually with random people, usually with mixed
success. Being able to effectively heal has made me more valuable to
the war effort. Seems quite a few people know how to hurt, but not to
heal.
One of the commanders mentioned that I might be powerful enough to be
of some use in Outland. I remember Elder Hooff talking about it a few
months back. I'm excited to go, from what we've been told the fight is
going well there, but slowly. Wish you were here.
I'll write again as soon as I'm able.
- Onaara
Friday, August 27, 2010
Too Hot
CPU Temps on Squirrel
My new obession seems to be temperature and heat. More specifically
how how my cpu and hard drives are running. I noticed a few days ago
when Squirrel ( Q8400 w/ stock cooler) was encoding some video in a
very hot apartment, the temperatures hit 86C. That's crazy. I let it
finish the encode, but vowed not to let the temps get that high
again. This is especially worrysome because the chip isn't even
overclocked ( unlike my Athlon64 @2.3Ghz, stock 1.8Ghz).
I think the culpurit is the stock Intel cooler. Its just not up to the
challenge. As far as I know the Q8400 isn't known for being
particularly warm. It runs at 2.66Ghz with 4MB of cache. The only part
in the rig that could be producing crazy amount of heat is the ATI
4870 ( which itself has a massive cooler that exhausts to the outside
of the case). I'm thinking I want to replace the stock cooler. For $20
- $50 or so I can get a really good cooler that will keep the machine
nice and frosty. I haven't even tried to overclock ( mainly cause its
fast enough for what I need and the temps were a bit high). With a
better cooler the temps might be low enough that overclocking would be
nice. Plus it would boost my folding and transcoding a bit.
At first I'm only planning on replacing the cooler on Squirrel. Dug
doesn't get used near enough to warrant a new part. It's kind of a
shame really. But I can't really blame Fiance for not using her
Quad. There's so much stuff stacked all over her desk, that just
getting to her computer would take a while. I keep mine relatively
cleared off just because I want to be able to use my machine.
HDD Temps on Frisket
Also recently I found a linux utility, hddtemp, that reads out the
temperature of the hard drives. On a whim I checked the temps on
Downy. Those are running at about 40-45C, considering there's 5 HDs in
that case I would say thats pretty good. The Antec300 case seems to
really help with keep the temperatures down. Makes sense considering
there's 2x120MM fans blowing straight onto the drives, a 120MM
exhausting hot air out the back and a monster 140MM fan exhausting air
out of the top. With that kind of airflow, the drives should be ok.
I checked the temps on Frisket, which only has 3 HDs total and those
temps were in the 55-59C range. Much higher. I think this is
attributed to the fact that that machine is still on my old desktop
case. The case itself was ok back in the day, but if I'm planning on
turning it into a true server class machine, I need a better
case. With that in mind I ordered another Antec300 case for the
server. This time its the "Illusion" version. which just means it
comes with front led fans, so I don't have to buy them seperately.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Subie again...
Why I hate living in an apartment.
Went out to Subie this morning, on my way to work. Saw a shiny mark,
about the size of silver dollar. I thought it was bird poop, like
normal. Closer look it was a scratch. Not just a small normal one, it
was pretty deep and it looked like it went through the paint into the
actual shell.
This isn't the first time Subie has been accosted in this parking
lot. The side is littered with little dings and scratches, mostly from
incosiderate fuckers that can't understand that maybe other people
actually give a shit about their cars.
One particular incident comes to mind. Fiance and I were walking to
her car to go on a jog ( back when we did such things). On the way
there I see 4 mexicans hanging around the car. Worst, one of them was
SITTING on the hood. Maybe more like leaning, but there was butt to
hood contact. Me being the chicken shit I was ( I'd like to think was,
but possibly still am) didn't say anything. I'm actually trying hard
to be better at this. I've gone out of my way to face confrontation,
instead of scurrying away. I even went and got a manager because a guy
was being unruly during a movie.
This is a perfect example of people thinking they can do whatever they
like. They have no concept of personal property. They don't care if
they sit on their car so why should anyone else care? People wonder
why the "rich" like to segregate themselves away in gated communities,
this is one of those reasons. Logic follows that if you're in that
situation then hopefully you're of the same mindset, ie: I won't fuck
with your shit if you don't fuck with mine.
