tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77280508767256630902024-03-13T06:22:52.124-07:00The Dungeon RunnerA blog for wow crapsSnackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-69728869796971719212012-07-06T06:01:00.000-07:002012-07-06T06:01:03.515-07:00Maps, Guilds, The Story-based Existence of All of the Above<br />
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This originally was posted as part of email correspondence with friends, and details the RP/in character justification for the Waypoint guild in a storyline that runs only in my head.</div>
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Head canon, if you will.</div>
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Presented unedited, except for this preamble, the story is shared.</div>
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Visper, for a long ass time, my Draenei DK whom for a very long time was my main, was a paladin in life - she smote the Burning Legion, fought to defend Shattrath against the orcs, and after coming to Azeroth aligned with the Argent Dawn to fight the Scourge because the BL did their best biblical begatting with zombies all up ins.</div>
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Then she died because Reasons. Then she undied, because Other Reasons. (tl;dr, "rawr I fight zombies in spite of bleeding to death" "oh noes!" "oh no I bleed to death" "Hey this draenei thing is new. Fel, grab her, she can be a DK too I guess") This is all important, bear with me.</div>
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<br />In life, Visper led a group of... well... not soldiers out of Shattrath, about the same time as the short story "Unbroken" (<a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Unbroken_(story)" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.wowwiki.com/<wbr></wbr>Unbroken_(story)</a> ) - women, children, and most importantly (to her) her sister, Karanina. I'd talked a bit about Kara being "in with the wrong crowd" - think the socialite Haris Pilton - and this is important because instead of being a good elder sister and raising Kara, Visper is very "throw myself into work" - in this case, cartography.</div>
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After the sacking of Shattrath, those same maps she made allowed them to evade Orc war parties for whatever interminable period of time happened between then and the Exodar fleeing.</div>
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The Wrath. Visper gets all DK-ish. Northrend war efforts. Etc., etc. Was present in ICC's siege, and notable among Alliance military for using the corpses of Alliance and Horde military to stymie Deathbringer Saurfang long enough for a concentrated army to kill the orc DK, earning herself a military discharge for her efforts publicly because "The Alliance did what it had to, but using our fallen as meat shields is too far!"</div>
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Which is pretty okay by Visper's standpoint because "Holy crap, my last INFINITES OF MILLENIA have been running from death, fighting to the death, being dead, and fighting the dead who were death incarnate." (being super freaking tired of skirmishes is the IC reason Visper doesn't PVP)</div>
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So, a new purpose, a new time, a new life, what skillset (that doesn't involve killing) does Visper have? Well, maps.</div>
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Drawing on actual REAL LIFE HISTORY, the competition for ownership rights of things beyond the Mississippi River was determined between Spain, Britain and the U.S. by... having the most accurate, complete maps. As such, there would always be demand of better detailed maps in Azeroth for people like Cynwise to plot battleground strategies, or for folks like Brann Bronzebeard to detail what he found, or... you get the point.</div>
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It's small, not a big deal for a while. Modest success, as Waypoint maps start circulating slowly, because of a reluctance to embrace the Gnomish printing press.</div>
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Then Deathwing eats Azeroth. The old maps, from prior to his breaking the world are suddenly way out of date. Even the best maps of the time don't account for all the changes in the world. Suddenly, there's a demand. A demand for high quality, high detail maps.</div>
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A small operation like Waypoint can't handle that, so "holy crap we need to hire people." All sorts of people, from all walks of life. "Can you draw a map? Can you draw a map that is detailed, and others can follow to find places and things you've mapped? Then when you're in Stormwind, we've got a cot with your name on it, couple meals a day, maybe a bit of gold in your bag if you bring back a good map."</div>
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(Pausing story to say this is why the lowbies matter in Waypoint's -Story- - every map brought back refines, reforges old maps. Higher detail through repetitive mapping, creating higher quality maps. "I'm level 10 in WSG and what is this" No, you're on the Ashenvale battlefield against the invading Orcish hordes, try and sketch your location while you're out there, k thx)</div>
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The organization grows based on this conceit because "Hey, all I have to do is draw pretty pictures of where I am, and I get free room and board in Stormwind, sign me up!" but also Visper starts a little something on the side, a little bit of recreational hunting. There are dragons out there, big and nasty with gnashing teeth. It'd be nice to be able to hang their fang up in the guild hall, wouldn't it? (Waypoint's raid team story is here. Recreational saviors of Azeroth, what what)</div>
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Dragon Soul isn't just a "raid team" affair, it's a concerted effort by all of Azeroth that can be spared - the entirety of the Waypoint guild commits itself to fighting Deathwing and the Twilight Hammer, from multiple vantage points in Northrend (some of the paladins may have been out of the Argent Tournament Grounds, for example, mages from Dalaran, some may have shipped from the southern coast of Dragonblight, etc.) </div>
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And with Deathwing's er. Death. Numbers of Waypoint have gone missing, either because they went MIA for being thrown off DW's back, or because afterward they're like "NOPE.JPEG" and boogied off to who knows where. But, see, the Horde hostilities have started flaring up. Flaring up A LOT. Waypoint can't afford to be complacent, if it's cartographers are going to be mapping the world - because, uh. We need maps of Durotan and the like too. Soon. Pay high coin for a good map of Orgrimmar, for example, or insider information as to what is exactly going on in the Undercity now. (story hook for PVP focused players) </div>
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And, rumors have it of this new continent in the mists, a future land of resources, of bounty. Of opportunity. And if the Horde and Alliance want it, they're sending cartographers first, to see what exactly the country is all about. (5.0 story hook)</div>
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Basically, using the organization's structure as a vague "this is what is possible" it allows for a lot of different character types to tell their own story without feeling tied down to the organization as total. Even having a way to "touch base" with Stormwind is solid, too, beyond mailing their factors to work with the Auction House. </div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-74075262074370173202012-06-12T06:53:00.000-07:002012-06-12T06:53:06.744-07:00Karanina, the Noble<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">This is the story of a player, popularly known as Snack. </span><br />
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But to tell you that story, I have to tell you this one: about a draenei priestess, named Karanina.<div>
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Karanina is the second ever character I have rolled - far enough back, that her "Date of Birth" was before getting a couple of Hallow's End achievements in 2008: Karanina didn't reach max level until 13 May, 2011.</div>
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<br />Where a bunch of other alts have come and gone, Karanina has remained. Which, I suppose, really shouldn't surprise me to be writing of stubborn, cussed determination.</div>
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I originally rolled Kara with intent to heal, in those days way back when when nobody did leveling dungeons, with intent of leveling; because these were things you needed guild groups for - at least with the warrior I'd began my exploits into World of Warcraft with, I could reliably quest without feeling too squishy. But, I hadn't forgotten an interest in healing, and when I managed to bumble my way to level 55 and the ability to create a death knight: I promptly forgot about leveling a priest.</div>
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Two years later, in January of 2010, I convinced my better half to roll a character - and after a morning of installing, and updating and installing some more, a draenei paladin named Quaras was born.</div>
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We had done the "Recruit a Friend" program - and if we wanted the experience bonus, for both of us, we needed to play two characters together at level, and our character's stories began, because the joy of a blank template character is filling in the blanks for yourself: Quaras and Karanina had always been friends, had always traveled together - and this had become the reasons for a lot of things we chose to do, a lot of things early on that became bigger things later: our choice of spec, for example.</div>
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<i>"Sometimes, the monsters go for you first," she spoke, hefting the shield from the ground, offering a familiar grin, "So, I'll be your shield and your sword. And I'll be your guardian and defender."</i></div>
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<i>"Sometimes, you need to be protected from YOURSELF," the priest retorted, clutching her stave with two hands, frowning, "You have passion, I have discipline: So, I'll bend the light into your shield. I'll be your guardian, and your defender."</i></div>
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This was before the recruit a friend bonus took a character all the way to 80; and as such, we suddenly stood at level 60, and school picked up, and I'd pick up Kara and play a little; I'd heal a little and had fun. I'd use LFD and get a bit ahead, and then we'd quest a little more, and even out, and then it happened, because it does: I pulled ahead in levels, and kept going.</div>
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Real life wasn't nearly as clean, organized.</div>
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I was the manager of a dairy, at a national grocery chain. I had worked long hours, had invested much of myself into it's success. My dairy became me, my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations. I invested my creativity, my knowledge, my studies. It was what I had gone to college to learn how to do, it was practical application of everything I had learned, and everything I had studied, and it was everything I had ever been able to put in order.</div>
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I studied, and I learned management techniques because I loved them - I put programs and ideas into place. I championed procedures that have created inventory solidarity, and I had taken a nondescript dairy of a otherwise successful grocery store, and I made it one. The first year I was in control of said dairy, our annual sales creeped around $2 million dollars - the second, we were closer to $4 million.</div>
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I had talent, I had a knack for business, I had displayed the values and beliefs of a managerial candidate that could go far in a business and that threatens people in charge. Because sometimes, the idea of being replaced is terrifying, and the idea of replacing is pervasive and delicious to those coming up. I also had morals, I also had dedication to the people who worked for me, and when I had to make a very real choice, of standing up for the people who worked for me, or allowing a direct supervisor to continue to enforce ridiculous chain shifts on people, I fought for them, and I fought for them, and then I lost.</div>
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I threw myself pretty hard into a lot of self destructive things, and over a spring, a summer, a fall, I slowly picked myself up, put myself back together. I began raiding seriously, because unfettered from the commitments of a managerial schedule, I finally had time to do things like that. I could commit to regular runs. I looked for raiding guilds on Medivh that worked with my schedule - hard, being a west coast player on an east coast server, but not impossible.</div>
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Pre-Cataclysm was a weird time to find a guild. I'd joined one that raided for two weeks, that I had sat on the bench for four of their five raid nights, before they'd decided "We really don't want to raid anymore, we'll wait until Cataclysm releases." It was June. That guild didn't last much longer.</div>
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Eventually, I wound up in another guild, and stayed there the remainder of Wrath, a guild that led to the formation of Waypoint, if only to be what that guild wasn't: communicative. The guild split in five different groups, of people who had known and played games with each other since Everquest, and never spoke to each other in guild chat ever. </div>
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A <a href="http://disciplinaryaction.wordpress.com/">fine upstanding member of the World of Warcraft twitter community</a> had convinced me I could run my own guild, and I listened. I'm kind of gullible.</div>
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It was a time, where I needed someone to have faith in me, because I didn't have it in myself.</div>
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Tier 11 came and went, a difficult time of building a guild in a difficult time of building guilds. Waypoint had grown, had struggled. Had survived, thus far. We grabbed people who had never raided before, and drug them along to our guild first kills of bosses in Blackwing Descent and had invested ourselves into players who'd never raided seriously before Cataclysm.</div>
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The notreally secret of Waypoint, is that I run it like I ran my business: everybody had a piece in it, and everybody mattered. </div>
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The truth is, I knew exactly what was going to happen with our holy paladin - he had been my raid leader, before Cataclysm. He had been my friend. And he was good at what he did, but if Waypoint was going to live, he had to change, or he had to leave. When he left, it would cripple our progression entirely.</div>
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The plan was simple, and it solved a lot of issues within Waypoint: We had a growing roster of DPS. Half of our raid was on the Vanquisher token.</div>
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And I made a decision to preserve the guild culture, to cut our nose to spite our faces. To be a guild made up of players who had been in heroic modes seriously, suddenly be spinning its wheels to get traction in a tier change.</div>
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Now, we needed another healer. There was Karanina.</div>
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<i>"Look at you, some sort of fancy one? Classy, you'd describe yourself, eh Princess? And what the fel do you think you can accomplish, when the Light is weaker than it's ever been?"</i></div>
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<i>"I, I can be the battle medic..."</i></div>
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In my head, Karanina had spoken to me, and it was kind of a solemn voice. A stoicism in her character. She was shy, reticent. A bookworm with hobbies such as tending to a garden, and writing flowing manuscripts of religious faith and doctrine. The professions were a part of the character, the spec was a part of the character, my inexperience at playing a healing priest was part of the character. Kara lacked confidence, she was short on faith in herself. </div>
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"You know you're writing about you, don't you?" </div>
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I didn't. I mean, I'd never suspected, but, I'd never thought to suspect.</div>
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Tier 12 was hard. Firelands, sure, Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, okay. But, it was a hard time for me, because I had to admit that I was struggling. We were a guild that fought for every progression kill, only for the next week to see us stuck back into the rut we were in, because reasons. </div>
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It felt every time we made progress, the next week we slid backwards, and that no matter how much gear we got, we weren't good enough.</div>
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I blamed a lot on myself. A lot more than I should have, honestly, because I had to learn to heal in a raid, but I was still uncertain of myself as a raid leader. It was August, when my insomnia started, when I started literally losing sleep over raiding in World of Warcraft, and despite our best EVERYTHING, we were 2/7 in the Firelands, prior to the nerfing of the raid. </div>
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That's not heroic mode.</div>
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I only had a single free day a week to do heroics, and I spent it by running the remade Zul'Gurub, and the retooled Zul'Aman. Repeatedly, over and over, until I could reach the valor point cap. Our tanks declared themselves "STORNG," but was "STUBRN."</div>
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So I would dungeon. I would dungeon, and I would study, and I would dungeon more, and I would study harder, and when raid night came about, I was as ready as I could be that week.</div>
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The character, in my head, started to grow up, quietly. Where inexperience had stood, there was devotion to a cause. Where there had been an eager need to prove one's self, came an inner peace, a knowledge that I could slowly do well. Slowly.</div>
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<i>"Your armor means nothing, your faith, even less..."</i></div>
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<i>She bolted upright, her brow slick with sweat, her heart racing, the memory of the beast's bellowing cries. The intonations of the dead shouldn't echo, but in the dark, alone, she pulled the sheets over her a little tighter, curled a little closer, and prayed a little harder.</i></div>
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Deathwing's quote resonates with me. You might never hear it, over the sound of Mumble/Vent, over the sound effects of a raid group. But, it's a line that resonates, and it's pervasive, it instills doubt. That, in spite of you, you'll never overcome the terrors. If not Deathwing's, then the next. There's always a next. It's not always so cataclysmic, but there is always a next.</div>
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Lately, I've had the honor of raiding with Vidyala, Vosskah, Walks (of Apotheosis) and the other fine folks at Business Time. They've gone to Firelands with the intent of building Dragonwrath - and, we've finished. It's been successful. And to be complimented on my healing, has been an honor. One of their folks, Tass, has given me the greatest compliment I can't ever repeat, but, it feels damn good, to know that people I like raiding with, that I respect, hold me in the same kind of light.</div>
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In the writings that I share with my closest, Kara isn't the shy, reticent any more. She's a leader. Not a tactical one, but a personable one. She recognizes people are better than her at tasks, and she tries her best. Not to keep everyone happy, but to keep everything on rails, because, happy follows where consistent lives. She struggles with things, but, in my silly canon I keep for Waypoint in my head, she's a pretty okay leader. </div>
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And that's when I realized when Kara had grown to where she was happy, I had too. </div>
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That when she had grown to actually trust and have faith in herself, so had I. That, when you pull your nose out of the texts for a bit and see who you've surrounded yourself with, it can be really shocking when you don't realize how well you've done it.</div>
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As for now? I'll have faith. If not in a basement windchime, then in me. </div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-73279415587036008922012-02-16T12:16:00.000-08:002012-02-16T12:16:22.439-08:00Six!Apparently, it is a thing, and I was tagged by Lizzia at <a href="http://www.shamanoholic.com/">Shamanaholic</a> (formerly Authorized to Ramble) to show off pictures. Yey pictures! Except there's rules to it.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><strong style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">This is how it goes:</strong></span><br />
<ol style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Go into your screenshots folder</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couln’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Challenge six new bloggers.</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Link to them.</span></li>
</ol><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I don't have six folders, but here's my 6th screenshot!</span> <br />
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So, go be kind to each other, huh?</span></span>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-85318568663578864942012-01-18T20:08:00.000-08:002012-01-18T20:08:23.035-08:00On Nerfing of Dargon SolesEvery time <a href="http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/18/dragon-soul-normal-and-heroic-nerf-begins-jan-31st/">major nerfs</a> come around for a "current tier" raid, people rather loudly huff and barrel their chests out and speak down to the proles who raid and say "Well, they should improve if they want to see content at our level."<br />
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That's not a wrong opinion, but it is a bad mindset!<br />
