Puggers can't be choosers.

Well I haven't really been playing much Beta recently. This is due to the EU Beta server being up and down more often than the knickers of a workaholic prostitute. Speaking of which, I don't want to hear any chimes of empathy from my American readers: The kinds of problems you've had on Beta recently have been with us from day one. Or at least from the point I arrived.

In other news, CD seems to have settled into a pattern of one Hyjal farm run a week. Last night we cleared the first three bosses in record time and actually managed a go at Azgalor. That might have even become a kill if a pesky Druid had paid attention to where to run when he got the Impending Doom!

Apart from that, I've slowly been stockpiling mats for if/when I move over to Blacksmithing. Whilst doing that this morning, I got a whisper from a random druid. It consisted entirely of "Spec?". I figured if he/she/it was going to ask me questions without engaging me in a conversation or at least being interesting/polite, then I would do likewise, and I replied "A/S/L?". The exchange ended at that point.

Which brings me to something that grinds my gears. I'm disinclined to PuG at the best of times, but if someone whispers me "spec?" or words to that effect without trying to engage me in conversation, then they're gonna get crap back. If some know-nothing DPSer wants to know my unbuffed HP like it means anything, then I'm gonna demand their Attack Power and crit chance before saying "Is that all? No thanks". I am, however, Archduke of the Assholes.

As probably only tanks read this, I'm doubtless pissing in the wind, but here's my thoughts on what it would be nice to hear from prospective Puggers:

Wrong: "Spec?"
Right: "Are you able to (Tank/Heal/DPS)?"

Let the person you're contacting know what you want. If they can't help you, they may know someone (or have an alt) who can.

Wrong: "What's ur HP?"
Right: "Have you tanked (insert target Instance here) before?

The first question distills the Tank's knowledge, gear and ability down to one easily-fudged number. The second gives you an idea of wether or not he can do the job you require of him.

Wrong: "Looking for two more, need Tank and Healer"
Right: "Three DPS Looking for Group"

I mean, c'mon people, be honest! ;)

Beta: It's Mine Time!

Well with the current bugged/broken Judgements making Paladin levelling and tanking about as much fun as trying to tighten a screw with a maggot, I decided to get Ulu's professions in order.

When I first copied Ulu to the test realm, his mining was only at 273, and I needed 375 to begin mining in Northrend.

First stop was the Burning Steppes, where I spent an hour doing circuits and mining all the Thorium and Dark Iron veins I could see to get him close to 300. On the plus side, the zones were practically deserted, so I was free to level at my leisure.

At 299 mining, I got on a bird to the Blasted Lands, figuring I could find the last couple of nodes I needed on the way to the Dark Portal. I was right, and dinged 300 there. For my trouble, Ulu was rewarded with Toughness rank 4.

After that, it was time for the easy part. I did circuits of Hellfire Penninsula and Nagrand on Ulu's epic flier, mining all the Fel Iron and Adamantite nodes I could find. Outland was a little busier than Azeroth with all the levelling Death Knights, but none of them were mining, so Ulu had carte blanche again. It took me maybe an hour and a half from that point to get up to 375 mining and Toughness rank 5, but it was worth it.

I'm quite chuffed with the Toughness buffs. It's nice to have a reason to keep a gathering profession late into the life cycle. The 20 Stamina buff is actually 26 when combined with Ulu's talents and I'm looking forward to getting the level 6 Toughness at 450 Mining...

I went to bed after finishing the grind, but I took a run around this morning and mined my first few Cobalt nodes.

In related news, I've just copied my bank character over to the Beta realm with my stored collection of Ores, stones, gems and Primals. I think tonight I'm going to drop Engineering and powerlevel Blacksmithing.

Beta: Further down the Rabbit Hole...

So this weekend, I knuckled down and got some more Beta going on...

First of all, let me say that Blizzard have truly fucked things up with the latest build. Whatever the plan was to tone down Retribution has resulted in none of our three Judgement spells working. This means that along with not doing damage based on the seal used, Judgement of Wisdom doesn't restore mana, Judgement of Light doesn't restore health and the talented abilities Judgements of the Wise and Judgements of the Just don't work. In fact the only indication I can get that Judgement is being used is Heart of the Crusader proccing.

