When reading GMW's blogpost on learned lessons from Wow i decided to take up her tag (altho she managed to miss me :P).
So as an extra little post this Friday (2 for the price of 1 oh my gosh need!) i'll share with you the infinate wisdom i managed to gather while playing World of Warcraft since open beta.
My top 5 of learned lessons:
Leading a guild can be hell.. not just hell for the leader(s) but it can be for the members aswell.
Luckily members often don't get all the shit that is going on behind the screen and i often wonder myself if i wouldn't be better off myself on the other end of that screen myself... ignorance is bliss aint it?
I've been an officer in my previous guild where i was leading the raids. Due to curcumstances is was lured into the Guilds council.. not that it changed much as i felt i was already close to the GM in there (slightly exaggerated ofc). I said goodbye of this council's job in awhile as it didn't produce the fruits i expected it to and general officertasks and raidleading was taking up too much time anyway.
This guild had an obvious council but as i said i felt like the GM at times, it felt like i was giving carte blanche as about everything i wanted to do and change was done. However i've always been one of those officers who was there because he was needed to... not because he wanted to. (maybe i got that of my childhood hero) If i would not feel i was needed i wouldn't accept the job and that what it often is: a job, but then without the pay.
Having one person as a Guildmaster can have his advantages.. decissions are often quickly made and actions quickly taken. Now this is not always an advantage ofcourse, sometimes it's better to be forced to think about something first and discuss it with others.
And what if your Guildmaster is a jerk or just simply with a whole different view on things then some others? A guild is likely to run into trouble.
But i can imagen having a great GM can work brilliantly aswell.
What about a Council? A big disadvantage imo is the speed at which it operates.. everything seems to be consulted with the others aswell.. if you take some quick action for a change there is a big chance someone else will go beserk.
Often it seems near impossible to get to an agreement the majority of a council backs which can drag out a decission endlessly where everyone is trying to make his point over and over again so someone else might change his mind. Best is to find a middle road but that simply aint just always there.
The advantage of a Council is that you can devide the workload and often get a result which is the offspring of the minds of several people.. which will likely match more people's ideas in the guild aswell.
I've run under a GM aswell.. i was just a regular member but he had his officers. This ubermensch GM saw his officers more as his henchmen tho and at a certain point he found himself colliding with his staff. The GM left the guild shortly after and a council was formed.
I don't think i could personally "work" as an officer with a GM like this above me but i could imagen a sort of partnership where the GM would take final responsibility and officers doing the daily running of the guild.
The current guild i'm a councillor in has sort of suckered me in that task aswell... i left my previous guild as i needed a break from being an officer and all the worries it brought along, i had to find back the fun in the game. My help was soon needed in the new guild as they told me and i became again part of the working force.
Truth told most people in this council pull their weight and i am nowhere close feeling like a GM nowadays which is pretty nice.
Still i wonder if being an officer is really worth it at times.. constantly solving "problems", being part of heated discussions both ingame as on the forums... being available for fellow guildies and always trying to give a good example.. it's a crappy job.
Sometimes i just wanna give up and go back to being a regular member, but especially at those moments it is when i'm needed and quiting would likely result in other people getting more work. Sure i'm replaceable, quite well in this guild too be honest.. but perhaps those who could are actually smarter then me and have decided to enjoy the game instead of trying to be a sorry excuse for an officer.
I respect my fellow officers, i can't always agree with them but thats actually a good thing. Important is to find a sollution a majority will agree upon. (I believe a perfect sollution just doesn't exist, the trick is to find a color that matches your skintone)
GM or Council? I'm sure both ways can work altho i wouldn't want a GM's job in a somewhat bigger raidguild.
Sometimes i long back to those days where was just playing singleplayer games, not worrying about other players and just enjoying the game flying solo.... aaaahhh, those were the days.
I need to say "hurray for badges!"... runs like Karazhan are a lot more popular all of the sudden it seems and that must have been the general idea Blizzard had all along. Sure more interest can mean it is easier to actually miss out on a run, certainly with an alt, but those you do get to attend are alot more fruitfull.
Yesterday we had a common problem: lack of healers. Two people had alt priests luckily and we managed to do both Huntsman and Moroes... dps was pretty amazing as most of the others were mains, in total we had 4 alts at the beggining where me and the hunter were epic geared. Later a main dps dropped out for a 3rd healer alt (which is also reasonable epic geared i think) Maybe the title is a bit too misleading afterall :)
Long story short.. we did Horseman (which we did by mistake actually.. had better skipped him), Moroes, Wiz of Oz (opera), Curator, Chess and Prince. We ended at a few minutes past 12h where we didn't start before 9ish, so 3 hours later we downed 6 bosses. Not bad if i say so myself.
I really liked the pace we were going and most people didn't take long afk and buff breaks, we weren't rushing and it was relaxed enough.
I think after i left some people went on and skapped either Illhoof or Aran aswell but it was time for my beautysleep.
Just now i found out i almost made a critical mistake... Vambracers of Courage dropped and i identified them as a minor upgrade compared to my current Bracers of the Green Fortress. I would lose some stamina, defense and dodge but would gain some armor and blockrating... as i'm short of rage often because i dodge and parry to much the extra blockrating seemed nice for extra threat for my Shield slam. But just now when getting links from Wowhead i notice there is actually an extra socket on the vambracers, won't lose stamina but would actually gain some.
Now thats a nice day-after surprise!
Like many others i got myself some nice fresh epics yesterday, resulting in enchant materials and gems to skyrocket.
Luckily i got most materials in advance so i will just be paying through the nose for the gem needed on the unexpected new bracers.
Just wonder why i didn't think of those prices skyrocket in advance so i could have joined the sledride to new found richess....
Well, i won't start complaining now.. i'm actually very happy with what i got yesterday and had truelly one of the better Wowdays.
It's good to be an addict. :-P
Why is it that some Epics don't seem worth the pixels? I remember when i first did Karazhan on my Hunter (my main) i was completely covered in the best Blue (rare) items i could find from questrewards, crafted or instance drops. One of the things i soon found at was that the Epics in Karazhan weren't that much of an upgrade over my blues most of the time... more of a sidegrade.
Most of the time i would actually lose dps but would gain some other stat, mostly stamina or intellect. In my own calculations i always used "dps > other stats" but i soon addopted a new motto: "dead people don't deal damage" so i went for the sidegrades anyway, altho sometimes with pain in my spreadsheet.
Still now i get offered new epic drops in SSC and now and then they are such minor upgrades that i wouldn't want to spend my dkp on it.. kind of like the Thunderstrike (aka Shadowstrike) which dropped from Sulfuron in MC, which wasn't worth the dkp either and thus got the nickname Nexusstrike or Vendorstrike.
Yesterday before i had to go raid SSC (Vashj 24%.. we will have her soon) i got invited for a quick Heroic run on my tank to Setthek Halls.
