Sunday, May 31, 2009

Ulduar Downings for KoU's Progression Team

Flame Levi
Razorscale
XT-002
Kologarn
Iron Assembly
Auriaya
Hodir
Thorim

This is just a list for us. We've attempted Ignis and Freya, a few shots on each before we ran out of time for the evening.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Fun in Regular Halls of Lightning

One of my friends has leveled a DK tank and he wanted to take it on a test drive. So we rousted together some people and hit the heroic daily, which was Utgarde Keep. I took Kikidas, because Ingvar drops a ring. It's better than the rings I have. So I went.

When I joined the group, I got a swell of heart-ache and longing remembrance, as Agurtzane said, "Nooo! I wanted JUST ONE CHANCE to hold aggro!"

Of course, it would have helped if he had been in frost presence instead of unholy! (Remind me to tell you guys about the hunter in our Ulduar-10 that had on Pack during the Deconstructor.)

So after a few wipes (well, I kept dying, so as far as I'm concerned... wipe) where I kept going, "I don't know WHY I'm pulling aggro! I'm waiting!" I finally notice that the tank is not in frost. I gleefully point it out, gloating that it wasn't my warlocky badness that was causing me to pull aggro. I, dare I say, was innocent.

We go on through the instance, la-de-da, kill the boss, la-de-da, no ring, poop, and we try to get him the tanking trinket out of regular HoL. Kikidas doesn't need anything out of regular HoL (not that any of my 80's do), so I decide to take Kvasira just to make it a nice quick run.

Heehee. I need to run regular instances more often! I was almost hitting 4k DPS on everything. *glee* I know it means nothing... but it still made me squeal in delight and fuzzy warmth.

So fuzzy. So warm. Like curling up with a kitten of epic DPS proportions.

And once Frost presence was on, Agurtzane kept threat really well... except for when I opened with Divine Storm...

C'mon people, I need the BIG NUMBERS! Aggro be damned. (It isn't like every tank doesn't have to get massive amounts of AoE threat right away with ANY ret paladin that they run with. I was just training the new tank appropriately.)

On a side note... I'm still having issues figuring out a good single or duo-target trash rotation. For quick deaths, rain of fire seems to do better than SoC? But other than that, is it SB, SB, DL?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

PvP Martyr vs. Command?

Yes, my paladin is PvPing again. Namely because Boon wishes to arena. And what the Boon wishes, the K provides. So I need PvP gear.... so it was off to the battlegrounds for me!

It's a new game out there. There are times when, yes... it's an 'even match' and we win. By even match I mean not a horde premade and equal amounts of people on both sides. Of course, we still lose a fair number of those even matches.

And then there are those matches where we go into EotS (I see this most often there) and it's 15 to 7, Alliance to Horde.

Those are so sweet and clean. Feel a little bad for the poor Hordlings.... until the next match where I sit there and curse them all back to the bowels of Hell.

Anyway... I had been noticing that some paladins in PvP are still using the damage to self Martyr. Presumably because of the higher overall damage, despite the 'always crit on stunned targets' of Command.

I slapped it on to try it... and surprisingly, I didn't do as poorly with it as I expected -- didn't die from it, at any rate.

So for PvP, I've rediscovered the rawr. Yes. The rawr. The feel of running the flag and nyah'ing at the Horde's attempt to stop me. The feel of rushing FRR and whomping people. The feel of running up and planting a seaforium charge at a gate and defending it and seeing the gate blow open with no tanks nearby. The serene joy I get sitting at the top of IBT and watching it burn. And of course... Arathi Basin and the... yeah, still hate the terrain advantage in AB.

Back to Martyr and Command in PvP. From what I had read, people still preferred Command over Martyr in PvP. But it isn't matching up with what I'm seeing in actual battlegrounds. I'll have to evaluate if I notice it on arena opponents, as well.

You'd think that without the constant whackitywhack on something with judgement of light inflicted upon it, that the damage you take from Martyr would swiftly outstrip your Divine Storm/Art of War healing, and if you didn't have a healer nearby, it would be a big negative. But again, it isn't something I noticed as a big downside. I think because most fights are over before the health loss becomes an issue. You're either going to die or not.