That said, I gritted my teeth and finished levelling Ulu to 71 as Retribution. At that point, I went back to Stormwind, respecced to Protection and picked up the new Divine Plea spell.

I then went to the Nexus with two of my friends (a Resto Druid and an Enhancement Shaman) for an attempt at the instance. All three of us were in a mixture of T5/T6 and badge gear, so we figured we had a decent shot at a beginner instance.

Wrong.

We managed to kill one boss in there, Grand Magus Talestra who is completely insane, somewhere in between Shade of Aran and the last boss in Arcatraz. We made some attempts at Anomalus as well, but we really needed another DPSer for him. We gave up after the instance server crashed.

Lessons learned:

* The Nexus looks really cool.
* Threat generation's a nightmare with the bugged Judgements.
* Resto Druids are Tiny Gods at group healing now.
* Not even the instance servers in Beta are free from lag and instability.

Apart from that, I've done a bunch of quests over there and I'm starting to get a feel for Prot-based soloing. Divine Plea really helps cut downtime, and when they get Judgements working again, there should be no problem with staying as Protection.

I'm currently considering copying my Bank character over to test so I can level Blacksmithing with the ores I've collected. By the time I've got Ulu into his mid-70s, I'd like to be able to start work on the Tempered Saronite set.

Nailing shut the Engineering coffin...

New Beta build which is currently downloading at home. I haven't had much of chance to Beta recently due to a combination of gathering mining materials, showing up for raids and the occasional social engagement.

They've apparently announced some of the initial Engineering stuff here, and, it's looking more and more likely that I'll be switching to Blacksmithing on Ulu. The only two interesting items are set of blue-quality tanking Goggles which will probably be replaced early in Ulu's raiding career at 80 and a trinket with +81 Stamina which I predict to have a similar shelflife.

But when to switch? That is the question:

I could switch now, use the Crystalforge Faceguard as my sole tanking helm. I'd gain about 0.5% uncrushability, some Block Value and 40-ish spelldamage, but lose 2% Avoidance and 200 hp.

I could hold on and hope that the Hexlord drops the Battleworn Tuskguard. The difference in the two is negligable, although the goggles look cooler.

Or I could hold on even longer and make the switch a week or so before Northrend hits the live servers.

Meanwhile On Live...

So Beta predictably crashed about an hour after I logged in last night. With a sigh, I closed down the client, fired up WoW normal and went back to working on my mining.

Just after I hit 375, I went off to Shattered Halls normal to help a guildie through a run there.

After that, I ran through Dum Morogh, Loch Modan, The Wetlands and the Arathi Highlands on a mammoth mining spree. I'm still considering levelling Blacksmithing for WotLK, and I'm determined to grind enough mats to do so ahead of time, rather than my normal "grind a bit, give up and spend a fortune on the AH".

Switching to Blacksmithing now wouldn't be terrible, since I'll still have my T5 helm to tide me over in place of the Goggles. I'd lose some Avoidance and stamina, but I'd gain spelldamage and block value. That said, I'll make the final call if and when the loot gods are kind enough to drop a Battleworn Tuskguard in my lap.

I'm actually considering copying my newly 375 mining Ulu over to Beta so I can start mining those Cobalt Nodes that have been looking enticingly at me. If I actually do level Blacksmithing, then I'm definately shifting him across.

Anyway, it seems that CD's raiding is finally starting to pick up again. Sign-ups have been strong for the upcoming Mount Hyjal runs. Of course with them being MH runs, Ulu's needed.

Gah, why couldn't my Beta Key have arrived a fortnight ago?!

Beta: More on Ulu's journey to the Ret side.

So yea, I ended up speccing back to Ret. I tried with Prot, I spent an hour questing with it last night, but i just couldn't get into the groove. Even with Judgement of Wisdom and alternating between Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Wisdom as my mana pool dictated, it was hella slow and there was downtime every 4-5 packs.