Things went smooth and we had picked up a good healer which was the only non-guildy. A bit later we managed to kill the final boss and Spaulders of Dementia dropped. I've been looking at these shoulders in the past and selected them as a future upgrade... so when these dropped i automaticly targeted them as an upgrade and rolled Need.
Now as i currently own Shoulderguards of the bold and epics > blues (yeah right) there was no doubt for anyone that i should get them. Only a bit after that i just realised that i was gonna get the PvP shoulders once Season3 would start (the day after) and that i should compare them to those... i might have denied someone a shard by my impulsive behaviour. Comparing them to either my current blue ones or the pvp ones they had no sockets which would result in quite a stamina setback, sure i would gain 24 agility (altho the crit on the pvp shoulders was more) but as this was ment for my tanking set the stamina had priority. The extra defense the Spaulders of Dementia would give aren't needed at the moment but i guess i bank them in case i need to swap some gear around.
In the end this item might have been more usefull as a shard and simply comparing them to the blue shoulders i have alone makes them more of a sidegrade then an upgrade... not worth the dkp but luckily i didn't need to spend it.
The one bonus it gave was the matching colors it has compared to the rest of my gear... making me look like less of a noob a day early. :)
The last week i have been leveling my mining on my level from zero to what it currently is (326?). I started out in Loch Modann east of Ironforge for Copper and later Tin, for Iron i went to the Arathi Highlands, then went on to the Hinterlands for Mithril. Before going to Silithus for the Rich Thorium veins i had to make a small stop in Ungoro crater for the few last needed levels on small Thoriumveins.
On my journey through the "old" world i made some stops in other area's aswell and almost everywhere i had the feeling i was the very last person alive in this world. Too be honest it felt pretty good being away from the crowd, it was almost like i was on a holiday... perhaps roleplaying might not be such a bad idea as i assume getting away and relax is part of their play aswell.
But i had more feelings then just that, i felt like i owned the place... every vein around there was mine and no creature was powerfull enough to lay hands on me, i even killed The Windreaver... a level 60 elite with 3 adds with a protection warrior. (kited him once on my Hunter which took alot longer and wasn't easy with all those damned bugs out in the Silithus dessert)
But being out there alone kind of made me sad... this great world as been discarded by most of us while we had soo many great adventures out there and spend days of our lives exploring those zones. Leveling a new toon is nowhere near as much fun as it was in the beginning of Wow and i pity da foo' who joined us later and missed out on that experience. Sure, loads of quests are a lot easier but teaming up with even a noob could make some quests alot easier... and lets not forget how much harder it is to get a low level instance party together.
I can only hope that with Northrend being added to the Azeroth map there will be going some more traffic through that world so at least Ironforge can be restored to it's own glory, or at least won't be the abandoned place it is now.
Likely just as Ogrimmar Ironforge used to be thé place to be... it was there where you would show your new gear, new pet, new gizmo/gadget, do your tradings or spend your hours being bored. Imho Shattrah hasn't really got a hangspot like this, as far as i know Blizzard did this on purpose to spread people to avoid lag for some players.
I'm ending this useless little post saluting the heroes who keep an eye on Azeroth for us while we are robbing the Outlands of its natural resources... thanks for keeping it safe until we return!
There are quite a few reputation grinds out there... altho considerable easier then pre-TBC it seems there are alot more factions to grind for now. It was Timbermaw and those dorfs in Black rock mountain which needed turn-ins íf you were after the rare crafting patterns but for most this wasn't worth the trouble. In the Outlands gaining an higher reputation level grants some worthwhile rewards now, untill recently you needed to be at least Revered with most of the factions to be able to do Heroics. Often you have to grind several factions to get the most benefit, a good item at Revered there... a shoulderenchant at Exalted there... a headenchant at Revered there... a nice offspec reward on Exalted there... etcetera.
And then there are the less usefull grinds, a grind for a sporeling pet, a grind for a special mount, a grind for a tabard, the list goes on.
I myself found my warrior on a point where i could pick three possible grinds;
The first aint a reputation grind actually, i dropped skinning and learned mining (currently at 250) so i could grind metals for crafting me thé tankgun out there.
The next option is a Consortium tabard. Why? Because it's red'ish and matches my gear... how stupid is that? :P
The final option is grinding to Exalted with Aldor so i can get the better shoulder enchant and have some extra defense. (don't need it atm tho)
Yesterday i was off to Nagrand to grind some consortium rep but before i even got there i reconsidered my options... sure a matching tabard would be nice but is it really more helpfull then the other two options? I decided to turn around and focus my attention on mining instead to get the tanking gun first.
Which one i grind first doesn't really matter much actually as grinding is mind numbing no matter where i need to do it, the reward tho should be rewarding enough to justify the time spend.
I consider myself pretty lucky, i've managed to minimalize my grinding sessions thus far.. some people's game actually exist mostly out of grinding (mostly or money) but i can set some goals to grind for and when i reach those i'm often done with it, i would fail as a chinese farmer for sure. I can't imagen what other people do to get through a grinding session, browse Youtube for new Happy tree friends episodes? (NSFW) "Read" a book on tape? Try to see shapes in the coffeestaines on their desks? Normally i just hang back (messing up my own back by doing that) and slowly fall into a coma, resulting in logging off after an hour because i'm sick of the game.. or at least this part of it.
Most of the time no reward justifies hours of work (thats what it feels like yeah) so why do we still bother? I guess some longing for progress or perhaps one of human's most basic feelings: Greed.
While in this game Stats > Looks it sure helps to have a character which looks okay, which pleases the own eye so to speak. Blizzard has admited this by offering a hair-change feature soon (?) in the next expansion: Wrath of the Lich King. But what i'm refering to is gearwise... for those who spend quite some time at level 60 have probably managed to get a nice set together, perhaps just out of 5-main, crafter or maybe in one the raidinstances. Having a good looking character helps you give you more that "Hero-feel" i assume, at least at every upgrade i quickly use the build-in dressingroom and pray it matches the gear i have slightly... but sadly it often doesn't.
People who had a nice Tier (considered an achievement) set or something pre-TBC quickly started looking like newbies upon entering Outlands in their rainbowlike carnival suites, for me that was a bit depressing.
At 70 the quest for upgrades began anew, often obtained from either raiding or pvp. I'll skip the story on my Hunter as he surely hasn't found the end of his journey yet.. but my Warrior seems to have gotten quite far. I'll start out with a screeny:
This is when my Warrior first set foot in Karazhan, the first raidinstance so to speak. While i was able to tank a bit i was still arms specced at this point.
