Wednesday night durnken...drunkings?

So it is Wednesday night. The day before Thanksgiving, and I have a 4 day weekend ahead of me. Not only that, but today was our Unix admins last day of work, he is now retirewd! I am now the Unix admin. Yay! Sorta...I get a promotoion with no pay raise.

But more importantly he come over tonight after work and we got ripped :)

Youy see to lhe left here a picture of my 2007 fathersday gift. My son bought me a kegeratore. How awesome is that?

I am currently pretty ripped on 4 pints of homebrew Honey Stout, whic runs abotu 13% alchahol by volume. The unic admin has lef t the building and I thing it is time to login to wow and see how fail I can be.

Will lwet you knwo how it gowes,

Happy turkey day to all my ones of readesr!

May you have as many drunken nights as I hav eahead!

How fail can a Fail Naxx be?

After recovering a bit from the weekends events I logged on to WoW to see if I could acquire a piece or two of gear for my warrior. I putted around Dalaran for a bit, putting Titansteel and epic gems on the AH to fill my pockets a bit, when I see a request for an OT for Naxx25. I whisper the person and get a raid invite.

Things that should have clued me in to the potential of fail ahead of me.

1.) When looking at Raid comp, I see 8 DK's.

2.) Looking at the 22 members currently in the raid there were only 5 that were classes that even had the potential to be healers. Only 2 of them were speced heals, the druid was the bear MT and the 2 shaman were enhancement.

3.) When I connected to the vent server provided and heard the "raid leader" (I used quotes because giving this guy the title "Leader" is being generous) talk I realized he was a 8 year old kid playing his dad's account.

4.) After 30 minutes, we were able to get 2 more healers, which I think is a little light for an inexperienced PuG we started clearing trash to Anub'Arak, the DK dps'ers were constantly Death Gripping mobs away from myself and the other tank.

You would think that after all this just to START a raid, I would have bailed and moved on with my evening, but no. I am a glutton for punishment. We got to Anub, explained the fight. Something that I feel should not be necessary for the first raid this late in an expansion. I mean come on people, even if you are gearing your first toon, this late in the expansions cycle there are enough resources out there for you to come to a raid reasonably educated to the boss fights.

Attempt 1: The main tank, pulled I heroic threw (is that right?) to one add, switched to Prot and charged the other and picked them up nicely if I must say. I know I know. Should I really be patting myself on the back for doing the first part of the easiest raid in the game correctly? With this group the answer is yes. Adds were burned down, and fun was had by all. The first time Anub'Rekhan cast Locust Swarm the melee dps failed to exit the area, there was much dying and the corpse scarabs had their way with the raid.

We wiped. On Anub'Rekahn. Yet I still stayed with the raid.

Attempt 2: We explain over and over the importance of running away from the locsut swarm and coming into the middle to DPS the add. Fight starts well, adds go down, Anub casts locust swarm, melee dps dies, and corpse scarabs have their way with the raid.

We wiped. On Anub'Rekahn. Yet I still stayed with the raid.

Attempt 3: We explain on vent once again how to do this boss. A number of times. It is not hard. There is discussion from the "raid leader" that we should go to a different quarter and try an easier boss. Really? an easier boss than Anub? There isn't one. Myself and the 2 other experienced raiders explain that if this raid can not down Anub there is no way we can down any other boss in Naxx. There was more suggestions of a diffrent boss, one that did not did not spawn the scarabs, because you know they are SOOO HARD!

The main tank, at this point is getting a little frustrated and says this fight is real easy and if the people that do not know it just listen and follow directions we will down this boss and see about moving on. Now I do not know how to emphisize the importance of this next phrase, uttered by the "raid leader", one of the DK's that could not get out of the swarm and stay alive.

He says and I quote "I DON'T HAVE TIME TO LEARN THESE FIGHTS, I JUST WANT TO RAID" let me repeat that. "I don't have time to learn these fights, I just want to raid.

Thank you ladies and gentleman, I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses. Good night.

I would 4 friends and ran 5 heroics in an hour and a half. Received no gear upgrades, but got the same amount of badges the Naxx run would have netted me, had a great time and built my AOE tanking skills a bit.