Granted, there are a few times where it comes down to the ittybitty little last bit of life for you and the other dude, where Martyr could seriously make you have a baaad day, but that doesn't happen too often.

If any other paladins read this blog, chime in with your impressions of Command vs. Martyr in PvP and Arena.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Martyr vs. Command

With the advent of Retribution Paladins actually being USEFUL in raids, a big debate has popped up over Seal of the Martyr versus Seal of Command. (where Alliance Martyr = Horde Blood)

Seal of the Martyr: All melee attacks deal [0.22 * mw] to [0.22 * MW] additional Holy damage, but the Paladin loses health equal to 10% of the total damage inflicted. Lasts 30 min.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing [.36* MW + .25* SP + .16* AP] Holy damage at the cost of health equal to 33% of the damage caused.

Seal of Command: Gives the Paladin a chance to deal [0.45 * mw] to [0.45 * MW] additional Holy damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 min.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing [0.24 * mw + 0.16 * AP + 0.25 * SPH] to [0.24 * MW + 0.16 * AP + 0.25 * SPH] Holy damage. This attack will always be a critical strike if the target is stunned or incapacitated.

Now, a lot of people will argue that Command is better, because of the Glyph of Seal of Command, which increases your chance of dealing Command damage by 20%.

The big difference between Command and Martyr, in my mind, is that Command is a proc ability, meaning it does not hit on every attack, and Martyr is an 'on melee hit' ability.

The numbers (crunched by people smarter than I am) say that Command unglyphed will proc 7 times per minute, glyphed it will proc a little over 8 times per minute.

Martyr will deal damage with every Crusader Strike, every melee swing, every Divine Storm (and have the potential to crit with every strike).

When I was first playing around with switching from Command to Martyr, having grown up in the era of pre-Martyr Alliance Paladin, where Command was IT... I had the Command Glyph and I was rockin' the Command bandwagon.

Then I noticed in a raid that I was in that another ret paladin was using Seal of the Martyr. They were doing more DPS than I was (unpossible, but it happened). And so ... I started to take a look.

On Recount, using Seal of Command, my #1 ability was Melee, followed by Judgement, followed by something else, often CS or Seal damage. (It's been a while since I've used SoC, so forgive me that I can't remember.)

On Recount, using Seal of the Martyr, my #1 ability was Seal Damage, followed by Melee, followed by Judgement.

So, a lightbulb flicked on in my head... if my melee damage is constant (and there's no reason it shouldn't be, since Seal damage counts as it's own section in recount), the only thing changing is my seal damage and judgement damage... and OMG, my Seal damage is blowing past my overall melee damage.

My DPS jumped up by a bunch, I don't know exact numbers, but all of a sudden, Martyr was lookin' pretty hot, even unglyphed compared to Command as it is.

Actually, let me bring pretty pretty pictures!

Or numbers... here is a comparison of my WWS on a recent Nax25 run compared to Vialora, who used mainly SoC (he switched to Martyr briefly at one point, then habitually went back to SoC)... if I could figure out how to list us both side by side, I'd do that. But I'm dumb.

We both did about 4 million damage overall with just Swing damage.

His Seal of Command did 2 million damage.

My Seal of the Martyr did 5.5 million (of which, 10% of that was done to myself, but 10% of 5 million still means somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.9 million damage done to the mobs, unless I'm doing numbers TOTALLY wrong).

His Judgement of Command did about 2 million.

My Judgement of the Martyr did a little higher than that. Again, 33% of that damage was done to myself, but that still leaves my judgement damage to other mobs comfortably over the two million mark.

And he is using the Glyph of the Seal of Command.

The argument 'It puts a strain on the healers', is largely negated by Judging Light, Art of War and Divine Storm.

Now, there are stories untold of people killing themselves with Seal of the Martyr/Blood on Prince in Karazhan, and even some talking about Thaddius in Naxx. Are there going to be situations where if you're expecting to take a ton of splash damage that MAY drop your health low enough where you can kill yourself, you need to WATCH yourself (or use a different seal)? Yes.