With Ret on the other hand, between Judgement of Light and Judgements of the Wise, I was tearing through mobs at a rare old pace. Yes, the survivabilty is lower than Prot, but with the higher damage output, I can kill 3-4 mobs in a fraction of the time and end the fight with over 80% mana. Then all I need to do is cast a quick Holy Light on myself (4k normal heal, 6-7k crit) and I'm ready to take on the next group.

This Discussion has sparked off one of Galoheart's posts. The issue of making Tanking "more fun" has been stated as one of Blizzard's goals in WotLK. I personally have fun tanking atm, but if they wanted to make questing/grinding as a protection spec more fun, then they could do something about our DPS.

At the moment, Tanks do comparatively low damage, but our threat is boosted by various macguffins (Righteous Fury, Defensive Stance, Dire Bear form). If they lowered our innate threat increases, but boosted our baseline damage then it might make solo questing more fun. I'm not suggesting that Tanks should outDPS primary DPS classes like Rogues, Warlocks, Hunters or Mages, but it'd be nice if, as Lore suggested, we were on a par with "utility DPSers" like Shadow Priests, Enhancement Shamans and the like.

Ultimately, I'm going to stick it out as Ret until I hit 71 and get Divine Plea. Then I'll switch back to Prot and see if that makes any difference to my fun as Prot grinding.

I suspect not.

Beta: Quicker, Easier, More Seductive...

In Beta, I've weakened and gone back to Retribution, I'll go into more depth later on, but I'm just finding Prot soloing more annoying than ever since trying Ret...

Death Knight: The first post.

Well, I said I'd do it, so here goes. Yes, I, like almost everyone else in Beta, have started a Death Knight, and I think I like them.

I named him Graysun (using the name of my original Paladin alt from September 2006) and I decided to make him Human. My original idea was to make a Pink-haired Gnome Deathknight, but I quickly realised that joke would get old all too soon. Humans may be bland, but with +5 Expertise with Maces and Swords and +10% Reputation gained from quests, they seemed like the best choice.

Because the Death Knight is a hero class, you start off at level 55. What worried me going in was "am I going to be overwhelmed with the need to spend 46 Talent points and master a few dozen skills straight away?"

Thankfully the answer is "no". You start play with no talent points and about half-a-dozen skills. You're wearing a suit of matched, green-quality armor with no trinkets, relic or weapon. The first quests you do give you your weapon and teach you about Runeforging, which allow you to enchant your weapon with a variety of special effects.

This is Graysun in his starter armor shortly after acquiring his Runeblade:



(I've hidden his helm in those shots, but it looks like a hood covering the upper part of his face in the same style as the rest of his armor. The death knights themselves look like normal examples of their race, with the addition of glowing blue eyes.)

After you've gotten your blade, you're set loose on the Scarlet Crusade! Most of the quests give blue rewards to replace your starter greens, and they too form a matched set of gear.



Also, most of the quests give you some talent points as additional rewards, allowing you to get used to your character and spend your talent points as you go.

After only a cursory look at the talents, I decided to focus on the Blood tree, which seems to focus on 2-handed DPS and life-draining. There's a few talents that remind me strongly of Retribution paladins, which smacks a little of laziness, but I guess they're aiming both trees for the same role: heavy 2-handed DPS with the ability to convert some of the damage done to healing for the group. The healing component of a Blood-spec seems to be higher than that of a Retadin, but I suspect that's to make up for the Death Knight's lack of direct heals.

The Death Knight seems to be everything I wanted the Dark Templar in Age of Conan to be, a tank that does damage and uses that damage to heal himself. I suspect the healing component may even be enough to make up for not using a shield in certain situations. I genuinely tempted to make one as my DPS toon in Wrath live, since I have very little desire to level Wulf these days.

Beta: Prot to Ret and back again.

So when I finally logged into Beta on Saturday, I naturally went straight for Ulushnar. As a Protadin, my first thoughts were to spec Prot, using a spec based off Lore's musings on the WotLK-era core spec.

I dithered around a bit at first. For some strange reason, they'd given Ulu a different "haircut" (actually a large Klingon-like head protusion with a grey mullet) as opposed to his normal alabaster baldness. I went to the hairdresser in Stormwind and found to my horror that the Bald Draenei model was missing!