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Blizzard, with their raid development, are in a position now where they want the time they spend crafting these raids to be seen by more players - many supporters like to bandy about the "1% of players saw the Sunwell" statistic, when arguing for the opening of content to more levels of play skill; much of the opposition throw the argument that "the challenge is the fun" and that "in the old days you'd spend many raid lock outs on a single boss!"<br />
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Both sides have legitimate arguments; both sides are legitimately right. But, both sides are unable to find equal ground - it's the scene from Reservoir Dogs where the mob boss hands out the nicknames: Nobody knows each other, so nobody wants to back down.<br />
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Bashiok is Nice Guy Eddie in this analogy. The KBilly Radio DJ is the gentleman who runs MMO Champion. Stealer's Wheel is thus replaced with Rebecca Black. (I am bad at analogies)<br />
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The side that wants it easier isn't necessarily bad players, but on a limited time frame. The side that wants everything "left alone" aren't necessarily on a limitless schedule, but they have a drive and determination that leaves them wanting to achieve MORE.<br />
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They may be the side that heavily romanticizes the days of yore, where you'd spend weeks wiping to a boss because everybody hadn't farmed enough Nature Resist gear - they may just feel like this is what they want to to do with their time. The side that supports the nerfs may have been those players too, who remember the Chambers of Suppression in Blackwing Lair - may have been the rogue tapping all the traps so people can pass, even!<br />
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Let's get past the idea that there's only two "kinds" of people playing World of Warcraft.<br />
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But before that happens, there needs to be an across the board understanding between two very emotionally charged parties.<br />
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To the people who support the nerfs: It's okay. You'll see the content.<br />
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To the people who are against the nerfs: It's okay. You've seen the content.<br />
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I'm over simplifying this. It needs to be simple. Maybe it needs to be overly simple.<br />
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There will never be a clear conversation about anything if we're constantly going to war with ourselves about what side of the bread we put the butter on.<br />
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Lets have a discourse on the topic with respect for each other. Don't instantly kneejerk about "Bads in mah raids killin' mah dragons" - don't get butthurt over "special snowflakes don't want us in their sandbox!"<br />
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Be excellent to each other. Just to mix it up a little, for once.Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-51253839932394822552012-01-05T04:45:00.000-08:002012-01-05T04:45:26.546-08:00A Series of Half Finished ThoughtsI have OPINIONS on the INTERNET.<br />
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<b>On LFR</b>:<br />
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When it's a blast, it's a fun ride. When it's painful, it's like putting needles in your eyes. I've had absurd luck in winning loot rolls, but mostly, I treat it as a "pre-trainer" for the actual raid, and a good easy source of 500 VP early on in the week.<br />
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It allows me the opportunity to maybe flesh stuff out so I don't feel guilty rolling against my raid team for tier tokens and the such; spreading the upgrades about better. A 384 is fine, too.<br />
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<b>On Vidyaguilt:</b><br />
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For Christmas, my sister got me the Batman: Arkham City game. It's fun! It's like the old animated series we grew up watching, with the darker/edgier Christopher Nolan Batman seeping through it. (the number of returning VA help too)<br />
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Except, I feel bad for taking time away from playing World of Warcraft to play that instead. I feel like as a GM, I need to be prescient, I need to be seen AND heard often. I'm allowed to play other video games, but I always feel like, "You know, they probably could use one more for a dungeon, or you might have a JC cut they don't have..." while completely oblivious to the fact that I'm pretty easily reached.<br />
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<b>More LFR Thoughts</b>:<br />
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I feel we'll see less people applying to actual raid guilds because of this. Not because "If this is what raiding is, man, EFF THAT NOISE" or because "I can do this AS MUCH AS I WANT" or even because of some misguided direction towards elitism: People who are not constantly motivated by loot want to see content. And when they've done it, they're done. That's good enough for them! They can focus on doing other stuff in game instead of finding a guild that matches their schedule, arranging their schedule to allow them to continue to raid uninterrupted, finding time throughout the week to finish their weekly dungeon chores so they can buy upgrades to be better at raiding, taking time to study boss strategies, to watch videos, to read about how to play their class wholly and completely to their best, gemming and enchanting with the GOOD STUFF, the expensive enchants...<br />
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Or, they can queue for LFR, see the bosses once. If they win stuff, cool. If they lose stuff, cool. When the dragon is dead, they can nod and say "What's next?"<br />
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What do you have as a guild manager, a recruiter, a raid team to offer someone like this? LFR isn't going away, think about how you recruit, think about what you have. It's been a recruit's market for a while now, and that is not changing any time soon.<u> Adapt.</u><br />
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<b>On Insomnia:</b><br />
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Sleep deprivation affects a lot beyond "oh I'm just sleepy" - in the workplace, it can cause a number of issues, especially if you are in the detail works of things. Handling of heavy equipment can be made dangerous, too, if your attention slips just a bit.<br />
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We raid in the evenings; and by time we get to raid, I've been up at least fourteen hours. It's made putting my thoughts together to speak clearly kind of tricky, and I've been a liability to my guild because of it. A couple people in guild have stepped up to make these calls, and I thank them for it every week, but I want to thank them again because it never feels like enough to just say "thank you" to them in game.<br />
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Thank you, Rezz, Dee. I'll get sleeps soon, I think maybe.<br />
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<b>Proper Internet Interactions:</b><br />
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No matter who you are, what you do, it's very easy for "an internet thing" to explode into a "real life thing" in the ways that are bad, obviously, which is what I'm vaguely alluding to.<br />
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Be decent. You'll find it's a lot easier to get on with people if you're respectful, as if they were there with you. As if you were close enough for them to reach across the table and cuff you upside the ear for saying something offensive.<br />
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<b>On Dicking Around:</b><br />
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I like dungeons. It's kinda my thing.<br />
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I wish there were more in dungeon to explore, and more going on beyond "This is the Blackrock Mountain Level" or "This is the Skywall level" or "This is the cat people level."<br />
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I equate dungeons to dungeons - in Final Fantasy, the most easily accessible boxes have small loot that's good for there and then (potions, tents, healing items) and to find the best stuff, you have to explore the space a bit. I know this was done in Wrath with heroic bosses being "off the beaten path" - and as their content was no longer relevant, it got harder talking people into going back in and doing those bosses. Or, their content was trivialized to the point of being irrelevant because of LFD's introduction, and Triumph badges for EVERY boss kill?<br />
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That's all I've got at the moment, nothin' detailed enough to be a full blogpost, but I felt like sharing. What about you? What's on your mind?Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-63559514311986773962011-12-06T09:40:00.000-08:002011-12-06T09:50:56.176-08:00Notes for Endtime DungeonRecently, World of Warcraft's Patch 4.3 added three new five-player dungeons, End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight: this is a quick guide to the first.<br />
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<div><b><u>End Time</u></b></div><div><b><u><br />
</u></b></div><div><b>WHY ARE YOU HERE: </b>The Infinite Dragonflight has been getting all up ins on Nozdormu's grill - and now the Aspect of Time has had it UP TO HERE with these pallet swapped dreggins.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The Infinite Dragonflight's leader, Murozond, is blocking up the pathways of time, preventing anyone from using time as it should be - which is troublesome, because the Dragon Aspects have this plan that kind of involves a bit of time travel to really put the screws to Deathwing.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>NUMBER OF BOSSES: </b>Five bosses total, you'll only fight three. Think like Trial of the Champion back in Wrath.</div><div><br />
</div><div><u>Mystery Pool </u>- Of these four, you'll fight two, in one of the four Dragonshrines in Dragonblight. Nozdormu has a Chronothinger to take you to the four areas, so there's not a whole lot of travelling about. Each Dragonshrine has it's own amount of trash to worry about though.</div><div><u><br />
</u></div><div><b>Echo of Jaina </b>- Fought in the Blue Dragonshrine; to force her to appear, you have to collect 16 fragments of her staff. The trash in this pack are ghostly beings, akin to the Halls of Reflection gauntlet in Wrath. Priests should be focused down, their Lightwells destroyed. Sorcerers can blink about, so if they can be silenced, do so. Riflemen and Footmen are the remaining trash - all classified as Undead, for you CC happy types (shackle undead, repentance, turn evil, etc)<br />
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Jaina herself has three major abilities to watch for:<br />
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<u>Pyroblast</u> - It's like fire, FOR YOUR FACE. If you're a tank. Uninterruptable.<br />
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<u>Ice Blades</u> - She'll blink away from you, and cast Ice Blades. Don't stand in them please. Immediately after, she'll cast Frostbolt Volley three times in quick succession, and this part CAN be interrupted! Please do, this hurts.<br />
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<u>Flarecore</u> - She'll create a small fireball on the ground; left to it's own devices it'll explode for lots of damage. If you step on it early, you'll take a chunk of damage, but it's much less worrisome.<br />
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She'll probably have time to cast Ice Blades at least twice, until you're in appropriate gear (i378, or Firelands equivalent) - when you might be able to push through the fight faster. A fairly anticlimactic fight.<br />
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<b>Echo of Baine </b>- Obsidian Dragonshrine houses Baine Bloodhoof, current leader of the Tauren people. He's mad, son. He has three packs of black dragons before him that you can safely avoid to get to the lava pool/platforms he's situated on. If you feel saucy and want to kill them, I recommend the drake first, as he'll spew lava on everyone, and it ratchets up in damage with the Black Dragon Seer's spellcasts (also interruptable).<br />
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Baine himself is a fairly simplistic fight:<br />
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<u>Throw Totem</u> - It's what it sounds? He'll throw a massive Tauren totem at you, knocking your character backwards - but, then you can grab the totem and throw it back at him, stunning him.<br />
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<u>Pulverize</u> - He'll jump to one of the rock islands, shattering it. You can't stand there any more, because the floor is lava. Pretend you're poor, and jump away to the nearest couch.<br />
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If Baine is allowed to chill in the lava, he gets a buff, allowing him to cast "Molten Blast" - it hurts like hell, don't let him stay in the lava. However, melee dps can hop in and out of the fire for the "Molten Fists" buff that adds fire damage to their attacks.<br />
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Yes, standing in the fire is a buff on this guy. I'm really getting mixed messages about things from Blizzard here.<br />
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<b>Echo of Sylvanas </b>- In the Ruby Dragonshrine, the Dark Lady of the Forsaken. Her trash packs are roaming Plaguebeasts, with Geists all about. They're not very avoidable - Geists have to die, first. FIRST. If the Plaguebeast dies first, the geists will eat it and hulk out, cleaving everybody and doing incredible amounts of damage. If you're healing, have a Cure Disease type button ready, or possibly prep to heal through a good amount of damage.<br />
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Sylvanas herself is fairly simplistic as well<br />
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<u>Unholy Shot</u> - She's a hunter. She uses shots. /shrug<br />
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<u>JFC WHAT THE HELL IS THAT PURPLE CRAP</u> - She'll make there be pools of purple on the ground. Don't stand in it, please.<br />
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<u>Ring Around The Rosie</u> - A circle of ghouls, linked by purple, will surround the fight area, and slowly advance to the center. Standing in the purple will kill you - killing one of the ghouls will allow you to create a safe pathway to run through as the remaining ghouls finish their walk.<br />
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She'll set back onto the ground immediately afterwards, allowing the fight to continue. Keep moving, she'll lay down another line of purple fairly shortly afterwards. Continue to dps.<br />
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Echo of Tyrande -</b> In the Emerald Dragonshrine, Tyrande is encloaked in Darkness - and you shouldn't be afraid of the dark, but rather, what's hiding in it: Tigers and Night Elven Sentinels. You won't be able to damage them effectively until you pull them into shafts of moonlight that'll make you run all the way around the lake, causing the shadowed figures to come into the light for being beat down.<br />
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As for Tyrande:<br />
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Melee dps and tanks should stand up on the rock Tyrande's on, in the middle of the lake. Because of the Dark Moonlight, casters will see their cast times increased by standing IN the lake, and are probably well suited to stand on the edge of the lake, to avoid stuff.<br />
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<u>Moonbolt</u> - her primary attack, will knock a tank around to the tune of 37k - 43k damage.<br />
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<u>Stardust</u> - A wholly interruptable attack that should be interrupted, because it's interruptable. Hits every player in area for about 50k damage. Interruptable. Interrupt this.<br />
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<u>Moonlance</u> - A straight line shot that will split like a fork as it reaches out - players hit by it will be stunned for 5 seconds<br />
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As the fight rolls on, she'll also cast Lunar Guidance - speeding up her spell casting. The first cast will be when she reaches 80% of her life, the second at 55% of her life. And at 30%, she'll ramp up the damage with the Tears of Elune spell, turning the fight into a DPS burn phase. You can see where the tears are falling, and when capable, you should move out of the way too.<br />
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<b>Note: </b>Of these four bosses, only two will be encountered at a time. They mostly share a loot table, but each character has a special item from each of them. This may annoy you if you're looking for ONE PARTICULAR DROP, but this is the way RNG handled loot works.<br />
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<b>Wait, why are we killing these four?</b><br />
We don't know! Even Nozdormu is all "/shrug" about why they're here, though it's rumored that their presence suggests we can see big things from them in Azeroth's future.<br />
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<b>FINAL BOSS: Murozond, Leader of the Infinite Dragonflight</b><br />
After all your hopping shenanigans, Nozdormu can lead you to the Bronze Dragonshrine, where you'll fight Murozond's minions - two trash packs of four. The Suppressors need to be silenced, stunned, CC'd, because their spells will wreck people's day. The others are fairly simplistic (read: beat it to death).<br />
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Murozond is a dragon. A PROPER Dragon, not like those dragons we've been fighting all expansion. This is a dragon that if you stand on his ass, he'll tail whip you. If you stand in front of him, he'll roast you.<br />
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He also has a couple special abilities<br />
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<u>Arcane Burst</u> - Kind of like a mage's spell, but not really. Puts a stacking debuff on the player that increases the amount of damage they take.<br />
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<u>Arcane Bomb</u> - Again, like a mage spell, but not really. A circle of glowing will warn you to get out of the way of a bomb that'll make the ground dangerous to walk in - 25k damage per tick dangerous. As the fight continues, as his life gets lower, he'll set these faster.<br />
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But you get a special trick this fight, too:<br />
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<u>Hourglass</u> - Look at that beautiful Hourglass. Love it. "Why can't I hold all this damage done?!" your Recount will cry. Wanna meet dat hourglass.<br />
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Shortly after pulling Murozond, the fight will "snapshot" every player - and when you hit the Hourglass, it's like smacking the reset button - every player will "rewind" back to where they were snapshot, Murozond will be exactly where he was before you hit it, as he himself says: He is outside of time's influence.<br />
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The way we usually do the fight in Waypoint, is every 20%, we smack the Hourglass, then everybody unloads all their DPS cooldowns. If we've got it in group, this is also when we hit Heroism/Bloodlust/Beastlust/Timewarp as well: because after every Hourglass turn, your cooldowns are reset, your debuffs are removed, and timers act as if you never cast the spell at all.<br />
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We settled on "Every 20%" because at our gear level, it let us see the fight before we got comfortable with it - now, we'll let it roll and still have a couple charges on the Hourglass before we finish the fight.<br />
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<b>So, why'd we kill Murozond?</b><br />
The Leader of the Infinite Dragonflight, Murozond, is Nozdormu, the Aspect of Time! We see the "least worst" of all possible endings for Azeroth, with Deathwing having impaled himself upon Wyrmrest Temple - and Nozdormu, driven mad by the infinite of possibilities he sees, sets out to "fix" time in the way he thinks it needed to be, giving impetus to the Caverns of Time dungeons.<br />
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Killing Murozond opens up the Caverns of Time, allowing Nozdormu free reign over time itself again, so he can lead you into the next dungeon; the Well of Eternity.</div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-83727475588762549362011-11-18T12:30:00.000-08:002011-11-18T12:30:21.414-08:00On CharacterNot the personality trait, no.<br />
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There's a couple letters in MMORPG that kinda hang - the whole "Role Playing" thing. Some people can treat World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, the upcoming The Old Republic, or whichever their MMO of choice is as a numbers game - bigger numbers forever, all the time!<br />
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Metagaming is okay, you know? Munchkin out, munchkins, keep on trucking, 'coz we love you too. (But if you roll seven RIGHT NOW, our love for you is double all weekend)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgblo4I78EopJ2-xv8bMoYtzG-7oq0DQ1HY4N1jm_5r9WxpKNaUPDMFSUUDqN0neyPqY-GL8ntJ0SOQ98-4NxNO8gIortIemBeq_umfQZfIwBE7XPDyesfhIINclIx_9ndNFrA9ZJk3Pmm/s1600/kerryicon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgblo4I78EopJ2-xv8bMoYtzG-7oq0DQ1HY4N1jm_5r9WxpKNaUPDMFSUUDqN0neyPqY-GL8ntJ0SOQ98-4NxNO8gIortIemBeq_umfQZfIwBE7XPDyesfhIINclIx_9ndNFrA9ZJk3Pmm/s400/kerryicon.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kerain North, as drawn by @Outbirk</td></tr>
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For some, the Role Playing may stop at the "get better gear, be better at game" - but, for others, they may have a personal attachment to characters they play. Might make stories for them, even!<br />
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I've felt bad about the recent offerings because I dump more fanfiction than anything useful here - but it felt like a good conversation piece!<br />