However, I haven't had a problem yet. I use it on Gluth and his decimates. I use it on Thaddius with his polarities. I use it on Malygos with his vortex and falling damage. I use it on Loatheb with his unable to heal yourself debuff.

I have yet to kill myself.

And I kick ass.

Monday, May 18, 2009

One-Shot Nax25 and Post-Raid Thoughts

It ran from 6-11pm... well, really more like 6:15ish to 10:30ish. And some of that ish is because of afks, disconnects, and us calling it then uncalling it to finish off KT.

The run went ... bumpy. We had a new tank, so had to spend some time going over fights here and there. And we had a few 'oops' wipes, once on TRASH (so humiliating).

We one shot Spider, one shot Plague (getting Heroic: Safety Dance for those of us who were new), two shot Gothik and the 4 Horsies.

On Gothik, we had some weird thing happen where the mobs didn't respawn on dead side after being killed on live. So we had Gothik come down and over to dead side, along with about 20 elites.

The Four Horsemen we had the back crew go down after the first boss went down. Which then caused everyone to get AOEd to death.

We 2-shot Patchwerk, then finished Abom cleanly.

We 2-shot Sapph because for some odd reason, our MT got two-shot at the beginning and we lost too many DPS before one of the secondary tanks could pick it up.

We had the SLOPPIEST KT wipe ever... the MT got his position wrong, and the melee groups that were supposed to be aligned according to him decided to align themselves according to the room instead... so while I was in the right spot to the left of the tank, I was standing on the group that was supposed to be opposite the tank. And people were standing on the tank. And then the tanks that picked up the Guardians didn't pick all of them up, and they were running around whacking on the healers. It was... not... pretty.

Our second KT attempt went better, of a sorts. We lost all the tanks at the very end, and I wound up tanking KT for the last 300k health. By that I mean he was chasing me and I was backing up and whacking him with everything including the kitchen sink, while the healers kept me alive and the remaining DPS went midieval on his ass.

At the end, I had enough for my 75 badge tier 7.5 pants. Yay me. 10% more damage to divine storm, woot woot!

So... a few thoughts...

I brought in my paladin as she is my 'main' character, my progression raider. Yet with the exception of one or possibly two pieces, there isn't anything she could use out of there, everything that dropped for plate DPS that night was a sidegrade at best. I did pick up a new libram, but that was it.

Yet a few other people who were progression raiders brought in their alts. Well geared, yes, but alts nontheless. Which makes me wonder why I can't bring in one of MY DPS alts? Karika is geared to the gills, but Kikidas can use some upgrades. And while she doesn't do the DPS that Kvasira can do, she still puts up decent numbers.

And don't get me started on Keiji.

Given that I don't log onto WoW anymore, except to arena and raid... my alts are unlikely to get into any runs that give them gear upgrades. And it means that between runs, my progression raider will definately not be getting any upgrades.

I'm okay with this.

I'm still writing, both fanfiction (I snicker at myself) as well as sitting down to write one of the stories that I've hashed around for a while now in my head. Maybe I'll actually finish it, this time.

I found myself slightly frustrated with the raiding. We spent a lot of time doing what I felt was ... sitting around with our thumbs up our ass. The tanks not pulling as loot was being handed out. I don't think there was a single time I didn't have to prompt: "Can we continue clearing?" and have one of the RL's confirm: "Yeah, tanks go fight something.".

We had to wait for Patchwerk to pat away and back again (long wait) because we had to wait for someone who decided to go AFK, one person who disconnected and for healing assignments to be handed out.

I find my tolerance for such disturbances to have dwindled to nothing... not that my patience was ever super high to begin with. But now I don't just have the vague feeling of 'I could be doing something productive' or 'this is inefficient'. Now I KNOW I could be doing something more productive or efficient.

I don't mind raiding. It's fun to get together with my friends and bullshit and have Neshura give me a tell of 'You and your damn DPS!' as I beat her out (it only happened once) on Razvious. But at the same time, I wish I had a hookup to a computer so I can write ideas down as I'm waiting, rather than resisting the urge to alt-tab out.

Overall, I was consistently in the top 10 DPS, depending on fight, usually in the top 5-7. To my own surprise, I broke 3k most often.