PS: Does them being Mexican have anything to do with them being
dumbasses? I don't know, they were Mexican so I'm describing them as
such. If they were black I would have said "4 black guys", if they
were filipino I would have said "4 bastards". ;-)
Monday, August 16, 2010
Back in on the Crack
Yesterday I reactivated my World of Warcraft account. Why? Mainly cause I needed some stress relief from the house and paddling. Paddling itself is winding down, and I can feel my body just needs more rest than it used to. I think some time playing games will really help me deflate after this season.
Minutes after reactivating my account I hopped into a Halls of Reflection PUG. I was healing, and it did not go well. Partly I'm sure was my forgetting where all my keybindings were and how everything is. I was even experiencing some lag at certain points... which was strange.
I hopped into a Sunken Temple run with Onaara also. That went better. I slowly had to remember how to play a resto-shaman. It went well enough that I dinged 49. Did some questing and got to within 700xp of level 50. Went to bed, then finished it off early this morning. I'm now at level 50.
Minutes after reactivating my account I hopped into a Halls of Reflection PUG. I was healing, and it did not go well. Partly I'm sure was my forgetting where all my keybindings were and how everything is. I was even experiencing some lag at certain points... which was strange.
I hopped into a Sunken Temple run with Onaara also. That went better. I slowly had to remember how to play a resto-shaman. It went well enough that I dinged 49. Did some questing and got to within 700xp of level 50. Went to bed, then finished it off early this morning. I'm now at level 50.
Friday, August 13, 2010
New Server
Low Power Server?
Was talking to a fellow mdadm/server/RAID5/packrat about what he has
planned for his current and next server. His significant-other is
starting a new endeavor that requires she have a redudant,
fault-tolerant system to keep all her documents on. He of course
though that a Ubuntu based RAID with automated backup would be perfect
for this.
Reuse
He decided that based on her storage needs, his current server would
be more than adequete for her needs ( with some minor reshuffling
towards data backup than maximum capacity). He will take his RAID5,
composed of 5x500GB drives, and turn it into a RAID1, with hot
spare. 500GB is more than enough space for her needs, and the other
two drives can be used for cycled backups. He would have a nightly
backup of the RAID onto another 500GB, and this would be cycled on
some schedule. I'm going to suggest he create something like
rsnapshot, which would enable him to have versioning as well as
backup.
With this repurposing, it enables him to think about what he will do
for his next, bigger, badder RAID server.
... Less? Power
He apparently has been thinking of building DOWN his server. He's
noticed that he doesn't use much of the server's processing power on a
day to day basis. With the amount of electricity a dual-core (not to
mention the quad-core I was planning on getting) uses up even at idle,
a more efficient system could lead to significant savings.
I originally was planning on upgrading the "new" server to a quad
core, probably an AthlonII X4 630 or similar. Its a cheap chip, with
decent performance for the money. Yes some dual core intels are
faster, but I like knowing I have 4 real cores. The reasoning behind
this upgrade was Air Video, the fact that it does take up some power
for live-conversion almost necessiates a powerful machine. Plus I'd
like to be able to run Bittorrent and possibly other services on the
machine.
With a lower power machine I would save quite a bit of energy. With
the possibility of moving into a house, saving electricity will be
even more important. But at the same time, I'll lose the ability to
have a power server. It can probably still do the software NAS
functions, samba sharing, as well as bittorrenting. Air Video
live-conversions would be too taxing for the little processor. This
could be possibly remedied by farming out the conversion duties to my
quad desktop ( much like how its done now ). It wouldn't be too bad,
since I don't think I'd really get in the habit of turning the quad
off.
Prices
The prices for Atom based boards are about comparable to a decent sale
at Fry's for the quad-core Athlon. I've seen the Athlon II X4 630 +
motherboard on sale at Fry's for as little as $70. The Atom based
boards on newegg are closer to $100 for processor and
motherboard. Another potential savings would be on the power
supply. With such an efficient processor, more of the PSU's power
would go towards the drives, meaning I would be able to use less
powerful (400-430W) PSU's instead of the big ones I use now ( 500W+).
Either way, first things first. I need a case for that
server. Regardless of the processor, those drives aren't being
properly cooled.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Contract Signed
Contact Signed
Got an email yesterday from the realtor. He has the signed contract and is forwarding it to our loan guy. Fiance dropped off all but 1 of the documents loan guy needed to get to the underwriter. She was missing her W-2 from an old old job. That came in the mail yesterday also, but not until after she'd already made the trip to drop off the other docs. Guess she's making another trip to drop it off.
Open Escrow?