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What about you? Do you think of your "toon" as a character? Do you put thought into their motivation? Their history? Do you do this for every character, or just for your favorite?Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-33413572831593943042011-10-27T07:12:00.000-07:002011-10-29T21:15:41.799-07:00Fiction: "Service"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHw-f5mnbFSafKK14eme8WL5k-08vG8yYvns0Ku_AIV0UbldMiTWjW2b1P7VxT0ri7915zXuaPtGy_4nF1KHY0GY7pC4dattSXHRucCL08wbd9mA0R19Oc0BQQ_t_wQahqfCLzWwF-1bVK/s1600/WoWScrnShot_102711_070016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHw-f5mnbFSafKK14eme8WL5k-08vG8yYvns0Ku_AIV0UbldMiTWjW2b1P7VxT0ri7915zXuaPtGy_4nF1KHY0GY7pC4dattSXHRucCL08wbd9mA0R19Oc0BQQ_t_wQahqfCLzWwF-1bVK/s400/WoWScrnShot_102711_070016.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She sat by candle light, the weighty tome open in front of her. Her fingers trail over the pages, reading aloud. "Esarus thar no'Darador'," her voice echoes in the quiet, and with a smile she speaks again, whispering, "By Blood and Honor, We Serve."</span><br />
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</div><div>Pushing back from the desk, she settles back and looks to the window - over the horizon, over the hills and rooftops above the township the first rays of light begin peering over the horizon, and the girl frowned, solemnly cursing, "...again?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>As the sun rose over Hearthglen, the trumpets sounded, blowing strong into the air - and the field grew crowded, heavy with the Argent Crusade recruits - the girl shuffling to the lines, slipping into the back of the rows of troops, as the drill instructor ahead called forth, "KER-AIN NORTH, FRONT AND CENTER!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The girl sighs, and slumps, moving forward, her plate armor shining yellow in the rising sun, the libram on her belt hanging on one hip, sword and shield sheathed upon her back. The Argent Crusade tabard she wore wafted softly in the breeze, as she stands tall, proud, snapping a sharp salute, "Reporting, sir!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The instructor paces - the night elven warrior stands tall in his plate armor, Argent Crusade tabard pressed neatly, the hanging tails swaying beneath him as he moves, pacing around the girl. She stands firm, holding her salute, but gives herself a moment to swallow hard when he paces behind her, biting her lip as he lingers, before pacing around in front of her again. "Miss North, I note you've shown up rather disheveled. The Argent Crusade is the Light's army. We've fought in these Plaguelands for many years before now as the Argent Dawn - we were the rays of hope when Naxxramas appeared, and on the shores of Northrend, we were the razor pointed arrowtip that sunk into the neck of the beasts of the Scourge," he looked about to the other recruits, then gestured to them, "They had the decency of showing up properly dressed. Your tabard is backwards. Your armor isn't properly fastened. And the plank of metal with the Lordaeron crest on it is hardly-"</div><div><br />
</div><div>"I, I am of Lordaeron, sir," she interrupted. Her voice shook, and she looked up towards him, craning her head back to meet the eyes of the elven man as he stood above her. "And I know of the Argent Dawn and the Knights of the Silver Hand. Where the Horde and Alliance have abandoned, we have fought, and we have taken, and we have held."</div><div><br />
</div><div>"I'm glad you spend the time you could be preparing for the mornings studying what the Argent Crusade is about," he says, offering a small smile and a nod, before his countenance turned stern again, "But if I'm to prepare you for battle, you have to show up ready for it. And you have not! Report to the Mess Hall; we'll have you peeling potatoes until you're proven ready!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>-----</div><div><br />
</div><div>The walk to the mess hall had been quiet, and it took everything Kerain had not to show any emotion. Her lips pursed, her eyes steadied, and she bit the inside of her cheek as she approached the hall, and the chef shook his head as he saw the girl approach, the gnome speaking up, "At this rate, we're gonna run out of potatoes the way they keep sending you here. Well, the stool's still in there from last time... get yerself settled in."</div><div><br />
</div><div>She nodded, and offered a wave and weak smile as she pushed into the pantry. She unfastened the shield and sword, setting them gingerly against the wall, following suit with the plate belt, settign that upon the stool before her. She tugged at the tabard, shifting it about her neck, resetting everything neatly into place, as well as reaching down and grabbing the tail, raising and stretching the fabric to look down upon the length.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The star of the Argent Crusade stood proud in the center of her chest, and within the golden center, the silver-threaded hand caught the sun's rays. Kerain sighs, smilling as she reties it and refastens the plate belt around her waist, locking the belt tighter, and smoothing everything out, and sighing as she settles upon the stool, taking a potato in hand, and grumbling at it, "Potato? Some days, you know, you're my only friend."</div><div><br />
</div><div>-----</div><div><br />
</div><div>Time passed, the sun moved, the light dimmed in the pantry, and the potatoes were peeled. A small knife in Kerain's pocket slowly removed the skin from each potato, before tossing the leavings into one basket, and the workable potato into another. After some time, the chef toddled in, and the gnome chuckled a bit as he threw a fresh bag in front of her. "Look, these spuds ain't gonna skin themselves. I was gonna let 'em go, but if you're doing whatever it is that gets ya sent here, you can cut up a few MORE spuds and-"</div><div><br />
</div><div>From outside, shouts and calls to arms, the ringing of a bell, and shouts, "SCOURGE! SCOURGE INCOMING! SCOURRRRGEEEEEE!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The gnome chef hustles, slamming the pantry door behind him, Kerain grabbing her shield and sword, and shoving through slamming the door open, barrelling through the mess hall to the outside, the sky blue above and the grass green below. The Argent Crusaders charged forth towards the township's gate, Hearthglen's path filled with the soldiers of the Argent Crusade - and in the distance, the Abomination towered over all, arms raised high into the sky and smashing down, the chains snaking through the crowd of trainees as it continued to lumber forth, whipping the chains upwards and flinging the recruits aside.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Kerain's eyes went wide as she stared. The Abomination towered, its arms smashing a colossal cleaver through the crowd of Crusade trainees, crying out, "PLAYTIME!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>She shakes, shivering, watching him approach, swinging the chain back over its head, and forth smashing it upon the ground, slapping people away with its third arm. Guards continue to rush forth, as the calls go out, "FOR THE HIGHLORD! FOR THE CRUSADE!" </div><div><br />
</div><div>Mages stream from their towers, their magics flying to stun, to slow the Abomination, and Kerain moves, forward, slow, her plated boots falling upon the dirt.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The instructor crawls away from the carnage, his sword broken, but still in hand, his eyes hazy as he looks up, "Ker-ain?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>She falls to her knees beside him, dropping the sword and shield and placing her hands upon him, the light glowing bright as she grits her teeth over him, his breathing slowing and normalizing. She speaks out, "This isn't going to be as good as a real battle medic, but, at least you shouldn't be in too much pain any more. Just, uh, it'll be okay! Really!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The Abomination in the distance slashed and struck and swung about wildly, and Kerain looked between the Abomination and the Instructor, before reaching blindly, grabbing the sword and shield, and marching towards the fray, shaking in her boots. Her voice shakes, and the Crusade troops about her stagger, slow their charge at the monster as she raises her shield, and bellows, her voice clear, "ESARUS THAR NO'DARADOR! BY BLOOD AND HONOR WE SERVE!" Thrusting the sword tip towards the Abomination, she cries, "FOR LORDAERON!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>Kerain charges, before she glances aside at the sword, and her eyes go wide, the blade broken in half - but in charge, she couldn't stop, the beast ahead of her, Abomination raising its chain up over it's head, roaring and swinging forward to crash upon the ground. Kerain darts to the side, and charges forward still, broken sword clenched in one hand and shield on her arm, cursing herself as she moves out of the way, "This is stupid this is stupid this is stupid this is stupid!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The Abomination rages, and up close, Kerain struggles to shut her nose - the beast's stomach hanging open, foul smell of rot and decay from it's open guts and the swaying of its intestines distracting- but the mass shifted, moved, and the cleaver rose, swung! She rose the shield, and fell to a leg, kneeling before the monster, throwing the shield up at an angle - the cleaver scraping, sparks flying, before she pushed it over, rising to her feet again, shield held tight in her arms, as she shakes, her eyes still wide with panic, but the beast moves, and shifts, chains raising up again, before the girl shoves the broken sword in between the holes, stomping the hilt deep into the dirt, slowing the beasts' turn as she places a hand upon the Libram at her hip, narrowing her eyes and watching as the beast pulls itself free with a single heft.</div><div><br />
</div><div>It turns, its gaze angered, eyes locked upon Kerain's, as she raises the shield, hiding behind it, raising the shield up, ready, before the beast swings the cleaver again, wild, "LITTLE THING WILL NOT STAND!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The cleaver swings, and Kerain watches, the shield held tight, before she drops to her hands and knees, letting the blade swing overhead, before fetching up to her feet again, bolts of fire and ice flying over her as they pepper the monster crashing against the beast and staggering it back, the girl charging forward with the shield to push the beast back, swinging it hard, before pulling it free from her arm, and throwing it to the beast's face, shield glowing hot with the Light as it strikes, flying back and landing in the dirt before her, the beast smashing the chain into the ground again, the girl stumbling, staggering away before falling upon the ground.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The Abomination raises it's cleaver, with a glint in it's eye. From beneath the monster seems to grin as it's guttural voice echoes, "NO MORE PLAY!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>Kerain shut her eyes, and then, there was Light. It shone even with her eyes shut, and when she opened them, the Abomination was frozen in place, and... she blinked, watching it tower above her, stagger forth and back, rocking on it's legs before finally falling back, the sound of it's falling against the ground as loud as the chains it flailed with. Kerain fell back breathing heavily, and saying, to no one in particular. "...that was stupid."</div><div><br />
</div><div>"Some could say stupidity is another phrase for bravery, Miss North," a new voice echoes. "Which you've shown greatly here today. Though, I must ask, was the broken sword intentional?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>She looks up from her spot on the ground, and the sword - the armor. All so familiar, as her eyes widen, her mouth agape, before she scrambles to her feet, snapping a sharp salute to the man before her, "Highlord Fordring, Sir!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The eldery gentleman laughs, and the blade of the Highlord, the Ashbringer shines in the midday sun. The sword changes hands and he returns her salute, before laughing, and crossing the distance, patting the girl on the shoulder. "It's heartening to see someone so young take an interest in the Light, someone willing to stand their ground. I'd hoped we'd armed you better than with broken swords though..."</div><div><br />
</div><div>"N-no sir! It, it wasn't... I picked up the sword nearest and-" she swallowed hard, before stiffening, her salute held, and shaking, "S-sir, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been- I need to- uh. I mean!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>"Now, now," he laughs, "You've done well today. If we've a few more paladin like yourself in the rosters, the future of Azeroth is assuredly safe. But, that broken sword! Those words! You've been studying a friend of mine! I'll speak to the mess hall, have them bring up a meal, and we can share stories of the Second War, it sounds like you'd be of a mind to hear that. How does that sound?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>"Highlord Fordring, sir?" She asks, uncomfortable, "If I may? May I return to peeling the potatoes now...? If I don't finish, there won't be enough for the others to eat tonight."</div><div><br />
</div><div>Before an answer, she moved, ducked, and ran to fetch the shield, pulling it free from the ground where it had stuck, and swung it about, fastening it to her back, running through the camp back to the mess hall... biting her lip again, but this time, fighting the wide grin that grew on her face as she trundled back to her chore, her punishment, her duties. </div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-61951583469314324742011-10-11T09:26:00.000-07:002011-10-11T09:26:18.445-07:00Rambling on a themeBefore I start rambling in a jumble of half-formed thoughts, I would like to start by directing you to this latest post on the <a href="http://flavortextlore.wordpress.com/">Flavor Text Lore </a>blog, <a href="http://flavortextlore.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/failure-challenge-and-the-decline-of-wow/">"Failure, Challenge, and the Decline of WoW"</a> - while a lot of people might be quick to point and say it's a familiar argument made by people who play Warcraft at a much higher level than the average player, they do themselves the disservice of realizing Hamlet and Perculia give probably the most intelligent dissertation on "fun" and "engaging" gameplay short of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sirlin">David Sirlin</a>'s dissertations on Street Fighter 2.<br />
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There is a good counter point to be made here in regards to their article; I am not the writer to make that argument, nor do I have the complete thoughts to do the argument a shade of the justice it deserves.<br />
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Instead, I want to move down another train of thought; to talk about what is fun, because I do feel pretty confident in being able to illustrate what I think is fun, and hopefully, to tie back to the Flavor Text post, I can illustrate an idea that I've been rolling around for a few weeks:<br />
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Being picky is okay, because being picky is knowing what you want. And if you know what you want from a video game (be it WoW or anything else), your gameplay experience changes based on your expectations.<br />
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Let's agree to a single conceit before we move any further on this point: Overcoming challenges is fun.<br />
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You play a video game because you want a challenge. Everything extra that you do in a video game is compulsory.<br />
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Now that you and I agree, "We like to be challenged" we can riff a little. We have an even ground. We don't care what the challenge is, we like to beat stuff. We play a game and like to be able to point to whatever we've done and say "I completed this. For me."<br />
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I can talk a little bit about what I do, how I play video games, and chase my fun. I am a Guild Manager for Waypoint (US-Medivh Ally), I am a raid leader for our team (currently 6/7 in regular Firelands) and we progress at our own pace, and occasionally frustrate myself worrying entirely too much about WoW in general.<br />
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Before all that, I grew up with video games; playing video games with my Dad has given a lot of happy memories, where we'd spend hours playing Super Mario or the Legend of Zelda - I'd played a lot of video games, and we even had a Commodore to play other games, such as Oregon Trail.<br />
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I tell you this, because I don't remember when the hell I found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry">Wizardry</a>.<br />
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I knew I got lost. A lot. So I knew I needed some way to get around, to know how I got places. I needed a map.<br />
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Quite a few years later, I found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrian_Odyssey">Etrian</a> <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EtrianOdyssey">Odyssey</a>.<br />
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Etrian Odyssey is a lot of things, but my favorite quote, from Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe, is that "Etrian Odyssey has one difficulty, and that difficulty is Motherfucker."<br />
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It is a brutally hard game, and for players of newer RPGs, it may seem antiquated. Dated. Made for a forgotten time. In the first game, NPCs warn you of dangerous monsters known as F.O.E.'s, and warn you to give caution, to avoid them when you can - that discretion is the better part of valor.<br />
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Many players, full of confidence in their brave party of adventurers, and eager to show those NPCs whats up, will charge headlong into battle...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/dB_PVPyn6n8/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dB_PVPyn6n8&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dB_PVPyn6n8&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div><br />
Youtube's aspect ratio cuts off the subtitles, I'm sorry. Though, through memetic mutation, if it's worth writing songs about, you can realize that the FOE monster is very much something to be watched for, avoided, fled from. Also if you wind up in battle with an FOE about, you need to end it FAST or the FOE will join in. (Even in boss battles, FOE!)<br />
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What does the FOE look like in battle? Well...<br />
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Those are the eyes of a killer.<br />
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I could very easily talk about Etrian Odyssey for hours and hours and hours; it's a game I've been able to set down and pick up frequently, otften. The difficulty curve is less a curve and more a number of 90 degree angles doubling back on itself like an MC Escher work; but still I enjoy it.<br />
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I enjoy it because of it's masochistic difficulty, because the exploration of lush, rich environments does a lot to engross me beyond the gameplay, it's an easy game for me to lose myself in.<br />
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Also, maps.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuu30dIS9wrVe85jEUHMyjxKuAeWVFQ0-Kc4kcIkTi6KQdBXgNacqeH_fwSlzZYhUutqJSwWnojMHBS0tCrCZS6kM4fgIUqcr3yvVc78Exq7Q-FltaKGf-oXh3AWzB8XHENbrKN8zTjfa/s1600/etrian_odyssey_b22f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuu30dIS9wrVe85jEUHMyjxKuAeWVFQ0-Kc4kcIkTi6KQdBXgNacqeH_fwSlzZYhUutqJSwWnojMHBS0tCrCZS6kM4fgIUqcr3yvVc78Exq7Q-FltaKGf-oXh3AWzB8XHENbrKN8zTjfa/s400/etrian_odyssey_b22f.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
But, to get off my fanaticism here and tie this back to the Flavor Text blog post, I thought about what I find to be fun. How I define fun, myself, how I chase it.<br />
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How am I picky in playing a video game? Why do I continue to play a video game? What is fun?<br />
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Let's double back onto the WoW stuff I mentioned earlier, the point of being a raid leader and a guild manager; but beyond that, what I enjoy most of WoW? I like to raid.<br />
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Raiding is end game content - you get to the maximum level, and what is there to do? Reputation grinds, questing, and so on and so forth.<br />
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Or, if you've grown up playing JRPGs, you tackle bonus content before killing the final boss; where the bonus bosses are often harder, require more preparation or just plain cussed determination to kill than the story boss. (Never mind the logistics of why this storyline unimportant boss is more dangerous than the being trying to end the world.)<br />
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Remember, we agreed on this - overcoming challenges is fun. Doing optional challenges is compulsory.<br />
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Raiding is optional. Plenty of players can and have enjoyed WoW in its time without setting foot in a raid while it was "current end game content," but that it's viable to choose to never raid is what needs to be brought forth, and the purpose of the Flavor Text blog post that I keep referring back to is that there has to be a challenge somewhere in a video game.<br />
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Because overcoming a challenge is fun, remember?<br />
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This is what the Flavor Text Lore blog post referred to, what Perculia and Hamlet wrote out; not that there is no challenge in World of Warcraft - but that the challenges are unrewarding to accomplish if you aren't eager to chase into raiding.<br />
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The single player challenges don't offer many lessons to apply in a group environment.<br />
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Ultimately, it is up to the player to decide where they want to find their challenges. Open ended video games with no set finish, or cessation generally end when a player is done finding fun in them.<br />
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This is what I believe about fun in video games, for now at least.Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-22934729938792724682011-09-21T17:36:00.000-07:002011-09-21T17:36:41.535-07:00This Is How I PriestIn July, I tagged the "Circle of Healers" post - to detail a bit about how I understood healing, to talk about things I did, and to look at stuff I watch intently. And then, Blizzard recently had a "call to arms" for classes for players to detail what and why they're happy/unhappy with their chosen class.<br />
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This, paired with conversations I've had with <a href="http://www.authorizedtoramble.com/">Lizzia</a> and some others about HOW I actually heal has led to this, this thing here. A blog post.<br />