How I spent my weekend

This weekend was a very busy weekend. Mrs. Skraps threw a baby shower for her sister on Saturday, so Friday night was clean clean clean the house. With some WoW thrown in at the end of the night, nothing major just a few heroics. Saturday started with a canned food drive for my son's boy scout troop. A soccer tournament that included me being AR. I must say my old fat body did not take well to running up and down a soccer pitch for 210 minutes. Then the wife had her party, so I had to avoid going home. Finally at 6:00 pm I went home to take a little nap to prep for the evening.

At 9:00 pm I took my son to the church we have our boy scout meetings at, picked up 3 other boys and caravaned with the rest of the troop to Davis, CA to go to Rocknasium for an over night lock-in. At 5:00 am, we rounded up all the kids (it was a co-ed trip as the troop and venture crew went to this event together) we headed home. I walked in the door at 6:30 am, hit the couch and fell asleep. I slept until 9:30 when the father in law woke up and started rattling around the house. I tinkered around the house a bit, when the wife got up, I went to bed to sleep a bit more.

I have come to the conclusion that I am getting a little old to be running around for 3 soccer games, then staying up all night with the boy scouts. But it was a fun weekend over all.


Later today or tomorrow I will talk about the total Fail PuG Naxx 25 I joined thinking I might actually be able to get a little Naxx raid in.

Gearing up, and Raiding again.

After a very long stretch of sporadic raid availability, real life has mellowed out a bit, the boy's soccer season is over and Tuesday is the only night of the week that we have booked, and I am able to raid again. This week marks the 3rd week in a row I have made raids and I am finally accruing some DKP to win some upgrades. This week I won a nice pair of wrists for the paltry sum of 5 DKP. This really nice cloak also dropped this week but after I bid 50, another resto shaman in the raid, checked how much DKP I had and bid 5 over what I had, essentially slapping me in the face with his enormous ePeen. I'm not bitter though. It is good to be raiding again. Also I managed to get Water Walking cast on the Guild Leader a split second before he hit the water, to the joyous laughter of the entire raid.

In other news. I have spend most of my "down" time in WoW over the last 2 weeks gearing up my alt (was my main in classic, and first ever toon to 60). I have worked really hard, with the help of some excellent guild healers trying to get myself to the defense cap. There was quite a few hairy moments running heroics with just over 500 defense, that our awesome healers managed to keep me alive through. I dropped about 500g getting my engineering up to 450, made a Combat Shotgun, and tanking goggles and with the help of a few gems got up to 541 defense. Now I just need to work on stamina and avoidance. I am hoping to get a PuG together this weekend and try a 10 or 25 Naxx. I really would like to try tanking a raid before 3.3 comes out and I am busy gearing up my main.

Besides last time I tanked a raid it was MC and Baron Geddon was giving us problems. Mind you I came into WoW a year after release and the guild I was in, in an amazing paradox wanted raiders geared for highest level raids in order to step into the lowest raid instances. because of this bizzare gear requirement, our guild was mainly a farm guild. People would come in, cut their teeth on raiding and move on to progression guilds. I have a few friends still in that guild, and they still have this problem of keeping raiders.

Final note: Last weekend some friends and I went to a beer tasting event called "Around the World in 80 Beers". Now correct me if I am wrong, but does that not sound like there would be 80 beers at the event? Instead of 80 beers there were 31. Now I admit I struggled with math in high school and college but I am pretty sure that 80 is not equal to 31. To top it off, the advertisement for the event said and I quote "served by beautiful "ambassador" models dressed in specially designed sexy costumes with an around-the-world theme". The advertisement for the event even included this picture as part of its promotion. When we arrived at the event there were 3 men, and one very angry woman pouring beer. No models in sexy outfits. About 30 minutes after the event started three of the 4 tables were staffed by women, but none were in sexy costumes, and only two of them were willing to chat at all with the patrons. We were not falling down drunk, and hitting on these women, just trying to chat with them like we would any waitress at any bar we have ever gone to. So if they host an "Around the World in 80 Beers" event in your area I suggest you skip it. It is not worth the $30 price tag for admission.

My request for Cataclysm Changes.