Ultimately, out of protest, I picked the "hairstyle" that was obviously supposed to include the baldness, and wandered round as a Draenei with half it's head missing:



I started doing quests as Prot, but I found the old cycles weren't working. Even with the new Hammer of the Righteous and my Spiteblade, mobs were dying too slowly. Of course the sane response would be to round em up and AoE, but since it was a busy Saturday afternoon and I was competing with a whole bunch of DPS specs (including Hunters with their new Devilsaur pets and Warriors dual-weilding 2-handers), I was generally limited to what Exorcism and Avenger's Sheild could gather for me.

I'll say one thing for using a high-DPS one-hander over a caster 1-hander though: it really helps you keep soloing if you're low on Mana. That said, with the new Judgement of Wisdom, and the fact that Seals last two minutes, I found mana to be ok, as long as I didn't Consecrate. The Seal change was the hardest to adjust to, since refreshing a seal after hitting Judgement is hard-wired into my playstyle at this point.

Anyway, after a few quests, the Northrend World Server crashed, I went to start my Death Knight (more on him in another post), and then did some mining on Ulu on Live.

After a break for food, I went back to Ulu, ported him back to Stormwind and visited three places: The hairdresser, the Paladin Trainer and the bank. I got sick of being half-headed, so I gave in and got the Klingon Mullet, although this time I changed his hair color to a reddish-brown which I thought was more asthetically pleasing:



After doing that, I went to the bank, and traded in my Prot gear for my Ret gear. It's a mixture of Heroic, Kara, ZA, T5 and early T6 items. It's not amazing, but it gets the job done. Anyway, I specced Ret (using a Spec suggested by Worldie on the Maintankadin forums)) and ended up with 2.3k Attack Power (with improved BoM) and 23.49% melee crit.

I. Owned.

Using Seal of Command and my unenchanted Hammer of the Naaru meant I was downing most mobs in about three hits. I was taking on 3-4 mobs at a time and killing them all in the same time it took Prot Ulu to kill one, and with less downtime for mana recovery afterwards. As it stands, Retribution's kinda broken, and it's damage is going to be toned down before release. Hopefully they'll keep abilities like Divine Storm and Judgements of the Wise functioning similarly, since they offer nice utility. Similarly, I hope they don't break Ret's damage-dealing capacity whilst they're toning it down. It'd be nice to have them doing competitive damage in raids.

After a couple of hours with Ret, I kinda felt a little guilty. I'm positioning myself to be my group's main tank, and there's no point in me falling in love with toys I can't have. So I specced back to Prot and went to see how I could best make it work.

The golden rules seem to be:

*Use Judgement of Wisdom exclusively.
*Use Seal of Wisdom when you're low on Mana. It'll proc on all three mobs when you use Hammer of the Righteous, and the Hammer + Holy Shield + White Damage should keep your DPS high enough.
*Use Consecrate sparingly. Generally I used it when I made an aoe pull to gather up the mobs.
*No matter what you do, downtime is inevitable. Take it like a man and keep on hoping for level 71 and Divine Plea.

Beta: first thoughts.

So I spent most of Saturday Morning/Afternoon downloading and installing the 2gb WotLK Beta client and about another gig of patches. After that, I had some time running about the new content with Ulushnar as both Protection and Retribution spec. I also started a Death Knight called Graysun, who I levelled to 58 and completed the starting Zone with. My initial findings will be expanded on later, but at the moment:

*Those bastards haven't implemented the "bald Draenei" hairstyle from live, so I had to give Ulu a haircut.
*Northrend looks cool, or at least the Borean Tundra does.
*Protection with the current itemization's ok for soloing, but it's more mana-hungry than ever.
*I haven't tanked any instances yet.
*Retribution is completely OP. Even with mediocre stats (2.3k AP buffed and 23.5% melee crit), I was killing most enemies in 2-3 hits and ending fights with 2-3 enemies at above 80% health and mana.
*Blood-spec Death Knights are similarly OP. I was taking down quests I'd struggled with on Wulf/Ulu without breaking a sweat and similarly ending fights with over 80% health and mana.

