ShamWoW

So long and thanks for all the fish

2011-12-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

It has been almost a year since I last posted. Months since I last played. It is probably time to shut this site down. Thanks for the community and the laughs.

What Heal To Use And When?

2011-01-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

Cataclysm has been out for a month and a week now. Natural Order has finally started our raiding schedule and it is time to start farming raid mats, and leveling alts.

With the time put into the expansion I would like to take a look at the Shaman healing toolkit and talk about when to use what heal.

Riptide: Our only non-proc HOT (not counting healing stream). Glyphed Riptide lasts 21 seconds, if you are at the haste soft cap you will get an additional tic out of your riptide. You should cast it every 6 seconds on cool down to any member of your raid taking damage. Do not cast over a currently ticking Riptide, that is just a wast of mana. This is our second cheapest heal, and is REALLY efficient to top off raid damage, or to give you a couple seconds of breathing room to land that big heal.

Healing Wave: Our baby heal. Cheap. Very small heal. Use it to top off only. I actually don't even have this on my regular cast bars. It is setup with a cast modifier and isn't used much.

Healing Surge/Greater Healing Wave: Big heals. Until 4.0.6 don't even bother with Greater Healing wave, as it is more expensive, slower and its heal is barley bigger than Healing Surge. We will revisit this after 4.0.6 when it is supposed to get bigger (20% bigger) but it's mana cost will also getting a 10% boost. Healing Surge is big, fast and sexy. Use it on the tank, or to bring a DPS from almost dead to near full health.

Healing Rain: Heal over time, AOE. The sexy. Heals anybody standing in it for a pretty good chunk, throw a chain heal or two during a healing rain and you have healed five or six people to almost full, but you have also just burned through 20% of your total mana. Situational for massive raid damage, try to overlap with other AOE heals to create a ven diagram of healing on the ground during raids to bring the raid back to full health.

Chain Heal: Used to be the iconic heal of the Resto Shaman. It has become slightly underpowered, and fairly inefficient. That should change some in 4.0.6, but we will have to wait and see. Still works great if you are on raid heals, procs up to 4 earthliving weapon HoT's. Use it anytime you have extra mana and raid wide damage to top off. Again works great with Healing Rain.

Totems

Water: Mana Spring, probably wont be used in a raid if there is 1 or 2 pallys. Use Healing Stream. It is a decent HoT, in current Heroic/entry Raid gear it heals for about 400 every 2 seconds. It isn't going to save anybody but essentially lowers incoming damage by 1% or so.

Earth: Again you will probably have a Pally or DK providing Earth's buffs, so drop Stoneskin Totem. Increases tank mitigation and lowers incoming damage. Earth has a few utility totems you may have call to use, on add heavy fights you may want to drop Earthbind to slow adds, or Grounding Totem to eat a spell every time it's CD is up. It just may save a tank on a magic heavy encounter.

Air: You are probably always going to use Wrath of Air . Unless someone specifically asks for windfury. I have never been asked to do this.

Fire: Fire totems are kind of problematic for the Resto Shaman. There really is nothing usefull for us here. There is usually a Elemental (at least in my raids) providing the superior Totemic Wrath on their fire totems. I usually either drop Searing Totem to contribute a tiny bit of DPS, or no fire totem at all.

Finally I am going to give Mana Tide it's own section as it really is too important to place with the other totems. This is our big mana regen ability. Use it every time you are below 75% mana and then every time it is off cool down the rest of the fight. Don't try to save it until later in the fight. If you are below 50% mana, it is too late and you will be oom before the fight is over. Pop it early, pop it often as it is on a 3 minute cool down. You may be able to pop it 3 times on a longer boss fight. In 4.0.6 it becomes raid wide, so it will really help your healing team.

I must really love my wife.

2010-12-22T09:04:00.000-08:00

Last night, after dinner I queued for a random, got Halls of Origination. (I have learned in the past any dungeon with "Halls" in the title is going to suck) First time I have been there and I must say, it is excellent dungeon design! It is by far the most fun I have had in a Cata dungeon! I mean come on! CAMELS! A boss that you fight while riding camels! What could be more fun? I had a great run. It was a dungeon finder PuG, and everyone seemed to know the place and their roles. Tank was great, explained his strats and marked targets. DPS didn't stand in the fire and went pew pew.

By the end of the run I was 1/10th of a bubble to level 85, some 100k experience. One quest, a few random mobs, and I would be 85. (I know I'm a slacker, 2 weeks in and still not 85) But instead of finishing the last little bit to 85 I sat down on the couch with the wife to watch this...
Is that love? Oh I think it is.

Level 85 Resto and Elemental Specs

2010-12-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

*Disclaimer: These specs are not raid tested, not theory-crafted. These are just the specs I will be starting level 85 heroic grind with. Specs may change with raiding and after testing.

Restoration: I think the resto spec is pretty self explanatory. I did not take any of the PvP talents, and I also took none of the damage to increase mana/healing talents. I just do not see having the free GCD or mana to risk a lightning bolt or shock early in the expansion.

Other than the above mentioned talents I took pretty much everything in the resto tree. I took the talents in enhancement that allows for more efficient shields, and better weapon enhancements. (15% additional mana from water shield and 40% better earthliving) I also took ans am really excited for the reworked Ancestral Swiftness. I loved this talent in wrath, but could never find the free points to take it, and in Cata it is even better as it is an instant cast Ghost Wolf, but an overall 15% movement speed increase. Which should help in the promised "more movement" fights coming up. Other than that I took Acuity from Elemental, because 3% crit si 3% crit.

Elemental: Elemental is a little more difficult to come up with what I think of as an "optimal spec" as there are a few more discretionary points here. Basically I took the same 3 talents from the Enhancement tree to give me a little more oompf and the instant cast Ghost Wolf, plus all the standard DPS increasing talents from Elemental. There are 2 extra points at the end that you can move around. If you find yourself running out of mana drop the two points into Convection, otherwise I put them into Earth's Grasp. Rooting your targets isn't always what you want to do, but it is pretty helpful wen soloing, or kiting. Plus it is pretty nice if you find you have pulled agro and need to run to the tank before getting squashed.

Healing Blackrock Caverns

2010-12-08T09:54:00.000-08:00

Here is a quick guide to healing Blackrock Caverns, with a little bit of boss strategy thrown in. This is based on personal experience, so your mileage may vary.

Rom'ogg Bonecrusher: You need to clear the pat and packs close to the boss first. If you do not he will call for help and probably kill your group. Once you engage the boss, stay at max range and heal. The boss has a few abilities you need to worry about. First is Quake. Quake is a fairly quick cast, targeted/AOE. Near as I can tell it targets 3 ranged targets and does a fairly significant amount of damage over time. When you see it targeted run away. Second ability you need to worry about is Chains of Woe. Chains pull you to the boss, and roots you into place. Chains need to be AOE'd down fast. Twenty seconds after casting chains he will use The Skullcracker, 360degree cleave in a 10 yard radius that deals 100k damage. If you do not get out of it, you will die. I recommend running straight through the boss and away soon as your chains are broken. Use any cool downs you have, make sure Earth Shield and Riptide are up on the tank and kill the boss.

Once you kill the boss, a large NPC is released from a cage, when ever you see a pull that looks impossible, wait a few seconds the NPS pops out, and kills the mobs for you.

Corla, Herald of Twilight: Only allow one zealot to evolve at a time or you will wipe. You need to swap DPS in the evolution beam, or one of the players will evolve and become mind controlled and you will wipe. We found we had the DPS to kill the cultists before they evolved, but then the boss dropped no loot. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature. Once a zealot evolves he will cast Shadow Strike you should interrupt it. We found it best to burn the boss till the first zealot evolves, kill the evolved Zealot then back to the boss till the second evolution. Once the second zealot is evolved you should have the boss pretty much dead.

Corla casts Dark Command, but tremor totem and chain heal should take care of it. She also Death Grips a random player to her through the encounter. Watch the Zealots melee abilities while you are running back out. The zealots are the real boss of this encounter, once the zealots are down, it is pretty much tank-n-spank. Don't be afraid to use chain heal and riptide.

Karsh Steelbender: From a healers perspective this is a tank-n-spank fight. Watch for the cleave, and don't die. Tanking is a little more difficult. He has Quicksilver Armor making him basically undamageable. The tank needs to drag him through the fire in the center of the room, giving him Superheated Quicksilver Armor. Every stack increases damage against him by 5% +1000 per melee attack. But every melee attack causes an AOE splash to the group for 1000 damage over 12 seconds. Anything over 6-7 stacks becomes unhealable and the group wipes. So you have to let the stacks of superheated fall off, then drag him back through the flames.

Beauty: Optional boss, Tank-n-spank. Boss has a fear, drop tremor totem. The only other things to look out for is the knock back ability Flamebreak and a random charge ability Beserker Charge. There is a lot of group damage, so chain heal liberally. One final ability is a living bomb like ability called Magma Spit. If you cleanse it, and the target is close to other members it will blow them up. Run from the group before cleansing, or just let the timer tick down.

Ascendant Lord Obsidius: The final boss of the first Cataclysm dungeon. He has two Shadow of Obsidius who should be off tanked or CC'ed away from the boss. These adds are pretty much immune to damage so ignore them. Obsidius will randomly swap into one of his shadows, so there is a target switch with an aggro reset.

Obsidius really doesnt have any abilities of note. A pretty basic melee ability Stone Blow, an identical ability to Warriors, Thunderclap and a shadow damage spell Twilight Corruption. This fight is by far the easiest in the instance, assuming you can target switch mid-fight.

Depending on how real life runs today I will try to discover Throne of Tides, or Vortex Pinnacle and let you know how those are.

P.S.

2010-12-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

See this post from a week or so ago. Cataclysm was Blizzards smoothest expansion launch to date. Servers were up at midnight, there was no regular Tuesday maintenance and near as I can tell there was no server outages all day yesterday. Good job Blizzard, I hope this sets a precedent for the future.

Of course it was brilliant planing on Blizzards side to put all the game-breaking data in a patch two weeks before the launch of the expansion, so returning players see nothing but a smooth running remade world.

Cataclysn: Day 1

2010-12-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

I went to my local GameStop Monday night at midnight, with many protests from Mrs. Skraps. I got there a little late, almost 11 and paid for my copy and went to get in line to pick it up at 12:00. As I was walking out of the store I ran into a friend who was 5th in line who said as I was walking out "John! here we are come get in line!".

There were about 100 people in line, so unexpectedly being able to jump to the front of the line was nice, I was out of the store at 12:08 and on my way home to install. I promised Mrs. Skraps I wouldn't play Monday night/Tuesday morning, so soon as the install was complete I logged on grabbed my Lil'Deathwing and signed off to go to bed.

Yesterday, despite having the day off from work I didn't get to play much. I had to go do a bit of a side job, clean house, do laundry and go pick up my new lap top that conveniently was delivered to work on my day off.

I then powered on my new laptop, and they hard drive failed. I spent an hour on the phone with Dell before I could convince them to just send me a hard disk.

Well after all that, I spent some time in Vashj'ir, it is a beautiful zone, with some fun quests and you get the awesome seahorse mount. I then decided to head over to Hyjal. This zone is awesome. There are scenic views, awesome monsters, great quests and some surprises. (1980's Joust arcade game style mini-game with vulture non-combat pet as a reward)

I got to level 82 last night, 3 pieces of my T10 gear are still left, but 3 epics have been replaced with greens and 1 epic has been replaced with a dungeon blue. I have enshrined my T10 set in my bank, to marvel over forever. I will only replace the T10 shoulders when something more awesome than a elk pops out of the replacement.

I AM KINGSLAYER!

2010-12-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

Last night while struggling against great adversity the Natural Order alt run finally downed Arthas. The great adversity consisted of my wife wanting me to, in her words "QUIT PLAYING THAT STUPID GAME, COME HAVE DINNER AND DECORATE THE CHRISTMAS TREE!"

Our raid started right on time, 6:15 pacific. We started the first attempt at about 6:20. I am confident we would have 1-shot Arthas if it were not for something I did. We mastered phase 1 and 2 in the last few weeks, the phase transition into 3 was giving us trouble last week, this week we walked right through it.

Arthas was at 18% health, all 10 of us were up and it was looking like a 1-shot kill. I quickly yelled through the house to my son "Aristotle! We are killing the Lich King!", as soon as the words were out of my mouth, our tank somehow was one-shot. (We think whoever was sucked into frostmourne missed and Arthas enraged) DPS started dying to infest and it pretty much fell apart.

I jinxed us.

We went it for attempt two, Natural Orders alt team looked like pro sponsored raiders and killed the Lich King, without loosing a single DPS, stepping in a defile, loosing to an infest. It was basically a text book kill...

and I forgot to start FRAPS.

One consolation is this wicked-awesome screen shot.

So finally after almost two years I have seen the defeat of the Lich King and I can move on to Cataclysm tonight with a light heart and a massive sense of accomplishment.

I'll be heading to Gamestop tonight about 10:30 to grab my collectors edition and I am off tomorrow. I'll be posting screen shots and impressions as I start to level tonight.

Damn you Arthas!

2010-11-29T12:05:00.000-08:00

So this is the third week on Arthas and he still lives. To be fair the first week we only had a couple of attempts before the raid time was over and we all went to bed. Last week we worked on him for a good hour, hour and a half. Last week we were struggling with phase 2, and getting the Val'kyr's down. This week we have mastered phase 2, killing the val'kyrs with no problem, staying out of defile, but it would fall apart at the phase 3 transition.

I am not sure how I managed to do this, but every single time just before we pushed into transition, defile would drop, and the raid would run one way, I always ran the other. I would get out of range and could never recover from the infest. We would loose 2-3 dps, and push into phase 3 with 2 tanks, 3 heals and 2 dps. I guess you could probably finish him off with those numbers but I'm skeptical.

We have decided to push one more week on Arthas, and do our regular Sunday night raid on the 5th , as well as raid into the night on Monday the 6th. I figure we have to midnight my time Monday if we do not get him down Sunday.

Then I heads out to game stop, pick up my Cata collectors edition, and take Tuesday off, and hopefully the servers cooperate and I get some "me" time with Cata before the wife and kid get home from school.

On the launch day front: Am I being overly optimistic? I really think this will be the smoothest expansion launch to date. I figure, almost all of the expansion data is running on live right now, the shattering has occurred and and everything is running smooth. All that is left is flip the switch to activate the Worgen/Goblin starting zones and the new 80-85 zones.

Right?

Right?

Lich King 10 Still not down.

2010-11-23T10:12:00.000-08:00

Well Sunday night came and went and Natural Order's alt run still has not defeated The Lich King. We have now mastered phase one, the phase transition and managed to get almost to the second phase transition. We were killed by a lot of bad luck late in the evening with defiles and early in the evening with Varyklys. We have just about 2 weeks to finish him off before Cataclysm. If we can get the DPS coordinated I think we should be able to get him down this week.

Things I learned on Lich King.

1.) When DBM tells you you have Necrotic Plague, RUN and RUN now. don't finish casting, tont stare at your screen and watch the pretty timer tick. Get over to the ghouls and get cleansed.