As you can see the colors of my armor are as flashy as possible, often i try to use a tabard in a certain color to make it look a little bit more fashionable... i mostly fail tho :P
In a few more days i can spend some saved honor points and get me a nice Arena season1 shield and matching shoulders. For those who not know my Warrior has been tanking Karazhan and the alt runs (and even some main ones), often as Main Tank... i can barely dent a bar of butter solo but i make a pretty nice tank if i say so myself. Mainly because the ammount of time and money i've invested in my gear ofcourse. So what will be the endresult? (at least for now)
I present you with another piccy:
Don't i look stunning? Much is owed to Blizzard for matching non-set gear in Karazhan aswell ofcourse but i took the effort of picking it up at the various bosses. :)
I'm looking a bit into (near) future actuelly but it's just a matter of time now before i look like this, from next wednesday (28-11-2007) you should be able to see me standing in Shatt like this.. looks and stats nicely balanced. Or feel free to check his profile.
Looks aint everything, but shouldn't be ignored completely.. there are actually girls out there you know? :P
Raiding is expensive... can't deny that. Pots, reagents, repairs, food, bandages.. you name it.
Blizzard admits this and tries to help making this cheaper; pots in return for drops for example, adding a chance to get more then 1 pot when making it, (new) discounts on repairs on higher reputation levels, repeatable dailies to get quick money, dailies which give buff food.... who else what more.
But is it enough?
I find myself more and more grinding for herbs for pots, disenchanting greens for oils, doing boring dailies for cash... not because i want to but because i need to. I'm a Hunter so i don't use reagents but i use ammo instead... epic arrows which fly out with the speed of light as i'm a Beastmaster. Each raid i use a Flask of Relentless assault... i come home from work every day and 4 days a week i need to prepare for that nights raid. So i check out the Auction House and i pray for a reasonable priced Fel Lotus which is one of the components. I can farm the other 2 components quite easily but the droprate on Fel Lotus is just terrible... don't think i managed to get more then 6 myself sofar.
In the beginning they were about 25 gold, quickly they were going up in price but stubborn as i was refused to pay 30 bloody goldpieces for one stupid plant.
They prices didn't seem to go down tho and i had no choice to buy it for the price they are asking >.>
But it didn't stop there... prices are still going up and the cheapest one on the AH today was 45gold with the price of a ready flask at 50 gold.
On a raidnight i use:
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It seems drastical but i actually was thinking about offering my warrior's services on non raiddays... just for raids and perhaps an Heroic if there is anything to gain for me. I'm figguring there are still guilds out there who could use a good tank (don't want to be cocky but for an alt i do pretty well) to help them in Karazhan or even at Gruul when i'm lucky.
"But aren't you in a raiding guild already?" Why yes... but my Main is my Hunter and after playing him for over 3 years it's nice to be able to play a different toon now and then. I raid 4 times a week on my Hunter and apart from the hard needed grinding (both mats as gold for repairs) it's nice to run an instance with my alt now and then.
Thing is... my tank is just that: an Alt. Yesterday we did a Karazhan run... at least the others in the guild did. Wednesday has been our optional run for Mains since a while now but i want to play my alts on Monday and Wednesday which aren't offical raiddays.
So what happened lately on Wednesday's mainrun to Kara? Lack of tanks! Guess who was gonna play MT in there? Now that wasn't too hard was it? But thanks to the 2.3 patch there drop Heroic Badges in Karazhan now.. increasing tank interest all of the sudden.
Sure i could have gone to Kara myself on my Hunter but i've gone there to often on him.
Now normally we still have Monday Kara Alt-run, it's a matter of crossing your fingers and just hope enough people are up for it. (preferable people who at least enchanted their Blue gear) I fear for my alts raid options now tho as we have Zul'aman aswell which is a good alternative for a monday's raid, but not for alts ofcourse >.>
I managed to get my tank some nice gear and i am still working on that. I like to do Karazhan but if i'm honest there aint much for me to get there but thats not the point... a tank needs to tank. Sure a 5man is fun but i hardly need the Epic gear i've gathered for that, even for Heroic i'm slightly overgeared i'd say. Even if i would be able to do Karazhan more often, what is the next step for an alt? Whats the next step for someone who aint considered full? It's about picking up the crumbs other people drop... "all tanks sick/depressed/grind wife-rep? Woot! Perhaps if you need a tank i can bring mine? ^.^ " Can't remember this happening yet and i don't expect it too happen anytime near soon, maybe around Xmas if i'm lucky.
But should i just hang around waiting for things which might not ever happen? Should i quit the guild with my Warrior and find a guild who's on Gruul, Karazhan, Magtheridon (about the point at which my warrior is) and join them on non-raid days? Doesn't sound like a bad idea but might be tricky combining two "lives". Should i request a mainswitch? As a councillor of the guild i'm well aware we got enough tanks already and my Hunters dps would surely be missed.
To not complicate things selling my services might not be such a bad idea, sort of a hitman but in my case receiving the hits instead of making one. :) Running an instance like Karazhan gives Heroic badges as drops, i'd say this would be enough payment... perhaps a drop when i'm lucky. If i would need to tank Gruul for the 100th time while there is nothing to gain i'd say paying my repairs would be the least they could do, but as i still would like some drops from him ánd the experience of tanking him at all it would be certainly my treat for now.
Or maybe i should stop dreaming and just accept what i am: an alt.
Our raid starts at 20h30, 19h15 i enter the lovely World of Warcraft... enough time for a quick Heroic? Worth a shot...
Let's see what our Consortium friends in Shattrah want us to eliminate today, a big dragon in the Caverns of Time... at the Dark Portal to be more precise. Well, might be a tricky one but lets give it a shot.
Within two minutes i have a party together, including a lock who wiped there earlier today and is willing to give it another shot.
We move all the way to frakkin' Tanaris, waisting valuable time.. the clock is ticking but there is still time.
We let our lock run into the instance first as we need to use his raid id... hmmm, two different instances? Ok run out, make lock leader and try again. That seems to work!
But WTH? Some of us can't enter "instance full", but before i figured out what is going on the answer comes to me... on a dwarven mount.... and then another answer.. on a horse. Suddenly i find myself in this instance with two people who aint even in our party. o.O
We are confused and it seems the other guys are aswell. A Blizzard fuckup? I've heard about double ID's before, there was a thing a while back where an Alliance and an Horde raid had the same ID in the Black Temple... they had the unique (but not working as intended) chance to down a BT boss with a mixed raid. (Not sure if they succeeded on that tho)
I also read this article on a 3 vs 3 Arena match where suddenly a 4th of the opposing faction joined one of the teams and was able to actually heal those guys.
Did we encounter something like this? Did Blizz used the same raid ID for a next group already?
There wasn't time to make a ticket and wait for a GM to finally show... let alone get disappointed by his "sollution" which often are in the range of "delete your WTF folder and restart".