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As before, the character in question is <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/medivh/Karanina/advanced">Karanina</a>, Discipline Priest of US Medivh-A's guild Waypoint.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilhyyH6vLOzImVro3QrCUCRV_P2Quou1oT5DWWhWWLSS1e1PBzahzD5L9kSoWoIPFesm-Y6oAS5Zly0TtOfHDzPU0A4K6HNRH6FgPKTUEevqVH_-5OobIVg06iDVOLmjq767D4fUE2Nc2-/s1600/PRINCESSKARANINNY.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilhyyH6vLOzImVro3QrCUCRV_P2Quou1oT5DWWhWWLSS1e1PBzahzD5L9kSoWoIPFesm-Y6oAS5Zly0TtOfHDzPU0A4K6HNRH6FgPKTUEevqVH_-5OobIVg06iDVOLmjq767D4fUE2Nc2-/s1600/PRINCESSKARANINNY.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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She's not smug, she's just prettier than you, and has the GM logs to prove it. (Picture by outbirk of <a href="http://www.princeofspades.net/runes/">Dancing Runes</a>)<br />
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Anybody who's had the misfortune of listening to me debate my Valor Point purchases will probably know all of this stuff already, and will likely want to close this blog and silently mourn their knowing me.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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A lot of this in blog is going to be more how I do things - I'll explain why, I'll point what I'm doing, and I hope, share some ideas on what I'm doing.<br />
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For better or worse, let's call this a performance evaluation.<br />
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<b><u>Talents, Specs, Glyphs</u></b><br />
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This is currently what I'm running: <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfhcrosbfRMochM:cmqzcqzM0">33/8/0</a><br />
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To me, Discipline feels like a really good model of what Blizzard intended with the truncated talent trees - there are two very viable, very quantifiable playstyles within the tree - either for running an Atonement based spec (where you fill in periods with casting smite at the boss/enemy, which does include healing and mana regen) or Strength of Soul based, where you put a bit more emphasis into your shielding, allowing for STRONGER shields - and the ability to get a strong shield up in time to mitigate a fairly nasty strike.<br />
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I prefer my SoS build for a big personal story reason, and a little gameplay one.<br />
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Shielding is fun, the play style is fun, demanding a lot of focus to keep up well - I've joked once that I've wiped groups by sneezing, but it's not entirely an exaggeration; to keep the pace up and rolling shields onto people, managing cooldowns to help smooth out incoming damage, or to outright nullify it.<br />
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I feel like an air traffic controller managing heals and mana and shielding to absorb damage, and while I'm doing this, I'm also making raid calls and directing players to targets and... that's really cool.<br />
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Personal story reason, when my One True began playing, she rolled a draenei paladin - and we played together. She noted "You're too squishy, I need to be protection to keep you alive" and I smarted off back, "Yeah, I need to be discipline to keep you safe from yourself, too." Yes, this is literally the entire reason I have based my playstyle, spec choice and continue to play one of the most complex healing classes in World of Warcraft.<br />
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I made a few talent choices that deviate away from Elitist Jerks recommendations - in the Holy tree, I've put points into <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=18533">Divine Fury</a> and <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=15362">Inspiration</a> for a bit more weight behind my heals and my critical heals; something I had to actively choose over <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=15308">3% haste</a> and <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=15311">a minute less on cooldown of my big mana regen</a>.<br />
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Divine Fury's benefit is mostly in faster casts - shaving half a second off of a cast time for a number of my spells is a good boost, and allows me to be more timely - and Inspiration's benefit is an extra reduction in damage after a critical heal.<br />
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Looking down towards my glyphs, I've put an emphasis on my shields - in particular, looking at the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=42407">Glyph of Power Word: Barrie</a>r, I bring a bit of utility to the healers I work with: in addition to a solid damage reduction, everybody beneath the barrier recieves a bit more healing...<br />
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I wish I could say I'd been running with that all along, but instead, I've only thought to change that up recently<br />
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I've been able to look at some of my abilities, and figure how they work together - for example, <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=89485">Inner Focus</a> is a fairly good spell, allowing me to cast something without any mana cost; something that could make food a good "last ditch" effort. I use it when it's come off of cooldown to allow a bit more conservation of my mana pool, though - peppering my tank with free Greater Heals. As an aside benefit, it improves the critical rate of my heals, but, I'll touch on math a bit later.<br />
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I've tried to be a "one spec fits all" type of player. This can be effective, and it can work; but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying to get better at looking over my talent point choices and figure what I can adjust where.<br />
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<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=33202">Reflective Shield</a>, for instance, looks like it'd be amazing, but it only applies to damage I take personally. Considering most of my play is done in raids and dungeons, I don't often take damage consistently enough that this would be something I could invest in. If I was more into PVP, this could be a thing I do to keep myself alive better - I'm not ready to out and out dismiss it, but for the encounters we're in now, I just don't feel like it'd add a whole lot of benefit when it'd force me to give something up in a different direction.<br />
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When an encounter might make Reflective Shield attractive, I'd probably rebuild a talent spec to include <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45243">Focused Will</a> as well - any fight where I'm consistently taking damage enough that I need to worry about my own survivability, I'd want to be able to reduce what I could where I could. I can't expect to shove myself off on the other two healers to take care of me. "Physician, heal thyself!"<br />
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<b><u>Numbers Are Hard, Let's Go Shopping</u></b><br />
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Currently, Kara's sitting at 9.11% haste rating, 16.74% critical rating, and 14.27 mastery.<br />
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A lot of classes and specs have ratings that determine what's more useful for them - the death knight I've played as a main through the entirety of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and into Cataclysm for example, favors Haste above Mastery, which is head and shoulders above Crit rating.<br />
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For me, all of those numbers are important, working in synergy. I don't know how. Voodoo I guess.<br />
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<b><u>Shopping Is Hard, Give Me Numbers</u></b><br />
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Okay, okay, fine.<br />
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Prior to World of Warcraft patch 4.2, a critical heal was 150% of what was originally cast. If I healed for 10,000, a critical heal would be 15,000. Patch 4.2 made a critical heal 200% of what was cast. If I healed you for 10,000, a critical heal would be 20,000.<br />
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This is where we start getting complex. You asked for it.<br />
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When I apply Power Word: Shield, it also applies a debuff to the recipient, known as Weakened Soul. This is to stop me from being a bubble-happy mouth-breather of a monkey, to actually make me have to engage the game and not just be like "HURRRRRR BUBBLES FOREVAR DURRRRRR."<br />
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Disc healing then becomes engaging, and the philosophy of healing becoming akin to a game of darts. But your talents and abilities work with that.<br />
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Penance applies a buff to the recipient, known as <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=47517">Grace</a>. For every heal I cast, I apply one stack of Grace. Penance applies three stacks, because Penance is three heals. Penance starts as the tank starts taking damage - when Penance is finished, I apply PW: Shield (If it isn't on cooldown) Weakened Soul is applied to my target, but damage is incoming. I can cast a few Flash Heals - I certainly have the mana pool to afford this.<br />
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Why am I casting inefficient Flash Heal? To make use of <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=57472">Renewed Hope</a>. My heals get larger by 10% because of it. The 10,000 HP heal becomes an 11,000 HP heal. If critical, that becomes a 22,000 HP heal.<br />
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But wait, there's more! Because of talents like <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=47515">Divine Aegis</a> and Inspiration (linked above), I can create ANOTHER shield, even if I have cast a shield; it's a shield WITHIN a shield, we are talking shield-ception here you need to go deeper. A 22,000 HP critical heal creates a second, smaller shield, that will absorb 6600 extra damage on top of whatever shield I have placed upon my tank.<br />
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That's not even taking into account Mastery, which starts at a base 20% bonus absorption and only improves as I add more mastery, which affects every single shield I could put on anybody ever, including, but not limited to Inspiration, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.<br />
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tl;dr, Yo Dawg. So I heard you like bubbles. So we put some bubbles in your bubbles so you can bubble while you bubble.<br />
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<b><u>What I Do, How I Do It (That's What She Said)</u></b><br />
<b><u><br />
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There is no healing "rotation" or "priority" system the way there is for DPS or tanking. You need to react, or in the case of Disc spec, be Proactive.<br />
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I try to keep Renew active on my tank at all times, because I have gear that makes Renew worth while, in the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/item=62050">Darkmoon Card: Tsunami</a> - every time Renew ticks a heal, no matter how small it is, I get a stack of Giant Wave. Giant Wave is the benefit to DMC: Tsunami, in that it's 80 spirit per stack, up to five; or 400 spirit consistently. The rewards of mana generation from that will eventually taper off, but as of right now, there's very few other trinkets I could consider replacing it with.<br />
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I vary between Flash Heal and Greater Heal as my "prime" healing spells, because each varies. Regular, run of the mill Heal is too much time for too little reward, so I honestly keep it off my ability bars. This is probably because I'm bad.<br />
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Inner Focus is something I hit as soon as it's off cooldown, and I usually tend to IMMEDIATELY follow with Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing, depending on the situation. The critical heal bonus from Inner Focus is NICE, and there's an additional critical bonus provided by a member of our raid group - a near 50% critical heal rate is fantastic, and it does let me aid the party as much as I can.<br />
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Power Infusion is something I cast prior to heavy damage phases to try and reduce my mana cost during periods I need to cast a lot of heals to keep people up - but it's on a short enough cooldown that I can afford to use it early on, when easing into a fight, so it'll be ready and available later on as well. If the fight rolls long enough for whatever reason (for example, Rhyolith) I'll hit Power Infusion when it comes off cooldown, simply because I need to string along the mana as far as I can.<br />
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My biggest regens are Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope - both of which are on long enough cooldowns that I try to time it for periods where it'll be most beneficial, and adjusting from there. As we've moved forward in the Firelands, I have more mana available at the periods when I needed it before - because of gear, as a raid team? We further along than we were before, when I hit the same mana milestones I used to use as "mile markers" for cooldowns.<br />
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<b><u>Overall Thoughts</u></b><br />
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I could benefit from trying Holy. If not for having a different nuance of healing to add to the raid when needed, then to be better at healing over all for myself.<br />
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Predominantly, I am a tank healer - I focus on healing one or two targets, and I keep them up well. Personally, I get a bit spazzy when I have to heal ALL THE THINGS and do get a bit freaked out by it. Possibly because I'm used to the comforts of working in a tightly defined spec?<br />
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I sometimes worry if I miss raid calls people need me to make because I am too focused on healing. I try to strip down my UI to bare essentials so I'm not fighting areas of the game for attention. And above all, I do get a lot more antsy when I perceive something not going right in some direction I have no control over.<br />
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I am getting better at trusting my heals; and I trust my fellow healers implicitly.<br />
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At the end of a raid night, it's hard to look at things I've done without nitpicking minor details. But every time I nitpick those minor details, I take steps to correct them. I'm getting better at movement, I keep gaining a bit more awareness.<br />
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Overall? Room for Improvement. Need to breathe more. Need to panic less. Have to learn to trust the heals more, too often spazzes and overheals on a DK tank.<br />
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I think I'm doing okay though.Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-51027781862494806622011-07-09T06:41:00.000-07:002011-07-09T06:41:57.960-07:00Circle of Healers<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Lizzia, of <a href="http://www.authorizedtoramble.com/">Authorized to Ramble</a>, a healer within my guild, and a good friend, tagged me to take this questionnaire/survey.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">To detail the approximate amount of raid healing experience I have at level 85, I healed my first raid (Baradin Hold) in the tail end of June. Then my second raid was Blackwing Descent. Then my third was Firelands. All in about two weeks. I've been level 85 on my priest since May 13th, of 2011, and after a little bit of "play here, play there" we were sort of ambushed with news the week before the Firelands patch that we were going to be losing one of our healers because of waning interest in raiding.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">We were having roster questions and weren't sure how to manage raid slot rotations, but the way we went with is I just moved to join the ranks of Waypoint Healers, including the aforementioned Liz, and Rezznul, who occasionally posts at <a href="http://rednoobdiaries.wordpress.com/">Red Noob Diaries</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Yes. Taking up a wholly unfamiliar role days before a major content patch and expecting to be competent at it is much less terrifying to me than recruiting new players.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 19px;">What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?</span></li>
</ul></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">The only max level healer I have, and will be answering the questions here on, is the Discipline Priest healer, <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/medivh/Karanina/simple">Karanina</a>; of Medivh-US's Waypoint guild.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">A majority of my dungeoneeristing lately is in 10 player raids, five player dungeons, and the occasional bout of PVP tomfoolery.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Inner Focus; now that healing is supposed to be much more akin to a game of darts, the idea of a well timed heal saving the day is fantastic - and when I didn't have enough mana to maintain throughput, I learned to love Inner Focus very quickly.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Divine Hymn! A channeled smart heal sounds really exciting, but, it just feels... very underwhelming.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">I feel like the best thing I bring to the table as a Disc Priest - and why you ought consider one in your raid team - is the strong tank healing they bring. Through management of cooldowns (Pain Suppression, Power Word: Barrier, PW: Shield being the big ones, with Prayer of Mending and Penance being consistent casts) we can do a lot to help mitigate a tank's damage received.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Mana Efficiency! Doubly so for my spec, because it does feel like Discipline requires way more gear to be good - but, on the opposite side of that coin, it does feel like when you get that gear level, you are pretty incredible at what you do.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Don't raid 25s; instead let me answer this for 10s.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">The strength of Disc Priest healing is tank heals - ideally I'm focused on one tank, though, I'm finding with my gear level, and sharpening reaction time, I could probably be good at keeping both tanks bubbled, if not healed up. I don't know if this is actually feasible, but it's definitely something I am learning and working to see if it is a thing.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">So far I've only levelled a Priest healer; so, there's that. I think I would like the feel of resto shamananananing, though.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">I tried Paladin healing, but didn't like it - though, only having a cursory idea of what I'm trying to do is always going to be very frustrating to me.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is your worst habit as a healer? </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">I don't trust the tools enough. Prayer of Mending is better than I think, as is Renew. </span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">"What's a CC? C'mon, Bear Run. Why'd we die? What do you mean you need mana?"</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Maybe?</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">"Is everybody I am supposed to heal still alive, Y/N?"</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">I don't know enough to know what to say here! That it's bad? I'm enjoying Disc healing very muchly, and I like to think I'm doing pretty okay at it, but... see above question for the depth and breadth of my visual knowledge.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Well, I'm having difficulty learning not to tunnel vision, so I imagine most new healers probably have this problem?</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Lot of overhealing - I do try and leverage Greater Heal when needed to get sizable Divine Aegis shield procs from critical healan.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Haste or Crit and why? </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Balance, tending towards Crit. I can time heals, I cannot force a crit.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What healing class do you feel you understand least?</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Priest =B</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?</span> </li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Add-ons, I just use Quartz. I can glance and see buffs on target and manage expectations of healing accordingly.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">As far as macros, I do have shift modifiers for Renew/PW: Shield and Dispel/Mass Dispel - generally filling up my extra buttons on my mouse with utility/constant use spells.</span></span></div><ul style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? </span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">I try to balance things out, at least, right now. Emphasis is definitely on crit, but I do feel like I've been lagging behind the other STORNG HEALARS of Waypoint; something, up until just yesterday I was very concerned and worried (worrycerned) about.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">Now, I suppose I need to tag someone for this, and I SHALL! I HAVE! I MUST. Liala, of <a href="http://disciplinaryaction.wordpress.com/">Disciplinary Action</a>, was the biggest influence in sticking Disc as a priest, and I would like to see what she has to say on the matter. So. Uh. Tag, yer it.</span></span></div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-71327641002355005762011-06-02T18:45:00.000-07:002011-06-02T18:45:06.798-07:00Fiction: "Interrogation"<div class="gmail_quote" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 1ex;">The guards shuffled, nervous, idling standing diligent watch over the prisoner's door - flanking it on either side. The Stormwind Elite guards stood at the ready, buried in the deepest recesses of Stormwind city... and they were bored.<div><br />
</div><div>"Listen, so," the first guard spoke, breaking the long silence, "The captive... would you?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>"Would I what?" the second responded, sighing, knowing the answer.</div><div><br />
</div><div>"C'mon, man. A blood elf. You know what I'm talking about," the first chuckles, "It's them ears, man. They bounce when you-"</div><div><br />