2.) Watch your threat. A mage can tank Arthas, for about 1/2 a swing. It isn't pretty. When Omen flashes "High Threat" you can not cast "just one more arcane blast". Because that Arcan Blast will crit for 60k damage and Arthas will eat you.

3.) A mage with a lucky string of crits on a full stack of Arcane Blast can do some SERIOUS DPS in phase one, when it is pretty much stand and fire. Sunday night I was averaging 16k dps during phase one, and settling down to a more reasonable 8.5k DPS for the rest of the fight.

With Cataclysm so near I spend a lot of time reflecting on what I have managed to attain over the last two years in Wrath. At the end of the Burning Crusade I was in Ex Obscurum. We were a close guild, and had some major accomplishments. We were ranked number 3 on our server, the number 1 horde guild. I had successfully killed Illidan and the whole guild was excited for Wrath, and the future of raiding. The only problem was we raided 4-5 nights per week. I was a casual hardcore raider, and after almost 2 years of raiding 4-5 nights per week it was taking a toll on my home life. The wife and I were growing apart (she was working late most every night as well), the boy needed more dad time it just wasn't working.

Wrath launches, I cut back my WoW hours, and I was late to the level 80 party. I missed early raids, in fact I didn't even step into Naxx before Ulduar was released. I finally started raiding 10 mans with pugs and guild alts, and slowly got back into raiding with Ex Obscurum near the end of Ulduar/early ToC. But I was raiding only Thursday/Saturday. Late last winter, Ex Obscurum decided to server transfer and for the first time in my WoW lofe I had no guild for my toons. I spent a few months guildless leveling alts. I got both my Pally and Mage to 80, and found a new home in natural Order.

NO is a much better fit for my play-style/life needs. They have a number of runs every week from Hard Mode progression to alt runs, and it is a "come as you are" atmosphere. You do not have to dedicate your life to every single run every week. Show up when you can and if they have a spot you raid. We run so many raids, both 10's and 25's that if you want to raid on a given night there is usually a place for you. If you miss a raid there isn't 9 or 24 people missing you.

So Wrath is closing, I am so close to an Arthas kill I can taste it and level 85 is looming with a whole new sait of heroics, dungeons and raids.

Here is to the future, and the past. I toast Arthas, Anub'arak, Mimron, Illidan, lady Vash, C'thun and any other boss that myself and a group of myself and 9-39 friends worked those long nights to defeat.

Quick and Dirty Video Cataclysm Changes

2010-11-17T19:48:00.000-08:00

This is a quick video sped up 2x flying from Bilgewater Harbor to Gadgetzan.

2010-11-16T15:44:00.000-08:00

Sunday night Natural Orders alt run did something amazing. After only 2 weeks we cleared ICC to the foot of the Frozen Throne. The previous week we cleared through Plagueworks, and Dreamwalker. This week we started on Sindragosa as we felt she was the hardest boss we had left. We spent close to an hour on Sindi, and thought we would be lucky to get the rest of the bosses before Arthas down.

A personal aside, FU Sindragosa. I went in on my Mage for the alt run, to save my lockout in case I can actually make the 25's on Skraps, and this is an ALT run. Probably shouldn't take my main on an alt run. I was targeted for EVERY SINGLE Unchained Magic, but with the patch 4.01 health pool improvement I was able to survive stacks getting as high as 10 without putting any strain on the healers.

The rest of the bosses were a cake walk, and we decided since we actually made it though to Arthas a bit early we would make a few attempts on the Lich Kink himself. We ended up calling the raid at just shy of 1:00 am eastern time, a full 2 hours after raids normally end. Lucky for me and my marriage that put us off just before 10:00 pm my time, and a good 15 minutes before wife agro one-shot me.

The alt run will extend our raid lockout for another week, or two or three if needed. Basically we have committed to getting as many people the Kingslayer title before December 7th as possible. It is looking good for both Skraps and Tharadra to get their kingslayers before Deathwing leaves poor Arthas alone atop his ivory tower wondering where all the visitors have gone. I hear Prince Malchezaar has a weekly poker night Arthas may be able to join.

As much as I am looking forward to the release of Cataclysm and the new leveling experience for my alts, I am really excited about downing Arthas before that happens. This will be the completion of two years of work, and completing a goal I have had since the Fall of the Lich King was pushed last December.

No matter how silly the goal, it always feels good to be this close to completing it.

Serious Case of Pre-Expansion Blues...

2010-11-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

In the last 2 weeks or so I have been having a really hard time motivating myself to even log in unless it is a raid night, even then I only want to raid about 50% of the time. I have pretty much given up my spot in our 25 man, and only really run the Sunday night alt ICC 10. I guess I would like to maybe try tanking ICC on either my warrior or my Pally a bit, but not really sure.

Over the weekend I picked up the StarCraft 2 Collectors Edition at a local Fry's Electronics. The sticker on the box said $59.99. It was the only one on the shelf with that price, the Sticker said right on it StarCraft 2 CE. When I got to the register, I had to fight with both the checker and the manager to get the price as they said it was supposed to read $89.99. Well after about 5 minutes of fighting that I should have to pay what the box says I walked out the door with a CE for the price of the regular. Yay me?!

Any way, I have been mixing it up pretty heavily between the single player campaign, and the online multi-player matches. I am really enjoying the single player game, multi-player...not so much. I have been playing the "training" league for those of us who never played RTS before, even though I have been playing RTS's since Warcraft. I have had my ass handed to me a number of times. Some of the matches I am killed so early in the game I only have a few marines to protect myself with, and they are rolling over me with whatever the Protoss and Zerg versions of a tank are. How do they do it?

Last night for the first time I was matched with someone who played on my level. It was tedious. We spent hours gathering materials, and sending squads of units to their slow painful death. I would attack his base, take out forward defenses damage a few units, and get all my guys killed. I would then frantically return to my base, pump out units and wait for his attack, where I would barley get enough units together to defend.

We would then move to another resource and gather for a while and start the attack cycle over again. While it was long, and tedious I had a really good time. Finally when all the maps resources were depleted, and there was no way to recover from the loss of units, I was able to get into his base and win.

A far cry from watching the SC2 finals at Blizzcon.

Just for fun

2010-11-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

If you ever wanted to write a blog post on faction rewards, check out Flameshock.

Also last night was Natural Orders ICC 10 alt run. There was much discussion as to weather they needed a healer, or not. I volunteered to heal on Skraps, even though there is nothing in ICC 10 I could really use this side of the LK kill. After much waiting, a guildie with a semi-geared healer came on, joined the raid and off we went.

Now don't get me wrong I fully understand that damage meters are a pretty lame measure of ones performance, and a DPS that puts out the least DPS could be the most valuable raid member if they are kiting, cleansing or some other vital job that prevents them from standing still and going pew pew.

But last night, for the first time ever I broke 10k DPS. I actually hit 10077 dps on Festergut, and topped the meter for that one fight. I normally hover around number 3 for 10 man, 5 or 6 for 25. I am not the best geared mage in the group, or frankly the best DPS, I am normally a healer remember.

But I was pretty damned proud of myself when I topped the meter for that one fight.

And I Ran...I Ran So Far Away!

2010-11-02T15:11:00.001-07:00

I shouted all over Durotar that the end was near, not one damned person cared. Although thes two little ladies were pretty impressed, you could tell by their looks of total indifference.

Blizzcon 2010 Photo Slideshow

2010-11-01T15:31:00.001-07:00

View all

Get your own

This is not the greatest shirt in the world.

2010-10-31T21:22:00.001-07:00

It is merely a tribute!

My favorite blizzcon shirt. More pics to come soon.

Blizzcon news...

2010-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

I was struck near dead by some Blizzcon Super Virus this week. Today is the first day I managed to crawl into work. I'll get pics and info from my point of view posted this weekend after the Halloween party.

I would like to have a word with AT&t

2010-10-23T08:15:00.001-07:00

That word would be a big F.U. Ok that's technically two words, but you get the idea. I can not post anything from blizzcon. The network is so super saturated that nothing is going up. So I will just do a massive dump of information and pictures Sunday or Monday.

Opening ceremony.

2010-10-23T08:05:00.001-07:00

I think the 10:30 start time on the wall is erroneous!

Figuring out iPhone blogger app.

2010-10-21T23:41:00.001-07:00

Here is the pic of swag bag.

First look at blizzcon loot!

2010-10-21T23:37:00.001-07:00

Finally in Anaheim checked in and registered. I finally have a 1/2 dozen beers in me and I have time to look at the goodie bag. The first thing you see in the bag is a large box of something. It is a "Deathling". Which is a stoneware mini featuring statue. It will look awesome on my desk! There is a poster for the wow magazine, some swag flyers directing you to booths and a Starcraft 2 trial as well as the 2010 limited authenticator. I spend almost 7 hours driving today. It is 11:30 and I have a Lon day tomorrow. The janky hotel has no wifi in my room so I'll post from my iPhone when I can. Hopefully some pics will come too. I'll try to get good pics from my slr up tomorrow night too. See you all tomorrow. BLIZZCON!

Two Days Until Blizzcon!

2010-10-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

It is 4:15 Monday afternoon, and I am at work. But I am also trying to get all my last minute things together for my trip down south to Blizzcon Thursday. Today I had to take my car in for oil change and rotate/balance the tires to make it ready for the 400 mile drive to Southern California. So check here Thursday, Friday and Saturday for pics and video from this years Blizzcon oh and hopefully some hot cosplay girls ;) (don' tell the wife)

I also just confirmed my reservation for the hotel, and FINALLY got my ticket emails from Blizzard over the weekend. I was a bit worried that I had not seen them yet. Oh by the way...I totally win the internet at online hotel reservations. I am staying at the hotel across the street from the convention center, I got the room for Thursday, Friday and Saturday for the amazing sum of $108! It is probably a pit though. I was really looking forward to taking my son to the convention, but because he has his head in his ass and has gotten unsatisfactory grades in both Math and English he will be staying home. Instead I will be taking my cousin. So yay for a guys weekend at the convention, boo for the boy missing it and his poor grades.

I did two runs of ICC over the weekend. ICC 25 as DPS on my Mage, and ICC 10 on Skraps healing. The 25 run was tons of fun, the tanks really didn't have threat issues, and the DPS were kind enough to wait 3 seconds before opening up on bosses. I pretty much switched specs from Arcane to Fire between each trash pull and boss fight so I could get the feel for both. They are both a lot of fun right now, with Arcane doing slightly more DPS but I think that has more to do with my familiarity than any raw numbers. We made it through Professor Putricide in less than 2 hours with only one or two wipes on Festergut. Those were strictly due to people not knowing the fight and bad RNG.

Last night was ICC 10, I was healing with the awesome new resto toolbox. A few thoughts. Healing Wave isn't really a great replacement for Lesser Healing Wave. I found myself using riptide almost exclusively to top off the raid. During boss fights I was using Greater Healing Wave on the tanks, rolling Riptide on the raid and the occasional Healing Surge.

Let me tell you about Healing Surge. I think it may be by far the single most OP heal in the game. Again don't quote me, as I don't really know what other similar spells are out there for other classes, I just know what Healing Surge does. When a tank dropped below 45% health I was able to get a hasted Healing Surge from the T10 4 piece bonus off in .74 seconds that healed for 20k+. Supposedly there is going to be some mana limiting factor in Cataclysm, but I didn't see it in T10 gear. I was able to spam Healing Surge during phase 3 of Putricide almost indefinitely, I cast it at least 30 times before I thought I might want to drop Mana Tide.

Speaking of Mana Tide. How awesome is that? My rough numbers, possibly based on old spirit to mana regen numbers puts it to about 862 mana per second for 12 seconds every 3 minutes. (based on my current spirit and intellect numbers, unbuffed) for a total of 10,344 mana returned! And that goes for everyone in your group!

Things I have learned from 4.01

2010-10-13T08:39:00.001-07:00

Wrath Heroics are hard again, at least for the first 5 minutes. That's when everybody figures out where they put their buttons and things go mostly smooth again.

Most of my glyphs diapered and I have neglected to buy any to replace them.

Healing Surge, Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave all seem to do the job as advertised, although I am not seeing the new "Mana Management Game" I so feared. After healing through a few heroics last night, I never dipped below 85% mana. This may change in a raid setting where boss fights are 5 minutes or longer.

My Rogue friends are having issues. They claim that combo points are "Just Disappearing", I don't deny that this is happening, I just have not sen it first hand. I bet it sucks.

Arcane Mages are a bit more fun than before, they are a little more "proccy". Meaning you cant just spam arcane blast and arcane missile when you get to 4 stacks. But boy when Arcane Missile is up, and it is improved. It is freekin awesome to see all those missiles flying at your target.

Earthquake is super fun! I will be going into ICC tonight and I will see what it does damage-wise. I think it will be fun on the trash mobs before Marrowgar and the Gunship battle. I mean that is if I am not healing.

Wrath Heroics are HARD 4SRSLY!

2010-10-13T08:23:00.001-07:00

Last night after tinkering with my Arcane spec on my mage for a bit and reforging my stupid 28% hit to an awesome 355 Mastery, a tank in the guild announced he was going to queue for a Heroic, and did anybody want to join him.

As a DPS I jumped at the chance, cause come on...skip the 15 minute DPS queue time? Sure! Well we got Halls of Lightning, one of the harder instances in early Wrath. Well we had wiped before the first boss. Everybody said no biggie, we ended up pugging the heals, the rest of the run was guild. We gave the healer the benefit of the doubt, since it is a new spec, and things were just generally wonky.

Well by the 3rd wipe on General Bjarngrim we were like WTF? Heals just were not happening. The healer was kind of dickish, and then dropped group.

I volunteered to switch over to Skraps and heal. I logged on, set my talents bought my skills that were new or missing and ported into the dungeon. Soon as I ported into the dungeon I found why the original healer had such a problem. Healbot is broken, and I am betting the healer never healed before there were healing ad-ons to make healing simple a whack-a-mole game.

Admittedly it has been a few years since I healed without an ad-on, and I think I would stroke out if I had to heal a raid without some kind of unit frame/cast click interface. But healing is perfectly doable with some smart key bindings, and focus-casting macros. Oh and you have to turn off auto self cast, unless you are just going to stand in melee and chain-heal yourself and let it bounce to the rest of the group, not the most efficient way to heal.

In the end, with only one more death, and some really ginormous fails on my part we completed the dungeon and got our justice points and a bit of experience for the five Natural Order folks with our new specs.

Welcome to Patch 4.01

2010-10-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

This is what my Resto spec will look like tonight when the servers come back up. Natural Order will we going into Ulduar tonight to try out the new specs, and attempt a drake run. There is really no point in trying any progression raiding for a few days, between server stability and people trying to work out new specs.

I'll give you a run down on this spec, and why I selected the talents I selected.

Remember at level 80 we get fewer talent points, and I tried to pick talents I thought would benefit the raiding shaman the most.