Soon we found out that Blizzard wasn't to blame.. (there goes my mass conspiracy theory) one of the people who done the instance with our saved lock tried again aswell with a different party. At least one of that (also unsuccesfull) party teamed with some others again after that and those were saved to that raid ID aswell now... the same as i was saved onto now aswell :S There were likely about 10-14 people saved to this ID now... resulting in little chance for most of us to actually do the instance.
By now we had just 40 minutes left and while at first we wanted to give Ramparts a quick shot for at least 1 badge we soon decided to give up on that too, invites for the raid usually start a bit early, most of us needed some preparation time and i surely didn't want to be caught in a different instance and thus delaying the raid as an officer.
Tonight is a no-raid day, perhaps a last minute Karazhan or Zul'aman but if i'd rather do an Heroic thats my choice. If i'm able to join on my warrior i won't mind either tho, i'm still 2 badges short of a new tank cloak and there is plenty of other stuff to get aswell.
Yesterday was disappointing Badges-wise but life aint over yet. On a more positive note i wiped all night on Vashj yesterday while we were learning the event on our second day... trying out different tactics. We got to 3 out of 4 shields in the second (and hardest) phase so things are coming along nicely.. despite all deaths i had a great time and i can't till the next time i can drop my lifeless body in front of Lady Vashj again. (altho returning the favor would be even nicer but i can wait...)
Aye it's true... i was sooo bored yesterday i actually started fishing once again.
We had somewhat planned to finish Karazhan (just chess between us and the Prince) but some others decided to go do Zul'Aman... because of this we ended up in two raids (altho i only started invites áfter it seemed that people didn't want to do ZA that day) and neither did go anywhere in the end. I tried to get my raids people to get to ZA if they wanted so they wouldn't have to hang around bored doing nothing, i myself just didn't feel like raiding on my Hunter... i had set my mind on raiding with my warrior and the hunter just wouldn't do.
My recently restarted m8 has been leveling his fishing as he wanted to level his cooking to be able to do the new cooking dailies. I gave him some tips how to do it, for example i advised him to go fish outside of the Wailing Caverns and catch Deviate Fish so he (ended up being me) could turn them into [Savory Deviate Delight] and make some profit from leveling fishing... sure it takes a bit longer to skill fishing like that but it won't end at a certain level, you will just need to catch more and more for a level.
He found a new way to earn gold; fish for lobsters as those turn into
[Spicy Crawdad] which are supposed to sell nicely on AH aswell.
To improve his fishing skills he even enchanted some gloves with +5 fishing and was then on his way to Stranglethorn Vale to do a quest to get a fishing hat... i soon found out that he ment the hat which is a turn-in reward from a rare fish during the sundays fishing tournament, my bet is that he can be found there next weekend. :)
I advised him to get the new Find Fish tracking so spotting the pools will be alot easier then, learned from a [Weather-beaten Journal] which can be caught from pools since patch 2.3. As i was bored i decided to get this of my list aswell... surprisingly the fourth catch already had the journal in it, caught from a pool of fish in Zangermarsh.
The rest of the evening i would catch fish usefull to raiding later, fish with Agility and those with Stamina ánd mp5... in between i would fish on floating wreckage and pure water which gave me some Motes of Water, Fel Iron ore, handsful of Fel Iron bolts and all sorts of other debris. No fishing won't make me rich but surprisingly i didn't mind fishing mindlessly throughout the rest of the evening, i didn't feel like anything else anymore.
Did i waste my evening? I'd like to think not: i managed to maximize my cooking, gain some fishing skills and got a bag full of buff food. I even managed to get some earlier shuteye without still seeing flashes before my eyes from hectic fights and hefty repairbills.... maybe i should fish more often, Nag Pagle finally got his own dock and tent after 3 years... perhaps he's living the good life afterall.
With the introduction of patch 2.3 i've suddenly found a new habbit for my warrior alt: collecting badges!
Now i suddenly have all the Heroic keys i can go anywhere i want to which makes the new daily Heroic quests even sweeter.
It seems simple, clear the Heroic instance.. get the quest item drop and get 2 free Heroic badges... actually it ís simple!
So killing 3 bosses will give you a quick 5 badges, it's like my poststamp collection has started all over again. (except for the fact i never did that but you get the picture :P )
With a shitload of new items added there is bound to be something to your liking at the vendor, i myself have laid my eyes on a new tanking cloak; [Slikk's Cloak of Placation].
I've not yet given much thought on what to get after that but some bits are deffo an upgrade compared to the Karazhan epics i currently have, the leggings for one... but lets get that cloak for starters.
Yesterday (sunday) we did an alt run to Karazhan during the day and in the time available we managed to get to Curator, one-shotting every boss.. even had a premature pull on Maiden and while she took a life we reacted quickly and put things right. This may seem unrelated but it isn't actually... this relative short run made us end up with 9 Badges of Justice. Not a bad number i'd say for a couple of hours while at the same time gearing up some alts.
Now in a previous post i complained it was waaay easier to get epics doing pvp then raiding... while clearing 25man raids can still be a pain, gathering badges has gotten alot easier ánd faster. Lots of the rewards are even surprisingly good, some won't even need to be replaced untill you're in the Black Temple.
I'm not raiding (just) for the loot ofcourse, i had a great time yesterday evening when we did our first ever attempt on Lady Vashj (woot!), but it almost seems you just need to clear SSC and TK to get attuned to the next instance not just for gearing up.
In a way the new Badge system helps raid progress aswell ofcourse, people can work on gearing up outside of raids aswell.. even pot up on DKP that way to get the better drops later. :) I myself like to invest in my alt, maybe not the best move progress-wise but at this moment that is where i get most fun from and aint that the main goal of this game?
Anyway.. after 2 Heroic runs and 1 Karazhan run i'm at 23 badges which is just 2 short of a new cloak which makes me a happy gamer ;)
I got a few good (hopefully) posts still waiting but i feel it aint the time for that yet.. so without a real topic i'm gonna start todays post.
At least i have some stuff to write about; our guild did Zul'Aman yesterday.
A shocking 32 people came online to experience the new Troll themed instance and surprisingly we were able to form 3 raidgroups, reasonable balanced.
Sorting this took some time so we started off a bit late.
We've read the tactics quickly but besides that we knew very little on this instance, so a little scared and very cautious we moved forward. We soon found out the trash to the first boss (bear-dude) was easy enough for our group and shortly after we were at the boss. I told the others the tactics on this one and we did our first attempt which would become the last one aswell as we 1-shotted him.
He did hit quite hard and i saw our tanks health drop awfully low at times but the healers kept them up. Sadly enough no one wanted the loot he dropped.
To my surprise my group was the first one to kill the boss which made me a bit proud on "my" group :)
We moved back and went north to the Eagle boss, supposed to be the next boss when comparing easy-ness. Trash was a bit of a surprise as we needed to run a sort of short gauntlet, clearing the path upwards while adds kept spawning. Despite one of our players DC'ing we had not much problems with this as all players acted quickly to the unexpected event, nice to have people around who can take action without 4-page instructions.