I don't really know if this means we've opened Escrow and thus have moved into the "Contingency" portion of the process. We haven't given our deposit check ( is it even a check I don't know) so I'm guessing we're not. But we'll have to see.
Next up, we need inspections up the wazoo to make sure the house isn't hiding anything weird under the hood.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
New House?
Fiance and I have been looking at houses for about 2 weeks now. We've been looking at places online, and if the pictures look good, we decide to drive by. We drive by to see the outside of the house, and the neighborhood on our own. That usually will narrow the field pretty quickly. After that we'll schedule an outing with our real estate agent to actually take a look at the inside.
We took a look at 2 houses we really liked last tuesday. The first one, we loved the outside and the area, but the inside turned out not so good. The rooms were small, and over customized. Disappointed we headed for the next house. This house I wasn't too excited about the outside. This was because the last time we saw it was at night. Seeing it in the daytime made quite a difference. Once we got inside it was great, the rooms were spacious and the layout was nice. The backyard was huge as well. We really liked it but wanted to be cautious.
After much deliberation we decided to take another look and then put in a bid. When in contact with our realtor, he informed us that a strong bid was placed on the house on FRIDAY. This house has been on the market 50 days. We decided we didn't want to try to fight for the house and gave up. As the day wore on, we talked about how much we like it. About 20 minutes later we decided to put in a full-price bid. We thought the house was worth full price, so might as well give it a shot.
Fast forward to yesterday. We get a call from the realtor that our bid was VERBALLY accepted. Meaning that there's a very good chance we got the house. Its not for sure that they've accepted it, but we're hoping.
I'm trying not to get too excited, especially since we don't have the contract signed yet. But its hard not to get excited! I'm already starting to think about how I want the server rack to be...
We took a look at 2 houses we really liked last tuesday. The first one, we loved the outside and the area, but the inside turned out not so good. The rooms were small, and over customized. Disappointed we headed for the next house. This house I wasn't too excited about the outside. This was because the last time we saw it was at night. Seeing it in the daytime made quite a difference. Once we got inside it was great, the rooms were spacious and the layout was nice. The backyard was huge as well. We really liked it but wanted to be cautious.
After much deliberation we decided to take another look and then put in a bid. When in contact with our realtor, he informed us that a strong bid was placed on the house on FRIDAY. This house has been on the market 50 days. We decided we didn't want to try to fight for the house and gave up. As the day wore on, we talked about how much we like it. About 20 minutes later we decided to put in a full-price bid. We thought the house was worth full price, so might as well give it a shot.
Fast forward to yesterday. We get a call from the realtor that our bid was VERBALLY accepted. Meaning that there's a very good chance we got the house. Its not for sure that they've accepted it, but we're hoping.
I'm trying not to get too excited, especially since we don't have the contract signed yet. But its hard not to get excited! I'm already starting to think about how I want the server rack to be...
Friday, August 06, 2010
Air Video.. more like Air Awesome.
Shortly after getting my iPad I went searching for the "essential"
apps for it. I came accross a review for a program called Air
Video. In a nutshell, it is a Client/Server program that lets you
stream your videos wirelessly from your computer to your iPod
Touch/iPhone/iPad. It does this beautifully. With this application I
don't have to worry about pre-loading my devices with movies, as long
as I'm within my own network.
Another, experimental, feature of Air Video is that it can also stream
outside of your network, over the internet. At first I didn't think
this would be THAT useful. When would I ever really want to be
watching movies on the go? Especially since my iPad is Wifi. It turns
out it is very useful. Having the ability to access and watch every
video on the server from my iPhone is amazing. Any time I'm sitting in
one place for potentially more than 10 minutes, I pull out the iPhone
and watch something.
This of course can all be done using DLNA server/client, much like
MediaTomb. The killer feature for this solution (other than the
aforementioned internet streaming) is the live-conversion its capable
of doing. It will stream any format the iPhone is capable of playing (
h.264, etc). It shines when it finds a video that the iPhone cannot
play, such as .wmv, .avi, etc. It uses ffmpeg.exe to on-the-fly
transcoding to the proper format. I can literally request to play any
video in my collection and Air Video Server will transcode it as I
watch.
Its even smart enough to figure out what device you're trying to watch
on and how the bandwidth is. This information is used to figure out
what resolution to output to the device. This means that theoretically
an iPad with great bandwidth would receive a high resolutoin image,
while an iPhone on a congested network (such as ATT's 3G) may receive
a lower quality one. It even does this on the fly, so if as the video
goes on, the bandwidth gets more congested, Air Video will
automatically downscale to a lower quality image so that there's no
interruption in the video. Depending on how drastic it needs to be,
there may be a momentary stop in the video to change streams.