I took all the talents in the first tier, not because I think they are all that important, but mostly because I need to spend the points to get higher in the tree, and I skipped Soothing Rains because we only get 1/2 the bang for its buck until lever 83, the 85 build will be quite different. I also skipped any talent that looked vaguely pvp oriented. So for tier 2 that left only Improved Water Shield and Totemic Focus and I figured anything that helps with Mana will pretty much be a must.

I am kind of conflicted about Nature's Blessing but I took it anyway. Outside of 5 mans I am not sure of how much tank healing I am going to be doing, but as I understand it with our new tool kit, we are better suited to tank healing than ever before.

I still skipped Telluric Currents for progression raiding, but if I decide to run more 5 mans to pick up my last 2 pieces of T10 that could be quite awesome since I am throwing Lightning bolts as often as heals in 5 mans. From here out the rest of the resto talents are a no-brainer. There is some decision on taking points in Elemental or Enhancement. If you drop 3 points into Elemental you get a 3% crit increase in all spells, but I choose to dump my last 5 points into Enhancement, mostly because I am afraid of being mana short, and a 40% spell power buff to Earthliving Weapon is nothing to blink at.

If I make it into the raid tonight I will let you know how it goes. Tuesdays are always iffy for raiding as it is Boy Scout night with the boy, and you know family first and all that jazz. Just a little side note, he completed his First Class Scout requirements last week, and is 3/4 done with Star Scout. He is working his way towards Eagle quite nicely, I'm pretty proud.

Natural Order's 25 man raid is progressing nicely

2010-10-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Natural Order's 25 man raid is progressing nicely. I seem to DPS for one night of raiding on my mage, and heal the other night on the Shaman. I'm pretty happy with this. I get to heal the stuff that isn't quite on farm, with drops I need and DPS all the farm content and get upgrades for my alt, although Nibelung refuses to drop for my mage. I know this item isn't BiS or anything, I just REALLY want to have a Val'kyr at my beck and call.

Last weekend I was super productive on my shaman. I finally completed the Argent Tournament stuff and got a bevy of titles and achievements.

Exalted Champion of the Horde, Exalted Champion of Silvermoon City, Exalted Argent Champion of the Horde, Champion of the Horde, Champion of Silvermoon City

That's a lot of achievement spam in guild chat I tell ya!

Last week's ICC run was particularly fruitful for Skraps as well, even though I used up all my PR points in EPGP. I walked away with the most epic gear ever! Plus some gear, that I guess is good and useful...Mail of Crimson Coins and Unclean Surgical Gloves.

I guess one good thing about raiding in a EPGP guild and going weeks on end without picking up any gear, when gear does finally drop for you, even from multiple bosses you get to clean up and loot whore it all. (although if another of the shaman in the guild had needed either I would have passed, cause I'm cool like that, and luckily there was only one other resto Shaman on the run last week who already had those pieces)

This week we again ran the first 2 wings, no Nibelung again, we will see what happens next week. Thursday it is back to the upper spire, we will see if I finally get my shot at the LK

Back into ICC...One more time

2010-09-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

Natural Order runs a few different raids per week. We have a 10 man who has already killed the Lich King. Another 10 man that is currently on the Lich King, and a 25 man progression that will be on our 3rd raid extension working on a Lich King kill. (To be fair we only raid about 2 hours per week per raid group, so we have just under 4 hours into the LK fight)

This weekend we started a alt run 10 man group. Well Skraps has now gone into ICC as a healer once more. Strangely I find raid healing much less stressful than DPS. I know that is usually the opposite reaction most people have, but when DPS'ing I find myself constantly trying to make sure I am doing the most DPS possible, while trying not to do something stupid like stand in a defile.

I think my job as a healer can be distilled to a few simple things.

1.) Don't let people die.
2.) Don't die.
3.) Cleanse when something needs to be cleansed.

I know this is an over simplification of a healers job, but I only have to react to situations and I find that calming. When DPS'ing I have to make sure my debuffs are up, I am maximizing my DPS, de-curisng, slowing, and watching fro procs.

Oh and I finally got my super awesome T10 Resto Shaman shoulders. I broke my 4 piece T9, because I didn't thing the extra 5% crit on chain heal was really worth the extra stats from the T10.

And I get FRIKEN antelope jumping out of my shoulders! I think my next piece will have to be the helm to complete the awesome forest animal look of the T10.

Blizzcon 2010

2010-08-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

Well Finally got off my lazy bum and booked the hotel for the trip. I will be driving from the San Francisco area to Anaheim Thursday October 21st. I plan to work a 1/2 day, and be on the road by 12:30. Pick up "The Boy" from school about 1ish and make the 6 hour drive. I should make it to Anaheim in time for whatever Thursday night party is going on. If you want to meet up drop me a line, would love to share a beer with my tens of ones of readers. I'll probably be dropping by the WoW.com soiree as Matt "Matticus" Low owes me a beer for sending him a SC2 beta key. If anybody from the SF Bay Area are heading down and needs a ride and wants to share expenses, and can stomach hours of Kevin Smith podcasts on the trip I have room for 1 or 2 more people in the car.

What happened to Improved Reincarnation?

2010-08-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

One thing that troubles me about being a shaman in wow, we still have the LONGEST cool down ability in the game. While the new 30 minute cool down is awesome, and I am more likely to use it when ever it is up (That is if I am actually dead). It still confuses and angers me that that in order to make the ability usable with some degree of certainty requires the additional penalty of wasting two talent points, and then we STILL have the longest cool down in the game out side of professions.

As it stands now in a raid situation, especially on progression raiding it is an incredibly difficult decision on weather or not to pop. You need to look at how long into the fight you are, what other members of the raid are still up, boss health left and the likely hood of a wipe, because with a 30 minute CD you do not want to pop it, only to still wipe. Especially if having that CD available on the next attempt could have made the difference between a 1% wipe and a successful boss kill.

Luckily for my my current guilds 25 man team has a GINORMOUS stack of druids, we have something like 6 battle resurrections available, so blowing the CD isn't always that big a deal. But on our 10's it is a huge difference, considering we are usually running with 2-3 healers and 1 druid 50% of the time.

One thing that still confuses me is when the CD was lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes with the ability to talent into it to drop it to 15 minutes, the devs claimed it was so powerful that they didn't want Shaman to be able to use it on every fight. They wanted us to have to choose when to use it. Now don't get me wrong, but I LOVE! being able to pop when I make a dumb mistake, I think it is one of the signature abilities of the class. But I think the Druids battle rez, or even the Warloc's Soulstone provide quite a bit more utility seeing as how they can cast it on others.

What concerns me now is the fact that in all the Cataclysm preview data that has come out I have not seen the current CD on Reincarnate. Nor is the talent in the talent tree anymore. So I see it going one of two ways.

1.) They finally see it my way and dropped the CD to 15 minutes, still the longest CD in the game.

or

2.) They see that nobody uses the Improved Reincarnation talent in live, and think therefore nobody likes it and thinks 30 minutes is just fine. Without taking into account that spending those two talent points somewhere else provides much more bang for the buck. Talent points are expensive after all, and it really hurts to have to give up on mana regen, spell power or something else to make your ability ALMOST on par with other class abilities.

My Cataclysm Fantasy

2010-08-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

What I would love to see is a legendary shaman shield, or off hand or whatever you want to call it, that emulates the warcraft 3 giant totem the Tauren shaman carries around.

But what are the odds that blizzard would put in a legendary item aimed at a single class, and a under represented class to boot.

Back into ICC

2010-08-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

This isn't me, just more mocking thereof
So Natural Order's 10 man team have successfully beaten the Lich King, and Ruby Sanctum. I am on the 2nd 10 man team and we are a bit behind that but not to terribly far behind that, im confident we will see the Lich Kind defeated and some of the hard modes down as well. We are also now hitting ICC 25 every week or so with full guild runs. We are 9/12 complete in ICC. Last night we spent a great night wiping on Putricide after clearing the Blood Wing Tuesday. We had a number of great attempts and have gotten him into phase 3 a few times, but just can't quite seal the deal. I suspect we will get him next time, we were so close this week.

Now here is what I am really here to talk about. Nibelung. It has eluded me since the opening of ICC. Every person in NO that can wield a staff has one, and they take it out on AOE intensive fights and there is 100 Valkyr flying around the raid mocking me. I understand that staff isnt exactly BiS for a mage, but the proc is so pretty I feel like I am reverting to my 6 year old self. Ever week when we get to Lady Deathwhisper I scream "I WANT IT, I WANT IT, I NEED IT!" Alas she never drops it when I am around. If for some reason I miss the first part of the raid, RNG be damned, she drops 2 of them. It is getting to the point that hunters and warriors are getting them just to mock me.

Congratulations to all my friends who can now marry in CA

2010-08-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

ICC, Paladin Alts

2010-07-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

Picture is unrelated, I just got a chuckle out of it

Last night I was happily leveling my new alt obsession, Pallyadin the female Belf Paladin. It is all good fun, and I have been tanking my way to 80 using the dungeon finder and questing for gear.

There was a message in guild chat that said, if we do not have 1 dps for ICC we will have to sit 9 people for the night. Despite the fact that I was about to BBQ some awesome 3 cheese Angus burgers for the boy and I decided to raid, and make the boy cook me dinner. They needed DPS so I took the mage in instead of Skraps the shaman. It was a blast, and let me tell you with that 30% buff the DPS was averaging about 6k, with the top DPS hitting 10k. We wrecked the place, despite the fact that I still fail at moving out of the fire on Lord Marrowgar. (I mean really? WTF man, how do I always die in the fire on him? It isn't like it is hard to miss GIANT blue trails of fire)

Hopefully sometime this weekend, we will get past the plagueworks and head to the blood wing, an area I haven't seen yet.

On to my noobtastic self. As I mentioned, I have been leveling a Paladin alt. She is now level 78, just one and a half short levels to the level cap, this will be my 5th 80. I really need to get this altaholism under control, I have now spent 25k gold on epic fliers. It is too much!

Cataclysm Shaman 31 Point Talent Trees

2010-07-14T10:01:00.001-07:00

OK. Before you get on my case, this is a COMPLETELY non-scientific, not in the beta so I don't really know, "Best Guess" of what the cookie cutter build of the Resto Tree will be in Cataclysm.

Here is a direct link to the talents so you can check them out.

There are a few talents I am not particularly happy with, and I am sure they will change as testing goes on. The first one, REALLY deep in the tree that I am not really sure of is Telluric Currents as I understand it mana management will be a big part of the healing game in Cata, and this spell may be necessary for the mana regen portion. I just worry that with things ramping up in Cata, not only will the mana management be required, but it may also require healers to DPS more to beat tighter enrage timers. This may well push the already difficult job of healing over the edge. Because not only will you have to be watching DPS that still in this day and age not move out of the fire, but on every spare GCD have to throw a lightning bolt, or shock in to beat the enrage.

Focused Insight is a talent I did not pick up, although thinking back on it, a instant cast shock, may be more efficient than a lighting bolt for the reduced cost of the next heal, plus a Greater Healing Wave with a 15% mana reduction and 5% bonus on top, kinda gets me happy in the pants.

As near as I can tell there seems to be about a 3 talent "option" in this new 31 point tree, depending on your play style, or weather or not you are doing PVP you can pick a couple of what I am calling tertiary talents, Ancestral Resolve, Focused Insight and Natures Guardian.

As far as your secondary tree, it seems pretty obvious that you are going to want to go into the enhancement tree, as the elemental trees lower talents only improve damage, while enhancement improves some of your buffs, and your mana pool. Although Concussion in conjunction with Telluric Currents may be required for the mana regen.

This ends my completley uninformed, best guess at the new 31 point resto tree. If I manage to find time later this week before I leave for a 3 day white water rafting trip I will take a look at the other trees. But I am not sure I will get the chance, still trying to recover here at the office after a small fire in the telco closet here at work over the weekend.

Exclusive Shaman preview!

2010-07-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

I just had a wonderful chat with Ghostcrawler, he leaked some wonderful tidbits about upcoming Cataclysm changes for the shaman class.

THERE WILL BE A NEW TOTEM SCHOOL! In addition to the new totem, each totem school will have a summon elemental ability. These elementals will not be directly involved in combat like the current earth and fire elementals, but will provide a super charged raid buff from their usual schools. We will be summoning a air elemental to increase party haste by 20% for 30 seconds and water elemental (not like the mage elemental) that provides a massive AOE mana regen with an effect similar to a druids Tranquility.

To go with our current Earth, Water, Fire, Air. We will get the Spirit totem! Spirit totems will be able to combine the four original totems elementals into a super powerful Elemental.

Midsummer - Part one.

2010-06-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I spent quite a few hours working on the meta for midsummer. I will write a longer post later on the in's-and out's of Midsummer, but right now I want to post a warning.

I was in a quiet place in the Dalaran sewers last night attempting to get the torch juggler achievement. Part way through the throwing a gnome parked himself at my feet, and ended up catching half of the torches I threw into the air. Not only did it interfere with me being able to do the achievement, it stole torches purchased with precious flowers.

I am not sure if this is considered griefing or "working as intended". But I suggest you attempt to do the juggling achievement in your faction only areas.

Spread the word about the ability to steal torches too.

The most bizzare spam comment ever?

2010-06-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

This morning I received an email stating that I had a new comment on my healing ICC wing 1 post of oh, like 6 months ago. Here is the comment, links etc striped out.

The really good news is that through shamanic healing you can be cleared of your emotional, mental, spiritual and energetic blocks in a very gentle, yet deep way . Unlike many other healing methods, the healing techniques I use theta healing, shamanic healing, soul retrieval and spiritual coaching work to permanently clear up your issues.

I am not sure if this is trying to sell something or telling me I need to relax, and just cast chain heal till the boss is dead.

All quiet on the Northrend Front.

2010-06-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

With Ex Obscurum leaving Farstriders for greener pastures I have been struggling to find my place in Dark and Light. I am raiding 2-3 days per week, but not feeling it like I did back in the day with Ex Obscurum.

With the fall of the Lich King Northrend has fallen quiet. There are a few skirmishes here and there, the Argent tournament is still going strong, and allowing me to gain reputation with the remaining Horde cities. I spend a hour or two a day clearing out random dungeons for gold, as Triumph Emblems have even lost their value.

I am currently leveling a Paladin. This is the Paladin I started with the release of BC, got to level 17 and parked it. I finally picked it up again 2 weeks ago, and have made an amazing push to level it. I am now level 65, and I can feel the cold winds of Northrend blowing. I have only explored Hellfire Peninsula and parts of Zangermash, but I am dying to abandon the deserted locations of Outland. I spend 3 days in Hellfire and never once saw a player character. Zangermarsh is just as lonely. Thank God for the dungeon finder. As a Tankadin, I always find a group within 2-3 minutes.

Tonight I am going to start farming Sethekk Hall for the Paladin libram, hopefully I can take that into Northrend with me and ease leveling there.

I am not sure where this blog is going to be going while I work through the Northrend Blues, and await Cataclysm. I will try to post a little more often, if for nothing else than keep me occupied when I am supposed to be working.

There will probably be a lot on Alt news here until I either got into the Beta, or Cata comes out and I can start shamaning again.

Blizzcon here I come!

2010-06-02T19:08:00.001-07:00

Hello John, thank you for shopping at the Blizzard Store!