After explaining tactics on the Eagle boss and adapting them a bit we managed to 1-shot that one aswell. The loot was perfect for a resto-shammy but as we didn't have one in our group we were another shard richer.
The Dragonhawk boss was our next target, Lynx might have been easier i heard later but he will have to wait. The first thing i noticed was a Scout, i instantly remembered these being buggers but he was aggro'd before i could call out to stop him. Adds spawned which we dealt with.
But before we reached the boss we had to kill many of these scouts, often too late so we ended up dealing with both a trashpull as a load of adds.
We wiped at least 3 times just getting to this boss, might have been more even... what a pain those scouts are.
The boss appeared to be a bit trickier and we needed to adapt our tactics several times and we almost had the trick figured out and were ready to take him down.
But when some people who had to repair ran back we had to cope with respawns.
It was late so we called it but we had quite a bit of fun in Zul'Aman, despite disappointing rewards so far. (altho the 3 Heroic Badges and the new 20slot bag were nice)
All 3 groups ended with the same ammount of bosses killed in the time available, we just managed to test the trash before the Dragonhawk boss a bit more :)
With a bit of luck we can head back there tonight but with 3 different raidids chances are slim, but at least we have a fresh SSC waiting for us aswell.
Guess i'll report back in... other bloggers seem to have made a report on their findings (like BBB) and it would make a fitting followup to my previous post. I'll try to make this as painless as possible for you guys tho so don't worry.
So how did i spend my day?
I logged on to my Hunter, got the new patterns (actually i did live up to my addictness and did this during my lunchbreak which i used to drive home like a madman.. patched my wow and then did a quick Outlands tour).
Later that day i finished the daily cooking quest and got [Spicy Hot Talkbuk] instead of the wanted [Kibler's bits], better luck tonight i guess.
I did make the new 1000 feather quiver so i gained a wooping 6 slots and filled the half quiver up with the new epic arrows for boss events.
The new animation for Volley is doable i guess... looks a bit like fireworks (shooting from the chest as the Hunter won't be doing a shootanimation >.>) but the sound!!! It even sounds like bloody fireworks... i'm trying to kill mobs with it, not threat them to a fuckin' show here... /sigh
Took a quick peak at the Heroic badge rewards and i've spotted a nice tankcloak sofar, defo need to look more into what they have later.
The Guildbank is looking pretty cool aswell, i'm not sure if it will change much for our members but our Guild's banker is surely happy we will be able to give him a hand from now on.
Most addons still seemed to work for me or i didn't really missed them much yet.. will check on those somewhere this weekend i suppose, gives the addon masters some time to update them aswell.
I checked out the new Daily PvP quests which would give me a shocking 450honor (i think it was) and some badges from that BG aswell, not bad. Too bad to complete the quest you need to win the Battleground, quite a pain as alliance :/
We even managed to lose Alterac Valley for the first time in a loooong time.. the new method requires a bit more tactical play so we are pretty much fucked in another BG. Luckily i'm close to the wanted items so i can forget about them for a bit soon.
As all Heroic keys are available on Honored now i picked mine up aswell (already had them on my main but my tank just had 2 thusfar). I quickly got drafted for the days Heroic (Ramparts) to earn 2 extra badges when turning in the daily, really like this addition... will make finding Heroics quite a bit easier, at least once a day because after that you're saved anyway. Soon i was unvirgined as a Heroic Tank and the near full Epic gear i had did withstand the test excellent, even when our healer DC'd i managed to stay up long enough for our Elemental shammy to notice and spam me some heals.
I joined another Heroic later as i got the taste for it and went to the Manatombs. Things went smooth and our Ret Pala was happy aswell as he didn't manage to overaggro me aslong as we were killing a single mob, on pulls where i had to tank more then 1 i had to keep an eye on that but even then it went okay most of the time.
Can't take the credit for the smoothness of this run myself as we had some of our finest in that party.
Besides a few more badges (which brought my 1st days total to 8) [The Fel Barrier] dropped aswell, i really wanted that... not just for the usefull resistance stats but also for the great graphics. The first epic i had bought for my warrior was the [The Skullflame Shield] which costed me quite a bit. After i got hacked this shield was one of the first items i rebought for him as i just loved it. I hated it i had to replace it for a better shield later on and still have it in my bank.. good to finally have it as an upgraded version :) The mage we had along (a regular reader :P ) mentioned me it had better armor then my current which i didn't even notice yet, almost 1k even. The reason i didn't take a very good look at this is as i plan to have the Gladiator shield next week anyway which will be superior to this one again... at least it gives me one week to walk arround looking old fashion wicked again.
Hmmm.. guess it wasn't as painless as i expected it to be, thanks for sticking tho :P
At least it's a sign there was plenty to do for me yesterday, patch 2.4 next week please?
At work at the moment (as usual at this time) and with the new patch waiting for me at home its time to make a To-Do list to getting going as effective as possible when i get home. Nothing says Addict like a shitload of pre-planning.
So time to check out the 2.3 patchnotes once again.
The to-do list will be different for each person but this one is for my level 70 Hunter with Leatherworking, for my Tank there aint much to do yet at this point.. he will have to wait till next week when season 3 starts.
I find myself checking out the blogs i read several times a day, some of them i'm checking at least every hour to see if they already posted something new. So i was wondering "am i a too stable guy?" I do my best to post once a day, not in the weekends but i do during workdays. That makes 5 posts a week.
Only on very special occassions i post more then once on one day, when i didn't manage to put up a post the day before for example so my average won't fall. Or when i get a brilliant good idea all of the sudden and i already did post that day.
But to be honest, i don't do that very often... you can check, the blogroll is right there on the right. Go ahead, take a glimps if you don't believe me (calling me a big fat liar, bwah.. ).
And then i wondered: do all those visits i bring count to the number of visits to other people's blogs? Do i unknowingly boost them up the meters? It's not about meters i know that but it's nice to check them out once in a while and see you actually do this with a reason... people reading the "articles" i manage to produce.
Me with my steady postingritm might mess up my own number of visits, people visit my site somewhere during the day.. read the article.. check the date to make sure it's a new one (or regelars might actually know) and check back again the day after.
So thats why i posted two times today! To keep you on your toes!!! Maybe i'll even post again in 10mins,... or i won't.. guess you won't know till you check back do ya? :P
In meantime i'll go check out the Eternal N00bies again and see if he updated it or any of the others i recently added to my bloglinks, The Bronze Kettle or Girl meets Wow for example.
Ah well.. can always read the patchnotes for patch 2.3.0 for the 5th time.