I'd have more to report, but the Beta servers are up and down like a yo-yo, and even when they're up, the lag at peak times (froma bout 9 in the morning to 11 at night) makes it nigh-unplayable.

Also, I've been busy on Live as well. Ulu's mining is fast approaching 375 (having a Epic Flying Mount really helped with the last bit!) I've also led an attempt at a ZA Bear run (need to get used to the different route and group set-up), a Kara badge-farming run (for Retribution goodies), and our first successful 25-man in over 2 weeks (a clear of the first three bosses in Moutn Hyjal).

Beeee-taaaaa!

Well my Beta key arrived last night! About 97% through downloading the Client. News will follow.

Update 14Aug08

So what's been happening since last we looked at our heroic Space-goat?

I managed to grind the last of the gold for Ulu's Artisan Riding on Tuesday evening, but not the gold for the mount itself. Luckily, some auctions took care of this on Wednesday and Ulu is now the proud owner of a Swift Purple Gryphon. The whole grind's kinda made me bored with daily quests, so I'm gonna hold off on grinding Netherwing Rep just yet.

Ulu's mining's coming along fine. I'm now at the 255-ish level, so I should be terrorizing the mining nodes of Outland on my birdie by the end of the weekend.

My next goal with Ulu after this was to max out his Engineering and make the Flying Machine, but I'm currently holding off on this. Looking at what's come through from the Beta thusfar, it seems that Engineering won't have comparable Goggles in WotLK, or indeed anything that would be specifically advantageous to a Tank. I'm going to stockpile materials and if this appears to be the case closer to release, then I'll drop Engineering for Blacksmithing.

In terms of raiding, there really isn't that much going on. The last 25-man CD managed was on the 31st of July. No matter how many we recruit, we never seem to get more than 20 people in a raid. I'm one failed raid away from giving up on 25-mans altogether.

Preparations for Wrath

Well when I checked my banker's mail before work this morning, I found an enchanting pattern I picked up last night had sold. This puts me at nearly 4.8k gold after a weekend of daily grinding and selling almost everything in my bank that wasn't soulbound! If a couple of more auctions go through, I should be able to get Artisan Flying for Ulu tonight! And then it's off to Netherwing ledge!

In other news, Ulu has now dropped Enchanting for Mining and I'm slowly levelling that. After completing that, I'm going to level the last 7 points of his Engineering skill and make him a Turbo-charged Flying Machine. Lorefiends beware!

Raiding is going less-well. For every amazing raid we have had, we have 2-3 that just fail to get off the starter blocks. I figure things'll pick up again after this month, but then we'll have a few weeks until Warhammer Online sucks away our playerbase.

And by the time folks start to filter back by that, we'll be staring down the barrel of WotLK's release date.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I can be bothered anymore.

What Genre?

Well, on beholding my Biker regalia, Loopinvariant had this to say:

That's just as bad as adding space ships and space goats in BC. They could at least have made an attempt to fit it in with the genre. Not cool, no thanks.

I have to ask: What Genre? The Dwarves have had Steampunk technology since at least Warcraft 3. This is again in line with the Warhammer world they ripped off, where the Dwarves have the self-same Gyrocopters they introduced for Engineers in WoW a couple of patches ago.

Blizz are focusing on making the game fun rather than "authentic", which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. There are MMO's out there offering a more "authentically Medieval" fantasy experience, like Age of Conan or Lord of the Rings online. I'm happy for Blizzard to follow their demented muse wherever it takes them, as long as the end result is fun.

Afterall, look up Fantasy at Dictionary.com some time. The first definition you'll see is:

imagination, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Like a true nature's child, we were born, born to be wild...

Full Defias Leather set
Bandit Shoulders
Furious Gizmatic Goggles

I'm ready to get my Engineering Bike in Wrath of the Lich King!

Preparing for Wrath...

I've been slowly getting my ass in gear for the Expansion.