</div><div>A clearing throat interrupts the conversation, and from the shadows ahead, a warlock approached, escorted by another guard - the Captain himself, who's frown wore heavy. "We don't have time for idle chatter when we're fighting a war against Hellscream's Horde, boys. If you've time to talk, you've had time to watch the prisoner."</div><div><br />
</div><div>The Captain gestured, parting the two guards, and raising his keyring, opening the door, revealing a darkened room, with lights upon the blood elf inside - she slumped in her chair, and her eyes narrowed as she stared out, details hard to make out as she cursed in tongues, the warlock chuckling - she was tiny compared to the guards, and the robes she wore hid everything about her figure, as her voice broke the silence, stern and condescending. </div><div><br />
</div><div>"If you could hear the things she was saying about your mothers, you'd be red in the face."</div><div><br />
</div><div>The Captain cleared his throat, "The warlock is on loan from the Stormwind military - Sergeant Hale here will be-"</div><div><br />
</div><div>"I will be interrogating the prisoner," she says, taking the keys from the Captain, as she stepped into the threshold of the doorway. She paused, turning back, and pulling the hood back a bit, revealing cold blue eyes, and a comma of black hair that fell in front of a smooth face, as she pointed forth - and from the shadows, a stomp - a second. A third. The Doomguard marched forth from the shadows, and the warlock laughed, "This is Enrico; he will be my... Guardian, shall we say. He'll stand post with the guards outside the doorway, to ... keep you all honest. Now. Do be good for him, won't you?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The warlock grabbed the door handle, closing it behind her, and securing it as well as she could... the doomguard moving into position and crossing his arms before his chest as he glowered down at the guards and the Captain. </div><div><br />
</div><div>One of the guards raised a hand, idly, and his voice quivered as hey spoke, "H-hello... Enrico."</div><div><br />
</div><div>"Bonjour," bellowed the demon, in tongues unknowable.</div><div><br />
</div><div>- - - -</div><div><br />
</div><div>The warlock reached into her sleeve, pulling out a number of candles, and setting them upon the floor, in a circle about the elf - and as she placed one, moved to set the next, a quick twitch of her finger set the candle alight with green flames, until she moved and circled all the way about the elf.</div><div><br />
</div><div>"I've always enjoyed a little mood lighting, myself," she joked, reaching up to her hood. "The Ashen Verdict robes, with its hood, made quite an imposing appearance, but you, certainly, are beyond such simple intimidation. Instead, why don't you tell me a bit about yourself?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>She pulled the hood back, letting it rest behind her head - and shaking her head, the ebon locks fell about her face, until her hands reached - tying it back into a simple, single pony tail. Her face was cute - surprisingly. And the elf could only growl her anger, muttering a curse about being interrogated by a child.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The elf spat at the woman's feet, cursing in Thalassian, "I'll die before I answer to your insolence! I fight for the Horde!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>"Oh, but you didn't always," the woman responded in kind, her own tongue returning the elves' language, as she moves in close. "Do you remember your races' part of the Lordaeron alliance? I was regaled by stories of your race, about how masterfully you all drew your bows and arrows - turning every troll, orc, and ogre into a pin cushion of arrows." She reaches down, pulling the elves' chained hand up forcefully, and leaning in close to her wrist, "Look at this. This is the musculature of a master archer. You aren't just some toy the Horde plays with. You're important. But in this cage, you're mine. Lucky for you, I love elves."</div><div><br />
</div><div>The green flames danced and the light shone bright upon the elf, her long blonde hair hanging in a mess about her face. The warlock reaches out, brushing the blonde strands back behind the elves' long ear, and she smiles, "Listen, I'm not going to hurt you. But I need you to tell me what Hellscream is planning next. Where is the next Horde offensive?"</div><div><br />
</div><div>The elf laughs, and spits in the warlock's face, her grin wide, her eyes narrow, "I'll never betray the Horde! And you'll never make me speak!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>Hale reaches up to her cheek, and with a single gloved finger, wipes the spittle from her face, smearing it upon the elves' forehead, gloved palm pushing the woman's head back. The elf growled and reared her head about to bite, but the warlock could only sigh, "I said I am not going to hurt you. I never said I don't have ways to make you beg for mercy and talk. I really wished we could talk, and open a dialogue, really friendly like."</div></blockquote></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The Warlock moved, and walked about slowly, and the elf struggled in her chains, pulling at each arm roughly, distrustful, and struggling to escape. The gloved hands fell gently upon the elven shoulders, holding the lithe woman down into the chair she was chained in, and she leans close. Her hair brushes against the long elven ear as she whispers, "It's okay. You're afraid. Fear," she pauses, and speaks rapidly in a demonic tongue, before slipping as easily back into Thalassian, "Is healthy. Look ahead, little one, what do you see? What are you afraid of?"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The green flames danced and sputtered, and the elf stiffened in her seat, staring ahead into the murky darkness beyond the candle light; she shook her head, slow, muttering just below the range of hearing, and quivering slowly. Shadows before them shook and danced, and the warlock sighed, shaking her head. She never knew what people feared the most, but most of them had been infinitely more vocal than this - Hale was bored, and she slumped upon the elf's shoulders, leaning close and looking ahead to the murky depths as the spell began to wear off, the elf shaking and quivering hard and violently in her seat, panting heavily as sweat beaded on her forehead.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"Are you still here with me? Good," her hands reach in front of the elf, and she slowly peels one glove off, then the other, her bare hands working and rubbing the elves' shoulders up to her neck as she leans in close, her voice firm, a whisper. "Tell me what Hellscream's next offensive is."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The elf shuddered and shook, her head slowly shaking in defiance as her voice whispered, "Never."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Her fingers wrenched into skin, and the warlock nodded, "The coils of death are terrifying, aren't they?"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The green flames stoked and burned hotter, and as Hale looked out into the blackness, and she thought shaped were forming before her. She smiled, as the reaction was visceral, as the bead of sweat turned thick, turned cold, the woman in her hands writing and squirming away, as if something was coming at her in the darkness, and physically pulling back - retreating from the shape. The black mass of shadows seemed to reach out towards the elf, and she struggled to move away, backing into the warlock's chest, as she waved her bare hands forward the shadows dissipating into a fine miasma, before she lowers her hands, cradling the elf against her.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"I told you, I'm here. There's a lot to be afraid of, but not while I'm here, little one," she says, Hale's smile turning wry, "I'm here, and I'll be here, and I'll keep you safe from that what's hiding in the shadows."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"I-It was-! It was coming for me, and it was going to-"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
"Shh," Hale interrupted, "I know it was. And I made it go away, didn't I? It's all gone. All of it. Now, little one, all you have to do... is talk to me. Do you want to talk to me? I'll listen, you know. I'll even ask questions. But if you don't answer, they'll come back... you'll be all alone in the dark and everything will come back for you."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The warlock leaned close, her lips to the elves' ears. Her breath hot, her words dripping with maliciousness. "It's not the dark that's scary, you know. It's what's hiding in it."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">- - - - -</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The door opened slowly, and the warlock stepped out, as the Doomguard moved aside slowly, the warlock replacing her gloves and adjusting the hood obscuring her face. Behind her, a single candle remained lit with a green flame, and she spoke tersely, her words directed at the Captain, "She knew nothing. Wandered too far south from her guard post. High ranking, yes, but most of what she knows is the defense of Silvermoon City," she moved forward, the Doomguard following close behind as she returned the way she had arrived, pausing to look back. "Move her to a better lit cell. That candle will burn out in about an hour. Do it before that, please."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"She told you everything, then?" the Captain asked, "We spoke with her for DAYS before she would even say a single word!"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"I... love elves," she responds quietly, turning to leave, her slippered feet quiet upon the stone ground.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Left behind, the Doomguard bows forward, arm sweeping in front of himself as he speaks in that hellish tongue, "Bonne journée."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"> </div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-39338771547947956892011-05-23T07:15:00.000-07:002011-05-23T07:15:27.457-07:00Fiction: "A quick meeting"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">In a darkened corner, of a twisting alleyway, of an ignored side street of Stormwind City, the building stood, plain and unadorned except for a simple flag hung in the window - blue and white trim, a golden compass in the center.</span><br />
<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The rains fell, hard, and the cobblestone stood fast against the clanking of Obsidium plate boots... and as the rainfall continued upon the cold steel, freezing slightly about the man, the simple building remained closed - the doorway wider, taller. And a simple sign, printed in plain common: "Knock."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The visitor laughs, before pushing, slamming the large door open, as he pushes in, the rainslick armor frosting over as he enters the building, leaving the door open. Inside the main room, bookcases stood tall, yet half empty - the walls were covered, plastered in various maps of Azeroth in a number of different stages of completion, varying in detail and size, of areas all over the world... and domineering the room, the number of desks in the middle, and the draenei woman sitting at them. She moved, her head low, her horns tilted forth. She shuffles about papers, and stops speaking abruptly, without a pause to look up towards the man. Silently, she continues poring over document after document, before the man breaks the silence, clearing his throat rough.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"You didn't knock," she states, calmly. "It's a simple instruction. If you cannot follow it, I will not help you."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rain water runs fast, the sounds of it splashing from the rooftop upon the stone streets echoing, and the man raises one gloved hand, shaking frost and water from it, before sarcastically cracking his gloved hand against the door, one rap of his gauntlet against wood. The woman raises her head, eyes raised and locking onto the man - her eyes shone bright, yet, wrong. And when her eyes met his, she sighed slightly. "I'd hoped I'd fallen out of interest of the Ebon Blade after I refused to enlist in the Alliance army."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"Then you know why I'm here," the man spoke, his voice quivering with an unearthly reverb, "Rumor has it there's a little group about here that spends it's time chasing dragons... and I figure, if these stories are true, then the rag tag little band of misfits ought be plying their craft where it really matters - the island of Tol Barad needs skilled warriors defending it."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The woman pauses, her face unmoving as she watches him speak. He shakes his head, and continues to speak, "You're wasting the talents of good men and women, dragging them along on your little hunts. And for what? Because you can't face an enemy that stands eye to eye with you? Because you've become a coward? Visper Almaasy, what do you offer the world? Before, you were something, you were a force to be reckoned with, but now? You waste your unlife with your little maps and pictures, and silly little hunts. What do you get for it?"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"Sometimes, I get to wear armor. I like armor," she says, her tone flat, her speech controlled. None of the unholy energies that scar the death knight's voice echo, though her attention wanes, and she returns to the papers before her, "I shall pass."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">He crosses the room, and his gloved hand smashes the papers out from her hands, before throwing everything off of the table - at his full height, he stands above the woman, his eyes narrowing, as he locks his gaze with hers, "You'll get every single one of your little fools killed, and for what? A bit of honor? And what happens when you've finished, left standing alone while every one else who put their false trust into you has died, Almaasy? WHAT WILL YOU HAVE THEN?"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The woman finally looks up from her papers, her face still stone solid, her eyes unmoving, except for the flash - the hint - of a twitch. Her voice strains, and she struggles to hide her own touch of death in her voice, "You'll say whatever you wish about me. You can. And you have. And you will. But you will not speak ill of-"</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"Or what, Almaasy?" he grins, "Don't tell me The Butcher went soft..."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The draenei exhales, turning to another batch of papers, before the death knight continued, his laughter harsh, "I suppose that's why you never finished Shadowmourne. I hope your laziness isn't catching up to the rest of your people," he stopped to laugh again, leaning forward on the table, closing the distance between himself and Visper, slapping the other batch of papers from her hand.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"You could stop anything I'm doing here but you won't - you won't go to war with the Horde, because you've lost your taste for it. Why do you even continue to exist?" </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">She turned, and her hand shot up from the table, grasping the man's jaw. Her face remained emotionless, unreadable. He pulls back, frantic, but her grip tightens and she pulls him back to the table, pushing back her chair and raising to her full height, towering over the man. Her hand clenches tighter and harder, cracking ice and growing wet with the rain water falling upon it...</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Her voice cracks, and the hint of unholy energy was shattered, unable to feign otherwise, as she speaks, "Say anything. Anything you want. You can say whatever you want about me. I will not be upset - no, really," she says, her grip tightening, as if to say otherwise. The death knight struggles, trying to skitter away.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"I know the idea of a death knight who doesn't want to go to war is odd," she continues, "But I do not intend to waste my unlife on old hatreds - instead, I am going to defend - it is like you do. Only instead of standing at a safe point and screaming at my allies for not performing to my standards, I am going to stand shoulder to shoulder with them."</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">She releases him and raises, crossing her arms in front of her, breaking her stern countenance for a sneer, "How is it, you say, in common? Get out of here, you nerd." </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">He staggers back, grimacing, and growling.</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"And close the door when you leave. I do enjoy having the living here once in a while," she says, pointing to the doorway, before settling back into her seat, crossing her legs as she watches him leave, abrupt - unflinching as he slams the door hard enough to knock papers and maps free from the walls...</div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-86994290840955370492010-12-30T13:13:00.000-08:002010-12-30T14:12:45.770-08:00Death Knight 301: Or, "Cataclysmicly Unholy Specs"A little over three weeks ago, a little thing came out for World of Warcraft.<br />
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Maybe you heard of it? I guess there's some kind of dragon, too.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFC36qYYGeqZz4TCptBZ6dRokW0Vg7ggdb09nKLNipnlut2kpI14tY615KrelFMajuy6Dn2XFmlQgtP9KhqOmjXLnktFLdC4samtFDRe1m0rHMq0vShyNLBDMX5Ny4mH9n6ijRoBAZBsDZ/s1600/800px-Deathwing_Cataclysm_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFC36qYYGeqZz4TCptBZ6dRokW0Vg7ggdb09nKLNipnlut2kpI14tY615KrelFMajuy6Dn2XFmlQgtP9KhqOmjXLnktFLdC4samtFDRe1m0rHMq0vShyNLBDMX5Ny4mH9n6ijRoBAZBsDZ/s400/800px-Deathwing_Cataclysm_2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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Oh, hey, I guess I heard a thing about that.<br />
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Part and parcel of the new expansion, in addition to Ol' DW's toothy grin as he ganks low level characters just trying to earn an honest copper, is a new "end game" - a lot of changes in the game play mechanics for Unholy Death Knights, and today, we're going to talk about how you can be good - if your group mates don't find your rotten, twisted visage of undeath handsome, well, they can at least find you handy.<br />
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As a disclaimer, you'll want to note that this is current as of December 30th, 2010 - everything is subject to change, ever, forever; it may not be like it used to be, and you'll never have Will of the Necropolis to give you a zombie 1-Up ever again. Ever.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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First, let's talk a little bit about where Unholy DPS stands in the grand scheme of things. Culled straight from the <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1829962#blog">official site</a> itself, from Ghostcrawler himself: "We see Survival Hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights."<br />
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Take a second and bask in this - we spent a lot of Wrath being retooled and twerked and fixed up. There was an especially HILARIOUS period where Scourge Strike wasn't properly scaling it's damage with diseases, making us hit like we were tiny kittens. And for a time, we were the premier AOE specialist, so much so, that the Tier 9 Armor bonus for us got nerfed so players would have a reason to upgrade to Tier 10.<br />
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However, Unholy still has a lot of utility to bring to the field, and if you're not aware of the changes, you might feel like you aren't pulling your weight - you might not have that "oomph" you feel you should have.<br />
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We'll start with specs: The Elitist Jerks approved standards are perfectly fine and have the math behind them to prove their viability. In a twist of design, Unholy is viable with two-handed weapons and dual wielding one-handed weapons with only a little reworking of your talent points. Both play well, both are fairly intuitive, and the greatest separation between the two is preference right now.<br />
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Firstly, old faithful, the <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jbGZZcucdfsodfo">Two Handed weapon spec</a>.<br />
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When you fill out the above spec you are left with two "free floating" talent points which you can use for other abilities that may not directly impact your dps, but will add a great deal of utility.<br />
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Personally, I liked those two floater points being spent in Magic Suppression for additional protection in fights like Lost City of Tol'Vir's Siamat - a fight where there is a LOT of magic damage being thrown around, and in addition to reducing damage to a nearly trivial level (compare being hit for 800 damage against being hit for 8000 damage - the first looks a lot better!) you are also gaining runic power for essentially free <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=47541">Death Coils</a>. This means a faster stack to get <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=63560">Dark Transformation</a> going, as well as being a very healthy source of your dps.<br />
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Now, to break from Elitist Jerks into my own personal experience: I've found<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45529"> Blood Tap</a> to be a fairly neat toy that doesn't come up as "useful" - because you are an Unholy Death Knight, you have the passive ability <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=56835">Reaping</a>. Reaping works by giving you a Death Rune whenever you hit the enemy with <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45902">Blood Strike</a>, <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=50842">Pestilence </a>or <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=85948">Festering Strike</a>, and... two thirds of those are going to be sitting pretty in your tool set. Blood Strike is useful for activating Reaping until you learn Festering Strike, then... you can pretty safely put that attack back in your toolbox.<br />
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Because Festering Strike refreshes the timer on your diseases, as well as turning one Frost and one Blood rune into a free floating Death Rune, I've found Blood Tap to be less useful in practice - though for full disclosure: I haven't begun raiding in Cataclysm yet, so I may come back in a few weeks and say "Welp, Blood Tap is awesome."<br />