I have finally convinced Vialora (maybe) to use Seal of the Martyr instead of Seal of Command. Go me and my awesome powers of persuasion (and recount).

Unfortunately, the tier 7.5 shoulders and leg pieces are bright yellow and blue. My chest piece, gloves and boots are dark red. My cloak is this hideous gray-green and purple.

We need the ability to dye our armor, if only so I don't look so much like a color-blind ginsu knife.

Poe Shots

Finally, as promised... I present... POE!

Photobucket

We've contemplated keeping her in the dog kennel to prevent her from trying to escape, but she just meows piteously.

Jailed

... the blurring is from my hand, not the cat.

Artsy Poe

The gray cat is Cloud. You should see them groom each other. So cute.

Poe and Cloud

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Funny vs. Not Funny

Funny: Someone in your raid is well known for practical jokes (that often involve death). (He pays repair bills)

Someone else who typically falls prey to those jokes (and deaths) encourages someone who does not know said joker to get on joker's chopper.

In the beginning of OS.

With all the trash mobs around.

... said joker goes riding off and dies, along with his companion. And about three or four other people who didn't notice the joker riding off, laughing gleefully. Everyone else is safely zoned out already.

This is before the raid is started, before food, etc. Some people still aren't there.

Amusing.

Not Funny: Someone in your raid is well known for being a chode. Always complains. Tends to die because he does stupid shit and then blames everyone else for his death.

You're in Ulduar25. He was given command of driving one of the Siege Engines.

Raid Co-Leader says: Don't use the ram command on the siege engines when you're on a ramp. You'll fall through the world. Okay everyone, let's roll out and kill Flame Levi.

Driver: *RAM* *FALLS* *DIES and kills Co-Leader*

Co-Leader says: WTF.

Driver: I was at the bottom of the ramp. I should have been fine.

Now we have to wait for his vehicle to respawn. Which it never does. Finally we have to go escort his sorry ass down to Flame Levi.

Not Amusing.

Friday, May 8, 2009

New Hard Drive = No Pictures :(

I discovered that when we built myself a new computer and discovered that it still ran s.a.s. (slow as sh!t) without a new hard drive, we went and got a new hard drive.

And my old hard drive is the one with all my pictures of my babies! (including some who are no longer with me, so it's pretty important that I get that hard drive hooked back up!)

So, until I can discover where my camera went to and how to upload photos from it without the camera manager software that came with the camera ten years ago (okay, it wasn't really ten years ago, it was more like 6...), or get my old hard drive hooked back up (whimper), no pictures. :( I shall endeavor to get some.

And I need my old hard drive back, or I'll have forever lost the only pictures of Mike (friend), Phil (cat), Anubis (cat) and Kira (cat) that I have. And that is unacceptable.

(So, still working on the Poe picture... sorry!)

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

I am an idjit

I had fully intended on uploading a picture of Poe, since I just posted about her. And I forgot.

Now ya'll have to wait until I get home this afternoon. Because I KNOW you're just dying to see fluffy-lazy kitties.

Monday, May 4, 2009

I know how KT feels...

Mr. Bigglesworth dies.

KT: No!!! A curse upon you, interlopers! The armies of the Lich King will hunt you down. You will not escape your fate...

********

Kel’Thuz4d]: ok and now my cat is 8fwhwe8ufhffweeexvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

[Kel’Thuz4d]: walking on my keyboard

[Kel’Thuz4d]: hold on afk

********

Yesterday morning, my cat Poe was safely in my house. I know this because I caught her begging at the front door to go outside when I took the dogs out in the morning.

Yesterday afternoon, I idly asked my husband, "Have you seen Poe lately?"

Now, to explain Poe... she's a fluffy, lazy, brown/black tiger kitty, who is very responsive to her name. You call her name from anywhere in the house, and she'll meow back at you and slowly make her way to you to see if you have food.

She's so lazy, she won't even bat at a feather-teaser that's wriggling two inches too far from the minimum distance of mild effort of stretching her foot forward. However, she does like to go outside and eat the grass until she vomits. This makes having a rabbit on a diet of hay in the house very interesting.