2 BlizzCon Ticket - 2010(s) Purchased

BlizzCon 2010
October 22-23, 2010
Anaheim Convention Center
800 West Katella Ave.
Anaheim, CA 92802

See you there!

It has gone from half-full to half-empty.

2010-05-18T11:07:00.001-07:00

First off, I don't know who these girls are, but when doing a google image search for an appropriate image when talking about the Cata alpha. The search term Alpha came up with this, and lets face it who doesn't love hot college girls?

Anyway back to the real reason behind this post. With all the leaked alpha information and the current state of the alpha builds I have to revise my earlier estimates and move from the optimist column to the pessimist column. I no longer believe that Cata will be out in august, although I am still skeptical that it will come out after Blizzcon. I really feel a November release is too far away. So maybe events will unfold something like this. Cata release sometime late September, early October. Blizzcon late October, with an announcement of the next expansion, or a tease for the next gen MMO. Diablo 3 release sometime in first quarter 2011.

Ever the optimist I suppose.

The road. It has come to an end.

2010-05-14T10:20:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow marks the last day of Ex Obscurum as a guild on Farstriders. The GM's and most of the core raiders have transfered to Emerald Dream, to become a more progression minded raid guild. I have been a member of Ex Obscurum for two and a half years and it was an incredibly difficult decision to stay on the low population, slow progression Farstriders realm. But since I have retired from progression raiding I could not rationalize the cost of server transferring 5 toons. I know it is kind of silly to want to keep all toons together, but I like to be able to move things around and keep within a single server community. So I bid a fond farewell to all my friends in Ex Ob, and wish them luck in their 25 man hard mode progression. Kick the Lich King in the ass for me!

I have joined up with a pretty organized guild on Farstriders, Dark and Light. I have become ranged DPS in their second core raid group. What does this mean? It means I am raiding on the mage, and doing guild 10 man pugs on my Shaman. The best part is Dark and Light is a uber casual guild. My team raids 3 nights a week, two hours per raid, and they have OK'd my absence on the first raid night, due to my commitment to my sons Boy Scout troop. So I am pretty confident I can put 4 hours of my life per week into organized raiding. This makes me happy, and allows me to see some progression, and maybe even the Lich King before Cata comes out.

On to raiding news. Team 2 is making its first steps into ICC, last night we made it past Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper. Sunday night it will be gunship, and a few attempts on Saurfang. I know a lot of people think this is nearing "old" content. But when you are just now stepping into ICC it is still pretty tough.

I remember healing Lady Deathwhisper 25 pre-nerf and thinking the encounter was a joke. Then they nerfed it and I laughed at how simple it was for my well geared, well organized guild that had raided more or less with the same group as a 25 man since SCC in BC. Well for a 10 man team that has only been raiding together for close to a month. Even with the 15% ICC buff that Lady was no joke. We took I think 4 attempts to down her. I think our main problem was a shortage of physical DPS. Our DPS consisted of a ret pally, prot pally, and finally brought in a hunter alt to get her down. The casters had no problem dealing with out adds, but with so much of the pallys DPS coming from Holy damage it was tough going. On our final attempt we managed to break the mana shield and get the Lady to about 75%.

The group decided to go one more time, even though we had passed our scheduled end time. Fourth time was the charm, we re assigned DPS, did a better job of marking physical DPS targets, and managed to actually get a few seconds of breathing room between add spawns. I actually remembered to slow targets, and decurse casters when needed. We downed Lady Deathwhisper with two tanks, two healers and me left alive. I tell you that last 8% with less than a minute on the enrage timer and no other DPS left up put a lot of pressure on my to squeeze out every ounce of DPS I could.

It was the most fun I have had in a raid in a long time. The group wasn't as well organized as I was used to, it felt weird for the raid leader to explain boss strategies before each pull, as in Ex Ob, if you didn't do your research and learn the fights, you didn't raid. But over all it was an incredible feeling to finally down a boss we were struggling with.

I will miss Ex Ob, but I think I have found a new home.

On a side note, the English translation of the latin Ex Obscurum is "From Darkness" or our of Darkness. I think it is fitting that my new home is Dark and Light!

Cataclysm predictions...

2010-05-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have for a very long time stated my prediction that Cataclysm will be released this August. I don't know why I have felt so strongly about this but I do. I have posted this prediction many times here, and again I will re-affirm that prediction. If I am wrong I'm wrong. But I think I have some pretty good data to back up my thoughts. Today another piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

Today Blizzard announced that Starcraft 2 will be released July 27th. Blizzard has stated many times that some of the new Cataclysm features will be integration into Battlenet2.0. With Starcraft's release the end of July, that gives them a full month (I am guessing a late August release) to work out the bugs, and roll out Cataclysm.

Today the Cataclysm Beta realm character transfer servers are active. So I am guessing the beta should be starting around the 15th of this month. The Wrath beta was around 4 months. I am being pretty generous here, but assuming the familiarity the Dev's have with the tools, they can cut that down to 90 days or so. Worst case they are in beta foe 105 days and that hits my end of August guess.

Blizzcon is scheduled for October this year. I can't imagine we will be in beta for 7 months, to hit the November 2'nd release date I have heard bandied about. Also I just cant see them wasting dev time (not that Blizzcon is a waste per se) with just 2 weeks between Blizzcon and a major release. I also think Blizzcon will be more focused on Diablo 3, the other SC2 campaigns and possibly a teaser for whatever comes after Cata, as well as some news on the nextgen MMO.

I would to hear somebody tell me why I am wrong. But until then, I'll live with my glass half-full and hope for a Cata Release by the end of August.

Shiki Summarizes Clash of the Titans in WoW terms

2010-04-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Shiki is a guildie, she wrote this and I was so entertained I had to share...

So there was a guy named Perseus that liked to fish. He spent his entire life leveling his fishing skill with a few of his close friends, until one day the opposing faction decided to raid their spot. His friends left their corpses in the water and rerolled on a PvE server, because leveling as PvP was too frustrating.

With his fishing guild disbanded, Perseus traveled to the main city to look for another guild, and he joined . All he wanted to do was fish, but wanted him to be a warrior and defeat a world boss event before it laid waste to the main city.

But first, he needed some gear. So the GL of told Perseus to put a raid together and go farm some gear.

Perseus is a horrible raid coordinator. His raid had like 7 warriors, two hunters and a pug priest. The priest wasn’t very good. She sucked at healing and really only followed them around. The hunters were pro though. After leaving the city, Perseus finds a cool epic world drop sword.

As they traveled across the land, Perseus ended up getting cursed, and there was no way to remove it because they were too stupid to bring mages. As the curse is sapping his HP, they encounter a mini-encounter of giant scorpions and, after a while of fighting, managed to win the fight with seconds to spare on the enrage timer. The two hunters quit the raid after realizing they were the only two dps above the tank. Unfortunately by now the curse has depleted like 90% of Perseus health, so they have to find a mage.

Eventually they do find a mage, and he decurses Perseus, who also gets a cool faction shield to tank with. After losing the hunters, they invite the mage to the raid because it would be useful to have a decurse and biscuits, and continue on to the top of the mountain to turn in a quest to go fight the snake boss.

After turning in the quest to the creepy old ladies at the top of the hill, they head off to the docks in the lower city to go across to the other continent where the next quest is. As they prepare to go into the lake, the priestess AFKs and leaves the others to go into the lair for some odd reason.

When the encounter begins, most of the dps run off the edge, the rest pull aggro and get 1shotted by Medusa, leaving only the mage and two other warriors to beat the boss without any heals. The mage suicides to take a ton of Medusa’s health, as the other warrior dies while trying to use the stalactite mechanic to deal damage as well, but dies before he can do it again.

Perseus solos the rest of Medusa’s health and gets his trinket to drop. After returning to the outside, Perseus sees the afk priest get ganked by a rogue, so he flags pvp and bladestorms the rogue off the edge of a cliff. The priest releases her spirit to corpse run, but gives up because there’s no nearby graveyard.

Perseus gets a quest reward flying mount as a pat of his epic quest chain, and flies back to the main city to put together another group for the world boss event.

As he returns, two of the officers of (the GL and his daughter) are in a trade chat war with the guild over who is the better guild, and the daughter goes to solo the Kraken to prove a point. She gets sapped mid-battle as the Kraken spawns in the middle of the city, and the GL gets killed by one of the officers of .

After a long chase scene that involved the hunters running through the city on a scorpion (Leave it to the huntards to leave a guild raid to farm a mount…) Perceus goes to tank the kraken boss without a raid. The trinket from Medusa actually helped him one-shot the boss, but the platform collapsed duringt he rp event and the sapped officer of fell into the water.

Perseus goes to save her, and she offers to promote him to GL because he dad quit the game, but he’s all “hell no!” and /gquits the guild to run around on his horse.

He hooks up with the priest after she finally spirit rezzed.

The end!

I have a deep, dark and dirty secret.

2010-04-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

I have been playing a Mage for some time now and I am loving it. I recently also joined a new raiding guild with her. Their raid schedule is much more forgiving than any guild I have ever worked with. They raid 3 nights per week, 2 hours per night, and they are doing old content. They are doing Ulduar and ToC with the occasional foray into ICC for the first boss. Even with my currently ridiculously restricted schedule I can fit 4 hours a week into my life to raid (one night is Boy Scout night with the kid so no raiding on Tuesdays). Not only is the 4 hours per week very doable it gives me some time to farm mats and contribute to the guild and maintain the tricky home life balance.

My mage is wearing almost exclusively valor gear, with the exceptionally embaresing blue sandals from Nexus, and there is no badge shoes available (ok there are but I refuse to spend 40 badges on i213 shoes). I hope to someday get a HoR/FoS to pick up the i219 pieces I could use.

This week I got in on two raids, we did the first section of Ulduar the first night, and Marrowgar the second night. I think I held my own at a respectable 5k dps on trash, and just under 4k on bosses. I think if I manage to replace the few low ilevel pieces with Ulduar/ToC stuff in the next few weeks I'll be a perfectly capable DPS heading into ICC in June like the guild plans.

I think my Shamaning is on hold until Cata comes out, as I just can't muster the availability to raid full time right now. I will however still be here, wiping PuG's and putting my two cents into all the upcoming changes to my beloved healing Shaman.

It's the end of the world as we know it!

2010-04-15T13:28:00.001-07:00

And I feel Fine!

Remember back in November when the Blizzard pet store debuted with the super cute Pandaren Monk pet and the Mini K'T pets? The forum troll, and blog rolls exploded with cries of foul and how this is the first step into the void that can never be taken back. They said WoW would be ruined for ever, and any day now we will all be able to buy epic, nay LEGENDARY items from the Blizzard store for real money. Thus ruining the game for every one forever.

Because we all know if you have the ability to pay for in-game it it will completely destroy the ecosystem. Well it has been 6 months since the introduction of the Blizzard pet store, I did purchase both the Lil K.T. and Pandaren. You know what? My server is still chugging along, the game still works and nothing was ruined due to the massive influx of tiny pets. I still take out my K'T or Pandaren whenever I raid during trash, or when farming heroics. But I take out any of the 57 other pets I farmed as well. I am a mini pet junkie, and I will farm, buy on the AH or the Blizz store any pet I can find.

Today Blizzard dropped a bombshell on the pet store. Not only can you buy the now Lil'XT for $10. You can also buy the super cool awesome OMGWTFBBQ Celestial Steed.

So I took a casual look at the WoW.com comments, and the official Blizzard forums. There is a ton of uproar again about how these "micro transactions" (I use quotes because really come on! $10 or $25 is not a micro transaction, it is a full fledged transaction) is going to destroy WoW. Althought there is a new part to the arguement.

The general complaint now says "Blizzard is selling useful items for real money" WoW is once again ruined. Next up is legendary weapons and armor. I guess it depends on your definition of "useful items" I guess that a mount is more useful than a non-combat pet, but it is not something you cant acquire with minimal effort. To use the Celestial steed all you need is to be level 20, with basic riding skill. Of course all you get is basic riding speed, and no flying. I still fail to see how this is game breaking.

The second most common argument is "Whah! Everyone with $25 in their wallet will have this super cool and unique mount! If everyone has it it is no longer unique to top end raiders who get lucky and win a roll or DKP bid for a 2% drop rate mount, or highly skilled PvP'ers and lets face it I am neither of those, and I will never be. I cant seem to figure out arena play for some reason, regardless of the toon I have tried it on, from hunter, to resto shaman to warrior, to mage. My Arena experience has pretty much involved the match starting, and seconds later I'm a puddle on the ground while my partner says "WTF? Why didn't you do X?"

Well to the people making the second argument I have bad news for you. Regardless of what your mommies tell you, you are not a special little snow flake. You do not deserve special treatment, and I'm sorry you are just like everyone else.

I personally am fairly glad that Blizz made this mount available to anybody with $25 in their wallet. I really thought it would be a reward for something ridiculously difficult like "Defeat Alganon the Observer 25 hard mode with only 15 people, with no warriors, paladins or rogues in the raid and no raid member wearing any gear with an iLevel greater than 187."

I'm about to go home for my lunch break (I know how awesome is it that I can go home for my lunch break?) and if the que to buy the mount is less than 60000 I will be buying mine and trying it out. When you think about it...is $25 really that much for a unique mount that you will have on all current characters as well as all future characters on any server you play in the future? I don't think so.

Happy Birthday!

2010-04-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

So today marks the 1st birthday of Sham-Wows!
Coming soon, my first forays into ICC since the second wing opened.

OMFG! Spirit Walkers Embrace.

2010-04-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

So the Blues have released the first glimpse of the Cataclysm changes for Shaman. From what I see so far I like what I see. I mean aside from the change in cleansing. But that is just me picking nits. I like to think that you would use water to cleanse poison and disease, but it certainly isn't a game breaker.

Looking to the future: Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it's necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Go back and read that again, I'll wait.

Every 2 minutes we will be able to cast on the run? Yes please! I have to imagine that all caster classes will receive some kind of buff similar to this or there will be some epic QQ going on. But OMG! The thought of this ability has me giddy!

Read this one too: Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

I hope to Sylvanas that this spell has an effect similar to the Druid Tranquility spell. A spell that for years I have thought the most beautiful spell effect in the game. I would love to see Shaman cast a area of sparkly rain on all his companions to heal them!

If this is where we are going in Cataclysm, I say bring it! Deathwing.

I will be back from my WoW haiatus after spring break!

2010-04-06T08:44:00.001-07:00

But in the mean time, check out my recent goings on. For the last couple of months my WoW time has been severely limited. I have only had short times to pop on, 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there. This lead me from raiding to doing the only thing you can really do in short intervals. Level another alt!

I had never played a mage past level 10, so I thought I would give it a shot. I found I really enjoyed it. I mean except at the lowest levels that required me to sit and drink in between every kill. Now I am level 80, after 3 months of casual play, have managed to get the complete t9 set, and I am working on collecting the badges for the trinkets, rings and necks. I should be geared to PuG some raids on off nights by the time I am back to WoW full time.

StarCraft 2 Beta.