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Moving right along, let's talk about the surprisingly fashionable choice of Unholy Death Knights for the Winter 2010-2011 season: <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jbuZ0hZcucdfsodfo">Dual Wield Weapon Unholy</a><br />
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You give up the "Free floating" points - and in the "projected best" build linked here, you put one talent point into Blood Tap instead of two, so you can take <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=50138">Nerves of Cold Steel</a>, a passive ability that "Increases your chance to hit with one-handed melee weapons by 3% and increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 25%"<br />
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The idea behind DW Unholy is that it pairs with the Unholy talent tree's <a href="http://www.wowhead.com/spell=49530">Sudden Doom</a> passive ability - as you hit the enemy with your (much faster) one handed swords, each regular hit has a 15% chance to activate the "Sudden Doom" ability, and what does that mean? Free Death Coil. With the faster hits, it's not uncommon for this to activate two, three times in a row - and when you dump the last of your Runic Power to empty that meter, Dark Transformation activates, and your little ghoul buddy is suddenly a roaring, rampaging Plague Beast - and you're doing the bulk of your damage with a minimum of effort as you continually move away from the bad stuff on the ground.<br />
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To be frank and honest, I was worried about this when I first read about Dual Wielding being viable - and the preliminary numbers standing out for it as being the BEST choice for an Unholy Death Knight, I panicked, and it looked a little something like this:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6qhl7JIlWRQe-AzVZFgBdTR6QW13LASCGmy1_dKE8M-LsrrIyxcBzk_5Fsu4ogG-J1VNp51XQ453DjxXZPNrg4QtuRPNMSMAtkdSeAEUWgg5jRL3nASOsozN56Fltr_9yc9tEL3TF_2i/s1600/vader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6qhl7JIlWRQe-AzVZFgBdTR6QW13LASCGmy1_dKE8M-LsrrIyxcBzk_5Fsu4ogG-J1VNp51XQ453DjxXZPNrg4QtuRPNMSMAtkdSeAEUWgg5jRL3nASOsozN56Fltr_9yc9tEL3TF_2i/s1600/vader.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Beyond having an excuse to post a silly comic picture, dual wielding of weapons felt like it lacked the proper flavor for a lumbering, cold knight of death.<br />
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That my class could be re purposed so easily! So quickly! I worried! Then I tried it. And I have learned to stop worrying, and love... rolling on and losing one handed swords. (I'm sorry warrior and paladin tanks.) However, it IS worth noting that Blizzard is aware of the popularity of DW Unholy, and has <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1829962#blog">said</a>, "We want to make sure Unholy DKs prefer 2H weapons." The class changes detailed in that blog are not going to be live tomorrow - they won't be live next week. They may not even be live next month. But, be aware, be knowledgeable - soon we'll be back to using ridiculously tiny two handed weapons, maybe. Or, respeccing into Frost, because we really liked Dual Wielding.<br />
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Some of the changes to make DW less viable may be reducing the damage gains from Dark Transformation - or, perhaps, moving Nerves of Cold Steel to keep it from being so readily accessible? We live in a world of uncertainty, but we'll adjust as it happens. That's as good a plan as any, don't you think?<br />
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Finally, a few notes and personal thoughts from my forays in game over the past couple weeks:<br />
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- Grim Batol feels like it has too much trash. Crossing the line between "difficult" and "tedious" in some points; though being able to ride the drakes and bomb the enemies from above to make the mobs weaker for easy rep/cash is really neat.<br />
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- Lost City of Tol'Vir is really, really cool. The bosses are rough as hell though.<br />
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- Don't be afraid to speak up if you've got ideas. Nobody knows what the "best practice" for these heroics are just yet, and we likely won't be face rolling them to grind for badges blindly until well into patch 4.1. A good idea, or a quiet insistence that a little CC can make life easier for people is a good way to get things on the right track.<br />
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- I've been using Pestilence a LOT less now a days, because I'm afraid of breaking CC - there's no Wandering Plague any more, so there's no ACCIDENTAL breakages. Yay for that!<br />
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- Pet AI seems really funky lately. I've been running with my ghoul set to Passive to keep it from flipping out and chasing another enemy halfway across the zone for staring at him funny. At least THEN, it's because of user error.<br />
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- Players seem less tolerant of jerkness all the way around - no matter if it's a tank, a healer, or dps. My thought? I waited 40 minutes to get into a dungeon because my guild mates aren't online. Let's get something DONE.Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-47526365065281072072010-11-27T15:08:00.000-08:002010-11-27T15:08:43.491-08:00Dungeon Runner's Handbook: Stormwind Stockades, ReduxThere are a lot of emotional posts on the internet about 4.0.3a, the end of "Old Azeroth" and missing the sights and sounds of the world knowing that when the servers came back up today, the world would be alien, and new, and the joy of exploration would sink in again.<br />
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Other people have wrote those blogs, and they've wrote them better than I could.<br />
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For me, 4.0.3a brought us "remastered" versions of old dungeons, old favorites.<br />
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But one, you see, one stood the challenge of all challenges in front of me.<br />
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The enemy of enemies; the original "Feeds On Your Tears" encounter.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYUwaP754nkiPEIlMOChBVEFcYm49ahdrH2aRAvktIDmPDAHkVvllyuN8lzGP2BU0ZU8h_FhVOQjmhpUG-eD5Tf7VwuGhe74DjleS8bAfnvoJmEU8Dp4QLOPclWdI6at6GWBnXXNJkAZSE/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_191400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYUwaP754nkiPEIlMOChBVEFcYm49ahdrH2aRAvktIDmPDAHkVvllyuN8lzGP2BU0ZU8h_FhVOQjmhpUG-eD5Tf7VwuGhe74DjleS8bAfnvoJmEU8Dp4QLOPclWdI6at6GWBnXXNJkAZSE/s400/WoWScrnShot_112310_191400.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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Fecal Matter has suddenly exeunt a state of philosophical rendering.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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The Stockades are located (surprise) in Stormwind City, which makes things kind of tricky for Horde players - though, for low level characters, you should be able to use the "Looking for Dungeon" tool to get in there. There are two methods for Horde players to get INTO Stormwind City, both of which marked on the following map - with Cataclysm's release, you might be able to fly into the city itself.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiErGb22kWsQI2niZwfLkek11aHpVR6D6FgzWggjXlmGv1nBXlqyAzC_hIPlMyk7OzaRiga3-gxDRHvD5LECrvAVw4IB9aw2wJgN8N-MCU8BqMbbMzqIIfQJYXBciLx3VLNQwZEbJIJ5LbP/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112710_130237.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiErGb22kWsQI2niZwfLkek11aHpVR6D6FgzWggjXlmGv1nBXlqyAzC_hIPlMyk7OzaRiga3-gxDRHvD5LECrvAVw4IB9aw2wJgN8N-MCU8BqMbbMzqIIfQJYXBciLx3VLNQwZEbJIJ5LbP/s640/WoWScrnShot_112710_130237.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yellow is your goal. Red is a sea route into the city, Blue is the most direct route.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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Also, a warning: If you're a Horde player and your party dies, you will have a long run back to the instance from the opposite side of Elwynn Forest - play carefully, or hope for the best!<br />
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When you've accomplished that goal (which, really, is the hard part) you'll find yourself into the dungeon. And now, we can show off maps from inside as part of Blizzard's User Interface! YAY!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAKMHl59iDzHFDpRLZAyFaJOmAVxrvWhxaw8_qGrkrwGUQqi9vOLXmGz9lOYkcQOCPvBrt7wHhyz1s5vTAKNs7_IH2d6CIJcPve-Nu6_vaAzZfZLrtX20i9lW8qOVgQ73XzfMGTD0gq2x8/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_191512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAKMHl59iDzHFDpRLZAyFaJOmAVxrvWhxaw8_qGrkrwGUQqi9vOLXmGz9lOYkcQOCPvBrt7wHhyz1s5vTAKNs7_IH2d6CIJcPve-Nu6_vaAzZfZLrtX20i9lW8qOVgQ73XzfMGTD0gq2x8/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_191512.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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As far as dungeon crawling goes, this is a pretty simplistic dungeon - Stockades is a trio of hallways, acting as "dungeon wings" - there's three chunks, the Human Rioters, Riverpaw Gnolls, and Elementals.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6vRgffaqZW1gAfb0cuPdmELzPEqolA5t2X4mW1SNF6oqQxdKYd9IuwExxDcdrWG3vRVtpNWkSyHwagPe2tP03nRVZlwn0NcO3fvmoBNg33MxjmMOC3QGqUvhtt6cQ9AIbnesVq6IKlIsw/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_191742.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6vRgffaqZW1gAfb0cuPdmELzPEqolA5t2X4mW1SNF6oqQxdKYd9IuwExxDcdrWG3vRVtpNWkSyHwagPe2tP03nRVZlwn0NcO3fvmoBNg33MxjmMOC3QGqUvhtt6cQ9AIbnesVq6IKlIsw/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_191742.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I thought the broken bottle was a nice touch.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
The initial stretch into the dungeon is full of human enemies, who really don't have any special abilities. The enemies are varied - elite Rowdy Troublemakers and Shifty Thieves are mixed in with Petty Criminals.<br />
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The boss of the "Human Wing" is quite a dapper gent, however!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ8wKQb7RXGVig6G-QtFeZY9UhBw2P7jpNDkJnIlbpkv9WASARbinuzQRCpJHjrpgrbVG0nEs21eL9nML4MpUhDitKmVeQqYctI3owwQmoXlPEnskIhSuBZJLhbR_KpP7R_Gh9GNB1XiRs/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_192025.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ8wKQb7RXGVig6G-QtFeZY9UhBw2P7jpNDkJnIlbpkv9WASARbinuzQRCpJHjrpgrbVG0nEs21eL9nML4MpUhDitKmVeQqYctI3owwQmoXlPEnskIhSuBZJLhbR_KpP7R_Gh9GNB1XiRs/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_192025.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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The quest to kill this gentleman, the riot instigator, is straight forward, as he's in the room straight ahead from the entrance.<br />
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His "Special Tricks" include a flurry of stabbing attacks, and a vanish ability that allow him to appear behind one of your party members, though he won't start doing this until he's around 40% health - if you've PVP'd or have played a Rogue, it will be familiar to you. While it's a low level dungeon, an unsuspecting tank could be surprised by this and lose a squishier member of their party if caught by surprise.<br />
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The second wing, to the right of the entry way, is full of Elemental enemies.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnvb1aq0ZsTLxOUA0z3C3M8x6ftpCSWt_FVOgfaUbkMFnFW9O4A7gEYkP_TcLNURIOyx38Tf7c2Fv3LZGAELWgV7x7kGgoO8mqHS9CmIWN4lIiCV27kPObs24Bmb7abQg3u_Ap0MJOV-0C/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_192301.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnvb1aq0ZsTLxOUA0z3C3M8x6ftpCSWt_FVOgfaUbkMFnFW9O4A7gEYkP_TcLNURIOyx38Tf7c2Fv3LZGAELWgV7x7kGgoO8mqHS9CmIWN4lIiCV27kPObs24Bmb7abQg3u_Ap0MJOV-0C/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_192301.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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The enemies use, well. Magic. Fire magic. At the appropriate level for Stockades, you may not have much of a way to mitigate magic damage - but they cast infrequently, opting instead to hit you. The Fireball spell they cast can be interrupted though. (Examples, Shield Slam, Kick, Hammer of Justice)<br />
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The boss of the Elemental Wing is...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXNB7tqpZSSwv5mi_NLgbIjg_petQNbAWfeu6MtYeGuw_afLu5WtULRDXfI1hIZrYr3fWFy1At9raznN07hX0MO2rxVX37Ndbb1kia4s4lGMsZnSw_CIG8trD3PdSIQZvU11_abGGwI4VC/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_192610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXNB7tqpZSSwv5mi_NLgbIjg_petQNbAWfeu6MtYeGuw_afLu5WtULRDXfI1hIZrYr3fWFy1At9raznN07hX0MO2rxVX37Ndbb1kia4s4lGMsZnSw_CIG8trD3PdSIQZvU11_abGGwI4VC/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_192610.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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Yes, a larger, more powerful elemental.<br />
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In addition to a Fireball spell (this one cannot be interrupted) he also has a Rain of Fire to damage everybody who would be standing close to the area of effect. He takes a lot of damage, and won't go down easily (if you've an "at level" party) because of a health pool of 15,250 HP.<br />
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Thankfully, his attacks aren't TOO hard hitting, so long as you have the right person up ahead, taking the beating.<br />
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Finally, you'll have the Gnoll wing.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHeXO9jM6LNcpJwGreq8smD5cdCMctYSCRhM0pzn1JFsGw8ydTDoz4UMGMtL-BpY9MdtKTqv_IQp8FRihHZCNdOhNGcVS5PJRQRKty4ufyt168Eo-8pSmZUgtQTBW-U1V9eZBsxu7fjGj7/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_193158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHeXO9jM6LNcpJwGreq8smD5cdCMctYSCRhM0pzn1JFsGw8ydTDoz4UMGMtL-BpY9MdtKTqv_IQp8FRihHZCNdOhNGcVS5PJRQRKty4ufyt168Eo-8pSmZUgtQTBW-U1V9eZBsxu7fjGj7/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_193158.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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There are Gnolls, with clubs.<br />
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Some of them have BOARDS with NAILS in them. Left to their own devices, they'll likely build a board with a nail so large in it, it could DESTROY THE WORLD, but you won't cotton to that, because you are here to ADVENTURE and CHEW BUBBLEGUM, and you are all out of BUBBLEGUM and also you can't eat while in combat.<br />
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I'm sorry, that's just how it works.<br />
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However, they're not just packing boards with nails in them, they've also Shaman casting lightning magic at you.<br />
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<br />
In addition to laughing like hyenas, they've also got lightning magic to cast at you - it's damage is classified as "Nature" damage, they'll come mixed in packs with the enemies who are going to bash you, so you'll want to focus on killing these guys first.<br />
<br />
<br />
Finally, coming up to the destroyer of worlds himself!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImFmFo0TRZSuIBglSe0z8bqyNQTOSPJEMwjLJNSPzLzkY6HpqIvyXwix1nOSMNfxooHuYGrmh44pHeBTSbFpeNMtdohMBZqh5EEeqC5l6b0OeIEzhALttkadh2xPfc0_PGDTSYwtihk_l/s1600/WoWScrnShot_112310_193502.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImFmFo0TRZSuIBglSe0z8bqyNQTOSPJEMwjLJNSPzLzkY6HpqIvyXwix1nOSMNfxooHuYGrmh44pHeBTSbFpeNMtdohMBZqh5EEeqC5l6b0OeIEzhALttkadh2xPfc0_PGDTSYwtihk_l/s640/WoWScrnShot_112310_193502.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
Hogger himself doles out physical damage - and has a couple of abilities, including an attack that inflicts a Bleed status ailment - the recipient loses 5% of their health every two seconds, making it a pretty painful hit to take at a low level. Even a high level character running the dungeon will see a significant part of their life bar shaved off with this - to get these pictures I ran a level 80 through here, and while taking 3-400 HP damage from bosses wasn't too bad, seeing six thousand HP drop off was fairly jaw dropping!<br />
<br />
There's a surprising amount of good item drops from this dungeon now; but with the reworking and retooling of dungeons for Cataclysm, you might level past this area quickly, passing a couple of good blue-quality items.<br />
<br />
A HUGE improvement over the original Stockades' "Kill some guys here" and no design on whether or not you're facing any kind of special enemy - much like a lot of the stuff that's been updated for Cataclysm, it's definitely an improvement!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Finally, a couple random notes:<br />
<br />
I've had the opportunity to run a couple dungeons since, and it seems like we'll see a lot more "interesting mechanic" bosses at low level dungeons, though we'll have to see how that plays out with how fast people can level from 1 to 60 now.<br />
<br />
New Old Stratholme is a phased instance now - defeating Balnazzar on "Live Side" (filled with the Scarlet Crusade) triggers the Argent Crusade pushing into the city: which prevents you from killing the Risen Swordsmith because... he doesn't spawn, because his hallway is filled with Argent Crusaders. If you're a completionist trying to do every quest in one run, you'll want to be wary for that.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Cataclysm's going to be awesome, and having a good chunk of the game (the new 1-60 content) now? It's done a lot to elevate the game from "I guess that'd be neat" to "OH MY GOD MUST HAVE" for a lot of players.<br />
<br />
So much newness to see, though, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all of everything! So... take your time, and make sure you enjoy the ride!Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-7419957601145703292010-11-21T09:00:00.000-08:002010-11-21T09:00:02.528-08:00So I Heard You Like Role Play<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1zvC5nkvPuqL_VGaiMhN9FiTHnXjGVhh_GmJyZkipbzY902MDej6Q_t73PScejEtmf5eV5O-MHwvCxhyphenhyphenWFObCZEUl4aPSmsqBvk2ELJWViyeRKb-oMhF2RybkBlTRzsngc4GHIzudJhkZ/s1600/bloodninjacat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1zvC5nkvPuqL_VGaiMhN9FiTHnXjGVhh_GmJyZkipbzY902MDej6Q_t73PScejEtmf5eV5O-MHwvCxhyphenhyphenWFObCZEUl4aPSmsqBvk2ELJWViyeRKb-oMhF2RybkBlTRzsngc4GHIzudJhkZ/s400/bloodninjacat.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><div><a name='more'></a></div><div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div>I misled you. This isn't about roleplaying in World of Warcraft in the sense that you think.</div><div><br />
</div><div>It's about... </div><div><br />
</div><div>Playing your role. In a dungeon group. (Cuz this is the Dungeon Runner, get it? GET IT?! HAHA! ...yeah, that was weak.)</div><div><br />
</div><div>A typical World of Warcraft five player dungeon group will be composed of one tank, one healer, and three damage dealers, often shorthanded to "dps" - an acronym meaning "Damage per second."<br />
<br />
A brief run down of the three roles.<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Tanks? You're Welcome</span></u></b><br />
<br />
The Tank's role in a group is, in short, to piss off every monster SO MUCH that they ignore the people/elves/dwarves/draenei/cows in dresses and hit the person/orc/troll/zombie in front of them as much as they can.<br />
<br />
This is the most important member of your group.<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A Healing Touch</span></u></b><br />
<br />
The Healer's role is to make sure that people stay alive - not at full life, alive.<br />
<br />
The tank is usually the biggest recipient of these magical heal-y talents, because of their role (see above RE: angering monsters) - though, the remainder of the party will need healing once in a while! ESPECIALLY themselves! "Physician, heal thyself!"<br />
<br />
This is the most important member of your group.<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DPS: "What Can I Own For You?"</span></u></b><br />
<br />
DPS has been described as "A sprint" - you're going to play fast and hard and occasionally piss things off more than your tank, and you're successful if the boss dies.<br />
<br />
Occasionally people will link "Damage Per Second" meters to show you how awesome they are for doing SO MUCH DAMAGE, but these people usually die within the first two or three seconds of a five minute fight, so... it inspires a wonderful trailing off.<br />
<br />
These are the most important members of your group.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Now, Wait Just a Minute, Snack...</span></b></u><br />
<br />
"How can SO MANY PEOPLE be the most important part of your dungeon group? All five of them are the most important people in your group!"<br />
<br />
And that is absolutely correct! Because without each other's contributions, <u>you will not succeed</u>!<br />
<br />
Folks, I am talking about the word "Teamwork."<br />
<br />
Let's subscribe to the idea that you, on your own, are good. You're the bees knees, the hero of heroes - you've got the gear, you've got the stuff, Stan Bush sings about YOU because you've got the Touch!<br />
<br />
Except, sometimes, there are challenges that are bigger than you can handle on your own. So you get four of your closest friends together, and you set out to conquer the monsters!<br />
<br />
Team work is NOT every one selflessly giving to a group's mission, though, many who speak of team work would want you to think this.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3jZ3t9d-uLDetNBcA6T8ljKiU-VjepSWK5CjKMNmzqkhPZH7aPy-QmYysZ7MFN1NcWmykQJNFo41k87MVomjjhTr9ZopGRp7qYwkt-7yW7W06nlFlvT0BSduYX0fUFGlboPHDDC_W7S1D/s1600/teamwork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3jZ3t9d-uLDetNBcA6T8ljKiU-VjepSWK5CjKMNmzqkhPZH7aPy-QmYysZ7MFN1NcWmykQJNFo41k87MVomjjhTr9ZopGRp7qYwkt-7yW7W06nlFlvT0BSduYX0fUFGlboPHDDC_W7S1D/s640/teamwork.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
What we're speaking of, is a group of people, loosely tied together for a single common goal - they may share this larger goal (killing Internet Dragons), while having smaller, more personal goals (collect loot).<br />
<br />
Every person's contributions add to the success of the greater whole - and it's why it's so notable when someone decides to NOT play their role. It's not a matter of whether or not it's helping the group, it's a matter of your goals working DIRECTLY OPPOSING to the overarching, common goal: instead of "Killing the Internet Dragon" you are doing things that hinder the group!<br />
<br />
The purpose of a "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" is that you have to cooperate with other players to accomplish these goals - and that working in opposition is what offends and upsets people.<br />