The Air Video Server component is fast. It is multi-threaded so it
will use up every core my system has. I'm currently running it on
Squirrel, which is the Q8400 quad with 4GB of ram. It pegs all 4
processors at 100%. This is probably overkill for one live-conversion
thread. The faster the processor, the "farther-ahead" the converstion
can be, on top of real-time. For example, with this system, assume
that we start at the beginning of the video. If my machine can
transcode at 2 seconds of video per second, then at 30 seconds of
watching video, the NEXT 30 seconds is already done and waiting to be
sent over the wire. If somehow the load on the server goes up, it will
be 30 seconds before I even see any kind of stutter (because of the
buffered video).
As I said, a quad core is probably very overkill for
one live-conversion stream. But what about multiple streams? Air Video
can handle streaming video to multiple devices. Not only that, it can
stream different videos to different devices concurrently. The only
limit ( I've found) is how much resources the server has. My record
has been to stream 4 720p (source) videos, in .wmv format, to 4
devices. These devices include an iPod Touch 1G, an iPhone 3G (on
Wifi), an iPhone 3GS (on Wifi) and a 16GB Wifi iPad. Each stream was
clear, with no stuttering. I even did some high speed scrubbing on
each and saw no performance loss. *I'll be adding an iPhone 4 to this
soon, and will post a picture.
This program is definetly designed for the mac, and mac
users. Everythign is as simple as possible. There are no configuration
files, everything is very straight forward. It even makes a valiant
attempt at configuring your router for internet streaming (through
UPNP). They even provide a server "PIN", which you can enter on your
mobile device to reference your server. I have a hunch that this pin
is merely some numerical transform based on your external IP and port
number. For advanced users, putting the IP and Port would probalby be
more straight forward and easier to debug. But for normal users this
PIN makes everything very simple and very intuitive. Those kinds of
little touches are all around the application. This is the kind of
thing that makes this otherwise good application into a great one.
The company that created Air Video (inmethod) is very much an iOS
design house. The software doesn't run on any other mobile
platforms. This is only really a con if you don't have an iPhone. Its
such a nice piece of software, it'd be great to have it on Android as
well. Though I will confess to having a bit of smugness knowing that
our Android friends don't have access to it ;-). I'm sure there's an
equivalent app for Android, but is it as polished and easy to use as
this? I dunno.
The server software only works on OSX and Windows. Again, only a con
if you need it in Linux. For me this was a bigger issue than not
working in Android ( since I don't have any android devices). Both of
my file servers ( downy and frisket) both run a flavor of Ubuntu. It
would be awesome if I could run the Air Video Server on one of these
machines, to keep everything self contained. Two issues prevent me
from doing this; the software not running in linux and the horsepower
needed for live-conversion. The older server ( downy ) is a 1.3Ghz
Athlon T-bird with 768MB of RAM. Handling the CRC and file i/o duties
of a software raid5 tend to keep it pretty busy. The newer server (
frisket ) is a 2.3Ghz Athlon64 with 3GB of ram. It is quite a bit more
powerful than downy and has plenty of ram. Unfortunately Air Video
states that it requires at least a Core2Duo class processor. I've seen
people run it on Pentium D's with no issue. So at least a dual-core
for live-conversion. Probably significantly less for straight
playback/streaming.
The price for all this functionality? $3. Amazing. Technically its
free if you get creative with your folder structure. But for 3 bucks
it was well worth it.
apps for it. I came accross a review for a program called Air
Video. In a nutshell, it is a Client/Server program that lets you
stream your videos wirelessly from your computer to your iPod
Touch/iPhone/iPad. It does this beautifully. With this application I
don't have to worry about pre-loading my devices with movies, as long
as I'm within my own network.
Internet Streaming!
Another, experimental, feature of Air Video is that it can also stream
outside of your network, over the internet. At first I didn't think
this would be THAT useful. When would I ever really want to be
watching movies on the go? Especially since my iPad is Wifi. It turns
out it is very useful. Having the ability to access and watch every
video on the server from my iPhone is amazing. Any time I'm sitting in
one place for potentially more than 10 minutes, I pull out the iPhone
and watch something.