2010-03-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

While I am on a brief hiatus from WoW, I have been really enjoying StarCraft 2. Speaking of the StarCraft 2 beta. I have received an additional SC2 invite. Anybody have any ideas on how I should give this away?

StarCraft 2 Beta is in the house!

2010-02-23T17:44:00.001-08:00

Today I received an email from Blizzard stating I had received an invite to the Star Craft 2 Beta. Needless to say I was very skeptical, and by very I was totally F*ing skeptical. So when I got home from work today, I copied the beta code from the email, and went to log on to my battle.net account. When I pasted the beta key into the field, I was prepared to get a rejection. But guess what. I now have SC2 listed in my battle.net account!

Downloading now, will let you all know in the next few days what I think!

Quick Update: According to the ToS I can't give any info on the game yet. Soon as I can I will let you know what I got on my hands. Short answer though: Awesome. Although all the games I have played so far I have had my ass handed to me pretty thoroughly.

Feeling a little Blue

2010-02-18T09:14:00.000-08:00

So like so many others I'm feeling a little burnt out. It doesn't help that I have not been able to raid since before ICC was released. I am feeling a little blue. I am having the to wrestle with what I want from WoW. I think the biggest problem is I really love my guild, but due to changes in real life I am unable to make raid times. I really want to raid. So I have two choices. Suck it up and just play the solo game I have been playing or nut up and transfer servers to something on the pacific time zone, and find a guild that raids after 7:00 pm.

Every day I get a little closer to diving into the guild recruitment forums on worldofwarcraft.com. The thought of sifting through all the crap there kind of makes me ill to think about.

So I guess I will do the cheap thing, and ask you folks, all my 10's of readers. Any body have a guild that needs a resto shaman, and a barley geared prot warrior? I prefer horde, but if the guild is right I may faction change. (after I complete my rep grinds with UC and Silvermoon)

To Honor One's Elders

2010-02-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

If you, like me are trying to play catch up to get the achievement What a Long Strange Trip it Has Been. You have spent the last 2 weeks grinding achievements. I spent the last two days casually grinding the Lunar Holiday achievement. This is probably the easiest holiday to complete, because it does not require the RNG or grinding or kills or anything like that. But it does take an incredible amount of time. There are a whopping 74 elders to visit! But the great thing is all the Elders provide 75 faction rep, for a total of 5500 rep for the holiday. After completing I have gotten Exalted with Thunderbluff, 1000 rep from Exalted with Undercity and 1/2 way through with Silvermoon. Some time in the next 30 days I should be exalted with everyone!

So now I just need to complete the mid-summer fire festival and I will complete the achievement and have my 310% mount and will put all this stupid holiday grinding behind me.

Love is in the Air!

2010-02-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

When I sat down to write this how to, I had planned on writing a in depth how too of every step of the achievement. When I actually got to writing it I found that this holiday was redesigned so much that a guide is not really necessary. I will clarify some of the less obvious steps, but there is really only one thing you need to do to complete this achievement. Collect lots and lots of Charm bracelets!

I found the easiest way to farm these charms, for a max level character anyway is to goin to Ulduar, get into a demolisher and agro at least 2 towers. The endless stream of dwarfs will net you over 60 complete bracelets per hour. If you do not have a friend that wants to farm with you you can form a raid with a alt, with a few minutes help from a guildie.

Log on an alt, form a group, convert that to a raid. Promote your friend to leader and log off your alt. Re-log your character you want to farm with, join the raid, and take lead back. Your friend drops group and bobs your uncle you have a 1 man raid.

What do I do with all those charm bracelets I just farmed? First off visit all your factions capitol cities, and do the little quest for your nation of adoration achievement. This takes 4 charm bracelets and about 20 minutes of travel between cities.

Then do your holiday dailies, you want to get as many love tokens as possible to cut the farming time and the dailys and the quest chain all net you 5 tokens. When I was done with the first days quests I had almost 50 tokens. I farmed another 60 bracelets in Ulduar and was able to buy everything I needed to complete my partially completed meta yesterday, as well as buy my own Romantic Picnic Basket and Truesilver Shafted Arrow pets.

I had a lot of people ask me how do I Pity the Fool? Love Fools cost 10 Love Tokens, you will need 50 Love tokens, unless you are amazing lucky and find someone dropped a Love Fool in the 15 seconds before you arrived at the spot. You simply buy a love fool, visit the required zone drop a fool and /pity. You can do it anywhere in the required zone, except Arathi Basin. You have to be at the Black Smith to get credit. I hear people say you do not need to be in Naxx, simply in the Necropolis by the zone entrance, but if you are still in your raid from farming bracelets just enter the zone to be safe, kill Mr. Bigglesworth while you are there too...that cat has attitude.

You can lower the amount of tokens required if you use someone elses Picnic Basket in Dalaran for the Lonely achievement, but really with the ease of farming bracelets, just get your basket for fun while waiting for raids to start. If you use a basket found in Dalaran and you do not want the pet it is going to cost you 98 tokens, with the basket and the pet it is 148 baskets. Just under 2 hours of farming in Ulduar, and some luck finding the race/class combos for the pelting with flowers achievement. I found the easiest way to complete this part is in a BG or Wintergrasp. You will find every race/class combo needed in a PvP setting. Just try to pelt them before they kill you.

I must say as a Orc Shaman, I really do not look forward to spending the next 3 weeks with flower petals falling around my head every time I am in a city.

The hardest part of the meta this year, and the only one that falls victim to the dreaded RNG monster is My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose. The roses have a 100% drop rate from the following bosses: Maiden of Grief (Halls of Stone), Prince Keleseth (Utgarde Keep), Prince Taldaram (Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom). Both normal and Heroic. You just need to win the roll and you get the achievement. If you use the dungeon finder, roll need, because I guarantee someone else will.

If you are just starting the Fool for Love meta this year I recommend breaking it down to 2 or 3 days, as grinding is boring. But this year it is much more doable than last year. Good luck!

Productive Weekend

2010-02-07T18:58:00.001-08:00

Last night was my son's Boy Scout Troops annual cab feed. The crab feed is our major fund raiser for the year, and procedes are used to pay for summer camp. The crab feed pays for more than half the cost for each scout to attend camp. It also pays for the less privileged scouts outright. We have 100% attendance for our troop at camp. It is awesome. Last night I was in charge of the raffle ticket sales and live desert auction. I took in just over $2000. It looks like a good year for the scouts bank account, economy be damned! I want to thank all the folks that made last night such a success. We took in just under $10,000 for the whole night, but our expenses were just under 1/2 of that.

On to WoW!

Managed to complete my "Fool for Love" meta in just a few hours today. All I needed was the nations of adoration, 3 race/class combos to pelt with flowers and a few /pity's on love fools. I also managed a bevy of achievements today, including FINALLY finishing the Lil' Game Hunter achievement, I now have my fawn.

Tomorrow, I will post hos to gather up to 60 Lovely Charm Bracelets and hour, so you too can complete your meta, and buy all the holiday goods you want.

Beer Snob? Yeah kinda

2010-01-27T15:07:00.000-08:00

So I am so ashamed to admit it, but I am a huge fan of TJ's monthly summary of Cosmo. After reading/commenting on the post, and comments I feel it is my duty to bring up something in the comments.

Yes I am a bit of a beer snob. I will not drink beer from a can, I do sometimes drink bottled beer, but only out of a mug, or pilsner glass, or a wheat beer glass you know whatever the particular brew calls for. Just like the wine snobs we love to make fun of, beer tastes better when drank from the proper glassware.

The other thing I am ashamed to admit is I read Maxim. Really I am not that guy. (lol bewbies he he) But Maxim has a few articles I enjoy, and their tech gadget coverage is better than most anyplace else.

This month they had a article about the 25 best new beers. I do not really understand what their criteria for "New" is as some of them are quite old. It is pretty informative for those of us who enjoy beer, but do not really know where to go after venturing from Bud, or Coors to something more exotic like Sierra Nevada. This list has a pretty good selection of beers, and they tell you what it tastes like using terms you can throw around to impress your friends.

The problem is the article looses all of its credibility when they recommend Bud Light Wheat. Really? When I read that it sent me into such a nerd rage I scared the cat. There has to be 1000 easily available good Hefeweizens on the market. It appalls me that they would recommend what might be the worst wheat beer available in the United States. I feel I can criticize them both as a beer snob, and due to the fact that I live less than 5 miles from their California brewery.

On to happier subjects, from my personal brewery in the backyard I have tapped my first ever keg of Heffewizen. I made it with 6 pounds of Bavarian wheat, and 2oz Bavarian hops at boil and another ounce at finish. I am quite proud of the outcome, although it has a strange banana flavor at finish. I need to figure out what I did wrong there and correct it for next time. Also my first ever completely original recipe will be going in the keg tonight and should be ready to drink by mid-February. It is an American Ale. I used 4 pounds of honey and 2 pounds of malt, with an ounce of bitter orange peel at finish. I will let you know how it comes out.

Parenting Skillz...I has them.

2010-01-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

Last night I flexed my parenting muscle and uttered the following phrase: "You can do your homework later, lets play WoW" Am I a great parent or what?

I have once again been thrown from raiding life by real life events. So to fill my downtime I have started yet another new alt. With the new LFD I find I generally have enough time to complete a few quests waiting for the que to pop, do the dungeon then logout for the night. I have also managed to convince my son to start and level a new alt with me. We are running a mage/holy pally combo. The real nice thing is in this low level setting he mounts up, gathers 5-10 mobs, consecrates and I frost nova them to death. I find it super efficient for the kill x of y quests.

This weekend Was super busy, we had Cirque du Soliel Ovo Friday night. Had familial obligations Saturday night, and plans to play WoW all day Sunday. Well I got up Sunday, went to the garage to do some laundry and there was a spreading puddle of steaming water on the floor. 5 hours later I had a clean garage and finished installing a new water heater and was too beat to do any WoW.

Just in case you missed it.

2010-01-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

World of Matticus has an excellent article up about 5 misconceptions on healers. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the phrase "Healers, what happened?" and slowly boiled. So many times I have wanted to yell "You F*ing died! Move out of the mother lovin fire, teach the dps to move, blow a cool down early in the fight sometimes!" Of course I never do that, bacause I am a little passive aggressive sometimes. My favorite part of his article comes at the end with this...

"When a boss goes down smoothly you almost never hear anyone say; “That was awesome! Great job healers! That was all you!”, but when a wipe happens you will hear the phrase “what happened healers?” way too often. Not everything is within a healers control. Sometimes things happen that stretch our abilities so thin there is no recovery. Random mob abilities chaining together can cause a group to wipe before a healer even has a chance to react. When someone places this burden on the healers, it’s a short trip to off the rage deep end."

Just once after a really close downing of a boss I would probably squee with joy if I heard "Nice job healers, couldn't have done it without you!? Strangely I hear quite often "DPS...Fantastic! You really are on top of your game."

OK enough QQ. It is Friday, and I have a big weekend ahead of me. Mrs. Skraps' birthday is next week and we are starting early.

Sunday we are going to the Winter Wineland event in the Russian River Valley. Thirty dollars for free food and tasting at 123 boutique winery's? Yes please! Then dinner Wednseday with her family and finally on Friday a night out to see Cirque du Soleil. Don't tell her that part is a surprise, and she has never even once considered to read my blog.

Pugnacious

2010-01-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last couple of days reading blogs with horror stories of the new LFG is working. Everything from DPS'ers queuing as tanks, to healers droping group in the middle of boss fights.

Now I like to PuG. I have been PuG'ing pretty regularly since I started WoW. I have always felt Pug'ing is an excellent way to learn your class. When you run with experienced guildies and friends there are very few "Oh Shit" moments. They happen all the time in PuG's.

After years of PuG'ing on my server, and having more bad PuG's than good I had braced myself for all kinds of horror in the new cross-server lfg.

It has not happened. I have not once had a horrible awful noobtastic PuG. (OK that one Oculus PuG doesn't count) I have thoroughly enjoyed the groups I have been randomly matched with. Gear wise it seems I am paired with groups that are all pretty much on par with me gear wise. It is usually 4 very well geared people and one person in blues and greens. I like this. It gives newer 80's the chance to learn their class role in 5 mans as well as get the lions share of loot, to help gear them quicker.

The only times I felt the gear matching portion of the LFG fail was when I queued as a tank. Now my tank is getting there, but at this time I could almost reack 30k health buffed, I was sitting at 544 defense and 26k health. I was put in a group to tank Halls of Reflection. When I zoned in I saw the HoR loading screen and thought "Really? They think I am geared to tank this?" When the rest of the party zoned in I immediately stated I don't know why I am here as tank, and I don't think my gear is up to tanking it. The party concurred, but decided to give it a shot or two anyway as we all had the 15 minute debuff from the LFG.

We made two attempts, managed to down the first boss in the ghost waves. But I couldn't keep alive and threat on all the targets. Partly due to my lack of skill as a tank, and the healer trying so hard to keep me alive. After the 15 minute debuff was gone, I suggested we bail. the group agreed and we parted ways in a very good way.

That is my LFG horror story. We tried, failed through no egregious errors on any party members fault, and parted ways happy, and willing to run anything else with the same group.

Now I have to ask. Was my server just so full of bad players that I had numerous horror stories in the old LFG? Or has the new LFG made players step up and play better? Or is it simply the gear matching system, presumably if you have put enough effort into aquiring gear of a certain level you have become a decent player?

How Lame am I?

2010-01-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

So the guild did not down any of the new bosses yet this week in 25's. Although all 3 teams on 10's downed at least Festergut and one downed Festergut and Rotface. We only raid Wednesday, Thursday and sometimes Monday if we have the numbers and there is still content to down. As I do not raid on Mondays (or even play at all usually) I will miss the guild first kills and this makes me sad.

But on to the rest of the weekend. I had A LOT of playtime over the weekend and was able to finagle my warriors way into a Ulduar 10 for the weekly raid quest. Before I start explaining the level of my lameness let me explain that I have never played a DPS warrior. My warrior is my very first ever toon in WoW. Back in the prehistoric age of WoW, you may call it Vanilla WoW. I did not have any thottbot, or WoWHead or any of the great resources we have now. I pretty much soloed to 60. I did eventually join a guild around 40. But it was a small guild, a lot of them were even more noobish than me. Well when i hit level 10. I put my first talent point into the protection tree. I thought you could only use one tree, and I did not know what a respec was. So there I was, prot solo leveling to 60 in classic. It took me something like 22 days /played.

Fast forward 3 + years and we are in Wrath, and my Warrior is now 80. I have purchased dual talents but have rarely used the Arms spec I bought. So when I was invited to the 10 man I thought I would be OT. Well I was DPS. I broke out my blue giant hammer and tried to dps.

After the first trash pulls I looked at recount. I did 667 DPS.

There was much laughter from all my "Friends". I do more DPS when I heal on my shammy. We engaged Ignus, and I pretty much auto attacked, as I couldn't figure out how to get any rage. Every minute when I had enough rage saved I would either mortal strike, execute or bladestorm as I frantically facerolled through the encounter.