Yesterday a fairly new guildy announced something terrible... something which made all our own frustrations and problems look insignificant and i'm not just talking about the ingame ones. I have come to appreciatte this guy already in a short period of time as he's not just a very skilled player but also a very nice guy, always paying attention and in for a joke.
He shared his reallife pain with us as he it was likely to effect his ingame life and time aswell, without going too much into detail as i wanna respect his privacy; his other half got attacked by a bunch of drunk racist kids a bit back.. and while thing were looking good now his partner was recovering in the hospital there occured unexpected complications. Yesterday morning our guildy had to say goodbye to his love.
Now i have lost a few people in my life aswell, most shockingly my best friend and my mother within 3 weeks from each other.. i can't imagen how terrible it must be to lose your GF/BF, when thinking about it i wouldn't know what would happen if i would have to go on without my GF.
This guildy decided to share his grieve with us as sharing your pain is likely the best thing you can do, even with relative strangers. He told us he was surprised he found such comfort from us, people on the other side of an on-line game. One of the guildies told him we weren't just a guild, we are a family... if something happens to one of us the others are there for him/her. I guess this is true for our guild mostly, i'd chosen the word Friends instead of Family myself but i guess it's just how you look at it. It's this familiy/friends feeling which keeps us together on moments when things don't run that smooth.
So if someone is in trouble we'd like to think we can try to help, sadly we can do little more then have a friendly chat when someone is having reallife problems. A while back when we had some people being hacked (including me) it showed just how much the rest of the guild would help with something they could actually help with. Besides a shitload of gold, pots and enchants heading our way they were gonna boost us through BWL... buttnakid if needed.
Ofcourse what happened to this guildy was alot worse then getting hacked and his life would probably evolve arround getting his love's murderer behind bars for quite a bit and i can only he won't lose himself into that.
He spend most of his time with friends and family yesterday if i understood him correctly but as seeing he came online at the start of the evening they let him have some time to himself, or perhaps his familiy needed time to themselves.. i'm just speculating a bit here.
This guildy spend most of his night as far as i can tell in the World of Warcraft, trying to get his mind of things for a while. You might want to call it hiding from the real world but there is only so much you can take and being online surrounded by people you've come to see as friends might just be the thing you need if you want to forget the mean and messed up world out there, if only for a short while.
My thoughts are with you and your family m8, hope you can get through this.
Update: rounded down some numbers which gave a bit inaccurate outcome, been more precise now. Also added the effect of Faerie fire.
We were having a discussion in the Warrior section on our forum on the best tank weapon enchant and the new enchant Executioner came up in this story aswell;
Permanently enchant a Melee Weapon to occasionally ignore 840 of your enemy's armor. Requires a level 60 or higher item.
I wondered if ignoring 840armor would be such a great deal, so i looked up the ammount of armor on bosses (list on end of this post) and most bosses seem to have either 6200 or 7700 armor.
When ignoring 840 armor that is at least 11% of their armor which seems quite a bit.
This doesn't however say the damage you deal will be 11% higher. If i may believe wowwiki, the formula for damagereduction is as followed:
Levels 60+ DR% = Armor / (Armor+400+85*(Level+4.5*(Level-59)))
For a level 73 (bossmob) with 7700 armor the damagereduction will be: 0,39 (so from 100 damage 61 will come through)
For a level 73 (bossmob) with 7700-840 armor the damagereduction will be: 0,36 (so from 100 damage 64 will come through)
So roughly said (correct me when i'm wrong) thats an occassionaly 3% damage increase, assuming my math is correct here. (2,7% actually when not rounding numers)
Executioner can proc when active and lasts 15seconds... when it procs it doesn't stack but it does refresh itsself. In theory you could keep this up with a fast weapon so you would be able to consider this a near 3% threat improvement on damagedealing attacks. (so doesn't apply to Sunder or Demoshout for example) As Devastate (which does deal damage) is likely to be used instead of Sunder after the 2.3 patch as it applies a sunder aswell, the number of damagedealing moves a tank does will even increase.
Btw on a full sundered boss with 7200 armor this will be 0,30 and 0,26 reduction... so the damage reduction is reduced by about 4% (3,6% not rounded).
When also adding Faerie Fire the effect damagereduction will be reduced by 3,8%.
Conclusion:Assuming my view on this isn't crooked then Executioner gives about 3% damageincrease which is quite a bit. (depending on other debuffs)
While 1 damage = 1 threat, defensive stance of a Warrior increases this aswell. Again this enchant won't give you a 3% threat increase as most skills have an ammount of threat "built in" (450 in a sunder for example) we can't talk about a 4% threatincrease.
But what other options are then?
Ok.. 65 posts later i finally do what i told myself to do at the start: make a proper header! Well proper, it's sorta what i had in mind and i'm pretty happy with it myself.
I'm not 100% done yet as i need to center the damned picture, didn't find how that was possible.. perhaps the only way is making a wider image... but i'll look into that later. It's 2 'o clock at night now and i just finished this after a late raid into Serpentshrine Caverns and it's really bedtime for me now.
The only reason i'm still doing this is the lack of Wow-time i have this weekend due to social events, bleeuk!
Some info on the header; the background picture is actually my workspace at the office... that's where i write 99,9% of my blogs and spam various other blogs and forums and look for all the Wow-related info during daytimes. Ow and i manage to do some work there aswell now and then. ;)
I used Wow modelview to assemble my character, thats how i look at the moment but i don't intend to change it before i got full Tier7 just so you know. After that i used the same program to get some other wow-related items which are in there aswell.
I edited the screenshots with Paintshop pro and then put it all together in Adobe Imagestyler, which is an outdated program (freeware now) but i still use it. (Livemotion was its followup which has been replaced by something else again i believe)
Anyway, hope you like the new header. :)
I need to thank you, my readers, or actually the people at work should thank you. Because if i didn't write down my Wow obsessions in this blog i would have been "that guy at work". You know who i mean, this guy (or perhaps even girl/woman) who keeps talking about what obsesses him.. often something that aint interesting in the far distance, at least not for you it is.
It even become less interesting when he starts repeating himself and you start to hear fragments for the 3rd time, quite amazing how you can tell the same story in so many different (but still boring) ways.
The best thing is to just keep doing whatever you were doing when this guy starts and give him an occassional "uhuh", you're just there to receive anyway... don't bother to respond or add to his wall of text as he ain't gonna stop talking for a second anyway.
I'm always cautious when people start me on Wow to not end up like this rambling guy at work. Being overenthousiastic about a game is still not completely accepted and if you go on about it too long you will get mocked.
I guess me talking about my Wow passion is for non-players as boring as it is for me when this guy at work is talking about his house and the chours he still needs to do (for the 100th time). But still it's socially more accepted that this guy keeps on chattering on about wooden floors, paint and nails while i get a frown when i talk about my on-line friends and virtual items. Perhaps a grown man shouldn't spend so much time on a game?