<br />
What can we do about this though? How can we influence this change, to the better?<br />
<br />
Through calm, through rationality, through decency.<br />
<br />
I'm asking a lot here, I know.<br />
<br />
But maybe. Juuuust maybe.<br />
<br />
You know and understand... that we're all in this together.<br />
<br />
Killing Internet Dragons.</div>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-53086803956495656792010-11-16T10:52:00.000-08:002010-11-16T10:53:14.345-08:00Death Knight 101, or, "Snack and the Contractual Obligation"Full disclosure! I do not main a <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/medivh/caluna/">Discipline Priest</a> in World of Warcraft. I main what I feel is the stylistic opposite of that, an <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/medivh/visper/">Unholy Death Knight</a>.<br />
<br />
I don't play better than any one else. I play successfully, but that's only because I'm 1/10th of a raid team that is currently 8/12 hard modes in Icecrown Citadel - my efforts are a viable contribution to the whole. I take talent choices that seem "useless" to the outside viewer. Looking and comparing my talent build to the "accepted best" I've made some silly choices too!<br />
<br />
However, a lot of guides I see that talk about playing a Death Knight haven't quite been brought up to date for low level Death Knights just yet, so I'm going to give a once over here, talk about some of the basic ideas behind playing an Unholy Death Knight.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Why should I play a Death Knight?</span></u></b><br />
<br />
Because we tell physics to get bent.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnYVdYZEqJpQHwy1TJrgW2i6dKGxpjYiH-T4WWphs6oglG1B_0fd94GE4Up9JJ61rlBWMOwXblwXgPPGycKoMS0ASwKXAZWQkrbETNcILv7lmLp9oazstkrxh4023fVUI9aCyl1JDkKcM/s1600/WoWScrnShot_121209_110851.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnYVdYZEqJpQHwy1TJrgW2i6dKGxpjYiH-T4WWphs6oglG1B_0fd94GE4Up9JJ61rlBWMOwXblwXgPPGycKoMS0ASwKXAZWQkrbETNcILv7lmLp9oazstkrxh4023fVUI9aCyl1JDkKcM/s640/WoWScrnShot_121209_110851.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Welp.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
Or, to answer seriously, the Death Knight is a World of Warcraft Hero class that you can only create when you have a character level 55 or higher on your account. When you meet that criteria, you can then create a lone Death Knight on any server, Horde or Alliance. You start at level 55, and after completing a series of quests, you finish at level 58, setting out into the world... of warcraft... to explore and find your way.<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Why should I play an Unholy Death Knight?</span></u></b><br />
<br />
GORRAM ZOMBIE PARTY<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No Bee Gees though. That's insensitive.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
<br />
AWJEAHBABY ALL UP INS ON EXODAR'S DISCO FLOOR<br />
<br />
I mean uh<br />
<br />
It's easy to say what a "Hero Class" is, but in this case, you can imagine an Unholy Death Knight as an amalgamation of an Affliction Warlock and an Arms Warrior - while we're clearly going to hit like a truck with massive two handed weapons, an Unholy DK's bread and butter are our diseases - they have the obvious benefit of a damage over time effect, but they also offer a couple of unique debuffs, and the ability to spread them about a pack of enemies very quickly. Unholy Death Knights also bring in the zombie party - with a permanent Zombie minion, as well as the "Army of the Dead" skill.<br />
<br />
All of this is based off of two unique resources, Runes, and Runic Power. As you spend Runes, you gain Runic Power. You use Runic Power to pay the cost for other abilities (Death Coil, mainly, but also Mind Freeze and Summon Gargoyle - did I mention you get a gargoyle? You get a gargoyle, by the way).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchnN7SIw7u_J0MtrEKYwdK6LQkP9FmCeilOgFYMnWhLKB50VIJa-E24QXh-wENW36QqdyXqnc5u_LjQJOAdD14QjkE59FnXBoaBOXYFeRqIsGSGMDS3PfuCp0Hg_a6pZIi9PcAKcsHyGt/s1600/runeandrunepower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchnN7SIw7u_J0MtrEKYwdK6LQkP9FmCeilOgFYMnWhLKB50VIJa-E24QXh-wENW36QqdyXqnc5u_LjQJOAdD14QjkE59FnXBoaBOXYFeRqIsGSGMDS3PfuCp0Hg_a6pZIi9PcAKcsHyGt/s400/runeandrunepower.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Please tell me I don't need to tell you what the green bar is.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
You'll equip plate armor, with an emphasis on stats like Crit, Haste, and soon in Cataclysm, Mastery.<br />
<br />
You also have a handful of talents and tricks available to you to help the dungeon/raid team - if used appropriately. The specifics of these numbers and stat weights are best found through <a href="http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105521-unholy_dps_cataclysm_all_your_reasons/">Elitist Jerks</a> - I won't cover specifics at the moment, because we'll consider this Unholy Death Knight 101.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Why Should Groups Take Me, as an Unholy Death Knight?</span></u></b><br />
<br />
Before you have enough talent points to grab Ebon Plaguebringer, the permanent zombie pet is an additional source of damage that can help take down groups of enemies - or, distracting an enemy while the group focuses on a more dangerous target.<br />
<br />
Ebon Plaguebringer, however, is your meat and potatoes - with two points in this ability, any enemy infected with it takes an additional 30% damage from your diseases, as well as an additional 8% magic damage from any one in your group.<br />
<br />
To put that shortly, while you're doing more damage, mages and warlocks will love you because they get to do more damage too. Until patch 4.0, no other class had an equivalent debuff to offer - and with 4.0, Affliction Warlocks have to specifically talent make Curse of Elements do a similar effect.<br />
<br />
In addition, you'll have Chains of Ice to slow enemies down - or the additional enemies they spawn during a fight. You have Death Grip, which can be used to interrupt spellcasters (good!) and as a taunt (bad!) to drag enemies about so that your tanks don't have to try and run all over the place to pick them up (good!).<br />
<br />
CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION FOOTNOTE: Do NOT under any circumstance just "Death grip" stuff to help your tank. They find this offensive. It upsets them. If you're running with a group of people you know, best to speak with the tank to determine who to grab, when, or, if you should at all. If running with a pick up group, don't even use it. At all. Same for Army of the Dead. The benefits are outweighed by the negatives. The hilarious, hilarious negatives.<br />
<br />
<u><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">So, What Am I Actually Doing Here?</span></b></u><br />
<br />
An Unholy Death Knight has a "priority" system for doing damage, which would be a neat flowchart.<br />
<br />
Essentialy, you want to keep your diseases on the enemy - Plague Strike adds Blood Fever, Icy Touch adds Frost Fever. When you've talented into Ebon Plaguebringer, that is added with either of your other diseases. If you're facing a number of enemies and want to spread the disease-ridden fun, you'll use Pestilence - if it's just one enemy, you'll go straight into Scourge Strike - this is your big "Nuke" of a strike, your kill button.<br />
<br />
And you know what? All of your diseases only make Scourge Strike better.<br />
<br />
When you learn Festering Strike, for the same cost of an Icy Touch and a Plague Strike (One Frost/Blood rune) you can use that to refresh all of your diseases, setting their timer back to fully refreshed.<br />
<br />
Your Runic Power meter fills as you attack, as you use your abilities - and you can spend it to use Death Coil, which is another way for you to do damage. As you use Death Coil, you can activate Dark Transformation - which turns your zombie minion into a LARGER zombie minion that does more damage.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">A Brief Summary</span></u></b><br />
<br />
Unholy Death Knights may not see the top of a DPS Chart in single target fights - in AOE battles, where you have plenty of targets to use pestilence to spread your diseases to, you can put out ridiculous amounts of damage, but remember that utility is the greatest thing you can bring a raid group!<br />
<br />
And then, you can win all the mounts.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD6sPj6KbEWEq2IBz_D9UChvvZGZtQm1F_FveusG8Tro1BPQstRlCDgQa6bZghqTZ6TBi4moY3blob_EZ_h1AhwFS_BDn_2bnYnFQIOTmwPPAwFduDEbFfpQHPqu-ycATVNoD4QAJpEdAm/s1600/WoWScrnShot_053010_224038.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD6sPj6KbEWEq2IBz_D9UChvvZGZtQm1F_FveusG8Tro1BPQstRlCDgQa6bZghqTZ6TBi4moY3blob_EZ_h1AhwFS_BDn_2bnYnFQIOTmwPPAwFduDEbFfpQHPqu-ycATVNoD4QAJpEdAm/s640/WoWScrnShot_053010_224038.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">THIS INTERNET DRAGON WILL CARRY ME TO SAFETY.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-66292156288923280642010-11-10T11:00:00.000-08:002010-11-10T11:00:00.812-08:00Pretty Much Just..."OMG BLIZZARD WTF MOAR LIEK REHASH OF THE BORING AMIRITE I AM SO RITE LOLOLOLO xD"<br />
<br />
No.<br />
<br />
No, because no.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Wrath of the Lich King, as an expansion, offered a lot of "familiarity" - encounters that we could easily describe as "Like (x) but with (y mechanic) added."<br />
<br />
Even moreso if you play other video games.<br />
<br />
But, it's a good piece of game design to "train" your players to do simple things first, then introduce them to more complex versions - variations on a theme, if you will.<br />
<br />
A good analogy would be Portal, though I'll skip cake jokes for everyone's benefit. The game's start has you as a "test dummy" for a new device, the Portal Gun. Using it allows your player character to move from one place to another - if the fastest distance between two points is a straight line, then making it so the destination point and the starting point are exactly the same is even faster.<br />
<br />
The game starts by having you do simple movement puzzles, training - introducing new physics quirks ("Speedy thing goes in - speedy thing comes out") and ideals of motion. The twist of the game has you using all of the tricks you've learned in the first half, in the second half, where the game is not about "testing" but rather, "escape."<br />
<br />
So, how does this relate to World of Warcraft? Well, there are easy encounters and there are hard encounters. There are hard bosses that have "easy mode" versions to get an idea of HOW the encounter will work; even if it doesn't tell you the entire story, you are not caught unaware by familiar tricks.<br />
<br />
The first such boss we can talk about, in terms of having a similar "easy mode" to the raid boss, is Kel'Thuzad from Naxxramas.<br />
<br />
Kel'Thuzad is the final boss of Naxxramas, a three phase fight. Phase One is technically not really a phase - but for about four minutes, additional enemies will spawn, of varying difficulties and strengths, some are more dangerous than others - so your ten man raid group will have to focus on different enemies for different reasons.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidC0sNCEs_a7lBsmebaueoOFfyuxthMQZb2M5JxOM5LcOmCKZD58yz18xLs_NmG_YAy-dMMx_PzqIcupKo_Iu-9ld85nSnP1Umothq41VVP9xH_VpijEB-NbavAH6Vn8re8a0Z09089yqL/s1600/141302.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="491" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidC0sNCEs_a7lBsmebaueoOFfyuxthMQZb2M5JxOM5LcOmCKZD58yz18xLs_NmG_YAy-dMMx_PzqIcupKo_Iu-9ld85nSnP1Umothq41VVP9xH_VpijEB-NbavAH6Vn8re8a0Z09089yqL/s640/141302.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smile pretty for the camera, Mr. Thuzad!</td></tr>
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Phase Two and Three are where the real boss fight are, but, if only there was somewhere... some place...<br />
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Where you could get an idea of the flow of the fight...<br />
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Of the additional enemies spawning upon- CHELLO, what have we here then?!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0wvM5gn-q0zUJrTxSRJlVajFXH-uEtFMEJY0l2A3RH-Iy_WvfAhVNVESbW2U-p7kNRAV4ErSiORfnXvG-0PsRa4vM_qVjMfbSF_BmR3bGzkOW80OZZsjd9DeXwr31CQscSSJiGrK3LcY/s1600/93932.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0wvM5gn-q0zUJrTxSRJlVajFXH-uEtFMEJY0l2A3RH-Iy_WvfAhVNVESbW2U-p7kNRAV4ErSiORfnXvG-0PsRa4vM_qVjMfbSF_BmR3bGzkOW80OZZsjd9DeXwr31CQscSSJiGrK3LcY/s640/93932.jpg" width="545" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I can be cool too, right guys?</td></tr>
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This is Novos the Summoner, a mid boss of the Drak'Tharon Keep instance.<br />
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He is a two phase fight, the first consisting of waves of additional enemies spawning and running at your party from three different possible directions - a consistent flow from a staircase he stares up, as well as an additional "Crystal Handler" that must be killed to remove the shield and start phase two.<br />
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Novos and Kel'Thuzad have similar abilities - both cast ice magic at single targets and in an Area of Effect. KT, however, has the Bigger Badder versions of the spells, including instant cast volleys and Void Zones that you should not, under any circumstance, continue to stand in.<br />
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But, a guild that was having problems on Kel'Thuzad could look to Novos as a "Tutorial Mode" for the fight and have an idea for how Phases One and Two would go. While it's not perfectly EQUIVALENT, you still can help relate a fight to someone by saying "It's pretty much just Novos..."<br />
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Or, perhaps you play other video games besides World of Warcraft?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYa0WxBz-w0mbv_23lNV8PitYVz5y8N2agdT2au40qamU1X_J2WvhguU9PTAaNnIKy10A0M1ix8A537f623eWQ0pUkr0_vLNH49NPsjTLL7RET8IJ1B4_IgEVmH9PftJpT0b2Qy5swoGFp/s1600/Chrono_Trigger_Giga_Gaia_Fight.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYa0WxBz-w0mbv_23lNV8PitYVz5y8N2agdT2au40qamU1X_J2WvhguU9PTAaNnIKy10A0M1ix8A537f623eWQ0pUkr0_vLNH49NPsjTLL7RET8IJ1B4_IgEVmH9PftJpT0b2Qy5swoGFp/s400/Chrono_Trigger_Giga_Gaia_Fight.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kologarn, without Projected Textures turned on</td></tr>
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OBLIVIOOOOOOOOOO-waitaminute.<br />
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Who the hell is tha-<br />
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No. No way. Did they seriously?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdVn7e3Sr17_0h9obyTJFHzg-iGvdQc00mLv7YE-_bTxo47DS2my0tosQXSFaQ4WgsPzj0X-xMt0UJnM9Ff4GXFeISreJiVQLJBoqGudT4Lvc4_AVziShziEAa1BDSzFxNozno9x7M5RoH/s1600/127344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdVn7e3Sr17_0h9obyTJFHzg-iGvdQc00mLv7YE-_bTxo47DS2my0tosQXSFaQ4WgsPzj0X-xMt0UJnM9Ff4GXFeISreJiVQLJBoqGudT4Lvc4_AVziShziEAa1BDSzFxNozno9x7M5RoH/s640/127344.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Giga Gaia, with Blast Processing</td></tr>
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<br />
KOLOGARN.<br />
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Kologarn and Giga Gaia are both bosses with multiple targets. Either arm is a boss in it's own right; and killing the "head" finishes the encounter, allowing the party to move on.<br />
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If all three pieces are allowed to stay active, they have access to bigger moves that do damage to the entire party/raid. Ideally, you'd kill an arm to weaken his ability to do massive damage to your group, then you'd keep weakening one arm exponentially during the fight, so that you can keep a rotation going - if one arm is down, the other arm is using weaker attacks. If both arms die at the same time, both arms will be ressurected at the same time - in addition to the boss getting bigger, heavier attacks to use.<br />
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Kologarn, pretty much just Chrono Trigger's Giga Gaia; right down to the mechanics.<br />
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BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!<br />
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Trial of the Crusader offered a pair of Valkyr that have a very peculiar mechanic. One is a dark Valkyr, the other is a light Valkyr - their magic is that of shifting orbs... Your party takes on an aura of either light or dark, and collects the orbs of the same color to increase your damage done, to decrease the damage you take from the magic of a certain type.<br />
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You change your "aura" to change to match the abilities - to absorb the worst of it, to prepare to battle back against the brunt of the damage, you switch and change back and forth, sometimes multiple times.<br />
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If this sounds familiar...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEx4MbVZ9s87ngyMAje3Fu1nDLjLOsf4DDjJOCNfPo_M6FHp3i0CIwYIJpYsz26GMUVtqJON5KCB2yu9yYwXmnG-VAV37zf3bluY266UlQOzkJ2zot3hisiaMJfsgHFG__PyGKnBCIhs-N/s1600/246654-ikaruga9_super.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEx4MbVZ9s87ngyMAje3Fu1nDLjLOsf4DDjJOCNfPo_M6FHp3i0CIwYIJpYsz26GMUVtqJON5KCB2yu9yYwXmnG-VAV37zf3bluY266UlQOzkJ2zot3hisiaMJfsgHFG__PyGKnBCIhs-N/s640/246654-ikaruga9_super.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ikaruga hates you and wants you to die.</td></tr>
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...you probably played this. Ikaruga is a top down shooter, where your space ship can change polarities, from light to dark. Doing so negates the damage you'll take from the dark/light orbs and charge your ship to do incredible amounts of damage to everything on screen.<br />
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Sounding familiar?<br />
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Repeating ideas in a video game has never been anything new. In fact, it's a training tool. From the first time Super Mario ran straight into his first goomba, from the first time the ghosts ran away from Pac-Man after eating the big power pellet, every thing in a video game teaches you how to play... if you look at it that way.<br />
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moar liek "Reeducation of the Learned King" amiriteSnackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-11107021454981455202010-11-07T15:11:00.000-08:002010-11-07T15:11:35.300-08:00A Healer InactionA picture tells a story of a thousand words! I swear to you, I may type far less than that.<br />
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Wednesday's post talked about my Disco Priest "Toolbox" - what I had, and how I could use them. More theory than numbers, but that's okay. <a href="http://disciplinaryaction.wordpress.com/">Better</a> <a href="http://elitistjerks.com/f77/">writers</a> than I have touched on the numbers in very dedicated, very intelligent posts.<br />
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Not me, though. We're playing from the heart here at The Dungeon Runner. I've got a lone screen shot to work with, but I'll MS paint edit it up to show you things here and there and everywhere that require notation.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPzMc0B3_YQ_P2vTKp1Xw1S65Oifrp9BWz_pfDftEhNBQfMTILzz3mXJ9aXZ9OXPZaSGZRyNdl8G7VFfH0aZC1hY3Xbqo6omBKFKB7wz_niyKag4PEJ9k9UXWTnvjUIr64OGYc-ah4Vbfk/s1600/Tooltimepic5point1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPzMc0B3_YQ_P2vTKp1Xw1S65Oifrp9BWz_pfDftEhNBQfMTILzz3mXJ9aXZ9OXPZaSGZRyNdl8G7VFfH0aZC1hY3Xbqo6omBKFKB7wz_niyKag4PEJ9k9UXWTnvjUIr64OGYc-ah4Vbfk/s640/Tooltimepic5point1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pictured: Accurate representation of what I'm looking at. Not Pictured: Sonic the Hedgehog x Velen fanart (OTP)</td></tr>
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This is the screenshot I want you to see. The player information is on the left - the five members of our party are all present. They're all alive, and doing quite well.<br />
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Now, a couple important points come up in this screenshot, so let's move on to a visible demonstration!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguY-XjD2kYJ2I18R5grqNi-a4rwAvFObIrbgol4rAudhm3goKPd0x_JJMjtJRHHSTK6HDnvFXJWP7FVkhsoyHGeTspsQXaRU_V_eKyn2fSWy7vN4gDmIHyXo9rmNbkXSPoxm0ilHsQuYnp/s1600/Tooltimepic5point2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguY-XjD2kYJ2I18R5grqNi-a4rwAvFObIrbgol4rAudhm3goKPd0x_JJMjtJRHHSTK6HDnvFXJWP7FVkhsoyHGeTspsQXaRU_V_eKyn2fSWy7vN4gDmIHyXo9rmNbkXSPoxm0ilHsQuYnp/s640/Tooltimepic5point2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Million billion hours in MS Paint</td></tr>
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Yes, I'm running out of mana. Below, right dead center of the screen is a number of timer bars from an add on called Quartz. Both of which are important for different reasons.<br />
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Firstly, I'm nearly bone dry on mana. As a healer this is a bad thing! Except, I'm not a good healer!<br />
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Let's call this "Red Lining" - pushing my mana supply so that I have a general idea of WHERE I stand - how much mana do I need for us to survive a run in Gnomeregan where it bugs and we have an army of mobs, riding twelve deep, charging for our heads? How much mana is "okay" before I absolutely need to replenish mana? This is the sort of "decision making" one makes frequently in dungeon crawler games - at what point are you punished for not playing it safe? For playing it TOO safe? Sometimes, you have to abuse that line until you realize where you're standing.<br />
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Secondly, I am running a timer add on known as Quartz, which can be found on <a href="http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx">Curse</a> - it adds timer bars for all of your buffs and heals as a priest... but, admittedly, I snagged it so I can keep track of my Affliction Warlock's damage over time spells better. In this case, the screen shot above, I can prepare to "cook" spells (start a second spell cast just a few split seconds before the first cast ends) as I see spells "falling off" - while our dear tank is AOK right now, when "Weakened Soul" falls off, I can recast Power Word: Shield, replacing it with a fresh shield.<br />
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Ultimately, playing a Discipline Priest will demand a lot of attention, of awareness - it may be something I can manage without an add on, or I may decide playing a Disco Priest just isn't "for me."<br />