So the lesson learned. I am not DPS. But I did have a good time, and the guild had a few decent laughs at my expense. I just wish I had done a screen shot so you could see out top dps pushing 8k and me with 6. I mean 600.

oh but I did get 2 neat achievements, that are soo 3.1.

Welcome Cassidy Jade.

2010-01-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Skraps was gone most of the weekend. She spent 2 days at the hospital with her sister who was having a baby. Yay for 44 hours of labor huh? So every one welcome Cassidy Jade. she was born Saturday at 7:00 weighing in at 4lbs. 10oz and 17 inches long.

Mom and baby are both doing fine and should be heading home from the hospital about now.

Included in the pic is Mrs. Skraps' best Friend Cyndy. She is gunna love having a pic of her on the internet. This is one of maybe 10 times I have ever seen a pic of Cyn, and I have know her since 10th grade. She actually introduced me to Mrs. Skraps. So it is all her fault!

Healing Plagueworks, and nerfs to Lady Deathwhisper

2010-01-07T11:59:00.000-08:00

Last night was Ex Obscurum's first 25 man attempt at the Plagueworks. Our raid got started later than usual and we had a few stupid wipes on Lord Marrowgar. You would think that this group of raiders would already know to not stand in the fire. (Myself included, for some reason I died to that twice last night) There was one shot when I had the particularly bad luck of getting bone spiked, then the coldflame shot out right under me, that hurt!

The rest of the first four bosses were all 1 shots. I never thought that Lady Deathwhisper was particularly difficult, but the nerfs that dropped with maintenance yesterday are ridiculous. The add health is so low, our DPS had time to run and bash her shield for 20 seconds between pops. Her mana shield is also 2 million points smaller. We had her shield down, and engaged before the 3rd wave of adds were down. This made it the new loot pinata.

Healing Plagueworks:

Trash: There is not a lot of trash leading up to the boss and nothing particularly interesting. There is a few mobs that simulate a mini Leotheras the Blind, as they spawn inner demons on a number of the raid. We accidentally pulled two, and had a crap ton of shades running around the raid. We ended up using our DK's army, my fire elemental and a bloodlust to kill this trash. It was one of the most epic fights I have seen. Even though it brought my fairly speedy computer down to 3fps.

When the small trash is clear, you meet Precious and Stinky Rotface, and Festergut's dogs. These dogs are...unpleasant. They are very much mini-Gluths. They spawn zombies, they Decimate and generally wreak all sorts of havoc. If you know Gluth, you will have no problems here. Just make sure that the entire raid has healthstones, and healing potions, as even the best AOE healers will have a hard time keeping everyone up through the decimate. Once the dogs are down you will get to move on to pick your first boss, Festergut, or Rotface.

We choose Festergut. This fight is not an easy fight. The boss has 43.5 million HP a 5 minute enrage timer, and high raid AOE. This is the first ICC gear check. When the encounter starts the entire raid takes 4500 damage every 2 seconds. We ran with 1 tank, 6 heals and 18 DPS. At this point in the guilds gearing we can hit the required DPS, if no one dies. One healer should be able to keep the tank alive and the rest should be on raid, with a druid rolling HoT's on the tank on the side. The rest of the healers are basically frantically trying to keep everyone alive.

You MUST be aware of your surroundings. During the encounter 3 gas spores will spawn on 3 random members of the raid. We think it will always spawn on a melee range player and 2 ranged, but don't quote me on that. When the spores spawn the raid must find the closest spore and sit under it. When the spore pops you will get a shadow damage DoT, if you survive the DoT, you become inoculated and gain 25% shadow damage resistance. This stacks 3 times. If you do not have 3 stacks when Festergut expels Pungent Blight you will die. (although I guess some tanks could live through that.)

I wish I could tell you we 1 shot him, or even 3 shot him, but alas with the late start we did not have him down by the 9:00 end time for raids. So we will go back in tonight and down him as well as his brother Rotface, hopefully with a wipe or two to spare on Professor Putricide and I can revise this guide for a kill instead of how to wipe on Festergut.

Shaman healing Icecrown Citadel's first wing

2010-01-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

With the opening of the second wing of ICC I figure it is about time for the Sham-Wows guide to healing ICC. This guide is aimed specifically at shaman, but I am sure other healing classes may benefit from it.

Lord Marrowgar - As is the case with almost all raids the first boss is pretty easy. He is no Atumen mind you, but pretty easy as far as raid encounters go. This is a 2 phase encounter and as such is mostly just a tank-n-spank affair. Phase one is plain old tank-n-spank. He does a cleave that does a fairly high damage to the tank and 2 closest melee. DO NOT EVER GET NEAR THIS. During phase one he does a line of frost, that ticks for a substantial amount of damage. As in all raid settings, do not stand in the fire... I mean ice. Phase two is the whirlwind phase, he does a AOE that ticks higher the closer you are. Get away from him. He also shoots out lines of frost during the whirlwind. Strafing is the easiest way to avoid these slow moving lines.

Depending on your healing assignment, there is a few different things to do. If you are assigned to raid heals, your best bet is to stand behind Marrowgar, close enough to melee that they can break off the boss and get you out of the Bone Spikes, but far enough away to get out of the way of the whirlwind when it starts. If you are on tanks stay just outside of his hitbox with the rest of melee.

This fight just requires raid awareness, and keeping players topped up. If you have mana and casting time to spare, it would not hurt to throw an instant cast damage spell on the bone spikes if you can. This will get the dps/healer out of the spike faster, and lower the over raid healing required.

Lady Deathwhisper - I found this to be an incredibly fun fight. The event starts with the Lady in the back of the room protected my a mana shield. She will spawn adds in the front and either side of the room. I am not DPS so I am not sure what the adds abilities are.

There is an element of controlled chaos in this encounter. During the adds phase while Melee and Ranged are taking care of the mana shield, the Lady will randomly mind control people. Be ready with a quick Hex if needed. Nobody wants to be killed by their friends. She will also drop death and decay on the ground. As always do not stand in the fire...or death and decay. Again as far as healing goes there is no big "gotcha" in this fight. Try to keep everyone topped off, run your standard riptide rotation on the tanks, and chain heals on the raid. You should come through this unscathed.

Icecrown Gunship Battle - Three weeks into this new content and I am still not sure what is going on in this fight. All I know is that bear tanks become bears with rockets on their bums, but when we shift to ghost wolf, we get a "Can not be used while shape shifted" error. I cry foul and want this fixed NOW! This fight is pretty chaotic as far as healing goes. Raid members will be jumping off the ship and therefore going out of range and LoS through the entire encounter. If you are assigned to stay on the ship you have a pretty easy job. Stay put, and spam chain heal. There will be targets showing up on the ground around you. If the target is where you are, move. Don't stand in the fire. If you are assigned to go to the other ship. Rocket boost over just behind your tank, drop your totems, and spam chain heal. Make sure you come back to the ship when your tank does. It will go poorly for you if you forget to come back.

Deathbringer Saurfang - This fight is the first fight in ICC that is difficult. It requires a ton of raid awareness. But you are raiding ICC, you have already learned all the lessons tought by raiding since vanilla right? No? Oh. I assume everyone runs DMB or something like that. Before the fight starts type /range 12. This will tell you if anybody is less than 12 yards away from you. If they are, you or they need to move. Saurfang uses an ability called blood nova it hits a random player and all players within 12 yards for 7500-8500 damage.

There is a lot going on in this fight, and the basics you want to be aware of is Saurfang heals when people die, there are also a few abilities that when linked together will eventually heal Saurfang for more than the raid can do in damage. You want to stick to your healing assignments, and do your best to keep everyone up. Do not be afraid to run forward and drop a earthbind totem at the foot of the stairs before he summons blood beasts. But when you do drop your totem, make sure you turn around and run back to position to avoid making things worse in the raid. There is a ton of damage in this fight, and your raid leaders should let you know who to heal and who to let die based on your strategy. Generally we let the first two marked players die, then heal through the rest of the marks. This is a DPS race, a healing race, and a gear check for the tanks.

If this final fight is any indication of what the rest of ICC will be like I am pretty excited about the forthcoming encounters. I think there will be a excellent oportunity for everyone to hone their raid skills while having a blast earning fat loot.

New loot for a new year

2010-01-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Three weeks into ICC and I finally have enough DKP to win some new loot. Man DKP sucks when life gets in the way of raiding. But now that I ~~have~~ had some DKP accrued I managed to win two pieces if iLvl 264 loot. From Marrowgar this week I picked up Bulwark of Smouldering Steel, a BiS item. not only that i picked it up for a mere 5 DKP. Later on the guship battle I managet to pick up Althor's Abacus but this cost me the remainder of my DKP. Going into this weeks raid I will only have 25 DKP picked up at the end of this weeks raids. But all in all I am extremely happy with those two pieces.

p.s. I was in Pit of Saron this weekend and Battered Hilt dropped. I know it is a low drop rate item that is BoE, and damn near everyone can use/wants it. But you have no idea how demoralizing it is when two people pass, and you roll a 2. A freeking 2. Damn you RNG.

Recovering from Christmas.

2009-12-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

First Mrs. Skraps got me this totally awesome polo for Christmas. Gift wise, I think we spent the least we have ever spent, but yet we probably have had the best Christmas ever.

The Skraps family also received the Khet Laser Game a super fun strategy game, as well as the 5-6 player expansion for Settlers of Catan. We played a LOT of board games over the 3 day weekend. Something I always enjoy. (Especially when you make a totally awesome coup de grace and win Catan) Next up for the family game nights will be Pandemic, Cant wait to try this one.

When "the boy" has friends over we always try to play a board game or two when we have dinner. His friends think it is a little weird, but I am a big fan of the family sitting down at the table to have dinner and play a social game, although most of the guests grudgingly play just waiting to get back to the xBox.

Speaking of the xBox, "the boy" got Modern Warfare 2 for Christmas. Can someone please tell me how to beat him? Please? I spend most of the game running from him, while he hides behind a riot shield that I can only figure is made of some special material unknown to man. I hit him with a friken rocket, he laughs and throws a knife at me, hits me in the foot and I die! HE LIVES THROUGH A ROCKET ATTACK, I TAKE A KNIFE TO THE FOOT AND I DIE! Anyway, after a few hours of dying I at least am able to aim (somewhat) and shoot. I have gotten to the point where I do not die as soon as he pops up on my screen, but I still kind of suck like a Hoover.

Not much going on in the WoW world due to the Holiday hiatus but hope to start raiding again this week. I did finish my 100th random party member and got the cute Pug pet. Tank gear seems to only drop when I am healing so no great upgrades for the tank alt. I would love to replace my blue boots, and trinkets though.

Christmas part 2: the Revenge

2009-12-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

Someone please tell me why my we ever thought it would be a good idea to have a birthday party for my wife's brother last night, 30 people for Christmas dinner tonight and 25 people for Christmas dinner tomorrow? I will have almost 100 people coming through my house for these 3 days. I'm just happy I get to work until 5:00 today so I can rest a bit.

Winter Veil = Done

2009-12-22T11:56:00.001-08:00

I Finally got the Winter Veil achievements and title done. Once again the RNG shows me how much it hates me. I so far have collected 167 boughs of fresh holly fa la la la la..la la la la. 40 Mistletoe, and just 10 snowflakes. I had to very carefully stalk each of the race/class combination in Dalaran. Surprisingly the most difficult was the Tauren Shaman. It turns out most Shaman on my server are either Orc or Troll. I had to beg a guildie to logon one of his long neglected alt to get the Tauren Shaman.

I was quite surprised how easy "With a Little Helper from my Friends" was. I suited up, went into a Warsong Gulch, found a Death Knight with a high health pool, and followed him around healing him. By the time we (the Horde) capped 3 flags I had 48 HK's. I queued up for another BG, Arathi Basin popped, got my last 2 HK's and proceed to heal my way to a 5 cap on AB.

I have discovered that while I am probably the worlds worst arena resto shaman, in the BG's I excel. People are not nearly coordinated enough and I can easily out heal the damage one or two people are capable of doing to me. I absorb damage, while some DPS class comes in like a wrecking ball and the floor is littered with dead.

With family in town, and holidays rockin I will probably not play at all the rest of the week, but here is to hoping I can sneak away for a random or two somewhere.

Hope everyone has a excellent Non-Denominational Winter Celebration Season, and a happy reset of the Judeao-Christian Gregorian Calander. (Hey I am a California Liberal. Heaven forbid I say Merry Christman and Happy New Year)

Productive weekend for Tank alt. No joy in mudville for the main.

2009-12-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Well almost a full week down of 3.3 and I still feel that the new LFG in sht most awesome improvement to WoW ever! I find I have a hard time grinding things on my main right now, especially with the ease of finding a group. 8-10 seconds wait time to get into a random group! Yay for being either a tank or healer.

Friday night was a no raid night for the guild so I ran the new 5 mans as a healer and got a really nice upgrade to my weapon...and by nice I mean sucktastic. Another damnable dagger! It is actually quite a nice weapon, but couldn't they have made it a mace, or ~~sword~~ or a fist weapon? Yeah a caster fist weapon...that would be nice right? But I always feel so...so...lame when I am a big burly Orc Shaman, with a tiny pointed stick on my belt where my mace should be. Other than healing the 5 mans the Shaman did not get a spot in this weeks raids (I have been low availability the last few months, and agree that my spot should have been given to someone that shows to raids) so i spent a LOT of time farming heroics on my tank.

As a side note I did every heroic Saturday via the random dungeon feature except the second two new 5 mans, and AN. I did get placed into HoL x2, HoS x3 and The Oculus x3. Surprisingly The Oculus wasn't full of suck. It was completed the first two times, with no wiping and about 30 minutes total. The third time I ended up dropping the group after the 3rd wipe just in the drake flying portion. The healer and two DPS had never done Oculus and it is too difficult to explain the finer points of drake riding via party chat.

Inc: Loot list from Saturday's farming of Heroics.
To start off I got the 2 piece T9 bonus with The shoulders and gloves. Both of those items replaced blues and bang for the buck were awesome upgrades. Got the BiS tank ranged weapon for a measly 25 emblems, about 3 random dungeons worth of emblems. Finally I converted some Emblems of conquest down to pick up the valor tank cloak, as I was sporting a iLevel 187 blue tanking cloak.

The next two pieces I am looking to pick up are the ring and trinket. I should have them by Wednesday if I miss raiding this week.

Hoping to make the cut for this weeks raids as I would like to write a how to guide for healing ICC, you know at some point that it is still relevant. It seems I am really good at writing how to guides about 2 weeks after everyone else has already figured it out.

p.s. Final thought for the 3.3. It is excedingly difficult for a warrior tank to hold threat on mobs that keep teleporting behind me due to the known but that is hopefully fixed today. I also learned how difficult it is to hold threat against a boomkin that is doing 6.5k dps in a 5 man. I shudder to think what that dude's dps is in a 25 man! I am willing to bet he can go back to sunwell and look sternly at Brutalus and he will keel over. Lastly I am only 3-4 groups away from the Perky Pug!

3.3 First impressions

2009-12-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

Why do i ever try to log in and do anything on patch day?