So thank you, for reading my ramblings and making me not feel like that guy who's stories aint interesting enough to want to devote some valuable time on. Ow and i would appreciate if you wouldn't comment with "uhuh". ;-)
As i might have mentioned before i have a druid aswell, currently level 64. I leveled this guy quite a while ago as a feral but i got bored with it after a while so it got stuck on arround level 42. After a while i decided to pick it up again and try it as a Moonkin... the main reasoning behind this was that i would have gear with a nice ammount of mana (spelldamage/healing was limited at that level) which would easier get me into groups for instances aswell.
I liked the extra possibility this gave me and the big hits when solo'ing wasn't bad either.. actually a nice change from Feral.
After a while we even got moonkin form with the sexy dance and shortly after they buffed moonkin so it was a bit less of a Oomkin, still problematic at times but a great improvement mostly.
I ran Zul'Gurub with my Moonkin later and one of the bigger issues was getting aggro all the time, i simply had to wait twice as long before starting dps then the other casters so a lucky Starfire crit wouldn't draw the mobs attention again.
Trash went fine this way but at boss encounters i ran out of mana halfway during a fight anyway (this was before you could spank a mob for manareturn, unless Judgement of Wisdom was on). During these events i often just stayed in caster form and offhealed where needed, also on trash i would often switch out of Moonkin and dropped some heals here and there if the action became a bit high paced.
Despite all of this i managed to get relative high on the charts, probably at nr. 2 or 3 if i just would keep dps'ing all of the time.
DPS was good, threatgeneration was waay too good and manaproblems were defo an issue aswell.
Recently i've seen more newitems on Moonkin, one was of a Moonkin tanking in Karazhan for one. Sure this moonkin had likely quite good gear and perhaps some dps even had to hold back to not overaggro (altho without BoS a Moonkin can be a tank's worst nightmare),.. but still it was a funny way to use a moonkin, probably the only class/spec besides Pala, Warrior and Feral Druid who can pull this off relative easily due to the armorbonus in moonkin form.
Now i realise my druids gear is probably quite crappy still but i'm not too impressed with my own performance so far. Unless i can root a mob so it won't interrupt my loooong casts i'm in a bit of tight spot. Barkskin is nice but often doesn't allow me enough time to completely kill a mob, resulting in the need of using the mana-ineffective instant Moonfire several times. I use my Treants mostly as offtanks when i happen to run into more then 1 mob, buying me enough time to kill one mob as more then one beating on me at once resulted in my fur (feathers?) turning gray before i got a spell off. (or my immenent death, whichever comes first)
The good stories i've read recently on Moonkins haven't restored my enthousiasm with my Druid sadly enough, i'd like to level it so i can use him for a farmbot (as he has mining) and make a buck for a change. (engineering on him costed me plenty thus far) But i've done the Outlands content twice now and won't do it again if the character need to do it with doesn't appeal to me in some way.
So unless someone makes me see the light, my druid is staying AFK for a bit... till we meet again my green haired friend.
Due to being ill (likely thanks to the GF) i've missed 2 raids now and one optional Kara raid. I did do some dailies but by the time it was time to raid the water was running from my eyes and my head was beating like a whole raid of Drums, so it was time to hit the bed once more.
As we have no raid tonight it could be a slow night once again, perhaps i'll even go watch some tv or play HL2 instead of Wow if there is nothing to do for me.
You'd think i'd really need my wow-fix after a period of none raiding and limited other wow-time... but it's not like that actually. I've been trying to think of something fun to do later on today when i'm no longer stuck at work but the inspiration is limited.
Now i did read that the patch (2.3) will hit us next week (14th of November for Europe, one day earlier for the US) which means i have some farming to do. I was planning on making me that new big quiver ([Quiver of a Thousand Feathers]) so i wouldn't have to fill up my backup aswell constantly... i wanted to have enough honor on my Warrior alt to buy at least the shield, perhaps even the shoulders (Season 3 of Arena starts the 20/21th so i got a week more for that). But as 2.3 is the Zul'Aman patch we will likely be hitting that place which is something i look forward to aswell.
I'm expecting the Monday Karazhan run to be canceled for a while tho so i might need to shelve my Warrior for a bit sadly enough... unless we can use him in ZA, not sure if his gear is 100% up to that tho.
Not sure what else i'm looking forward to atm, the new ammo is nice and it sure helps getting an ammo vendor in Shattrah for all the special ammo (1 at Scyer and 1 at Aldor) which will reduce traveling time to the different factions). I was thinking if i should stock up on mats to get myself some Engineered arrows made... ([Adamantite Arrow Maker]) if i'm not mistaken those are the highest damage ones again.
I'm kind of a cheapskate, always carrying around two types of arrows; 1 type for trash/solo play and the better expensive type for bosses.
I know most other Hunters just use one type, i wonder if i didn't save on those if i would end up even higher on the charts when looking at overall damage...
Guess i'm up for some pre-fun, preparing for things and items to come... a relaxed night awaits me with plenty to do but nothing with high priority. Let's start in Westfall to grind me 1000 Light Feathers (99 actually) for my quiver so that task is doen with.
After that i might do some Alterac Valley on my Warrior... currently still the easiest and fastest way to gain quick Honor but i'm afraid when they "fix" AV in 2.3 that a match is actually gonna take alot longer.
Perhaps i should find a way to level my Engineer to level 335 so i can make my own arrows, the problem is that my Engineer is just level 64 atm so can't farm the pattern by himself :S Good thing one of our Hunters has switched to engineering recently so i'll guess i'll go mailbomb his box for now :)
For those who don't know; machinima is a videoclip made with the use of gametools or totaly shot ingame. I'm not sure where it started but i know it's been around since at least Quake. One of the more well known machinima's is the RedvsBlue series, which is shot using Halo.
Ofcourse as a Wow-addict i'm more into wow-related movies and there are some mighty fine ones out there... some just musicvideo's, others complete series or even movies. There is alot of quality difference between them all.. where others are silent-movies, some have brilliant voice acting aswell. (and some less brilliant sadly enough)
As i enjoy watching clips like this during slower periods at raids i wanted to share the ones i enjoy with you, perhaps making it a returning series. I'm starting this series with a couple of music video's based on music from Jonathan Coulton, the funny texts he uses in his songs have proven to make excellent clips.. so i made a kind of top 10 (truth is i didn't find more then 10), all made by the same guy (or group). It's quite funny to see how his Machinima skills have evolved aswell where the first ones barely had any special effects where the latest ones are full of creative highlights. For Maximum enjoyment you might want to start at the bottom and work up (altho it's not totaly in the correct order, it's kind of in the order which my current mood fits... Code Monkey is my personal number one anyway).