Live-Conversion
This of course can all be done using DLNA server/client, much like
MediaTomb. The killer feature for this solution (other than the
aforementioned internet streaming) is the live-conversion its capable
of doing. It will stream any format the iPhone is capable of playing (
h.264, etc). It shines when it finds a video that the iPhone cannot
play, such as .wmv, .avi, etc. It uses ffmpeg.exe to on-the-fly
transcoding to the proper format. I can literally request to play any
video in my collection and Air Video Server will transcode it as I
watch.
Its even smart enough to figure out what device you're trying to watch
on and how the bandwidth is. This information is used to figure out
what resolution to output to the device. This means that theoretically
an iPad with great bandwidth would receive a high resolutoin image,
while an iPhone on a congested network (such as ATT's 3G) may receive
a lower quality one. It even does this on the fly, so if as the video
goes on, the bandwidth gets more congested, Air Video will
automatically downscale to a lower quality image so that there's no
interruption in the video. Depending on how drastic it needs to be,
there may be a momentary stop in the video to change streams.
Speed
The Air Video Server component is fast. It is multi-threaded so it
will use up every core my system has. I'm currently running it on
Squirrel, which is the Q8400 quad with 4GB of ram. It pegs all 4
processors at 100%. This is probably overkill for one live-conversion
thread. The faster the processor, the "farther-ahead" the converstion
can be, on top of real-time. For example, with this system, assume
that we start at the beginning of the video. If my machine can
transcode at 2 seconds of video per second, then at 30 seconds of
watching video, the NEXT 30 seconds is already done and waiting to be
sent over the wire. If somehow the load on the server goes up, it will
be 30 seconds before I even see any kind of stutter (because of the
buffered video).
As I said, a quad core is probably very overkill for
one live-conversion stream. But what about multiple streams? Air Video
can handle streaming video to multiple devices. Not only that, it can
stream different videos to different devices concurrently. The only
limit ( I've found) is how much resources the server has. My record
has been to stream 4 720p (source) videos, in .wmv format, to 4
devices. These devices include an iPod Touch 1G, an iPhone 3G (on
Wifi), an iPhone 3GS (on Wifi) and a 16GB Wifi iPad. Each stream was
clear, with no stuttering. I even did some high speed scrubbing on
each and saw no performance loss. *I'll be adding an iPhone 4 to this
soon, and will post a picture.
Ease of Use
This program is definetly designed for the mac, and mac
users. Everythign is as simple as possible. There are no configuration
files, everything is very straight forward. It even makes a valiant
attempt at configuring your router for internet streaming (through
UPNP). They even provide a server "PIN", which you can enter on your
mobile device to reference your server. I have a hunch that this pin
is merely some numerical transform based on your external IP and port
number. For advanced users, putting the IP and Port would probalby be
more straight forward and easier to debug. But for normal users this
PIN makes everything very simple and very intuitive. Those kinds of
little touches are all around the application. This is the kind of
thing that makes this otherwise good application into a great one.
Cons
The company that created Air Video (inmethod) is very much an iOS
design house. The software doesn't run on any other mobile
platforms. This is only really a con if you don't have an iPhone. Its
such a nice piece of software, it'd be great to have it on Android as
well. Though I will confess to having a bit of smugness knowing that
our Android friends don't have access to it ;-). I'm sure there's an
equivalent app for Android, but is it as polished and easy to use as
this? I dunno.
The server software only works on OSX and Windows. Again, only a con
if you need it in Linux. For me this was a bigger issue than not
working in Android ( since I don't have any android devices). Both of
my file servers ( downy and frisket) both run a flavor of Ubuntu. It
would be awesome if I could run the Air Video Server on one of these
machines, to keep everything self contained. Two issues prevent me
from doing this; the software not running in linux and the horsepower
needed for live-conversion. The older server ( downy ) is a 1.3Ghz
Athlon T-bird with 768MB of RAM. Handling the CRC and file i/o duties
of a software raid5 tend to keep it pretty busy. The newer server (
frisket ) is a 2.3Ghz Athlon64 with 3GB of ram. It is quite a bit more
powerful than downy and has plenty of ram. Unfortunately Air Video
states that it requires at least a Core2Duo class processor. I've seen
people run it on Pentium D's with no issue. So at least a dual-core
for live-conversion. Probably significantly less for straight
playback/streaming.
Conclusion
The price for all this functionality? $3. Amazing. Technically its
free if you get creative with your folder structure. But for 3 bucks
it was well worth it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)