First thing up is getting my hands on my Epic Flyer at long last. Between powerlevelling professions, respecs and the occasional splurge on epic gems on the AH, I must have squandered nearly 20k Gold over the 18 months or so I've been playing Ulushnar. This is gonna stop now, I'm going to grind my dailies like a mad thing and get Artisan Riding for Ulu at least. I'm currently 2k gold in with 3k to go. should be doable if I don't slack.

I've also got my hands on a decent one-hander for Hammer of the Righteous. Depending on Wether or not the speed's been normalised in the Expansion, I'll end up using either the Spiteblade or King's Defender unless something better drops in the meantime.

I'm also giving consideration to dropping Enchanting for Mining closer to the expansion release date. Mining gives a healthy stamina boost now and it'll also make levelling Engineering in the Xpac much easier.

Finally, I'm thinking about my raiding situation post-WotLK. There are people who I enjoy raiding with in CD, but I'm more and more attracted to the notion of setting up a small 15-20 man guild and focussing solely on the 10-man side of content. The new Guild Calendar introduced in Wrath seems really nice, and along with the Guild Bank, it seems the non-guild Raid Group is something of an awkward anachronism.

Of course the problem is that a lot of the people I'd currently want to fill this ten-man guild are in Guilds that they have friends in and probably wouldn't leave.

Ah well, we'll see what the next couple of months bring.

Thoughts on Warhammer Online

Well, apparently the relase date for Warhammer Online has been announced as September 18th, and I'm honestly not bothered. I've had a changeable and varied relationship with Games Workshop's fantasy franchise which dates back many years.

I used to play the wargame a lot, but I left behind my love for the wargame in my teens, where it was basically a case of whoever bought the newest army was instantly the most powerful.

I did play the RPG a couple of years back and I really loved it, even with it's clunky career system. It was brutal, harrowing and relentless, starting out like D&D but quickly turning into Call of Cthulu. I can remember turning to my GM at one point and asking "I can't understand why my character shouldn't give up in the face of the overwhelming powers arrayed against them." His answer was basically along the lines of "well if you don't, who will?" It was one of the first Fantasy RPGs I played that defined heroics as more than "slaughter a villageload of Goblins, kill the evil wizard and get the treasure."

But the things I loved the RPG for just wouldn't translate into an MMO.
What's basically left is WoW. And yes, I know Blizzard liberally borrow Games Workshop's character designs, but ultimately that kind of nitpicking doesn't matter. If Blizzard made a tabletop wargame with minatures, I'd call it a Warhammer rip-off.

It's also a Wow focussed around PVP which is "Realm vs Realm". At one point it sounded like an interesting notion where each race had their own capital which was locked in a border skirmish with a race on the other faction. Of course, expediency and a desire not to clash with Wrath of the Lich King's immenent arrival has meant that this has been reduced to basically one captial for each faction.

All the races in a faction together from the start? I'm not seeing a gigantic difference to WoW at that point. Then there's the fact that there's 14 playable classes in a PVP-focussed game, each with the requisite three talent trees that have been de rigeur since Diablo 2. Wow has enough problems balancing 9 classes, and I'm not loving EA/Mythic's chances with nearly twice that number.

I'm glad they're getting it out when they are. With a month or two between Warhammer and Wrath of the Lich King, it'll be enough time for some folks to try WAR, get sick of it and come back.

It's time for Good News/Bad News.

Good News: One of my guildies decides she doesn't want her WotLK Beta key from the '08 WWI. She sends me the code on Saturday the 2nd of August and I promptly redeem it.

Bad News: I then find this forum post :

The deadline for redeeming your code for the current round of invites is Friday the 1st of August. Codes registered after this date will not be eligible for beta entry until a later date, so we encourage everyone to register early and be part of the vanguard into Northrend.

Ah well, I'll be getting into Beta. At some point. Maybe.

In other news, I've decided to take a short break from 25-man raiding. At the moment it's still a crapshoot about wether or not a raid will go ahead on a given night, and for every raid that goes ahead and does well, there's 2-3 that either fail to go ahead, or end in us going with a suboptimal group and wiping a lot. Since I have, for my sins, taken a seat on the CD council again, it means I'm in the unenviable position of telling the 15-20 people who did show up ready to raid that it's not going ahead.

Not the mostest fun job in the world.