Yesterday after work I tried to be good, I tried to be smart and avoid patch day woes. I got off work, went to work out. Attempted to take the dogs for a walk, but since it was 30 F'ing degrees outside (hey leave me alone, I'm from California. COLD is 50 degrees) neither me or the dogs wanted to go out.

At 6:30 pst (8:30 server) I logged in. There were a few guildies on, and by a few I mean ALL of them. Everyone was trying out the new 5 mans, as raids are scheduled for Wed/Thurs. I thought I would try the new LFG.

I got dropped in Gun'drak. I was tank, have a very competent healer, and 3 dps. Then 2 DPS, then 3 DPS. It was a rough start, but then we basically chain pulled the instance, without stopping to clear some of the raptors before King Dred. I thought well at least I will get the 6 raptor achievement. Nope. The DPS was on fire so much it was all i could do to keep aggro, they killed King Dred before he summoned the second set of raptors.

After getting my 2 emblems of frost, a void crystal and some dust (the new DE system rocks!) I got together with some guildies to run the new 5 mans. At which point we were greeted with the fail: Additional instances can not be launched. 30 minutes later we got in, cleared the first 5 man, and got 1/2 way through the second. Then the guild leader put the call out..."We are going to do ICC 10. Anybody want to join us?"

The group fell apart, the healer and 2 dps left group to join the raid. This was OK with me as I had fatherly duties to attend to and I like to do 25's first, then do 10's on Sundays. We said our good byes and I logged for a bit.

Review of 3.3 so far...

The lfg is so full of win that if Blizzard were to come to me today tell me in payment for the new feature I had to go down to the tenderloin and wake the homeless at 4:30 in the morning I would be OK with that. I ran 4 random dungeons yesterday, and had 0 fail in the groups. The 5% buff for doing a random dungeon rocks. 5% Damage, 5% healing win win!

Tonight I am going to hop on to one of my low level alts and try the LFG tool for them...After the raid of course. the 10's team cleared 2-4 last night before I logged, not sure if they got 3 down last night.

The only loot I got last night was Nighttime. Not exactly main spec for me, but if I ever go with a dual wield fury for off spec this will me fun.

Oh and yesterday I managed to accrue 6 emblems of Frost, and 14 triumph for just over an hour and a half of dungeons.

Instancing levels 40-60

2009-12-04T09:01:00.000-08:00

With 3.3 dropping any time I thought it would be an excellent idea to post a leveling by instance guide. Because you know, everyone will be pugging everything under the sun, and the cross-server LFG should help get you into more instances while you are leveling, or at least you can sit around with 4 other people looking for a tank or a healer in cross-server LFG.

Starting at high 30's you can get into Uldaman. This is a very
long instence, as a lot of them were in old Azeroth, but if for nothing else it is a lot of fun for the "Indiana Jones" boss. I don't want to give any spoilers for anybody that haven't done this, I will just say i got a kick out of it the first time there. There are 8 bosses in Uldaman, that is almost like doing a 5 man raid, except trash respawns much faster.

There is a TON of loot in Uldaman, but nothing worth "farming" for. If you find a group ready to do it awesome, but do not feel like you have to visit it to move on in your leveling.

Some of the loot highlights include:
Olaf's All Purpose Shield - Not the best shield and lets face it at this level you will have a 2h or very close to dual wielding, but the on use makes it very useful.
Spaulders of a Lost Age - MP5 mail? Sure why not!

At level 40 you will hit Zul'Farrak one of my favorite old world instances, and someplace we all went to for the then awesome Carrot on a Stick remember this was back in the day when epic riding was the fastest movement speed in the game. This instance also has what was my first ever "Event Boss" that takes place after freeing captives at the top of the temple. I have so many excellent memories of ZF that to this day if I find someone needs to run ZF I will always go. This is also the first place you learn things like positioning, CC and agro management. Becasue if you do not do those things, you will die.

Loot highlights:
The Hand of Antu'sul - Really with the proc, you should pass to the tank, but it is an excellent Enhancement weapon.
Gahz'rilla Scale Armor - Stam + MP5, this screams Shaman...or hunter cough cough.
Ripsaw - I actually had this weapon for far too long on Skraps.

After ZF You can move on to Maraudon and Sunken Temple. These are both REALLY long instances, but if you have committed to leveling through instancing and are able to use the new LFG tool to find a group, you will really enjoy these places. Back in the vanilla days, the hunter class quest culminated in Sunken Temple and really required you to use all the skills a then max level hunter would need to be a successful end game player.

The loot lists for these dungeons are ridiculously long, so i am going to cheat out and refer you to the Awesome Kalibans Loot list to make a wish list of gear you want.

Here is to 3.3 and hoping the new LFG works as good for low level instances as it does for end game Heroic Dungeons.

Leveling Enhancement 40-60

2009-12-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

Continuing my leveling guide after a long hiatus, lets just jump right into it! Again the point of this build is ease of leveling and getting to those sweet sweet spirit wolves as soon as possible. I know there are some Shaman resources out there (with actual numbers to back them up, where as mine is just love of the ability) that say spirit wo lves are under powered and kind of a joke but for leveling they are a must have.

As soon as you ding 41 run, do not walk to your Shaman trainer and train Storm Strike aside from the fact that it is a wonderful damage tool in your bag of tricks the increased nature damage makes your next 4 nature damage spells kick it up a notch. With the mana return from the improved version you will almost never sit to drink again.

Your next 3 points will be put into dual weild specialization this will minimize misses, and really helps get over the hit penalty you take with dual wielding.

At level 45 you get another excellent ability Lava Lash this ability really shines when you are doing something like MH Windfury off hand Flametongue. Remember as an Enhancement Shaman you are rewarded for slow weapons. So find the slowest big fat mace, or axe you can find and pummel things to the ground. You could also use fist weapons, but at this level I do not think there is any fist weapons.

At 47 you have a few options on where to put your next 2 points. You can go with Static Shock which may allow you to refresh lightning shield a little less often, but maxed out it only provides a 6% chance of discharging and recovering 2 orbs. i much prefer to go back up in the tree and put these 2 points into Frozen power 10% more damage from damn near every spell you fling? Yes please.

At 49 you get Shamanistic Rage this is a wonderful ability with a short cool down, and you are going to want to pop it on almost every fight. Reduces damage, and regens mana for every melee hit. One of the defining talents of the Enhancement tree. After Shamanistic Rage you will drop 3 points into Mental Quickness this converts attack power into spell power. With the true hybridization of the enhancement tree being both melee and caster dps this talent is a no brainer.

At this point in your leveling you will once again have a point to put where you please. I do not do any PvP so you will notice I do not take the PvP talents like Earthen Power instead I go back and put slack points into Elemental Weapons as this increases the effect of all our weapon imbues.

We are getting very near the bottom of the tree, and put 5 points into Maelstrom Weapon this is the awesome ability that allows you to instant cast Lightning bolts, chain lightning, and and heals, although if you are casting heals something went terribly wrong. When we ding 60, there is much rejoicing (yay) and you get Feral Spirit and every three minutes you get your puppy pals to come play with you.

This wraps up talent selection for the level 40-60 grind. Tomorrow I will be posting instances and gear selections to go with it. Normally I would suggest you just grind out quests as the fastest way to level, but with 3.3 potentially dropping on Tuesday Dec 7th I like to think instancing through levels will be possible with the cross-server LFG.

He beat WoW?!

2009-12-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

So there is a story out today about a Taiwanese man who "beat" WoW. Now what does this mean? It means he has gotten all 986 achievement points and has completed an amazing 5906 quests. Here is his Armory Profile. Just looking at his Feats of Strength makes me kind of sad. So many Server firsts, the amount of time he has spent on this game must be ridiculous. Sometimes I think I spend too much time on the game, I raid (usually) 2 nights a week, play in the mornings on weekends, and an hour here and hour there when the wife is watching something on TV I hate.

I would like to take this moment to remind everyone this is just a game, go out and make adventures in real life. Spend time with loved ones, have a beer. Run naked through the center of town, ok so I got arrested for that last one, but you may be lucky.

Wednesday night durnken...drunkings?

2009-11-25T19:10:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-11-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T08:12:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-05T09:44:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

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.

How did I get here? This isn't my beautiful wife?

2009-10-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

In other news I have found renewed joy in leveling my very first toon. When I first started playing WoW in November 2005 I looked over the character selection screen. I selected Warrior, because that was one of my favorite classes in PnP D&D. I soon reached level 10. Got my first talent point and put it in the protection tree. All points earned from that day forward were put in the protection tree.

You see I didn't know you could respec, nor did I know you could put points in more than one tree. So I leveled in Classic from 10-60 as Prot. It was slow. I think it took me something like 22 days /played. But it was fun. I got to 60 in the closing weeks of Classic. I think I was 60 for about 3 months before BC was released. I got to tank my share of Classic End-Game raids. It was fun. When BC came out I briefly switched to furry to get from level 60-65, when I switched back to Prot. I tanked a lot of level 80 Heroics, but my then guild had some pretty ridiculous gear requirements just to step into Kara. They basically wanted a tank geared to tank Prince, just to step into Kara. So I farmed, I farmed, I farmed heroics. It was slow going. Then one day I was invited to a PuG, but they wanted me to DPS as they already had a Pally tank. I walked into Shatered Halls, fearing our lack of CC and watched the Pally walk into a 6 pack, and tank every damned one of them. I was disgusted with the state of warrior tanking, and hung up my breastplate, never to tank again.

That is until just last week. My son who is still hanging around level 73 asked me to hop on my warrior and tank UK. I begrudgingly obliged, and warned the group it had been a LONG time since I had tanked and to cut me some slack. I had put a little time into this character and got him to level 73, so I had atleast played around with the new talents and abilities.

Tanking was FUN again! I could run into a pack, Thunder Clap, Shockwave, and improved/glyphed Revenge, with glyphed Sunder and multi-mob tank. It was Awesome. Now a little more than a week later and I am at 78, I am a veteran of the Wrathgate (btw the most epic quest chain in all of WoW) and I am pressing hard to get to 80.

What a long strange trip it has been...Well not really

2009-10-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after a long and painful trip to the dentist I decided I had had enough of work and took the rest of the day off sick leave. I went home, had some chicken noodle soup and napped for a bit. When I was woken up from pain after the Novocain wore off, I took some Motrin and sat down to WoW for a bit. I soon found a group for Headless Horseman. Now as I have said before I hate the RNG. I killed HH at least 5 times every day last year, and so fat this year I have killed him close to 10 times per day. So that is close to 100 kills this year. Well yesterday on our last summons for the day he finally drops. I select need, one other person in the group rolls need. I see Skraps rolls need...2 Other guy Rolls need...67. GAH!!! This is the first time it has dropped for me this year and I roll a 2! See that damned RNG.

Due too a Epic act of Charity my trade window pops open, and I see the Squashling in the trade. So an act of pity grants me...

Quick Geek Moment...

2009-10-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Linus Torvalds Mocking the Windows 7 guy at the Japan Linux Symposium.

Fare thee well, Shagger of Rats!

2009-10-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

I just want to wish a fond farewell to one of my all time favorite bloggers. Ratshag, of Need More Rage. For whatever reason he has moved on from this silly world of the blogosphere and he will be missed. Ratshag is one of the reasons I started to write this blog. I knew I could never come close to the entertainment value of his RP posts, but I hope I can give 1/10th of the entertainment I have received.

I wish you luck and happiness in whatever endeavors you embark on.

BLOOD AND THUNDER, RATSHAG!

How I hate the RNG.

2009-10-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday. Five days after the launch of the Hallows End event. I have been part of no less than 45 Headless Horseman kills. I have trick-or-treated once per hour every non-working hour, including getting out of bed in the middle of the night, and hearthing away from raids to trick-or-treat then be summoned back to complete the raid. I have not seen a single drop of the Sinister Squashling. I did much the same last year. In two years, my relationship with the RNG has not improved. I fear I will finish this years event with still no pet. I never really tried for the What a long strange trip it has been achievement, mostly because I planed a romantic get-away with the wife during duration of one of the in-game holidays (I know, why oh why did real life trump a game?) that made the achievement impossible last year, but this year I want to complete it.

Every day when I am online, I see 3-5 guild members with the achievement pop up exclaiming they received the squashling, as well as completing Hallowed Be Thy Name meta achievement. Including one group that I just missed out on joining who saw 4 out of 5 Headless Horseman kills yield a Squashling.

That is why I hate the RNG.

I guess I should L2P and STFU.

2009-10-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

So my wife whom I love very much hates WoW with the fiery passion of one passion of 1000 burning suns. She just doesn't understand why I enjoy it so much. She also has a fair bit of OCD, so is afraid to try it for fear of getting sucked in and never seeing the sun again. She goes out of her way to avoid WoW, "Leet Speak" and most anything related to gaming culture. I was explaining to my son the other day how angry I am about the Reincarnation Cool Down, while my wife was on the couch watching *shudder* "So You Think You Can Dance". She paused the Tivo, looked at me as says "QQ MOAR Nub" unpaused the Tivo and went back to her show as if nothing had happened.

I was briefly in Bizzaro World there.

Just a little bit of QQ.

2009-10-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

I am going to sit here and QQ a little bit. Looking over the patch notes for 3.3 I feel it is necessary to whine here. THE signature ability of the shaman is Reincarnation. The problem is it is on a SIXTY MINUTE cool down! With two points into improved reincarnation you can drop that down to 40 minutes. Ridiculous.

With the new patch notes today I read with much excitement the following line:

Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to...EXCITEMENT BUILDING...50 minutes. WTF? Even with the 2 points in it it is still 30 minutes. Two talent points is incredibly expensive for an ability that is wipe prevention at best, wipe recovery at worst.

The same patch notes drops the warlock soulstone down to 15 minutes. So a Warlock soloing can cast a self resurrect on themselves and "pop" just like a shaman every 15 minutes. This same soulstone has way more utility in raid than Reincarnation. The druid's battle resurrection in on a 20 minute cool down, an ability I argue has more utility than Reincarnation.

Why is it that shaman get the short shrift on their prime ability? I would like to see Reincarnation dropped to 40 minute cooldown, that might make 2 points more palatable for the improved version dropping it to 20 minutes. Or maybe 30 minutes base, and 20 minutes improved with more health and mana after popping.

What do you think? Should us shaman band together and start a massive QQ campaign on the official forums?

Oh yes I am now Undying

2009-10-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Or not. With ExOb no longer raiding on Friday nights I found myself home alone with no wife, no kid, no father-in-law. If only there was a raid it would have been a perfect Friday night. I logged in and within minutes I had a friend pst me and ask if I wanted to heal or DPS a emblem run in Naxx. I said sure. We got the group together, I started checking everyone's gear and achievements. Everybody was pretty much over geared for Naxx with a few exceptions. We had all been there a number of times. So I suggested we make it an "Undying" run. Everyone thought it was a great idea. We cleared the trash to Anub'rekhan where I promptly and epically AFK walked right into Anub'rekhan and died.

Hmmmm.....

2009-10-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

I just got a Facebook friend request from my biological father, whom I have not seen since I was 3. What to do?