Nr. 1 Code Monkey
Nr. 2 The Future Soon
Nr. 3 Betty and Me
Nr. 4 Skullcrusher Mountain
Nr. 5 I Feel Fantastic
Nr. 6 The Big Boom
Nr. 7 Podsafe Christmas Song
Nr. 8 Creepy Doll
Nr. 9 Just as long as me
Nr. 10 Your Brains
And as a small bonus a beefed up version of Code Monkey: Speed Monkey
Yesterday i was bed-bound for most of the day as i became ill in the weekend. This resulted in me missing sunday's raid and even worse: made me skip yesterdays blog, omg! At the end of the monday i was soo freakin' bored with my bed i logged in onto WoW around 20h despite of the headache. I didn't really felt like doing anything and since not much was going on anyway i ended up standing in Shatt for an hour or so before finally doing a few mindless quests.
Now this hanging around does happen more often, even when i don't have an headache... just because i can't find the inspiration for something. Luckily i find myself with less down-time in the Outlands then i did pre-TBC.
Before we had dailies and the relative short instance runs people often spend enteire nights hanging around in Ironforge (prob the same goes for Ogrimarr) looking for a group to a instance of his/her liking.
Or if you had an alt but didn't want to take it through the dreaded STV quest-zone again... anyway, there was nothing fun to do besides watching the spammeral chat or scanning the Auction House for the bazillionth time.
Often you did nothing but chat a bit with friends who had the same problem sitting around a campfire on the AH bridge.
But at other times you tried to think up stupid things to do to kill time.. who hasn't lined up in a mount parade around IF at least once?
Some people duelled outside the IF gates all night but that got bored too fast for me anyway.
I spend a big part of one night running around with a m8 through IF in what i called "GTA-style", with the camera direct above us looking down (like the old Grand Theft Auto games) which gave a whole new look to Wow for awhile.
This same Warrior m8 set up a guild once called < Warrior Trainer > once and was camping in between the other Warrior trainers. It was a long night but he actually got some low level warrior noob confused, guess it was worth the wait. :)
I suppose i would have clicked the T3 warrior myself aswell if i wanted to gain some knowledge.
We've seen words spelled on the floor out of bears, mass moonkin dances (saxy!), people playing hide and seek or simply nakid Nightelfs dancing in an AoE shower.
I myself tried to move around IF in a Free running way... trying to minimalize the time on regular ground and jump from building onto the balcony of the next, quite a bit of Ironforge can be done like this. But other people have been more persistant and kept rubbing certain walls until they reached the highest parts of Ironforge, i've seen people in that gap where the Gryphon flies through for example. (between bank-square and the forge)
When i get bored in Shattrah i go do some dailies most of the time till something more fun comes around, perhaps Blizzard has sort of smuttered our creativity by offering us more to do...
Who does the raidinggame must have been confronted with damage meters... Recap, Recount, WWS.. various options to track the ammount of damage you have dealth. At the moment i use Omen which is (as you hopefully know) is actually a threatmeter. Then i manage to stay high on the threatmeters i know i'm dishing out the most dps, as a small bonus i have goo view on the tanks threat. It doesn't give nice meters afterwards or pretty statistics but thats not that important to me, it's important i try to squeeze out as much as possible when the moment is there... not because i want to top the meters but because i wanna be the best i can be and succeed.
Ofcourse being high on the meters is a nice ego boost, yet again a bonus :)
Not all of us can be part of the damagemeters, healers and tanks aren't suppose to do damage... at least not as a primairy task. A lot of classes are ment to do dps but others have other functions aswell to justify their lower damage output or Blizz just hit them with the nerfbat too hard somewhere in the past. In the past Hunters weren't ment on top of the meters, they were mostly part of the sub-top and offered other utility... not threat limited and low maintenace dps were two of those. (Despite that i was often top dps on my Hunter)
Mages were high up there... thé dps class so to speak. Rogues did pretty good aswell when they weren't limited by movement or other factors which limited their dps time or their potential lifespan.
Currently the three classes which are ment to top the meters are Rogue's, BM Hunters and Warlocks... at least thats the last thing i heared.
For some reason one of our Mages begs to differ and often is on the top aswell, competing with Rogue's and BM Hunters. Most of our Locks can't keep up sadly enough and i'm afraid that says more about them then the mage.
This mage however is a numbercruncher and i'm sure he reads up on his class whenever possible, not saving a single goldpiece if he can get an item with 1spelldamage more and using flasks as manadrinks.
I consider myself a good player but i'm not checking on my own performance 5 times a day, i don't respec each week for the need of the raid (altho i think my spec fits me best) and i refuse to heavily pot up on trashpulls. (i go all out on bosses seems enough for me and will hopefully avoid me going bankrupt soon)
Some players excell in every class they play, they are just good gamers and are able to play anything to it's possible potential.... i think i play my Warrior pretty damn good aswell for example (still much to learn but i'm making good progress) and this mage can play his other toons pretty good aswell.
What is my point in this story? I'm not sure actually, i guess to show that we can overcome the retrictions Blizzard puts on our classes and can shine even if general believes try to tell us otherwise.
For your enjoyment (and to make my point) click the image for a bigger view of the damage done on our very first Leotheras (SSC) kill.
Yesterday was a raid-free day, we have 3 evenings like that where no raids are planned. So on these nights (and during daytime in the weekend) you can do things for yourself.
Quite stunning how much personal time you have to commit to a raidgroup. If you want to have to privelage to see stuff you can't see solo you will have to sacrifice something in return ofcourse.
As i probably told before Karazhan is no longer part of our raidschedual, we do it on our free days and it's totaly optional... if you rather alt, run a 5-man or need to grind, it's up to you. Karazhan is however DKP free, it has always been.. which means it's a nice way to get some nice gear without killing your DKP-pool. (that is, if there is still gear in there you need)
For a large group it's a nice way to play your alt and give it some half decent gear aswell, lucky for those mains who still want to go as it is a pain to get people to go there nowadays just for the fun of it as most are quite sick of Kara by now. The downside is that it's often not clear in advance if we have a Kara run going or not and many times it starts late as we wait and pray for someone to fill the last spot. (healers mostly)
To kill time we did a run to Botanica, i was up for the rep and most others (all alts except for the lock m8) hoped for a combination of rep and loot. Then suddenly the call for Karazhan came which was our main goal (at least it was mine) but shortly we found out our healer didn't wanna go to Kara and rather finished the run..... i commited to this run so i had no choice to finish it. I'm glad the healer told us, don't get me wrong.. rather have him being honest then blame us for ditching him later on.
We finished the run quite fast anyway and even replaced the last green item on the Lock (who did 45% of the damage btw)... we started Karazhan quite late due to this (21h30?) but still cleared Huntsman, Moroes and Maiden and called it a night at 23h30.
A fun night i can tell you, no loot for me personally but that's just a bonus and not the main goal.
Just wished i could force myself to take an early night for a change :)
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