The only exception to the lazy-factor is when you call "HUNGRY KITTIES". Then she's like dynamite, racing with loud yowls to the food bowl.

So we look around and do not see a fluffy lazy cat. We see our other two cats. But no Poebaby.

So I pull out the ULTIMATE WEAPON(tm). I call for hungry kitties! I'm nearly run over by Cloud and Ripley as they make it to the basement where their food is stored.

(Yes, Cloud after FFVII and Ripley after Ellen of Aliens fame. Poe herself is named after Po, a Hawaiian earth aspect of night and women. Boon added the E, so people wouldn't call her Pooh.)

Okay. I step outside and check the front and back yards. Have I mentioned this cat is lazy? The other two times she's managed to slip (and how does a big fluffy plump cat slip past people? I have no idea. She's like Houdini) past us outside, she's been right in the front or back yard, pretending to be a cow.

No kitty. I call for her, and listen, hoping to hear her meow. Nope. Nothing. The sound of kids playing two houses over. No cat.

I go back inside and Boon and I start checking under blankets in the bedroom, in closets, under the couch. He worries that she's died in the house. Considering that she has the best vet ever and has no health problems, I don't think that's likely.

So we go out and walk the block, calling out for our cat. Have you ever walked around the block and did nothing but call for your CAT? Yeah. Try explaining that one.

"POE! POE BABY! POEPOEKITTY!" (Boon told me after a minute that I really shouldn't be shouting Poepoe)

One of our neighbors from the corner said that they had been out for an hour and haven't seen her. An elderly neighbor from across the street came out and when he heard we had lost our cat, he said "I have two cats myself. I'll walk the block." and he proceeded to amble around his block.

Boon and I got into the car and started to troll the neighborhood. We stopped to ask people on various blocks in a two block radius if they've seen a fluffy brown tiger kitty. No one.

Boon starts to curse her and swear that someone had to have stolen her. A pretty, friendly cat? Who wouldn't want one? Neither of us could fathom our lazy cat hauling her ass off of our front or back yard of her own free will.

Thankfully, she has a collar on, and it reads:
I AM LOST.
XXX-XXX-XXXX.
POE

(where the X's are the digits to our phone number, pervs.)

However, less than 30% of cats (even with collars) ever make it home once they're lost (the knowledge of statistics has never been so depressing, well, except when we looked up the statistics for Boon's particular flavor of cancer.).

So we're driving around, becoming more and more depressed. We finally pull back into our driveway, and our elderly neighbor greets us with a smile, "Someone returned your cat!"

I nearly flew out of the moving car, let me tell you.

The story was as follows... remember I said there were neighbors with their kids playing? They live two houses down from us. They have two YOUNG girls, who SHRIEK very loudly as they play. They're kids. It's expected.

Well, their parents had heard us calling for our cat, but it took them a minute to remember that earlier that day, they had seen a cat under THEIR neighbor's fence. They had figured that it was their neighbor's cat (Right idea, wrong neighbor!). One of them then got up and checked. Yup. Cat was still crouched under the neighbor's fence. She called and Poe, bless her friendly heart, came right on over and undoubtedly was quite happy to be picked up.

I think she had gotten startled somehow, or just ambled away from the house. We have no idea how long she was out. Then when the girls started to play, probably got freaked and either didn't hear us calling for her, or was too scared to go past the playing children.

The neighbor started towards our house, Poe undoubtedly clinging to her shoulder (she loves shoulders). Poe heard the dogs barking and according to the person carrying her, nearly had an aneurysm trying to get to our house.

When we got in, I scooped Poe up, who had the gall to look as though I should simply feed her and not fuss that much. Boon held Poe up, called her an idiot, and then hugged her.

Now, why is this on a WoW Blog? Other than the fact that it's MY BLOG AND I CAN POST IF I WANT TO... we missed our Nax25 raid to go find our cat. (Our guildies didn't mind and were glad we found our cat, but this is the tie-in for it to count as a WoW related post.)

I think if Mr. Bigglesworth was missing from Naxxramas, Kel'Thuzad would be a no-show too.