So far I only have one request for a Cataclysm change. Make Karzhan a 5 man leveling instance. Remove some of the trash, drop them down to the 68-72 range, and have the bosses drop blues for leveling from Outland through Northrend. I spent a lot of time in Karazhan during the Burning Crusade. I tanked it for my guild in the early days of the Burning Crusade, although we never cleared it. I then moved into Ex Obscurum and began running it every week as a hunter, while we regeared the guild for our run up to Illidan. While I did raid in classic it was pretty sporadic as my former guild could not muster the required 40 raiders. Kara is the place I learned not to stand in the fire, how to face pull, lulz and all the great time I had making friends in OxOb. I hate to think of that sprawling castle just gathering dust the bosses wondering when someone will come to visit.

So make the trash packs non-elite, lessen them so the time between bosses in only 5 or so minutes and let us all run Kara with the goblins, worgen and every new toon we re-roll.

Thursday Night Adventures

Because I fail at so much, including calendar reading. I showed up to last nights raid right on time at 7:00pm server time. There was only half a dozen people on. I then looked at the calendar and saw that this weeks raids were moved from 7:00 to 10:00.

Since I had already cleared the time with the wife/house/boy as play time, I hopped back onto my warrior. Just short of 2 hours later DING!

Things I learned on the short trip from 78 to 80:

1.) Tanking is fun again.
2.) People REALLY hate Halls of Stone/Lightning and you can only get a group by begging guildies
3.) Despite the fact that it says you can do ToC Regular at 78. YOU CAN NOT TANK IT at 78, 79, or possibly for a good while after you turn 80.

I had 23k health buffed, and the faction champions cut through me like butter. Now mind you I am still 90 def points below the def cap, so I expected to get hit hard. but OMG. I will beg some guildies this evening to spam run ToC Regulae tonight as DPS and hope I can gear up quickly enough to maybe OT Naxx on Sunday.

If anybody has recommendations on how to quickly gear a tank I would love some advice.

p.s. Working on a How to Heal: ToC 25, 25 heroic. Hope to have it up this weekend. Also putting the finishing touches on leveling from 40-70.

Halloween 2009

For all my ones of fans out there. Here is a pic of Mrs. Skraps and Me, at our annual Halloween Party. She is dress as Coralins, I'm Rorschach. My costume was actually better than it looks in the picture, but it was like 80 degrees in Northern CA Halloween night. That costume has many layers, including Coat, scarf, gloves, mask and hat. By this time in the evening I had been cooking in that getup for hours. I was minutes away from melting. Good thing my brother-in-law had my over sized Beer glass (it actually holds 6 cans of beer in 1 glass. It is full of WIN) just out of frame. Enjoy.

- Skraps

Aion Review - Final

I REALLY wanted to like Aion. I really did. Not that I was bored with WoW, or felt I needed something more from my MMO. I just wanted to have something new and exciting. I wanted a new world to explore while waiting to re-roll a Goblin in Cataclysm. Unfortunately I just could not get into Aion. Sure the world was beautiful, the character customization options were phenomenal but there was just something missing. My first month expired yesterday, and I let my account close.

Frankly I could not get a character past level 20. There was just too much "grinding" involved in the leveling process. I found I would complete all the quests in a given area and be forced to kill mob after mob just to gain that next level so I could safely move to the next zone. The quests that I did complete were just standard MMO fare. There were no lore driven quest chains that ended in a "whoa" moment, like the Wrathgate (I know it is not fare to compare a near endgame event by a company known for incredible lore, against 20 levels of a new game) But there were plenty of events early in WoW that were minor, like Thrall tasking you with clearing a cult from the heart of his city at level 12 that I just didn't see in Aion.

In the end I went back to WoW about 1/2 way through my Aion subscription and started working on leveling my Warrior to 80. Something I thought I would never do, since I shelved being a tank in the early days of BC. But you know what. I had more enjoyment leveling my 3rd toon through Wrath than I did exploring all of the new world of Aion.

Having said all that Aion is not a bad game, and if I had to break it down to a plain number scale rating it would probably score pretty high. If you are feeling burnt out on WoW or whatever your game of choice is, I would recommend you try Aion, I just hope they start 10 day free trials sooner rather than later. I would hate to think someone drops $40 on this game based on my reviews.

New 3.3 Patch Notes

Not a lot new there, except a major buff for Shaman of every spec.

Shamans:

• • Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
  • Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Now that's what I'm talking about! Elementals will go from being used only on DPS races to every fight. They will be much more useful for the leveling Shaman as well. Nothing like a Oh Shit Earth Elemental when thing s go wrong, or a Fire Elemental to help you solo that 3 person quest.