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In the meantime? Red lining. Lots of it.Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-71281767526836802722010-11-03T11:00:00.000-07:002010-11-03T11:00:04.481-07:00It's Tool Time!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyuqg27lQjYf7ZD2da8DIFv_JQh6N3vQiQnmm9ww-t3vSAlKTLYB1ozWfJa4S40PjccgQ0rYHTjnkmbmhkk-ZSTnqP6lLOv2EG89AxKSb0FB0IxmtT6KYGETsp2sKCP1rE-XnWThbBoE6m/s1600/20081009_binfordBig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyuqg27lQjYf7ZD2da8DIFv_JQh6N3vQiQnmm9ww-t3vSAlKTLYB1ozWfJa4S40PjccgQ0rYHTjnkmbmhkk-ZSTnqP6lLOv2EG89AxKSb0FB0IxmtT6KYGETsp2sKCP1rE-XnWThbBoE6m/s400/20081009_binfordBig.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Let's talk about low level dungeon running in World of Warcraft.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Specifically, a comment was brought up in the last post, talking about low level dungeons: Christina brought up that "When you're absent many of your key tools at a low level, you're really not learning your role at all."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I talked about dungeon running at low levels, and the abuse we could heap upon players to make them act the way we wanted them to - and I feel like that particular comment needed to be addressed. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For this discussion, we'll drag Caluna back out here - only she's gotten a tad camera shy, so you'll have to forgive her choice of apparel.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEjgDzgFz_yOx02TUb4SzyYjNFNV6TzyEZjka8D8lKrW7Gd6hJBrK_q8Zb_-1wxNMjN6vpXBt1k4wYrqEQoHLlaVYqEnz_O6LHtpThsR4ZWRA8J9dQxwjOrbjtXKPvR_6PqW75v7HNx76H/s1600/tooltimepic1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEjgDzgFz_yOx02TUb4SzyYjNFNV6TzyEZjka8D8lKrW7Gd6hJBrK_q8Zb_-1wxNMjN6vpXBt1k4wYrqEQoHLlaVYqEnz_O6LHtpThsR4ZWRA8J9dQxwjOrbjtXKPvR_6PqW75v7HNx76H/s640/tooltimepic1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;">So, Caluna here is level 23 now. I'll confess to you, I cheated - she gained a whole level doing a bunch of the current Cataclysm pre-release event quests.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;">But, level 23 doesn't offer you much in the way of a spell book. In fact, looking up at the screenshot above, you'll see a bunch of buttons, a few empty spots, and more buttons off to the side.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Using the default UI, I like to keep my main action bar for abilities I use most frequently - there's Power Word: Shield at the 2 key, Renew at the 3 key, Flash Heal at 4. Way over to the right, you'll see what I call my "Panic Button" set - Cure Disease is something I need to think about using - as well as Psychic Scream. Gift of the Naaru and Lifebloom are my panic heals, when things have gotten so frantic, I am scrambling to throw whatever heal I can to keep as many people alive as possible. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not necessarily a pretty set up; but functional and clean.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, let's take a quick waltz through Cal's spellbook, and take a good solid look at what she has available to her:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijOpAkYSP7S7HGL9OpL9t0r6pkP5qh96hGaieigLpa6m8Y1aRLo1_sGmIWAEaHq5faamyXPCdTFlQpd9JT9Q9hfzYxBPZIW7Ix-kksgNBY3aEzhYC-Pedi20aY3haYHRl-e2Ii3ddaY9Xm/s1600/tooltimepic2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijOpAkYSP7S7HGL9OpL9t0r6pkP5qh96hGaieigLpa6m8Y1aRLo1_sGmIWAEaHq5faamyXPCdTFlQpd9JT9Q9hfzYxBPZIW7Ix-kksgNBY3aEzhYC-Pedi20aY3haYHRl-e2Ii3ddaY9Xm/s640/tooltimepic2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is her Discipline spellbook - the abilities that are grayed out, I cannot learn until it says so.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivp6Q3PYPByNDFLP-dP4vQZq1OlcjJzZF6X3l1Vb5iT5ceENH8ZY8FBHVytt-CI1YMQ3fjLbLpdQm8koamH_g7BXWA5C-aK-a8w2E1-xEl6dYVODXtb4GmVtPuD4e8luzxwXA6GWk5K4AN/s1600/tooltimepic3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivp6Q3PYPByNDFLP-dP4vQZq1OlcjJzZF6X3l1Vb5iT5ceENH8ZY8FBHVytt-CI1YMQ3fjLbLpdQm8koamH_g7BXWA5C-aK-a8w2E1-xEl6dYVODXtb4GmVtPuD4e8luzxwXA6GWk5K4AN/s640/tooltimepic3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is her Holy spellbook. If you wanna feel less nerdy for reading a blog about dungeon running, call it a playbook. Pretend you're John Madden!</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDt3i3z7Ja-tuwdbf1TdFfAmEfhkPKDV8PJ73APMdP1VUwTJwEObAVtIP11H-k0KE8aM4p2aMnEqUtM-22Uv_MGs7ojs71A1Xkz7aEpEKsR1UF9ccrK0aBdw9y2zLsPx639B0usCsT-LkW/s1600/tooltimepic4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDt3i3z7Ja-tuwdbf1TdFfAmEfhkPKDV8PJ73APMdP1VUwTJwEObAVtIP11H-k0KE8aM4p2aMnEqUtM-22Uv_MGs7ojs71A1Xkz7aEpEKsR1UF9ccrK0aBdw9y2zLsPx639B0usCsT-LkW/s640/tooltimepic4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, this is her shadow spellbook. I'm linking it for completion and also because pictures are pretty.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I want you to look at all this, not because I spent a million hours in MS Paint blacking out people's names in trade chat, but because you don't get much of an idea of what you're supposed to do - or HOW you're supposed to do it - with such a limited tool set unless you know the general principle behind the class.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In our case, Caluna is a Discipline Priest. As far as I understand it; a Disco Priest is about "Preventative Maintenance" - if making the little bar go to the right is good, making the little bar NOT GO LEFT AT ALL must be better!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(This is horribly simplified because I am a bad Disco Priest.)</span><br />
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A large change made in the recent patch 4.0.1 has governed how classes choose their roles - when you pick a skill tree, you are THERE until you pay in game currency to "reskill" yourself, spending your talent points differently. At a low level, you find yourself thinking about what and how you'll do things - or maybe you pick something because it sounds neat - or maybe you see that you get LOTS of passive talents, and a few special skills and they sound like that'd be useful.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Well, for a Discipline Priest, when you hit level ten, you're granted with a spell known as Penance.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Penance, as I am unable to link the Wowhead tool tip because I fail the internet forever, can heal friendly targets, or hurt enemy targets. It's a channeled spell, which means you can't cast anything else while said spell is in use. (In the above screen shots, Penance is set to number 6)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I don't have a whole lot to work with here!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However, with a little bit of playing about, and reading the in-game description of the class ("Uses magic to shield allies from taking damage as well as heal their wounds.") I can look at my abilities and figure out how they go together.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Renew is a "Heal over Time" (HoT) spell that can be used to help a player recover a bit of life when they aren't being abused too much.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Flash Heal is my current "big heal" - it has a couple second cast time, meaning, you'll find yourself unable to cast anything else before you heal someone for a sizable chunk of their life bar.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Power Word: Shield is an Absorption shield - the damage the player who has been shielded would take is instead ate by the shield. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a five man dungeon at level 23, my priority will be to shield anybody taking damage - in theory, this will be the tank.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To avoid taking aggro early on, I want to shield the tank BEFORE the tank gets to the enemies. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If I don't want to rebubble the tank - or, perhaps, the enemies are dying fast enough that if the bubble breaks, and the tank takes a bit of damage, it's okay - I can then throw Renew on the tank. If I lose focus, and the tank takes a lot of damage - or perhaps, pulls more than can be handled, I can then charge up to use Flash Heal, pulling the tank's life bar back up.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I know a fair bit about other classes - if a warlock is low on mana, I can throw a Renew their way, and they can Life Tap without worry - sacrificing HP for MP, knowing the HoT I've put on them will bring their life bar back up.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm not a new player. I don't know if a new player would sit and think about their tools - a new player sure as heck may not know what tools other players have available to them. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But! Instead of being handed a full toolbox, I'm being given a hammer, a saw, and some nails. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">PW: Shield stays a static part of any Disco Priest's tool box all the way to the end game (and probably into Cataclysm's end game as well!) - this is my hammer. I can not be a successful carpenter without my hammer - but, I can't be a successful carpenter unless I know how to use my hammer! </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The early tools may not let me know how I'm going to play Caluna at level 85. The early tools may not let me know how I'm going to play Caluna at level 25! But, by thinking critically of what I'm doing, by looking at what I've got in my toolbox/spell book/play book, I can be a better player, even at low levels.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And good habits - in work and in play - are best learned early on.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hastily Added Post Script of Zero Promises: I'll try and get an "In Action" screen shot this week to showcase what it is I'm looking at during a dungeon, to try and explain what I'm doing and why - ideally, this would be posted Saturday or Sunday, so please check back!</span>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-50633542695991936992010-10-27T18:36:00.000-07:002010-10-27T18:37:21.464-07:00From level 15 to 20, or, Groupthink!In 1971, Stanford University's Professor Philip Zimbardo had a little experiment.<br />
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The experiment was intended to be a two week run, taking a pool of twenty-four volunteers (of a 75 volunteer group) to test an idea: that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards were key to understanding abusive prison situations.<br />
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The twenty-four chosen were then split into two camps; prisoners and guards. Guards were given clothing to define them - khaki pants, military surplus jackets, mirrored sunglasses. Prisoners were dressed in ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps with numbers sewn into them - the prisoners were not referred to by name, but by number.<br />
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Ultimately, the experiment fell apart, and was closed in the first six days because the guards took to their roles a little too willingly - while physically abusing the prisoners was outright banned, they were instructed to "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">promote disorientation, depersonalization, and deindividualization." If you're very interested, you can see the wikipedia article <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment">here</a>...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">I have to tell you that story, so I can tell you this one.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">I spoke about hitting level 15 last night, and Liala, of Disciplinary Action - and the partner in crime for the "festivities" and I hit the Looking for Dungeon finder HARD, and with NO MERCY. Or as hard as a pair of level 15s can manage.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">As we've gamed the system, see, by being a discipline priest and a protection warrior, our queue is faster than instant, and within a minute, we've zoned into Ragefire Chasm - a perfect low level dungeon with a few interesting trash pulls to challenge our skills as a tank/healer combination. We've got heirloom gear, we've got talents, we're at least a little familiar with what we're doing, so it's no problems, no issue whatsoever.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Our trio of dps, for the sake of anonymity, were a rogue, a hunter, and a shaman.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">And before we can say anything, the Shaman takes off running to the first pack of enemies and decimates them in their heirloom gear. And the second. And the third.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">So, we do what comes natural, and that's mouth off about it. Patch 4.0.1 changed a lot of gameplay mechanics in World of Warcraft, to the point of the game being made... I'd almost say easier? Or at the very least, your class has a more distinct STYLE from a lower level - that as you use the tools you're given, you can be pretty good at what you're working with when you level when you quest, when you, yes, utilize the LFD system.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">And when you've players in heirloom gear and especially bored players who know what they're doing looking for really quick jaunts through the system, it's easy to be beaten down and turned into a negative wreck by dps declairing "It doesn't matter if we have a real tank or not, because we can just kill everything anyway before it hurts us."</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglNs_Ma-ynsQLhLpvKg3S-h_0_qPy70mBcYI8kJrOhF4MB8CP_5dmbhoiVAfCvJ22pRTzktfkUgh7wDYQF4WLRnx0S-PBmwaHJJKjX3PD5Lh7gPsYpB6XNf0Jkyqo5quhITlVUa4K7W6Oj/s1600/WoWScrnShot_102710_170129.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglNs_Ma-ynsQLhLpvKg3S-h_0_qPy70mBcYI8kJrOhF4MB8CP_5dmbhoiVAfCvJ22pRTzktfkUgh7wDYQF4WLRnx0S-PBmwaHJJKjX3PD5Lh7gPsYpB6XNf0Jkyqo5quhITlVUa4K7W6Oj/s640/WoWScrnShot_102710_170129.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Your argument is invalid. I have bull horns.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">This is terrible, and VERY boldly, I'll say it's bad game play for a game that thrives, no, REQUIRES team work.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">It creates a feeling from a very early point where you have people who might be INTERESTED in tanking - having done it in, say, Dungeons and Dragons - being turned off because it's going to be a fight for control of the instance against people who are simply going to just go ahead and go do... whatever it is they do. And be successful at it.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">I don't know if the dungeons changing in Cataclysm will change this. I hope they do, but I suspect, probably not. But, Liala and I made our stand that day - she was tanking, I was healing, and anybody trying to show us as unnecessary would see how horribly, painfully wrong they are because we wouldn't bother doing our job.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The Shaman/Rogue/Hunter trio finally reached the big room - where you have four packs of enemies standing about, loitering, ready to start casting magic at people foolish enough to pull more than one at a time, a brief reminder that they are not invincible, that they are in a team, that they will not succeed on their own - and when the Shaman died, Liala stepped up, I stepped in, and everybody else stayed alive. As I cast Resurrection upon the Shaman, the question was asked, "And what have we learned...?"</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">We made our point very clear. We were not going to play loose and fast with the class roles. That we were here to run dungeons, yes, but that we were going to abuse those who deserved it, but we were going to reward playing "correctly."</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The dungeon was finished without incident. The shaman dropped group. And we were both surprised to not see "Shamrackobama has ignored you" on our chat windows.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The rogue stayed stealthed the entire time. The hunter was quick to jump along with us, so we kept going. And going.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">We ran through Ragefire Chasm nine times in a row, leveling three times each in the process! </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">And every time, we'd get a new "DPS" class who would just run ahead feeling invincible, Every time, they would die, but slowly, they began to heed our directions. We gave them orders, they were listening, and the runs got smoother, the runs got faster, the runs - dare I say - were more profitable. But we picked up a druid on one of these runs whom we'll call Cat. Druids, if you're unaware, shift forms to do damage, to fit their need in whatever role they are required, and Cat decided, he liked being a bear.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">(this is where a bear picture would go but I am bad at jpegs)</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Bears do plenty of important things in dungeons; they act as a tank class! But one tank is enough! In a five man dungeon, two is too many! AND THREE IS UNHEARD OF!</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">But Cat, Cat was very good at drawing aggro, which is a very technical, precise terminology that simplifies out to "The Priest Dies." (I'll go into this in a game mechanic post at some point, I like the idea of a numerical value to how much everybody hates you.)</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">A few times, we told Cat, "Stop trying to tank" and Cat was a chipper sort, so we chattered a bit, and then kept on trucking through Ragefire Chasm and it was somewhere around the 9th time we ran it that night that we decided leaving luck to heaven was a bad idea, and wound up in the eponymous Deadmines.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The thing I want to talk about in Deadmines was not how "elite" we were for surviving a massive barrage when Cat pulled every goblin in the dungeon, but it was when a pair of strong leaders whipped a small group of random players together to become a very effective force.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">And then when the pair of strong leaders began acting to serve their needs - literally, rolling "Need" on items for each other to game the system our way - they put forth a bare minimum of argument. Every body won last night - we both hit level 20, we both recieved a mass of upgrades that'll serve us as we continue to LFD grind... and we learned. We're better players for it, but it was so weird being "IN CHARGE" like that, that when we demanded people stop and listen to us, they did so. And then we proceeded to act according to a plan, and it went well.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The final thought is, that group think in World of Warcraft - to tie it back to the introduction above - is that the most vocal drives the ship. And it's not always the most vocal who has the best interests of the GROUP in mind.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Learning how to play is always going to be the purpose of the "Looking for Dungeon" finder at low levels - it may be an efficient way to level, it may be a good way to break up the doldrums of questing, but it is a way to learn to play nice with other people, and I'd like you all to remember, you're allowed to say "I want to learn."</span></span><br />
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</span></span>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7728050876725663090.post-50709178435197098332010-10-27T11:48:00.000-07:002010-10-27T11:48:12.440-07:00This is an Introduction!Hello! My name is Snack, or perhaps Joe, but I want to welcome you to this, my blog about dungeon running.<br />
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Previously, I was given a moment of your time on the <a href="http://puggingpally.wordpress.com/">Pugging Pally</a> blog with a guest post (<a href="http://puggingpally.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/from-bad-to-less-bad-pugging-as-a-tool-to-improve-joe/">here</a>) that was pretty much a very simplified version of my views and ideas on "pugging" (joining "Pick Up Groups" to venture into dungeons in parties of five, ten, or twenty five) and how it can help make someone a better player - how tenacity and diligence in learning how to play can lead people to situations where they get better.<br />
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Because of that, I've met some really cool people, and talked a lot with them via "the twitters" and that eventually leads to the meat and potatoes content of this post.<br />
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Disco, the head priestess at <a href="http://disciplinaryaction.wordpress.com/">Disciplinary Action</a> and I had a conversation, that essentially boiled down to "Tanking and healing look like fun. I bet we could do it!"<br />
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And now we are.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8KqMQQK0_CAoT0AIUGx7baaKKLB_B7COmMdWCCupIwkVerZHvyhimnKhKhL2VzoAkNfd3yK300KU6Lk7XRuEvJpIV2yHgzXc1UMfxdl1I7_B9-r5g2u77AJoqU1ui1-_6hnwHhGa68S_I/s1600/WoWScrnShot_102710_055832.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8KqMQQK0_CAoT0AIUGx7baaKKLB_B7COmMdWCCupIwkVerZHvyhimnKhKhL2VzoAkNfd3yK300KU6Lk7XRuEvJpIV2yHgzXc1UMfxdl1I7_B9-r5g2u77AJoqU1ui1-_6hnwHhGa68S_I/s320/WoWScrnShot_102710_055832.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smile for the camera!</td></tr>
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This here is Caluna. She's a Discipline Priest on the Medivh server, putting her square into the Ruin Battlegroup.<br />
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And last night, she hit level 15.<br />
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Hello, LFD.<br />
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The purpose of this blog is to talk about dungeons, and the myriad of things that exist in said dungeons. (i.e., dragons, gold, et cetera) - while World of Warcraft is certainly going to be a big focus, it is not the only game where you run around in dungeons killing monsters and gathering items for resale in your nearest town - though, any more, it feels as if the "dungeon exploration" niche of RPGs is getting ever smaller.<br />
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I'd like to talk about those games as well, games like Etrian Odyssey or Shiren the Wanderer, Torchlight or Nethack that wear their dungeon crawler tags with pride; though, I probably will wind up talking more about WoW because I hear there's some sort of thing happening with that soon? Where there may be some sort of cataclysmic changes?<br />
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Well, if there's anything we'll do, it's face them, head on.<br />
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That's what us adventurers do, you know.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Snackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167891256723070872noreply@blogger.com4