Aion Review

2009-10-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

(click the picture for high res version)

I spent a long 3 day weekend in a seedy motel doing secret dirty things behind the back of my first love. While it was a great experience I have decided to come clean and confess my sins. I have not logged in to WoW since Friday and I have stories to tell.

One sentence review: Aion is not a WoW killer.

Long review: While Aion is a beautiful game it will not replace WoW for me. I am going to break this down into two sections, what I liked and what I did not like. Now mind you I have not played this to End Game. In 3 days I was only able to make it to level 15, and did not see any dungeons or group quests.

What I liked:
NC Soft is the king of character creation. My first MMO was City of Heroes. A game that allowed for huge character customization. Aion takes what City of Heroes did and expands it exponential, and the models both male and female are down right gorgeous. One of the features that I thought was neat was Titles that you earn grant buffs to skills. Like "Tree Hugger" grants +20 magic protection. The starting zones are well laid out, and quests flow quite well from quest hub to quest hub. The trade/gathering skill system is quite nice too. As near as I can tell you can select every trade skill and there is just one "Gather" skill that allows you to collect any resource. When you choose a profession you are given two quests to introduce you to the skill one with mats provided and one where you have to gather and process the mats. It is quite nice, although I am not sure how this affects server economy with everyone being able to gather all materials.

I will hide my shame no longer:
I am also going to come clean and admit something I have never told anyone. I am a gold buyer. What can I say I was young I needed the gold pieces. I only did it once, way back when I first started and did not understand the implications of gold buying/selling. I bought 100g back in the olden days when I hit 40 to buy my first mount. If I could take it back I would. The only thing I can say in defense was it was in the early days of WoW and long before the malicious hacking/spamming that occurs today.

Not a problem with the game per se, but a serious problem.
Spam. Holy dog in heaven there is a severe spam issue. All the gold sellers that left WoW when Blizz struck entire IP ranges with the Ban Hammer have jumped to Aion. Some of the spam looks a lot like system messages directing you to sites with key loggers that were one letter off from the actual NC Soft account management page. A character that I grouped with to complete some kill x numbers of y an hour before came back on and spammed trade as a bot. NC Soft needs to get control of the spam problem.

What I did not like:
Quests: Aion breaks no new ground here. Basic FedEx, kill x of y etc. etc. some of the quests felt down right "grindy". I know the RNG hates me, and I will never get luck and have a quest item drop from the first kill, but I spent 45 minutes today killing thieves trying to find a journal for a quest.

Classes/Abilities: There really is only 4 classes with 2 specs each. I started as a Priest as I really like playing healing classes. From level 1-10 every priest is just a priest. At level 10 you "Ascend" and become a Deava and get your wings. You also get to choose your "spec". For the priest the choices were Cleric (healing class) and Chanter (similar to Enhancement Shaman). I accidentally chose Chanter, and am stuck with that decision. There is no option for a respec what ever you choose you own.

One of the much hyped aspects of Aion is flight. I hear there is in flight combat, the only in flight combat I experienced was a quest to destroy 3 floating rocks. It was kind of a "this is how you do it" quest, not really enough to get you into combat. So far at this low level the flight is just a gimmick. Not even on par with a regular ground mount in WoW much less a flying mount.

I have 27 more days of my initial Aion subscription, and I will continue playing. Hopefully I will be able to level enough to experience some dungeons. I am not sure if I will be able to make it to "End Game" content before the end of my subscription, but I will write another review at the end of the month.

I have done the unthinkable

2009-10-02T11:58:00.001-07:00

With ExOb cutting raids down to just two nights per week, and me being available for only one of those. Today at lunch I went out and purchased Aion. I will let you all know what I think next week. Oh yeah. I switch up my schedule this week so I am working Tuesday-Saturday for the next month. Posting will be on an alternative schedule for the next month.

Onyxia PuG, Brewfest, and fun for all!

2009-09-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had to leave work early to take the wife to a doctors appointment. I got home from all the running around before I would have normally gotten home from work, so I logged in to WoW for a bit before taking the boy to Boy Scouts. I completed my achievements for Brewfest finally. Only 12 more months to go to get my proto-drake.

I managed to get an invite for a Onyxia PuG. This was my first time on level 80 Ony. I had tanked her a number of times in classic, and this fight is pretty much the same. Healing this fight was a blast. We wiped 3 times, once due to bad luck with the tank dying right off the pull, once with really bad timing going into phase 3. She hit phase 3 right as the elite add spawned, and a whelp spawn. There was no recovering from that. The 3rd wipe was also in the phase 3 transition, with a flame breath knocking some of the dps into the rookery as she was landing.

ExOb is recruiting, our Warrior MT has had a change in work schedule and will not be able to raid for the foreseeable future, so we are scaling raids back to just Wednesday and Thursday until we are done recruiting. This means I can put the wife on Soccer duty, and raid my 2 nights a week...I hope.

So hopefully tonight we will smash down the ToC 25, and one shot Ulduar tomorrow, and I can show off all the phat lewtz I win in DKP, cause lets face it I can't win a roll to save my life. Yay DKP!

Weekend Update

2009-09-28T10:16:00.001-07:00

This week was fun and profitable, an early brewfest drop of the Tankard o' Terror last week I was able to sell the tankard for 3500g. The tankard was selling over the weekend for 500g. I am just 41 tickets shy of my Brew Master title and feeling pretty good. I used some of that gold to buy flight for my DK at the newly reduced price of 225g, and bought Northrend flying tome for both my warrior and DK. I actually brushed off the cobwebs and tanked a few instances this weekend with my warrior. I think I did pretty well, except the DK in the party kept dying. Turns out he did not understand aggro management, I got tired of trying to save him. Let him get killed, then intervened the healer picked up the run away mob, and continued.

I did not play WoW at all on Saturday. Saturday started with an incredibly early 7:15 am appointment for team pictures for my sons soccer team. Took my car to the shop at 8:30, had $500 worth of repairs. Stupid German Sports car. It turns out it is quite bad when the check engine light is flashing. Then my son's soccer game at 11:00 am. They played a team that has been undefeated for 3 seasons in a row. They play a very physical game. They had 2 boys yellow carded for rough play. One boy was sent of the field and red carded for throwing an elbow on our one scoring opportunity. My son has a dozen bruises on his legs and thighs from being kicked. It was a rough 5-0 loss. We had some friends over Saturday afternoon. It was about 100 degrees, the pool was a wonder 82 degrees. We played in the pool for a couple of hours, I BBQ'q a pepper and garlic rubbed pork loin, then we played Settlers of Catan until the wee hours. Other than that whole car repair thing it was a perfect Saturday.

Grunty is in the hizzle!

2009-09-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

In lieu of actually attending Blizzcon this year, and the fact that I was working Saturdays when Blizzcon rolled around I purchased the online stream of Blizzcon so I could watch it at work. Well this morning I was running early so I checked my email before work. There was an email from Blizz, with my Grunty code. So because I was running early I thought I would redeem it, and log on to check him out. Well guess what I was late for work. But I did get this quick screen shot of Grunty on Papa Hummel's pet biscuit. Enjoy. I will try to frapps it and post him later today.

Brewfest Rocks!

2009-09-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went home for lunch, I can do that because I live only 4 miles from my office. It rocks. After reheating my enchilada left over from Monday night I decided to log in to WoW and do the ram racing daily or maybe kill Coren Direbrew. Well I popped on, and was immediately hit with a pst "Wanna heal Direbrew?" Sure I says! 5 minutes and 5 Direbrew kills, 2 brewfest mounts and one Mug o' Terror. I won the roll on the mug, lost the mounts. Put the mug on the AH because I don't do melee dps. When I got home from work, and soccer practice, and boy scouts I hopped on to finish gathering coins for the day.

Low and behold, I had a new message from horde AH. It said my Mug o' Terror sold and I was 3500g richer! Woohoo! That put me over the top to but Epic and Northrend Flying for my level 72 Warrior who I am trying to get to level 80 and start tanking again.

Brewfest, Achievements and ToC 10

2009-09-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

Last night I was conflicted. Do I sign on to WoW and get more tokens so I can complete the Brewfest Achievements or do I watch "The Big Bang Theory", a show that I contend is the best show on television.

Well WoW won, I thought I would logon and complete the dailies and then go back and watch TV. Well soon as I popped on I got a message. "Want to heal ToC 10?". Why yes I did, and we burned through the place in about 40 minutes. No loot for me, even though just about every boss dropped mail. It was all hunter/enhancement loot. I got these nice little achievements and got to do a quick raid, and still made it to bed in time to not make Mrs. Skraps angry.

Brewfest:

Last year I gave up on "What a long, strange trip it has been" right after Hallows End, when I failed due to RNG and a lack of Sinister Squashling. This year I think I will try again, starting with Brewfest.

I hear you can get about 100 tokens per day. I have gotten 85 on the first day, then about 50 per day since. If I do not get the 550 needed to get the garb, and brew of the month I will give up again.

There has to be a plus side you say? Well Brewfest is now 3 days old, and I have killed Coren Direbrew 15 times, I have seen two Brewfest Kodo's and one Brewfest Ram. I think I have a pretty good shot of getting one by the end of Brewfest, if I can ever beat the RNG. So Far I have rolled a 3, a 2, and an 11 today at lunch.

Healing Heroics: Part 2, How to heal

2009-09-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

Healing heroics as a new 80 Shaman is tough. Our heals are not as big as some other classes, we only have one HoT (not counting Earthliving procs), and we bring a different type of buff to the group that takes some getting used to. But what we do bring to the party is totally awesome. We bring Totems, we bring Bloodlust, (Or Heroism, for you Alliance types) and we bring the totally awesome Chain Heal!

With the new Shaman totem interface it is easier than ever to place your totems. I have 2 standard totem sets when I heal. I have the With a Paladin, and without a Paladin sets. With a Paladin I drop Flametongue, Stoneskin, Healing, and Wrath of Air. If we do not have a Paladin I swap Healing with Mana.

The most important thing when you first start healing is knowing when to heal and what heals to use.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have EarthShield on the tank. Not only does it benefit from your spell power but any threat generated from the heal goes to the tank, not yourself. (Edit: Turns out I missed in patch notes, like a year ago, Earth Shield threat now goes to the Shaman who cast it.) Get the Riptide Glyph, and spread it around the group, but be careful it generates a lot of threat and sometimes you can get aggro early in the pull.

Master the Jump. I always have a heal casting on the tank, even if she is at full health. If I get to the last 15% of the cast bar, and the tank has taken no damage, hit the space bar to jump and interrupt the cast. Then recast Healing Wave, watch the cast bar etc. etc. etc. This way you always have a heal almost ready to go, but you are not wasting mana on overheals.

Once you start getting geared into early Naxx gear you will find healing as a Shaman much easier. Your mana pool gets bigger, your MP5 goes up and your heals land bigger heals. Once you get over 2k bonus healing your Chain Heals first jump will land for a 10k heal, your healing wave will land for 15-20k. There is nothing quite so awesome as seeing a tank go from 50% health to 100% in 1.8 seconds.

One last note on this guide to Shaman healing. Never forget to imbue your weapon with Earthliving. The proc is quite nice as it heals the target of your last crit with a pretty nice HoT, and it costs zero mana! You gotta love free heals right, that doesn't cost a CD, a Global Cool Down, or any mana. On top of all this it increases your bonus healing by another 150.

Glyphs

There is a little bit of leeway in the glyphs you choose, and it depends on your healing style and role. The glyphs I heal with, and I recommend are:

Glyph of Earth Shield
Glyph of Riptide
Glyph of Chain Heal

You can swap out one with either:

Glyph of Healing Stream
Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave

The problem all 5 Shaman greater glyphs are so awesome it is hard to pick one. If you are mostly raid heals, I would recommend the top 3 glyps, you could loose Glyph of Earth Shield for Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave to increase passive raid heals. If you are mostly MT heals I would switch Glyph of Chain Heal for Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave.

I hope this gets you well on your way to healing through Ulduar and beyond. Happy healing!

I work in IT.

2009-09-17T15:00:00.001-07:00

I have been working in IT for, well it seems like forever. I have had many jobs in IT, and in every organization I have worked IT is pretty much below the janitors in level of respect. Three years ago I got a job with my local county. It is a strange place. The staff treat us with respect. They love us. When they do something stupid and we have to come fix their computer they send us baked goods as an apology. When we do something out of the normal daily grind everyone makes a point to thank us. We are worshiped as IT Gods. The most bizarre organization I have worked in I tell ya.

Today, I received an email from a user at one of our branches, stating that a computer that we replaced the front USB plugs on has once again gone defective. This is how she reported it.

Bad bad 303
Has yet again,
Lost its’ programming
For the USB

I opened admin
Plugged in a flash
Added the driver
With nary a clash

Restarted the beast
On the same day
Was able to use
In the normal way

Next day no good
Bad bad 303
Again had lost
Its’ USB….

Now mind you I do work in a library, and librarians are strange ducks, but i just got the biggest kick out of this.

p.s. unfortunately there is not a hot librarian in the organization, but one can always hope that there is one in library school waiting to make it to the big leagues.

In which I Fail Epically.

2009-09-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

Way back in the day (like Classic back in the day) I played an Undead Warrior. I leveled to 60 fairly quickly 15 days /played. I tanked A LOT of classic raids. I really enjoyed tanking. Along comes BC, I get a new job, get home from work two hours later than I used to, and I am not an hour and a half late for every raid night. As you might guess, this doesn't work for me, for the guild, for anybody.

After many days of contemplation, and discussion with the guild leadership I left the guild (Hallowed Arcana, I still have an Alt parked there so I hang out sometimes) and joined Ex Obscurum. They are a great guild, and they raid much later than HA did. Win-Win. Except they did not need a tank, they had tanks coming out of the wood work. They needed DPS, I had a DPS. It worked for both of us. I ran DPS with ExOb through BC up to and including Illidan, pre nerf. It was good. I got bored with hunter DPS, and completed leveling my Shaman to heal. I healed a lot of Kara alt runs, and some ZA main runs, but never any real raids until Wrath came out.

Any way long story short (I know too late, but you needed the back story). I have a special talent for wiping raids. I mean epically! Like sending my pet into Mags, attacking his captors, starting the encounter with only 1/2 the raid in the room.

Following this trend of Epic Failure, I have my little 73 warrior parked in Dalaran, He has the Heirloom 2h Axe and Shoulders that he shares with my DK. I had a little time after doing daily's last night and bed, so I thought I would run a quick AV or two with my warrior as you get a crap ton of XP even with a loss now.

Well 8 minutes into AV, I am charging other players, Thunder Clapping Auto-swinging, and shouting, but for some reason I am unable to use any of my abilities. I think WTF! I can charge, I have rage, I can auto attack, but no heroic strike, no execute, no bleed effects.

This is when I realize I have no weapon equipped, no shoulder armor on nada. I also have no backup weapon in my bag. Nothing, zip, zilch. I spend the rest of the AV running around trying to help, but not. Warriors with a bow, goblin rocket launcher, and fear on 5 minute cooldown not terribly helpful.

This is how I Epic Fail! Can you top that? I don't think so!